A great idea for game with decisions

[NotInUse 64]

If you play games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The Walking Dead or so on, I have an idea for you.

 

Instead of making choices, let a coin decide the fate of characters, what you say in dialogues and so on.

 

I found it to be a fun way to play games, the problem is games with 3 choices like The Walking Dead, there you can use a number generator from 1 to 3 and the number that pops up is the choice you pick.

 

Just an idea though, hopefully you like it

[Scootalove 10,689]

That's a good idea, sometimes your decisions don't have to be based on your own choices but maybe flipping a coin could decide your dialogue and actions. Hmm, good.

[Concep 46]

I like the idea a lot. But the bad thing is it removes your own choice versus having the game decide for you.

[Harmonic Revelations 8,835]

With enough choices, that would give a game a high replay value. I like the idea.

[Discordian 6,015]

In general I believe the next step for game stories is to have it play out differently each time instead of following you down a set path or having you make choices that are ultimately irrelevant and won't change much.

 

I don't care whether I have dialog choices, most of the games I play don't even offer it, I just sometimes wish an event wouldn't happen the same every time just to mix things up.

[Judgement 445]

I would like a game where your choices effect the ending. (God I love jrpgs) I like how in games you have to choose the right action/thing to say in order to get the true ending. I love having a bad ending, normal ending, true ending, gag reel ending, etc. It adds to the replay value and makes you want to get all the endings especially if there is a reward (like an unlockable character) for getting them.

 

The thing is though, if the game starts out slow, you don't want to replay it again JUST for the different ending. If getting an ending gave you a special bonus chapter as an award, then I definately think it would be worth it.

 

I wouldn't want it to be based on luck though. Maybe collecting a certain object that triggers a certain ending would be nice.

 

I would like a challenging game where every ending is bad and you have to be witty to get the true ending.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Judgement

[Page.Turner 940]

I'm reallllly bad at getting endings on games...

 

It's not that I'm lazy! It's just... I really enjoy watching cut scenes and endings to games on Youtube. It's a really bad habit of mine that I know I should break but I just can't. XD

 

It's like when I was watching Game Grumps do a play of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. They were going for the Sleeze and Sirens ending but managed to get the true ending. Out of curiosity, I just kind of looked up the different endings on Youtube My favourite is probably the alien one XD

 

However... I think a game where a coin chooses your actions is an alright idea. I think games should be more like D&D where you perform an action but you have to roll a die to see how effective it is/how it plays out.

 

One time, in my D&D group, my friend's character is traumatized by beets because he grew up in a beet worshiping village XD And so another friend's character emptied a sack of beets onto the floor. My friend with the poor beet complex had to roll to gauge his reaction (using a kinsey scale and a 6 sided die) and he wound up throwing up on his shirt a little... XD

 

My point being: randomizing your reaction is one thing... but randomizing the outcome of an action makes the game more of a gamble

[FoxyCryptid 4,330]

You always use a dice for that as well. 1-2 are option one, 3-4 is option 2, and 5-6 is option 3. Just change that to 1-3 and 4-6 for two choices.  

Edited February 14, 2014 by Shoboni

[SasQ 1,379]

Since every number can be expressed in binary (which is the only true place-value system; other ones, including decimals, are only shortcut notations for it), you can use coin flips for multi-choice games as well.

 

For 3-choice one, just make 2 coin flips in a row. Heads-Heads (11) could mean choice 3, Heads-Tails (10) could mean choice 2, Tails-Heads (01) could mean choice 1, and when you flip two Tails (00), you can simply ignore it and repeat the flip. Or, if you have some preference for one of the options, you can encode this option as "mixed" (10 or 01), and the two others as 00 and 11. Then you have three choices again, but with your preferred choice having more chances to show up (the ratio is 1:2:1). But still you can have a bad luck

 

For games with more options, just encode each option's number in binary and flip your coin the proper number of times (number of digits or flips is the logarithm to the base 2 of the number of options; if you don't have log2 on your calculator, only log10 or ln, you can use them this way: log10(choices) / log10(2), or ln(choices) / ln(2) to get the number of coin flips needed). Ignore all unused numbers and just repeat your flip if they appear.

 

As to the idea of coin-flipping the whole game:

I think it could be interesting to try, but I'm afraid that it will take out the whole interactivity, turning the game into a plain old movie  

I'm with @ on this one: it's better to leave the choice to the player, but introduce the randomness in some other way to find out how much that was a good choice

 

In general I believe the next step for game stories is to have it play out differently each time instead of following you down a set path or having you make choices that are ultimately irrelevant and won't change much.

 

Yeah, I hate when game makers do that ;/ I then start wondering why don't they just play out the whole dialogue at once instead of forcing me to "crank it up" line after line. Often the choice of lines doesn't matter much, and I just play them all, one after another, until they all disappear (or, what's worse, start to repeat ;-P).

 

P.S.: I'm coin-flipping to check if this was a good idea or bad 

P.S.2: The coin said: BAD. Flipping again to see whether should I trust it 

Edited February 14, 2014 by SasQ