Unbelievably Long and Disjointed Ramblings About RPG Design

[Claw]

Actually called Mu's Unbelievably Long and Disjointed Ramblings About RPG Design .

I spotted them on NMA, and felt like someone had read my mind. It's about RPG design in general but also MMORPG design in particular, and I thought some people might be interested, since I couldn't find any references to it here.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I've only read 1 / 18th of it so far, but it's good.

Quoting a personal choice bit:

Even the overused motive of "kill stuff" can take on new meaning if the system is flexible enough to support it. If your goal is (using an Asheron's Call cliche for example) to drive the Tumeroks out of Dryreach, wouldn't it be interesting if it could actually be done? You'd think after losing about 18 million troops to marauding humans, they would have given up on the idea of holding the town and move somewhere else. The town is freed, the conquering players are hailed and honored, and now there's something else to do as the evicted monsters make other plans, or call for backup. If the engine allows for the dynamic construction of buildings over time, a player could discover a group of enemies secretly building a fort in the woods. Maybe the players can band together to ruin their plans. If they don't, then attacks on the locals will be launched out of the fortified base, forcing players to either do something about the situation or lose the town. Adding meaning to combat-related goals requires the same thing that noncombat goals require: imagination to conceive a new way for things to be done, robust code to implement the ideas, and sufficient technology to support the execution of these ideas without too much strain on the server or the client's bandwidth.

 

[DarkSign]

I love new discussions to devour! Thank you!

Someone post another good in-depth MMO design discussion.

 

[bgillisp]

I think with the technology we have today, we could easily implement the idea of monsters running off for reinforcements and building bases. Anyone care to dispute differently?

Off to read the rest of the thread, will post more later on that.

 

[bgillisp]

Just read the section on no numbers (under general) - I disagree big time with that. I will say that there are players that exploit numbers and will figure out how to min/max with numbers present. However, I do not feel that hiding all numbers is a good solution. Keep in mind we mean ALL here, in other words, no numbers on the damage the weapon gives, no numbers on your HP, etc...I think that sucks, and makes it harder to tell how much health you have left.

You can use an HP bar, but you will not have a good idea how much more damage you can take. To explain what I mean: your HP bar is at 50%. But, you see a lone goblin. Do you fight? If that 50% is 4/8, you should not, as a single hit can kill you. But, if it is 40/80, the goblin should be a pushover (assuming D&D level 1 goblin here). You lose this info if you lose the numbers, as the bar is uninformative. Granted, you will figure it out with time, but I feel that is unnecessary. Besides, how do you compensate then for changes to your max HP (increasing it or decreasing it - though few decrease it ever)? Do all the guessing again?

Maybe the solution is not no numbers, but to implement the numbers better? I liked what they said about weapons and different implementations of their effects. So, we could keep a long sword at its sterotypicial 2 - 12 Hp damage, but for spears, put them at 1 - 10, but give a bonus to AC. If the player only looks at damage, or only cares about damage, they will take the long sword. But, spears get a boost to make up for the damage difference. Another example: Daggers tend to be weak, but are pretty quick to swing. So, we could make daggers at 2 - 4 damage, but faster attacks (maybe an extra attack here and there?).

These are just fast examples, and not totally fleshed out. Also, I will say some are in the article, I just added them here for you to read.

Further comments on this? Any better ideas on how to handle this problem? I think we came up with some good ideas on an earlier topic (no levels, HP static but skills increase), and it sounds like VD's game will avoid some of the problems. Hey, maybe he should go over to that site and give them ideas?

Ok, long rant, time for bed now.

 

[Claw]

I felt Mu is a bit pessimistic or something in many places, and tends to extreme positions. That's not a bad thing I guess, you don't have to compromise in advance when you can expect it to happen during development anyway.

I do believe "no numbers" makes sense, which doesn't mean that I wouldn't like them personally, if only because that's what I am used to.
I submit, however, that many games I played in the past didn't show me their numbers, action games for instance. That didn't mean I was at a complete loss at assessing my situation.
Games tend to be extremely arbitrary, making it difficult to rely on common sense rather than numbers, especially when they apply Diablo-style pseudo diversity based on colours and names.
Maybe the key is to fix that, and allow players to rely on common sense and game lore to judge.
Besides, you could always have special indicators tied to stats, visual and textual descriptions based on the unseen numbers.

I think with the technology we have today, we could easily implement the idea of monsters running off for reinforcements and building bases. Anyone care to dispute differently?

True, and it should be even easier to randomize elements of the game. I lamented before that MMORPG developers seem unable to randomize even the most trite, uninspired quest, maybe spawn a specific enemy just for me to kill.

 

[bgillisp]

I agree it works in action games, but I still think it can be a pain in RPG's. Especially when things can change more via level up, temporary HP boost (or drain) and so on.

Descriptions would help, but wouldn't that give you an aritrary rank? In other words, a description would say you are expert in this, or novie in this, or something equivalent? I got the impression they were suggesting avoiding that as well, and leavling you with little indication on where you stood on things. They did give an example saying you could be told you know something about pottery, but nothing more. That seems wrong to me.

BTW, I wonder where VD and the others are? I figured they would jump in on this discussion quickly.

 

[Claw]

Well, as I described elsewhere I am strongly in favour of a fluent exp-based system without levels or skillpoints, which could be nicely expressed visually. I ain't perfectly sure what you meant with those temporary effects, but I figure there could be visual indicators for nearly anything, certainly anything that is relative to any character stat.

As for arbitrary ranks, we use them in real life, no problem for me. They'd be rough indicators of where you stand.
The pottery example seems extreme, yes. As I was saying.
With descriptions, I did however mean more a tool for judging the quality of a weapon, or a potential enemy. Your character could compare it to his equipment, for example:
"This [spear] has a [longer] reach than my [sword]; it is [better] at penetrating armor."

 

[Vykromond]

Wow, this is a real blast from the past- I remember reading Mu when I played AC in '99 and 2000.

 

[bgillisp]

I recall that post about the classless system, it is one of the RPG design threads I beleive. Does seem like a nice idea. As for expressed visually...I would have to seen it done well first to be convinced.

Arbitrary ranks are close to real life, but do we always want to simulate real life? This is the infamous realism vs fun debate, which I am sure has been done many times on this site. Myself, I prefer to avoid arbitrary ranks, but it can work.

Still, I think they meant no numbers or arbitrary raniks. At least that is what I gather from the info I read. So, if you do not do either, how do you give the player information on how skilled they are or not? And, how do you do it in a way everyone understands? Maybe that is why designers use numbers mainly, as everyone (usually) understands those at least.

 

[Claw]

It is not uncommon to use exp, health, mana and even skill bars.
I recall in D&D (at least the version I know), there are titles associated with the levels.

As for the document, I think discussing the concepts is one thing, taking them literally quite another. Maybe Mu aimed for a "naturalistic" design; I know I wouldn't. His comments are neither too specific nor too definite.

This means he cannot see his exact strength or hit points, he does not know that his sword does X amount of damage per hit, and wounds are represented graphically only, either status bars, hit location indicators, or ideally an actual change in texmaps reflecting damage to specific body parts. The player will have a pretty good idea that he is decent with an axe, a novice at archery, and completely unskilled at alchemy, but he doesn't have a number to refer to as his "skill."

I pretty much agree with that, although I am in favour of a character sheet which represents the character's abilities in some form.

 

[bgillisp]

Now I will say I agree with that, at least having a character sheet to see your abilities in some form. Still, I think it would be...bad to design a game with no numbers or no representation of your skills.

As for bars, if not implemented well, you can get confusion. Does a half-full bar mean 4/8 or 40/80? Granted, you will figure it out soon enough (after dying a few times or not dying), but still, it is annoying if not done well.

Example of bars not done well: See Wizardy 7, and just look at the HP bars (ignore the numbers). Your 40/80 warrior will have the exact same length on his HP bar as the 4/8 mage. Without the numbers, it gets hard to tell (at first) who can take what in the next round. Again, I will agree that you can get used to it, and figure it out, but it is annoying.

For good implementation of bars: See JA2. You could tell who could take a beating well/move farther/etc... with those, without even looking at the associated numbers. Now that was nice!

The trouble occurs when you pick a fixed space for the bar, and say when that space is full, it means 100% health, irregardless of whether 100% is 20/20 or 100/100. JA2 got around this as follows: the 20/20 bar filled less of that space than the 100/100 person, and colored the bar yellow to show injuries taken. This way, you got a sense that your 20/20 person could take less damage than the 100/100 person very quickly, even before they entered battle.

On a related note: Claw, have you seen a system implement a no numbers scheme well? Any games or something that you can name? I am sure I have played one a while ago that did implement thigs decently, but am blanking on the name for some reason.

 

[Balor]

Well, about HP bars... remeber 'holistic game design'? Well, if you also have no-HP, or fixed-HP health system, it will be fine.
Like, each character can be from 0 to 100% of health, but more experinced will soak up injury, and will be MUCH better at avoiding it altogether. Well, no HP with injury system is even better in my book, but that's a nice way of implementing too.

 

[DarkSign]

Lets jump back a bit and think this out.

If you dont give numbers then people will either count the number of kills it takes to raise x,y,z skill...assuming that you can keep count with a pad and pencil...or they wont count.

Even if they count, the curve of the change between levels (accelleration not velocity - meaning it takes 3 kills from 0 to 1 5 from 1 to 2 9 from 2-3) could still take forever to calculate unless you are sitting there with an excel spreadsheet!

While we all know MMOers are fanatics, if you dont give them the tools they cant build the formula.

Take ShadowBane for example. Even though the developers wouldnt release the formulas for Attack Rating, we all still min maxed it because we knew what went INTO the formula (dex, weap speed et. al.). BUT if we didnt have the baseline stats we might have just stopped altogether.

Thats one side.

The other side is RPGers DO like stats and figures just as much as the powergamers. Taking this tweaking away could seriously hurt your fanbase.

The question becomes would they just give up min/maxing and start playing the game for its own sake? Or would they give up on your game?

In my game where you its kind of FPS-ish, Im honestly wondering if it would matter to see the numbers? I mean as long as you have a list of the skills, all you need to know at any given time is did I pass or fail at that skill attempt?

It could be frustrating to not see that you are at 30% lockpicking but the door you are on is a 50% door, but surely youd give up after you failed 10 times and got 1 skill up?