In most stories, there's always a sense of progression as the protagonist overcomes challenges, works around their personal flaws, and basically improves themselves up until the story's end, where they've learned what they needed to know. Carried over into a game setting, this obviously should come with stronger abilities on the part of the protagonist. Hence, the game mechanic so integrated into the RPG genre that it's hard to find a game that doesn't make use of it in some way: leveling up.
Leveling up is by no means a bad thing. One of the reasons the mechanic has endured the way it has is because it's simple, satisfying, and effective. A reward for hard work, which is always welcome. However, implementing levels into a game you want to make is by no means a simple task, and requires careful fine-tuning to make it work. There's a few reasons for that, but most of them tie into the game's difficulty curve.
Every level a character gains makes the game easier. Depending on the game, a given level may have a drastic bonus or a slight one. It might even be to the point where one level is all the difference needed for a tricky fight to become manageable (or worse, an impossible fight to become at all feasible). Of course, this practice has given rise to the habit of "grinding", or putting the progression of the game on hold to fight vanilla monsters in order to gain several levels. There are also players who might dislike the fights interspersed through the game, and run from as many as possible.
The sharper the benefits of levels, the harder it becomes to balance the rest of the game. Either you anticipate the low-level players and make your fights too easy, or you anticipate the higher-level ones and force grinding from the player. On the converse side, if gaining levels doesn't give a benefit, why bother? There's no satisfaction gained if you haven't earned or accomplished anything, which in turn gives you less of a reason to go after the rank-and-file enemies.
There's also the fact that gaining levels tends to increase the number of moves you have available. Take, for example, the Final Fantasy games. The higher your mage's level, the more spells they'll know. There's a side effect to this that I don't think a lot of people see, and that is that early on, a character who gains abilities by leveling up has a limited, ineffective, and generally boring skillset. Sure, you might get the Awesometastic Bazooka of Justice spell later, but in the meantime, you're stuck using a boring Bonk spell, or worse, your physical attack. And for characters that only have one or two moves and don't get new ones by increasing levels, the system may as well not be there for all the difference it makes to them.
I think the best way to handle leveling up in games is to have the levels increase your stats by a fair amount, but to not change your character's moveset. The character should have all their moves, at least in a basic form, available from the word go, and the encounters should be designed to assume that your character fights only the battles they have to in order to get to that point. This lets players who don't mind grinding get a reward for their work in the form of ordinarily difficult fights being a bit easier, and characters who stay underleveled have to get creative with their abilities to take on foes much stronger than themselves.
One last thing that's worth mentioning: in many games that allow for leveling up, if you die to an enemy, you may lose some of the levels you've earned. Why anyone would consider that good game design escapes me. Yes, you want to punish the player for not succeeding, but causing them to lose levels just means they either have to go into a fight they've already lost at a disadvantage, or they have to grind even more levels, to make up the one they lost and then to eke out the advantage they need to win. And in that second case, if they still don't have enough, they get to do it again. Ugh, no thank you.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
gamedesign.dev: Controls
So, I don't really play fighting games a lot. I do on occasion, but they require way too much technical fiddling with the system to eke out every last advantage in order to win, and the setting of the games is all but a placeholder for the gameplay itself. "But hey, that's the same thing you say about roguelikes, and you won't shut up about those!" Well, there's two key differences between roguelikes and fighting games. The first of these, and the one central to this post, is that of the controls for the game. Every game has controls to them, otherwise you can't interact with the game, and then it's not a game at all (it's Metal Gear Solid).
Ideally, the controls of a game should be simple and intuitive enough that the player never has to take a break from immersion in the gameplay to go "okay, what button is the one to cling to walls?" The more often a player has to do this, the less likely that they'll want to keep playing, especially if they have no easy recourse for learning the controls for what they are trying to do. In, for example, a simple platformer, you'll probably have one button dedicated to doing just that, and so figuring it out is a matter of mashing all the buttons at random until you get it right. The scientific approach, if you're in a light-hearted mood.
In a roguelike, which still has considerably difficult controls (especially with cases like NetHack, having a command for every letter on the keyboard and then some), you can usually access a help menu at any moment with the ? key, which is natural enough that even a player who doesn't know for sure how to get help can figure it out. Better yet, roguelikes don't have time pass at all until you make a move, meaning you're at little risk of simply trying things until one works (or reading the help menu).
Compare this with fighting games. These also have a help menu, more often than not, and you usually only have a few buttons to deal with, so these shouldn't be the source of much trouble, right? Well, that's where the second issue comes in. In fighting games, every split second you have is to be used to gaining or keeping the upper hand. There's a big difference between learning how to perform an action and doing so with no pressure, but doing so when you have someone else, presumably a competent player, bearing down on you ready to punish any mistake, you have very little opportunity to learn how something works.
But hey, that's what the tutorial or practice modes are for, right? You can pick a character and learn all of their moves without risk. Unfortunately, it's not always as easy as that. Take the iconic Street Fighter series, for example. If you ask someone what a Hadoken is, they can probably tell you just how to perform it. It's considerably more complex than a single button press, and even more complex than, say, timing two button presses together. The motion is something of a shift from down to forwards on the directional pad or joystick, with a button press at the end of this motion. This is not the kind of thing someone would discover by accident.
"But that's not a big deal, since the game tells you in the help menu how to do it, and you can practice it. Quit making a fuss!" There is a huge difference to performing that kind of motion in a practice room, and performing it, when you have to (and not any other time) while being pressured by another player. And this Hadoken motion is only the tip of the iceberg. The Shoryuken move has an incredibly similar way it is performed, but the two are used in drastically different situations, and using one in place of the other will pretty much guarantee you take a hit. Even outside of the Shoryuken, moves that are even less intuitive, like holding one direction for an extended amount of time, or the absolute nightmare that is Guile's Ultra Combo in Street Fighter IV, are not the kind of thing you can reasonably expect to perform under duress unless you invest a stupidly high amount of time into the game.
I guess you can claim that perfecting these moves is the hallmark of an accomplished fighting gamer, but like I said earlier, every moment you spend figuring out how to do a move is a moment where you are not immersed in the game. I might just have a drastically different opinion of immersion than your average fighting gamer. You could claim that mastering the way your character controls improves the immersion more, but I would simply have to agree and play a game where I don't need to worry about needless complexity to get that immersion.
Ideally, the controls of a game should be simple and intuitive enough that the player never has to take a break from immersion in the gameplay to go "okay, what button is the one to cling to walls?" The more often a player has to do this, the less likely that they'll want to keep playing, especially if they have no easy recourse for learning the controls for what they are trying to do. In, for example, a simple platformer, you'll probably have one button dedicated to doing just that, and so figuring it out is a matter of mashing all the buttons at random until you get it right. The scientific approach, if you're in a light-hearted mood.
In a roguelike, which still has considerably difficult controls (especially with cases like NetHack, having a command for every letter on the keyboard and then some), you can usually access a help menu at any moment with the ? key, which is natural enough that even a player who doesn't know for sure how to get help can figure it out. Better yet, roguelikes don't have time pass at all until you make a move, meaning you're at little risk of simply trying things until one works (or reading the help menu).
Compare this with fighting games. These also have a help menu, more often than not, and you usually only have a few buttons to deal with, so these shouldn't be the source of much trouble, right? Well, that's where the second issue comes in. In fighting games, every split second you have is to be used to gaining or keeping the upper hand. There's a big difference between learning how to perform an action and doing so with no pressure, but doing so when you have someone else, presumably a competent player, bearing down on you ready to punish any mistake, you have very little opportunity to learn how something works.
But hey, that's what the tutorial or practice modes are for, right? You can pick a character and learn all of their moves without risk. Unfortunately, it's not always as easy as that. Take the iconic Street Fighter series, for example. If you ask someone what a Hadoken is, they can probably tell you just how to perform it. It's considerably more complex than a single button press, and even more complex than, say, timing two button presses together. The motion is something of a shift from down to forwards on the directional pad or joystick, with a button press at the end of this motion. This is not the kind of thing someone would discover by accident.
"But that's not a big deal, since the game tells you in the help menu how to do it, and you can practice it. Quit making a fuss!" There is a huge difference to performing that kind of motion in a practice room, and performing it, when you have to (and not any other time) while being pressured by another player. And this Hadoken motion is only the tip of the iceberg. The Shoryuken move has an incredibly similar way it is performed, but the two are used in drastically different situations, and using one in place of the other will pretty much guarantee you take a hit. Even outside of the Shoryuken, moves that are even less intuitive, like holding one direction for an extended amount of time, or the absolute nightmare that is Guile's Ultra Combo in Street Fighter IV, are not the kind of thing you can reasonably expect to perform under duress unless you invest a stupidly high amount of time into the game.
I guess you can claim that perfecting these moves is the hallmark of an accomplished fighting gamer, but like I said earlier, every moment you spend figuring out how to do a move is a moment where you are not immersed in the game. I might just have a drastically different opinion of immersion than your average fighting gamer. You could claim that mastering the way your character controls improves the immersion more, but I would simply have to agree and play a game where I don't need to worry about needless complexity to get that immersion.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
gamedesign.dev: Co-op play
So I picked up Donkey Kong Country Returns just the other day. Given that I spent almost a whole day with a friend of mine playing it, that says a lot of what I think about it. I really wish I had more opportunities to do co-op games, because there's a bunch of different philosophies regarding them that I don't think many people realize. A game designer needs to consider all of the players involved and how they want them to interact. I'll spend this post looking at each of the philosophies I know of in turn.
First off, the one presented in DKCR. Both players are active on the screen at once, they can't interfere with each other (except by triggering stuff in the environment, and this is kind of hard to malevolently use), and collectibles are shared between the two. The player controlling Diddy Kong (2P) can even ride on Donkey Kong's back, letting him carry both of them through and sharing health for as long as they like. The goal presented here is simple: the two players are meant to work together as often as possible, and very rarely throw each other under the bus. Additionally, the second player has a number of tools, like a weak ranged attack and hovering, to help them, which only makes sense considering the first player is likely to be the more experienced of the two. The atmosphere is one of friendly, but not vital, cooperation.
The next example people will probably think of is the one in Left 4 Dead. Each of the four players has their own health and weaponry and so forth, and must stick close together, lest one of the special infected ambush them where they can't be saved. That said, if one of the players should get to the level end and survive there, they win, and must wait there for the other players to win in turn or die. The players can harm each other through friendly fire and the like, so good teamwork is vital to survival. A player going lone wolf can cause major problems for the rest of the team, assuming they even bother to save the lone wolf at all. The atmosphere here is somewhat competitive, but very vital, cooperation.
A third example is the gameplay of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Although the core gameplay is fairly similar to DKCR, NSMBW instead has each of the four players with the same moveset and a definite ability to interfere with the others. Players can't pass through each other, and you can also pick up and throw other players into hazards, or use them as footstools, or hog the powerups, or basically any amount of backstabbing you can imagine. There's no hand-holding for the newbie players, either: instead, only the first two players get the actual characters of Mario and Luigi, and the third and fourth players get nameless Toads. I would've liked to see Wario and Waluigi, but that's just me. Point being, it is very easy for a decent character to screw over the others, and the game very much rewards you for it. The atmosphere is very competitive and not-at-all vital cooperation.
One last example is the flash game Transformice. For those of you unfamiliar with it: a crowd of mice is in a level, all of them racing to get to the cheese and return to the exit as fast as possible. The highest scoring mouse is selected to be the shaman, who can summon objects to assist or interfere with the other mice. Despite the lack of ability for mice to interfere with each other, barring a few special levels, it's still very competitive, as the shaman effectively holds the life of the other mice in their hands/paws, not to mention the scoreboards for mouse performance and assorted cosmetic rewards for doing well. That said, as possible as it is for mice to screw each other over, it's equally possible to help them along. The atmosphere: fairly competitive, and fairly vital.
So, which of these is best? It really depends heavily on what kind of game you want. Personally, I'm a softie who likes to help out the other players as often as possible, so the first two are preferable to me. But if you want to rub your victory in the faces of your friends, the other games are valid as well. Honestly, as long as you have a clear goal in mind, any kind of co-op is better than none, because we all love to socialize, and what better way than working together to accomplish a goal? Or chucking people in a pit, that's social too.
First off, the one presented in DKCR. Both players are active on the screen at once, they can't interfere with each other (except by triggering stuff in the environment, and this is kind of hard to malevolently use), and collectibles are shared between the two. The player controlling Diddy Kong (2P) can even ride on Donkey Kong's back, letting him carry both of them through and sharing health for as long as they like. The goal presented here is simple: the two players are meant to work together as often as possible, and very rarely throw each other under the bus. Additionally, the second player has a number of tools, like a weak ranged attack and hovering, to help them, which only makes sense considering the first player is likely to be the more experienced of the two. The atmosphere is one of friendly, but not vital, cooperation.
The next example people will probably think of is the one in Left 4 Dead. Each of the four players has their own health and weaponry and so forth, and must stick close together, lest one of the special infected ambush them where they can't be saved. That said, if one of the players should get to the level end and survive there, they win, and must wait there for the other players to win in turn or die. The players can harm each other through friendly fire and the like, so good teamwork is vital to survival. A player going lone wolf can cause major problems for the rest of the team, assuming they even bother to save the lone wolf at all. The atmosphere here is somewhat competitive, but very vital, cooperation.
A third example is the gameplay of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Although the core gameplay is fairly similar to DKCR, NSMBW instead has each of the four players with the same moveset and a definite ability to interfere with the others. Players can't pass through each other, and you can also pick up and throw other players into hazards, or use them as footstools, or hog the powerups, or basically any amount of backstabbing you can imagine. There's no hand-holding for the newbie players, either: instead, only the first two players get the actual characters of Mario and Luigi, and the third and fourth players get nameless Toads. I would've liked to see Wario and Waluigi, but that's just me. Point being, it is very easy for a decent character to screw over the others, and the game very much rewards you for it. The atmosphere is very competitive and not-at-all vital cooperation.
One last example is the flash game Transformice. For those of you unfamiliar with it: a crowd of mice is in a level, all of them racing to get to the cheese and return to the exit as fast as possible. The highest scoring mouse is selected to be the shaman, who can summon objects to assist or interfere with the other mice. Despite the lack of ability for mice to interfere with each other, barring a few special levels, it's still very competitive, as the shaman effectively holds the life of the other mice in their hands/paws, not to mention the scoreboards for mouse performance and assorted cosmetic rewards for doing well. That said, as possible as it is for mice to screw each other over, it's equally possible to help them along. The atmosphere: fairly competitive, and fairly vital.
So, which of these is best? It really depends heavily on what kind of game you want. Personally, I'm a softie who likes to help out the other players as often as possible, so the first two are preferable to me. But if you want to rub your victory in the faces of your friends, the other games are valid as well. Honestly, as long as you have a clear goal in mind, any kind of co-op is better than none, because we all love to socialize, and what better way than working together to accomplish a goal? Or chucking people in a pit, that's social too.
Friday, November 12, 2010
gamedesign.dev: Boss battles
Nothing gets the heart pounding and the blood rushing like a good challenge, and what could be more challenging than fighting tooth and nail for your own life against incredible odds? Since the earliest of games, it's been almost tradition to have the final hurdle in a given level be a fight against a bad guy bigger, tougher, and meaner than anything else in the level. The word "boss", which is a short and direct word that carries a clear meaning of ruling, fits these encounters aptly. Boss battles are so pervasive that they even manage to sneak their way into games that really don't need them at all.
The first thing to be considered for whether a game needs boss battles is the game's genre. Some of these, like fighting games, RPGs, and action-adventure titles were tailor-made for boss fights. Others, like puzzle games, survival horror, and story-based adventure games, are really better off without. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a great example. Throughout the game, it's impressed that you're dealing with forces beyond the understanding of mortal humans (hence the whole Sanity meter bit). So naturally, when a giant godbeast instantly kills one of your characters without a second of consideration, the next character to encounter it gets a long, drawn-out boss battle.
Similarly, if the game's control setup isn't inclined towards boss encounters, you should reconsider. Case in point: an otherwise charming Flash game by the name of Level Up! features a boss battle after every in-game day. Fair enough, except your character can't actually attack, instead having running and jumping as her only moves. You have to rely on getting the boss to hit itself with its own attacks. The boss moves fast and is unpredictable, and a lot of its attacks are very difficult to dodge, making positioning it for the four or five hits needed to win an absolute nightmare.
Lastly, there's the issue of concluding the game. It's generally expected that a game goes out with a bang, with an amazing climax that brings all the elements of the game up to that point into one incredible conclusion. There's no need to muck that up with a boss fight in all cases, though. One example is with Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. The final case is a pretty hefty one on its own, where you end up cornering a character from your past and it's dramatic and exciting. And then the game remembers a plot point from early on in the game and attempts to tie it into place with an initially minor character who then drags out the final case for what feels like twice the length, especially considering all the "clever escapes" he attempts. The other games all had their major antagonists who defined the events of the game, but this one just feels dull and uninteresting compared to the person just before them.
Also, even if you have a boss battle that works well in the game, please please PLEASE don't give it multiple forms. Once a player defeats a boss, it should stay defeated. If the boss is going to have multiple phases, that's another thing, because it means changing the existing strategy you have rather than setting up anew after what the player may have already regarded as a very final fight. One amusing example is with Tales of Symphonia. The final boss has two forms, and the second one is literally made up just for that scene and has no relevance to the game or plot at all. It's also significantly weaker than the already challenging first form of the boss. Actually, that's another thing: making a boss have multiple forms means making them disproportionately challenging since the player may be ill-equipped for marathon fights with tough foes.
This is actually a pretty common problem, not really specific to any given genre. It's kind of weird how this idea of an intense one-on-one showdown is locked into the minds of so many gamers regardless of how much practicality such an encounter would have. I'd personally be just as happy with sabotaging the final boss' plans out from under their feet, but maybe that's just me.
The first thing to be considered for whether a game needs boss battles is the game's genre. Some of these, like fighting games, RPGs, and action-adventure titles were tailor-made for boss fights. Others, like puzzle games, survival horror, and story-based adventure games, are really better off without. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a great example. Throughout the game, it's impressed that you're dealing with forces beyond the understanding of mortal humans (hence the whole Sanity meter bit). So naturally, when a giant godbeast instantly kills one of your characters without a second of consideration, the next character to encounter it gets a long, drawn-out boss battle.
Similarly, if the game's control setup isn't inclined towards boss encounters, you should reconsider. Case in point: an otherwise charming Flash game by the name of Level Up! features a boss battle after every in-game day. Fair enough, except your character can't actually attack, instead having running and jumping as her only moves. You have to rely on getting the boss to hit itself with its own attacks. The boss moves fast and is unpredictable, and a lot of its attacks are very difficult to dodge, making positioning it for the four or five hits needed to win an absolute nightmare.
Lastly, there's the issue of concluding the game. It's generally expected that a game goes out with a bang, with an amazing climax that brings all the elements of the game up to that point into one incredible conclusion. There's no need to muck that up with a boss fight in all cases, though. One example is with Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. The final case is a pretty hefty one on its own, where you end up cornering a character from your past and it's dramatic and exciting. And then the game remembers a plot point from early on in the game and attempts to tie it into place with an initially minor character who then drags out the final case for what feels like twice the length, especially considering all the "clever escapes" he attempts. The other games all had their major antagonists who defined the events of the game, but this one just feels dull and uninteresting compared to the person just before them.
Also, even if you have a boss battle that works well in the game, please please PLEASE don't give it multiple forms. Once a player defeats a boss, it should stay defeated. If the boss is going to have multiple phases, that's another thing, because it means changing the existing strategy you have rather than setting up anew after what the player may have already regarded as a very final fight. One amusing example is with Tales of Symphonia. The final boss has two forms, and the second one is literally made up just for that scene and has no relevance to the game or plot at all. It's also significantly weaker than the already challenging first form of the boss. Actually, that's another thing: making a boss have multiple forms means making them disproportionately challenging since the player may be ill-equipped for marathon fights with tough foes.
This is actually a pretty common problem, not really specific to any given genre. It's kind of weird how this idea of an intense one-on-one showdown is locked into the minds of so many gamers regardless of how much practicality such an encounter would have. I'd personally be just as happy with sabotaging the final boss' plans out from under their feet, but maybe that's just me.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
gamedesign.dev: Alignment
A classic video game hero is a bold and chivalrous champion who can infiltrate the enemy's base, defeat their leader, save the nation, and get the girl (or guy if you swing that way). But maybe you don't want to play that. Maybe you want to play a blackhearted rogue who does it for the money. Maybe you want to lead the nation not out of a sense of justice, but a lust for power. Maybe, in short, you're not heroic at all.
Now, in real life, if you did that, you'd be sent to prison (or maybe given a seat in politics). But hey, we're talking about a video game, so most people will let you do that! And from this, the alignment system is born. Most people will probably have been introduced to it from the games of Peter Molyneux, such as Black & White and Fable, although this has been around since early D&D. Basically, what it means is that you have a choice at any given point to take a course of action in line with one of the alignments, usually "good" and "evil" respectively. For example, when being rewarded for doing something, you can either accept the reward, turn it down (good), or demand more (evil).
The problem comes when people can't accurately gauge what a "good" or "evil" character can do. Anyone who's taken a philosophy class knows that the two points can vary greatly between different societies, such that mercy, typically a "good" value, may be seen as evil, while greed, typically considered "evil" may be seen as good. In a worst-case scenario, developers may just make the options for these alignments almost cartoonishly overblown, so in the above scenario, rather than turning down the reward, the good option would be to give them your own money, and the evil option would be to decapitate them for wasting your time.
My most annoying examples come from Fable 2, which is an otherwise decent game marred by seriously annoying plot. As part of the main plot, you sign up with the main antagonist's army to infiltrate and rescue an important prisoner. During this time, you are outfitted with a kind of shock collar that activates if you disobey the commands of your superiors, draining your experience. This effectively amounts to a number of cutscenes that are "act evil or lose experience". This would be merely annoying for a sidequest, but as part of the main quest, it's simply stupid. There's literally no benefit to acting good, gameplay-wise. Hell, there's no benefit to acting evil either, it's just that you're punished for one and not the other. If you must offer alignment choices, don't make one objectively better than the other mechanically. Gamers might like having choice with the plot, but most of them will choose in-game rewards over sticking to their preferred faction, especially if they can easily negate their alignment shift by doing something minor somewhere else.
An easy fix for the first problem, that of good and evil being subjective, is to just not use good and evil as the alignments, and let players go with options they might like the most. One example that was brought to my attention earlier in my life was the Shin Megami Tensei titles, in which the chief alignments were not good and evil, but law and chaos. Law storylines in SMT titles usually involves instating a powerful regime, usually the Judeochristian YHVH, as the ruler of humanity, ensuring peace and order for a millenium, but removing those who would disagree, either by crusade or brainwashing. Chaos, on the other hand, typically involves unseating figures of authority, usually through very violent means, but ensuring that everyone is free to do what they like in the future. These games almost always offer a chance to play through without following either path, staking a claim to the future as your own self without any ethical or factional obligations, but pitting you against both law and chaos.
Speaking of factions, another example that interests me is the new release of Fallout: New Vegas. There's a good-evil alignment system there as well, but the chief decider of the plot comes more from interacting with the factions of the world. Bethesda games usually take this route, where your dealings with assorted factions determine your character more than ethical questions. In this example, law and chaos as described in SMT are loosely associated with the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion, respectively, although there are several other factions with varying power that you can choose to ally with or destroy. These, in my opinion, are better ways to build your character than abstract alignment systems, because it keeps with the verisimilitude of the setting more effectively if the best barometer for your actions is which groups, with their own ideas of good and evil, would approve or disapprove of your actions, as opposed to some abstract ideal.
I once entertained an idea for a modification to 3.5e D&D (probably inspired by the webcomic Goblins) where rather than having a good or evil alignment, you could choose to associate with a faction, which would cause alignment-based powers to read you as "good" according to allied factions and "evil" to hostile ones. A big problem with 3.5e was the paladin class having to act good at all times, to the point that they simply could not travel with evil characters, and having a system like what I've described seems much more interesting to me, since you could really get a lot of political undertones going when doing things against what the leaders wish despite keeping in line with what the people of a faction represent, rather than making an abstract judgment call.
Now, in real life, if you did that, you'd be sent to prison (or maybe given a seat in politics). But hey, we're talking about a video game, so most people will let you do that! And from this, the alignment system is born. Most people will probably have been introduced to it from the games of Peter Molyneux, such as Black & White and Fable, although this has been around since early D&D. Basically, what it means is that you have a choice at any given point to take a course of action in line with one of the alignments, usually "good" and "evil" respectively. For example, when being rewarded for doing something, you can either accept the reward, turn it down (good), or demand more (evil).
The problem comes when people can't accurately gauge what a "good" or "evil" character can do. Anyone who's taken a philosophy class knows that the two points can vary greatly between different societies, such that mercy, typically a "good" value, may be seen as evil, while greed, typically considered "evil" may be seen as good. In a worst-case scenario, developers may just make the options for these alignments almost cartoonishly overblown, so in the above scenario, rather than turning down the reward, the good option would be to give them your own money, and the evil option would be to decapitate them for wasting your time.
My most annoying examples come from Fable 2, which is an otherwise decent game marred by seriously annoying plot. As part of the main plot, you sign up with the main antagonist's army to infiltrate and rescue an important prisoner. During this time, you are outfitted with a kind of shock collar that activates if you disobey the commands of your superiors, draining your experience. This effectively amounts to a number of cutscenes that are "act evil or lose experience". This would be merely annoying for a sidequest, but as part of the main quest, it's simply stupid. There's literally no benefit to acting good, gameplay-wise. Hell, there's no benefit to acting evil either, it's just that you're punished for one and not the other. If you must offer alignment choices, don't make one objectively better than the other mechanically. Gamers might like having choice with the plot, but most of them will choose in-game rewards over sticking to their preferred faction, especially if they can easily negate their alignment shift by doing something minor somewhere else.
An easy fix for the first problem, that of good and evil being subjective, is to just not use good and evil as the alignments, and let players go with options they might like the most. One example that was brought to my attention earlier in my life was the Shin Megami Tensei titles, in which the chief alignments were not good and evil, but law and chaos. Law storylines in SMT titles usually involves instating a powerful regime, usually the Judeochristian YHVH, as the ruler of humanity, ensuring peace and order for a millenium, but removing those who would disagree, either by crusade or brainwashing. Chaos, on the other hand, typically involves unseating figures of authority, usually through very violent means, but ensuring that everyone is free to do what they like in the future. These games almost always offer a chance to play through without following either path, staking a claim to the future as your own self without any ethical or factional obligations, but pitting you against both law and chaos.
Speaking of factions, another example that interests me is the new release of Fallout: New Vegas. There's a good-evil alignment system there as well, but the chief decider of the plot comes more from interacting with the factions of the world. Bethesda games usually take this route, where your dealings with assorted factions determine your character more than ethical questions. In this example, law and chaos as described in SMT are loosely associated with the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion, respectively, although there are several other factions with varying power that you can choose to ally with or destroy. These, in my opinion, are better ways to build your character than abstract alignment systems, because it keeps with the verisimilitude of the setting more effectively if the best barometer for your actions is which groups, with their own ideas of good and evil, would approve or disapprove of your actions, as opposed to some abstract ideal.
I once entertained an idea for a modification to 3.5e D&D (probably inspired by the webcomic Goblins) where rather than having a good or evil alignment, you could choose to associate with a faction, which would cause alignment-based powers to read you as "good" according to allied factions and "evil" to hostile ones. A big problem with 3.5e was the paladin class having to act good at all times, to the point that they simply could not travel with evil characters, and having a system like what I've described seems much more interesting to me, since you could really get a lot of political undertones going when doing things against what the leaders wish despite keeping in line with what the people of a faction represent, rather than making an abstract judgment call.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
gamedesign.dev: MMOs
Everything's better with friends, be it a good cake, a fun game, or mourning a lost family member. So it should stand to reason that playing an RPG with friends is only going to make it even better. I don't think the current model of multiplayer RPG, the MMORPG, works very well for that, though. Not to say it can't work, but the current trends just don't seem fun, from a game design standpoint. Not to imply you can't have fun with it, though, but then, people had fun playing with a hoop and stick back in the day.
First off: what is the goal of an MMO? The first and most apparent goal is "level up". Which isn't that bad, provided the system is fun enough to withstand a bit of leveling, but it's not really solid enough to be a standalone goal. After all, what happens when you hit the level cap? Most MMOs have figured out this problem, and offer plenty of content aside from that for when you've finished leveling. Which is all well and good, but there's an issue here anyway: unless you and your friends all work at the same time (or all max out your characters) it's nearly impossible to balance out your party without either getting the lower level players killed or making the higher leveled ones waste their time.
But that's not a big enough issue for most people, since people who are dedicated enough can easily get their level up to the maximum. This lets them play all the postgame content alongside their friends, which begs the question: why make people slog through a good twenty (or more) levels to get to the actual meat of the game? Of course, the obvious counter-argument is that there's no merit to leveling up in the first place if you do that, and balancing for people who do choose to level up is difficult, leading to leveling either being unrewarding or implicitly required anyway because everyone else does it.
As for the actual postgame content itself, in most MMOs, it seems to revolve around specific bosses meant to be tackled by anywhere from a party of four to an entire clan/guild/whatever. I don't really have a problem with that, except for two points. The first is, of course, that the bosses all have a strategy to them which, depending on the MMO in question, ranges from careful planning to outright gimmickry that leads to instant death if any of your twenty teammates forgets the rules for a second. These strategies aren't usually hinted at anywhere in-game that I'm aware of, which is a problem because that means all your party members have to be informed of the strategy through outside communication, which isn't a surefire thing.
Additionally, there's the equipment to be considered. A lot of the fun in these games comes from obtaining rare equipment to show off, but the problem is that you're competing against a crowd of other people your level or lower for that same prize. If an enemy only drops one Shiny Doohickey every ten minutes, then the other players will exploit every trick in the book to get their hands on it, especially if it's above and beyond what you can get by easier means, such as NPC shops. And for those players lucky/cunning/cheating enough to get that Shiny Doohickey, they're at a marked advantage compared to other players of their level. Which is what getting rare stuff is about, sure, but as with bosses, it's not ever really hinted at except through other players, who probably won't be willing to give away where they got the Shiny Doohickey.
Which leads right into my next point: player versus player. After all, what better way to show off your hard-earned levels and rare loot from postgame boss battles than by beating your opponent over the head with it? Well, let me put it this way: ever tried ascending a healer in NetHack? Now take that, but spawn a leocrotta five tiles away from you. Most MMOs simply aren't balanced enough for player versus player content, since each class has a role to fulfill in multiplayer parties (tank, DPS, heal, et cetera), and not all of these roles can feasibly do battle one-on-one against an equally-leveled character.
Now, since I don't play MMOs anymore (too bored of level-grinding a fresh character in each one) I can't really comment on the state of them as a whole. If you want an example of one I don't hate, I offer you Realm of the Mad God. It's more of a shooter than a traditional RPG, and it's still new and rough around the edges, but it manages to preserve the elements of an MMO without being completely unbearable. The first thing it does is grant full XP for monster kills to anyone in a good-sized radius around the player that delivered the killing blow. Further, other players are highlighted on the minimap, and you can teleport to any player in the server at any time (although be careful around those level 20 players). This encourages players to stick together, even if you've never met, since your tactics can usually work in good concert together. Additionally, there's no currency. Monsters have a chance to drop items on their defeat, and each class has a weapon slot, an armor slot, a ring slot, and an ability item slot. Of these, rings are class-universal, but all the others have class-restrictions, which means that if you have a rogue in your party, they can use the rare cloak you win, and if you don't, you can loot it to trade in the main lobby for something you can use, or hand it off to your newbie pal. Finally, since your character has the same basic moveset across classes, a decent player can even teleport right next to their high-level buddy and survive against tough enemies long enough to quickly match up to their level. All of this encourages cooperation, which any MMO player can tell you is the core of the genre.
First off: what is the goal of an MMO? The first and most apparent goal is "level up". Which isn't that bad, provided the system is fun enough to withstand a bit of leveling, but it's not really solid enough to be a standalone goal. After all, what happens when you hit the level cap? Most MMOs have figured out this problem, and offer plenty of content aside from that for when you've finished leveling. Which is all well and good, but there's an issue here anyway: unless you and your friends all work at the same time (or all max out your characters) it's nearly impossible to balance out your party without either getting the lower level players killed or making the higher leveled ones waste their time.
But that's not a big enough issue for most people, since people who are dedicated enough can easily get their level up to the maximum. This lets them play all the postgame content alongside their friends, which begs the question: why make people slog through a good twenty (or more) levels to get to the actual meat of the game? Of course, the obvious counter-argument is that there's no merit to leveling up in the first place if you do that, and balancing for people who do choose to level up is difficult, leading to leveling either being unrewarding or implicitly required anyway because everyone else does it.
As for the actual postgame content itself, in most MMOs, it seems to revolve around specific bosses meant to be tackled by anywhere from a party of four to an entire clan/guild/whatever. I don't really have a problem with that, except for two points. The first is, of course, that the bosses all have a strategy to them which, depending on the MMO in question, ranges from careful planning to outright gimmickry that leads to instant death if any of your twenty teammates forgets the rules for a second. These strategies aren't usually hinted at anywhere in-game that I'm aware of, which is a problem because that means all your party members have to be informed of the strategy through outside communication, which isn't a surefire thing.
Additionally, there's the equipment to be considered. A lot of the fun in these games comes from obtaining rare equipment to show off, but the problem is that you're competing against a crowd of other people your level or lower for that same prize. If an enemy only drops one Shiny Doohickey every ten minutes, then the other players will exploit every trick in the book to get their hands on it, especially if it's above and beyond what you can get by easier means, such as NPC shops. And for those players lucky/cunning/cheating enough to get that Shiny Doohickey, they're at a marked advantage compared to other players of their level. Which is what getting rare stuff is about, sure, but as with bosses, it's not ever really hinted at except through other players, who probably won't be willing to give away where they got the Shiny Doohickey.
Which leads right into my next point: player versus player. After all, what better way to show off your hard-earned levels and rare loot from postgame boss battles than by beating your opponent over the head with it? Well, let me put it this way: ever tried ascending a healer in NetHack? Now take that, but spawn a leocrotta five tiles away from you. Most MMOs simply aren't balanced enough for player versus player content, since each class has a role to fulfill in multiplayer parties (tank, DPS, heal, et cetera), and not all of these roles can feasibly do battle one-on-one against an equally-leveled character.
Now, since I don't play MMOs anymore (too bored of level-grinding a fresh character in each one) I can't really comment on the state of them as a whole. If you want an example of one I don't hate, I offer you Realm of the Mad God. It's more of a shooter than a traditional RPG, and it's still new and rough around the edges, but it manages to preserve the elements of an MMO without being completely unbearable. The first thing it does is grant full XP for monster kills to anyone in a good-sized radius around the player that delivered the killing blow. Further, other players are highlighted on the minimap, and you can teleport to any player in the server at any time (although be careful around those level 20 players). This encourages players to stick together, even if you've never met, since your tactics can usually work in good concert together. Additionally, there's no currency. Monsters have a chance to drop items on their defeat, and each class has a weapon slot, an armor slot, a ring slot, and an ability item slot. Of these, rings are class-universal, but all the others have class-restrictions, which means that if you have a rogue in your party, they can use the rare cloak you win, and if you don't, you can loot it to trade in the main lobby for something you can use, or hand it off to your newbie pal. Finally, since your character has the same basic moveset across classes, a decent player can even teleport right next to their high-level buddy and survive against tough enemies long enough to quickly match up to their level. All of this encourages cooperation, which any MMO player can tell you is the core of the genre.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
gamedesign.dev: Realism
When a story tells you about something using the details of the real world ("I plugged my headphones into my iPod"), that's realism, in the simplest sense. If they tell you this in a way that stretches your sense of disbelief ("I plugged my headphones into my iPod, and then kicked the velociraptor in the face"), that breaks the realism. A lot of serious games nowadays take great pains to ensure that realism is preserved throughout, and I find myself wondering if that's really a good idea.
The first issue is that you pay the most attention to realism when trying to make the atmosphere more serious. If you incorporate current events into your game (although maybe not American politics), these events should be treated with the same respect you'd afford to them in reality. Of course, games tend to tell a fictional story, using realism as the roots for their setting, which is all well and good if the story is appropriately serious. Since we're talking about games, which are very rarely serious (and almost never for the course of the whole game), this can sometimes cause clashes even in the most well-written stories.
The second issue is twofold. Real life is not a game. In games, your abilities are all expected to be put to roughly equal use, and you're eventually expected to win. I'm reminded of games like Counterstrike and Metal Gear Solid 4, which load themselves with all manner of real-world weapons, but only a handful of them are feasible choices in-game. If you choose a real-world weapon because you like it, and the developers didn't balance it against the twenty eight other choices, oh well, you screwed yourself over!
As for the second half of this issue, if you go into a game, be it single or multi player, you can be expected to eventually win. Maybe not right off the bat, but if you learn and apply the rules the game provides you, you can eventually succeed. In real life? Not so much. Sometimes you simply don't get your job, or that friendly boy doesn't want to have a relationship, or you get into a car crash and become paralyzed from the neck down. Incorporating realism into a game, where you could very easily do stuff like tackle a massive bear armed with nothing but a small knife and your determination, tends to clash in these situations, especially considering the issue of healing as I have before.
Lastly, an ideal game is fun all the time. You're provided with challenges and a story meant to please and provoke thought and the means to get through, and if you ever get bored with it, you can turn it off and go find something else to do. Real life is very frequently not fun. There's very little that's fun about working twelve-hour shifts, finding out your paycheck's been cut to give upper management a new foosball table, and heading home to find your wife's having an affair while you're away. Blending realism with gaming is, in other words, generally a poor idea.
But lots of people like their games to feel realistic, of course. It's more easy to relate to a setting if the things done in it are at least somewhat believable. There's a word that I think fits gaming as a whole much better, and that word is "verisimilitude". For those of you unfamiliar with the term, take it as meaning "realism within acceptable bounds for the setting". Dracula is a story about the living dead, so while it may not be realistic, it keeps with the feeling of verisimilitude when one of the characters seemingly rises from the dead. Hell, even the webcomic Dr. McNinja manages to keep the sense of verisimilitude going, despite being far from realistic. Dr. McNinja is both a doctor and a ninja, but you never see him, say, summoning a demon. Other characters might do that, because they're ghost wizards or whatever, but it would make sense for them in the bounds of the setting.
There's no sense in complaining about games being unrealistic. Of course they are. They're games. But you can easily complain about the game breaking the verisimilitude. For example with Tales of Symphonia. The group finds themselves jailed up, and none of the characters can break free. Just then, Regal, who keeps his hands manacled and fights with his feet for somewhat silly reasons, moves forward and shoots a massive burst of energy from his hands, breaking through the cell. Regal has never displayed any abilities that would be even close to that power throughout the game, and it's only brought up so that the plot can continue. That is a huge breach of verisimilitude.
So the solution is simple. Just make sure your characters obey the laws of their setting. These don't have to be the same laws as the ones our world goes by, because our world is not nearly as fun as that of a game, but they should stick by them.
The first issue is that you pay the most attention to realism when trying to make the atmosphere more serious. If you incorporate current events into your game (although maybe not American politics), these events should be treated with the same respect you'd afford to them in reality. Of course, games tend to tell a fictional story, using realism as the roots for their setting, which is all well and good if the story is appropriately serious. Since we're talking about games, which are very rarely serious (and almost never for the course of the whole game), this can sometimes cause clashes even in the most well-written stories.
The second issue is twofold. Real life is not a game. In games, your abilities are all expected to be put to roughly equal use, and you're eventually expected to win. I'm reminded of games like Counterstrike and Metal Gear Solid 4, which load themselves with all manner of real-world weapons, but only a handful of them are feasible choices in-game. If you choose a real-world weapon because you like it, and the developers didn't balance it against the twenty eight other choices, oh well, you screwed yourself over!
As for the second half of this issue, if you go into a game, be it single or multi player, you can be expected to eventually win. Maybe not right off the bat, but if you learn and apply the rules the game provides you, you can eventually succeed. In real life? Not so much. Sometimes you simply don't get your job, or that friendly boy doesn't want to have a relationship, or you get into a car crash and become paralyzed from the neck down. Incorporating realism into a game, where you could very easily do stuff like tackle a massive bear armed with nothing but a small knife and your determination, tends to clash in these situations, especially considering the issue of healing as I have before.
Lastly, an ideal game is fun all the time. You're provided with challenges and a story meant to please and provoke thought and the means to get through, and if you ever get bored with it, you can turn it off and go find something else to do. Real life is very frequently not fun. There's very little that's fun about working twelve-hour shifts, finding out your paycheck's been cut to give upper management a new foosball table, and heading home to find your wife's having an affair while you're away. Blending realism with gaming is, in other words, generally a poor idea.
But lots of people like their games to feel realistic, of course. It's more easy to relate to a setting if the things done in it are at least somewhat believable. There's a word that I think fits gaming as a whole much better, and that word is "verisimilitude". For those of you unfamiliar with the term, take it as meaning "realism within acceptable bounds for the setting". Dracula is a story about the living dead, so while it may not be realistic, it keeps with the feeling of verisimilitude when one of the characters seemingly rises from the dead. Hell, even the webcomic Dr. McNinja manages to keep the sense of verisimilitude going, despite being far from realistic. Dr. McNinja is both a doctor and a ninja, but you never see him, say, summoning a demon. Other characters might do that, because they're ghost wizards or whatever, but it would make sense for them in the bounds of the setting.
There's no sense in complaining about games being unrealistic. Of course they are. They're games. But you can easily complain about the game breaking the verisimilitude. For example with Tales of Symphonia. The group finds themselves jailed up, and none of the characters can break free. Just then, Regal, who keeps his hands manacled and fights with his feet for somewhat silly reasons, moves forward and shoots a massive burst of energy from his hands, breaking through the cell. Regal has never displayed any abilities that would be even close to that power throughout the game, and it's only brought up so that the plot can continue. That is a huge breach of verisimilitude.
So the solution is simple. Just make sure your characters obey the laws of their setting. These don't have to be the same laws as the ones our world goes by, because our world is not nearly as fun as that of a game, but they should stick by them.
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