Is XP/level based character progression still proper design?

[mondblut]

It is good for what RPGs and cRPGs were back 20 or 30 years ago

What was good for what RPGs and cRPGs were back 20 or 30 years ago is sorely missed today.

Modern cRPGs, where focus is not so heavily put on combat, where story, exploration, interaction, lore, etc. started to play much more significant role, they need new concepts, new solutions, fresh ones.

I suggest a fresh concept of burying them under 2 yards of cement, for starters.

 

[Hormalakh]

so basically that's a mixture of use-based (finding items that progress your character) and xp based (finding trainers like in M&M).

The issue is that many of these scrolls and trainers unless there's a choice (only one person in your party can use the item) are not really interesting. the XP mechanic allows each character to make a choice as to how to progress specifically.

No, it's not either. There is no resource to spend (XP). With a trainer, you could have it cost gold if you wanted, but that would the only resource, no spending XP.

I don't see how it's use based at all.

There's probably a hundred ways to add choices to this system. Limited number of total ability slots, trainers each no multiple abilities but will only teach one. Trainers are in a faction system and become mutually exclusive. Etc, etc, etc.

point conceded: i'd have to be more general in my definitions of methods of character progression. as such, i think you're right, you could do it in different ways and no single mechanic is perfect. i guess it depends on the game you're trying to make. each one seems to have its own pros and cons.

carry on.

 

[Scruffy]

Here’s how the rpg I’d design (if for whatever reason I’d be given a chance) would work:

You pick a number of skills that depends on your intelligence. The higher the intelligence, the more things you can learn to do.

So, a stupid but very strong character will always be “superior” at combat than a smarter one, but the smarter one will learn to do more things.

Every time you win a skill check for a non-combat skill, that skill goes up a little bit. You throw a D20 dice, add your modifier and see if the check succeeds. Let’s say you have 30 in persuasion, and you need 40 to succeed. You throw a dice and make an 11. Success! You convince the NPC of whatever, and your persuasion goes up to 31. But if you lose the skillcheck, you lose a point in that skill as well.

That only happens if the difference between the skill check and your skill is 10 or higher though (so more or less, everytime you perform a skill check, you have about a 50% possibility of either gaining or losing skill). So, easy “persuasion” targets yield no improvement (or deterioration) to your abilities, to avoid metagaming around.
Higher perception/wisdom would give you a higher chance to succeed by opening additional dialogue options that make succeeding easier (this guy clearly loves X, I’ll approach the argument from the X side, so he’ll be more willing to listen to me) (this guys belongs to order X, and they believe Y, I’ll use argument Y to make him more sympathetic towards me) (etc).

So, just being smart won’t be enough to succeed skillchecks, a smart but low in wis/per character will always only have about 50% chance to raise his (non combat) skills.
SO, very smart (and many skills, but with a 50% chance of success) or less smart, less skills but more focus on developing the ones you have thanks to per/wis?
Well, that was a rant, now if you’ll excuse me I’ll do something productive.

 

[Telengard]

So, there were level-less systems out at the same time as early D&D, such as RECON and RuneQuest. They just weren't as popular, and they don't translate as easily to a GMless system, such as a computer RPG. A less popular system translates to less people who are interested in the game before you even show anything. And a system that is easier to translate to computers has many of advantages for devs.

Such as, when designing an encounter at the midpoint of the game. In a strict level system, the dev knows the characters are going to be, say, level 5 at that point, and can craft the desired difficulty accordingly. In an open system, the dev has no idea what the character will be at, which can leave the challenge level all over the place, if the encounter is of a fixed challenge. Of course, if the encounter is scaled to your level...

Now, if one doesn't maintain a certain degree of challenge, players get bored and quit. But how does one know what level of challenge to put in when one doesn't know what the character's relative power level is at any given point?

And also, how does the computer decide when the non-combat skills are being used properly, instead of being farmed?What constitutes the proper use of stealth?

And how does one balance skill usage with character type. If a player takes a rogueish character, and wants to rogue around the game, but the ability to use rogue skills is far less prevalent than the opportunities to use combat skills (as is usually the case), how does one keep that character's rogue skill ranks above his combat skills ranks? Plus, related to that, how does one prevent every character from looking the same at the end of the game? If combat gets called on the most, then every character ends up looking like a warrior at the end of the game regardless of how they started out, unless characters get more experience when using skills that aren't often called on than those that are?

By-use works really well when there's a GM there saying, you can't get experience from that. No, you can't get experience from that either. For computers, it works well in a closed system where the dev knows every single roll that is going to be made, or where character progression is going to be minimal at best. Or a by-use system can be jury-rigged to "work" with level scaling (or should we say skill-scaling). But if a dev isn't making a game based one of those concepts, then he will still today be better served with levels and experience.

 

[Scruffy]

So, there were level-less systems out at the same time as early D&D, such as RECON and RuneQuest. They just weren't as popular

And can I also add something popamole? After a night of D&D, gaining a level was a pretty good feeling. You felt that your adventure had a sense, and you couldn’t wait for the next gaming night with your new stats. Well, at least I liked it.
In ComputerRPGs, it’s not really the same feeling, since levels are way too quick to go up.

 

[Hormalakh]

So, there were level-less systems out at the same time as early D&D, such as RECON and RuneQuest. They just weren't as popular

And can I also add something popamole? After a night of D&D, gaining a level was a pretty good feeling. You felt that your adventure had a sense, and you couldn’t wait for the next gaming night with your new stats. Well, at least I liked it.
In ComputerRPGs, it’s not really the same feeling, since levels are way too quick to go up.

so you're saying it isn't satisfying when it comes too quick?

 

[Scruffy]

So, there were level-less systems out at the same time as early D&D, such as RECON and RuneQuest. They just weren't as popular

And can I also add something popamole? After a night of D&D, gaining a level was a pretty good feeling. You felt that your adventure had a sense, and you couldn’t wait for the next gaming night with your new stats. Well, at least I liked it.
In ComputerRPGs, it’s not really the same feeling, since levels are way too quick to go up.

so you're saying it isn't satisfying when it comes too quick?

no, you need to work a bit to really enjoy it, if it comes too quick the experience is just not intense and satisfying enough. After all, the fun part is working towards it, not reaching it immediately.

 

[Hormalakh]

blah... innuendo dude.

edit: just realized your comment is also innuendo. now i'm not sure if...

 

[Scruffy]

i was expecting this dialogue to go on at least for a little bit, man.

 

[sea]

Such as, when designing an encounter at the midpoint of the game. In a strict level system, the dev knows the characters are going to be, say, level 5 at that point, and can craft the desired difficulty accordingly. In an open system, the dev has no idea what the character will be at, which can leave the challenge level all over the place, if the encounter is of a fixed challenge. Of course, if the encounter is scaled to your level...

I don't see a problem with an encounter or quest being intended for a certain level range. If the player doesn't do it at the "right time" and the game world is arranged in a way that allows the player to do it at the "wrong time" to get the ideal benefit (i.e. 200 XP no longer means much) then who cares? The quest would have been easy by that point and the player is beyond its intended level, so what does it matter? For stuff like fetch quests it doesn't make sense to award high-level amounts of XP for completing effectively low-level tasks anyway.

 

[MoLAoS]

I don't know about exp but vertical progression, at least in single player games, is and should be the way to go. RPGs should be about character skill and the only player skill is building your character and perhaps deciding what skills to use.

 

[Telengard]

Such as, when designing an encounter at the midpoint of the game. In a strict level system, the dev knows the characters are going to be, say, level 5 at that point, and can craft the desired difficulty accordingly. In an open system, the dev has no idea what the character will be at, which can leave the challenge level all over the place, if the encounter is of a fixed challenge. Of course, if the encounter is scaled to your level...

I don't see a problem with an encounter or quest being intended for a certain level range. If the player doesn't do it at the "right time" and the game world is arranged in a way that allows the player to do it at the "wrong time" to get the ideal benefit (i.e. 200 XP no longer means much) then who cares? The quest would have been easy by that point and the player is beyond its intended level, so what does it matter? For stuff like fetch quests it doesn't make sense to award high-level amounts of XP for completing effectively low-level tasks anyway.

I completely agree with you. What you describe is what I prefer, actually. I should have said, "In open character progression, the dev has no idea what the character will be at, which can leave the challenge level all over the place, if the encounter is of a fixed challenge. Of course, if the encounter is scaled to your level..."

Meaning, in a use-based progression system where you have 3 players who have done the exact same quests in the exact same order, when character A arrives at a particular quest at the midpoint of the game, he might have incredible fighting ability and nothing else, whereas character B might have incredible stealth and no fighting ability, and character C might have a little bit of everything and no strengths at all. The more open the character progression, the less foreknowledge the dev has of what the character will be capable of at any given point in the game, making it that much harder to maintain at least the bare minimum of challenge for every player in the game. Which is another reason why a dev who isn't trying to make a hiking sim might choose to use a level-based system.

I didn't quite fill in that thought properly. My bad.

 

[baturinsky]

Is it possible to make encounter, though not scaling, be still some kind of a challenge for both weak and strong character?

Say, when character is weak, he still can handle challenge, if he did a lot of preparation (placed traps, hired help, found out when enemy is least prepared). He can also get only partial reward - he can sneak by abd steal quest item from chest, but can't kill enemy leader for shiny sword.
When character is about "adequate" strength, he attacks (more or less) head on, but have to spend potions, rests three times through if he is d20 mage, etc.
When character is OP, challenge is to not survive, but just to spend as little resources as possible, if any. Or he just intimidate enemies to get needed stuff without fight.

 

[MoLAoS]

Such as, when designing an encounter at the midpoint of the game. In a strict level system, the dev knows the characters are going to be, say, level 5 at that point, and can craft the desired difficulty accordingly. In an open system, the dev has no idea what the character will be at, which can leave the challenge level all over the place, if the encounter is of a fixed challenge. Of course, if the encounter is scaled to your level...

I don't see a problem with an encounter or quest being intended for a certain level range. If the player doesn't do it at the "right time" and the game world is arranged in a way that allows the player to do it at the "wrong time" to get the ideal benefit (i.e. 200 XP no longer means much) then who cares? The quest would have been easy by that point and the player is beyond its intended level, so what does it matter? For stuff like fetch quests it doesn't make sense to award high-level amounts of XP for completing effectively low-level tasks anyway.

I completely agree with you. What you describe is what I prefer, actually. I should have said, "In open character progression, the dev has no idea what the character will be at, which can leave the challenge level all over the place, if the encounter is of a fixed challenge. Of course, if the encounter is scaled to your level..."

Meaning, in a use-based progression system where you have 3 players who have done the exact same quests in the exact same order, when character A arrives at a particular quest at the midpoint of the game, he might have incredible fighting ability and nothing else, whereas character B might have incredible stealth and no fighting ability, and character C might have a little bit of everything and no strengths at all. The more open the character progression, the less foreknowledge the dev has of what the character will be capable of at any given point in the game, making it that much harder to maintain at least the bare minimum of challenge for every player in the game. Which is another reason why a dev who isn't trying to make a hiking sim might choose to use a level-based system.

I didn't quite fill in that thought properly. My bad.

This is the problem though. We don't want to support perfect challenge scaling, we want to leave it behind because its stupid and limiting. We need to make a couple paths through the world and then if the player screws up he dies. Making it so that the player never messes up takes way from the possibility space of RPG or RPGish design. Or even RTS or TBS or Sim or any other kind of game.

If they can't handle having to do a little fiddling to play a game then fuck em. Oh no I had to do a couple test runs before I figured out how to win the game! Boo hoo!

This is where casual roguelikes such as FTL and Dredmor have struck gold. Most people had to do a few tries in FTL to figure out how to win. You can play a whole shit ton of builds and still win the game because they left space for a ton of builds that also don't work.

 

[J1M]

I had high hopes when I saw this thread's title. It seems like things are finally moving in the right direction.

I want to use this space to consider a few related problems. They arise from being personally disillusioned with the concept of leveling up. Modern games do not tie level ups to significant game events. They tie them to time consumed and hand out dozens of them for basically free.

There are some negative consequences to game levels. One of the primary problems is keeping players at the right challenge rating for their level. Often, atrocious cludges like level scaling are used to address this issue. The difficulty curve becomes ultra-smooth and fighting orcs is the same as fighting human militia because they have to have the right stats for your character's level. Another alternative is extreme linearity. Yay?

Instead of so much effort being put into designing vertical advancement systems, I would love to see that effort put into a horizontal advancement system. Imagine a game where when you leave the tutorial town, you can go in any direction you want. How far you can go into the Ice Peam Mountains (tm) is determined by how specialized you've made your character for handling the challenges you find in that region. Instead, you could remain a generalist, and explore in concentric circles out from the starting area. Extreme difficulty areas of the world would be categorized by an admixture of specialized foes working together, not by HP bloat or narrow canyon walls that assure you visit the whole world first.

I am not against character advancement. I love planning characters and agonizing over tradeoffs. (Use-based systems are obviously retarded, but that has been demonstrated well-enough here already.) What doesn't excite me is seeing my base attack bonus and fort save go up +1. The fun and interesting parts of creating a character are picking the feats, prestige classes, deciding when to hit the base attack bonus required for that extra swing, etc.

Imagine a character system where you start and end the game with 100 hp. Your fireball does the same damage at the start and the end of the game. The progression comes from having a targeted pull spell to combine with fireball to make it more effective against groups. Other progression comes in the form of alternate damage types, stealth, upgraded movement, etc.

Like I said, these ideas are a result of some pretty simple math: hatred of linear environments + hatred of level scaling.

 

[Telengard]

Such as, when designing an encounter at the midpoint of the game. In a strict level system, the dev knows the characters are going to be, say, level 5 at that point, and can craft the desired difficulty accordingly. In an open system, the dev has no idea what the character will be at, which can leave the challenge level all over the place, if the encounter is of a fixed challenge. Of course, if the encounter is scaled to your level...

I don't see a problem with an encounter or quest being intended for a certain level range. If the player doesn't do it at the "right time" and the game world is arranged in a way that allows the player to do it at the "wrong time" to get the ideal benefit (i.e. 200 XP no longer means much) then who cares? The quest would have been easy by that point and the player is beyond its intended level, so what does it matter? For stuff like fetch quests it doesn't make sense to award high-level amounts of XP for completing effectively low-level tasks anyway.

I completely agree with you. What you describe is what I prefer, actually. I should have said, "In open character progression, the dev has no idea what the character will be at, which can leave the challenge level all over the place, if the encounter is of a fixed challenge. Of course, if the encounter is scaled to your level..."

Meaning, in a use-based progression system where you have 3 players who have done the exact same quests in the exact same order, when character A arrives at a particular quest at the midpoint of the game, he might have incredible fighting ability and nothing else, whereas character B might have incredible stealth and no fighting ability, and character C might have a little bit of everything and no strengths at all. The more open the character progression, the less foreknowledge the dev has of what the character will be capable of at any given point in the game, making it that much harder to maintain at least the bare minimum of challenge for every player in the game. Which is another reason why a dev who isn't trying to make a hiking sim might choose to use a level-based system.

I didn't quite fill in that thought properly. My bad.

This is the problem though. We don't want to support perfect challenge scaling, we want to leave it behind because its stupid and limiting. We need to make a couple paths through the world and then if the player screws up he dies. Making it so that the player never messes up takes way from the possibility space of RPG or RPGish design. Or even RTS or TBS or Sim or any other kind of game.

If they can't handle having to do a little fiddling to play a game then fuck em. Oh no I had to do a couple test runs before I figured out how to win the game! Boo hoo!

This is where casual roguelikes such as FTL and Dredmor have struck gold. Most people had to do a few tries in FTL to figure out how to win. You can play a whole shit ton of builds and still win the game because they left space for a ton of builds that also don't work.

The trouble I speak of lies not in the people who die, but in the people who get too far ahead of the curve and get bored because there is 0 challenge from there on. And I'm not speaking of the people who purposefully go to places to get ahead, but of the people who made choices during character progression that put them too far ahead of the difficulty curve. They played the game the way it was intended to be played, but they played it "too well", and now it's boring. For too many players in such a game, the only way to maintain challenge in the game is to make bad choices during character progression in order to keep the character weak enough to be fun.

In a purely level-based game, when the dev sits down to make a level 10 dungeon, he makes a level 10 dungeon. The dev has the foreknowledge to know pretty much what the characters will be capable of at level 10. In an open system, though, there is no such foreknowledge. At that equivalent point, the characters could be anything. Do you then ignore the issue and force stronger players to make bad character progression choices in order to maintain fun or quit out of boredom, or do you put in a kludge?

 

[MoLAoS]

You should make the game so that there are always several choices on where to go next. If you get ahead of the curve you can move to a new place.

As far as level systems, you are totally wrong. I can pwn a level based system easily without breaking any rules. The dev knows how good HE would be. He can't predict what more intelligent players will do. Especially the really smart min-maxers. The best a dev can do is make it so that the majority of players will be challenged. And honestly RPGs aren't about player skill. And that leads to cases where the victor was decided before the battle was fought. In RPGs there is a lot of risk that you can win the fight in the preparation stage. CK2 uses the ideal system in my mind. Players can set their own goals in the world so that everyone has a challenge.

 

[J1M]

You should make the game so that there are always several choices on where to go next. If you get ahead of the curve you can move to a new place.

As far as level systems, you are totally wrong. I can pwn a level based system easily without breaking any rules. The dev knows how good HE would be. He can't predict what more intelligent players will do. Especially the really smart min-maxers. The best a dev can do is make it so that the majority of players will be challenged. And honestly RPGs aren't about player skill. And that leads to cases where the victor was decided before the battle was fought. In RPGs there is a lot of risk that you can win the fight in the preparation stage. CK2 uses the ideal system in my mind. Players can set their own goals in the world so that everyone has a challenge.

Party building and ability usage is player skill. Let's not pretend your half-orc told you he intends to rage.

 

[Telengard]

You should make the game so that there are always several choices on where to go next. If you get ahead of the curve you can move to a new place.

As far as level systems, you are totally wrong. I can pwn a level based system easily without breaking any rules. The dev knows how good HE would be. He can't predict what more intelligent players will do. Especially the really smart min-maxers. The best a dev can do is make it so that the majority of players will be challenged. And honestly RPGs aren't about player skill. And that leads to cases where the victor was decided before the battle was fought. In RPGs there is a lot of risk that you can win the fight in the preparation stage. CK2 uses the ideal system in my mind. Players can set their own goals in the world so that everyone has a challenge.

Talkin' strict level systems here, like the old days the OP mentioned. Where level is the only real stat, which you can nudge a bit with attributes and race. And maybe some magic items. The end.

But that is why early D&D translated well into a GMless world. There are no other options. A particular player can find the dev's chosen challenge level easy or hard, but that's beside the point. The dev knew what challenge level he wanted, and the game provides it for him without him having to do anything. He wants level 10, it's all ready for him.

In a purely open progression, people can do anything, which means by the halfway point and beyond, they can be anything. "Level 10" is whatever the player wants it to be. And because it is whatever the player wants, the dev cannot know what the player will look like at any given point. He must instead research or guess what the typical player will look like at that time, and then what the elite player will look like, and then set the difficulty based on his findings. And he must do so for each dungeon he wants to have a different power rating.

In that open progression system, you could, of course, provide a whole bunch of areas of differing power levels, and let the player go where he needs to go, skipping those areas that he naturally has outpowered by his choices. But then, if the player accelerates past the curve by a third or more (quite possible), he will now be skipping large portions of your game. Fun.

 

[Telengard]

I had high hopes when I saw this thread's title. It seems like things are finally moving in the right direction.

I want to use this space to consider a few related problems. They arise from being personally disillusioned with the concept of leveling up. Modern games do not tie level ups to significant game events. They tie them to time consumed and hand out dozens of them for basically free.

There are some negative consequences to game levels. One of the primary problems is keeping players at the right challenge rating for their level. Often, atrocious cludges like level scaling are used to address this issue. The difficulty curve becomes ultra-smooth and fighting orcs is the same as fighting human militia because they have to have the right stats for your character's level. Another alternative is extreme linearity. Yay?

Instead of so much effort being put into designing vertical advancement systems, I would love to see that effort put into a horizontal advancement system. Imagine a game where when you leave the tutorial town, you can go in any direction you want. How far you can go into the Ice Peam Mountains (tm) is determined by how specialized you've made your character for handling the challenges you find in that region. Instead, you could remain a generalist, and explore in concentric circles out from the starting area. Extreme difficulty areas of the world would be categorized by an admixture of specialized foes working together, not by HP bloat or narrow canyon walls that assure you visit the whole world first.

I am not against character advancement. I love planning characters and agonizing over tradeoffs. (Use-based systems are obviously retarded, but that has been demonstrated well-enough here already.) What doesn't excite me is seeing my base attack bonus and fort save go up +1. The fun and interesting parts of creating a character are picking the feats, prestige classes, deciding when to hit the base attack bonus required for that extra swing, etc.

Imagine a character system where you start and end the game with 100 hp. Your fireball does the same damage at the start and the end of the game. The progression comes from having a targeted pull spell to combine with fireball to make it more effective against groups. Other progression comes in the form of alternate damage types, stealth, upgraded movement, etc.

Like I said, these ideas are a result of some pretty simple math: hatred of linear environments + hatred of level scaling.

I've been thinking about this since yesterday, and I think there's really something good possible in this. I don't know if anyone would be ready to do the AI to make the part work where larger groups of skilled individuals combine their many abilities and work together effectively. But beyond that, this is probably the direction that at least some of the open world games should have gone in all along.

I do forsee a potential issue in number of abilities needed in the game. If people need a certain number of abilities for each area, and the abilities they need are distinct from one another, we're probably talking a good number of abilities already just to travel to every place there is in the game. Would there be space and time enough on top of that to program additional abilities to make and balance distinct character types? Or is that something that have to be sacrificed, and in the end everyone would look kinda the same with most or all of the abilities learned?

Yet, even if it was sacrificed, would the new type of gameplay be enough to satisfy people so they wouldn't care?

 

[J1M]

I've been thinking about this since yesterday, and I think there's really something good possible in this. I don't know if anyone would be ready to do the AI to make the part work where larger groups of skilled individuals combine their many abilities and work together effectively. But beyond that, this is probably the direction that at least some of the open world games should have gone in all along.

I do forsee a potential issue in number of abilities needed in the game. If people need a certain number of abilities for each area, and the abilities they need are distinct from one another, we're probably talking a good number of abilities already just to travel to every place there is in the game. Would there be space and time enough on top of that to program additional abilities to make and balance distinct character types? Or is that something that have to be sacrificed, and in the end everyone would look kinda the same with most or all of the abilities learned?

Yet, even if it was sacrificed, would the new type of gameplay be enough to satisfy people so they wouldn't care?

I don't think giving players access to all of the abilities in the game if they desire to grind for that long is a bad thing. Since we are discussing horizontal progression instead of vertical progression, actively blocking that would be similar to telling a wizard that he could only add 10 spells to his spell book. Which is different than saying he can only use two level 9 spells a day. The player is still constrained by the number of actions they can take in a period of time. Additionally, I don't think we are talking about 100 different abilities here. Strip out all of the vertical upgrades in a game, and all of the damage type differences that have no real impact on gameplay. Very few games are going to have more than a dozen or two abilities.

Often, I think games allow the customization (aka locking out of abilities) of the player's character solely as a form of false choice. Look at the party generation thread in the Chaos Chronicles forum. Without access to wacky base classes, multiclassing, and prestige class options, everyone is essentially building the same party. Thief/Cleric/Wizard/Fighter + slot 5 choice. So much distinction and choice!

In contrast I would use Deus Ex as an example. Although people picked different skills to become experts in, almost everyone had the ability to lockpick, hack, and fire weapons. There was customization of focus, rather than customization of skill domains. It is impossible to play JC Denton as a cleric who stands in the back and supports a SWAT team. However, I think most people would agree that they had distinct play experiences based on how and when they applied those shared tools.

Finally, horizontal progression offers some beneficial characteristics to groups that aren't generally aligned with the interests of people reading this thread. One is that it encourages/allows all players to see all of the content. The business men may rejoice. The other is that it opens up possibilities for the crowd that likes to do speed runs and minimalist playthroughs.

 

[Cool name]

The learn-by-use system (most notably in 'recent' Elder Scrolls games) is shit and, moreover, easily exploitable.

The problem is with the game design and not with the learn-by-use system.

1. Have a hunger bar. It does decrease constantly. It can only be raised by eating.
2. Have a thirst bar. It does decrease constantly. It can only be raised by drinking.
3. Have an energy bar. Every action in the game (every swing of your sword, every spell cast, etc) decreases it. It can only be raised by sleeping.
4. There is a limited amount of food in the dungeon.
5. There is a limited amount of water in the dungeon.

There you go. It is no longer 'easily exploitable' as the game has an effective time limit by having a static amount of food and a static amount of water, which in turn does become a static amount of total energy to spend as to recover energy does consume a measure of your total time.

Edit: Or given most RPGs do seem to be about 'OMG, evil plot ahead, dark lord returning, powerful artifact about to fall in wrong hands, go and stop them before it is too late!' You just need to add 'It will be too late in 25 days, since we are at it.' and be done with it.

 

[mondblut]

TIme limits is one certain way to make a game unplayable junk.

 

[baturinsky]

TIme limits is one certain way to make a game unplayable junk.

You mean like Fallout? Or DCSS?

 

[odrzut]

TIme limits is one certain way to make a game unplayable junk.

Have you played Ur-Quan Masters (open sourced Star Control 2)? Check it out to see how to do great game with time limit. http://sc2.sourceforge.net/