Why can't we have an undo button again?

[Chemoeum]

(01-30-2014 02:26 AM)jchris98 Wrote:  

(01-30-2014 02:21 AM)Mag!cGuy Wrote:  

(01-30-2014 02:14 AM)His_Daddy Wrote:  i would always praying for an undo button in pass and play mode though, making things much easier for mock ups.

+ 9000

Means that the total for this is OVER 9000!!!

I knew someone was gonna do that

[TheGreatErenan]

I have decided that my position concerning a FoW-Limited Undo button (especially in League) is "against."

Here's my argument on the subject (footnotes are indicated by (1), (2), (3), etc..., because I cannot find a functioning superscript BB Code tag):

We must differentiate between mistakes and accidents. In the context of my argument, a mistake is when a player deliberately makes a move and subsequently decides that it was a bad move and would take it back if he were allowed to do so. An accident, on the other hand, is when a player intends to make some particular move but instead makes a different one on account of factors mostly beyond his control (e.g. a bird poops on the device's screen, the device registers it as a touch, and the move thereby made is not the one the player wanted to make). There is also the additional possibility of the scenario in which a player intends to make some particular move but instead makes a different one on account of factors completely within his control (e.g. the player foolishly decides to play his moves by swinging his arm recklessly downward at full speed and striking the device screen with his full thumbprint, resulting in inaccurate touches, leading to moves the player didn't intend). We shall call this an accident*, but this third possibility will hold little relevance to my argument, as we shall see.

Obviously, if a move, whether resulting from a mistake or an accident or an accident*, affects the Fog of War (FoW) in some informative way (that is, the player's move reveals whether any units are on hexes that were previously hidden in the FoW), then for gameplay reasons the move cannot be undone. This would provide the player with knowledge gained from making and undoing the move, and since that knowledge should not be possible within the rules of the game, such an undo mechanism is unacceptable unless such a change to the rules is also acceptable. For the purposes of this argument, I shall assume that such a rule change is unacceptable. Therefore, such an undo mechanism is also unacceptable.

What can we say about moves that do not affect the FoW in any informative way? Intuitively, it appears that the ability to take back such a move would not pose any threat to the mechanical rules of the game. Indeed, this is so. If the player gains no knowledge from the accidental move, then the mechanical rules of the game have not been compromised, and the preceding reason for denying the acceptability of an undo mechanism does not apply. There appears thus far to be no danger in implementing such a mechanism.

However, with respect to such moves, what can we say about the difference between mistakes and accidents? If the move was an accident, meaning that it was unintended and caused by mostly uncontrollable factors (e.g. baby sisters, falling bird poop, severe muscle spasms), then intuitively it appears fair to allow the undo mechanism. On the other hand, if the move was a mistake, meaning that it was deliberate but the player has subsequently decided that it was a poor choice for a move, then the fairness of an undo mechanism is, at the very least, arguably less than in the case of an accident.

There are two issues here, so I shall address them each in turn.

The first issue is that there is arguably some sort of normative obligation(1) placed upon players to abide by their poor choices. In serious Chess play, for instance, a player is expected to follow through on his mistakes made during a game. Being aware that the move one just made was a poor move does not render it permissible to "take back" that move. The rules of Chess require that the move be considered final, and that the game must proceed from the new board position thereby arrived at.

With respect to serious Outwitters play, of course, there are no publicly available written rules on this matter for two reasons. First, the rules governing how the game is implemented and how the game flows are codified in the software rather than through physical objects, such as a board and pieces and a rulebook, and therefore these rules needn't be enforced by manual means, such as judges, who would have to be well informed on the rules or at least have them on hand. The software handles it, and is therefore, in some sense, both the rulebook and the judge. Second, undoing a move is impossible anyway(2).

However, it is easy to imagine a version of Outwitters in which an undo mechanism is available. In such a case, rules would have to be specified governing whether mistakes and accidents* may be undone or just accidents. The problem stems from the difficulty in distinguishing between these three scenarios in software. The Outwitters app cannot reasonably be expected to discern whether a move was made intentionally or unintentionally or what external factors in the physical world led up to the move being made. Thus, it would be impossible to enforce any rule that disallowed the undoing of mistakes or accidents* but allowed the undoing of accidents. The only possibility would be to allow all of them. The question then is whether it should be (normatively) allowed to undo mistakes. My own intuitive position on this matter is that undoing mistakes and accidents* is better left disallowed and to such an extent that disallowing the undoing of accidents is an acceptable price to pay for this. Whether this position on the normative features of Outwitters play is the best one is open for discussion, but at present I have no further arguments one way or the other on the matter.

The second issue stems from the fact that there is a set of rules that aren't mechanically related to the logic of the game but which are nevertheless necessary for the game to be played. These rules, perhaps we should call them meta-rules, affect the manner in which the player can interface with the logical construct of the game(3). The most relevant meta-rule to the present discussion is that at the present time there is no implemented undo mechanism. There are other meta-rules. The player is given a confirmation dialog when directing a unit to move (assuming this option is turned on), the player is given a confirmation dialog when the "GIVE UP" button is pressed, the player is given no confirmation dialog when the "DONE" button is pressed or when a unit is commanded to attack another unit, and so on. Though these meta-rules do not directly affect the logical mechanisms of the game, they are nevertheless non-trivial and non-arbitrary. They do have an effect upon the manner in which players interact with the logical construct that is the game of Outwitters.

With respect to the present argument, the most relevant way in which these meta-rules affect the players' interactions with the game is that the lack of an undo mechanism forces players to plan their intended moves out without actually performing any moves(4). By contrast, Hero Academy has an undo mechanism made possible by the omission of a FoW from that game. The inclusion of this undo mechanism is a meta-rule that has no bearing on the logical mechanisms of the game. However, it surely does hold great consequence with respect to the manner in which players interact with the game. Specifically, it allows players to plan their moves on any given turn by actually performing possible moves, seeing the results, contemplating whether the results are desirable, and then either submitting the set of moves as the player's official moves for that turn or undoing the moves and trying again. Interfacing with Hero Academy would be a wildly different affair if this undo mechanism were stripped from the game.

Let us now turn our attention back to Outwitters. Suppose a FoW-Limited Undo Mechanism(5) were added to the application. We have seen already that moves that informatively affect the FoW cannot be undone, so such moves still cannot be used in order to plan moves. However, in this case, moves that do not affect the FoW could be undone, and therefore, there would be nothing stopping players from attempting to formulate plans for their turn by making such moves. Now, if players were to develop the habit of planning certain moves by actually making those moves, then this introduces the requirement of considering one's moves carefully with respect to whether or not they will informatively affect the FoW, which is little more than a distraction from thinking about what moves would be good moves to make with respect to the game itself. This further introduces the potential for players to make a different kind of mistake. A player could now mistakenly believe a certain move to be non-informatively FoW affecting when it is actually informatively FoW affecting, and upon performing the move, find that he cannot undo it. Now, instead of the player's lament being "I accidentally moved the wrong unit" it would be "I accidentally made a move that I can't undo" and the usual responses would be not only "try harder not to make mistakes" but also "don't plan any of your moves by making moves, just plan them all out mentally." So the undo mechanism has now not effectively removed the possibility for making mistakes (or accidents or accidents*), nor deflated the potential for forum arguments about the FoW-Limited Undo Mechanism debate.

---

Footnotes:

(1) I am borrowing the term "normative" from Philosophical Ethics. What I mean is that there is a standard of behavior to which we are (arguably) held.

(2) Obviously, it is possible to cheat by overriding the system's built-in rules (i.e. hacking). However, "do not cheat" is an implicit rule in any given game system and needn't be explicitly stated in a rulebook, and in any case, such a rule cannot be codified in software in any way that ensures it is followed in all cases.

(3) These meta-rules may seem similar to the normative rules given above. However, I mentally differentiate between them in that normative rules are the explicitly stated rules that govern how players are allowed to play, whereas the meta-rules I am discussing now are merely the limits of the implementation by which the players interface with the logical game. In many cases, these meta-rules might also effectively dictate certain normative rules because they are the primary means of implementing and enforcing the normative rules, especially in software. The one already discussed is that there is no undo mechanism implemented. This effectively implies the normative rule of taking back one's moves being disallowed. Yet there are meta-rules that don't necessarily carry with them a normative implication. The fact that in Outwitters a player must touch the screen to select a unit and move it is such a meta-rule. It doesn't imply any normative obligation to touch the unit (you might, for instance, prefer to leave the unit where it is).

(4) Of course, it is true that players frequently make partial or contingent plans and upon making moves, refine or otherwise alter their plans based upon information gained from changes to the FoW. This is not contrary to the sense in which I mean that players must plan their intended moves without actually performing any moves. My meaning is that, on account of the fact that moves cannot be undone, players cannot plan their moves by actually making moves. Even in the case of players making plans after gaining new information from moves made, the player must have planned to make the initial information gathering move or else it is nothing more than a blind leap, and such leaps are rarely (if ever) used in high level play and constitute a demonstrably poor strategy.

(5) That is, any individual move may be undone provided it does not affect the FoW in any way that reveals what units, if any, are located on one or more hexes.

[.Memories.]

Can I get a tldr? I'm at work and don't have time to read that, haha.

[TheGreatErenan]

tl;dr:

1. If you can undo honest accidents then you can also undo intentional but poor moves, and this latter fact is arguably a bad thing for a TBS game.

2. If you can undo moves that don't affect the FoW, then players will get in the habit of being able to undo such moves, and now their accidents are not just "I accidentally made a move I didn't mean to!" but also "I accidentally made a move that I thought I could undo but I really can't, and I was just trying to get an idea of where my units would be afterwards anyways!" And the response they receive will be not only "try harder not to make mistakes" but also "don't make moves unless you really intend to make them."

[.Memories.]

Thanks . I agree.

[Setorines]

Okay after reading that I believe the problem you are describing could easily be prevented by simply making the undo button cost a wit. This means that a mis click doesn't lose you the game, but it still costs something, thus eliminating he mistake category and only leaving it to be relevant when you accidentally move something.

For instance i was just playing a turn while making my lunch. And didn't notice I had clicked on my scrambler instead of the soldier next to him. Then put him in range. I spent my remaining 3 wits in an attempt to cover him. If this were implemented i would lose 1 wit instead of 3 wits, a scrambler and probably the game.

[TheGreatErenan]

(01-30-2014 05:20 AM)Setorines Wrote:  Okay after reading that I believe the problem you are describing could easily be prevented by simply making the undo button cost a wit. This means that a mis click doesn't lose you the game, but it still costs something, thus eliminating he mistake category and only leaving it to be relevant when you accidentally move something.

For instance i was just playing a turn while making my lunch. And didn't notice I had clicked on my scrambler instead of the soldier next to him. Then put him in range. I spent my remaining 3 wits in an attempt to cover him. If this were implemented i would lose 1 wit instead of 3 wits, a scrambler and probably the game.

The problem is that the game can't tell if you misclicked or not. So if a player intentionally makes a bad move (thinking it was a good move) and decides afterwards that he'd be better off spending a wit to retract it than to roll with it, then the game can't stop him from undoing his "accident."

[Setorines]

Very seldom will an intentional move that turns out poorly be worth spending a wit to undo.

[TheGreatErenan]

I'm not sure that's true, but if it is, then I suppose that would reduce the substance of my first objection a little (but not the second one, as far as I can tell). Even so, I would personally prefer a strict "no undos" policy to prevent even the corner cases where a player would benefit from undoing an intentional move.

[Chemoeum]

Mobis did it before it was debated.