Building for RP vs. building to "beat the game"

[gurugeorge]

Musing based on reflections stirred by the thread about Ironman mode.

There seem to be these two poles to RPGs (why two? there always seems to be two of things, except when there are three or four ).

Either you build a character that's a character, and let the gameplay chips fall where they may, or you tailor the build to beat the game (min-max). This is one way of putting the dichotomy but it has ramifications all the way through how games are designed.

It's been a perennial foofaraw in discussions about RPGs since forever - for some reason there's a lot of bad blood between people who like one or the other thing, because they think the other fellow is distracting the devs from making the kind of game they want.

And for a fact, it's bound to funnel a lot of design decisions, whether you're going primarily for one or the other.

One apparent paradox is that the former mode (rp) is thought to be "casual" and the latter (min-maxing) more "hardcore" - but surely it's the other way around? Surely making a clumsy chaaracter with a humph and a cleft palate and still beating the game with him is more challenging, and therefore more hardcore, than making the game as easy as possible by building a one-trick pony that beats all possible encounters?

This also has ramifications in terms of the difference between the attitude of engaging in some sort of lovingly-created gesamtkunstwerk and viewing a game (or even the devs, in a kind of meta PvP) as something to "beat." One would think that the competitive attitude is the right one, but isn't that only because when games started they were perforce technologically limited? And hasn't the aspiration always been to present a vritual world to adventure in virtually?

The other question is, is it possible to blend these two modes, or are they really like oil and water, and a game designed for one audience will never satisfy the other? (I think not, I think it's a question of relative weightings - the perfect RPG experience for me is one that's mostly linear, with no stopping and starting, preferably not even any re-loads at all, but I do like there to be a few encounters that are challenging, that I might even have to learn a few times. But my preference overall is for the forward momentum. But there's another paradox: you only really get true forward momentum if you've built an all-conquering monster. The geriatric with the humph is precisely the sort of character who's likely to get into trouble and have to stop and start a few times, and learn the encounter.)

As the reader might guess, I definitely lean towards the former, towards building a character first, and a bundle of stats second - but I'm not totally averse to the latter, sometimes the mood takes me, my blood is up and I enjoy a competitive challenge. And also, while making a build, I like to know what's what min-max wise, I like to read what the autists have figured out, so that even if I'm winding up a geriatric toy and seeing how it goes, I do want to min-max within those parameters (I want him to be the best fat old bastard he can possibly be).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

min-maxers in singleplayer games are mega cringe

 

[Dorateen]

Let me build a dwarven fighter, better yet, let me build the party of characters I want to go to war with rather than the prefabricated developer companions that encounters would be designed around, and I'll take on whatever the gameworld has to throw at the player without complaint.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I've seen just as many people saying the opposite. After all, only scrubs play in a way that gets them the most and biggest rewards, while the actually good players give their characters 3 Intelligence and win the game that way. How many casual players have played Fallout 1 with a stupid character? Arcanum as a Half-Ogre? VtMB as a Nosferatu or Malkavian? You always see people making topics like "What is the best character I can make in this game?" or "What stats should I avoid in this game?" Its not hardcore gamers making those topics.

 

[LannTheStupid]

First, I see no dichotomy, more like a continuum between 2 options. May be with spikes here and there.

Second, if the player doesn't want to "beat" anything, then he lowers the difficulty and plays whatever gimp he made. However, if the player does not want to lower the difficulty, then it is clear that he is in the "beating" mindset and, thus, should think more about the character build.

Third, all table top experiences are Ironman by definition.

And the last. In the latest CRPG's that I can remember player characters are: a settler who decided to move to an overseas colony hoping to obtain some land; a high ranking officer in a massive conquering army whose job is to crush resistance in the last remaining independent piece of the known world; a fortune seeker who took up the offer of the local feudal to obtain the lands and the title of Baron; and a volunteer who joined the 100+ years war with supernatural beings from another cosmic plane.
Now, explain me which of those roles can be fulfilled by a character not in the top performing condition by the standards of the corresponding world? What is the "role play" that pushes a weak character into one of those extremely dangerous endeavours? How a "role player" will argue that his high ranking officer was not executed for poor performance long before he receives his current task?

 

[Zanzoken]

This is a really deep topic to consider because it takes a lot of systems and content working together in the right way to make a proper experience.

I will start off by saying this. I think the reason people worry about "beating the game" is because they've been burned over the years by bad design. If the game is properly designed, then making a sensible build should lead to a character that is effective in the game. Not overpowered, not trash, just effective.

The design goal should be for all sensible builds to be roughly equally as effective in their role and over the course of the game as a whole. This is why encounter design is so important... having a variety of well-designed encounters give each character a chance to shine at different points and prove their value to the team. Or if it's a single-character game, having multiple paths through the level or whatever.

So there really shouldn't be a significant trade-off here. If you can't read the manual and use common sense to make a decent character that is fun to play and can beat the game on Normal, then something is wrong with the game.

 

[LannTheStupid]

How many casual players have played Fallout 1 with a stupid character? Arcanum as a Half-Ogre?

Because role players, actually, do not play roles they think they are playing. None of good or memorable CRPG's start as "we are in a tavern with random dudes". Even if the main hero is not predefined s/he has a history, which sometimes is chosen by the player. And from this point of view going through Arcanum as a Half-Ogre is not playing a role, but beating the game in the challenge mode. The first question a role player should ask himself is "How would a Half-Ogre who can barely speak (and, probably, can neither read nor count) buy a ticket to a luxury zeppelin flight?"

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The first question a role player should ask himself is "How would a Half-Ogre who can barely speak (and, probably, can neither read nor count) buy a ticket to a luxury zeppelin flight?"

• he beat someone up and took their ticket
• someone felt bad for him and helped him buy one
• ...

 

[Faarbaute]

I usually settle on a concept for my character first, then I try to realise that concept through whatever build options the game has. I usually end up, as you said, min-maxing to some degree within those parameters but I won't lose sleep over not playing a truly optimal character. Especially if it's my first stab at a game.

I don't LARP but I don't enjoy gameplay where for example, the optimal strategy for a wizard is to wield an axe or for a paladin to wield a wand, so if it comes to this I usually play around it, even if that means playing the game wrong.

 

[dacencora]

None of good or memorable CRPG's start as "we are in a tavern with random dudes".

• Wizardry
• Might and Magic
• The Bard’s Tale
• Wasteland
• Knights of the Chalice
• Icewind Dale

None of those are memorable or good?

 

[Humbaba]

Well, I mean there are degrees of minmaxing. I have never gone beyond making sure a character has adequate stats relative to his class and that has worked across multiple different games. I do see the appeal of tinkering and gaming the system so to speak because it is fun to figure out the best options and the optimal plan of attack. After all winning is fun and winning convincingly thanks to your own carefully planned build for example even more so. Though I have myself never multiclassed or anything ever in my life in any game because honestly I am not willing to dig that deep into fairly complex RPG systems when I can get through the game just fine without having to do so.

 

[LannTheStupid]

None of those are memorable or good?

Only Wizardry VII and some Might and Magic's. So - no.

Which proves my point: CRPG's that start with random dudes in a tavern are bad.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

None of good or memorable CRPG's start as "we are in a tavern with random dudes".

• Wizardry
• Might and Magic
• The Bard’s Tale
• Wasteland
• Knights of the Chalice
• Icewind Dale

None of those are memorable or good?

I find full party creation to be tedious at best. Might as well just have a single character who does what the entire party does, because each individual member has no personality unto itself.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

The first question a role player should ask himself is "How would a Half-Ogre who can barely speak (and, probably, can neither read nor count) buy a ticket to a luxury zeppelin flight?"

• he beat someone up and took their ticket
• someone felt bad for him and helped him buy one
• ...

He got scammed into buying one from a scalper, not fully comprehending what it was.

 

[Dorateen]

Developer companions don't have personalities, they have mental disorders.

 

[dacencora]

None of good or memorable CRPG's start as "we are in a tavern with random dudes".

• Wizardry
• Might and Magic
• The Bard’s Tale
• Wasteland
• Knights of the Chalice
• Icewind Dale

None of those are memorable or good?

I find full party creation to be tedious at best. Might as well just have a single character who does what the entire party does, because each individual member has no personality unto itself.

I think it’s fun to have all options available. NPCs in the wilderness, pre-made adventurers to recruit at the tavern/station, and the option to make your own. Bonus points if there are lots of portraits to choose from. I’ve played Wasteland the most of all those and it offers all of that minus the multiple portraits. It’s part of why it’s one of my favorite RPGs.

Might and Magic 3 and Xeen also do all of those things, but IIRC the NPCs in the wilderness don’t have much flavor to them, they’re mostly mercs. I could be very wrong though.

EDIT: also Wasteland 2 is pretty good about this, and the companions you find in the wilderness are more fleshed out.

 

[gurugeorge]

None of good or memorable CRPG's start as "we are in a tavern with random dudes".

• Wizardry
• Might and Magic
• The Bard’s Tale
• Wasteland
• Knights of the Chalice
• Icewind Dale

None of those are memorable or good?

I find full party creation to be tedious at best. Might as well just have a single character who does what the entire party does, because each individual member has no personality unto itself.

I think it’s fun to have all options available. NPCs in the wilderness, pre-made adventurers to recruit at the tavern/station, and the option to make your own. Bonus points if there are lots of portraits to choose from. I’ve played Wasteland the most of all those and it offers all of that minus the multiple portraits. It’s part of why it’s one of my favorite RPGs.

Might and Magic 3 and Xeen also do all of those things, but IIRC the NPCs in the wilderness don’t have much flavor to them, they’re mostly mercs. I could be very wrong though.

EDIT: also Wasteland 2 is pretty good about this, and the companions you find in the wilderness are more fleshed out.

There's an absolute shit-ton of portraits on Nexus, really good ones (one huge mega pack and another divided into sub-packs named after three areas in the world) - trouble is the in-game models aren't properly able to realize most of them.

*************

Optional ramble:-

It's funny you should say WL2, as I've been playing that recently and REALLY enjoying it, coming off the back of playing Colony Ship. I do like Colony Ship, but it'a definitely one of those games where there's an optimal path of things to do to "beat" it, things to beeline from one to the other, and if you don't pursue that path your experience is kinda sub-optimal. And the immersion and quasi-realism of the graphics and setting and story sort of contradict that (because you end up doing the same things again and again, wearing out the immersion). WL2 seems much more forgiving in that sense, even though the combat is quite similar in some ways. (It's funny because that's not how you're supposed to play Colony Ship, it doesn't seem to be how the devs want you to play it, but that's how everyone seems to play it - it was the same with AoD. The devs make a game where you're supposed to just follow your nose and take your lumps, but people find the optimal paths and they become ruts.)

At the end of the day, I really want to be going through a game just once (i.e. Ironman) so that everything is fresh and wondrous, but in order for the devs to let people do that, the game has to be such that it behaves logically, which means quasi-realistically (because there are a bajillion possible arbitrary game rules out there, but reality is a fixed set of rules, and people naturally will home in on the Schelling Point of the expectation that things will behave logically and realistically (just made a bit easier to win and get a dopamine hit, with time/space compressed, etc.)).

But for something to behave realistically must be a lot of work for devs because you've got to roll out the red carpet behind the scenes ahead of many possible player choices (a combinatorial explosion, indeed). But if they pull it off (perhaps blocking off whole areas of possiblity in a way that makes sense too), if any sane and logical path is a possible path to getting through the game with dignity intact using whatever tools you have, it feels good, you feel like you've come up with the idea yourself.

 

[dacencora]

There's an absolute shit-ton of portraits on Nexus, really good ones (one huge mega pack and another divided into sub-packs named after three areas in the world) - trouble is the in-game models aren't properly able to realize most of them.

For Wasteland 1? Is it for Remastered or something?

Re: the rest of your post:

I think Wasteland 2 isn’t as trite or uninspired as the rest of Codex apparently does. Granted I only played the DC, and I did that long after it released, but I didn’t think it was bad at all. I liked the combat a lot. It could be a little dry and boring, but overall I think it had a lot of fun stuff in it.

 

[mondblut]

min-maxers in singleplayer games are mega cringe

There are no "singleplayer games". There is always a game designer to beat.

 

[mondblut]

Its not hardcore gamers making those topics.

Its hardcore gamers answering them.

 

[NJClaw]

None of good or memorable CRPG's start as "we are in a tavern with random dudes".

• Wizardry
• Might and Magic
• The Bard’s Tale
• Wasteland
• Knights of the Chalice
• Icewind Dale

None of those are memorable or good?

I find full party creation to be tedious at best. Might as well just have a single character who does what the entire party does, because each individual member has no personality unto itself.

I always roleplay every single character every time I play Icewind Dale.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

None of good or memorable CRPG's start as "we are in a tavern with random dudes".

• Wizardry
• Might and Magic
• The Bard’s Tale
• Wasteland
• Knights of the Chalice
• Icewind Dale

None of those are memorable or good?

I find full party creation to be tedious at best. Might as well just have a single character who does what the entire party does, because each individual member has no personality unto itself.

I always roleplay every single character every time I play Icewind Dale.

Sadly, I do not suffer from multiple personality disorder.

 

[Butter]

Most CRPGs aren't built to incentivize role-playing. You can deliberately make shitty characters and then laugh at their ineptness, but if that keeps you entertained for more than a few minutes there's a problem. Fallout-likes do it by using a classless system, providing various dialogue options, providing multiple quest solutions, by not being especially difficult, and by limiting your control to a single character. Party-based games and games that adapt tabletop systems are essentially hopeless in this regard.

 

[gurugeorge]

There's an absolute shit-ton of portraits on Nexus, really good ones (one huge mega pack and another divided into sub-packs named after three areas in the world) - trouble is the in-game models aren't properly able to realize most of them.

For Wasteland 1? Is it for Remastered or something?

Bah, sorry misread your post.

I think Wasteland 2 isn’t as trite or uninspired as the rest of Codex apparently does. Granted I only played the DC, and I did that long after it released, but I didn’t think it was bad at all. I liked the combat a lot. It could be a little dry and boring, but overall I think it had a lot of fun stuff in it.

Yeah I'm really enjoying my playthrough. The combat is very moreish. I can see how the sameyness of it was a motivation for WL3, which has more intricately tactical combat, but actually while that makes for another nice game, it doesn't feel as Wastelandey as WL2, and it's nice in a different way.

It's another vector or polarity in these types of games: do you want to get into a trance state, a flow state, where you've perfected a set of "moves" and your muscle memory gets into a rhythm, or do you want a series of unique little puzzle challenges? Well, a bit o both, but for me I love long stretches of trance state where I'm goofing off pretending to be a Desert Ranger

For me that's the best part of gaming, where you get almost a "Third Eye" type of image in the mind of being that character. The tactical thoughts recede in the mind and it's almost like they're a part of the flow of a miniature model of a virtual world. You can almost hear yourself giving orders to your guys

Well of course that's just immersion, but it's when immersion starts to edge into "presence."

 

[Poseidon00]

I always build for RP. If I build for maximizing I will inevitably lose interest. Ideally you should be able to break any playstyle and make it viable, Morrowind style.