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.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
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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