I think this makes sense, but can you go into more detail about this:
Make using a cookbook expensive.
I didn’t mean a cookbook as an in-game item (I’m not sure if that’s what you were implying...), I meant the term to mean a set of well-known experiments which can simply be re-ran every time new results are required. If the game can be reduced to that state, then a lot of its value as a rationality teaching tool (and also as an interesting game, to me at least) is lost. How can we force the player to have to come up with new ideas for experiments, and see some of those ideas fail in subtle ways that require insight to understand?
My tendency is to want to solve this problem by just making a short game, so that there’s no need to figure out how to create a whole new, interesting experimental space for each session. This would be problematic in an MMO, where replayablity is expected (though there have been some interesting exceptions, like Uru).
Ah, I meant: “Make each item valuable enough that using several just to work out how effective each one is would be a fatal mistake” Instead you would have to keep track of how effective each one was, or watch the other players for hints.
I think this makes sense, but can you go into more detail about this:
I didn’t mean a cookbook as an in-game item (I’m not sure if that’s what you were implying...), I meant the term to mean a set of well-known experiments which can simply be re-ran every time new results are required. If the game can be reduced to that state, then a lot of its value as a rationality teaching tool (and also as an interesting game, to me at least) is lost. How can we force the player to have to come up with new ideas for experiments, and see some of those ideas fail in subtle ways that require insight to understand?
My tendency is to want to solve this problem by just making a short game, so that there’s no need to figure out how to create a whole new, interesting experimental space for each session. This would be problematic in an MMO, where replayablity is expected (though there have been some interesting exceptions, like Uru).
Ah, I meant: “Make each item valuable enough that using several just to work out how effective each one is would be a fatal mistake” Instead you would have to keep track of how effective each one was, or watch the other players for hints.