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

[Black]

Or in this case drive up it.

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

Don't forget the homosex!

 

[Azarkon]

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.

People compete in single player games all the time. It's why all the old games had the concept of score.

Specific to CRPGs, competition might be comparing character builds, achievements, single character runs in party games, etc.

But even without any competition, the act of getting through a game's challenges is what makes a game, a game. The old games understood this principle; new games, by contrast, are more like amusement park visits.

 

[Black Angel]

But even without any competition, the act of getting through a game's challenges is what makes a game, a game. The old games understood this principle; new games, by contrast, are more like amusement park visits.

Exactly. Without rules and system, games are not games. Character creation is already part of the gameplay of cRPGs, so trying to simplify it (especially when it's not complex in the first place) means simplifying the gameplay.

Although, to be honest, I'm all for Fallout, Arcanum, etc etc character creation made better, if that was Tim wanted to achieved. But if the underlying mindset behind the purpose of making the character creation of these old cRPGs better are that they are 'too complex', then I just can't feel any hope of the new ones being better.

Just.... if you are already hellbent in making it like that, Tim, just don't forget to engage with your community to see if there's indeed some things that you can make better without having to sacrifice what you perceived as 'too complex' from older cRPGs. I remembered now that Ragnarok Online had geometric shape at the side when you create your character, but you also can still see the numbers. It was rather simplistic, and there's not much impact to see on later gameplay from that character creation, but maybe that's because it's an MMORPG, and that's what first came to my mind when you mentioned 'geometric shape' for stats.

 

[Davaris]

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.

Chess has been around for hundreds of years.

Chess boards don't cost their developers 20 - 50 million dollars to make.

Unlike game developers, chess board makers don't change the rules and interface for every friggin' chess board style they create. lol

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.

People compete in single player games all the time. It's why all the old games had the concept of score.

Specific to CRPGs, competition might be comparing character builds, achievements, single character runs in party games, etc.

But even without any competition, the act of getting through a game's challenges is what makes a game, a game. The old games understood this principle; new games, by contrast, are more like amusement park visits.

PnP RPGs were unique in that they were cooperative instead of competitive.

 

[Lurker King]

Unlike game developers, chess board makers don't change the rules and interface for every friggin' chess board style they create.

All the more reason to remain faithful to traditional character building.

 

[Zeriel]

I suspect TimCain might argue that Dark Souls is an example of a mountain with a road, albeit a steep and narrow one. (Witness the birth of a Codex meme)

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

It's even worse than that. Even the publisher doesn't know what those attributes do. Using Dark Souls as an example of easy-to-access systems and character creation is possibly the worst metaphor one could choose: the stats don't even do what they say they do.

 

[Irenaeus]

 

[Correct_Carlo]

To me, both numbers and shapes can be equally vague if transparency of the game's systems are your goals. You can have stats, 1-100, for example, but that means nothing if the game doesn't tell you what, specifically, those numbers will mean in terms of gameplay. Lots of games have numbered stat systems, but very few make it clear what stats actually do without forcing you to read outside resources (I absolutely love Dark Souls, for example, but those games are pretty terrible at this. It's impossible to tell what certain stats do fully without meta-gaming). Simply representing those stats via shapes rather than numbers is a trivial and entirely cosmetic difference that won't necessarily make the game more transparent. It will just make its lack of transparency more palatable to a wider audience.

The best way to achieve transparency is just telling the player, directly on the stat screen, what exactly a stat will do. Lots of games think they do that, but very few actually do it well because the descriptions are so vague you can't possible tell in advance what increasing your perception skill from 20 to 50 will do. The best RPGs have always been the ones that just show you the algorithms for all the basic stat effects (damage, to hit, etc, etc) directly on the stat screen. That way the player can plug in the numbers and see immediately how that will affect gameplay. Of course, algorithms are probably scary for some people. But if your goal is transparency, it's really the only way to do things.

As long as it's clear what stats do, I don't think it's a terribly big deal whether they are represented through numbers or triangles. A more innovative idea might be coming up with a variety of interfaces for representing stats (triangles, numbers, hexagons, interpretive dance....whatever) and letting the player choose. I guess that might be too complicated, though.

 

[Goral]

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.

You can always do the thing you did in Vampire the Masquarade: Bloodlines, give player a choice to create character themselves or ask some retarded questions. But to be honest I can't believe you're listening to some retards and want to add such retarded features when in practically all games character creation is super simple, including Fallout (and you have template characters to choose from if it's too complicated so WTF?). Catering to the largest audience possible is a mistake, you will never reach Bethesda sales anyway, Obsidian is too small. Please do not make us hate you.

 

[MRY]

Unlike game developers, chess board makers don't change the ... interface

Though not sure whether this is a UI or graphics change.

Anyway, Lurker King and I have studied chess and come up with the following additional suggestions (beyond simple rules and multiplayer focus) to bring RPGs to chess-level popularity:

(1) No more than half the characters may be white.
(2) The most powerful characters are women.
(3) The main aspiration of a starting character is to transition to a woman. This is the only form of leveling up.
(4) The game ends before you get to defeat the final boss.
(5) No lore dumps

I think it could work, guys.

 

[Goral]

Chess has no "character creation"

It has but it's called an opening: http://www.thechesswebsite.com/chess-openings/
There are of course like top 10 that most players use but in general you have much room to shape your army.

 

[MRY]

Guess so. It's like this crazy idea of having your character creation happen during gameplay rather than before gameplay or something. :D

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

They are also tools you use to solve problems in the game. And that's what matters.

Why?

No. Trap builds as the name implies is something that unknowingly fucks you over.

So trap builds result from choices that later on will prevent you from moving forward because you lack a particular skill or stat.

This complaint is strange because 99% of cRPGs are very easy combat centric games that consider skill checks fluffy.

The only game that does that to the player is AoD, but even this is debatable. The main quests always follow a specific pattern.

But Fallout was full of trap builds, most sensible RPG character types are borderline useless in Fallout and will make you struggle through the game. Sure finishing it will be possible but it will be frustrating.
-Dumb musclehead - will loose out on exp rewards due to low intelligence, and struggle in combat because of low agility
-Handyman with lot of technical skills - almost totally useless
-Stealthy thief/assassin type - most of his skills will never be useful for anything, but won't be as bad in combat due to high agility alone
-Brainy scientist using futuristic weapons - his science skills will almost never be useful and he won't get energy weapons until very late in the game
Sure most of this builds can be made functional but only by making them more similar to the nimble, smart gunslinger-diplomat which is the dominant character archetype. Notice that the problem of trap builds can be solved without dumbing down the game as evidenced by many of the titles released later. For example in Underrail most of the above archetypes would be perfectly fine.
This is a difference between allowing bad builds and providing players with trap-options.

I got to agree with this. But I'd like to make a distinction. Is this solved with actual content for each type, or by tweaking the points you spend or the damage you do SO that your points spent on that type aren't consequential? An example of the latter is if you invested fully in the handyman and yet your hitpoints and damage go up in turn, whilst almost no actual handyman content exists beyond some superficial fluff. The end result is everybody ends up being the "nimble, smart gunslinger-diplomat" with superfical fluff added for their class.

That seems to be what a lot of games do. They get around the "bad build" problem by making everybdoy capable of the core gameplay. So if the core gameplay is "nimble, smart gunslinger-diplomat" then everyone can do it. They pull out fancy terms like "organic" and "inclusive" and "streamlined" to describe what they think is the apex of game development.

Maybe they're just not capable of making fully fleshed out games. Did underrail do it? I haven't played it.

Most of the time it's tweaked by making content for each type of character or making it so that each skills adds to the core gameplay in some way.
For example, one of the problems of the original Fallout which is brought up most often is how useless science was compared to most other skills. Each of the similar post-Fallout games managed to solve the issue:
-Arcanum: multiple science-related skills allow you to craft items, often much better then the ones you can find at the stroes
-NV: science allows you to craft energy weapons related items, for example recycle old ammo which is very helpful in early game
-AoD: lore is critical to accessing most information about the pre-apocalypse world and gives you many unique opportunities, I think that the best ending requires you to have high lore in order to be unlocked, though I'm not sure
-Underrail: science related skills are critical for crafting

 

[Davaris]

Unlike game developers, chess board makers don't change the ... interface

Though not sure whether this is a UI or graphics change.

Its a cosmetic change.

 

[Goral]

Don't forget the homosex!

Another proof that man without a woman (and woman without a man in general) goes crazy sooner or later.

Guess so. It's like this crazy idea of having your character creation happen during gameplay rather than before gameplay or something. :D

Except the opening is like character creation and you can also make one of optimal builds or something non-optimal during this phase. The real play starts in the middlegame. Here's an example of a brilliant opening that set up the whole game:

 

[Black]

Don't forget the homosex!

Another proof that man without a woman (and woman without a man in general) goes crazy sooner or later.

As opposed to a man with a woman?

 

[Kev Inkline]

Don't forget the homosex!

Another proof that man without a woman (and woman without a man in general) goes crazy sooner or later.

As opposed to a man with a woman?

No wonder Codexers come across so sane well adjusted, right?

 

[Arnust]

On the Dark Souls point... How many of you that say that it's not intuitive have NOT used the "Help" button in an interface?

While there is SOME misleading info, it says everything that you need to know about them from the get-go. And if the "what this level up is exactly going to do" tooltip you always get when leveling isn't intuitive, I don't know what is.

 

[Junmarko]

Proof that a man without a woman goes crazy sooner or later.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Guess so. It's like this crazy idea of having your character creation happen during gameplay rather than before gameplay or something. :D

Yes, but that's not the same thing as geometric shapes for character creation. Earlier in the thread I gave as example the Geneforge series (because of similarities in style with Fallout & Arcanum) which allow you do character creation both ways.

Anyway, I'm guessing that this insistence of having character creation but "for ages 9 to 99!!!" instead of simply doing pregenerated characters is because you want to give everyone the feeling that they create their own speshul character. How else are they going to be happy if they can't create that very original muscled wizard with a mysterious past?

I really don't think games should be made for people who don't want to play them. Maybe a special mode for special people that doesn't affect too much the game for those who actually want to play, like that "story mode" thing is an acceptable compromise.

But really, at this point only another industry crash can stop this crap.

 

[decaf]

Oh, and you can still rock climb. One of my designers wants to add a "look under the hood" button to character creation, to expose the numbers. We will explore that option.

So how are the triangles gonna work on character advancement? Would the triangles simply expand, so char's stat distribution is fixed? Or more like a radar graph?

going through trial-and-error spreadsheet character creation and trap build cycles until you find something that works in a tactical game.

Aha, time to rant about "trial-and-error trap build cycles".

1. At chargen, player cannot predict what challenges the char will face, so builds are crap on the first playthroughs.

Some players, don't want to keep playing gimped characters. Since respecs are usually unavailable, the solution is re-rolling another character.
If the game is single-character cRPG without respecs, there is a large emphasis on chargen, since skillsets are fixed at the beginning of the game. This is exacerbated when the game doesn't have party members or hirelings. With party members/hirelings, you can swap out skillsets to suit a particular mission without breaking immersion.
For me, re-rolling breaks immersion and I hate it. So respec, party or de-emphasize chargen and be more build-as-you-go

Spoiler

like Oblivion.

2. Most chargen don't have enough info - not enough to prevent trap builds on first playthroughs.

For most games, not all skills are equally useful. Some have selective use, some very useful in some encounters and no general utility, some are useful but not in early game (energy weapons), etc.
At chargen, most cRPGs don't show enough information on game start for an informed decision. Without this info, players only learn by playing a gimped build - the trial-and-error problem. This can be fixed by:

• Devs going through the entire game, and then going back and re-structuring gameintro and chargen with pertinent info. (I don't remember anyone doing this.)
  
• Player can't be fucked and looks at a build guide.

Both give the player the same sort of info for better chargen builds, but I think improving gameintro and chargen is the better solution.

3. At chargen, you cannot predict the game's "playstyle logic"

This extends to many things. Let's see Fallout 3 vs Diablo 2 vs Underrail vs Age of Decadence.

Spoiler

Fallout 3's game logic is "do anything, game is easy". Chargen stat allocation isn't particularly important, you can be powerful without much thought. Equipment choice isn't particularly important either, as you get fucktons of drops, and most don't have stat restrictions or gimped too much. Game easy, enemies weak, AI sucks, generally not much thought needed before you could fuck everyone's shit up. Challenge rating is "do whatever the fuck you want". Item, cash and XP drops are abundant, very few are must-haves.

Diablo 2 is "max out your primary stat, put some points in a secondary stat whenever to meet equip reqs, choose equips wisely occasionally". Chargen stat is simple, you get fuckloads of drops but it's easy to know which are trash since items are class-based, you only need some thought to equip selection make your char gud. Game's challenging, but not that hard. Challenge rating is "several encounters in a chain". You can have many encounters in a chain before things gradually gets tough. Even on the worst difficulty spikes, you could usually escape and re-consider your approach. The escape is tense, with low health and pot shortage. Since both can be easily replenished in town, you can easily attack the problem anew, so there's both tension and respite. Item, cash and XP drops are abundant, must-haves depends on build.

Underrail is similar to Diablo 2, "make your chargen and equips wisely, don't take encounters lightly and you'll be fine", but chargen is slightly more important. As long as you don't spread skills too widely, and choose equips wisely, game's slightly harder but not that bad. Challenge rating is increased to "most encounters", but you die only on a fuckup. A re-load and re-plan usually solves the problem. Item and XP drops are fairly common, must-haves depends on build. What you don't have you could buy (depending on RNG) or steal (basically a minigame).

Age of Decadence is "everything is a challenge, you get no breaks ever". Every single stat check, every single battle. Chargen importance is very high, equip selection importance is high, every single stat point allocation is also high. Game assumes enemies are actual pros, just as minmaxed as a player, so every single moment is tension-filled. Item, cash and XP drops are all rare and precious. What you don't have are expensive or behind tough locks.

So how does a player know a game's "playstyle logic" on chargen? How attribute-scrutinizing and penny-pinching should a player be? They can't know.
You can go by studio and/or hype, but that's pretty meta. A game can be advertised as "hardcore RPG for grognards", but every game advertises itself like this anyway.

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.

I play RPGs to beat people up. I see RPGs more as a road: there's things to fight, things to see, loot to get.

Along the way there must be enough challenges so the road's interesting. I think of challenge as a soundtrack, it must have both highs and lows. Constant low, it's 2ez. Constant high, too nerve-wracking.

http://www.relyonhorror.com/articles/evil-refined-why-resident-evil-remake-is-a-masterpiece/
In any sort of horror or dramatic media, it is important to give the audience a moment of reprieve. The reason for this is if you bombard the viewer, reader, or player with nothing but an oppressive atmosphere then it starts to lose its affect after a while. For example, in Amnesia: The Dark Descent the game initially starts out very scary, but it never lets up on the tension and after a while you get used to it and it gets kinda boring. Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami has known this since he directed the very first game. This is primarily what the purpose of the save rooms are: to offer the players a reprieve.

Chargen isn't much of a problem to me, it's not a mountain, it's a hill at most. It's the game's difficulty/trail-and-error-bullshit that forces me back to chargen, only that makes me salty.

 

[mondblut]

PnP RPGs were unique in that they were cooperative instead of competitive.

If your party didn't leave the DM in tears, you were playing it wrong

 

[Ruzen]

First of all, I knew Tim Cain didn't mean he wants to simply the systems but people love to lynch when they see the chance.

Second, I want to say something about Cain's opinion about "Luck Stat" in The Fallout and how he liked the idea that It turned into a perk, because of the vagueness of the stat.
I have to say determining: how lucky or unlucky my character was a crucial point in The Fallout series; It is semi-sandbox game. Because of the design of the world and how It simulates It, I thought the "random" effect is on purpose the promote the idea of the everything happens random, no one is special or entitled. I always believed that was the case. Without luck, in Fallout, It becomes a narrative superhero action game(Which is now Fallout4). In fact, Luck stat should effect even more to promote that idea.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

First of all, I knew Tim Cain didn't mean he wants to simply the systems but people love to lynch when they see the chance.

Second, I want to say something about Cain's opinion about "Luck Stat" in The Fallout and how he liked the idea that It turned into a perk, because of the vagueness of the stat.
I have to say determining: how lucky or unlucky my character was a crucial point in The Fallout series; It is semi-sandbox game. Because of the design of the world and how It simulates It, I thought the "random" effect is on purpose the promote the idea of the everything happens random, no one is special or entitled. I always believed that was the case. Without luck, in Fallout, It becomes a narrative superhero action game(Which is now Fallout4). In fact, Luck stat should effect even more to promote that idea.

so true. difference between powerplay and gimpplay.

and yet every1 assumes that you play a rpg to optimize your char... thx diablo again

a lesson in humility, too. but today fear dominates the world and presto we have to control everything we can. and buy dogs. and make them level up doing crap.

As for T.Cain... i have no idea how the geometrical levelling thing would work, it could turn out to even improve interaction with skills of a character/role, afaik. But him "saying" he likes complexity sounds like empty words, since the metaphore probably revealed his real intentions.
Thank you poetry for digging deeper into one's subconscious than one would want

 

[mondblut]

and yet every1 assumes that you play a rpg to optimize your char... thx diablo again

We've been playing a rpg to optimize our char since the White fucking Box.