Border of Puzzle and Strategy

[Devrailis Colandore]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to rant about something that has been on my mind for the last bit.

I had been thinking about the difference between pure puzzle games and strategy games. I started with the assumption that on some level, all strategy games are a subset puzzle games one way or another.

Some games, like jig-saw puzzles and Soduku are pure puzzle games. At least, I can't say if there is any deep strategy involved when rebuilding my puzzle portrait of teddy bears and fruit baskets for the x-teenth time (I do love my teddy bears and fruit baskets).

Other games like Starcraft and Sins of a Solar Empire feel like strategy games without the puzzling elements at first. Maybe it's because of the pacing, or the atmosphere of the game, but they do feel different from Tetris or Pipe Dreams. When I first started playing Star Craft, back in the day, it felt like a strategy gamer's FPS. But as the game started to mature and develop a meta-game, I started seeing more puzzle-like elements to it. Each faction had a set of strategies that posed unique problems which required their own set of solutions, much like in many puzzle games. The resolution of high level games could sometimes be concluded in the opening minutes, with the rest of the game playing out like a puzzle with all the pieces having already fallen into place. The meta-game itself became a puzzle.

Turn based strategy games seem to lend more easy comparisons to puzzle games. After being introduced to various Fire Emblem games, I realized that after you found the optimal strategies for a given level, the game would play very much like a puzzle. Move piece x to point y and do action z, repeat until objectives are met, etc... Other games, like Yggdra Union, barely give the illusion of being anything other than a puzzle game, with very restrictive rules and generally set paths of movement, though it still allowed a great deal of variation within those rules and paths.

As a turn based game, Wesnoth does have a puzzle-like aspect to it sometimes. This is particularly true for single-player campaigns, with its set objectives and generally predictable AI. Multi-player seems like another beast entirely, due to the variable skills and styles of players. Large, many-sided multi-player games seem very unpredictable to me, but maybe that's because I'm not the most skilled or frequent player on the server. Still, individual tactical decisions still feel like small self-contained puzzles.

With all that being said, my question to you then would be, how much of a puzzle game do you see Wesnoth as? How different is the puzzle feel of the campaign mode from multiplayer? Is there a line that a game needs to cross to transition from being a pure puzzle game to a strategy game? How does randomness and luck affect the puzzleness of a game? Particularly since luck does play a factor in Wesnoth's mechanics.

Comments, ideas, love-letters, and angry rants all welcome. Puzzles do their best now and are building, please have pleasant waiting.

[turin]

Wesnoth is certainly less puzzle than Fire Emblem. Once you're more complex than that, IMO, then for campaign play the puzzle aspect's not that important - though I don't play campaigns religiously, I mostly play for the plot and rarely replay campaigns after I know what happens. I suppose if you did this and set more stringent objectives, the game would become more puzzle-like, because you'd have less room for error.

I'm not an experienced MPer, so I dunno about that, but it seems to me that while there would be some puzzle element, knowing what units to use where and all that, a lot of it would come down to psychology and being able to predict the opponent's moves, and just general strategy, so the puzzle element isn't huge there either.

[Caphriel]

I'm going to slightly disagree with your basic assumption. I believe puzzles and strategy games are equivalent sets. In fact, all games are the same kind of game in that they require a balance of decision making against available time, with possible randomness and/or adversaries. The fastest games, of course, require reflex decisions (such as aiming in an FPS.) It's interesting that you mentioned Tetris and Pipe Dream, because I've never though of either of those as puzzle games. They tend toward the low-time end of the scale, making them more of what I'd call a skill game.

I would say that the difference between a turn-based, otherwise-deterministic strategy game and a puzzle game is the presence of an opponent, whether human or AI. When you're solving a puzzle, you have all the necessary information available to you, and you're working in a deterministic environment. That is, the results of your actions are entirely predictable. I wouldn't even call a jigsaw puzzle or sudoku (or any other pure puzzle, for that matter) games. The Wesnoth campaigns feel very much like a puzzle, because you have unlimited time and victory often requires manipulating the enemy AI into making 'mistakes', the rules for which are fairly common knowledge.

When you're playing a strategy game, you don't know what your opponent is going to do, and that's where the game is. Anyone can solve the n-queens problem or find a knight's tour, but the only limiting factor there is your available time. The real challenge in chess is dealing with an adversary. In most puzzle games, you're competing against something indifferent, such as a clock. In a real time strategy game and in most turn based strategy games, you're competing against the clock and an adversary. So puzzles are strategy games with no clock and no opponent. Puzzle games are games with a clock, but no opponent. Multiplayer Wesnoth is less puzzle-like, because you often lack the required information to make the best decision, and even if you know the entire board position, you don't know what your opponent is planning. Additionally, because the game is non-deterministic, you can't necessarily solve it.

While checkers, for example, is a solved game, it is (probably?) too complex for human players to achieve ideal play. Chess, even if it were to be solved, is guaranteed to be too complex for human players to achieve ideal play under all circumstances. It is true, however, that a great deal of strategy gaming involves learning what are considered optimal opening lines. In Wesnoth, that would be what units to recruit on which castle hexes in each start position on each map as each race playing against each race. That's already mind-numbingly complicated, and that's just assuming one ideal line for each situation. I can't find it for quoting, but I believe Dave made a statement about the complexity of Wesnoth somewhere on the website or forum. It's intractable.

In summary, what makes strategy games not puzzle games is the presence of an opponent, a non-deterministic or incalculably complex environment, and decision making based on insufficient information.

Now, to digress slightly, because the examples may prove illustrative, you mentioned StarCraft metagaming, in particular the game being concluded in the opening minutes and the rest playing out as a puzzle. I would like to point out that Jaedong, a Korean professional, is well known for winning games that are technically a build-order loss. That is, accepted theory says that his build should always lose to his opponent's build, but he will win through skill. In chess, certain opening lines are known to be disadvantageous to one player, usually black, but are still played by the disadvantaged player because many players do not know them, and thus do not know how to play it to their advantage. My point is that even if the metagame theory is puzzle-like, the player requires the ability to recall the metagame theory applicable to the situation, the ability to follow through on it, and the ability to adapt to variations by the opponent.

[krotop]

Although wesnoth is not deterministic, some tactical moves are better than other and it's not irrelevant to think there should be an optimum move that maximize the chances of success of your objectives. That's where the puzzle part is being felt (at least for me). The optimum usage of an ability like leadership where you can boost few to many units depending on how smart you planned your moves, or the choices you make for targetting a unit to kill, or for positionning your units the best way possible to benefit from the terrain, primary attack over retaliation weakness and other tactical decisions you make remain puzzle like to me, despite the randomness factor. And that's a part I enjoy a lot in the game, made really entertaining by this randomness factor as you try to plan the future moves depending on the result of the 1st, and your 1st moves depending on the potential benefit of future ones.

However, the game is not reduced to that, of course, and there is not 1 ideal way only to deal with a given situation, but an ideal way to reach a strategic goal and several potential strategies.
Just the experience I wanted to share.

[Caphriel]

Wired.com has something related to this discussion

[Ken_Oh]

Wired.com has something related to this discussion

Hmmm, D&D is between a board game and a card game? I applaud the concept, but I think it would have been better to make a Venn diagram.

[Cloud]

Depends on your definition.

A puzzle to me is something that has only two end conditions - solving the puzzle or giving up.

In that respect Wesnoth could be said to be a puzzle. You win, or you lose and try again until you do win or give up.

However it starts to step out of the realms of puzzles as there's not a low number of paths you can take to reach that end. A jigsaw, for example has only one way the pieces fit together. Even with one unit against one unit on a two hex map (same terrain and unit with only one attack) you still have two options - to fight or not to. If you fight then there's the randomness. Now multiply out by a vast hugebig number.

In essence anything is just a series of choices (you could even say everything is binary, every choice can be split into a yes or no decision) and so everything could be seen as gigantic puzzle where only certain choices bring the correct outcome (therein lies the difference between life and a game. The correct outcome in a game is clear cut, in life... not so clear cut ).

For me a puzzle becomes a strategy, when there's a large number of choices to make, the inclusion of random factors and where the wrong decision can be made and still can be counteracted by good decisions, or visa-versa.

[JW]

In essence anything is just a series of choices (you could even say everything is binary, every choice can be split into a yes or no decision)

Do you take the left path, the middle path, or the right path?

Or do you stay still?

Or do you go back?

Or do you dig down?

No....not everything is binary.

[Lord_Aether]

In essence anything is just a series of choices (you could even say everything is binary, every choice can be split into a yes or no decision)

Do you take the left path, the middle path, or the right path?

Or do you stay still?

Or do you go back?

Or do you dig down?

No....not everything is binary.

I believe his point is that the answer to each of those questions is either yes or no.

[Euthanatos93]

I think Aether is right. I think in the luck rationale thread that the implementation of luck in Wesntoh is there to keep it from becoming Chesslike. Chess is the closest to a puzzle game that Wesnoth is. Even without the random factor, chess is distinctly a strategy game.

If you want to boil it down. MP wesnoth is basically just a format for people to compare chosen numbers, dice rolls and attribute pixels to those numbers. It is also a format to give those numbers cohesion and meaning. I was trippin on this a while ago myself.

[Caphriel]

Depends on your definition.

A puzzle to me is something that has only two end conditions - solving the puzzle or giving up.

In that respect Wesnoth could be said to be a puzzle. You win, or you lose and try again until you do win or give up.
...
For me a puzzle becomes a strategy, when there's a large number of choices to make, the inclusion of random factors and where the wrong decision can be made and still can be counteracted by good decisions, or visa-versa.

I think what you missed in the first part is what makes Wesnoth not a puzzle game. Your argument may apply to single player Wesnoth, because you can take multiple tries, but for MP, there is a third end state: you lose. I agree with your concluding remark, though. Wesnoth is not a puzzle game because it is intractably complex.

Aether, let me restate JW's choice so that it is no longer binary:
"Do you take the left path, the middle path, the right path, stay still, go back, or dig down? Pick one." This is not binary, and although it could be divided into a series of binary choices, it has to be evaluated as a choice from amongst a plurality of options in order to guarantee the best possible result.

[JW]

Aether, let me restate JW's choice so that it is no longer binary:
"Do you take the left path, the middle path, the right path, stay still, go back, or dig down? Pick one." This is not binary, and although it could be divided into a series of binary choices, it has to be evaluated as a choice from amongst a plurality of options in order to guarantee the best possible result.

Exactly, thank you. Another good demonstration would be:

What do you want to eat?

Sure, you could binarily go through every food in existance and say "yes I want that" or "no, I don't want that," but that isn't very efficient, now is it? (this is a nice binary question for you though.)

[Euthanatos93]

No and it is made without reference. That's where comaparitve macros come in handy.