The only problem i see is that the game HAS to have some mathematical model by which to gauge damage and so on. So what do you propse to do?
Even life has a model.. you work out to gain strength and you practice to gain knowledge and ability! It''s not very difficult to figure out. Sometimes other things play in.. knowledge of a creature''s anatomy, weak points.. etc. You could keep up with things like that, hidden skills. One''s ability to understand the anatomy of a specific creature or creature type. But then again, we can''t let people go around disecting goblins to learn their anatomy.. lol

So what kind of game design doesn''t use stats in some way to make the character be able to do thing? What would you do to an MMORPG to make it fun and interesting without giving them new a bigger challenges as they go along? Remember, this is a fantasy game.. a reality game should be more to that way of thinking; in reality, you don''t go fighting goblin hordes, etc. Honestly, there''s no way to "fix" it in a fantasy MMORPG, because the people need some purpose, some meaning to playing. The goal of everyone doesn''t need to be like D&D style.. not everyone has to fight to level! I mean, heck.. a scholarly person certainly didn''t require killing to level, they got experience in other ways. But please, enlighten us as to what you think would work best

J

This is why I think some sort of attrition is the answer, even if it''s not in a skill-based system. It certainly doesn''t prevent people from being on top of the combat hill, but they have to work to stay there.

Plus, It makes iot so that in ROLE PLAYING terms, they are good cause they practice all the time...
And, since everyone is atrophying at the smae time (slowly, too) it doesn''t imbalance things.

The only real way to avoid a Murder-based experience system is either a skill use system (which you don''t want) or a timed system. MERP (The Middle Earth RPG, table top) gives you experience for things like "Miles traveled", and only awards you for defeating something you''ve never defeated before. Actually, I think it should be graded on a curve, but it''s better than a murder-based EXP system. MERP actually uses the word to mean just that: EXPERIENCE. You don''t get it for doing something you already know how to do... well not like in leveling, anyway.

Hope this helps.

quote: Original post by Niphty

The only problem i see is that the game HAS to have some mathematical model by which to gauge damage and so on. So what do you propse to do?

Make ''damage'' irrelevant, perhaps? Think outside the box

quote: So what kind of game design doesn''t use stats in some way to make the character be able to do thing?

Point and click graphical adventures... numerous text adventures... most platform games (sure, they have a twitch element, but generally you can always jump exactly the same height and length, the advancement is player-side here),etc.

quote: What would you do to an MMORPG to make it fun and interesting without giving them new a bigger challenges as they go along?

Make the challenges political, or social. Broaden your horizons on what can be ''fun''. Imagine a quest system where you get asked to map places for monetary reward. This could get ''harder'' by giving you progressively more and more distant places. No stats involved there, at least not directly. But the challenges do get harder, as the places get less well known and the distances grow larger.

But when you remove stats from a character, you start making a player-based game rather than a character-based game. That''s not necessarily a bad thing, of course.

Niphty:

A person of my cloth. My fifth project I am planning on doing I am hoping to use perl to allow users to modify the game, add stuff, ect, while using a modular approach to hard code certain actions/behaviors/propriatary stuff. The first four are going to be a tetris like game, pong, breakout, pac-man - to learn game programming and to learn the engine I want to use, be it purchased or made.

Scripting makes things easy to maintain, but opens one up to loss in future sales. Propriatary scripting mixed with open scripting languages(?) allow for flexibility and user expandability.

I can see your views on randomness in computer games. I''m a hard liner and think it is needed irrigardless of your final goal, but that is just me. A good mixed game of hack-n-slash and problem solving to examine might be ''Phantom Menace'' or to a more limited variation, ''Tomb Raider''. In both skills are hidden, you do the run jump shoot, fall, retry thing, but in Phantom Menace you get to puzzle out how to get around, through, and over things. You have to decide whether it is worth it to fight that patrol of droid guards or go around them. I think it has a fairly decent balance of fight-n-find, despite a few bugs (the occasional rock-head droid - you shoot all day at it, but it doesn''t bother shooting back).

Such a blance can easily be duplicated and modified to add player stats.

Well.. once again, you manage to make me look the fool ;p hehe. Honestly, thinking outside the box is what I do.. but I want to make a game which will work for a while and attract more than just a few hardcore gamers ;p Well, The ideas you mentioned were going to be put into use in the more realistic medieval roleplaying game.. but it has no place in a fantasy world. You need something where the character will go far beyond the player behind them. But in an MMORPG that''s hard to define. Not everyone''s a hero, but not everyone''s your average person. Let''s face it.. MOORPGs are flawed in general, and the only reason people stay is for the community.

As far as quests go.. like I said, i''ve got plans for at least 2 years worth of stuff There''s a few proprietary game design issues I can''t discuss openly.. but trust me, they fall right on the lines that you''re talking about I''m against the whole "whack monsters to get exp" theory. While yes, it may be fun.. it''s not fun for most people, at least not for long (anyone else tired of doom?) I for one prefer to let people live out lives, as a MMORPG should be. It''s become a mainstream thing now, which means it might be forever ruined! Because most people believe that an MMORPG should be hack''n slash, we might never get a chance to have a real MMORPG that succeeds That to me really sucks! So, I want to make it realistic, but not too realistic. I want to make some hack elements to it, but offer alternatives. If you don''t want to kill, you don''t need to. But the question is.. do you allow players to max out?
In my opinion.. maxxing a skill is nessicary. if you allow people to gain infinate ammounts of skill, well.. they have to be able to attain that within a lifetime. One good example is karate. Most people know of it.. that''s if they don''t know some of it. To attain black belt status usually takes around 10 years of work.. depending on how much effort you put in to it. My step-dad''s a black belt, and he''s taught me some things about it Now.. The black belt means he has gone as far as he can in Karate. Admittedly, he can learn some other skill.. such as Judo.. and so on.. but he has topped the ladder in one skill. Yes, i think the skill should use attrition as suggested by Kylotan.. in that once learned, it''s easier to regain that level of skill. Now, if karate could be learned infinately.. well, my step-dad would STILL be learning it. That is the inherant flaw with MMORPGs.. no point at which the player is considered "maxxed out."
I believe that each skill should be able to be learned at different rates.. obivously some things are harder than others. But they should have a maximum level. The point of having the in-game guilds merely allows the player to select what set or sets of skills they believe their character to be the best at. This works in a couple of different ways: first, by picking a guild.. you select a roleplaying aspect of your character. The skills required by that guild are those that you feel your character should be good at.. and not just good, but have a sort of natural ability for. the more concentrated a guild is.. the more bonus to that skill set you''ve got. As a pure fighter, you''re all about warriorism.. hack''n slash but as a mage.. you''re not going to try to be within 10 feet of something if you can help it; secondly, this gives you a grouping of some kind. Fighter, mage, theif.. your brethren will consider you to be one of them. i also believe player guilds are needed.. and that those guilds would help to combine the efforts of all the professions under one banner. This is important to me.. the guild aspect, and the duality of it.
We''re taking the guilding a step further in our game.. once again, proprietary info, but I''d be happy to let you, Kylotan and Landfish, help to test it out just to get your feedback and such. Yeah, the beta''s a long way off.. but.. we prolly will still need people to help test things, and since you''re both very knowledgable (and opinionated!) then it''d be a pleasure to have you help to test it and provide intelligent feedback about it Trust me.. it''ll be downright nice in the end!
A lot of what we''ve talked about has helped to shape things, and has given me new ideas to use on things i wanted to create.. and systems to create a game to use hehe! So a big thanks to everyone who responded to this point and to those who will respond

J

(His head in hands as he climbs back on the attrition soapbox once more...)

Niphty, I hate to say it, but what you said is not true. There is no ceiling to ability a human being can develope in a particular skill, except for the amount of time and energy they invest in it. If you build a ceiling into a game, everyone will hit that ceiling after a while, and then the game will be no fun, becausse equality squelches conflict.

If you have a system where improvement is statistically possible, you must accomidate for the craziest levelers out there. otherwise, it takes only one to ruin everyone's time.

(Here we go again, blah, blah, blah) Attrition (sick of it yet?) Attrophy leads to an EFFECTIVE improvement ceiling, but only due to the formulas involved. Theoretically, you could be the best ever by investing 24 hours a day and never screwing up once. But the issue is, like leveling, you get out what you put into it.

I know, I'm pushing it, but give it a thought. At least tell me i'm not "wrong."

Edited by - Landfish on May 8, 2000 5:28:42 PM

Hey niphty, you made two pages! Congrats!

Where does the Landfish live? Everywhere. Is not the Landfish the Buddha?

LOL.. sorry, i didn''t mean to tell you you were "wrong" in a sense It''s just that, from experience, the best social game had a ceiling. It wasn''t about who had the most of what skill, but who knew how to play the best, and it took a lot of random elements.. cause.. well.. it was a D&D game NeverWinter Nights.. once more. It has to have been my favorite game because it was simply enjoyable. It had great social element to it, learning the game was fun and not too difficult, and At high levels, there was still a LOT to do. And a lot of the fights required parties, which made the game even more enjoyable. The other game, Yserbius, had a limit of a ''signed long int'' in levels.. which in DOS translated into a word in bytes, or 32,767 levels. If you went above that, you actually went to -32768. hehe the highest real level was -1.. comparable to 64k. Once you got above level 150, though, not much changed. I had a powermaxxed character that had 32k levels and one normal at 164, and they were about the same. This game, too, was really really fun. You never hit a cieling, but the gains per level were so low, it no longer made much difference. The only real difference was in the final boss, or when playing PvP. More on that game some other time.. Feel free to ask me about these when I come visit up that way.. or at least remind me to tell you
Anyways.. I agree attrition would settle the problem, and that humans should have no limits.. but, the way i see it.. you can break things down far enough to put a limit on things. You can know everything there is to know about some things in certain aspects. Like all wood.. you know the properties of wood down to a T, but there''s other aspects to it.. molecular, sub-molecular, etc. It''s possible to know all about a certain aspect, yet the number of aspects are infinate. So it would be a system in which the skills have a cap, but the number of skills and the ways in which you could combine those skills.. is infinate. The system would only work with a true AI computer, that could.. well.. make up what happened when you tried to combine things Like if i combined my knowledge of math, wood, stones, and rope.. i could build a catapult.. or a way to transport large rocks with minimal force. This is how human knowledge is unlimited, but that''s only because it''s impossible to combine all aspects. if a computer at top speed, comparable to IBM''s Deep Blue, which could try something like 2 billion keys per second in a minimax game tree.. it would still take it forever to work out the secrets of all knowledge! By combining things not before combined, you come up with a new thing, which can be combined with other things.. making the tree infinate and three-dimensional, if not more! Well, it''s just a theory.. but it explains how you can know all of something yet still not know everything there is to know about it But i will conceede.. there''s no computer which could even begin to run that skill system.. hehe i''m a dreamer

Well, we''re gone now.. it''s be fun discussing. Landfish, feel free to write, we''ll check before we head up that way. Once in Conn, we will prolly be wireless, though. Oh.. and thanks.. my very first topic and it''s my first to go double-page hehe. I''m cool! ;p (sporting his 2600 t-shirt now.. hehe!)

J

Here´s my bit - it may be a bit off topic

Balance:
I personally am against levelling because it gets you defeatable monsters every time (or at least at every random encounter). I think that this takes the fun out of chance encounters. Of course, if you make them fixed skill they are impossible at first and ridiculously easy later on.
What to do?

RPG - role playing or methodical monster hacking
One of the factors that draws people towards rpgs it the experience bit, but on a lot of occasions this overpowers the gamepart (If i kill 283 more of them ugly bastards i´ll get the next level).
One possible way is to take the character devellopment part out of the users hands, which stabilizes the course of the game but takes much fun out of it. Some other ways have been mentioned above so i´ll try to get to the point.

REALISM

If you check your kill list at the end of any given RPG you will probably find something like this:
Goblins, small - 1786
Goblins, large - 2499
Trolls, ugly - 814
and so on...

Honestly, even Conan did not slaughter so many enemies. And besides, the battles become repetetive and boring, especially as you advance in level.

This is another problem - the increasing stats. A typical high-level character outranks a startin char by a factor of at least 3.
In "real life" (i´ll call it that for lack of better explanation) your stats advancements would be much smaller and over a much longer period of time (i´d guess for a typical rpg about 25-50% max).

Realism II:
Reality kills. In your "real world" everything can kill you. Even the lowliest of goblins should have a chance. (I remeber my heroes standing amidst the orc siege camp in DSA2 and killing wave after wave of baddies)
Maybe a special factor for strength in numbers should be included. If your hero wants to wade through the orc horde battling while surrounded on all sides - what chance would you give him? The weakest goblins can take down your hero if he has 20 friends who help him.

combat system
The usual combat system maxxes out at higher exp levels, you get almost certain hits and the enemy never gets you, or does little to no damage. This is not fun!
Heroes should grow tired, one little mistake can make all the difference.

Take up fencing
Look at what you really do with a sharp and pointy thing. Armed combat is very fast paced, something to be done more instinctively than with your head. Strength does not count as much as speed. The weight of the weapon is very important. And you are dead tired after five minutes of combat.

How many people to kill?
Would you like to have someone around fetching your lost dog or helping clear out the nasty weeds in your well of whom you know that he/she has killed dozens (or usually rather thousands) of people, even if they all deserved it?

Offer alternatives to killing. The average hero in your fantatsy realm would have to run more often than fight. Give the monsters a reason for attacking, give them a story. Let the hero try to talk to them, intimidate them somehow. And if there is a fight one of them would probably run away as soon as he seems to be losing. Not every battle has to end with someone dead.
Give alternatives. And reward them just as well with experience as fighting.
Make every death special, even tragic (Didn´t you ever ask yourself if the orcs had family?). Then you have to kill less, for more effect.

Maybe this went a bit too far
I´d be happy to read more about RPG.

Well, that''s along the lines we were talking about Having the whole story line be important.. and killing not so. For instance.. a Paladin. Honorable.. and major warrior. But would a REAL paladin attack and kill a creature mess less his size? I doubt it. The game we''re making is going to deal heavily with the issues of life in the world.. and death. But it''s got to have some element of "fun" and some people derive fun as killing things. That is why alignment in D&D was used.. although my girlfriend doesn''t favor an alignment system. For this game, alignment isn''t really going to fit in, as we''ve built around it.
As for combat, we''ve got several ideas on this. One.. you get tired as you fight more, and if you expect to fight something for long, you''d better have good endurance. And the strength you have determines if you can swing the weapon you hold. Your endurance versus the weapon''s weight determines how many times you can swing it. I think the problem is that so many games start you out like you''re a child, and you begin from there. One major thing we''re doing is to actually assume the person''s done some training before they reached this point in life.. even if the training was simply milking cows, etc. All of those real-world expereinces when you''re younger add up to what you know now. After that, many games simply allow the characters to become too big in terms of stats. If you begin life with a 5 in strength, is it really feasible to make it to 100? that''s assuming you''ve got 5 at 18 or whatever the race''s age is for starting adventurers. And that''s another point, do all races age at the same rate? Some can gain strength better, some can gain smarts better. Humans are always assumed to be the "well-rounded" race. But if you look at us, we aren''t well rounded.. hehe We tend to pick one thing and specialize in it. There''s no one i know that''s an athlete/genius.. they''re either an athlete or a genius. Just another common misconception
I have to agree that RPG''s need some work from their current form.. but, who''s to say what''s right and wrong? We all have our own views and opinions.. so it''s up to us to deisgn them into something and let the people decide if it''s good or bad. Whee!

J