In a Full-Body VR MMORPG, how I would force confidence?

Question

If we had Full-Body Immersion MMORPGs, how would morale-boosting and morale-lowering skills work for players? By that, I mean, how would the game forcibly make players more or less confident, even if their out-of-game personality would not fit their avatar's confidence level?

Like a coward playing that game, and is always cowardly in combat, flinchy, a weak hitter, defeatist, etc... But that's just because he isn't using his knowledge and physical ability to its full potential...

Then, on application of a Bravery Spell, he uses his full potential as a confident person.

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Actual Question

If it is possible, what game mechanics can I employ to tailor a player's confidence level? While sticking to these criteria:

1. Having the smallest amount of additional technology other than a VR headset like a SAO Amusphere

2. You only can control external stimuli (no drugging)

3. No forcibly taking control of his character in any way, no nudges... But, you could move the monsters?

Answer 1

In games I know that have morale effects, the bonus/penalty is just a numerical modifier to an existing number. I see no reason why this would change for virtual reality.

Suppose a player receives a +30% boost to their jumping ability. While so affected, apply a 1.3 force multiplier when the player performs the jumping action. So instead of jumping 1 in-game meter, the player jumps 1.3 in-game meters.

Suppose a player receives a -25% penalty to their attacking ability. While so affected, apply a 0.75 speed multiplier when the player performs the attack action. This slows the character down and gives opponents a better opportunity to evade.

These examples only apply to in-game, forced events, such as a wizard casting a spell on the player or the supernatural aura of a fearsome monster. To physically (psychologically?) make the player more confident, you would need to supply some form of in-game cues, such as a noticeable limp in a monster's gait or a clear opening in a warrior's defense. The inverse would apply for less confidence: the monster has already demonstrated feats far beyond the player's (character's) skills or the warrior is surrounded by corpses and shows no signs of fatigue or harm.

Answer 2

Music, Vision Filtering, Conditioning

How about a combination of music, color filtering and conditioning? During the tutorial to the game, you could have the user practice different things they'll need to do in the game. Then, when they fail, or during parts where they're likely to fail, play the 'not confident' music. This will make people associate that music with parts where they're likely to mess up. You could also tint their vision to be subtly blurry with a color tint to strengthen the effect.

Then, when you want to make them feel like they will mess up, you tint their vision and play the music.

As far as them feeling more confident, you could also have parts of the tutorial that seem really difficult, but are actually easy (or the game makes them hard at first, and then easier). When the user accomplishes this seemingly hard task, they'll feel like they're pretty great at the game. Then you'd play your 'confidence' music and tint their vision to be super clear and use a slightly brighter color palette so they feel more confident.

I think this all works best if the user doesn't understand what you're trying to do.

In a lot of games they'll tint the screen red and play heartbeat sounds to let you know you're about to die. I usually feel urgency/adrenaline when this happens to me (and I'm really into the game). I think the same could work for confidence. Movies use music and color palettes to set people's mood throughout the movie.

Answer 3

Confidence is tied to performance, so controlling a player's performance will give you control over their confidence. When a player feels their performance decreasing, they tend to naturally become more cautious.

You can control their performance by limiting their senses. Shorter view distance, blurred vision, sluggish controls, muffled sound effects, and inaccurate readings on meters and other UI elements all reduce performance naturally. Some restraint is necessary here, as too much impairment makes a game frustrating and can drive players away. But a little bit can be quite impactful.

You can also control performance by adjusting rewards and losses: greater rewards increase bravery, while greater losses increase caution. For example, when a player's character normally regenerates lost health, the loss of that regeneration will make the player more cautious. Similarly, if the player gains the ability to regain lost health by attacking enemies, then the player will become braver and enter battle more often in order to regain lost health.

Confidence in performance relies on the player's ability to assess their performance and compare it to the challenges presented by their environment. If a player is very powerful, but doesn't know it, and is confronted by an enemy which looks menacing but is actually weak, the player will be cautious until they realize through trial and error that their power is greater. The inverse is also possible: a deceptively weak-looking enemy could be more powerful than the player, overinflating player confidence leading them to attack it head-on. You can bypass the need for trial and error by providing UI elements to indicate differences in power, e.g. marking enemies which are too powerful with a red skull, or automatically targeting the weakest enemy for the next attack.

Confidence is also closely correlated with a player's sense of isolation and loneliness: a player in a group is more confident than one who is all alone in enemy territory. Your game doesn't need to be multiplayer either - the player's allies could be AI-controlled and the effect would be the same.

Player confidence also depends on their understanding of their surroundings. Therefore if you want to reduce confidence, you can simply overwhelm the player with information, e.g. by generating more enemies or changing the shape of the terrain. The more things change, the more the player needs to keep track of, and the easier it is for them to become overwhelmed and feel the need to retreat to a more controllable position.

Answer 4

Depending on bravery level, the computer could implement more monsters. Not real mosters, but illusions.

At full bravery level, you know exactly which monster is real and needs to be attacked and defended against and which is fake and can be ignored. You are confident in your abilities.

At full cowardice, the room is full of monsters and you don't know which ones are real, which means you have to be defensive and treat every single one as a real threat.

If illusions do not fit the world, you could use other information, maybe their threat level, or which weapons they have. The point is that enough information makes people confident, while too little information makes them doubt their actions.

Answer 5

Audio.

While incidental music and conditional heartbeat tones can be a good indicator to the player, it can also serve to prepare the player for a section, potentially bolstering their confidence during sections where they should not be confident.

To make a character less confident, the audio track should be similar to the normal audio track, but more randomized audio during situations where confidence would come into play, with slightly more discordant/offbeat tones being played than normal, and hits or stabs at random intervals where it might cause the player to slip up or fail a task that requires concentration.

For more relaxed or confident sections, you can play soothing music or nature sounds. You could also look into the effects of audio types that have been used in for Brainwave Entrainment. You could modulate the music or audio track to employ low frequency or low volume Binaural beats, Monaural beats, or Isochronic tones, which have been implied to have various effects on the listener's state of mind.

It would also be useful if not completely necessary to utilize Neurofeedback in the VR tech in order to monitor the user's state of mind, and adjust the audio accordingly for the intended effect.

Conversely, in order to make a character more confident, Incidental music and nature sounds would be great, but I feel it is not enough. A character may still run away from anything that would appear to be too threatening.

So while I disagree with altering the player's vision or statistics in ways that essentially break the game or make it seem unreliable (and thus unplayable), there's nothing telling me that you can't outright LIE to the player. Make hostile creatures seem more docile to a player whose confidence is boosted. Make their models smaller, perhaps. Make them appear to have fewer hit points or be already wounded (which would translate to other players as the confident player performing more critical strikes, or missing less often than normal).

Answer 6

The typical MMORPG involves assigning numeric bonuses to activities, such as swinging a sword or casting a spell. If you are in a VR world where one cannot simply assume the numbers are sufficient, then the story gets more complicated.

I would consider a MMORPG with some concept of a guardian angel that helps you. Perhaps they help you as a level 1 character, so you can more rapidly adjust to the game, but vanish over time. This guardian angel would help you make your desires happen. If they believe you wanted to jump over a ravine, but ever so slightly missed, they might tweak the gravity constants locally to accomplish the goal. A confidence boosting ability would bring back this assistance. If players were made aware that this effect was taking place, the players themselves would naturally become more confident as well.

Answer 7

Back in the dark ages, when such games were played with paper and dice, I often encountered situations where a player was acting "out of character". A timid player might have a hard time running a courageous character, or vice-versa.

Correcting such situations really only requires informing the player of what they are doing wrong. I usually kept a pack of index cards with helpful advice like "You are being to timid". Passing such a card, face down, to a player at an appropriate moment would make the aware of the issue and almost always, they would immediately adjust their actions.

I don't think you need to trick or game your players into playing their roles. You just need to let them know.

Answer 8

I don't think there is any way to guarantee that the player will be more confident. Thus, I see two ways of approaching this:

1. Accept that you cannot force confidence on someone and simply put systems in place that encourage confidence. This means that players lacking confidence may often have a more difficult time in the game (just as they might in real life).
2. Ignore the literal meaning of improving a character's morale/confidence in terms of emotion, and instead cut through to the base-level change to the character those types of spells/effects produce in other games.

On point #1, assuming all enemies are given some sort of danger ranking/threat level, that stat would just need to be treated as a perceived threat level rather than an absolute one. This level would be inversely related to the player's confidence. An interesting side effect of this is that overconfidence becomes a real risk. If a player is too confident, the perceived threat level may be so low that they don't take a threat seriously enough and get themselves into trouble.

Other answers have hinted at other ways to encourage players to be more confident such as causing the monster to appear injured or displaying additional monsters that are merely illusions, etc. If the game being played in single player only, those could work, but if there is any interaction with other players (especially cooperative), various issues come up with players seeing monsters too differently or the confidence of other players ruining a separate players fight (imagine if you were doing just fine against a very injured monster, and someone with extremely low confidence enters the room; suddenly, that nearly-dead monster is at peak condition and 5 feet taller—not good). Edit: From discussion in comments, simply allowing two players to see the same monster in different states would probably be fine, as long as you don't allow those states to be too wildly different (e.g., one player seeing a monster as an amputee while another sees 8 arms brandishing large weapons). Also, potential collusion between players to get around confidence deficiencies could be mitigated by allowing overconfidence to be an issue, since that should lower the value of that type of meta-gaming cooperation.

Concerning point #2, I'd postulate that in most games morale/confidence boosts to characters simply translate to increased attack (as in Final Fantasy) or health/defensive stats (like in Everquest). Thus, rather than trying to physiologically produce actual confidence or bravery in a character, you could just up their stats and trust that that would likely inspire actual confidence as well, since it would make their fights easier.

Answer 9

Some ideas come to mind, mostly involving visual distortions. For example, lack of confidence could introduce more jitter or sway into the player's view (especially while moving), make walkways seem narrower, make monsters seem bigger/scarier (glowing eyes, vague shadowy wisps, bigger teeth, more surprising/vicious attack animations), and so forth, while added confidence would have the opposite effects. Anyone with anxiety disorder would also "appreciate" the effect of introducing tunnel vision and a subtle dimming of the environment, as well as making the player's vision momentarily blurrier.

You could also subtly introduce the sound of the PC's heartbeat and breath, and ramp up its intensity and perhaps even rate. I remember that having a profound effect on me in a horrible reality/game show in the early 2000s, and it became pretty clear that's exactly what the game producers were going for.