Hello it's me again,

A few of the arguments out there are along the lines of "Using that system, how do I know if I can tackle a dragon", and "How do I know which weapon is better if I don't have numerical stats to look at."

First of all, I thought part of the fun of RPGs and other games is uncertainty. You don't know 100% that you can tackle that dragon. Maybe you can defeat those Goblin Hoards, or not. A good game that doesn't show numerical stats should be able to give a player a sense of achievement and power without showing numbers. "Hmmm, I'm nearly killing these Cloud Giants with one hit, maybe that dragon is feasible now."

And as for the weapons argument, part of an RPG should also be realism. A good game that doesn't use stats, again, should have some way of letting the player know if that Ax is way bad for him, like the boxes idea for instance. But like in real life, you can't know for certain that a Halbard is better than a two-handed sword until you start wacking a hoard of angry goblins with them. Of course, there is no rule that says that just because you don't have numerical stats, you can't gauge how good a weapon is. Take my bar idea for instance. While it wouldn't show exact numbers, they could show that the stats go way up for some weapons and not so much up or even down for others.

Oh, and don't try so hard to stop the people who spend hours trying to quantify your system, they are ruining the experience for themselves, not your game or your system.

Feel free to debunk me.

Oh, and now it is time to contradict myself.

Personally, I like numerical stats. I don't mind looking at numbers to see how powerful my guy is. One way to stop the numbers from taking away the experience of the game is to get rid of all those items where the description says "Increases STR by 10 pts." and either dump them, or change the description to "Power Bar: Makes you much stronger".

Enough of my rant, feel free to debunk me if I am wrong, just don't flame me, okay?

-Blackstream

"See you later, I'm going to go grab a few Bytes. I'm so thirsty, I could drink a whole data stream."

Edited by - Blackstream on June 24, 2000 6:44:07 PM

First, I want to comment on MadKieth''s and Paul''s idea for starting a blank-page character. This is a good way to determine a player''s gaming style, but I can see it choking in two ways: First, you need to have a really open beginning to your game, by allowing the player to do ANYTHING without any repercussions. If you direct the player''s choice of actions, you''re actually directing his character, which defeats what you strode out to do.

Second, it could get very boring wasting those first several minutes of game time doing what you need to do just to set up your character. The beauty of character fabrication is that you can come to the game with an idea, build the character based on that idea, and jump right into the game exactly as you want to be. This wouldn''t take more than a few minutes, as opposed to the amount of time you would spend trying to build your character from actions. Besides, performing actions could never smooth a character''s finish like hand-tweaking attributes.

However, I do like your idea. I think this method was accomplished fairly well in Daggerfall and other such games that used an optional list of questions to determine a starting character''s profession. An even better way to do it would be to ask the questions and then show the player his character, allowing him to tweak it more if he thought it necessary. This would allow for both rapid generation and manual customization.

I totally agree with Blackstream''s comments. However, there should be a better measure of ability than seeing how many times you succeed. Most people have a fairly good measure of their own skills, save for those who are overconfident or lacking confidence. For example, I know I''d hack my own limbs off if I started swinging a sword around. On the other hand, I also know I can type really fast and with excellent accuracy. There should be a way to measure skills intrinsically without already putting them to use. (We''re assuming the character has been using certain skills before the game begins. There should be a way for the player to rate these skills.)

In this case, I think a generic description is good, like "You suck with swords" or "You are an outstanding typist". Numbers don''t need to be used; in fact, they should be avoided unless you want to convey numbers as being an important aspect of the game''s concept (like if your character is an android).

I''m rather fond of numeric stats myself, because I''m a real math freak, and I feel comfortable around numbers. However, I also like pacman''s idea of making numbers optional based on the player''s preferences. I think it''s a good idea to have a toggle to turn numbers on and off, sort of like the Final Fantasy option that lets you display health as a meter or as a set of numbers.

- Tom -

Okay - here are my extensive thoughts on some of the problems we are having.
One thing where we seem to have some difficulty is with character creation.
I think that it''s perhaps a good idea to start out with a blank sheet and have some kind of introduction to the games way of working and they build their character up from brief, in-game experience. Then they take this and tackle the rest of the world.

System Shock 2 did exactly this. It started out with basically a blank sheet - and then it gave you a few training exercises to show the player the different ways of playing the game. Then you made a decision on what career you wanted to pursue.
This is the only thing about system shock 2 that I thought they did correct. The rest of their stats system sucked.

Ultima Ascension made a half hearted attempt at doing this but it was more focussed on getting the player to know the controls rather than make a starting point for his/her character.

It is very important in these kind of games that you offer a way for each TYPE of player to solve a problem, this is almost impossible, but any designer should make an effort. More often than not, a certain style of play is favoured in particular games, for instance a fighter.

This is due to the fact that there isn''t ample situations for, say, a thief to solve the problem the way a thief would. It really annoys me when games do this. It totally nullifies the point of having stats and skills altogether.

Another problem that having stats presents is restricting the player from picking up a certain kind of weapon and so forth. I''m not talking about skills here, skills are entirely different from stats and I admit, I like skills alot more than I like stats.

If *theoritically* I were to take stats out of the game, this would result in every "real" role-player or computer role-player not taking the game seriously and thus it would utterly fail to penetrate it''s target market. It would most likely have to be made 3D - have a twisted plot added to it and it''d become another deus ex/system shock 2.

Of course, it is still possible for the game to be succesful because there is only a small market of "hardcore" gamers of this type and they are so damn hard to please the designer should almost not bother.

Skills are good - as I mentioned. Having a very large skills tree is integral. Infinite may be impossible unless we somehow put a human brain into a computer or something, but big is good. This means that each player can take his style of play, and make himself unique. Giving him better individuality compared to having a largely stats based system where as individual as you get is having more strength/dexterity/intelligence that the person next to you.

This means it allows for much mroe diversity of playing. Sub-skills are good, and levels of mastery within these sub-skills makes things even better. This makes for an excellent community of players for an MMORPG and an excellent replayable single player RPG.

Stats aren''t flexible in this way, and although they can be useful in measuring the strength of a player for those players who can''t figure out how good they are in battle by observation - actually, yeah that kinda is my point.

Hrm.

Players will still look at the game and what can be done in the game so they can powermax from the skill tree/yes? There''s no easy solutions like this i''m afraid.

If you use a skill tree it has to mirror or balance your game in some way.Then its implementable. But if what the player can do in the game are highly limited then there''s no need to have a large number of skills that aren''t really used in the game. So no infinite tree skills.

Niphty, i can''t beleive i missed that idiot proof comment coming :-). It really is the foundation we have to set all of our crazy ideas on.I almost sounds like we need another thread for this one. [scratching head] Idiot proof ay? Now i have to re-evaluate all my ideas, thanks :-)

[spanner in the works - CRunCh!]

I shall return...



WE are their,
"Sons of the Free"

Anyone ever realise that Paul Cunninghams initals are PC? Maybe this explains why he knows too much - actually I feel like I''m using a bicycle pump to inflate his ego there but doesn''t matter anyway.

Okay - just thinking about this. It''s almost always impossible to stop players power-playing, and trying to get the best combination of skills, this is a big problem with MMORPGs. So I''ll just try to quickly address that problem.

Although it''s good to have situations where the player can evauluate and respond to a situation the way he/she needs to in single palyer rpgs, i think the same can be done in mmorpgs. Make situations where a lone player simply cannot complete a particular quest because it requires a combination of skills that he/she cannot have. For instance, have a situation which requires specifically a very highly skilled swordsman and a very highly skilled thief. If you prevent players from maxing in two fields or even maxing out in one field (ie - not allow them to master every kind of sword, maybe rapiers or one handed swords) then a whole variety of skilled players can exist. This creates a environment where a variety of skills and player types are required so that if everyone jumps on the tank mage bandwagon, then the community won''t get anywhere then if one thief is around he/she will be in a great demand and then there will be a constant sort of seesaw in skills within the community. Which at least makes for something more interesting than a whole bunch of tank mages saying "I killed a " then "Well I killed a "
Only a possible solution. I think lots of game designers simply make these basic stats types systems that ARE somewhat flawed because they want to avoid the dilemma of putting in the extra yard and making a better experience for the players.

Paul, you just weren''t thinking about how the players think versus how the designers think. I''ve been hacking on computers forever, and beta testing things for a while. I''ve got a knack for exposing those stupid errors the programmers never realize exist.. hehe Like you ever been into a music store that has the MUZE cd lookup system? Well.. it''s a touch screen with a keyboard, sorta. well.. i managed to crash the program back to DOS.. hehe I dunno what i did, my cousin and i just started poking it all at once and poof.. it seg faulted or something. lol! we were standing there dumbfounded.. hehe I restarted the program and then we quietly made our way to the door.. hehe They didn''t have it there when we came back the next time. And the newest ones have a built-in keyboard, so i guess the old ones with a keyboard under a lil cutout got trashed because people could still hit the lil ctrl and alt keys if they tried
If you need someone else to look over your ideas as a child would.. let me know, i''ve got the gift!

In speaking of CRPG vs MMORPG.. well, MMORPGs should be based on the need to have a party of various skilled individuals. It''s life. However, you shouldn''t be so bad as D&D, where having one of all types means you''ve got the perfect party It should be more like two of each type.. hehe Honestly, the more people you force together.. the better. And having a good guild system works well, too. By guild system i''m meaning player-run guilds. They promote the collusion of the individual professions under one roof for a common good. The guilding system i''ve worked on with my girl is very very well done and so should yours. hehe.
In a CRPG of only one character, there HAS to be a solution specific to the character. But it shouldn''t be too lame. I think it''s best to have a minimum party of like 2 characters. Why? well.. the problem arises that the story is STILL the same regardless of which character you''re playing. You simply have a side-plot or sub-plot that''s different. To me, the whole STORY should be different for the different characters. Same ending (Landfish, don''t flame ;p ). Same start, same end.. totally different middle. THAT is a true game worth replaying with all types! Some elements should be same, but honestly.. would a theif do HALF the same things as a fighter would? then why does the game have each character do 90% of the same thing?!?! The game should truely adapt to whatever skills/stats the player has.. that''s a really good game, and that''s using the AI we''re trying to figure out in the "Incredible AI" thread.. hehe I honestly now believe this might be possible. WHEE!

J

Okay, a lot of good things are being said in this thread, but unfortunately I have very little time today .
I''d just like to quickly pick up on this, since it kindof expresses the basic idea of my entire line of thought.

quote: Original post by Maitrek

Okay - just thinking about this. It''s almost always impossible to stop players power-playing, and trying to get the best combination of skills, this is a big problem with MMORPGs. So I''ll just try to quickly address that problem.

You''ve nailed the problem down here, Maitrek. Do you realise?
"Trying to get the best combination of skills.". This implies there IS a best combination of skills. What if there isn''t? If the game contains situations that you CANNOT avoid, where you''d need two, very opposed skills.
What if it were impossible to be both a good mage and a good fighter? (For an admittedly weak example, look at ADnD 2ndED, where a mage can never cast spells when dressed in half-decent armor. )


Another thing I''d like to touch is abstraction.
The skill-tree looks promising, because it''s very direct. But I think the same thing is it''s downfall. It is not abstract enough, so you need HUGE trees to satisfy the constraints we''d like to see. I think a combination is best - some stats (highest level of abstraction), some knowledge (second level of abstraction), and some more generic skills/skill trees (least abstract level).
By combining these, you might get a system that balances clarity and ease of use.


Give me one more medicated peaceful moment..
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important functions will be disabled from now on.

MadKeith:

Okay - I note that your point about making sure people can''t cross two opposing skills. That way we can get more people to make sure they ROLE play, not POWER play.

However I am sure that I disagree with your point about a skill tree not being abstract enough. I think that perhaps, you could meet half way between. You could have a tree where you have varying levels within a skill. Ie - a stat for the skill (a level of mastery) and no - I wouldn''t give it a number. I''d probably just put Mastery, Novice, blah blah. I still don''t like numbers.

I got it! I got it! I got it!

Powerplaying,
People don''t natually powerplay in order to be the best they simply want to get the most out of the game. It makes sence--- you buy a game and you want to get your monies worth, simple--- Our product really aren''t that different from an iceblock, sofa etc. its just a really complicated chew chew bar.I thought that was quite funny :-) I crack me up.

We are actually leading the consumer up the garden path when we react to these acusations of powerplaying and try to stop it. They are not powerplaying until we teach them how or make a game that promotes it. Take any FPS, most people will play the game until they''ve explored everything you can do in it THEN go online to explore more, yes?

- Children of the night, the sun shall rise! Oh yes, It shall!! -

Keith, I''m interested in seeing what you have to say when you''ve got more time! However.. let me nitpick you now so you''ve got more to do later.. hehe

I don''t see how you could not have some "best combination" of skills. Even if it''s simply the best skills for all types of characters and each one has a different "best combo". No matter what, certain things will work well together. For a fighter, it''s offense and defense. For a mage, magic and defense. Two categories of skills will always work well together.. it''s a fact of life You can''t make it so that no two are better than the any other two, or you might as well take away professions in the game, because certainly a fighter has nothing to aspire to if their combat skills are no better than their magic skills I mean, at that point you literally have created a classless game But how do you get around things like offense and defense is better than offense and magic? i mean, certainly some defense is better than all offense? how would you explain anomalies like these?

Please explain the abstraction in more detail and how you classify stats as totally abstract and knowledge as middle and skills as least. I don''t see exactly what ya mean here. I mean, how do you define knowledge? knowledge as i see it is the level of your skills. So having skills implies having knowledge So.. enlighten me here.

Paul, once again you amaze me with your child-like, wide, gleaming-eyed approach to your novel ideas LOL. you seem so amazed that things like that could happen, yet.. you''re the one that thought them up Well.. to touch on that a bit. If we could make a game which allows people to experience all the wonders of them game, then they would stop powermaxing. The only way to do that is to limit levels. Either hard limit them or soft limit them. I personally believe in hard limits in this case. Why? because i don''t like the idea of attrition, and that''s what''s needed for soft limits. I mean, how fair is it that someone always on can gain things above and beyond those never on? Are you going to do checks to see how long people have been signed off? and have attrition work only for three hours after they''ve logged off? Or does attrition only work while they''re logged on but not doing anything? Does that then not take away from people who socialize and don''t skill all the time?
In life, attrition is real, but it works in a way where you never notice it. It''s so slow. Three months from now you might think "wow, i''m getting a bit fat" etc etc. This is because attrition when you''re at normal levels is very very slow. Attrition at higher levels is much faster. Someone who has a lot of muscle mass will lose it much faster than someone who doesn''t. now, they might keep it for a good ammount of time, but still.. it''ll go away if they don''t work it. In short, this is a very big can of worms
What i propose to do instead is have the hard limit. X number of levels max. You can take two weeks to get there or you can take 2 months, doesn''t matter. And then those who''ve powermaxed have gained no advantage over anyone else. There''s no real reason to powermax unless the player sees one. This way there''s no competition between those who powermax and those who don''t. It''s all at your own pace, and eventually you''re all even again. so why does it matter? The most social game I ever played had the AD&D system in it where you could only get 12 levels max. The problem was in the balancing of maxxed players. A maxxed out human dual class was almost always the best. And for Player Vs Player, a cleric/mage was the best. For adventuring, there was the Ranger/Mage and Paladin/Mage. It was a world of humans. Which is rather neat if you think about it.. but it had no real variation. All people should be able to dual class in this kinda game.. or at least be as good as a dual classed character.
The other best game had a signed word for levels.. 32,767 max levels. Although once you got over around 50 you could do almost anything solo, and once you were over 100 you could for sure. Beyond that, the levels were only good in PvP situations.

Well.. i can''t wait to here some comments on this. Could it be we''ve actually tried to give the player TOO MANY options and TOO MANY levels?

J