Has anyone played System Shock 1? Although it''s not really an RPG, it has something similar. You could choose the difficulty level for several parts of the game: combat, puzzles, virtual reality, story(not really difficulty)...
This way each player could play as he liked. A doom fan could have disabled story and puzzles and ran through killing everything he saw.
On the other hand you could disable battles and only play for story and puzzles.
I think it was quite a useful function. When I played it the first time I enabled everything, but some years later I played again without battles, because I wanted to see the story again, before I played part 2.

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There are poeple who like nothing more then to kill 10,000 enimies through the course of the game and see the story and other aspects as just a side note.

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I don't think that's true. It's not because they like killing, but there is a reason behind that. Those people don't like killing 10,000 enemies. They do so because they want to have uber characters. They want to know what happens if the character reaches level 99. They want to have a character that can cast all spells and wield any weapons. They want to have a perfect character who has the most powerful weapons and spells. They want to reveal every single secret that your game has. Then what's the purpose of releasing the strategy guide?

If people find your game entertaining, they want to know all about your game, including hidden rooms or special items. Even if it requires them to kill 10,000 dragons. Once they do that, they will feel complete, so that they can sell back your game with a happy face.

There are people who don't care with secrets. Most of the time, these are the people who are not really interested playing your game. They play it just because they want to see the ending, the story. They don't care whether they have Double-Axis-Dragon-Slayer blade or not.

It's not because of the battles.

[edited by - alnite on September 17, 2003 6:11:31 PM]

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Original post by Odd the Hermit
since a player would not be levelling up sufficiently to survive the key battles, and thus you end up punishing the players whom you''re trying to help.

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Then don''t use levels at all. Like PaulCesar said, use another form of character building. If you make battle optional, and character building depends on battles, then your game just plain sucks.

A thought occured to me and thats the subject of mode specific secerts. I''m not really sure if there should be any of these or not. On handed they provide benifits for playing the game in that mode and may encourage people to play the game in the diffrent modes. But on the other hand completionist might feel cheated since they have to play the game in mode that they don''t like in order to get all the games secerts.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

I must admit to being really bored with the battles in the recent FF games... I played through them, experieincing boredom-induced physicsal pain only to experience the story. IMHO these games need a MOVIE mode. Its almost more fun to watch someone ELSE play...

The Baldurs Gate games were more interesting because you didn''t just talk/fight/expereince cut screens when you click on people; you can beg, borrow, steal, put mind-bending spells on them etc. There was just "more to do" and more ways to do it in these games.

Morrowind was a little more exciting during repetitive battles. Maybe thats just my internal Quake3 fanatic talking...

Any game with a great story or humor needs a mode where you can just sit back and watch. Final Fantasy and the adventure games Monkey Island and Grim Fandango (they don''t have repetitive combat just boring puzzles, but same concept) are my chief examples. These developers didn''t make good games, they made good linear storys that made us play mediocre games in order to experience them.

-Steven Rokiski

For me, breaking point in FF games came in FFX when I realised that the BlitzBall mini-game, while fairly tedious in itself, was more interesting than the battles - particularly since I realised early that the optimum approach to battles is to switch all you characters in before the winning blow so everyone levels up as fast as possible (yeah, you take some extra hits this way, but it''s never far from a save sphere, and you get tougher fast enough to be worth the damage)

I don''t advocate removing combat entirely - the Kingdom Hearts system is much better...

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Original post by TechnoGoth
A thought occured to me and thats the subject of mode specific secerts. I''m not really sure if there should be any of these or not. On handed they provide benifits for playing the game in that mode and may encourage people to play the game in the diffrent modes. But on the other hand completionist might feel cheated since they have to play the game in mode that they don''t like in order to get all the games secerts.

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[opinion]I''d say put in mode-specific secrets, but only in one direction--thus, someone playing in normal can access some stuff that isn''t in the No/KeyOnly Battle modes, while someone playing in the "Hurt me, hurt me" mode can access all of the secrets in Normal, as well as some new ones. Thus, there''s a reward (incentive) for the player to attempt the more challenging modes. People playing on the story-only mode are already taking the "easy" route, and thus don''t need any extra rewards. [/opinion]

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Oringinal post by alnite

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Oringinal post by Odd the Hermit
since a player would not be levelling up sufficiently to survive the key battles, and thus you end up punishing the players whom you''re trying to help.

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Then don''t use levels at all. Like PaulCesar said, use another form of character building. If you make battle optional, and character building depends on battles, then your game just plain sucks.

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Um, read my posts again. When I was talking about Key-Battle-Only mode, I advocated automagically making players appropriately levelled for the key battles. The section you quoted was from my pointing out that "No Encounter" items/abilities are insufficient for what we''re talking about, precisely because they prevent the player from levelling up appropriately for the key battles.

I have never (in this thread or elsewhere) advocated making battles optional while requiring them for character advancement.

-Odd the Hermit

Why not simply NOT relying on battle to create a challenge to the player ?


-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

I have thought about this a lot (for the game I''m designing, which is somewhat similar to TechnoGoth''s) and my conclusion (not saying it is the best choice) was that there should be no modes. Instead everything should be dynamic and dependent on the player''s behaviour.

One of the ideas I considered was to make the game playable to any kind of player by making possible for some things to be turned off (like combat, "manual" travelling, strategic elements etc.) at the start of the game.

A second option was to not make explicit on/off switches but to disguise this as a choice of character class. For example a monk / martial arts specialist would be able to disable most enemies with a simple touch (or even no touch).

The final option I stuck with was to dynamically change the game world based on player behaviour. But this is maybe specific to my game because:
1) there are no random encounters (that is -- enemies never suddenly appear). All monsters and NPCs exist at all times and live their own lives.
2) all living beings have a more complex behaviour model than just combat (how deep the model would be I don''t know yet) so that a presence of a monster would not mean that it would attack you.
3) the player does not have any enemies to fight right from the start. Who become the friends and enemies depends on the player''s actions.

Why did I choose the 3rd option? Because I thought -- nothing is constant in this world so why should it be in my game? A player might make a mistake when choosing a class or game mode. Or just change their mind later. I decided that I want to ALLOW the player to change their mind on how they want to play and at that everything the player does should affect how the game world reacts. This is a fundamental goal I want to achieve when designing my game. Because of this the game also has no character classes and the skill system is based on "practice makes perfect".

(The above is only in my head. I haven''t even got much of a design document. Currently I''m trying to create a prototype [with no combat at all])

I second that opinion Erkki, player''s should be able to change the way they play the game without restarting from the beginning.

Choose your path (good or evil), and your gameplay (rogue or fighter, or wizard...) as you wish. It''s a game, it''s made to entertain you, not annoy you.


-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-