How do you define (meaningful) choice?

[Renathras]

We talk about this a lot, but I got to thinking, maybe we mean different things by this.

For example, when I think of player choice/meaningful choice, in my mind, that means "multiple right answers" where one may be more efficient in one way and another in another etc. One may be more MP efficient while another may be more efficient in number of casts (Cure 1 vs Cure 2 is, in theory, this kind of choice) while another may be more efficient in some other way (e.g. Tetra not taking a GCD).

But a requirement is, that they're all viable. In FFXIV's "damage >>> all" system, this means, in my mind, they need to allow for comparable amounts of damage output. It's why I'm a fan of damage neutral heals. Because if they aren't, then they're (in most cases) "wrong" answers, which means not a "choice".

But from discussing things, I think some people mean something else by this concept. Something to the effect of "choice" should be having one right answer and all the others be wrong in various ways, where the player is rewarded, not with choice, but rather by making the right choice, as all the others are wrong.

To me, this makes little sense - it's like the saying "You can have your free elections as long as I choose all the candidates" where it's a choice in theory but in reality, it's a binary system of being right or everything else being wrong. To me, that isn't really "choice". In PLD's 1-2-3 combo, you have the "choice" to press 1-3-2, sure, but it's very obviously the wrong choice and thus invalid. So is it really "choice" at that point or just "being wrong"?

And how can a choice be meaningful if all but one answer is wrong?

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In any case, it got me to thinking it's worth asking the question.

Note there are no right/wrong answers, I'm just curious what people think choice/meaningful choice actually means.

[ChonkGoblinSuprem]

In games like this where you have the ability to level all of the classes and collect all of the things, complete all of the quests, etc. the most meaningful choices are when you actually make a choice to NOT! Exclusion and limitations is what makes for interesting characters. If you have everything, you might as well have nothing.

[Connor]

To me, meaningful choice means something you can actively decide upon to determine which tactical benefits you want to produce.

Like if you could choose between Adloquium for less healing but stronger defenses, or Physick for more healing but no long-term defensive effects. Or if you could choose between using Sacred Soil to strengthen the party’s defenses or Shadowflare to lower the enemy’s offense. Or maybe even something like, Biolysis and Miasma being mutually exclusive DoTs with two different additional effects. That’s not how they work now of course, just examples.

Furthermore I think buffing/debuffing is more likely to result in ‘meaningful’ decision making because it’s going to be context dependant. DPS’ing kinda can’t be context dependant by definition, because it’s practically impossible to ever make a scenario where dps’ing isn’t immediately the ‘best’ answer. Plus, buffing/debuffs needs limitations and restrictions for balance, and those limitations, possible exclusivities, resource managements, etc, can increase the amount of decisions healers get to make without falling as far into the ‘just always use it’ that dps abilities can fall into

[AmiableApkallu]

For a choice between A and B to be "meaningful", both options must, a priori, appear as reasonable answers to the question being asked, and furthermore, there must be consequences for choosing one over the other.

Without the latter, you might as well flip a coin and call it a day. Damage-neutral heals don't result in meaningful choice precisely because they reduce the consequences of choosing between damage vs. heal. It leads to absurdities such as facing no consequences for pushing a heal when everyone's already at full health, or even benefits if it's burning lilies to get Misery under a raid buff.

And how can a choice be meaningful if all but one answer is wrong?

It's the journey, not the destination. Which gets back to the first part of my opening sentence. If it's dead obvious what the one correct answer is, then the choice isn't meaningful. If we can endlessly debate which answer is better or correct, then there's some meaning to be had.

[Post]

I think it's worth trying to understand why 'wrong choices' as we refer to them even exist, and to what degree they're wrong (e.g. will the choice make me sub-optimal, will they make me die, will they make someone else die, will they make the group lose the game).

What you think of when you say meaningful choice fits into where the developers have set the parameters of what can work and not 'make the group lose the game'. After we're all operating in that developer designed space, and we're repeating things until the next thing comes out which is natural because the game rewards repeating and we've subscribed for at least a month, we tend to shift the bar of what is wrong to include less and less optimal things. Optimal here meaning 'less than the maximum damage dealt/lethal incoming damage reduced and minimum healing that detracts from that damage' because ultimately that makes the repeat go faster.

We like to go faster because we're not just on our own time when playing with others, especially when so many game systems exist purely to make grouping convenient and easy. It's thus a social faux pax to make things take longer and be more challenging than they could be.

It's not just players that do this either; the way we play and our experiences in this environment informs how they develop. The man himself said he wanted the game to be easy to pick up and put down because everyone's so busy nowadays.
There's always going to be players that feel the 'space' they created is too wide or too narrow, especially when players are more interested in venturing into the space for the rewards than the experience itself (which, again, they add the rewards and repeat rewards).

So, using WoW as it's foundation, a subscription model, and allowing players to play whatever they choose to a degree, of course there's going to be a dearth of 'correct choices' when the only way they can create classes is to make their execution be the level on which you engage with them. There's quite possibly no other place for them to be creative with the jobs other than how the player executes them (1 2 3 instead of 1 1 1), especially when the encounters they're designing for and mechanics they're designing for continually get pared down because some jobs do better at it than others (multiple targets; long range vs small hitboxes), some roles have more likelihood to waste other players' time as they have different responsibilities (tanks getting infinite aggro, tanks and healers getting simpler to use mitigation and healing, bosses positioning themselves instead of relying on players to do it) and some mechanics feel impossible to players to solve on the first go or a loss of DPS to handle (hence them being relegated to either the final savage floors or Ultimates nowadays, instead of like, Leviathan/Oppressor/Ratfinx/Refurbisher normal mode wiping parties that didn't have someone do the thing).

[TheDustyOne]

The problem with making all choices "the right choice" is now you stripped that choice of consequences, and meaning with it. You are right in that ideally you want multiple correct answers, but AmiableApkallu is right in that there's got to be consequences and risk involved. Choosing between using a healing resource and MP is a risk because you may need that healing now, but you may not be able to heal later, which as you point out is what Cure vs Cure II is supposed to do, the problem with that though is the amount of free healing from your oGCD and lilies, and MP regen from Lucid, making using Cure vs Cure II a false choice most of the time. Square has removed any risk involved with such decision making, making it a meaningless choice where it's better to use Cure II over Cure. And they've gone further with a large amount of oGCD heals, and frequent damage-neutral heals making Cure II a bad choice over Solace and Tetra.

Energy Drain is an example of risk-reward as, while you want to push your DPS, if it means losing a Broil cast to Adloquium when you could've used Lustrate, then that risk didn't pay off. The choice to use Lustrate or Energy Drain has consequences down the line. This is why many Scholars adamantly defend Energy Drain, because the choice is meaningful, if simple. This is also why people don't fully want your position of making every GCD heal damage neutral down the line, even my redesigns time-gated them in some way so that it rewarded efficient healing choices, rather than spamming Medica back-to-back and getting the same result as the guy who risked a single Medica II.

Even if there's only one "right answer", it's still more meaningful than every choice being the right one, because now there's consequences to making that choice. More meaningful choices doesn't necessarily mean "more optimal choices", although you can have that too, but more often than not, it's about making riskier choices for better rewards. A melee that greeds one extra GCD vs the melee that moved out earlier and spams his ranged a bit is a meaningful choice, the consequences being either more damage while potentially getting hit, or less damage with the guarantee of not getting hurt.

[Renathras]

I'm more trying to just see what people think than have a debate, but I do want to posit this:

If all choices are the right choice, then there is choice, just not meaningful choice.
If there is one right choice and everything else is wrong, then there is no choice - meaningful or otherwise.

I contest that only one right answer is a choice, much less a meaningful one.

So I feel like to have meaningful choice, there must be at the very least more than one right answer. The answers can be different flavor of thing - as noted before, HPS vs HPM is a meaningful choice in games where healing actually has a MP management component - but there must be more than one viable choice. If some choices are objectively worse (using Medica if you have Afflatus Rapture up or using Cure 2 if you have Afflatus Solace OR Tetragrammaton up), then there is no choice, meaningful or otherwise. There's only doing it right and fatfingering it (hence the 1-2-3 vs 1-3-1-3 mentioned above), which isn't a choice, meaningful or otherwise.

EDIT:

Oh, as an example of this - just invaded my brainspace:

Broil IV vs Ruin 2.

Ruin 2 has some cases where it is the better choice (situational) than Broil IV, and Broil IV has many situations where it is the better choice. But there is some gray area where it's up to the user. A tight movement where you MIGHT be able to get in the Broil, but the player might deem it too risky and go for the Ruin 2. This is still a meaningful choice since there is a choice and which answer is right isn't necessarily a set thing.

Contrast with Physic, which is basically always the wrong answer, and thus not a choice.

[TheDustyOne]

If there is one right choice and everything else is wrong, then there is no choice - meaningful or otherwise.

I disagree, the choice is meaningful, just not deep.

Let's say we take your Broil IV and Ruin II example for a minute here. When we don't need to move, Broil IV is obviously the right answer, but the choice to use Ruin II is still there, even if it's the wrong choice in that situation. The choice to use Broil IV over Ruin II is meaningful because we know the meaning behind why we're using Broil; that it does more damage than Ruin. Again, not exactly deep, and in a target dummy situation it makes Ruin II button bloat, but there's still meaning as to why someone is using Broil over Ruin.

Contrast that with someone deciding to use Titan over Garuda against a target dummy after their demi phase. They both do (roughly) the same damage and (roughly) the same mobility outside Slipstream. There's 2 choices, but it's not very meaningful, just choose whatever and your DPS isn't likely to suffer. Ruin II may be more situational and we ideally don't want to use it at all, but the choice to use it is ultimately more meaningful.

Also I know that when optimizing SMN, whether to use Titan or Garuda first can depend on party comp, but I'm talking in a general sense, the DPS gains are ultimately quite small.

Meaningful gameplay is about having consequences for your choices, depth is having lots of viable choices that are also meaningful.

[vetch]

It's not just players that do this either; the way we play and our experiences in this environment informs how they develop. The man himself said he wanted the game to be easy to pick up and put down because everyone's so busy nowadays.

Yoshi says all kinds of things. He's a public face, it's part of his job to spin.

Ironically it was much easier for me to pick up and put down jobs in a game like WoW, where kits were distinct and memorable and full of choices that depended on the situation, than one like FF14 where all the barely-differentiated skill slop runs together.

I couldn't tell you what the MCH skill order is anymore after not playing MCH for 8 months but I could tell you what the Warlock pets in vanilla WoW did and when to use each one despite having played it as an alt job over 16 years ago. Not even as a main job.

I think this is because when skills are creative, they're more memorable, and when choices are meaningful and impactful it feels good to make the choice, and good feelings are more memorable.

A Warlock's Healthstones don't use your potion cooldown btw, so passing them out before a tough pull is a great way to relieve some pressure on your healers. :-)

[LilimoLimomo]

For example, when I think of player choice/meaningful choice, in my mind, that means "multiple right answers" where one may be more efficient in one way and another in another etc. One may be more MP efficient while another may be more efficient in number of casts (Cure 1 vs Cure 2 is, in theory, this kind of choice) while another may be more efficient in some other way (e.g. Tetra not taking a GCD).

I think it depends on what you mean by "choice". If I give you a choice between drinking poison and lemonade, there are some contexts in which some people would consider that a choice because technically, you do get to choose. But from a less technical perspective, only one choice is sensible to pick, which functionally makes it not a choice at all. So first we need to clarify which framework we're using. I'm going to refer to the former as "choices", and the latter as "Choices". My best guess is we're talking about "Choices"!

And in that case, FFXIV doesn't generally offer Choices in combat.

But a requirement is, that they're all viable. In FFXIV's "damage >>> all" system, this means, in my mind, they need to allow for comparable amounts of damage output. It's why I'm a fan of damage neutral heals. Because if they aren't, then they're (in most cases) "wrong" answers, which means not a "choice".

I think this is the context that really brings it all together: in FFXIV, damage is the only game in town.

In a game like Monster Hunter, there's a lot more flexibility. Like in FFXIV, the end goal is to damage the monster until its HP is depleted, but there are just so many different ways to get there that don't seem invalid. You can bring weapons or tools to try to induce status effects that could give you an edge, you can try to break certain parts of the monsters' bodies to debilitate them or create new weak points, you can try to lure monsters to locations that offer certain strategic advantages, you can try to use traps or well-timed hits to interrupt the monsters' movements for a brief period so everyone can just wail on it, you can try risky maneuvers that have a high risk and high reward, or you can play it safe. There are a variety of different and interesting journeys that lead you to your destination.

In contrast, fighting an FFXIV boss is more restrictive. The only way you can impact the boss is to lower their HP, and the optimal way to do that is to perform your government-mandated rotation. There are minor opportunities for risk/reward play that generally just mean waiting until the last second to move so you can get one more tiny attack off. Conceptually, an FFXIV boss is the simultaneous playing of two games: the left hand plays the "stand in the right place" game, while the right hand plays the "do your rotation game". It's rare for these two games to meaningfully interact, though it does happen on occasion.

Now here's the really big thing. In theory, you could take all that stuff I said about Monster Hunter and convert it into pure math, and then you could find the optimal strategy to beat the monster in the lowest time possible. Speed-runners do this! But normal players don't, and I'd hazard that's because the wide variety of different ways you could fight the monster lead to meaningfully different experiences that are fun.

But in FFXIV battle doesn't branch or change based on what you do; you can only determine when the pre-determined phases change by dealing more optimal or less optimal damage. And because there's no way to do anything interesting, it becomes incredibly easy to hyper-focus on the only thing players can control: DPS. And that's why the line between "normal play" and "speed-running" overlaps in FFXIV to the extent that it does: because it's the only game in town.

(Now, that's not to say that FFXIV is bad or anything. I genuinely love the "stand in the right place" game! It's fun!)