I've been thinking about RPGs.
Everyone who plays them can point to an RPG and say, "That's one of my favorites". Whether you point to Planescape: Torment, FFVI, or something that's a bit of a stretch like System Shock II or FFVII, you don't have any problem pointing.
I've been thinking about the stuff I like in an RPG, and I've come to the conclusion that I like the boring stuff.
The primary gameplay of an RPG - killing monsters, exploring dungeons, leveling up - doesn't interest me much. I actually find those parts of the game very boring.
On the other hand, the boring parts of the game... I love. I love wandering around the village talking to everyone, I love mixing potions and enchanting weapons, I love building a character, I love flying around in my airship.
But I hate the same things in non-RPGs. I can't stand Animal Crossing or The Sims, even though they feature my favorite stuff.
Why?
As far as I can tell, the big reason is that the parts of the RPG that I like are set within a much larger framework. The point of the game isn't to enchant weapons or talk to peasants: it's to kill shit, explore, and level up. This means that when I spend time enchanting or chatting, I can measure it against an overall world, see it doing something.
Talking to peasants isn't the point of the game, but talking to peasants allows me to explore the world in more detail. Building a new spell isn't the point of the game, but doing so allows me to interact with the world (usually, kill shit) in a more personalized way.
In things like The Sims and Animal Crossing, these activities feel completely pointless. Sure, I can talk to everyone in town... but why bother? The world is a tiny, shallow place and exploring it is awfully pointless. Sure, I can build a classy house, but what does it matter? My sims are equally pleased by two rooms with a lot of corners. Having a nice house is actually bad, since it takes the sims twenty minutes to walk ten feet.
On the other side of the spectrum, I don't like these activities in MMORPGs, because they do not allow you to approach the world in more detail or from new perspectives. Exploring the world of the World of Warcraft is largely futile, because it's pretty well explored already. It's like "exploring" your local strip mall. There are no surprises, unless you count a 10% off sale on stuff you don't need.
Similarly, crafting weapons or potions is pointless because they have been carefully crippled down to a level of non-uniqueness that a fast food restaurant would be embarrassed about.
These all have the same problem: the creation doesn't let you interact with the world in a meaningful, seemingly unique way. Making potions doesn't give you any real new way of exploring the game, and building a house doesn't matter when there's really no world to explore with it.
Compare these to the examples I do like.
Evil Genius is about creating a house of a sort. I know a lot of people played The Sims like it was Evil Genius...
Evil Genius' house creation system was a lot weaker than The Sims, but to me it was a lot juicier. Every kind of room had a real purpose, every piece of furniture meant something. The layout wasn't just for kicks or to minimize travel time: it was continually tested by hapless tourists and not-so-hapless secret agents.
So, while Evil Genius didn't allow for many of the advanced options that The Sims allowed, it had a strong backbone that actually rewarded you for doing well.
Similarly, in Oblivion potion-making was generally quite rewarding. You could make potions of healing, sure. But it wasn't a matter of combining a rabbit foot and green herb: there were a lot of different ingredients you could use, a lot of side effects you needed to manage, and your skill played a huge part - not in simple pass/fail terms, but in what you could wring out of the ingredients.
Of course, potion making in Oblivion is well known for being one of the most broken systems on the face of the planet... that's something you have to manage, I suppose.
Evil Genius wasn't a spectacularly good game, but it's a great game to learn from. It was certainly the case that some players would be better at building bases than other players! It was definitely a long learning experience, each base slightly better as you learn the basics.
But it never came off as "unbalanced". (Actually, the unbalanced part of the game was personnel, not base construction.) The more successful you were, the more attention you drew.
This kind of adaptive feedback is the only thing I can think of that I predict will be in a lot more games. It allows you to play fast and loose with balance, favoring depth over fairness. And that's what I like.
...
A lot of people love The Sims, and I'm not saying it's bad. Instead, what I think is that these people impose their own world - their own value - onto the people and houses they create. Instead of having a feedback system like Oblivion's potions or Evil Genius' secret bases, the players substitute their own imagination and judgment. It seems to work well, but that's not something I need a game for.
On the other hand, the shallow 1+1=potion of MMORPGs is basically unforgivably bad...
What do you think? Do you like the "boring" parts? Can you think of a game design where crafting combines with massively multiplayer without being infuriating?
Showing posts with label long-term play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label long-term play. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Long Loops
Well, I've seen all the basic gameplay rules I really care to. They all boil down to about three basic mechanics with a thousand special rules lumped on top. I hate special rules. I prefer to layer gameplay mechanics instead of making special rules for a single gameplay mechanic.
One of the things that this allows is for a rule to control the way gameplay progresses - the pacing of the game, if you understand. It's more common in board games rather than tabletop RPGs. For example, in the Battlestar Galactica CCG, they have a "if your fleet gets too big, you piss off the Cylons" rule which makes for a definite shift in play between early and mid game. Similarly, in "Shadows over Camelot", the quests advance with or without you, which makes the end game usually a sprint to get those last few successes before the bad guys get their last few successes.
Indie tabletop games occasionally, very rarely, have a system for this. "With Great Power" has an explicit one, whereas "Prime Time" and "Rune" have one that is more of a guide rather than a layered set of rules. But these rules - or guides - make the game dramatic and fun in a way that is unique. I honestly don't think any game should be created without carefully thinking about the way it progresses from early to mid to late game.
With that in mind, I've been looking at the ways to make these progressions interesting, and I've come up with some basic observations:
1) Scarcity of Resources. Generally, as the game progresses, resources become more scarce as the players use them up. In some games, "resources" are literally tokens or cards or lives that are used to do things, but in many games the "resources" that get scarce are places on the board. Land, essentially, as the players (or other mechanic) fill it in.
2) Achieving New Modes of Play. Some games give you new capabilities as the game progresses, either on a schedule or in exchange for some resource wrangling. The opposite is also fairly common, with the new rules making it more difficult for the players.
3) Goal Changes. Some games put out new goals for the player. It could be done when an old goal is accomplished, on a timer, randomly, or when a player plays a new goal. Any way it works, this changes what the players are after and, therefore, their method of play.
4) Explicit Stages. The most likely method for a computer game or tabletop RPG, explicit stages carefully lay out a new set of resources and, often, new modes of play/goals. In its most common form, each stage is a new game with your starting resources altered by the previous game. However, in some cases a "stage" is actually only one part of play, changing only one or two aspects of the game when it switches.
5) The Hidden is Revealed. In any game with imperfect information, it is possible to "schedule" the reveal of that information. For example, in Shadows over Camelot, there is often a traitor. The game is largely about him balancing secrecy and effectiveness until the circumstances of the game essentially force a reveal. This is not like House on the Hill, where a traitor is invented at the moment of reveal. That's not hidden information, that's an explicit stage switch. I'm basically only counting hidden data that players are directly affected by even before it is revealed. Otherwise it's not hidden data.
#5 is a little iffy. There's something wrong with the way I phrased it. Can you think of any methods I didn't touch?
From these methods you can choose exactly how you want your game to progress. More is revealed about how a game feels to play by looking at it through these lenses rather than looking at the actual rules. Also, nearly all feedback loops are one of these rules.
For example, Chess is about killing pieces and controlling positions. The pieces are a limited resource that fades as the game continues, but they don't fade at the same rate, so a better player retains more pieces than a weaker player. That's a positive feedback loop.
Anyhow, food for thought. Comments?
One of the things that this allows is for a rule to control the way gameplay progresses - the pacing of the game, if you understand. It's more common in board games rather than tabletop RPGs. For example, in the Battlestar Galactica CCG, they have a "if your fleet gets too big, you piss off the Cylons" rule which makes for a definite shift in play between early and mid game. Similarly, in "Shadows over Camelot", the quests advance with or without you, which makes the end game usually a sprint to get those last few successes before the bad guys get their last few successes.
Indie tabletop games occasionally, very rarely, have a system for this. "With Great Power" has an explicit one, whereas "Prime Time" and "Rune" have one that is more of a guide rather than a layered set of rules. But these rules - or guides - make the game dramatic and fun in a way that is unique. I honestly don't think any game should be created without carefully thinking about the way it progresses from early to mid to late game.
With that in mind, I've been looking at the ways to make these progressions interesting, and I've come up with some basic observations:
1) Scarcity of Resources. Generally, as the game progresses, resources become more scarce as the players use them up. In some games, "resources" are literally tokens or cards or lives that are used to do things, but in many games the "resources" that get scarce are places on the board. Land, essentially, as the players (or other mechanic) fill it in.
2) Achieving New Modes of Play. Some games give you new capabilities as the game progresses, either on a schedule or in exchange for some resource wrangling. The opposite is also fairly common, with the new rules making it more difficult for the players.
3) Goal Changes. Some games put out new goals for the player. It could be done when an old goal is accomplished, on a timer, randomly, or when a player plays a new goal. Any way it works, this changes what the players are after and, therefore, their method of play.
4) Explicit Stages. The most likely method for a computer game or tabletop RPG, explicit stages carefully lay out a new set of resources and, often, new modes of play/goals. In its most common form, each stage is a new game with your starting resources altered by the previous game. However, in some cases a "stage" is actually only one part of play, changing only one or two aspects of the game when it switches.
5) The Hidden is Revealed. In any game with imperfect information, it is possible to "schedule" the reveal of that information. For example, in Shadows over Camelot, there is often a traitor. The game is largely about him balancing secrecy and effectiveness until the circumstances of the game essentially force a reveal. This is not like House on the Hill, where a traitor is invented at the moment of reveal. That's not hidden information, that's an explicit stage switch. I'm basically only counting hidden data that players are directly affected by even before it is revealed. Otherwise it's not hidden data.
#5 is a little iffy. There's something wrong with the way I phrased it. Can you think of any methods I didn't touch?
From these methods you can choose exactly how you want your game to progress. More is revealed about how a game feels to play by looking at it through these lenses rather than looking at the actual rules. Also, nearly all feedback loops are one of these rules.
For example, Chess is about killing pieces and controlling positions. The pieces are a limited resource that fades as the game continues, but they don't fade at the same rate, so a better player retains more pieces than a weaker player. That's a positive feedback loop.
Anyhow, food for thought. Comments?
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Candy Tests
I am a huge fan of playtesting. I playtest everything I build. Every game I make has a playtest phase before I even think about releasing it, and these playtests always catch issues that didn't occur to me. Every time.
Of course, there's two weaknesses to playtesting that you have to keep in mind at all times.
The first is that playtesters aren't (usually) testing the game for the length of time that your fans are actually going to play it. This means your more long-term play usually goes largely untested.
The second problem is that playtesters are subject to what I call the "Pepsi Challenge" fallacy.
The Pepsi Challenge was to determine which soft drink tasted better: Pepsi or Coke. Random testers nearly universally chose Pepsi. Why? Because Pepsi has a higher sugar content. It's a sweeter drink.
But it turns out that over the long run, Pepsi is less pleasing. Coke still wins out for the long-term drinkers, because it isn't too sweet.
What this means in terms of game playtesting is that testers will often choose whatever mode makes them feel stronger. However, a slope of challenge is what makes the game have staying power. So the testers will choose the variant that is actually worse for the long-term appeal of your game.
Basically, what you have to remember when using testers is pretty simple:
Watch them. Don't take what they say too straight: they aren't designers, they aren't testing the long-term play of the game, and they're heading for a Pepsi Challenge Fallacy.
What matters isn't what they say they prefer: it's what their play says. If they struggle to play, you need to polish that. But if they test two variants and have no trouble with either, the better variant is not necessarily the one they prefer.
Of course, some people are naturally immune to Pepsi. These people make great playtesters, but often don't represent your target audience very well. :)
Of course, there's two weaknesses to playtesting that you have to keep in mind at all times.
The first is that playtesters aren't (usually) testing the game for the length of time that your fans are actually going to play it. This means your more long-term play usually goes largely untested.
The second problem is that playtesters are subject to what I call the "Pepsi Challenge" fallacy.
The Pepsi Challenge was to determine which soft drink tasted better: Pepsi or Coke. Random testers nearly universally chose Pepsi. Why? Because Pepsi has a higher sugar content. It's a sweeter drink.
But it turns out that over the long run, Pepsi is less pleasing. Coke still wins out for the long-term drinkers, because it isn't too sweet.
What this means in terms of game playtesting is that testers will often choose whatever mode makes them feel stronger. However, a slope of challenge is what makes the game have staying power. So the testers will choose the variant that is actually worse for the long-term appeal of your game.
Basically, what you have to remember when using testers is pretty simple:
Watch them. Don't take what they say too straight: they aren't designers, they aren't testing the long-term play of the game, and they're heading for a Pepsi Challenge Fallacy.
What matters isn't what they say they prefer: it's what their play says. If they struggle to play, you need to polish that. But if they test two variants and have no trouble with either, the better variant is not necessarily the one they prefer.
Of course, some people are naturally immune to Pepsi. These people make great playtesters, but often don't represent your target audience very well. :)
Friday, October 27, 2006
Unique vs Manufactured, and What's a Body Good For?
Raph has an interesting post up that made me think.
In most games of all types, the enemies are faceless bundles of statistics, save for bosses. Similarly, the player upgrades by buying the next generic bundle of statistics, whether it's a new gun or a nifty wizard cloak.
I've played every Elder Scrolls game that's been made. You know what the biggest rush in those games is for me? The slew of random crap you pull off of every corpse and out of every treasure chest. The idea that you'll find a dagger with a few new capabilities, or a left bracer with a funky new graphic, or a loincloth of burning.
When I play those games, I'm totally addicted for ten, fifteen hours. Then I lose all interest. Why? Because the loot doesn't hold up. By the end of those hours, I've explored everything the game has to offer, at least as far as I'm concerned. The first weapon I find that does blammies when I stab someone? What an incredible rush. The next one? Not so much. The seventh one? Not at all.
It devolves: the only thing that interests me is the graphics associated with the items. A fruit-filled hat is worth more than the flamey sword of Nimbulus, because the flamey sword is just an extra +5 to something... but the bananahat is unique. Plus, I can enchant it to be a fruity hat of flaming, if I really need the flame.
Of course, a steady progression of "unique" is required there, too. The bananahat only holds my attention for so long before I must move on to the next hat.
Actually, that's a failure on the designer's part. The problem is that there isn't really enough feedback to prolong my joy in my bananahat. If everyone commented on my bananahat and changed their interactions with me in some interesting way, the bananahat would become extremely interesting to me. Also, generally speaking, there isn't much in-world feedback.
You might be able to see yourself, but it's a rear view and the costumes aren't generally very interesting from the back. Notice that the new "custom-avatar chats" always show your character from the front, even when they're full 3D? Yeah, fronts are better in terms of feedback.
Worse, the costumes themselves leave only a small mark on the screen, especially in Elder Scrolls games. World of Warcraft got this right: the costumes are extremely loud and large, totally dominating your character's appearance. Of course, there's the problem that you have fewer pieces to play with, and that's a big drawback...
Moreover, there's only so much joy you can get from permutations on the same stock. No matter how many hats I wear, they all go on top of the same head, with the same art style and the same model. The base gets boring, even if the hats don't, and that drags the hats down. Don't get the hats down!
This is true even in games like SecondLife. It doesn't matter that there are 50,000 different kinds of "hats" and more coming out every day. The stock beneath is the same, so they stop being interesting after a while. Thus the thriving business in morphing your avatar: you can't really wear clothes, but in changing the baseline you have changed your whole... um... baseline.
Okay, as per my recent unfortunate habit, I've started to ramble. What I'm saying is:
Manufactured or unique is the wrong question to ask. Randomly generating 500,000 different kinds of sword will only broaden the game so much. In the beginning, it'll be awesome, but by midgame, you'll be just as bored of the random swords as you would be of 100 carefully scripted, balanced swords. You'll know the parameters. Random generation is really a "wide" solution rather than a "deep" solution, and unless you plan on absurdly restricted access to randomly generated things, it's not going to add play depth for anyone other than newbs.
Subtracting out the gameplay elements actually deepens the play, because now the system follows supply and demand. Nobody cares that there's only three blue swords of cystic fibrosis, because they're worse than the ten thousand red swords of blammifying. But if all swords are equal, the rarity of those blue swords makes them incredibly valuable. The same idea applies for hats.
The feedback you get on your non-combat-related equipment is pretty strong in a MMORPG, although exceedingly weak in a one-player game. This means that you don't require as much depth in a MMORPG, because feedback will create more depth. In a one-player game, you'll need to go further. Much further.
For example, being able to dress a whole roster of characters in whatever fashions you prefer. Again: linking these things to play bonuses is basically a bad idea, because it dramatically limits the player's options.
Another idea is to be able to change your avatar, either piece by piece or in whole. You could pull a Shiny trick from Messiah: let the player inhabit whatever randomly generated NPC they can lure into a dark corner alone. NPCs can have some immediate gameplay results (such as being better warriors, or having access to certain places), but in the long run have fundamentally interchangeable capabilities. NPCs should look dramatically varied - it might be best to use animal-people, since they look very different from each other. Elves vs dwarves is about the minimum.
This would allow the player to grab an avatar, equip it, and run around. If he or she wants, he or she can jump into a new NPC - one that looks very different and people react to in very different ways.
This allows them to change the baseline and all the stuff on top. That's cool. I think that would be a fun game, either one-player or massively multiplayer. Imagine the economy that would spring up in body sales. Some NPCs are extremely hard to get because they are always surrounded by people, and those call in the highest prices.
Obviously, there would need to be some, I dunno, GAME involved at some point. But, pshaw, that's the easy part.
In most games of all types, the enemies are faceless bundles of statistics, save for bosses. Similarly, the player upgrades by buying the next generic bundle of statistics, whether it's a new gun or a nifty wizard cloak.
I've played every Elder Scrolls game that's been made. You know what the biggest rush in those games is for me? The slew of random crap you pull off of every corpse and out of every treasure chest. The idea that you'll find a dagger with a few new capabilities, or a left bracer with a funky new graphic, or a loincloth of burning.
When I play those games, I'm totally addicted for ten, fifteen hours. Then I lose all interest. Why? Because the loot doesn't hold up. By the end of those hours, I've explored everything the game has to offer, at least as far as I'm concerned. The first weapon I find that does blammies when I stab someone? What an incredible rush. The next one? Not so much. The seventh one? Not at all.
It devolves: the only thing that interests me is the graphics associated with the items. A fruit-filled hat is worth more than the flamey sword of Nimbulus, because the flamey sword is just an extra +5 to something... but the bananahat is unique. Plus, I can enchant it to be a fruity hat of flaming, if I really need the flame.
Of course, a steady progression of "unique" is required there, too. The bananahat only holds my attention for so long before I must move on to the next hat.
Actually, that's a failure on the designer's part. The problem is that there isn't really enough feedback to prolong my joy in my bananahat. If everyone commented on my bananahat and changed their interactions with me in some interesting way, the bananahat would become extremely interesting to me. Also, generally speaking, there isn't much in-world feedback.
You might be able to see yourself, but it's a rear view and the costumes aren't generally very interesting from the back. Notice that the new "custom-avatar chats" always show your character from the front, even when they're full 3D? Yeah, fronts are better in terms of feedback.
Worse, the costumes themselves leave only a small mark on the screen, especially in Elder Scrolls games. World of Warcraft got this right: the costumes are extremely loud and large, totally dominating your character's appearance. Of course, there's the problem that you have fewer pieces to play with, and that's a big drawback...
Moreover, there's only so much joy you can get from permutations on the same stock. No matter how many hats I wear, they all go on top of the same head, with the same art style and the same model. The base gets boring, even if the hats don't, and that drags the hats down. Don't get the hats down!
This is true even in games like SecondLife. It doesn't matter that there are 50,000 different kinds of "hats" and more coming out every day. The stock beneath is the same, so they stop being interesting after a while. Thus the thriving business in morphing your avatar: you can't really wear clothes, but in changing the baseline you have changed your whole... um... baseline.
Okay, as per my recent unfortunate habit, I've started to ramble. What I'm saying is:
Manufactured or unique is the wrong question to ask. Randomly generating 500,000 different kinds of sword will only broaden the game so much. In the beginning, it'll be awesome, but by midgame, you'll be just as bored of the random swords as you would be of 100 carefully scripted, balanced swords. You'll know the parameters. Random generation is really a "wide" solution rather than a "deep" solution, and unless you plan on absurdly restricted access to randomly generated things, it's not going to add play depth for anyone other than newbs.
Subtracting out the gameplay elements actually deepens the play, because now the system follows supply and demand. Nobody cares that there's only three blue swords of cystic fibrosis, because they're worse than the ten thousand red swords of blammifying. But if all swords are equal, the rarity of those blue swords makes them incredibly valuable. The same idea applies for hats.
The feedback you get on your non-combat-related equipment is pretty strong in a MMORPG, although exceedingly weak in a one-player game. This means that you don't require as much depth in a MMORPG, because feedback will create more depth. In a one-player game, you'll need to go further. Much further.
For example, being able to dress a whole roster of characters in whatever fashions you prefer. Again: linking these things to play bonuses is basically a bad idea, because it dramatically limits the player's options.
Another idea is to be able to change your avatar, either piece by piece or in whole. You could pull a Shiny trick from Messiah: let the player inhabit whatever randomly generated NPC they can lure into a dark corner alone. NPCs can have some immediate gameplay results (such as being better warriors, or having access to certain places), but in the long run have fundamentally interchangeable capabilities. NPCs should look dramatically varied - it might be best to use animal-people, since they look very different from each other. Elves vs dwarves is about the minimum.
This would allow the player to grab an avatar, equip it, and run around. If he or she wants, he or she can jump into a new NPC - one that looks very different and people react to in very different ways.
This allows them to change the baseline and all the stuff on top. That's cool. I think that would be a fun game, either one-player or massively multiplayer. Imagine the economy that would spring up in body sales. Some NPCs are extremely hard to get because they are always surrounded by people, and those call in the highest prices.
Obviously, there would need to be some, I dunno, GAME involved at some point. But, pshaw, that's the easy part.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)