Playing Pox and Emotional Fatigue

This is an idea @doubtofbuddha and I have kicked around a bit -- essentially, that playing Pox is really mentally draining compared to other games. I've put a ton of time into Street Fighter and the Dark Souls games, messed around with plenty of different first person shooters, and am working through several indies game right now while writing about them. None of those are as mentally taxing as Pox, in a way that's somewhat tough to describe.

Speculatively, I think it's because Pox involves a lot of highly contextual decision making which isn't justifiably sanded out by time. To illustrate that, consider another TBS (e.g. Hearthstone), and then consider an RTS (e.g. Starcraft 2).

In an RTS, a player is constantly making decisions, so a player must make meta-decisions about the areas they want to optimize -- should one choose to focus on macro to get the ball going, or spend more time micro-ing all their Stalkers? That's a substantive decision, but it also disguises something else important: the player can, with some mental comfort, ignore the various optimization problems in their play. Obviously, part of improving involves being able to manage more things at once, but at each stage there will be some inevitable slippage because the game is in real time. Even if the number of decisions potentially available is enormous, those decisions are necessarily spread out, and players can only do so much. Players learn to live with that.

In a TBS, players are confronted with a large array of potential options, and they then sort through that material. Most online TBSs work with a clock, but in general, players face a "decision set" each turn, handle it, and then move on to the next turn. Some games, like MtG, allow you to make decisions during opposing turns, but in general, decisions happen in discrete increments. In contrast to an RTS, the decisions involved in a TBS are much fewer and simpler. In Starcraft 2, for instance, the exact positioning of every single Zergling in a pod is a decision, albeit a very minor one, whereas in Hearthstone, attack order, attack targets, and card plays compose the entirety of a player's choices (and hero power, whatever). One turn may require a bit of thought, but it's never a gross amount.

Pox is... a combination of the two, specifically, the combination that is most mentally taxing, i.e. requires the most decisions that can't be justifiably ignored. First, compared to most other TBS, Pox involves a huge number of non-partitioned decisions, all of which are potentially important. (By non-partitioned, I mean such as in MtG, where actions are divided into phases, or in some other games, where everything moves, then everything attacks.) In terms of raw decision making, Pox passes most other TBS. Second, compared to an RTS, Pox confronts the player with a large number of choices but provides them no real excuses for making bad ones. Even with long term times -- far longer than would ever be reasonably implemented -- this number of significant decisions is still daunting.

Most of all, the decisions in Pox are highly contextual, which hinders habituation, and can even make habits work against the player as often as not. Keep 4 AP on a champion? Less than half the time, without a doubt. Probably less than 25%. Even so, that's one of the biggest and surest habits out there. Pox is also punishing by nature, where a single sub-optimal play can convert into losing an entire champion, which can rapidly collapse a whole front, which can lose the game, this means that every single decision has a severe amount of weight behind it. The player is confronted with a huge number of decisions, each of which might be -- probably is -- relevant, and they have no way to rationalize avoiding those decisions. It is difficult to even form an algorithm for processing these decisions, because habits can as often work against the player as not.

I think this is why you'll hear a lot of players who have hung around for a while either say they take it easy or don't worry to much or just wing it when it comes to numbers (I specifically remember @Agirgis1 telling me this when we were talking about Kanen): a player who wants to bring their mental A-game to each match, who actually wants to compete at a high level, needs to expend an enormous amount of raw, effortful processing power to do so. This is also why it's hard to get a sense of progression: Pox depends much more on conscious, instanced analysis than it does rules of thumb or shortcuts.


In short: I theorize that Pox is mentally exhausting because it confronts players with huge numbers of important decisions, without many ways to process those decisions.


But, again, all of that is somewhat speculative. I'm inclined right now to think that this draining quality to Pox is both deeply ingrained in the mechanics and the core cause of Pox's steep learning curve. I honestly want to hear from other folks, though -- do you find playing Pox to feel difficult? What's your mindset for the game? How frequently do you play? Any other thoughts or input would also be great.

 

• • This also includes automatic damage calculations and the like which would greatly reduce the burden if implemented

[/QUOTE]

But do we want automatic damage calculation?

 

I think that is the single most important feature that is currently missing in the game. A damage preview would make the game so much more accessible.
... then you'd only need a "range preview" so you don't have to hover over attack range, move champion, hover over attack range again to make sure that you are actually able to hit the target... and perhaps a "damaging aura and crap" display so you don't have to look at every single champion that you don't know to check if they have deafening aura or anything else that will hurt you if you just move close to them...
... and then you might have a playable game.

PoxNora tries to be a game about strategy. To make strategic movements you have to know what consequences your moves will have. If you attack Vulnerable Tough SL champions and have no idea if you kill the champion or end up one damage short that's not really helping the strategic part of the game. So I'd say that we do want that.

 

I have noticed this before, where i can sort of grind out game after game for a day or 2 , but sooner or later this mental wall hits where i just keep making silly mistakes; my brain literally refuses to focus on the game properly. I end up taking naps between games. Keeping in mind i used to ( and somewhat still do) workout and play basketball everyday and felt perfectly fine, but playing pox was what would have the power to actually make me feel exhausted (Mentally, and even physically wanting to take naps). Granted the frustration i feel from losing might contribute to the mental exhaustion.

I think mindset might have a big role to play in this, because i do remember a time when i would never hit said "Mental exhaustion wall" simply because i was always expecting to lose and just wanted to learn. So i didn't have an extra factor pushing against my mind.

All that being said, you can some-what make the game a lot less stressful by doing a lot of quick mental estimating ( as @kalasle said eariler) and just kind of running through the motions, only stopping to think hard at critical moments of the game.

Math really is a big skill in this game, if players had a computer simulating every possible combination of tools and spells/attacks possible for you every turn , most players would be shocked how many potential kills they are missing... simply because visually ( distance wise/not pushing your tools limits) it seems unlikely. And as kthx once argued to me, positioning is somewhat trivial to top players ( as in most positioning is basic, not requiring critical thought), as much as this is a strategy game..... it really isn't, no matter how good you are, sometimes youll still find yourself in trouble. ( As in you made no mistake, and the enemy made no outplays, yet by the luck of the game he is at the advantage.)

 

This is why i rage so hard when i lag all the time and end up not being able to do things i know it has the power to completely change the game

 

Kthx is wrong btw

 

Can you explain it further? I believe positioning is one of the most dificult things to do well. How is it so trivial like easy to determine on any scenario?

 

Other factor: Lots of counting and basic arithmetics in your head if you want to be good. I ended up just winging it, which produced not-that-great results, but, really, I'm not gonna be caught counting my opponents nora.

 

Completely false. Despite being diamond league in SC2, I absolutely felt stressed out from knowing that I was unable to do all the actions I needed to do to maximize my play. The bottleneck being on speed of play was frustrating and unbearable to me. So I don't play anymore.

completely false. cards in pox are absolutely partitioned - spells, units, and relics have completely different uses and are not all on the table to be played simultaneously. Furthermore, most decks are built with specific counters - you have an anti-range, anti-melee, detection, shatter, cleanse, etc. Nearly all of these are partitioned and irrelevant at any given moment in a game. This dramatically cuts down the decisions in pox.

I disagree. Unless you're calling Hearthstone and MtG "TBS" - which I do not.

I disagree with almost everything you said. I find pox fun, light, and relaxing. With moments of intensity, usually later into a game.

Due to constraints (i.e. nora, deployment zones, board state) the # of decisions to make at any given time is usually VERY manageable, in WELL under the 2 minute cap.

 

Before positioning a champion ask yourself the following questions

Am I in danger of getting hit by range units next turn?

Could my range unit possibly be engaged next turn to hinder my movement or kill my champion?

Will I contest font in the position I am?

Is unit I am placing in a font a summoned unit?

Am I in a safe range threat so that I at least am not double tapped?

Will any auras damage my champions at the end of the turn?

Etc.

There are more questions but these the basics I believe.

 

Perhaps I should have clarified what I meant by "partitioned." In MtG, for instance, turns happen in phases. You have Untap/Upkeep/Draw, then Main Phase 1, then Combat Phase and its steps, then Main Phase two, then end/cleanup. Each of these functions as a mini-turn, and you move through them in sequence. You make some decisions in each phase, but not all your decisions. For instance, you pick Sorceries and Creatures to play during Main Phase 1, and you probably think about how you are going to attack, but that happens at a different step. By comparison, Hearthstone is completely unpartitioned. The end result is that Hearthstone has a smaller base of rules to understand -- you don't need to know the parts of a turn and the choices you make in each part -- but the matrix of potential choices is more complex, because ordering becomes a potentially more significant factors. MtG is a partitioned game, Dreamblade is a partitioned game, Hearthstone is not a partitioned game, Pox not a partitioned game. That's what I meant by "partitioned."

I found it somewhat stressful as well, honestly, when I played SC2. I think the "speed" bottleneck, as you aptly call it, is a slightly different one from the "decision load" bottleneck. Like, in SC2, you can pretty much *always* be doing more, going faster, even at the tip-top of play. Its why seeing 400-500 APM spikes in competitive play was exciting, because you knew a player was working hard. In Pox, though, there's a theoretically solvable solution each turn. That finitude feel different to me than the real-time rush of playing SC2.

Yes, I am, and I would throw in XCOM (the remake is simpler, the TU system is more bulk complicated than Pox), Dreamblade, and things like Civ. Those, including the card games, are all games of strategy in which players take turns taking action. I understand that the term TBS may not always imply that kind of broad definition within the public consciousness, but I don't think its some egregious misuse, and considering Pox's position vis a vis card games and miniatures, its a useful comparison.

The math isn't perfect here (I think it's 4^6 rather than 5^6), but this came up when talking about turn timer: http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/turn-timer-again.15972/#post-206254 . What's most important about those numbers is that, because a lot of these decisions can become important -- like, game-winning important -- based on context, it's hard to consistently discount a bunch of that information. There are plenty of situations where shuffling a champion around a few tiles at a time is the right way to go, and for that, you even have to know the right way to shuffle. OG XCOM, mercifully, has a lot of stuff going on that prevents its near-simulation attitude from crushing the player, although that game is notoriously brutal.


Anyway, even if we have some disagreement over experience or terms, thanks for the reply. I appreciate the honest feedback and different perspective.

 

Not exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, but thanks for the input.

 

Making speed of calculating damage a gameplay element is unfun. it's not a math game. if you want to race someone on a calculator go play math blaster

 

Man, you said it right there.

I have played games competitively for years and the levels of stress i feel when playing Pox make no sense whatsoever to me. I've played games at a pretty high level being on an undefeated CoD team in ED and a reserve for a TF2 which competed in MLG at the time i felt i'd had my share of video game induced anxiety, but no. I had not.

I literally have to tell myself to calm down when playing Pox, at the start of the game I often find myself a jittery anxious mess which tends to continue until around the halfway point. Depending on my draws/map/oppoenent this can sometimes be overruled by rage. I think it's the apprehension of not knowing how the game will play out, as soon as i start winning or losing my anxiety tends to abate slightly.

Really it is fascinating, I do a bit of boxing and MMA in my spare time and i admittedly get a bit scared every single time i go to even spar but it isn't even comparable to the stress and anxiety i feel when playing Pox.

I don't think you should go around calling something 'completely false' based on personal experiences. Everyone reacts differently to stimuli, this is why anecdotal evidence is considered useless.

 

i think its the red pulsing globe when i press "Ranked PVP Game" to start looking for a game that gets my heart beating when i go into ranked. its so ominice, i want it to just be text saying "searching for player"

 

To some degree this, at a certain point it's just becomes basic movement to avoid things BUT, there is also offensive positioning baiting the enemy to attack you or even positioning to tank as much as possible without dieing. I don't 100% agree it's trivial, but most of it really is at some point of playing.

 

Well, it wasn't the precise cause of fatigue I was talking about, but that's totally alright -- again, your input is valuable to me because it indicates what you see as the dominant emotional factors when playing Pox.

 

Dude.....i got BM with a FW deck that isnt even the best deck in the faction

 

Do me a favor. Play my deck.