Okay PSA. As a *cascade of you* have mentioned now, vaccines do not *cure* infection, they help prevent it before it happens. And you're absolutely right. If these hypothetical people were already infected with a hypothetical disease or hypothetical virus, a hypothetical vaccine would not cure them. I am not a doctor, I am a KZfaqr. And a mediocre one at best. So cut me a little slack plz. Or don't, positive or negative, comments only help the vid grow so thank you

The intro has aged like fine wine.

This overlooks one of the most important types of loss aversion in play psychology: the fear of missing out on content. Many players will take the longer way back on their first attempt merely because don’t want to accidentally skip content. This is the reason why the genocide route in undertale is even completeable: the desire to experience all of a game’s content drives the player forward, even when the activity the player does is not truly “fun.”

Listens to intro Checks date W H A T

This logic can be applied to just about any roguelike, but Dead Cells certainly is a fantastic place to frame it.

jokes on you i'm so dumb i didn't see the statues and cleared the whole stage without thinking

Joke's on you, after hitting the switch I booked it out of the level as fast as I could, because I thought the stage was going to crumble and instakill me on a hidden timer.

Bro first five seconds don’t need to imagine it’s happening rn

“When you usually get killed, it’s because you got too greedy.” Fisherman: am i a joke to you?

It's not hair pulling if you're an absolute chad and go balls deep in every challenge and survive

9:40 hehe his money says b00b

As a perfectionist, I will take every gamble as long as the outcome is in my hands and not at the mercy of a die. And I will put myself through all the pain and misery as long as I can only blame myself. At the end of the day, I feel like I've lost more than I've gained from playing Dead Cells. I'm sure if there is Hell, this game is waiting there for me.

Honestly, your editing and delivery is so high quality, I can't fathom how you have so few subs. I just might be early to the party.

The intro aged badly

In slumbering sanctuary I instantly went to clear the whole level, despite having great difficulty getting there. Of course I got slammed by a golem for it. This is because of my curiosity, I just couldn’t let the mystery of what lies in the level lay undiscovered

Great, insightful video. Another factor that can be considered is long term vs short term gains. When I play Dead Cells, I always choose a better item/ability over health and go for a high risk/high reward play style. My reason for this is if I throw myself into these situations, I will get better faster, and so in the long term I will become a much better player and won't need the health boosts for example, even if it means dying a lot in the short term. This logic can also be applied to the battle royale genre: if you first land in a big city with loads of other players you will probably die immediately, or land somewhere isolated and slowly accrue gear you will last longer. The first choice is better for long term growth (and arguably leads to more interesting emergent gameplay)

I love how this guy thinks I actually pay attention to the pros and cons, I just grab the crap and run.

*Me, sweating a little having chosen vaccine b and vaccine d*

"so what drug would you use to cure people Doctor?" *literally 5 seconds later* "Dead Cells is a game about balancing Risk and Reward"

Who would have thought the world would be dealing with the Corona virus now

I see hidden treasure in games as intrinsically mine, thus the "loss" in talking a shortcut makes loss aversion a factor in me taking the "risky" path

With your Slumbering Sanctuary example I feel like I'm the exception to this: When I noticed the statues came alive, I went back to the beginning of the level and make sure I back traced all my steps to the switch solely to kill every monster in the level. 11:52 what an absolute bull-! "We don't like unfair difficulty." they say while there are enemies who can attack through walls and having guys throwing knifes at you for a longer duration than a parry protects you from.

I remember the first time I got a cursed treasure chest, I thought it was going to be a boss fight, but I was like "wtf this boi has a foot fetish"

The greatest loss aversion factors in the game were not taken into account. Path choice, killing vs skipping past enemies, mutation choice, unlocking equipment... I can see how you might not feel that way until you're far into the harder game modes, but this video really is only the tip of the iceberg, the first 4 or 5 hours for a complete newbie. Since Daryl here said he has difficulties in dodging and playing near perfectly, he might not yet understand the importance of bonus doors (time doors and flawless doors), so I'll cut him some slack. Also, in the harder game modes, YOU CANNOT SPREAD STATS. It's shooting yourself in the foot to do so. You have to tunnel into one stat, and this is where they get you again with loss aversion. Tactics is powerful and ranged, but the mutations suck, specifically by having no way of malaise prevention(very late game stuff). You'll be a glass cannon, which fares very well in biomes but very poorly in boss fights. Survival and Brutality are much safer, but less powerful against biomes. Path choice is by far the most grueling aspect of the game. After you open up every path, you have to weigh going for harder, way longer biomes with more 3-stat scrolls, elites and cursed chests or short and easy biomes with dual stat scrolls and less elites and cursed chests. Oh, but these short biomes lead to an extra, really hard biome that has very good bonuses if you killed 60 enemies flawlessly on the previous floor and also is rife with good loot. Afterwards, you gotta choose which biome you'll take, which will determine the first boss. Do you prefer to stick with the easy and short route and fight the Concierge, worse loot overall or do you feel confident going for the Ancient Sewers and knocking out Conjonctivius? After that, you get to choose a new biome. Do you want to go with the relatively easier Graveyard or the painstakingly long Slumbering Sanctuary? After that, do you want to hit the absolute hardest, most profitable biome and seal your fate against the Giant, by far the hardest boss, or will you wimp out and eventually hit the far easier Time Keeper instead? Do you feel like you can outrun the enemies and go for the timed door, or do you prefer to kill them all just in case one of them has a good, rare drop? If you do that, can you guarantee that you'll kill 60 of them without taking damage to unlock the flawless door? Mutation choice is the second biggest loss aversion choice in the game. But there's way too much to type about mutation choice, tbh. Just trust me it gets real hard in the late game.

Fun fact: for the riddle you gave, Options B and D have an expected value of 240 lives saved. So from a mathematical standpoint, you want to take the risk.

Although I agree in nearly every point made, I would point out it changes a lot in Dead Cells if you get to 5BC and start grinding towards the final boss. I don't know how to describe it but every decision making progress changes.

40/60 are odds I think I can gamble with.

Essential oils will save no lives so imma stick to them, thank you very much

This was an interesting reveal. I chose B at first, but then when the C/D option came up, I realized that C and D were how I instinctively thought of A and B

12:39 What an excellent design choice. Humans love deceiving themselves to raise self-importance. The Road Not Taken is a famous poem which takes advantage of this quirk to hit people in the feels, and allowing players to retroactively justify their mistakes is a genius design.

the end is just the beginning for me. I went through the undying shores after a week of playing the game and I eventually got to the throne room and died to king's hand. I got so close to beating it yet I knew that there was still so much to explore and so I did!

I’ve been binging this psych video playlist and i just have to say, as a psych nerd and gamer, these are some great videos!

Look at this man playing on 0 cell mode

we all agree that on your first go at sanctuary the golems teleporting you *back to them* after you try to run away was the most terrifying thing, right?

Video: About how most people hesitate regarding dangerous decisions and regard potential loss Me after a cursed sword drops: "Yeah, I can use this weapon"

The intro got me sweating in 2020

00:00 that aged well

Took A and C, didn't even consider leaving without clearing everything despite being bad at the game.

Thanks for mentioning the fact that it mostly affects those who are not comfortable with the game. Most decisions you mentioned become either irrelevant or obvious once you've played enough. Great video.

Man I love your editing The transitions, text effects, animation Also the script, structure, and delivery The series is a great idea honestly

Intro: If he knew about Corona

One of the best videos you have made man, always a pleasure to see something new from you

While these thought experiments were interesting, my personal experience with them was immediately recognizing the expected value was the same and skipping right to the ethical considerations of guaranteeing some lives saved vs only possibly saving all lives.

Just want to say that that massive drop at 1:06, with big letters popping up was a great cinematic (if that's the correct word) moment!

I don’t know if you’ll see this. But I was wondering if you could do an episode on minecraft and memory? I’ve always had such vivid memories back at an earlier time of minecraft and I don’t seem to be the only one. And I was wondering if it might be a psychological phenomenon

Great video! I really enjoyed playing Dead Cells and I can see how genius it is

While answering those questions I was thinking in terms of percentiles (2/6 = 30% < 40%)

Cool vid. I've actually been playing Dead Cells recently and thinking about how risk/reward are woven into the progression system. What I like about the game is how it sets up a false sense of risk. What I mean is that when it comes to video games we seem to anchor our risk/reward sensibilities on our previous experiences with video games as well as our general fear of dying. This game involves infinite continues and permanent upgrades though; if you can embrace it, the game encourages the you to play recklessly more than it encourages caution. Caution is something people bring with them into Dead Cells because of a Pavlovian response to dying in other games. Death and failure are so incredibly productive in Dead Cells that I've killed myself off on purpose just because I was getting sleepy. Even in the relatively early stages of the game, 30 cells lost at the point of death are nothing compared to the 250 cells that were locked in to permanent upgrades on the way to that point. For me the meta game has rendered choices so inconsequential that if my randomly spawned starting melee weapon is the Cursed Sword I just take it as a skill challenge to see how long I can last.

In the slumbering sanctuary you can't backtrack, the wall is curved so that even with wall climbing you cannot climb it

Daryl: Imagine that a virus is spreading across the world and 600 million people have already been infected Me: I don't gotta imagine it ma dude, I'm living it

Daryl: you draw your own conclusions DangerouslyFunny: If I'm not getting permanent attack boosts and cool weapons, it's definitely a loss for me

Funny how this is the best explanation for the concept of Loss Avertion I've found on KZfaq.

As a dead cells player it angered me that you evened out the scroll count. It better to have more damage than health. Who's going to hurt you when all the enemies are dead.

8:32 I personally didn't choose A, but I didn't like C's phrasing. It's implied that 2/3 people given the treatment will die, and the fates of the rest are uncertain, meaning giving it to people is essentially murder, 2/3 of the time, and an ineffective treatment 1/3 of the time. D, on the other hand, was congruent with B, and I chose both. A was iffy because 1/3 is a fairly good survival rate, but it's not perfect, and I could have saved more people.

The game Dandara did something like the Slumbering Sanctuary before Dead Cells. In the second ''biome'' you find an item at the end of the level, which activates all the traps along the way and forces you to backtrack to the first room. The backtrack is done through some of the same rooms (but now with extra hazards) and also opens new paths along the way, till you reach the first room again and fight the boss there.

The video have made me think about how I chose the cursed chests in the game. For me it was never a choice of risk vs reward, but I felt that to open the chest is “how the game is meant to be played” and if I didn’t open it I was not playing it “the right way”

As a dead cells veteran seeing people make the mistake of spreading stats like that hurts so much

That intro hits different now

I'd say this is a great illustration and can be applied to most rogue-lite games. In deadcells I run into this when traversing the Promenade. After collecting all the power-ups there's always the question of "Should I try to get through the prison depths or go straight to Ramparts/Ossuary?" If you've ever run through prison depths on BC 4/5 you'll have an understanding that it's not something you want to do unless you have a VERY solid run going early on in the game. (Unless you're just a godly dead cells player, then more power to you.)

I rarely comment on videos on KZfaq, but this type of video is just so good that I had to tell you. Please keep making more content like this! It's so fascinating and interesting!

When i heard the intro, I rechecked the Dates and i was like: *WHAT THE FU-*

wait, i picked both B and D at both situation and realized C/D = A/B. Does this means loss aversion is not applied when one try to list out all the details pros and cons? Like loss aversion is merely a illusion when the big picture is not clearly perceived?

Awesome video. Just found your channel. As a psych major, I really appreciate you looking at the psychology in games, something I enjoy thinking about as well. Thanks for the content. Definitely subbed! Peace.

I came for dead cells, but what I got was one of the best explanations of loss aversion. Great vid

It hurts me to see you balance your scrolls between the stats. The damage grows exponentially, allowing you to one-shot enemies with ease, preventing the damage received in the first place (very important in higher difficulties when you don't get full heals all the time). It also helps with clearing cursed chests, helping you earn more scrolls to boost your damage with. Well, you can occasionally throw a scroll into another stat, but it's usually enough to just use the dual scrolls with the wrong stats available on the one that boosts your health more.

Anti vaxxers when they take the survey: well I choose neither

Over a year late, but I wanted to give my experiences both with the cure problems and the Slumbering Sanctuary. I'll start with the Slumbering Sanctuary. When I first reached the Slumbering Sanctuary, everything leading up to the switch went exactly as you said; once I hit the switch, under normal circumstances, I probably would've gone for the path of least resistance. However, I was already having a really bad run and didn't feel like I had anything to lose, as my weapons were among my most hated at the time (Broadsword and Assault Shield), so I just said "screw it" and went the rest of the way with the hope that I'd find something good. I didn't. With the cure problems, I went with drugs B and D, but I didn't realize they were the same until after you had mentioned it. I put the initial problem under the question of expected value, determining drug A (and by extension C) had an expected value of 33.3%, whereas drug B (and D) had an expected value of 40%. When the question C and D came around, I redid the calculation for drug C and realized drug D had the better expected value again, but I didn't realize C and D were just A and B rephrased.

My roguelike strategy is this: be greedy and die until I'm good enough to be greedy and live. Not being greedy is not an option.

Always so informative, Daryl! Have you considered starting a Discord server for your channel to host discussions on the topics you bring up?

Tactics builds are easily the most risk-reward builds in a game thats highly risk reward youll run out of health super early, even with certain mutations (dead inside) so its a pretty standard glass cannon build, but it roots itself really well into the game too, bossfights will usually be a struggle because getting hit once or twice can be fatal before you get to kill said boss, but it will be much quicker than other builds, and cursed chests will easily fit right in with the run, since you already arent able to be hit much (also you should try the boss cell difficulties, it really amps up this sort of decision making)

True, I never got confident enough to use the Superguard in TTYD outside the Action Command tutorial.

I never considered any of this while playing the game, very insightful video. Your content is great dude, can't wait for more!

Interesting video! :)

The algorithm got you; prepare for a nice rise

yeah and those statues in the sanctuary appear behind you like freaking weeping angels

Darkest dungeon also does a fantastic job at this and it's something I noticed because you put it in the video. I know I'm a bit late here but in games like Darkest dungeon the decisions feel even harder because even if you play perfectly you still have the chance to get screwed by a random miss or crit which then causes more mistakes. The game slowly conditions you to treat the treasures you gain and even heroes you have as disposable so those risks feel even less scary if you think you're good enough

Wow hearing your intro today is insane lol

i chose A and C, but now i feel guilty for the 400 million that will die

one thing that's really valuable in this game is to constantly destroy gold doors to put a curse upon you everytime. that shit made me more strategic when im dealing with traps and monsters.

I loved Dead Cells and I love this video. It reminds me of how the bonfires are more sparse in Dark Souls 1 compared to the sequels, so when you’re low on Estus but you think you might be close to the next bonfire, it forces you to decide whether to play it safe and go back to the previous bonfire to try again, or keep pushing on with your souls and humanity on the line to save time and keep making progress.

I choose C, aha. In my head I was like "well C is still the highest probability of success." It actually didn't even click that they were the exact same numbers.

I think this video was a warning

Every time I got in a new area in Dead cells, I thought just try your best. Dying is always a factor in RLs and it's always the end. Even by fighting the giant, the first time he was really easy, but with a other build the fight got a lot harder, so that I learned witch build I can use, for one boss better or less

in roguelikes i never think the decision is really important, i always choose the path where i win something even if i die, because what i win can be something that helps me in another run

KZfaq, I have work to do, stop recommending me cool videos please.

Did you say Slumbering Sanctuary?!?! No no No No no, I ain't going to THAT place again?

Best video I've watched in a while. It makes me harken back to the systems at play in Deck 13's Lords of the Fallen or The Surge 1 & 2. You can choose to hold onto your XP in order to increase its multiplier, rather than bank what you have before being killed and possibly lose it all. The psychology behind game development always boils down to a question I find myself musing in each and every game that I begin playing: "What do the developers want me to experience?" The best games of all time tend to answer this question slightly differently with each subsequent play-through. All told, this video will hopefully only serve to strengthen the bond between passionate gamers and the software that moves them . . .

there's so many hard decission time all around the dead cells. Just like when you got a perfect combination of your item like assassins knife with phase skill and scheme mutation, you can just teleport to the back of enemy and stab with a tons of damage. but, you find out that you got a scythe claw at the mid game and the game let you to have a hard decision to choose between perfect combo or killing blow

I don't agree that vaccines A and C are the same. For A you said, it will definitely save 200 million. For C you said, it will definitely kill 400 millions. These are completely different things. As states, A could save more than 200 and C may save none. That wasn't clearly stated. ...yeah, I studied a math-heavy subject in university. These kind of things just jump at me.

'60% chance of human race extinction' yeah, I will go for that, seems legit

First time here in your channel but i'll be coming back here more times, really a nice video, got me hooked from beginning to the end and the intro is gold gj

The naughty treasure chest at the ending of the video was the best xDD

I did vaccine A and vaccine C also why would you ever do the cursed chest they seemed meh for such a bad effect

It's also pretty easy to not realize you have two doors to go through, and just go towards the first one you saw. Because let's face it, this is your first time. You're going to die here anyway.

Dead Cells developers: hm, yes. We definitely did that. Yep.

The first time I got to slumbering station, I acted exactly as you said. I cleared it out completely but those big guys were always a pain to deal with. Run away and he'll teleport you to him. Retreat from an attack and he'll dash punch. The one of the few ways to deal with him is close combat, which is freaking scary considering he is huge. I personally never grab cursed chests nor use the cursed sword, I might get something good or I might not, gambling has never been in my favor. I grab the most useful attributes at the time and consider the health at all time until it's less than 20%. I don't have an issue with dodging, I have really good reactions, but mistakes happen or a new enemy appears, I prefer having the health just incase rather than being killed by the above. With items, I choose what'll be the most fun synergies or my favorites, for instance, Quick Bow+Both Sentries=Firing Squad, reroll stats to be bleeding damage and poison, just melts enemies. Killed clockwork boss in less than 15 seconds including his little scene.

That intro... _OOF_

Plays Dead Cells for 30 hours "The Slumbering Sanctuary" *The. WHAT?*

I'm surprised you didn't mention how guiding the Spelunky ghost over gems turns them into much more valuable diamonds. I couldn't tell you how often my greed has gotten the better of me...

It's nice seeing you back on Psych of Play, Daryl! Dead Cells has become one of my favorite roguelike and I agree that this game is good at utilizing loss aversion. I almost always avoid the cursed chests because I'm afraid playing aggressively. Usually I just play it stealthily, using bow, traps, and turrets.