Editorial Gamasutra: DPS and the Decline of Complexity in RPGs

[Excidium]

And it still doesn't give the support classes anything to do in combat.

Supporting? Buffs, Control...

 

[RK47]

look, even some skills have different application if the players are creative enough like in GW2 WvW
downed player by a cliff, anyone who tries to get there n revive him - will get knocked over and fall to his death.
Thieves can stealth and revive.
Warriors can adopt a Balanced stance and not be knocked off the cliff.
Elementalist can block all projectiles and go for Earth Form.
Even Mesmers with Time Warp can quicken revival process with team haste.

In PVE, the designers never seem to account for these abilities due to them being close-minded themselves.
There are some instances where you have to cross a path quickly and dodge some air venting that knocks you off the platform to your death, and a lot of players would assume the correct way to deal with such deathtrap is to wait till the vent stop venting air...well - fuck - I just use the Human Racial Elite to turn into a tree and walk past like a boss, unaffected by knockbacks for 20 seconds.

 

[Excidium]

You could just save your elite slot and wait for the mesmer portal.

 

[RK47]

Yeah I shd roll a mesmer - but fuck it. My engineer sucked and Mr. Not Paladin was my main.
Engineer is also a weird class that suffers from the DPS race - he actually has a lot of tools at his disposal but had to sacrifice that for a DPS specialist role.
I tried going doctor-build with Engineer before, high crit, high heal, lots of regeneration and heals utility like Elixir Guns and Elixirs throws.

No dice. Group suffers from the lack of DPS in some encounters. Ran Twilight Arbor and felt morally defeated. My guardian could do good heals without sacrificing so much DPS.
So back to Grenade or GTFO build - shelved him due to boredom.

 

[J1M]

And it still doesn't give the support classes anything to do in combat.

Supporting? Buffs, Control...

I was referring to the traps/locked door examples.

If making a support class as interesting to players as a DPS class was easy, there would be more successful examples to draw upon.

In FFXI people loved bards and sought them out for parties, but they did that because bards made the whole party significantly better. They were a clearly superior choice for party composition. If they had the same relative effectiveness as adding a dragoon, nobody would have bothered with the positioning requirements or continuing to look for a bard with a dozen dragoons sitting around looking for a group.

Now, it is certainly possible that all encounters could be designed with debuff or control requirements as stringent as those for tanking or healing. This would certainly make a support class required, but I don't think you can say that recasting slow on the boss every 5 seconds is compelling gameplay.

Nor is it particularly amusing to maintain buffs on everyone in the group. WoW tried this with Paladins when it first launched raids. They had very powerful buffs that had to be recast every few minutes. With little to do between their most important task they also got to dick around doing some minor healing or damage. If damage/healing meters existed back then paladins wouldn't have been getting any new equipment.

If you up the number of things for someone to maintain, either through a large number of buffs/debuffs or having them do several tasks including control, you up the skill requirement and responsibility to a prohibitive level. That, combined with a group requirement, can result a the player shortage as you often see with tanks. Remember, when wow first launched groups of 5 were often formed with a hybrid/off-healer. Since healing was not twice as popular as tanking, this lead to healer shortages and the tank/healer/triple dps format that continues to persist.

The question is how you go about creating a new, essential, role that is not a gimmick.

 

[Excidium]

The question is how you go about creating a new, essential, role that is not a gimmick.

Is it even possible?

 

[sser]

But DPS is only a calculation and, recently, a part of the user interface. It's a tangible stat that newer games just show you instead of having to figure out yourself. Hell, old grognards have been listing DPS calculations forever, but in more abstract ways.

I think if there is a problem with "DPS" -- in its literal form -- it is the "S", the word "second." It represents how games have been so condensed timewise that the speed of action is literally frame by frame. DPS has always existed, but when was it first actually called "DPS"? I think that is an interesting question. But then DPS itself still isn't really a problem because it's just a change in gaming lexicon; a representation of change but not the change itself.

 

[RK47]

The question is how you go about creating a new, essential, role that is not a gimmick.

Is it even possible?

Making an essential role itself is already a big no-no.
Looking back, we never had a situation in GW2 dungeon party where we had to look for a specific profession to occupy a slot / role in the party.
I can't imagine going back to the 'need a tank for X dungeon, must have minimum 15k HP, guardian / warrior only please!'

 

[Johannes]

Wow, this thread is full of decline. Several codexers (some of which I thought were not retarded) cannot grasp the concept that a system with several types of damage, resistances and armor cannot be depicted in "DPS". Only decline games where dmg is dmg and armor is armor can even be sensibly depicted in dps.

Simply not true.

 

[The Bishop]

As it was mentioned here already, there's no problem with DPS in itself. Every game with damage have it or a similar concept already. The problem is with treating it as the key combat variable and then stressing that fact to the user, because that creates an implicit expectation with the player that more DPS is always better. If player finds out later on that this sword with more DPS is actually useless against say plate armor, he would expectedly feel cheated by the game. If you present DPS as the central concept of your system you cannot then allow it to be overshadowed by other concepts, unless you want your players to feel betrayed. And that dictates that you use very simple combat system, because no complex system can be made with DPS being universal measurement of combat efficiency.

 

[Juggie]

Wow, this thread is full of decline. Several codexers (some of which I thought were not retarded) cannot grasp the concept that a system with several types of damage, resistances and armor cannot be depicted in "DPS". Only decline games where dmg is dmg and armor is armor can even be sensibly depicted in dps.

True, because it's impossible to factor in enemies' damage reduction in DPS calculations, oh wait... When calculating DPS you can factor in many things and when someone is looking at the DPS value he should know which factors have been used in its computation. If you compute your damage output and don't consider your opponent's damage resistance then it should be fucking obvious that the estimated damage intake will be different. DPS should be used for quick comparison and not as an absolutely precise piece of info.

As it was mentioned here already, there's no problem with DPS in itself. Every game with damage have it or a similar concept already. The problem is with treating it as the key combat variable and then stressing that fact to the user, because that creates an implicit expectation with the player that more DPS is always better. If player finds out later on that this sword with more DPS is actually useless against say plate armor, he would expectedly feel cheated by the game. If you present DPS as the central concept of your system you cannot then allow it to be overshadowed by other concepts, unless you want your players to feel betrayed. And that dictates that you use very simple combat system, because no complex system can be made with DPS being universal measurement of combat efficiency.

Games have treated damage as primary offensive stat for a long time. It's quite understandable, because in combat you usually need to kill all your opponents and that's where damage comes into play. Games that do this aren't inherently bad. This doesn't mean that such games didn't include other major stats like accuracy, reload speed, mag sizes or life steal, chance for special effect on hit, etc. And if anyone considers DPS the only stat and feels cheated when he realizes that it isn't is a moron and I don't care about him nor games made for such people.

 

[crawlkill]

what does it even mean when people point to Infinity Engine games in particular and 2E D&D in general as examples of good balance? with little more than the slimmest modicum of thought I can easily play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 through melee-solo. with any number of PC classes. yeah, maybe I'm doing a little less damage per swing versus skeletons with my longsword, but the game doesn't allow me sufficient latitude with proficiencies to change my approach, nor is the penalty sufficient for it to be worthwhile to switch from my mastered dual-wielded slashing weapon to my one-pip club.

DPS has always existed. it's just in turn-based games it's "damage per round," or just more vaguely referenced as "high damage." and in the process of leveling, most games with such damagetype mechanics trivialize them once the numbers get big enough, -especially- IE games. of course you can represent damage-per-time-unit in multi-damagetype systems. you just say, 'oh yeah, you'll not hit that dude quite as hard.' even without representing it to yourself mathematically, you can perfectly well understand the repercussions.

and was World of Warcraft a better game when players needed to grind up resistance gear to take on raids? was it a better game when mages couldn't spec Fire because all the raid bosses had resistances to it? multiple damage types are only meaningful when they require a meaningful alteration of tactics, which itself needs to be meaningfully supported as an option in the rules of the game presenting that challenge. seriously, dudes. not content with failing at the whole neophilus thing, you guys are actually failing at being neophobus, here, too.

This doesn't mean that such games didn't include other major stats like accuracy, reload speed, mag sizes or life steal, chance for special effect on hit, etc.

literally everything you said there except life steal and your generic "special effect" is a component of DPS. they're other concerns, too, but in the context of a game where an enemy takes more than a moment of twitch to kill (you know, like in every RPG ever), those factors become DPS.

 

[Johannes]

what does it even mean when people point to Infinity Engine games in particular and 2E D&D in general as examples of good balance? with little more than the slimmest modicum of thought I can easily play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 through melee-solo. with any number of PC classes.

Can you? What do you do, for example, with a fighter or barbarian against a lich who keeps casting PfMW? Plus several other protection spells for good measure. You don't get those wands that cast Ruby Ray or Breach until ToB.


BG2 is an example of good balance because it offers a vast array of options, both in ways to create a party and in ways to tackle a specific encounter. And there's no single most powerful way to play it.
Of course it's improved a lot by installing a mod like SCS - which was specifically made to make the game more balanced.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Can you? What do you do, for example, with a fighter or barbarian against a lich who keeps casting PfMW?

Use a normal weapon? (dunno if liches are immune to normal weapons though, perhaps they are), use azure-edge to kill it before it gets the spell up? Use it after the spell expired (6 rounds)? use daystar (which can cast 2x sunray) ? Use a scroll of protection from magic? The list goes on.

 

[Johannes]

Can you? What do you do, for example, with a fighter or barbarian against a lich who keeps casting PfMW?

Use a normal weapon? (dunno if liches are immune to normal weapons though, perhaps they are), use azure-edge to kill it before it gets the spell up? Use it after the spell expired (6 rounds)? use daystar (which can cast 2x sunray) ? Use a scroll of protection from magic? The list goes on.

Yes they're immune. Azuredge won't work if the spell's in a contingency. They can keep recasting it many times over. Sunray is easily blocked by a protection spell too, Protection from Fire I think.

PfM scroll used on them would work, yes, but there's 2 or 3 of them in the game? Now compare to the amount of normal weapons-immune enemies able to cast spells.

Might be possible to always just run away over and over again so they eventually run out of buffs - but that's kind of an awful way to play if you intend to have any fun at least.

 

[Juggie]

This doesn't mean that such games didn't include other major stats like accuracy, reload speed, mag sizes or life steal, chance for special effect on hit, etc.

literally everything you said there except life steal and your generic "special effect" is a component of DPS. they're other concerns, too, but in the context of a game where an enemy takes more than a moment of twitch to kill (you know, like in every RPG ever), those factors become DPS.

I'm completely aware that they can be incorporated into DPS calculations. When you consider "training dummy" scenario this is easy to do, but the other stats behave differently in specific situations. For example reload speed is irrelevant if your mag size is high enough for you to finish an encounter without reloading. Accuracy might be modified by range and at certain ranges you get guaranteed hits with any weapon etc. It's kind of important to consider how certain stats behave, because when you incorporate them into DPS calculations they become dependant on many other factors. As I've said it's necessary to understand how the DPS value you are looking at was computed.

 

[crawlkill]

Might be possible to always just run away over and over again so they eventually run out of buffs - but that's kind of an awful way to play if you intend to have any fun at least.

Running the fuck away and exploiting the fact that enemies don't rest is pretty necessary, yeah. Solo runs have no personality, anyway. Not really fun. More a sort of morbid experiment.

Josh Sawyer made a very apt comment about the apparent diversity of defensive and breaching magics in Baldur's Gate/D&D2E, which was that every fight eventually just became a game of putting up the same protective spells then having them dispelled. Indicatively, I've never (ever) bothered to use dispelling magics (I think I played once with a single memorization of Oracle in my book?), and I've still gotten through those fights (although probably with more reloads than I'd've needed otherwise, hah). ...even without silly run-away-and-rest-their-defenses-away bullshit.

Baldur's Gate's presentation of tactical choice is mostly illusion. That's okay; the games aren't great for their combat, they're great for their characters and their dialogue. But generally, the idea of blunt vs slashing or which breaching spell to blow is ignorable, or, if you choose not to ignore it, counterable through very direct means--means that require you to know what's coming ahead of time, too, or to walk around with a bunch of situationally useful spells memorized. The combat part of the game can very easily come down to how much damage you put out per round, and vary very little with Kleinigkeiten like damage types.

I've played Baldur's Gate through three times since the Enhanced Edition came out. There are -so many fucking boots- in that game that give you 50% or 100% resistance to electricity or fire or frost damage. I encountered electricity damage twice, from traps, fire damage once or twice, from mages, and frost damage -never.- Never once, as far as I can recall. Kept those goddamn boots the entire game and never once did they stick me in a freezer.

 

[Infinitron]

Baldur's Gate's presentation of tactical choice is mostly illusion. That's okay; the games aren't great for their combat, they're great for their characters and their dialogue

 

[crawlkill]

Baldur's Gate's presentation of tactical choice is mostly illusion. That's okay; the games aren't great for their combat, they're great for their characters and their dialogue

Why did you delete my period, you monster?

 

[Juggie]

Baldur's Gate's presentation of tactical choice is mostly illusion. That's okay; the games aren't great for their combat, they're great for their characters and their dialogue. But generally, the idea of blunt vs slashing or which breaching spell to blow is ignorable, or, if you choose not to ignore it, counterable through very direct means--means that require you to know what's coming ahead of time, too, or to walk around with a bunch of situationally useful spells memorized. The combat part of the game can very easily come down to how much damage you put out per round, and vary very little with Kleinigkeiten like damage types.

This is actually quite true. I liked the games, especially BG2, but when I played it recently I realized that the encounters often required meta knowledge. If you didn't know what spells or abilities the opponent would use you were pretty screwed. Well that was mostly because situational spells and Vancian magic don't combine well. You need to know ahead of the time what situational spells you'll need and for that you either need very precise info about the opponents you'll be facing (either from ingame source or as meta knowledge) or you just memorize generic spells and use them even when they are suboptimal in pretty much any situation.
If instead of Vancian magic they allowed sorcerer-like spellcasting for all classes it would make much more sense, because the game featured several interesting encounters with spellcasters where the fight wasn't designed around HP attrition and DPS but instead around countering spells with other spells.

 

[Kane]

I had a talk recently about DPS in RTS games, and many of the points sea makes here against DPS are very much correct.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Yes they're immune. Azuredge won't work if the spell's in a contingency.

Depending on Initiative Azuredge works fine. With a Kensai I'd hit them before their contingiencies would fire, ending the fight before it even started half of the time.

They can keep recasting it many times over.

And you always have a time-frame when you can hit them. Azuredge is the nr. 1 lich killer weapon.

Sunray is easily blocked by a protection spell too, Protection from Fire I think.

With SCS2 some protection spells can block it, but you can time the casting that it hits before the spells are up (for instance by using the helmet that creates a simulacrum of your char). Or cast it after you outlasted them for a while and most protections are down.

PfM scroll used on them would work, yes, but there's 2 or 3 of them in the game?

that's two or three easy lich fights.

Now compare to the amount of normal weapons-immune enemies able to cast spells.

A bunch of liches, that's it. Out of which half would die before they even had their contingiencies up. All other mages would get bashed flat while switching between a normal and a magical weapon as required.

The point is you can solo with a fighter. All the vital stuff (like scrolls to remove level drain, disease, poison etc) can be used by all classes. It's actually easier than you'd think because as a Kensai you deal some insane damage while as a berserker you can take advantage of the immunities you gain while raging. Of course it would be even better if you could cast stoneskin and improved haste but that doesn't mean it won't work without. The only difference is that you need to drink more potions of which there are plenty anyway.

 

[Slow James]

Might be possible to always just run away over and over again so they eventually run out of buffs - but that's kind of an awful way to play if you intend to have any fun at least.

Running the fuck away and exploiting the fact that enemies don't rest is pretty necessary, yeah. Solo runs have no personality, anyway. Not really fun. More a sort of morbid experiment.

Josh Sawyer made a very apt comment about the apparent diversity of defensive and breaching magics in Baldur's Gate/D&D2E, which was that every fight eventually just became a game of putting up the same protective spells then having them dispelled. Indicatively, I've never (ever) bothered to use dispelling magics (I think I played once with a single memorization of Oracle in my book?), and I've still gotten through those fights (although probably with more reloads than I'd've needed otherwise, hah). ...even without silly run-away-and-rest-their-defenses-away bullshit.

Baldur's Gate's presentation of tactical choice is mostly illusion. That's okay; the games aren't great for their combat, they're great for their characters and their dialogue. But generally, the idea of blunt vs slashing or which breaching spell to blow is ignorable, or, if you choose not to ignore it, counterable through very direct means--means that require you to know what's coming ahead of time, too, or to walk around with a bunch of situationally useful spells memorized. The combat part of the game can very easily come down to how much damage you put out per round, and vary very little with Kleinigkeiten like damage types.

I've played Baldur's Gate through three times since the Enhanced Edition came out. There are -so many fucking boots- in that game that give you 50% or 100% resistance to electricity or fire or frost damage. I encountered electricity damage twice, from traps, fire damage once or twice, from mages, and frost damage -never.- Never once, as far as I can recall. Kept those goddamn boots the entire game and never once did they stick me in a freezer.

But you are missing the point. Of COURSE you can run through those games with a melee character. You know why? A melee character has the role of "combat class" in those types of games.

Not "Tank" or "DPS" class... but COMBAT class. Thieves had skills that were applicable outside of combat, such as trap disarming and lockpicking. Mages had spells that were applicable outside of combat, such as summoning a familiar to scout areas ahead. Whether or not a game like Baldur's Gate really did enough to showcase these non-combat talents is a little irrelevant - they existed. The classes themselves had benefits outside of combat, benefits that had to be weighed.

In the "every RPG is designed exactly like an MMO" model we have today, where the number of games with skills outside of combat is in the vast minority and where the expected gameplay is to run in with the holy trinity party to spam the same abilities over and over, each class is worth exactly the same in combat. Which is asinine. Why would a thief be able to do as much damage per second as a fighter? Other than to solve some nonsensical PvP balancing issue for an MMO... which, for some reason, has now infected every RPG experience, even those without a multiplayer component.

People in this thread throwing out the term "decline" should realize... making combat the only focus of your entire character creation/build system will make combat the entire focus of your GAME... period. If we're just going to be grinding and spamming nuke skills and spells, then let's just go ahead and all hop on consoles, so we can map those four skills to "A,B,X and Y" and quit with all the pretense. If all you want out of an RPG is levels and optimizing skill trees, let's stop with the Kickstarters. You all can just hop in and play Kingdoms of Amalur.

 

[The Bishop]

Games have treated damage as primary offensive stat for a long time. It's quite understandable, because in combat you usually need to kill all your opponents and that's where damage comes into play. Games that do this aren't inherently bad. This doesn't mean that such games didn't include other major stats like accuracy, reload speed, mag sizes or life steal, chance for special effect on hit, etc. And if anyone considers DPS the only stat and feels cheated when he realizes that it isn't is a moron and I don't care about him nor games made for such people.

The thing with your argument is that you present it as if you contradict me, when in fact you agree with me by simply rephrasing my point.

You start with saying that damage is important and that DPS isn't bad. That's what I say in the beginning as well. You then proceed with mentioning how including all other parameters like accuracy, reload speed e.t.c., i.e. not focusing on DPS can make for a good system and a good game, when I say that doing the opposite will likely result in a 'bad' simplistic system and not a good game.

So I guess the only appropriate response from me would be: yes, indeed.

 

[Johannes]

stuff

Maybe you're right and the game does let you kill liches with relative ease with Azuredge (or Imp. Mace of Disruption), no matter what they do. Pretty sure PfMW can be cast without a time of vulnerability though, with its zero casting time. There's a ton of other enemies that are immune to normal weapons though and cast PfMW - rakshasas, vampires, demons, IIRC some mindflayer too plus certainly something I'm forgetting. Plus Absolute Immunity cast by anyone, even if it's not as renewable.

It's not the melee'ers only problem that you can't always hit people, though. A lot of times enemies just deal much more DPS than you can heal with potions - and that you're often vulnerable to save-or-die stuff, and often have to rely on rare potions, scrolls or PW: reload to survive. When you're a single target with a very limited set of protection spells, surviving all the shit thrown at you is not so simple with just the DPS and HP of a single character.


I did look up some info, the vanilla game indeed has been solo'd by a barbarian at least. Now when using even a moderate SCS2 install, and a less magic-resistant melee class than that, I don't see anyone doing a playthrough unless exploiting the AI in the lamest way or relying on tons of reloads and dumb luck. And to me a properly balanced BG2 install is always more relevant when game design is discussed, than the vanilla.