2 ms·

Five hard lessons of RPG design

3 points by Archelaos 5y ago

thaumasiotes 5y ago
Some of these directly conflict with each other. > Strategic failures are the biggest disappointing failures for players. When building a character or a party, "you're making long-term decisions," said Sawyer, "but many RPGs effectively punish you for making bad choices." This isn't something that should change -- if there's a lesson here, learning that lesson is a mistake. And the article illustrates this point a few paragraphs down: > What you perceive in a game is ultimately what matters the most -- Mass Effect had tons of weapons but they were barely differentiated. They had incremental stat differences only. > "What's the chance that a 5 percent difference is going to make you take the enemy down in one fewer hit? If it takes me four shots, but the fourth shot killed him a little more, that doesn't mean anything to me," Sawyer said. > In Alpha Protocol, "The player could get abilities to upgrade their stealth but often they couldn't see the effects in the game," he said. It was widely considered to have a broken stealth system. Mass Effect did the work to ensure that you couldn't make the wrong choice when choosing your weapon. That didn't make their game better, it made it worse. If you can't make a bad choice, you can't really make any choice.
- Archelaos 5y ago
  > If you can't make a bad choice, you can't really make any choice. We should consider the wider context here. The unspoken presumption is, that when a play-through of a big RPG lasts dozens of hours the typical player plays it only once. Hardcore players may learn a lesson from a strategic failure for their next play-through, but for the typical player it just means a disappointment. This is the reason why there are so many questions of novice players on RPG gaming forums about which class to choose or which build to use. Of course, if you are playing something like NetHack that expects you to attempt multiple play-throughs, then there are no real strategic failures. You only have to cope with a lot of tactical failures, which is okay.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    Well, there's some discussion further down that I think is more on target, to the effect that if the player has picked a bad spec, they should be able to respec. Restarting the game shouldn't be a requirement. I have no issue with that message. It makes the Mass Effect design look even worse, though, since I assume you're able to change your weapon pretty freely.

3 points by Archelaos 5y ago

Some of these directly conflict with each other. > Strategic failures are the biggest disappointing failures for players. When building a character or a party, "you're making long-term decisions," said Sawyer, "but many RPGs effectively punish you for making bad choices." This isn't something that should change -- if there's a lesson here, learning that lesson is a mistake. And the article illustrates this point a few paragraphs down: > What you perceive in a game is ultimately what matters the most -- Mass Effect had tons of weapons but they were barely differentiated. They had incremental stat differences only. > "What's the chance that a 5 percent difference is going to make you take the enemy down in one fewer hit? If it takes me four shots, but the fourth shot killed him a little more, that doesn't mean anything to me," Sawyer said. > In Alpha Protocol, "The player could get abilities to upgrade their stealth but often they couldn't see the effects in the game," he said. It was widely considered to have a broken stealth system. Mass Effect did the work to ensure that you couldn't make the wrong choice when choosing your weapon. That didn't make their game better, it made it worse. If you can't make a bad choice, you can't really make any choice.

Archelaos 5y ago
> If you can't make a bad choice, you can't really make any choice. We should consider the wider context here. The unspoken presumption is, that when a play-through of a big RPG lasts dozens of hours the typical player plays it only once. Hardcore players may learn a lesson from a strategic failure for their next play-through, but for the typical player it just means a disappointment. This is the reason why there are so many questions of novice players on RPG gaming forums about which class to choose or which build to use. Of course, if you are playing something like NetHack that expects you to attempt multiple play-throughs, then there are no real strategic failures. You only have to cope with a lot of tactical failures, which is okay.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  Well, there's some discussion further down that I think is more on target, to the effect that if the player has picked a bad spec, they should be able to respec. Restarting the game shouldn't be a requirement. I have no issue with that message. It makes the Mass Effect design look even worse, though, since I assume you're able to change your weapon pretty freely.