hinch
13-08-04, 12:33
*NOTE THIS ARTICLE WASNT POSTED BY ME BUT I THOUGHT SOME OF YOU MAY FIND IT INTERESTING*
A long long time ago, on a forum far far away, I started a topic, on BioWare's Neverwinter Nights forums. It was asking for other's opinions on a tradeskill system I would develop for a persistent world I was developing. The project fell through; but from reading other's replies, I came out with some interesting insights for how to design an RPG system of improving your character. In this editorial I'll give a brief summary of different character-building systems, and share my views with you.
First of all, it is important to establish what an RPG actually means. It's an acronym, meaning role-playing game. At its core, a role-playing game is where you 'become' something else, pretending to be it. In most RPGs, you become your character, you pretend you are it, you act as though you were your character, and to all intents and purposes, you are your character. This is what I would call the fundamental aspect of an RPG game – you take the role of someone (or something) else, and you become it.
But there is more to an RPG than simply pretending to be someone else. In an RPG, you typically have an ability system, a computer-defined alternate system of what we have in real life. There are a number of ways to devise a skill system. There are two major ones, however, and it is these two (and derivatives) that I will mainly focus on.
The Class/Level System
The class/level system is what you use every time you play a Dungeons & Dragons game (such as Neverwinter Nights), EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot. When you create a character, you choose a specialisation, or 'class', to become proficient in.
After you've chosen your class, the system is quite inflexible, as there are only limited ways to become proficient in abilities outside of your class (for example, if you created a warrior character, you may not be allowed to use magic spells). This system works by getting experience points for various actions taken (such as killing an enemy), and when a certain level of experience is reached, points can be placed into different skills, allowing for an improvement in that skill. For example; if my warrior character reached level 5, I may have the option to put a skill point into longsword wielding, which would hypothetically improve the damage I would cause if I hit an enemy with my longsword.
The flaws with this system are obvious – why can I only improve my skills in stages? While some things in real life you may suddenly understand and be able to use where before you were not able to, the vast majority of skills are learnt in a gradual process. You use it – you get better. Another obvious flaw is that once you have chosen your character's specialisation, for example a wizard or a shaman, there is little or no chance to learn a skill outside of the chosen class. In real life, people have hobbies. For many of our readers, this is probably playing games, and this may not related to your day job in any way; but, just because it isn't related to your profession, does not mean you can't play it.
The first flaw normally leads on to the 'level grind', however it is not the only cause of it. At low levels, due to the lack of skill points earned, the player's character does not have the ability to take part in combat more advanced than basic enemies such as rats, goblins or simplistic enemies. This gets old, fast. I turn to the words of Brendan O'Brien1:
The eye-opener for me was a couple of years ago, while I was trying to introduce my wife to Dark Age of Camelot. I walked her through the character creation, taught her some of the basic controls, and sent her off into the world (with me looking over her shoulder). After spending about 15 minutes killing the snakes and rats around the starting area, she was already getting fairly bored. "What next?" she asked. Well, I tried to explain that she was really too weak to go anywhere yet, not to mention too poor to buy anything at the shops in town. I did my best to convince her that this was standard practice to get players to spend time learning and developing characters. I understood that it really wasn't fun at all yet, but that it would get a lot better at higher levels...
As I explained it all to her, I really began to listen to exactly what I was saying. It became very clear that she would have no interest wasting weeks or months of playing a weak, boring character, just to get to the more enjoyable portions of the game. I think those of us who grew up playing in these environments tend to lose sight of how this actually looks to a newcomer. We do our best to power through to beginning stages, because we both expect to be required to so and know that it really will get better eventually. However, when confronted by the wife asking a simple question "Why?", I couldn't come up with a reason that even made sense to me. "That's just the way it is with these games", wasn't about to get her excited about playing again.
The Skill System
The skill system of character improvement is much simpler – you use it, you improve. In the few MMORPGs which use this system (such as Ultima Online and Wish), your chance of succeeding in an activity is related to your skill in that activity – so its much harder to do well in a skill you are unfamiliar with, just as it is in real life. This system is much more realistic than the class/level system; but that does not make it more fun. A common problem with this system is that without enhancements, it becomes boring to repeatedly use a skill over and over again (a key reason why concerns over macroing – using an automation system of some kind to repeat an action – are being raised about Wish). Playing games is a form of escapism – no one plays them to repeat the tedium of real life (apart from possibly players of The Sims Online; but I digress).
However, I prefer this system more to the class/level system – and that is because you aren't fixed in your path after choosing your character. Why should my warrior not begin to learn healing magic? Is there an in-character, roleplaying reason for this? Some game systems allow you to 'dual-class', to quote the Dungeons & Dragons term, allowing you to specialise in two classes, such as mage and thief, but this still doesn't allow the flexibility I would like.
The Ideal Character Improvement System
Even though my description of the class/level system is mainly negative, it has the aspect I appreciate the most out of all the various permutations of character advancement systems. It takes into account that you are not playing your character all of the time – and it does this by allowing you to gain experience points in an activity, and then spend the skill points earned after levelling up not solely on the abilities you have used while levelling up. To quote Syrsuro's description of the D&D levelling system, from BioWare's forums2:
And no, you DON'T need to [practice] combat in the game to get better at it. You just need to get experience by any means. The same is true for any other ability or skill in D&D. Does your rogue make sure he picks a few pockets every level or can he just kill stuff and advance a level and put the points into PickPocket? Etc. It is an abstract system based on the assumption that there is equal time 'off camera' when the player handles the tedium of day to day living and among that tedium is actual training with the blade and mastering of smithing.
I think a system including this would make a powerful addition to the skills-based character improvement system which, to me, allows for greater character development, not only in your chosen profession, but one which lets you define your own character, more so than the static class choice you can only make at character creation.
The advancement systems we have at the moment need to allow for players who do not spend all of their time in game, endlessly killing goblins or hitting a tree with an axe to gain a small skill or experience point increase. We are roleplaying our character – but this does not mean he is only alive when we are in game. In the time we are offline, our character would be (at the very least) training. A system where you could select activities to be done while offline, such as "improve sword technique", "chop wood", or "go long-distance running", and a slight skill increase in the activities, proportional to the time you spent offline, would be ideal for players of MMORPGs who don't have the time commitment to spend hours in game training their characters up. Of course, choosing your character to learn offline skills would not be as fast as using them in game.
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts for the development of a skill system which is not only designed for those who spend hours at a time playing MMORPGs, but for those who play them causally, to enable all players to have fun without the endless grind of current MMORPGs. Of course, none of my suggestions are intended as a replacement for a content-filled MMORPG which develops your skills without you even noticing, through quests or otherwise!
1. Cited from the MUD-Dev mailing list.
2. Cited from the BioWare forums.
*NOTE THIS ARTICLE WASNT POSTED BY ME BUT I THOUGHT SOME OF YOU MAY FIND IT INTERESTING*
A long long time ago, on a forum far far away, I started a topic, on BioWare's Neverwinter Nights forums. It was asking for other's opinions on a tradeskill system I would develop for a persistent world I was developing. The project fell through; but from reading other's replies, I came out with some interesting insights for how to design an RPG system of improving your character. In this editorial I'll give a brief summary of different character-building systems, and share my views with you.
First of all, it is important to establish what an RPG actually means. It's an acronym, meaning role-playing game. At its core, a role-playing game is where you 'become' something else, pretending to be it. In most RPGs, you become your character, you pretend you are it, you act as though you were your character, and to all intents and purposes, you are your character. This is what I would call the fundamental aspect of an RPG game – you take the role of someone (or something) else, and you become it.
But there is more to an RPG than simply pretending to be someone else. In an RPG, you typically have an ability system, a computer-defined alternate system of what we have in real life. There are a number of ways to devise a skill system. There are two major ones, however, and it is these two (and derivatives) that I will mainly focus on.
The Class/Level System
The class/level system is what you use every time you play a Dungeons & Dragons game (such as Neverwinter Nights), EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot. When you create a character, you choose a specialisation, or 'class', to become proficient in.
After you've chosen your class, the system is quite inflexible, as there are only limited ways to become proficient in abilities outside of your class (for example, if you created a warrior character, you may not be allowed to use magic spells). This system works by getting experience points for various actions taken (such as killing an enemy), and when a certain level of experience is reached, points can be placed into different skills, allowing for an improvement in that skill. For example; if my warrior character reached level 5, I may have the option to put a skill point into longsword wielding, which would hypothetically improve the damage I would cause if I hit an enemy with my longsword.
The flaws with this system are obvious – why can I only improve my skills in stages? While some things in real life you may suddenly understand and be able to use where before you were not able to, the vast majority of skills are learnt in a gradual process. You use it – you get better. Another obvious flaw is that once you have chosen your character's specialisation, for example a wizard or a shaman, there is little or no chance to learn a skill outside of the chosen class. In real life, people have hobbies. For many of our readers, this is probably playing games, and this may not related to your day job in any way; but, just because it isn't related to your profession, does not mean you can't play it.
The first flaw normally leads on to the 'level grind', however it is not the only cause of it. At low levels, due to the lack of skill points earned, the player's character does not have the ability to take part in combat more advanced than basic enemies such as rats, goblins or simplistic enemies. This gets old, fast. I turn to the words of Brendan O'Brien1:
The eye-opener for me was a couple of years ago, while I was trying to introduce my wife to Dark Age of Camelot. I walked her through the character creation, taught her some of the basic controls, and sent her off into the world (with me looking over her shoulder). After spending about 15 minutes killing the snakes and rats around the starting area, she was already getting fairly bored. "What next?" she asked. Well, I tried to explain that she was really too weak to go anywhere yet, not to mention too poor to buy anything at the shops in town. I did my best to convince her that this was standard practice to get players to spend time learning and developing characters. I understood that it really wasn't fun at all yet, but that it would get a lot better at higher levels...
As I explained it all to her, I really began to listen to exactly what I was saying. It became very clear that she would have no interest wasting weeks or months of playing a weak, boring character, just to get to the more enjoyable portions of the game. I think those of us who grew up playing in these environments tend to lose sight of how this actually looks to a newcomer. We do our best to power through to beginning stages, because we both expect to be required to so and know that it really will get better eventually. However, when confronted by the wife asking a simple question "Why?", I couldn't come up with a reason that even made sense to me. "That's just the way it is with these games", wasn't about to get her excited about playing again.
The Skill System
The skill system of character improvement is much simpler – you use it, you improve. In the few MMORPGs which use this system (such as Ultima Online and Wish), your chance of succeeding in an activity is related to your skill in that activity – so its much harder to do well in a skill you are unfamiliar with, just as it is in real life. This system is much more realistic than the class/level system; but that does not make it more fun. A common problem with this system is that without enhancements, it becomes boring to repeatedly use a skill over and over again (a key reason why concerns over macroing – using an automation system of some kind to repeat an action – are being raised about Wish). Playing games is a form of escapism – no one plays them to repeat the tedium of real life (apart from possibly players of The Sims Online; but I digress).
However, I prefer this system more to the class/level system – and that is because you aren't fixed in your path after choosing your character. Why should my warrior not begin to learn healing magic? Is there an in-character, roleplaying reason for this? Some game systems allow you to 'dual-class', to quote the Dungeons & Dragons term, allowing you to specialise in two classes, such as mage and thief, but this still doesn't allow the flexibility I would like.
The Ideal Character Improvement System
Even though my description of the class/level system is mainly negative, it has the aspect I appreciate the most out of all the various permutations of character advancement systems. It takes into account that you are not playing your character all of the time – and it does this by allowing you to gain experience points in an activity, and then spend the skill points earned after levelling up not solely on the abilities you have used while levelling up. To quote Syrsuro's description of the D&D levelling system, from BioWare's forums2:
And no, you DON'T need to [practice] combat in the game to get better at it. You just need to get experience by any means. The same is true for any other ability or skill in D&D. Does your rogue make sure he picks a few pockets every level or can he just kill stuff and advance a level and put the points into PickPocket? Etc. It is an abstract system based on the assumption that there is equal time 'off camera' when the player handles the tedium of day to day living and among that tedium is actual training with the blade and mastering of smithing.
I think a system including this would make a powerful addition to the skills-based character improvement system which, to me, allows for greater character development, not only in your chosen profession, but one which lets you define your own character, more so than the static class choice you can only make at character creation.
The advancement systems we have at the moment need to allow for players who do not spend all of their time in game, endlessly killing goblins or hitting a tree with an axe to gain a small skill or experience point increase. We are roleplaying our character – but this does not mean he is only alive when we are in game. In the time we are offline, our character would be (at the very least) training. A system where you could select activities to be done while offline, such as "improve sword technique", "chop wood", or "go long-distance running", and a slight skill increase in the activities, proportional to the time you spent offline, would be ideal for players of MMORPGs who don't have the time commitment to spend hours in game training their characters up. Of course, choosing your character to learn offline skills would not be as fast as using them in game.
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts for the development of a skill system which is not only designed for those who spend hours at a time playing MMORPGs, but for those who play them causally, to enable all players to have fun without the endless grind of current MMORPGs. Of course, none of my suggestions are intended as a replacement for a content-filled MMORPG which develops your skills without you even noticing, through quests or otherwise!
1. Cited from the MUD-Dev mailing list.
2. Cited from the BioWare forums.
*NOTE THIS ARTICLE WASNT POSTED BY ME BUT I THOUGHT SOME OF YOU MAY FIND IT INTERESTING*