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

[J_C]

His first point is retarded. I didn't understand anything about that triangle style system, but I can understand what numbers mean. I know that a character with 5 strength is stronger than one with 3 strength. Why can't people understand that numbers actually help to understand how a system works. Putting arbitrary shapes and colors will just leave me scratching my head.

Oh, and Fallout 1's character creator was super easy to understand if you have an IQ higher than 70. For fucks sake, every line can be clicked on and it will be explained in the bottom right corner.

The illusion that if you tweak things, magically people that don't like RPGs are going to love them. It starts with tweaking then they start stripping features until they have an open world shooter with meaningless progression and choice and consequence and lo and behold, people like open world shooters.

THIS!

I think many designers are completely having it backwards. When they tweak an RPG to make it more "accessible", gamers are not liking it more because they made it easier to understand, they like it because they made it less of an RPG, and more of an action game with some lite RPG elements.

 

[Naraya]

 

[l3loodAngel]

Not upset? We buy their fucking games with our hard earned money. Some of us were/are poor. We are the core that brings them financial cushion, when they fail and get abandoned by mainstream. Or torn by mainstream media and give them benefit of doubt when fail all over again trying to appeal to mainstream. We praise them, when everybody else has frogotten about them and read their retrospectives about good old days and give them confidence. We give them credibility and they ditch us like a cheap hooker AGAIN at the first opportunity.

If they want to add dialogues to Quake or CS I don't mind, but don't call them RPGs.

Well this has been a nighmare all over again... Maybe it's time to turn the lights off for my gaming and time to grow up?

This is a game for the New Vegas audience. It'll cost tens of millions to make and market and the publisher will expect millions of sales. It has to be a bit on the dumb side by necessity, because millions of people don't buy games like pre-Fallout 3 or Arcanum.

I am not going to be there the third time.

 

[Roguey]

"I enjoy role playing but I don't enjoy having to fiddle around with a bunch of numbers to play a game with role playing" is a fair enough opinion to have.

The tabletop version of this gave us stuff like storyteller/storytelling and New Men Era.

 

[FeelTheRads]

"I enjoy role playing but I don't enjoy having to fiddle around with a bunch of numbers to play a game with role playing" is a fair enough opinion to have.

No, it's not. Or else we need some new genre names so we're not associated with LARPers anymore.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Well looks like we're stuck with


then for better or worse.

Suck it up Codex, and bow to your new oldschool RPG overlord

 

[FeelTheRads]

Yeah, right. That's what Sawyer wants to do anyway. It's only because he was supposed to do a spiritual successor that it wasn't completely streamlined for people who want to play diplomatic barbarians and other similar innovations.

 

[Excidium II]

What's with this trend of making CRPGs for people who don't like CRPGs.

 

[Roguey]

No, it's not. Or else we need some new genre names so we're not associated with LARPers anymore.

It's not LARPing when the game acknowledges your role playing.

What's with this trend of making CRPGs for people who don't like CRPGs.

Skyrim: 30 million sales to date.

 

[J_C]

So, finished watching all of the video, so here is my reaction to all of his points:

• Mistake #1 - Steep Learning Curves: Tim thinks character creation in Fallout, Arcanum and other RPGs was too complex. He's experimenting with creating a completely numberless character system that uses geometric shapes to visualize attributes.

As I have told before, totally bullshit. Reading numbers is easy once you get out of elementary school. I can guarantee you that if you show number based RPG character generation to a player, he will understand it in a few minutes if he wants to understand it and doesn't expect to know it without spending any effort. But if you show him that two triangles, he will ask what the fuck are those.

In Tim's defence, he rectified himself a bit in the question section, when he said that a visual system can be one which uses sliders for stats. Well sliders represent numbers, so that wouldn't be a big difference, if he wants to use sliders, let him.

• Mistake #2 - Letting Math Trump Psychology: Revealing the influence of the years he spent developing Wildstar, Tim wants to develop mechanics that are psychologically satisfying and addictive, even at the expense of mathematical elegance. For example, he says the player's first attack against an enemy should always hit even if his overall hit percentage is the same regardless, and that rather than allow players to increase their critical hit chance, they should only be allowed to increase their critical hit damage.

There might be some merit to that, and I don't think it would make a game any worse, even if it doesn't make sense from a logical perspective. But if someone is levelling up, logic dictates that the character is getting better at hitting the critical spots, so logically your critical chance should increase. It is the critical hit damage which should be constant because the headshot does the same amount of damage regardless if you hit someone at level 1 or level 10.

• Mistake #3 - Conflating Player Skill With Character Skill: This one will be familiar if you've watched some of Josh Sawyer's talks. Aiming and hitting in an action-RPG should not be determined by character stats. On the other hand, things like the impact of recoil can be affected by stats, as well as the aforementioned critical hit damage.

Half truth in there. I remember back in Alpha Protocol many were bashing the game that it made aiming connected to character stats instead of player skills. But if you are playing a fucking ROLEPLAYING game, than the character's stats should dictate the rules, not your l33t gaming skills. Alpha protocol did good that the aiming reticle was linked to your character's skill. Again, stop turning the roleplaying games into action games. The only truth in Tim's word is that if you have the reticle dead centre on the enemy, then you should hit the enemy. But, there should be effects (increased reticle, shaking hands etc), which signal that your character is proficient with guns or not.

• Mistake #4 - Misunderstanding Randomness: Here Tim lays out his frustration with the sorts of people who can't believe they could miss a 95% chance-to-hit attack three times in a row. His conclusion is that when people talk about "randomness", they often mean selecting a token rather than rolling a dice (ie, events can't repeat themselves).

Tim's right here. There are true idiots out there who don't know what randomness measn.

• Mistake #5 - Forcing Linearity: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Tim says games are not movies, using Fallout's Tandi rescue scenario with its multiple solutions as an example of the sort of non-linearity he prizes.

RPGs shouldn't be linear, so Tim is right again.

• Mistake #6 - Being Non-Reactive: Tim seems particularly interested in the sort of reactivity where characters in the world have different dispositions based on your character's background, clothing and attributes, as seen in Arcanum. He also loves having different end slides based on the player's choices in the game, using Temple of Elemental Evil's evil ending as an example.

Reactivity is always good, although it is not on the top spot in my super duper RPG ingredients.

• Mistake #7 - Telling Horrible Stories: Tim uses this to emphasize again that games are not movies. Not every character in a game has to be important or advance the plot. Tropes likes the Chosen One protagonist and amnesiac protagonist are tiresome and should be discarded.

True, again.

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah, right. That's what Sawyer wants to do anyway.

Heh, everybody's focusing on #1 and missing #2. I don't think Josh is too happy to hear of Tim's love for mathematically inelegant, psychologically addictive mechanics.

Half truth in there. I remember back in Alpha Protocol many were bashing the game that it made aiming connected to character stats instead of player skills. But if you are playing a fucking ROLEPLAYING game, than the character's stats should dictate the rules, not your l33t gaming skills. Alpha protocol did good that the aiming reticle was linked to your character's skill. Again, stop turning the roleplaying games into action games.

Groooooooooooooooooog

 

[The Bishop]

So Tim Cain is hard at work on a new game that you will love if you liked Fallout, with a character system that is accessible to 2 year olds and is particularly great at modeling Hulk and Spiderman. Isn't this just great.

 

[J_C]

So Tim Cain is hard at work on a new game that you will love if you liked Fallout, with a character system that is accessible to 2 year olds and is particularly great at modeling Hulk and Spiderman. Isn't this just great.

I'm actually not afraid of Tim implementing all that crap into Obsidian's games. We have the right guy at the design director position at Obsidian:

 

[Starwars]

I think I will always love Tim, but that first point (and parts of the second) was just pure decline. That said, I'm all for exploring new ways to change RPGs up a bit but everything he said seemed to boil down to "this will make it easier to understand... and it won't make the games simple and dumbed down, PROMISE!". Yeah, because those words have not been repeated over and over by other developers who have dumbed down their games.

There is some truth to what he says in that in some RPG systems, it can be hard to tell what exactly it means in terms of gameplay if you have like, 70 Small guns vs 90 Small Guns. But I mean, that's not really a problem with numbers themselves. You have all kinds of tools to explain that to the player via words or pictures. Like in New Vegas in the SPECIAL creation where there was a picture and name for each SPECIAL level.
And of course, you don't have to design a game where putting a point into something may not do anything at all until you reach a certain threshold.

But again, those are not problems that come from numbers. I suck *really* badly at math (seriously, I'm terrible at it) yet I don't have problems understanding most RPG systems unless they screw up the UI, hide information and so forth.

 

[Nuclear Explosion]

3, 5, 6, and 7 are good points. I disagree with point 1. Complexity is not what is wrong with the character creation systems of Fallout and Arcanum; the problem is that both games have useless attributes and skills, which can lead first time players to make non-viable builds. If cRPGs contained no trap options surely this would make them less daunting to new players, and removing trap options would get rid of nothing of value.

Half truth in there. I remember back in Alpha Protocol many were bashing the game that it made aiming connected to character stats instead of player skills. But if you are playing a fucking ROLEPLAYING game, than the character's stats should dictate the rules, not your l33t gaming skills. Alpha protocol did good that the aiming reticle was linked to your character's skill. Again, stop turning the roleplaying games into action games. The only truth in Tim's word is that if you have the reticle dead centre on the enemy, then you should hit the enemy. But, there should be effects (increased reticle, shaking hands etc), which signal that your character is proficient with guns or not.

If a game has action combat then its action combat should be enjoyable; what you are suggesting would not result in enjoyable action combat.

 

[J_C]

There is some truth to what he says in that in some RPG systems, it can be hard to tell what exactly it means in terms of gameplay if you have like, 70 Small guns vs 90 Small Guns.

Well it usually mean that 90 guns hit more/do more damage than 70 guns. This is not hard to figure out at all.

The bullshit about Tim's first point is that usually the character creation is the easiest part of RPG systems. Because what do you have to do:
a) pick attributes - difficult? No, a higher attributes will make you a better character.
b) pick skills - difficult? No, if you have a skill, you can do additional stuff. And if your skill is higher, your success rate is higher with that skill.
c) pick traits - difficult? No, if you have a trait, you can also do additional stuff with your character.

And that's it, this is what 90% of the RPG systems boil down to. Is this that hard? The complex stuff actually come from the underlying mechanics in the combat, with all the resistances, THac0 and shit. If Tim wanted to complain about something, he should have talk about those, not the character creation.

 

[Infinitron]

I have a hunch that more than Tim wants character creation to be "easy", he wants it to be fast. Just click a mouse somewhere in the middle of the triangles and off you go. No digging through tabs, no wondering about tradeoffs, just spitball a character concept and start the game.

 

[Alienman]

Man, I understand the concept of dumbing down games to reach a wider audience and well, Obsidian needs money. They have over 100 employees or something, I don't remember? But aren't devs doing themselves a disfavor when they dumb down so much? I mean soon we must reach the lowest point when even the most casual of casuals starts to think "hey, this game provides no challenge and it's fucking stupid".

And it does seem people/mainstream crave more complicated stuff, if you go by Dark Souls and such. Honestly I think this streamline thing has become something of a mantra for out of touch devs. It's like the only thing they can see. Screw the story, gameplay or anything else, if it is flashy and simple enough it will sell. But that doesn't seem to be the case either. With that I mean, if you try to create something outside the "action" genre.

 

[Lurker King]

Why not being honest and just admitting you aren't making RPGs anymore?

Because then they would need to compete with real action games. It's safer to make a pseudo-cRPG that plays like a bad action game for retards.

 

[FeelTheRads]

No digging through tabs

Well, that's true. Fucking tabs need to be killed. Except Fallout 1 didn't really have tabs in character creation. It was only until Fallout 3 and NV innovated and turned character creation and anything related to your character afterwards into a pain of digging through tabs and tabs and tabs within tabs.

Though apparently that's perfect for consoletards.

Because then they would need to compete with real action games. It's safer to make a pseudo-cRPG that plays like a bad action game for retards.

This. Obsidian's games suck as action games even more than they suck as RPGs.

Stuff like Alpha Protolol or Dungeon Siege or NV is fucking lol if you consider only the action gameplay aspect.

 

[l3loodAngel]

I have a hunch that less than Tim wants character creation to be "easy", he wants it to be fast. Just click a mouse somewhere in the middle of the triangles and off you go. No digging through tabs, no wondering about tradeoffs, just spitball a character concept and start the game.

Then remove stats all together! You just breeze through quake character creation

 

[Lurker King]

Then remove stats all together! You just breeze through quake character creation

Character creation? What the hell is that?!

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I have a hunch that less than Tim wants character creation to be "easy", he wants it to be fast. Just click a mouse somewhere in the middle of the triangles and off you go. No digging through tabs, no wondering about tradeoffs, .

... no reading, no answering stupid background questions like in VTMB...

Traitor Cain.

 

[Pentagon]

There is some truth to what he says in that in some RPG systems, it can be hard to tell what exactly it means in terms of gameplay if you have like, 70 Small guns vs 90 Small Guns.

Well it usually mean that 90 guns hit more/do more damage than 70 guns. This is not hard to figure out at all.

The bullshit about Tim's first point is that usually the character creation is the easiest part of RPG systems. Because what do you have to do:
a) pick attributes - difficult? No, a higher attributes will make you a better character.
b) pick skills - difficult? No, if you have a skill, you can do additional stuff. And if your skill is higher, your success rate is higher with that skill.
c) pick traits - difficult? No, if you have a trait, you can also do additional stuff with your character.

And that's it, this is what 90% of the RPG systems boil down to. Is this that hard? The complex stuff actually come from the underlying mechanics in the combat, with all the resistances, THac0 and shit. If Tim wanted to complain about something, he should have talk about those, not the character creation.

I think most people will grok that bigger is better. It's understanding how the numbers affect gameplay. I've beaten Fallout three separate times, and I wouldn't be able to tell the specific difference between 70 Smalll Guns and 90 Small Guns.
It's partly why I like using Apocalypse World to introduce people to RPG's. Only four numbers for starting stats: -1, 0, 1, and 2, which easily translates into bad, okay, above-average, and good for a starting player. Compare that to DnD where a new player would have a harder time understanding what the different effects of 9 DEX vs 12 DEX would be for her Ranger.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I have a hunch that less than Tim wants character creation to be "easy", he wants it to be fast. Just click a mouse somewhere in the middle of the triangles and off you go. No digging through tabs, no wondering about tradeoffs, just spitball a character concept and start the game.

Then remove stats all together! You just breeze through quake character creation

Sarcasm aside, it's not like it's something unheard of.
Hell, there's premade characters to choose from that you can do for people who don't want to do their own.
But if that's too much then leave the character creation to the game itself. Start everyone with the same character(s) and allow them to develop them as they want as the game progresses.
So no, I don't think he's only interested in a fast start. He's interested in playing the game for the player.
Hey, perhaps if you will, like an advanced version of the auto-leveling schemes in Arcanum.