Development Info Tim Cain at Reboot Develop 2017 - Building a Better RPG: Seven Mistakes to Avoid

[pippin]

But a true hero likes to live dangerously.

Enjoy your magic herpes then :D

 

[l3loodAngel]

Fallout character screen is great.
SPECIAL is well explained and skills too.
Way to many useless skills there but it has nothing to do with the UI/presentation, it's a design flaw.

I don't doubt that some people found it impressive as you say so but at some point i don't believe you can make the process/presentation simpler without losing complexity/choices/something.
I like Blood Bowl (a tactical 1vs1 boardgame) for example, you can't possibly make the game easier without losing strategic depth.
Not everything is for everyone.

FO character system is the gold standard for me. I have never seen a better character system and God knows I never will. Anyone bashing it without solid ground will lose my respect permanently.

 

[Black]

Well, it does have that "mountain" you see.

Motherfuck pirating my memes.

 

[l3loodAngel]

Why do people keep bringing up Dark Souls in a thread about grognardy character creation? Not all "hardcoreness" is the same. It's a different thing when you're getting hammered by a game while you're in control and able to dodge blows with your own skill, compared to going through trial-and-error spreadsheet character creation and trap build cycles until you find something that works in a tactical game

Of course, but their market approach allowed them to create a whole culture around the franchise. Maybe just as there was always a culture of competitive players around arcade games, we should develop a culture of competitive players around cRPGs.

Key word is competitive. How many RPGs are truly competitive?

 

[Alienman]

Time to copyright memes.

 

[Jedi Exile]

I wonder if Tim will post in this thread.

 

[Delbaeth]

But a true hero likes to live dangerously.

Enjoy your magic herpes then :D

Who said I wanted to be a hero?

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I wonder if Tim will post in this thread.

 

[Tiny Tim]

While all this does sound suspiciously like they're dumping down things that worked ( fallout and arcanum had killler character creation ) to appeal to a wider audience, i'm still hyped about their "secret" project more than i am for PoE 2.

 

[pippin]

Why do people keep bringing up Dark Souls in a thread about grognardy character creation? Not all "hardcoreness" is the same. It's a different thing when you're getting hammered by a game while you're in control and able to dodge blows with your own skill, compared to going through trial-and-error spreadsheet character creation and trap build cycles until you find something that works in a tactical game

Of course, but their market approach allowed them to create a whole culture around the franchise. Maybe just as there was always a culture of competitive players around arcade games, we should develop a culture of competitive players around cRPGs.

Key word is competitive. How many RPGs are truly competitive?

Are rpgs meant to be competitive? That sounds too much like MMORPGs and the genre is having a slow and P2W-ridden death in favor of MOBAs, but MOBAs are getting very tired now too. In the end, multiplayer was a mistake. The only thing actually close to having an online rpg experience was the "DM simulator" thingy featured in Vampire Redemption which was later taken to Neverwinter Nights.

 

[Black]

I wonder if Tim will post in this thread.

Fans shouldn't fear their developers. Developers should fear their fans.

 

[l3loodAngel]

But a true hero likes to live dangerously.

Enjoy your magic herpes then :D

We all have herpes you twat. Chickenpox cause is herpes zoster virus(which remains dormant)...

 

[Black]

Why do people keep bringing up Dark Souls in a thread about grognardy character creation? Not all "hardcoreness" is the same. It's a different thing when you're getting hammered by a game while you're in control and able to dodge blows with your own skill, compared to going through trial-and-error spreadsheet character creation and trap build cycles until you find something that works in a tactical game

Of course, but their market approach allowed them to create a whole culture around the franchise. Maybe just as there was always a culture of competitive players around arcade games, we should develop a culture of competitive players around cRPGs.

Key word is competitive. How many RPGs are truly competitive?

Are rpgs meant to be competitive? That sounds too much like MMORPGs and the genre is having a slow and P2W-ridden death in favor of MOBAs, but MOBAs are getting very tired now too. In the end, multiplayer was a mistake. The only thing actually close to having an online rpg experience was the "DM simulator" thingy featured in Vampire Redemption which was later taken to Neverwinter Nights.

If you even consider "competitiveness" when making an rpg you also have to consider balance.
And we all know where that leads.

 

[Alienman]

Balance is the path to the dark side. Balance leads to casualisation. Casualisation leads to boredom. Boredom leads to suffering.
- Yoda

 

[Lhynn]

FO character system is the gold standard for me. I have never seen a better character system and God knows I never will. Anyone bashing it without solid ground will lose my respect permanently.

Its not a bad system, but its kind of a mess, it was cobbled together in like 2 weeks because the actual system they wanted was a no go.
Still better than most of the stuff we are getting nowadays.

 

[Don Peste]

Wow, long thread. I will admit I don't have time to read it all, but let me say this. I think there has been a misunderstanding of my talk. I never said I don't like complex systems, just that I don't like the presentation of so much complexity in the first few minutes of the game, like in character creation. We lost a lot of potential players to that. That isn't hypothetical. I have emails and reviews to back me up.

Think of an RPG like a mountain. In my older RPG's, the only way to the top was going up cliffs, but many of you like rock climbing so it didn't matter. But a lot of people never even tried to do it. So I am building a road that lets people drive to the top of the mountain. The mountain is still as high as it used to be and the view is just as spectacular, but now more people can enjoy it.

There is so much misunderstanding on this thread, but I know you are smart and RPG-savvy people. That makes me think my first point of the talk is even more relevant: the need to reduce the learning slope to introduce something new. In other words, I think I need to simplify my talk.

Anyway, it took 30 hours on three flights to get back to Los Angeles from Croatia, so I am operating with severe jet lag. I will try to explain this more later.

Codex AMA when? :D

 

[Lurker King]

Chess has no "character creation".

But chess also has a bunch of rules that you need to learn before you can make the first move. This complexity is multiplied many times over when you consider how competitive players can be, the many studies of different phases of the game, the combinations, etc. Most people who come across a board won't quit chess because they are bored by this long process of learning. Some noteworthy differences:

- Chess has pedigree. The game is perceived as an intellectual hobby of brainy individuals with high IQ. cRPGs are perceived as pointless dungeon and dragons for fat teenagers, if not worse.

- Chess is promoted by tournaments, world championships, school programs, teached by fathers to their kids, etc. The only type of cRPGs promoted by tournaments are multi-million Mobas, i.e., noise and colorful real time strategy games. Most grognards don’t have the patience to play cRPGs anymore, much less teach their kids to play these games because graphics.

- It is easier to have an objective and impartial discussion about chess strategies. It is difficult to form a consensus even about basic stuff in cRPGs.

The list goes on and on.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[DavidBVal]

FO character system is the gold standard for me. I have never seen a better character system and God knows I never will. Anyone bashing it without solid ground will lose my respect permanently.

Its not a bad system, but its kind of a mess, it was cobbled together in like 2 weeks because the actual system they wanted was a no go.
Still better than most of the stuff we are getting nowadays.

No surprise. Almost nobody is smart enough (or dedicated enough) to design a good system. An RPG system is something that often trascends designers, and begins to click in place when thousands of players try to mess with it and find it's flexible enough to make each character feel speshul. so we'd be better off if designers just made moar random things, some of them would happen to be great.

 

[MRY]

Chess has no "character creation".

But chess also has a bunch of rules that you need to learn before you can make the first move. This complexity is multiplied many times over when you consider how competitive players can be, the many studies of different phases of the game, the combinations, etc. Most people who come across a board won't quit chess because they are bored by this long process of learning. Some noteworthy differences:

- Chess has pedigree. The game is perceived as an intellectual hobby of brainy individuals with high IQ. cRPGs are perceived as pointless dungeon and dragons for fat teenagers, if not worse.

- Chess is promoted by tournaments, world championships, school programs, teached by fathers to their kids, etc. The only type of cRPGs promoted by tournaments are multi-million Mobas, i.e., noise and colorful real time strategy games. Most grognards don’t have the patience to play cRPGs anymore, much less teach their kids to play these games because graphics.

- It is easier to have an objective and impartial discussion about chess strategies. It is difficult to form a consensus even about basic stuff in cRPGs.

The list goes on and on.

Well, you were the one who invoked players' patience for chess as proof for why they should be patient for a lengthy, complicated character creation process...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Lurker King]

Well, you were the one who invoked players' patience for chess as proof for why they should be patient for a lengthy, complicated character creation process...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Exactly. And I want to understand why there is so much difference in the way both are perceived, and whether we can attract new players, etc.

 

[MRY]

Clearly multiplayer and simple rules are the solution.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Why do people keep bringing up Dark Souls in a thread about grognardy character creation? Not all "hardcoreness" is the same. It's a different thing when you're getting hammered by a game while you're in control and able to dodge blows with your own skill, compared to going through trial-and-error spreadsheet character creation and trap build cycles until you find something that works in a tactical game

Of course, but their market approach allowed them to create a whole culture around the franchise. Maybe just as there was always a culture of competitive players around arcade games, we should develop a culture of competitive players around cRPGs.

Key word is competitive. How many RPGs are truly competitive?

Are rpgs meant to be competitive? That sounds too much like MMORPGs and the genre is having a slow and P2W-ridden death in favor of MOBAs, but MOBAs are getting very tired now too. In the end, multiplayer was a mistake. The only thing actually close to having an online rpg experience was the "DM simulator" thingy featured in Vampire Redemption which was later taken to Neverwinter Nights.

How can you be competitive in a single player game? I would have thought a competition necessarily requires an opponent, which would mean pvp.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

How would that be? Dark Souls starts with a character sheet of a dozen attributes, the player not knowing what do those attributes do.

Demon's/Dark Souls begins with the player choosing a class from a set of 10 pre-defined classes. The player won't know exactly what impact the differences in atrributes and starting equipment have on gameplay, but they are able to select a character archetype to begin with. The only later character customization consists of advancing attributes one point at a time, where the player is able to view what impact each attribute increase has on a variety of derived statistics. Demon's Souls requires the player to complete the lengthy level 1-1 before being able to level up, but Dark Souls requires only completion of a relatively brief tutorial, and the player's choice of starting class has almost no long-run impact if the player chooses to diverge from their initial class into a different archetype (e.g. selecting the Knight class but then adopting magic).

Of course, since the Souls games are at most borderline RPGs, and arguably better characterized as action games with RPG elements, it's questionable as to how relevant they are to a discussion of character creation and progression in RPGs with skill-based character customization similar to Fallout, Daggerfall, Ultima Underworld, Wasteland, etc. The principal pitfall in these systems is to include skills that are nearly or entirely worthless, without the player having advance knowledge of which skills will turn out not to be useful, whether as a result of bugs, or the object of the skill being largely or entirely absent (e.g. disarm traps in a game without traps), or some other reason. Which is not to say that skills should be perfectly balanced, merely that such a great (and unforseeable) disparity in utility should be avoided. This is an argument for better design in character creation systems rather than dumbing them down by removing elements entirely.

 

[CyberWhale]

Or in this case drive up it.

TimCain you were my hero, but first MMOs and now this.