Computer games by their very nature are rigidly defined pieces of maths/code*. This is compared to the likes of tabletop role playing where a fudge or two so as to keep the story, experience, or whatever you wish to deem it, moving are expected parts of the process, or in board games where house rules and mechanics external to the game (meta gaming being a term here but it can go further than that) are commonly in play.

"The Algorithm" however decided I would like a series of videos from a channel called FailRace called Survive the Hunt. The general premise is that a single player attempts to either blend in with NPCs in some measure of "living world" for a certain amount of time, or whilst having to complete a series of objectives. Various rules for the hunters and the hunters are enacted depending upon the game (typically they use one of the Forza titles or GTA5) to make it a viable mode of play. Ordinarily I am no fan of watching footage of such gameplay but it turns out we do indeed dance for our machines these days and it was massively compelling. But for the honking great yellow arrow various people I had met expressed an interest in such a mode as far back as GTA 1 (as in the 2d efforts), and things like Watch_Dogs had similar modes in its "randomly draw you into multiplayer" thing it did, but that series did well. Similarly if you wanted an example of the "asymmetric gaming" concept that was an E3 buzzword in years past then this is that, and a far better glimpse into what it can achieve than many of the offerings we ultimately saw.

Of course it goes beyond that and we have game mods (whether with developer made tools, or the likes of ROM hacking), the humble house rule (don't shoot a player without a weapon in Goldeneye), simplistic savestate efforts (in EA's Skate series the ability to designate a spawn point and play the pass the controller was almost universal), the increasingly large number of "challenge games" wherein emulator savestates and memory viewers are set up to create challenges for people, various communities make their own challenges (the Pokemon Nuzlocke Challenge being a good example), and even speedrunning could be argued to be a version of this.

*at least for now. While we have hidden rules in games they are just that. Eventually we probably will have some kind of self learning and altering code make a game, first likely coming in the form of rewards and weapon statistics being honed by an algorithm similar to suggested videos on various video services, but that is a discussion for another thread (feel free to make such a thing if you want though).

Previously we discussed the state of VR and 3D and whether they had once more failed to take hold.

Spoiler: earlier editions

the last game skill you unlearned, The game you invested the most money in, times where people said gameplay styles would not work for a platform, the value of online play, emulation vs hardware, a favoured game style that might have become less common in recent times, skills one might have learned or honed because of a game, games on the PS4 and Xbone that will stand the test of time, games that got better after launch, cancelled games and shuttered devs, and story canon in games.

You are invited to then discuss things such as your house rules, own games you made within others that you and yours play, ROM hacks/cheats to alter games such that it would fit here, and times where you take a small facet of a game and have things fall from that.

 

[comput3rus3r]

Do card games count? As kids me and my family invented a card game we named asshole due to how the cards look when dealt. We didn’t realize there was already a card game called asshole (or president) which had different rules from our game. We still play it to this day haha.

"asshole" sounds like such a family friendly game. /s

 

[Longshot56]

When my siblings and I would play animal crossing we would design clothes and leave them at the Abel sisters

We each had our T-shirt slot with the Abel sisters on display

The goal was to get the most villagers wearing your shirt

The designs varied, but my favorite were the ones that said "screw bob"

Haha I had never seen my brother Bob so mad when he saw the first villager wearing that "screw bob" t-shirt

Short for Bobby like Robert, or is his name just Bob

 

[x65943]

Short for Bobby like Robert, or is his name just Bob

Robert, he doesn't even go by Bob anymore (now he goes by Rob)

But to his siblings he will always be Bob. In fact when we hear his wife call him Rob we all think it's weird.

 

[Sakitoshi]

I find this kind of challenges dumb (in videogames at least), the game already has a set of rules that fit them perfectly fine and do the job.
That being said, the closer I got to doing something like that was when I played pokemon sun catching and using nothing but new pokemon. I wanted to recreate the feeling of excitement I feel when I played pokemon white. Needless to say it failed by the lackluster that is sun in general, but at least I got to know how effective were the new pokemon I guess.

 

[Jahrs]

might not fit in exactly. but me and my friends do custom decks only for yugioh. ie no googling decklists and making it based off your own ideas. Its lead to alot of interesting duels. then theres the no legendary rule in pokemon games when battling. find the games be a bit more fun when you do thing yourself and dont rely so much on handouts.

 

[RustInPeace]

With Pokemon, nothing special, just don't use items during battle (hold items are allowed), have the battle style on "set" instead of shift, and that's it. I did two nuzlockes for FireRed, the first one wasn't ideal and I was left disappointed. Second one was more fulfilling, but I haven't done a nuzlocke since. I'm satisfied with that, more likely to do them if they are baked into a game, for example Polished Crystal has a nuzlocke feature I'd try.

When it comes to Pokemon, playing ROMHacks for the last 6 months in quick succession, strategy and competitiveness (against the AI) are almost thrown out the window if you grind it out and are overleveled, which was my case quite a bit. So, it's important to vary playthroughs no matter the ROMHack. Lately I've been doing monotype runs, which are very fun. Currently on Blaze Black 2 with an Ice-type team. This doesn't qualify as one's own set of rules, but recently I finished Yet Another Fire Red Hack on Lunatic Mode. No EVs gained, no items can be used during battles, those two basic handicaps made it the most difficult ROMHack I think I've played. I had to be at least 15 levels above the E4 to win, and the Champion rematch is filled with hackmons, not legit pokemon at all. For example, an ugly fusion of Lickitung and a floating figure that made it I guess Normal/Ghost, a gray-colored Furrett that is Dark/Psychic I think and bulky as fuck. It was crazy.

 

[DANTENDO]

we used to play tiger woods online and we found out some players were sort of cheating by taking out a pin in the mouse to guarantee a straight shot as mouse with one of the pins out would never hook or slice yr shot while moving it up and down-so when we spoke to players they admitted doing it and we had a way of making it fair by all of us taking pins out but setting wind on gusty settings so you had to use yr skill to aim still-dont kno if these pc golf games are still about these days but if yr playing online golf find out if you think someone could be benefiting from hitting a straight shot all the time

 

[FAST6191]

might not fit in exactly. but me and my friends do custom decks only for yugioh. ie no googling decklists and making it based off your own ideas. Its lead to alot of interesting duels. then theres the no legendary rule in pokemon games when battling. find the games be a bit more fun when you do thing yourself and dont rely so much on handouts.

I occasionally field requests to have custom decks made for such card games on computers. This tends to be for people that want to play against the AI though so usually it ends up with a link to https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/duels-planeswalkers-all-about-ai-2014-02-13 and having to explain that the little ARM7, or, worse z80, processor that moves at a blistering 4.194304MHz is not going to be able to calculate fast enough to do well here. Alas my friends and I that would play such games tend to be the sorts of people that have that link in bookmarks and employing much of the same maths (and if not then you tend not to last long or get compelled to pick it up) so it probably changes something there.

I find this kind of challenges dumb (in videogames at least), the game already has a set of rules that fit them perfectly fine and do the job.

A curious response.

It is not the first time I have met something like it (my favourites probably still being the people that genuinely seemed to think the earlier DS zelda dpad patches were some kind of insult to or affront to the devs of the games) but I still find such a mindset to be strange. The game may or may not play fine as is, though many times there are trash games come good with mods/hacks and minigames or short segments that people really like. However a random player/hacker/modder might well have different ideas, or the benefit of infinite time, greater understanding and greater skills than the initial dev (computer games are not quite a fully matured medium yet with nothing new under the sun, though it is contentious whether such a thing exists for any medium... maybe the rate of new things being discovered and explored is still considerably higher) and that has routinely given rise to all sorts of cool things. To dismiss them wholesale seems a strange thing from where I sit; I would even be dubious should the claim of "the cream of the crop will rise into my awareness".


Forgot another one. Original Deus Ex, PC edition. In an update it got a multiplayer mode (it was originally single player only, at this time internet and updates were not quite a fact of life/something everybody searched for all the time, more like if you encountered a show stopper). Anyway I loved the game and about 3 months after launch got a PC that could play it. Ultimately only found out about updates way late in the day. In it people had made a mode wherein you jumped off a very high height and had a small section of water to land in, smaller pools being the harder challenges.

we used to play tiger woods online and we found out some players were sort of cheating by taking out a pin in the mouse to guarantee a straight shot as mouse with one of the pins out would never hook or slice yr shot while moving it up and down-so when we spoke to players they admitted doing it and we had a way of making it fair by all of us taking pins out but setting wind on gusty settings so you had to use yr skill to aim still-dont kno if these pc golf games are still about these days but if yr playing online golf find out if you think someone could be benefiting from hitting a straight shot all the time

I am told something similar happens for people playing without crosshairs on various FPS games, or the "hardcore mode" equivalents for that game. People there putting a dot in ink in the middle of their screen to act as such... maybe they were Vectrex fans and felt like kicking it old school.

 

[Noctosphere]

Here we play monopoly with only one dice
It balances the game and make it harder to get doubles...

 

[BORTZ]

I haven't done it yet but I think that it would be fun to play Pokemon r/b/y or g/s/c with only pokemon available to Team Rocket. You can get a decent team. I would probably do something like allow myself to cheat in a new pokemon to catch after each gym or something. I should make some rules up.

 

[Longshot56]

Robert, he doesn't even go by Bob anymore (now he goes by Rob)

But to his siblings he will always be Bob. In fact when we hear his wife call him Rob we all think it's weird.

Alright. I was asking since hearing Bob is weird to me.

 

[FAST6191]

Here we play monopoly with only one dice
It balances the game and make it harder to get doubles...

That would change the maths somewhat... I don't know if it is necessarily more balanced and with the lower movement potential that would do things to it. (barring jail and card effects, the former of which forms the basis for many strategies here, it becomes essentially random, and the chances of you skipping over a row of hotels or something drops considerably.



An interesting thing to ponder for this actually. Might have to go do that.

I haven't done it yet but I think that it would be fun to play Pokemon r/b/y or g/s/c with only pokemon available to Team Rocket. You can get a decent team. I would probably do something like allow myself to cheat in a new pokemon to catch after each gym or something. I should make some rules up.

I assume most people here saw the likes of

But for those that did not then there you go. The channel does a few similar ones which have some interesting effects for pokemon.

 

[Sakitoshi]

A curious response.

not really.
I never though about game mods while writing that, I have no issues with those.
there are mods that change the gameplay but by doing so modify the set rules permanently. the kind of thing I find dumb is self imposed restrictions when there is nothing to make you enforce them. some of those mods may even enhance the game by fixing some broken/very annoying mechanic.
think about it like this, your character is about to die, you find "healing item 2" but you decided that you would only use "healing item 1" to heal yourself, at the same time there is an horde of enemies right around the corner, would your character in that situation just ignore said healing item when it really needs it? of course not, but you as a dumb player will make him ignore it anyway.

that's also why I don't find it dumb for non-video games, because board and card games are all about following established rules by yourself, you can do whatever you want if you want, you have only yourself (and well, the other players) to stop you from deviating from them.

 

[FAST6191]

not really.
I never though about game mods while writing that, I have no issues with those.
there are mods that change the gameplay but by doing so modify the set rules permanently. the kind of thing I find dumb is self imposed restrictions when there is nothing to make you enforce them. some of those mods may even enhance the game by fixing some broken/very annoying mechanic.
think about it like this, your character is about to die, you find "healing item 2" but you decided that you would only use "healing item 1" to heal yourself, at the same time there is an horde of enemies right around the corner, would your character in that situation just ignore said healing item when it really needs it? of course not, but you as a dumb player will make him ignore it anyway.

that's also why I don't find it dumb for non-video games, because board and card games are all about following established rules by yourself, you can do whatever you want if you want, you have only yourself (and well, the other players) to stop you from deviating from them.

I am still at a loss here.

But if in this virtual world/playthrough healing item 2 effectively does not exist then it does not exist as an option. I don't really see the difference between that and imagining what if you had a healing item when you didn't.

There are any number of real world things where one is given or takes a handicap as well. Having a virtual equivalent does not seem so outside the realms of normal thought.

 

[Sakitoshi]

I am still at a loss here.

But if in this virtual world/playthrough healing item 2 effectively does not exist then it does not exist as an option. I don't really see the difference between that and imagining what if you had a healing item when you didn't.

There are any number of real world things where one is given or takes a handicap as well. Having a virtual equivalent does not seem so outside the realms of normal thought.

fair enough, but my point stands as the item indeed exist and you very well could pick it up even if by accident.

 

[Mythical]

I sometimes put a self limit on party members. Could be a certain class or a limit of people. For Dragon Quest IX I played it with 3 characters (I've sunk way too much time into that game though)

 

[Deleted User]

might not fit in exactly. but me and my friends do custom decks only for yugioh. ie no googling decklists and making it based off your own ideas. Its lead to alot of interesting duels. then theres the no legendary rule in pokemon games when battling. find the games be a bit more fun when you do thing yourself and dont rely so much on handouts.

Me and my friends did the same thing with yugioh. Original ideas only and no meta deck. It was a blast!

 

[RedoLane]

One time, I completed Doom 2 with a specific rule: One Map, One Ammo
Before each map, I span a custom-made roulette which consists of 4 different ammo types + melee type.
The resulted type will be used for the entirety of the map, so if it the result was shotgun ammo, I used Shotgun and Super Shotgun on the map.
When ammo ran out, I just avoided any obstacle and monster on the way.

The only exception was on the final map, where I had to use a Rocket launcher in order to kill the Icon of Sin.

 

[Jahrs]

You get the funniest situations with that kind of rule set. for example had a god card get murdered by og kuriboh wasnt even mad about it either

 

[JavaScribe]

When drinking, you mustn't drive, you must stop

"But officer, I wasn't drinking and driving! I stopped on the side of the road every time I took a drink!"

 

[Alexander1970]

Playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 on the way from Munich to somewhere in Poland.
And then comes this "specific" Truck to creep in front of me.And then i remember this thread.

Shovel gently aside those slowcoaches without any penalties. No.it doesn´t interest me whether the polnish cpu controlled driver had a controverisal with his virtual wife neither he comes to late to his virtual work.
This Things that i never try or thing about in real life,yes thats what a realistic driving game for.

But in an reasonably way.

 

[Ericzander]

Beer-io kart is the effing best.

You all crack open a cold one and you have to finish it before completing the race. However you're not allowed to drink and drive, so you have to make sure your character is stopped every time you take a sip.

My strategy is to chug as much as I can at the start and then use the powerups to catch up. Woe be to the person in first place who has to chug it all before finishing.

 

[warweeny]

That is a dangerous way to do nuzlocke, if your starter faints your game is over. And unless you intend to grind it up a lot early on before you get to any trainers/gym leaders where you're at a type disadvantage, it WILL faint.

grind it to level 20 first gym, 30 second, and get last evo on the 3rd gym and the whole game is a walk in the park, it will deff NOT faint, especially on vanilla pokemon. pokemon red? get level 20 charmeleon vs brock, 2 shot ember vs onix, level 30 slashes all misties pokemon away, charmeleon outspeeds them all, and by the time you get to surge you have a level 42 charizard vs 24 raichu, yeah, much difficult...oh wait. type disadvantage means nothing to a level 60 pokemon that is destroying level 40 pokemon.

easier said than done
it takes time...

Time = difficult? no, no it does not. And you do not need much time since you only have HM slaves and your starter, your starter get all the exp, it levels up like crazy.