Misused: The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything

We should open a separate thread about The Producer Thinks of Everything, because that page is also unclear on what exactly it's supposed to be about.

In the meantime, we need an agreed-upon definition of this trope here.

Then shouldn't it be called Loads And Loads Of Available Actions or something like it?

No, that's a terrible name. You can have contingencies for all sorts of strange combinations and still only have a couple of types of actions. Hitting is still hitting no matter what the weapon or the target, but depending on the combination of equipped items, you might get completely different options. Also, you can have a huge menu of available actions that each only do one thing.

While having loads of different available actions is required for this trope, it is not sufficient by itself. E.g. every adventure game or Wide-Open Sandbox have lots of available actions.

What about the use of this trope for things the player might uncommonly do or unlikely events happening?

(Example being a certain normally unreachable helicopter in the sky's blade's actually being programmed to slice anyone who comes into contact with it, talking to a normally unreachable man who eventually adds at the end of his conversation, "And how did you get up here, anyway?", taking advantage of a certain game's physics engine tip a ginormous truck over {causing even the instruction text to flip it back being stumped on how you managed to accomplish that}, breaking all the lights in the first level of Igi by having her jump into them {causing a small Easter Egg to happen}, etc.)

edited 30th Nov '14 1:50:09 AM by KarjamP

I personally am unconvinced that this is a problem if defined properly.

One form of the trope is an obscene number of options or creative freedom allowed to the player. But, it still falls into the main criteria I mentioned before: it has to be something the game doesn't tell you about and/or it has to be missable in the majority of playthroughs. It has to be something like, "Oh hey, I didn't notice that if I combine these two powers that seemingly don't go together, or items that will likely never be seen in combination, or do/have/see this specific thing at a time that I normally wouldn't/shouldn't, the game acknowledges it."

As long as it fits that single criteria (unmentioned/unlikely), I see no reason to restrict it from the trope.

Still I think using "loads and loads" would be appropriate here.

Do you guys think we might need a crowner to decide the exact definition of the trope?

Seems like people are also using this trope for either for "extra details added to the game to make it seem more plausible" or as a synomous trope for "Gameplay and Story Integration".

One such example is what I've found within Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire (that I've since removed) - one such example were added about the Pokéball the player sends out to battle their Pokémon being floatsy whenever a battle starts underwater, and someone else added about the battle backdrop on Route 113 depicting area being ash covered. Another example that I've since removed is one that says "the player character removes their shoes within certain buildings".

edited 11th Dec '14 10:18:54 AM by KarjamP

bump?

That kind of thing could be useful in a Stickler For The Details trope, where so many unnecessary and minor things are added to it that just makes it seem more real.

I heartily agree that requiring a minimum for each game is the wrong idea for this trope, though examples have been removed in the past for that reason. As for that requirement inviting gushing, I suspect that the page was created with this title in the first place mostly to gush over the many ways NetHack does it. Might a rename help, perhaps?

"Everything" is a relative measure. A ratio of things the developers had to think of to the things they actually did think of. A game with 4 ways to go off the rails and something special prepared for all of them is thinking of everything, a game with something prepared for 10 of 1000 things is not.

The requirement should therefore be for a relatively low number of things the developers didn't think of.

I don't think the ratio of options is relevant, because it sounds like unproveable busywork that we'd need to have a slide ruler and intimate knowledge of the game to judge. I say if there's even ONE example, and we can create a list of criteria to identify it, then that one example counts.

We could do a trope transplant and move the trope to the new name, but since this trope's one of the more popular tropes, we can't get rid of the original name.

The best we can do is to make it a redirect to the new name.

I think it should need to be something that the dev team would have to think about above normal development, most importantly. If they just add an Easter Egg somewhere, that's just something additional that's a related trope, but not this one. If they just add a reaction to something in a list where everything else has a reaction, it doesn't count, since there's no extra thought put into it, just checking off a list.

You should have to go out of your way to find it. Getting to places you're not supposed to be able to, either by abusing glitches or skills above what you need to beat the game would count. Backtracking in a game where backtracking is neither expected nor otherwise useful in any way would count. Accidentally getting to a place by missing a plot hook or randomly exploring wouldn't count (unless you glitch through a wall by accident or something similar).

Trying to find a combination of items that can break the game one way or another (like getting around restrictions) could count, although I'm not sure how to define it conclusively. An example would for instance be how in Diablo 2 you can (or could) use an item with a runeword with a too high level requirement if you wear the item before you complete the runeword. Patching that is probably a little too simple to count for the trope, but it could probably count in aggregate. The Nethack cockatrice example is about something similar, but covers every combination and exploit you could think about it, so that's not about a singular patch, but a bunch of them, covering a wide range of actions.

I think at least the two first points should be necessary. The third would count if you have to try a lot of combinations and still not find the game break its own logic.

"I think it should need to be something that the dev team would have to think about above normal development, most importantly."

Perhaps, but "normal development" looks a bit vague to me.

The distinction I'd make between this trope and Easter Egg is that an Easter Egg, while it might be equally "out of the way," serves the purpose of an in-joke (such as a Contest Winner Cameo or Developer's Room) or a sui generis spectacle, while this trope, as I see it, is about providing in-character or out-of-character reactions or responses specifically related to something the player does that would be neither necessary or expected.

This is 'an unlikely scenario that has a low chance of happening but the developers thought of it anyway and planned for it anyway.' If they make a joke or a shoutout while doing it thus giving incentive to do it then it's this + Easter Egg.

A good example would be Hearthstone. In it Priests, Druids, and Mages can not get weapons normally but if you somehow get one, which requires a huge amount of luck, they say phrases like the classes that actually have weapon cards. It is not funny or anything it is just there.

On the other side there exists a card that spawns a 1 health creature to block an attack, since it has 1 health it spawns to die. But what if you somehow make it survive and attack with it? He says 'I live!?'. The fact that the sound file exists is this, the fact that it is funny is Easter Egg.

edited 12th Dec '14 7:47:02 PM by Memers

I don't think the first example qualifies anyway. It's just checking off a list. Just like the second example.

So is there any reason to rename instead of dewick? We didn't rename Understatement, and that had a lot more misuse than this...

Can we please continue discussing before this gets clocked?

If there is no actual requirement for the developers to prepare for at least a significant majority of the things a player might do, then the name is completely misleading.

The Dev Team Thinks Of Some Things just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Even so, we can't just outright get rid of it simply due to the sheer amount of wicks to this trope.

Move the trope to a new name then turn this one into a redirect, yes. But we can't outright get rid of it.

So... in this trope, what exactly is the dev team thinking of?

Dev team thought of unlikely events that shouldn't happen outside of luck or following a guide to cause them to happen but prepared for them anyway via a unique path, extra lines or voice work, Non-Standard Game Over etc.

edited 22nd Dec '14 5:25:08 PM by Memers