Repetition isn't necessarily tedious, but science is. Why, and what should we do?

[allmhuran]

There are two things I'd like to put right up front in this post:

- We all acknowledge that the game is still in development, that is why providing feedback now is good - while the game is still in development and ideas can still be incorporated.

- I think KSP is awesome (check my sig).

With that out of the way, let me talk about repetition for a minute. Repetition isn't necessarily bad. All games are repetitive in some way or other:

- In Doom (and all of its followers) you repetitively shoot monsters/enemies/targets.

- In RTS games, you repetitively order units around.

- In racing games, you repetitively drive laps around a track.

- Even in monopoly, you repetitively roll the dice.

- In KSP you repetitively snap parts together to build rockets.

So why are these repetitive "gameplay" elements not incredibly boring? Well, because the thing that is repetitive is somehow "fun". But what *is* fun? Ah, there's the question.

Well, in FPS games, racing games and RTS games, and rocket building, you can get better at the thing you are doing repetitively. There are skills involved that can be improved upon. But what about monopoly? You can't get better at rolling the dice. Ah, but rolling the dice introduces am element of suspense and tension regarding what the value of the roll will be.

I think there's another element that is, perhaps, more important. Every time you perform one of these repetitive activities, the result has some effect on the immediate state of the game. A monster dies, or your vehicle enters a turn, or your units move into position, or your piece moves around the board, or your rocket gets a little bit bigger. Something has changed, and that change will have an impact on the game from that moment forward.

Contrast this, now, with science collection in KSP. You click on EVA, then you click on "EVA Report", then you click on "keep" or "discard", then you repeat this process until you have gathered all possible EVA reports. There's no skill to be learned here, nothing you can get better at... it's just clicking buttons. There's no element of risk. And there's no immediate change to the state of the game other than your pod's stored science points increasing a little. Yes, at some point down the line you will spend those points on new tech, but nothing about the gameplay has changed. In 30 seconds you will get out and do exactly the same thing again in the hope that maybe this time you are over a new biome. Or you'll fly to another planet and do exactly the same thing again.

I think this gets at the heart of the problem with the current science mechanic. You can't get any better at it the more you do it because there's no skill to be learned, and the action has no effect on the state of the game or the gameplay. This is why it seems so "grindy" (heck, at least in, say, WoW, the grinding usually involves using your combat skills).

If, on reflecting upon these ideas, anyone feels they grok what I'm getting at, then I wonder if anyone can offer ideas for a better mechanic. It seems what we need is ideally:

1) A mechanic that involves a skill you can improve upon, and/or

2) A mechanic that has a more immediate effect on the gameplay.

I have at least a couple of ideas, but I'm interested in what other people might suggest.

There's one other thing I want to make clear: I am aware that there are some mods that can help relieve the "manual labour" component of science. One will, for example, tell you which biome you are over so you know when to get out and do an EVA report. I suppose someone might make one that lets you bind EVA reporting to a key press, or automatically throws away science you've already collected so you don't get RSI shifting the mouse between the "report" and "discard" buttons. But what I'm talking about here is not just to do with automating the existing repetition. I'm saying we need a different *kind* of thing to do to collect science, and perhaps a different kind of result of performing the collection.

[allmhuran]

Oh, and if you want to actually hear me rant about this: http://youtu.be/MrqhNfMyLCs?t=6m50s

[r4pt0r]

for something that would imeadiately affect gameplay, i suggested this http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79254-EVA-controls

[nholzric]

Interesting post, there's definitely an element of delayed gratification with science, you don't get the bonus until you return or at least broadcast and switch back to the space port.

I'm a big fan of having the amount of science collected be influenced by the intelligence of the Kerbal (or Kerbals) aboard. If you wanted to up the dopamine feedback when collecting science, maybe collecting science would plus-up the intelligence of all the Kerbals involved.

[Kasuha]

I don't think the fact that you need to press and hold Shift for a second when you want to throttle up your ship is any less tedious or repetitive than current means of collecting science. With exception of EVA reports and samples, you can even assign a key to all experiments to do their measurements and then fast-forward clicking on a button to get all the science stored or processed by lab - I don't see any problem in that.

Besides, disregarding asteroids, there's only so much science and measurements to be done. Some biomes on Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus and then a few on each planet. Yes, science is feeling a bit repetitive to me at present but that's just because to top up the tech tree I don't need anything more than to send about seven identical missions to different Minmus biomes. That can be done in two hours.

I have played MMORPGs and I have gone through hours of repeated clicking to kill the same monster over and over again to gain XP and/or rare drop. Whatever is in KSP is nowhere near that.

[allmhuran]

When you throttle up your ship something very obvious and immediate about the state of the game changes: you go faster. Your action has had a consequence that will change something about the very next instant of the gameplay. You also have to choose when to throttle up, and how much to throttle up. Even before doing this you have to decide just how many engines you want to be throttling up when you do it, again with a consequences that will change the gameplay. You don't have to throttle up repeatedly at random intervals in hope of the off chance that you happen to have throttled up at a time when your engines are going to successfully fire. You don't get RSI from doing it over and over for half an hour. There's no way in which they are the same.

[vasya pupkin]

Hello, i'd like to address some of your points (and you definitely made some reasonable ones).

When you write:

- In racing games, you repetitively drive laps around a track.

.

.

.

In 30 seconds you will get out and do exactly the same thing again in the hope that maybe this time you are over a new biome. Or you'll fly to another planet and do exactly the same thing again.

- in the same theme it sounds a bit mutually controversial. Because when you landing on another planet you're actually "repetitively drive laps around a track", and the change you're making is in, hopefully, learning about making it to "that far".

The difference in approach pops-up when one compare progress towards final results. In same racing games with each passed lap you'll approach to the finish and eventually end of a game, because these games concentrated more on sportive aspects which are particular case of competitive spirit in general, what demand results (and like other arcades are).

Þn the other hand games which are true simulators of something, like flight simulators or spaceflight simulators like KSP, do not have an explicit finishing point just because their main experience lay less in achievement of something than in emulating experience itself. People stop playing simulators when they had enough and play again when they want repeat that experience.

While, as i wrote, there's a bit of contrariety, the main theme make a reasonable point regarding work with reports and search for science experience. In the same RTS games, experience usually acquired automatically, from time to time "bothering" a player by just a pop-up notifications of collecting. It sounds good until you recall that you have to choice between keep/lab/transmit; sometimes you know that you'll not bring that back and transmit data before your probe will be destroyed; sometimes you run out of electricity and cannot transmit anything so you keep your results in hope of bringing them back. IMHO, all these decisions can't be made automatically.

But simple automation (doubt if it is actually simple) of the actual search for biomes and bringing-up the report windows indeed might be found useful (IMHO of course).

Though it might be also good idea to make such automation switchable (on/off) in case one want to concentrate on flight mission itself.

Oh, and if you want to actually hear me rant about this: http://youtu.be/MrqhNfMyLCs?t=6m50s

- Mapping planets in general, and making some map of locations (probably interactive) sounds very constructive (towards fun) idea. Edited May 12, 2014 by vasya pupkin
minor corrections

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Discoveries!

Gathering data is boring. Making discoveries is fun.

Every time you take a reading there should be random chance that you “made a Discovery,†a popup with a joke, some little bit of funny Kerbal science, and a bunch of science points. And the discoveries change the game. You get instructions of someplace else to go on the planet, or a different scientific reading to take. (don’t have the right equipment? Then you have reason to come back!) each Biome can have one or two discoveries waiting to be made.

You can also get “anomalous readings.†(more common) And enough anomalous reading this add up to a Discovery.

There I fixed it,

----

“I believe that we should commit ourselves to the goal, before this week is out, of landing a Kerbal on the Mun and returning him safely to Kerbin.â€Â

– John Fitzgerald Kerbedy.

Edited May 12, 2014 by Brainlord Mesomorph
typos

[allmhuran]

Because when you landing on another planet you're actually "repetitively drive laps around a track", and the change you're making is in, hopefully, learning about making it to "that far".

I totally agree with this actually. This is the fun part of KSP - learning how to build better rockets and learning how to fly them. I'm not making any claim that this part of the game is not fun. I'm saying the specific act of science collection itself isn't fun. That is, the part of the video that I linked to where I am just clicking "EVA Report" and then "Discard" over and over and over again trying to pick up the biomes. Can you imagine what it will be like if/when all planets have biomes? You'd have* to spend hours and hours and hours doing this.

* Sure, you don't have to collect the science at all. I get that. But if "doing science" is in fact going to be part of the game, I'd rather it be interesting and fun rather than tedious and grindy. If it's pure repetitive boredom then why have it at all?

[tntristan12]

I think my problem with science implementation as it currently exists now is that it doesnt feel at all connected with the present state of the game. You can get out and do an EVA report and if you're above the right biome you'll get slightly more science than you would if you were over a different one. However, this completely disregards your ability to actually do *science*! You can't bring spectrometers and scan the chemical composition of the planet from a distance to find the interesting parts, then land and get a surface sample after you've evaluated your options. You just get out and... Look?

And then there is absolutely no incentive to perform unmanned missions to assess the safety of the environment or get more information because landing a probe or unmanned rover contributes exactly nothing to the progress of the game! This makes science purely a property of the mission you are currently running with little sense of buildup between missions. Once one mission accomplishes a scientific achievement, that's it... There's no reason to stay or explore more. Science for science's sake is completely useless to the overall progression of the game.

Solving this issue is key to addressing the concerns outlined in the OP as increasing the degree to which science gathering impacts the overall progression of the space program will inevitably make it less boring and repetitive.

[vasya pupkin]

If it's pure repetitive boredom then why have it at all?

- As i wrote, IMHO, because of inevitable choice of keep/lab/transmit. All you can shortcut in these circumstances (if not changing science system entirely - that i wont address since that thing beyond the scope of this thread) is an automation of actual click on report button, but this brings additional questions of automating the research itself (like whether and how if yes).

[allmhuran]

I think my problem with science implementation as it currently exists now is that it doesnt feel at all connected with the present state of the game.

Totally agree, I mentioned in the video that having science be based on an abstract points system "divorces it from the gameplay" (IIRC you made a note of this phrase actually, thought it was worth repeating here)

- As i wrote, IMHO, because of inevitable choice of keep/lab/transmit.

For the record, that mission collected all the science necessary to unlock the entire tree. So the question of whether to transmit or not was never an issue. I acknowledge that not many players are going to go to this level of effort. But it does make the point that I made in the video, that if "science" is an abstract points based system, the only challenge is to get the highest score.

I do get your point though. I think a suitable solution (regarding automation only) would be for the "on rails" vehicle to never transmit data back or process it automatically, just collect it. If you want to transmit or do further processing, take control of the vessel and tell it do the transmissions.

Edit: Oh and yeah, feel free to offer suggestions that change the system entirely! I think that would totally be on topic.

Edited May 12, 2014 by allmhuran

[vasya pupkin]

if "science" is an abstract points based system, the only challenge is to get the highest score.

- And before "science" points, people probably were bored by "the only challenge is to get to another planet". All the adaptive changes require a lot of work and customization. So developers added this unified approach which might not be the best, but it works. Personally, i think (and i completely possible may be wrong) it is more laying in the field of compatibility with chosen philosophy of add-ons. And if radical change of research system will demand from 3rd side developers to complicate their add-ons, they might just give up on these.

If so, from the point of view of squad team, it might be concluded to a challenging question: whether or not to throw away enormous number of hours spent by vast number of people?

And if so, the answer might be obvious.

Again, as to your a suggestion, i think it brings a reasonable points, and partial automation gives a start to think about. If at all.

Edited May 12, 2014 by vasya pupkin
corrected errors in post

[vger]

I've said numerous times that each world should have mysteries, that require unique ways of solving them. Not to the point of making KSP a puzzle game, but it would make research more involved than just 'land and bring back.' I even made a thread about it a while back, but it fell on deaf ears.

In fact, just about EVERY thread I've seen posted about this very topic, gets very few replies.

[Kasuha]

In context of acquiring individual technologies, I would like achievement-driven approach too. For instance, you only get access to more powerful rocket engines after you achieve orbital flight.

But we need to remember that the science system is only one part of the whole career mode system which is intended to use three "currencies" - science, reputation, and money. Science points might start making way more sense once put into context. But we'll need to wait a while for that since we're now only going to get contracts in 0.24 which is still not all what's intended for career.

[tntristan12]

In context of acquiring individual technologies, I would like achievement-driven approach too. For instance, you only get access to more powerful rocket engines after you achieve orbital flight.

Yes, but an orbital flight with a standard rocket and immediately de-orbiting into the ocean with parachutes is worth the same amount of science as achieving an orbital flight in a single stage and de-orbiting on a trajectory that allows you to safely land back at KSC. There is no distinction between these two, and if you were to accomplish the former early on in the game, then develop technology to do the later before going on to other planets, you would get exactly... zero science. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I'm hoping that the upcoming contracts system will remedy this kind of dissociation somewhat.

But we need to remember that the science system is only one part of the whole career mode system which is intended to use three "currencies" - science, reputation, and money. Science points might start making way more sense once put into context. But we'll need to wait a while for that since we're now only going to get contracts in 0.24 which is still not all what's intended for career.

This is another concept I have high hopes for, as I outlined here.

[Red Iron Crown]

Yes, but an orbital flight with a standard rocket and immediately de-orbiting into the ocean with parachutes is worth the same amount of science as achieving an orbital flight in a single stage and de-orbiting on a trajectory that allows you to safely land back at KSC. There is no distinction between these two, and if you were to accomplish the former early on in the game, then develop technology to do the later before going on to other planets, you would get exactly... zero science. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I'm hoping that the upcoming contracts system will remedy this kind of dissociation somewhat.

No additional technology need be developed to land at KSC, just player skill.

[Justin Kerbice]

In order to break the bureaucratic repetitiveness of kerbal science, we could have at our disposal various science parts doing the same job, but with various parameters (efficiency, speed, quality, resolution, ...).

Kind of chemical analysis of some matter/liquid:

-you have cheap/solid/basic part which give you the acid/base value,

-another part give you molecular analysis (x % of this, y % of that),

-another give you presence of lifeforms (ex:bacteria detected here) or its absence,

-and so on

each level mean part price/research needed to get it, lifetime, resource consumption (a mass spectrometer should needs lot's of power for example), difficulty to use the part (this need kerbal skills), a random parameter also for analysis quality (sample tainted, kerbal mistake, sensor not calibrated right, ...).

Just some ideas for a more interesting sicence as even doing the same experiment 3 times may give you 3 different results (= 3 different "score") in some case.

[xcorps]

I understand and have some empathy with the OP suggestion, but I don't want a science minigame. I wouldn't be opposed to more interaction with various experiments as long as they are not involving pressing the right key at the right moment.

Something like Apollo (14 was it?) where you slam a rocket into Mun for seismic readings, or deploy an experiment and recover it on a different mission.

[vger]

I understand and have some empathy with the OP suggestion, but I don't want a science minigame. I wouldn't be opposed to more interaction with various experiments as long as they are not involving pressing the right key at the right moment.

Being able to experiment in the lab could be pretty cool though. It wouldn't have to rely on twitch skills though. It could just be a case of trying different things to see what works.

Heck, for some reason I've always wanted to actually see inside the goo canister during the experiment. Just for the sake of having something more tangible than just getting a text message.

But no, the kind of increases to the complexity of science gathering that I had in my mind, wouldn't make it feel like a metagame.

Gosh, maybe I should just do a mock video one of these days, instead of trying to explain it in text. Maybe people would start to 'feel' it then.

[xcorps]

Agreed, vger.

[tntristan12]

Being able to experiment in the lab could be pretty cool though. It wouldn't have to rely on twitch skills though. It could just be a case of trying different things to see what works.

I would love to have some experiments that could only be conducted in the lab under certain conditions (i.e. zero G vs. Eve G). Consider the mystery goo. When you conduct an experiment on it in the dead cold and vacuum of space, you would naturally get one set of results. When you can examine the experiment on site with the proper instrumentation (i.e. in the lab module) you leave the experiment intact (i.e. the temperature and pressure when you examine it are as close as possible to the conditions you had when the experiment began). Bringing back the goo and recovering it destroys the conditions of the experiment (the gravity and temperature specifically), so how then is it possible to receive 100% of the science value from it?

Heck, for some reason I've always wanted to actually see inside the goo canister during the experiment. Just for the sake of having something more tangible than just getting a text message.

Yes! This, 100%. This could be applied to other experiments as well. How cool would it be if your analysis of surface sample composition yielded actual chemical composition data?

But no, the kind of increases to the complexity of science gathering that I had in my mind, wouldn't make it feel like a metagame.

There exists a fine balance between making something tedious and making it interactive. I can see why xcorps would be worried about it becoming akin to a real-time event. However, imposing certain time and space restrictions on an experiment wouldn't necessarily make it tedious if you could regularly replicate the conditions of the experiment (i.e. simply fly to orbit and wait until you're on the dark side of the planet before taking your measurement). I don't think it'd ever end up becoming a minigame, or at least I sincerely hope not!

Gosh, maybe I should just do a mock video one of these days, instead of trying to explain it in text. Maybe people would start to 'feel' it then.

I would love to watch this video.

[Jouni]

The science in KSP is boring and repetitive, because we're playing the boring and repetitive part of science. In reality, it's even more boring and repetitive.

I'm hoping that contracts will make science more interesting. In addition to external contracts (house two scientists in a lab at LKO for a year; bring back surface samples from three Mun biomes; etc.), the mechanism could also be used for declaring mission goals in advance. The more ambitious goals you choose, the more you have to pay for preparing the ship for the mission. If you succeed, you get a lot of science points (or credits or something). If you fail, your reputation suffers. You may also try things not listed among mission goals, but the payoff will be less, as the ship was not prepared for it, and the crew had to improvise.

[tntristan12]

The science in KSP is boring and repetitive, because we're playing the boring and repetitive part of science. In reality, it's even more boring and repetitive.

In this line of work, science isn't so much "boring and repetitive" as it is "boring with occasional bouts of excitement." For example, I was just involved in a project to blow up a satellite (no, not in space). The satellite took the better part of two years to design, months to build, days to move everything in place, hours to set up the experiment... less than 50 milliseconds to completely and utterly destroy... then hours of breaking down the experiment, days to move everything back, and now we're looking at the better part of two years for post analysis.

But man, the destruction was EPIC!

KSP affords us the benefit of speeding through the setup and breakdown. We can build rockets that would take years to build in real life in a matter of minutes. We can time-warp through the boring transit stuff! We have the luxury of being able to cut right to the experiment - the meat - the interesting stuff! Alas, we don't have much interesting stuff to do... And that's a shame. Think of how fun it'd be to set up an LCROSS style mission and slam a spend fuel tank into the Mun to analyze its cloud with spectrometers! Maybe that level of detail is wishful thinking... But perhaps we can get a level or two of more involvement in the experiments themselves? As stated in the OP: Clicking on a button repeatedly and hoping for new science is BORING!

[allmhuran]

Science, like many things, can definitely be boring and repetitive in real life. This is why we shouldn't try to take the activities of real life and port them into a game. Instead we can take the "essence" of something and turn it into an activity that is entertaining and fun, because that's what games are meant to be. So we can have something called "science", and it can relate to what science is in the real world, but it need not be performed in the same way as it is in the real world.

Or if it's too hard to take the essence of science and turn it into something fun, we can remove it entirely. I know, "shock horror gasp, science is the entire point of space exploraiton". But if it can't be made to be fun, then we shouldn't put it in the game simply in order to "have something to do". Harvester made much the same argument about resources: Yes, we want stuff to do when getting to other planets and moons, but that doesn't mean we should break out the shovels and start digging. When we're talking about adding gameplay elements we can't just add any old activity and assume that it will somehow improve the game. The activities need to be fun. In real racing you don't get to the track, immediately do your qualifying lap, and then immediately start the race. You spend the vast majority of the day waiting for your fifteen minutes while everyone else has theirs. But that doesn't mean racing games should implement this by forcing you to sit idle in your chair for hours waiting for your turn.