Making narrative sense of "levels" in RPGs

[Cognisant]

It's kinda weird that in most RPGs characters get stronger, more skillful and more durable by say killing enemies or completing quest objectives or having life changing experiences. It's meant to simulate character development, that as you progress your character grows from their lived experiences, just as people in reality get stronger through exercise, more skillful through practice, more knowledgeable by learning and wiser through, uh, experience. But it's not a one way street, just as the narrative affects the character's capabilities so too does the character affect the narrative and if the character is noticeably becoming more capable through certain actions it stands to reason that they would prioritize those actions. Meta-gaming so to speak.

Spoiler

So how to account for this phenomenon in narrative without making it exploitable?
A story where someone goes around killing wildlife for EXP would be rather odd, but at the same time we want to have stories with larger than life heroes and demigods and some explanation for how they became so powerful that doesn't preclude that blacksmith's son wishing for adventure from going on an adventure and becoming one of those larger than life heroes.

I think the solution is based on the premise of the 2001 Jet Lee movie "The One", basically there's parallel universes and every time a parallel version of you dies that version's mojo is distributed among those remaining, except without the travel between universes and trying to kill parallel versions of yourself, because that's kinda odd.

Spoiler

Instead it's a matter of risk, have you ever almost fallen from a high place or almost been hit by something and had a moment of existential terror along the lines of "oh shit I almost died", well in a parallel universe you did, which means every version of you gets just a little bit more mojo. Now this has to happen a lot before you become truly larger than life and so it's only people who take lots of stupid risks or constantly find themselves in danger that "level up" so to speak, and such people tend to engage in more risky behavior, perhaps even believing themselves to be favored by the gods or something.

Spoiler

And just for fun you can occasionally have someone survive something by the slimmest of margins, like say they get grabbed by a giant eagle and as they're being flown back to its nest they free themselves by stabbing its feet, falling hundreds of meters down to the ground and landing in a deep snow drift surrounded by sharp rocks. In this case the vast majority of parallel selves would not have survived the encounter, either being killed by the eagle outright, devoured at its nest or smashed upon the rocks or cold hard earth, thus the character in question has "leveled up" to mythic status in a matter of hours, enabling them to survive just long enough to be discovered, rescued and their injuries treated.

Have fun

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Mother Of Learning handled experience pretty well. MC was never gaining discrete chunks of exp, but every fight and every challenge taught him something new or increased the efficiency of what he knew. Also he didn't gain anything from doing things that he already solved (aside from stopping skill decay) which makes sense. It helps when every learning experience is defined as a problem to solve that only gets solved when MC improves themselves to overcome it. It's a fantasy novel that you can read for free on RR, slow buildup, but satisfying growth.

I made my own rpg system that handles character growth in terms of floating point growth of every skill or attribute involved in a task. So shooting from a crossbow is a task involving (marksmanship skill [weight .8], agility [weight .6] and focus skill [weight 0.2]). It's just an example, my crossbow shooting ckeck has 3 mental attributes and 2 physical ones as well as 5 skills involved. After the character used said skills they are stored and improved when said character goes to sleep. I run a few calculations to decide how many skills were improved and by what amount they should increase. I also have skill decay, unused abilities and attributes get worse over time till they reach a certain minimum (even individual spells have proficiency ratings and you could just blast a cone of ice all day and get super mana efficient in it, but forget how to cast strong light due to disuse). It's pretty much how learning and growth works in our world, no narrative explanations needed, except maybe for why growth rates are so quick. It can also be played as a tabletop game if one person has a laptop to calculate a few things.

A good number of the lit-rpg novels have a very crude rpg system behind them. Some try to pretend that they don't, but it's clearly a simplistic spreadsheet that handles stats and character's knowledge. Some of them openly show character's stats and their growth, some try to narrate it away and don't bother with it.

 

[preilemus]

When looking at real-world experience, I think that leveling up in most RPGs is very arbitrary. I think there are experiences that we all have that can be equated to "leveling up" irl; some examples that come to mind for me are promotions, religious/spiritual milestones, graduations, and so on. The Elder Scrolls IV was neat in that you also had to find a bed and rest in order to level up. When you go to the gym and spend an hour lifting weights, you are not instantaneously stronger - if anything, instantaneously weaker due to all of the energy just expended. The growth comes from rest and recuperation, sometimes.

One time I was sauteeing some food and I needed something in a pinch to de-glaze what I was cooking. The only thing I had on hand was a jug of orange juice in the fridge which happened to work nicely. That definitely felt like a level up. I've also had unexpected breakthroughs while doing daily breathing exercises. Maybe in those cases, the stove blew up on an alternate self, or I choked on my own saliva, but how can that be proved?

Maybe after you've killed your 100th giant rat in the forest you might have an epiphany on how to do it more efficiently, and that's what the "level up" experience in games simulates.

"From henceforth, ye shall be statistically better at that thing thou art doing."

Skills irl can atrophy when they're not in regular use, but if we have learned something previously, we can often pick it back up faster than if we were learning it for the very first time. I haven't seen that mechanic in any game I've ever played, though.

 

[Hadoblado]

@blar
Isn't that an enormous amount to keep track of? Have you got it coded in a program or something or do you have to go through this process after every action?

Re: OP
Highlander xp makes a lot of sense for quantitative scaling but yeah can create some perverse play incentives. If you're trying to make a truly consistent mechanism I don't think it works without some tuning, but only if you're thinking about it too hard imo.

It sort of assumes that the number of universes is finite and that no new universes are created (if they were created, your mojo would go down every time you take an action as it is diluted by your new multiverse selves).

If it's universal, then you're going to get people randomly increasing in power relative because their otherselves are not all doing the same thing. So I will level up while sleeping because otherselves went out and did dangerous things. This basically means your xp would look more like a constant trickle as you average out the variance. I guess you could have a "relatedness" factor between universes so that your causal proximity dictates the degree of mojo redistribution?

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

@blar
Isn't that an enormous amount to keep track of? Have you got it coded in a program or something or do you have to go through this process after every action?

I have a video game prototype that does everything. Doing thosands of little calculations per one skillcheck doesn't bring down the performance, skillchecks are quite rare, most of the time the player just stares at the screen trying to interpret the game world and decide what to do next. So why restrict ourselves and make simple mechanics? Why not have a player character that has 10,000 attributes and skills of various levels of importance? The only limit is the development time required to make meaningful gameplay that uses extra mechanics and stats. In my system even character's attributes are linked and non-static. My version of the intelligence stat improves other mental attributes slightly, but also improves the learning rate for most skills. I have separate physical condition and mental condition, physical condition synergises with strength and agility and mental condition. All visible attributes improve other character's opinion of them. So what's usually known as charisma is a function of all stats, equipment value and presentation skills. I'm not aiming for realism here, I'd call it 'rationalism' in the sense that it's the kind of logical complexity that makes sense and could work in an alternate magical universe.

When it comes to pen and paper rpg's I think it's high time to start an era of phone app assisted gameplay. We all know how physical dice are sacred to most players, those stay. But keeping track of modifiers, loot tables and statistics is a headache for players and gm's alike.

So why not let the player roll their d10 or d20, then plug that into their phone app which keeps their whole character sheet and give the result after whatever incredibly complex nonlinear set of functions and equations that need to be factored in. If the player likes, they can roll the dice in the app so the result doesn't have to be plugged in, or better yet, use image recognition and read the result from the dice on the table, that's also very doable. This effectively makes any level of system complexity workable, but also preferred. Most rpg systems need to be limited to a maximum of two lookup tables for mechanics so as to not slow everything to a crawl. And it's already a crawl and the gameplay gets mechanics dense. With an app handling mechanics, the players can have a pure storytelling experience without letting go of mechanics. Storytelling used to be mechanics free and people would make things up, but now it can also use heavy mechanics if that enhances the game or helps with creativity.

I'm not interested in developing a fully functional app product at the moment, but I think the level of current rpg apps is pedestrian. They can keep track of memorized spells and spell lists? That's so basic. I could easily see an app that connects with every other player at the table and the GM has a different kind of UI. They can make secret rolls, players can make secret rolls for the gm, share public monster information with the players, keep secret monster information hidden until players reveal it but also have this hidden information contribute to the rolls, send messages, plan future meetings, organize their character sheets, do all the in-game mechanics like rolling actions, skill checks, keeping track of random mundane inventory, counting missiles till they run out, calculating travel time and generating random encounters and so much more.

The end result would be worth the modest development time for someone dedicated to pen and paper rpg's. Imagine, you skip all the layers of abstraction to have your character do in-charactery things, without worrying if you should grapple because you don't remember how it works. You could grapple and have your phone factor in if the opponent's skin is oiled , if he has enough stamina to continue grappling in the next round, if lying on his chest restricts his breathing and therefore limits stamina regeneration and so on, infinite complexity gives rise to infinite possibility.

 

[Hadoblado]

I would be for getting rid of dice, but I'm in the minority there.

Agree that there's a potential market for such a product, the difficulty comes with integrating it. You're not going to get whole groups trying out an app, you'll get one person trying it at first and the DM won't be able to balance both systems simultaneously.

As written, I can only see this working if a DM starts with a tiny group and builds from there (sorry - I really do agree with you, I've just been burned a lot with ambition before). I do think there are ways to do this well though, by having independent value with in-built scalability.

Regarding complex mechanics: There is value in making them understandable. The part of me that wants to game the system doesn't want to wade through infinite systems. I also want to have an idea of what a good idea in a system is but that's hard if the system is opaque due to complexity. But yeah there's certainly an allure to trying to model something with increasingly sophisticated systems.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Agree that there's a potential market for such a product, the difficulty comes with integrating it. You're not going to get whole groups trying out an app, you'll get one person trying it at first and the DM won't be able to balance both systems simultaneously.

It's good if you have a team and someone does the marketing and research. As a small dev they could make the app and test it, but they don't have the millions of dollars to market something like this and they would have to get external investors on board and that means they lose direction over the process and have to make concessions. Even marketing small indie games costs hundreds of thousands to make any impact.

Given that tabletop rpg market is so niche I don't expect a good enough return on investment anyway. People play different systems with DnD / Cthulhu being most popular, I guess? So the app would need to handle different mechanics to have a wide enough reach, that's a lot of work for a playerbase that doesn't even approach hundreds of millions. It's better if this was open source and many people joined and collaborated and included their favorite systems and so on.

I also had another cool idea, with 5 players using the app they could place their phones side by side and this would give them a joint screen surface big enough to display a battle map. No need to carry a big touch screen tv for that. Lots of things that would enhance the experience that aren't that difficult to implement.

Regarding complex mechanics: There is value in making them understandable. The part of me that wants to game the system doesn't want to wade through infinite systems. I also want to have an idea of what a good idea in a system is but that's hard if the system is opaque due to complexity. But yeah there's certainly an allure to trying to model something with increasingly sophisticated systems.

Picture a complex open system. You can read the documentation, but it's so large that you can't understand everything at once, or even in a year. This doesn't mean that you can't minmax or try different things. You can. Let's say you focus on one attribute and how it influences some major gameplay aspect like persuasion and you try all the dials and sliders that give you the best persuasion. After one playthrough like that you end up with a decent understanding of persuasion and mechanics related to that, but you're still baffled by combat, magic etc. You get to explore this intricate universe and slowly piece an understanding of it. I think it's minmaxing dream, unless you really expect to know everything right when you sit down to make your very first character.

But the best thing about it is that you don't have to read the documentation. You can simply play and it will be a natural experience. It's not like a fantasy peasant knows how anything in their world works, they might know that working the field is a source of stable income, but they have no idea how to fight or do anything else in the world and the player would feel the same, until gradually they would try things and build an understanding out of it. There's absolutely no need to understand the game to play it, if it's a fair system.

 

[Puffy]

I think there reaches a certain level of detail with video-games where you may as well stop levelling up your cooking attribute in the RPG and just level up your cooking attributes IRL. Think how long it would take to reach 99 cooking in something like Runescape, you could easily go from nothing to the foundations of cooking IRL in that time. Same with guitar hero and learning actual guitar. Or Call of Duty and being a paintball/ air-soft player.

I personally don't like video-games that try to simulate reality for that kind of reason. It feels like the game is cheating me out of a more rewarding experience. I get the dopamine rush and false sense of achievement out of "levelling up" where I usually haven't achieved anything outside of playing the game more. Worse with games that have an indefinite structure, endlessly creating content, as it means there's no end to this inertia cycle.

I like in-person gaming, like board games, as it has a finite structure, with a clear beginning and end. The game is dependent on a gathering and comes to an end with that gathering. You can get better at the game and "level up" but a weekly games night respects my life and boundaries. With video-games it's basically down to me to define the boundary, and as I am addiction and inertia prone I'm likely do a bad job at that. So in the pursuit of "levelling up" I could just be self-sabotaging myself, I think it's important to at least consider that in our design choices.

My preference is usually narrative-based games where the levelling up (and even my increasing skill in the game) represents story progression and character development. So if I feel like I want to play I know that the story will be over within <10 hours and that the boundary of the experience will finish with that. Journey, Silent Hill 2, System Shock 2, Shadow of the Colossus and Soul Reaver are among my favourite examples.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I think there reaches a certain level of detail with video-games where you may as well stop levelling up your cooking attribute in the RPG and just level up your cooking attributes IRL. Think how long it would take to reach 99 cooking in something like Runescape, you could easily go from nothing to the foundations of cooking IRL in that time. Same with guitar hero and learning actual guitar. Or Call of Duty and being a paintball/ air-soft player.

I get it that life can be fun to level up and offers a lot of enjoyment, but games can also offer enjoyment and experiences and don't have to be single player. One can do all these things with other players or friends and build a set of shared memories. I'm a big fan of board games and they help but they're always held back by unsophisticated, simplistic mechanics.

Runescape is a very simple game. What if the game is more complex than reality? What if the cooking experience in the game is more involved, creative and engaging than what you can get outside?

Can you fly by yourself irl? Can you travel across dimensions, visit other solar systems, do any of the impossible cool things that you'd like to do?

Most people in asian countries can't afford to rent a place big enough to have a kitchen. They can't even dream of practicing the skill of cooking irl. What if there was a game that simulates real cooking so that they could cook without paying for equipment, ingredients and space? They would learn cooking and with good controllers they could even learn the movements of cutting and arranging dishes.

Fantasy, unreality is a qualitatively different experience than reality. People take psychedelics to change reality, other people use imagination to alter it in different ways. There is freedom in imagination and fantasy that will never be available to mortal men. Even guys like Elon Musk with all his money can't travel or organize a flight to a single planet, let alone conquer a galaxy. What if I like astrophysics but don't have the patience to wait 20 years to where the probe that I've been working on gets launched and another 20 years for when it gathers information? I can do that and more in any space based simulation and play around the ramifications of being the ruler of several thousands of worlds.

There's going to be a point where simulation and unreality surpasses the experiences offered by reality. At that point many will disconnect from the ugly, imperfect, grim and dark place that surrounds us. After all what's the point of participating in a rigged rat race that only offers the greatest freedom to those who spend most of their time gathering resources that they never get to spend?

One of the answers to the fermi paradox could be that reality is too slow and too boring to engage with. The brains just want to turn inwards into a perpetual simulation.

 

[Puffy]

I think there reaches a certain level of detail with video-games where you may as well stop levelling up your cooking attribute in the RPG and just level up your cooking attributes IRL. Think how long it would take to reach 99 cooking in something like Runescape, you could easily go from nothing to the foundations of cooking IRL in that time. Same with guitar hero and learning actual guitar. Or Call of Duty and being a paintball/ air-soft player.

I get it that life can be fun to level up and offers a lot of enjoyment, but games can also offer enjoyment and experiences and don't have to be single player. One can do all these things with other players or friends and build a set of shared memories. I'm a big fan of board games and they help but they're always held back by unsophisticated, simplistic mechanics.

Runescape is a very simple game. What if the game is more complex than reality? What if the cooking experience in the game is more involved, creative and engaging than what you can get outside?

Can you fly by yourself irl? Can you travel across dimensions, visit other solar systems, do any of the impossible cool things that you'd like to do?

Most people in asian countries can't afford to rent a place big enough to have a kitchen. They can't even dream of practicing the skill of cooking irl. What if there was a game that simulates real cooking so that they could cook without paying for equipment, ingredients and space? They would learn cooking and with good controllers they could even learn the movements of cutting and arranging dishes.

Fantasy, unreality is a qualitatively different experience than reality. People take psychedelics to change reality, other people use imagination to alter it in different ways. There is freedom in imagination and fantasy that will never be available to mortal men. Even guys like Elon Musk with all his money can't travel or organize a flight to a single planet, let alone conquer a galaxy. What if I like astrophysics but don't have the patience to wait 20 years to where the probe that I've been working on gets launched and another 20 years for when it gathers information? I can do that and more in any space based simulation and play around the ramifications of being the ruler of several thousands of worlds.

There's going to be a point where simulation and unreality surpasses the experiences offered by reality. At that point many will disconnect from the ugly, imperfect, grim and dark place that surrounds us. After all what's the point of participating in a rigged rat race that only offers the greatest freedom to those who spend most of their time gathering resources that they never get to spend?

One of the answers to the fermi paradox could be that reality is too slow and too boring to engage with. The brains just want to turn inwards into a perpetual simulation.

I don't personally share your enthusiasm for this but I'm supportive of your enthusiasm. We obviously come from different frames of reference with programming being close to your heart and life passion, where for me gaming is something I associate with a life consuming addiction I had due to crippling social anxiety. I'm happy to leave virtual and simulated reality as developments for my grandchildren in favour of looking after the family farm.

 

[Hadoblado]

I like some leveling mechanics and not others. For me, it's about unlocking options. I don't like higher numbers, I want to be able to do something new.

For this reason, my favourite games tend to be card games where you unlock new cards or small variations to the cards that change how they play. Each time you get a new card, there's a huge number of possible ways to apply it.

One of my favourite passtimes is looking at sets, often for games I don't even play, just to guess how good something will be or how it is used. What makes this enjoyable is that despite being quite expert at this, I am still wrong all the time. There's a channel I've been watching on youtube recently where pros from different games evaluate cards from other games. You can see different levels of analysis occurring, and even the very best players are often split about whether something is the best card ever or completely useless.

Noita (roguelike) has a similar system where the leveling is more about equipment. You find spells and wands and have to figure out how to combine them. Every new spell you find is like a coding operation that might let you do something cool. Combine this with an alchemistic physics engine and you can spend hours trying out new ways to "level up".

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I don't personally share your enthusiasm for this but I'm supportive of your enthusiasm. We obviously come from different frames of reference with programming being close to your heart and life passion, where for me gaming is something I associate with a life consuming addiction I had due to crippling social anxiety. I'm happy to leave virtual and simulated reality as developments for my grandchildren in favour of looking after the family farm.

90% of people will never be able to own a farm where they could live a simple idyllic life close to nature surrounded by a group of friends.

Even if that's their dream life the best that they're going to be able to afford is a very life-like simulation of a farm in a game.

For many people things like being intimate with another human being are out of their reach, but they are going to get an artificial intelligence to be their soulmate.

I'm not so enthusiastic about it. It would be better if everyone could get their own space and achieve all their dreams irl. Entering an electronic space where everything is unlimited is the only solution that everyone can realistically attain with the limited resources on this planet. And simulations better than life are quite a way off.

 

[Puffy]

I don't personally share your enthusiasm for this but I'm supportive of your enthusiasm. We obviously come from different frames of reference with programming being close to your heart and life passion, where for me gaming is something I associate with a life consuming addiction I had due to crippling social anxiety. I'm happy to leave virtual and simulated reality as developments for my grandchildren in favour of looking after the family farm.

90% of people will never be able to own a farm where they could live a simple idyllic life close to nature surrounded by a group of friends.

Even if that's their dream life the best that they're going to be able to afford is a very life-like simulation of a farm in a game.

For many people things like being intimate with another human being are out of their reach, but they are going to get an artificial intelligence to be their soulmate.

I'm not so enthusiastic about it. It would be better if everyone could get their own space and achieve all their dreams irl. Entering an electronic space where everything is unlimited is the only solution that everyone can realistically attain with the limited resources on this planet. And simulations better than life are quite a way off.

I wouldn't presume that people want the type of thing you're describing just because they're poor, unless there's something else you had in mind.

Also, I think it's important to not forget that people are animals, it feeds into our discussion in the obesity thread but I'm unsure we can just bring animals like ourselves into a technological environment and expect we'll be happy. For example, I think we'd both choose intimacy with our loved ones over an AI soul-mate any day, in the same way a cat would prefer the warmth and comfort of a human over a machine. If someone wants to choose the latter that's up to them. But if they're doing it and retreating into hyperreality because they're too afraid to work on themselves in the here and now then I feel they're making a big mistake.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Also, I think it's important to not forget that people are animals, it feeds into our discussion in the obesity thread but I'm unsure we can just bring animals like ourselves into a technological environment and expect we'll be happy. For example, I think we'd both choose intimacy with our loved ones over an AI soul-mate any day, in the same way a cat would prefer the warmth and comfort of a human over a machine. If someone wants to choose the latter that's up to them. But if they're doing it and retreating into hyperreality because they're too afraid to work on themselves in the here and now then I feel they're making a big mistake.

Let's say meta-ironically that I'm really keen on ruling the galaxy, seriously, I'd love to be the god-emperor of mankind. I think I have the necessary knowledge and vision. Where else am I going to be able to become the god-emperor of mankind if not in a simulation?

Is my dream too grandiose? What about dreaming of becoming the leader of a country? There can be only one leader for a period of 4 years. In a lifetime where I can start my candidacy aged 24, I can keep trying to become a leader for 40 years before I'm a decaying old fart. During that time, only 10 people realistically can get the post that I'm dreaming of. Am I to agree to pursue a less ambitious goal or accept defeat?

I am realistic and I know how poor and hopeless people are in developing countries. If I apply myself as a poor background average Chinese guy, the best I can hope for is having a family and kids and slaving away at a factory for the rest of my days. My professional life is uninspired at best and I have a wonderful family life to compensate. For most people, almost everything is unattainable from the start, even when we talk about things that lie in the realm of possibility for people in the west.

It's not a matter of applying oneself. It's a matter of realizing that by applying oneself we can only do so much and the result is still mediocre. The hierarchy is ruthless, there can be only a few beneficiaries of the work of thousands. I'm not one to overthrow the success hierarchy.

Let's make the following thought experiment. Suppose that everyone is a clone of the same highly capable, highly driven individual. They all try to climb the success hierarchy. Being equally capable they all deserve the top spot, but only one gets it by pure chance. The rest would have to contend with getting 2nd through last place. Are all these highly capable individuals supposed to accept that they will earn less money, have less of everything, have to work for the guy who is no more capable than they are?

We are left with these options:
1. Like what you get and adjust your dreams to reality
2. Like what you want and dream big
3. Quit the rat race and get everything in a simulation

 

[Puffy]

@Glaerhaidh Again happy you're enthusiastic - wanting to be god or president sounds like a bit of a middle-class problem though. :P

If someone was in a position of supreme hardship I can sympathise if they'd rather live in a different reality or start their life over in a simulation. Maybe it’s just to make that available for them. For me, I choose 1, but it's a personal choice rooted in my own life learning.

I used to imagine that life was only worth-while if I got to be a great artist that everyone remembered. Then I had the chance to meet some larger than life characters with big dreams like Lyra. What I've discovered several times is that their aspirations were rooted in trauma. They'd rather live in a fantasy of glory as a means of avoiding how maladjusted they are to life and working on their real shit in the here and now.

I think it's important to acknowledge that a video-game like this could just be enabling people's mental illness and/or maladjustment, when maybe it'd be more rewarding for them to accept their place and work on themselves here. That was the take-away that I'm applying for myself anyway.

I think for it to help it'd have to be a pretty intelligent simulation, that could take people's desires and show through the game how they might not always play out in the best way. Maybe there's unforeseen circumstances of becoming a great artist that isn't how I'd imagine it to be, etc. So that through the simulation I learn hard lessons that I can apply to my choices in real life.

Or maybe a trauma simulator that takes as input the person as they are and simulated a reality where they find healing and resolution to their issues - so that they can take this insight back to apply in their lives. In effect that’s what psychedelics like ayahuasca do when applied in a therapeutic environment.

That’s my stream of consciousness spew on this anyway. Our differences in metaphysics are probably also a relevant factor.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I think it's important to acknowledge that a video-game like this could just be enabling people's mental illness and/or maladjustment, when maybe it'd be more rewarding for them to accept their place and work on themselves here. That was the take-away that I'm applying for myself anyway.

I think it would be healthy if people lived their dreary lives as usual but had access to a simulation for 2 hours every day. They could continue to try and mostly fail to improve their hopeless situation in the real world, but have a dream world to fall back to.

Nothing stops the simulation from being educational or improving people's social skills. Everything that's learnt in a simulation is remembered and helps get better results irl.
That said, there will always be losers, it's the way the system works. Even if everyone were incredibly capable and valuable, some people would not get anything out of bad luck and limited job positions or limited resources/space.

That's how I see it until we get to things like mind uploading and storing your consciousness on a server without a physical body. At that point the dream world becomes more important than reality. Other than ensuring that your mainframe will be secure and receive the power and maintenance that it needs one can keep influencing the reality via expendable robots and avatars in parallel with existing in a simulation, probably living multiple lives at the same time. Once we have uploaded our consciousness nothing stops us from living multiple lives in parallel and synchronizing our experiences every so often.

 

[Puffy]

I think it's important to acknowledge that a video-game like this could just be enabling people's mental illness and/or maladjustment, when maybe it'd be more rewarding for them to accept their place and work on themselves here. That was the take-away that I'm applying for myself anyway.

I think it would be healthy if people lived their dreary lives as usual but had access to a simulation for 2 hours every day. They could continue to try and mostly fail to improve their hopeless situation in the real world, but have a dream world to fall back to.

Nothing stops the simulation from being educational or improving people's social skills. Everything that's learnt in a simulation is remembered and helps get better results irl.
That said, there will always be losers, it's the way the system works. Even if everyone were incredibly capable and valuable, some people would not get anything out of bad luck and limited job positions or limited resources/space.

That's how I see it until we get to things like mind uploading and storing your consciousness on a server without a physical body. At that point the dream world becomes more important than reality. Other than ensuring that your mainframe will be secure and receive the power and maintenance that it needs one can keep influencing the reality via expendable robots and avatars in parallel with existing in a simulation, probably living multiple lives at the same time. Once we have uploaded our consciousness nothing stops us from living multiple lives in parallel and synchronizing our experiences every so often.

If we're going really pie in the sky. I think the potentially cool aspect of what you're describing would be in evolving humanity into a collective consciousness. Why limit ourselves in being individuals. A lot of our problems and conflicts and inefficiencies and lack of understanding comes from the fact that we're all separated.

Personally I conceive of humanity as like a single body, with everyone being individual cells that provide specific functions for the body. Imagine how much more efficient everyone would be if we all had access to the same consciousness and were working together towards common goals.

On a more pragmatic level. I agree with you that a few hours of entertainment is pretty harmless, however one should choose to do that. The problem is that it's quite easy to procrastinate and escape into an alternative reality with video-games if things are not going so well in the real world. They can inadvertently enable mental health issues or life-blocks for people like myself. For example if you have strong social anxiety being able to talk to people online is certainly a nice thing. But it doesn't necessarily transfer in helping you to interact with people in the real world. The evidence is in the experience of many, like the hikkimori's in Japan, for which media becomes a crutch and a reason to not try developing socially in the real world.

To be honest, I think this forum probably has a history of some people like this as well. Personally I don't see why this won't continue to be a relevant factor with the current development of virtual reality technologies.

 

[Cognisant]

I like some leveling mechanics and not others. For me, it's about unlocking options. I don't like higher numbers, I want to be able to do something new.

This is why Deus Ex and Morrowind were so great, leveling up a skill increased the utility of it., e.g. in Deus Ex you accuracy with a pistol depended upon your pistols usage skill and you could compensate for your inaccuracy by crouching and not moving (I think you could go prone too?) and aiming for center-mass rather than headshots. As you increased the skill and JC became more accurate you could change how you played the game, engaging targets from further away or sneaking up to deliver headshots or engaging in run-and-gun firefights, options which were always available but weren't always feasible.

If we're going really pie in the sky. I think the potentially cool aspect of what you're describing would be in evolving humanity into a collective consciousness. Why limit ourselves in being individuals. A lot of our problems and conflicts and inefficiencies and lack of understanding comes from the fact that we're all separated.

Personally I conceive of humanity as like a single body, with everyone being individual cells that provide specific functions for the body. Imagine how much more efficient everyone would be if we all had access to the same consciousness and were working together towards common goals.

Full integration necessarily comes with the loss of individuality, ideally you want a mix of the two so that the collective can engage in high level strategic operations while there's a ground-up command structure that's actually doing things. This is in theory how the US military operates, units in the field are given strategic goals but have the freedom to adapt to circumstances and exploit opportunities as they see fit, even sending situation reports up the chain of command which may change the overall strategic approach. i.e. "chemical and/or biological weapons found in captured enemy cache"

An entirely top-down command structure has an efficiency of scale but that's wasted when it's spent trying to brute force a problem by throwing more resources at it without changing the approach, you see this a lot in autocratic nations like China where the government has absolute power but runs into trouble because its mandates lack regional nuance.