Intentionally Unbalanced gameplay

[HaemishM]

Alkiera was right. I used the word "Skills" in terms of what the game gives your avatar to improve his power. That is different from player skills, which are wholly dependent on the player, and not the game. The games need to make the latter more important than the former.

Games that allow Random PK's to flourish will NEVER achieve any kind of mass market appeal.

[rscott]

Wonderbrick,
You would probably also say i have a limited vision if i say that baseball games must have bats, bases, pitchers and hitters, and can't have footballs.  I saw no, iIts not a limited vision, its just an implication of calling your game a baseball game.

[WonderBrick]

How important is imagination and immersion to a RPG?  Or storytelling?  Or baseball?

I keep getting the feeling that whenever you refer to RPGs, you are looking at a strict game of baseball.

[rscott]

So is that a yes? That you think a baseball game doesn't need teams, batters or  pitchers?  And that if it it includes footballs or guns thats okay?  Its still baseball?

I'm guessing you would say yes.  

I would say no.  Its 'like baseball', or 'baseball-like'.

[WonderBrick]

I am saying a baseball approach in RPGs represents only a part of what is out there in the RPG genre.  Those baseball-like ruleset RPGs exist, but it is a strict set of rules you are playing.  There is another angle to RPGs that also exists, and that is an open-ended world of storytelling and player-driven imagination.  

On one hand, you have what is very clearly a dictated path(a game not unlike baseball).  And on the other hand, you have an open-ended world, playing more on the imagination aspects.  And all the flavors inbetween.

[rscott]

I figured it was merely a difference in terminology.  But i guessed wrong on which terminology.

I think this may touch a bit on world design.  Do we see the world as a game, or a virtual world simulation, or lastly a sandbox.  Your first description fits the game/world description.  While the latter fits the sandbox idea.  And in the sandbox case I figure the world is created open ended deliberately.  There is no winning/losing, or inherent competition between players.  Its up to the players to make their own play, their own fun, their own personal win/loss conditions...if only for that day.  

But this i see as being tangental to RPG.  A sandbox world isn't necesarily a RPG, though it will allow it.  It will also allow a rough form of  quake.

[WonderBrick]

Quake?  *sigh*

[pxib]

It's the middle of the night and this is all off the top of my thread but HEY, a thread from last year!

Does it work if you let players play the monsters for free, or at a vastly discounted subscription rate? Give them a 2D, bare bones, sprite-based engine... simplified terrain. All humans look the same, all spells look like bolts. Latency and lag suck. Whatever works to drop the bandwidth and development cost. Also, monsters are gimpy and short on abilities.

You log into your MONSTER account, pick a (very generic) monster type,  and it drops you into some location near players, likely already tussling with the AI. You get a few rules about how your monster should act, and a few victory conditions. These are all optional, but you will be rewarded "points" for obeying them. Maybe your goal is to eat a particular sort of herb.. and to run away from humans you see. Maybe your goal is to kill rats, but you get bonus points for giving humans a disease. Whatever.

Monster types would relate to those goals. They would have to either be equally fun, or provide different sorts of necessary "points". We want monsters of whichever sort is required available at all times. The game can even yank monsters away to other tasks as needed by offering their players something shiny.

Now steal a bit from this interesting game in its own right, specifically the setup of "wandering monsters". As they gain points they can either gain skill within one type, allowing them to play a more complex and varied version of a type they like, or they can upgrade to new, more-powerful monsters. Tired of playing wolves and bears? How about zombies and skeletons? Tired of those? Move on to goblins and orcs. If you stick with wolves, however, you get some customization. You get some choice about your appearance and maybe a different sort of name. Slightly advanced abilities or speed or something.  Eventually you're given the opportunity to blow a lot of points and one-time spawn as a "boss" wolf, marauding the countryside causing trouble and killing the weak until you are hunted down. Maybe you get to make some appearance choices and design yourself a name out of poetry magnets: Toothmunch the Scarred. Maybe you get emotes. /howl and /snarl and /sniff... or whatever.

You never know the names or locations of your killers. You never get to choose which server you land on, which part of the world, or exactly what sort of creature you are... but you're penalized a little for ditching your responsibilities and rewarded semi-handsomely for doing them. so play right! It IS a grind and a job, and it is a game, not a world.. but you're not paying that much for it and it's a fun break from whatever you were doing. You die a LOT, and you're weaker than everybody you run into, and maybe there are imaginary walls all around where you're working past which you can't even chase the bastard you nearly killed... but that's what it's like being a monster--



-- and this one time I spawned as a goblin mage named Moldwort Spittle and walked right into town with some other goblins and RULED EVERYONE for like HALF AN HOUR until they brought a WHOLE ARMY down on us. Goblins are awesome.

 

All sorts of flaws, sure... all sorts of potential for abuse... and, as I said in another thread, one of the nice things about PvE is that the monsters never complain on the forums, but the opportunity to play different game in the same world when you're momentarily bored with the game you've got? That sounds fantastic. I wonder if you could keep their linkage secret for long. Open up one slightly before the other, and pretend they're unrelated.

Blahblahblahblahblah. Goodnight.

[Yegolev]

Which got me to wondering, if we want to encourage players to basically be each others content so people don't get bored, could such an unbalanced system be utilized in a mmog setting?  Fer instance, the "heroes" could play the typical first person avatar fighting mobs for loot and glory, and pehaps the "monster side" of the game is closer to a dungeon keeper or a mini RTS where you build lairs and caves, stock with various npc baddies and order minions about trying to raze villages and steal gold and the like.

It would be like two totally seperate game play expeirences, but have good synergy.

I probably should have read some responses before posting, but then I wouldn't be me.

I like this idea a lot.  I was never terribly comfortable with the focus on class equality in a MMOG, particularly since it doesn't mean jack-shit if the players themselves are mismatched in skill.

I implemented this in a short-lived AD&D campaign I ran in a rewrite of the Dark Sun world (halflings and trees were the frst things to go).  It was pretty unbalanced for two main reasons: I made a player the villain, and that player was a fat, bearded, college-grad, PnP'ing falconer that lived with his parents.  His big disadvantage was that he couldn't use the Dark Sun source books due to my rewrite, and I saddled him with some uncooperative minions.  Otherwise, he had an entire ruined city to himself and all of the things that make a lair a home, including dungeons, henchmen and laboratories.  Everyone else started off at dirt-poor level one will-kill-rats-for-food status, while this guy was hard at work trying to figure out how to create the One Ring.  The villain did manage to get killed in a freak accident when confronting an earth priest, but I was cool: I had him rise as a special undead a couple days later.  My lack of ability to run an interesting campaign was the big issue.

[Viin]

Speaking of running lairs, being more RTS like, and being the villain in an MMO:

Grendal's Revenge

Q: What is my role in the story of Grendel's Revenge?

A: You are Grendel's Revenge. As one of his children you must take your place in the world and help drive forth the plague that lies upon Uthgol. You will be a wandering monster who loots and pillages; or a social monster who dwells and builds. You will be a chimera who flies upon the wind; an undead who dwells between life and death; or a humanoid who lives beneath the ground. You will be vampire or ghoul; phoenix or wyvern; kobold or minotaur. You are Grendel's Revenge upon the Uglies, upon all those who would harm him and are not his.


Q: What are the main technical features of Grendel's Revenge?

A: Grendel's Revenge offers a number of highly advanced game systems.

You will get the choice to play one of forty-five monster races. These include twelve social monster races and thirty-three wandering monster races. You will further get to select between five different roles--leader, shaman, builder, warrior, or magical--and over a hundred different special abilities.

Systems of favor and karma allow for multiple routes of advancement for all characters. Atributes or special abilities can be improved, new special abilities can be learned, and wandering monsters may even reincarnate as new, more powerful monster types following death.

A system of fealty allows for clans to be created and for complex structures of leaders and followers to be formed. Various special abilities and locales can offer benefits to entire clans.

A lair-building system provides an RTS-style element, allowing clans to create their own homes; recruit grunts to aid in the building; devise devious traps; and select specific rooms to benefit their clan in different ways.

[tazelbain]

Now if only Skotos had money to put behind some of their interesting ideas.

[Pococurante]

You will get the choice to play one of forty-five monster races. These include twelve social monster races and thirty-three wandering monster races. You will further get to select between five different roles--leader, shaman, builder, warrior, or magical--and over a hundred different special abilities.

The graphics budget is cost-prohibitive even if they're just skinning several base models.  Which when we're talking monsters seems highly unlikely there'd be much opportunity for reuse.

[Viin]

This game is already live and in production. However, I should have noted this is a text based game. There's something to be said for not wasting a lot of money on pretty art and focusing almost exclusively on the gameplay.

[Xilren's Twin]

This game is already live and in production. However, I should have noted this is a text based game. There's something to be said for not wasting a lot of money on pretty art and focusing almost exclusively on the gameplay.

There something to be said for having a game more than 1000 people would actually want to play too.  /rimshot

There are a lot of good ideas in text mud and games, but that's like say their are some great restaraunts ... on the moon.  That nice, but is it actually relevant.  It like comparing pen and paper rpgs to their computerized counterparts.  The medium makes a significant difference. Text based games in this day and age are so self limiting in target audience that I wonder how many of the gameplay "lessons learned" would even apply to a typical 3D graphical mmorpg....

Xilren

[Pococurante]

I hope that's not true.  For budget reasons I'm debating an initial text-only release of the product I have in mind.  I don't see it so much as a cash cow as an expense-offset learning pad.

[Margalis]

One of the biggest problems with MMORPGs is they refuse to follow "show don't tell." So I'm not sure a text game is really a good launching point. A problem with MMORPGs is that many of them are already way too close to a text game with graphics.

I know it sounds nice to say focus on the gameplay, but imagine Super Mario Brothers as an all text game. It just doesn't make any sense. I'd like that to be the same case with MMORPG. If someone says "imagine this as a text game" the only response should be "WTF?"

I am not a whore for the Shiny but graphics and on-screen interactions are a whole new dimension. It doesn't make sense to think of computer/video games as rule-sets with graphics overlayed on top of them. The graphics and the rules are indistinguishable. What does it mean to jump on a Goomba in a text game? Nothing.

That's not to say that games don't have rules. Football has rules, but to play football you need a field and a ball. Same deal.

One of the hard parts of learning from a text game would be that the audience would be so selective it probably wouldn't apply to a larger scope.

[Pococurante]

I agree the "fun" factor can't be pigeonholed like that and text games are intrinsically different than graphical ones.  I see a text game as just shaking down the mechanics that would be in a graphical version.  Crafting etc.

[Viin]

I agree that only certain things can be done in graphics and still other things can only be done in text. However, like Pococurante says, using text is a great way to prototype gameplay and mechanics.

For example, if you are making a YuGiOh MMO, you don't need fancy graphics to test that your card battles work and are fun. The interface can be very important (see the interface on all the latest MMOs: crap) but if the underlying mechanics are bad before you even get to the interface stage, well, you shouldn't have to use a custom interface to fix a broken mechanic.

Text is also very good for things like combat. Yes yes, I know it can't simulate clicking on a target to attack, but it is very good at the numbers part. With very little effort you can prototype all of your classes/abilities/skills, npcs, etc and see how they play and balance against everything else. As a developer, this is a huge boon because you don't have to wait for some UI guy to implement your changes, you can make and test changes to gameplay and mechanics without waiting for anyone else.

Also, I agree medium is a big deal, but at the same time you do not have to limit yourself to one specific medium. I know of at least one effort (and I'm not sure what's happened to it) where a developer was creating a MMO engine that has a universal output that could go into any client you want. IE: if you wanted a text interface, you could easily take the information sent to the client and simply describe the location and/or situation using words. Or, you could take that same information and use it within your 3D engine to generate that same exact scene in a graphical format. Think XML/CSS for MMOs.

Oh and to Xilren's comment, when was the last time you played a game with over 1000 people and you noticed there were 1000 people you knew or cared about? There's nothing wrong with smaller communities and I would argue that these types of games are much more healthy with smaller communities. Being number 42,231 out of 200,000 isn't very exciting. The same concept applies to bars and other hang out joints: you go where you are known. If most of the people playing with you know you/get to know you, you tend to stick around just for the social aspects even if the gameplay is boring. People play tight knit MUDs for 6-10 years.

Anyways .. sorry for the derail!

[Xilren's Twin]

Oh and to Xilren's comment, when was the last time you played a game with over 1000 people and you noticed there were 1000 people you knew or cared about? There's nothing wrong with smaller communities and I would argue that these types of games are much more healthy with smaller communities. Being number 42,231 out of 200,000 isn't very exciting. The same concept applies to bars and other hang out joints: you go where you are known. If most of the people playing with you know you/get to know you, you tend to stick around just for the social aspects even if the gameplay is boring. People play tight knit MUDs for 6-10 years.

Actually, I agree with you on playing with small communities is preferrable the massive ones, but thats not the way my comment was intended.  You could have a small community feel in the largest of games if you structure it right.

But, if you only have 1000 people total playing total, you'd be lucky to have 200 people on a sever at any given point, which would make most games a virtual ghost town unless they are tiny. Not only that, but the self selecting audience is already so niche that the feedback they give would need to be take with a grain of salt; how much of what makes those players happy would translate well to the general gaming public?  Oddly, when I read Brad's take on instancing in that other thread the impression I have of him is he is one of those people who played and like muds thus his first game was simple 3d graphics on a standard mud type, and so will his subsequent game be.  Inherently self selecting for a subset of online game players b/c of those design choices to "stay true to his mud roots". IMHO he has never gotten the critical point that most people dont play muds for a reason thus using muds as your baseline is already proceeding from a set of false assumptions in many areas....

XIlren

[Yegolev]

A game would need to be designed with a small population in mind, be that via smaller world, social magnets, or bottlenecks.  You wouldn't want to play WoW with just 200 other people because you would never see them.  Cut back on some of the areas, though, or give people a reason to spend time in outposts rather than using them as a bus stop, and you will end up meeting some people.  Ideally the game will be designed from the bottom up for a low population.  These will eventually become familiar people if the number of names and faces you have to remember is hard-capped at 150.  You don't want to spend all of your time around people anyway, and I missed the days on Crushridge when I could wander around Silverpine and not see anyone for several minutes.  I think it contributes to the world-feel if you don't have to be surrounded by jackholes all the time.

[Viin]

I agree that there are good things and bad things about a small player base. I guess I'm just saying that there's no reason to throw out the work and development done within the MUD world, as a lot of it does apply to MMOs. Especially when it comes to stuff about player-player interaction, player-GM interaction, quest mechanics and generation, and other things that aren't restricted to a specific media format.

I also think that WoW is one of the first games (that I've played, anyway) that has good the 'big world' thing right. Just because there's a lot of land mass doesn't mean there is a lot of content (see: Asheron's Call). Most of the MUDs I played had a world bigger than even WoW's continents, even with the "content" concentrated in smaller spaces (which means less travelling to find the content and a higher content to world space ratio). (Couple that with the ability to add new areas all the time with minimal effort and you have a game that grows with the population - much like expansions  and the new raiding instances Blizzard has been adding to WoW).

Even with only 200-300 folks on at a time, there were still hubs that people congregated at and usually exploration was done in a party. Once you leave the city/cities you really were all alone in the wilderness.

Ideally, you'd have a game with a large number of people playing (thousands) but also fostered the smaller communities. Guilds/clans somewhat lend to this, but the feeling of being a 'local' is absent from any specific location or crowd.

[Merusk]

I also think that WoW is one of the first games (that I've played, anyway) that has good the 'big world' thing right. Just because there's a lot of land mass doesn't mean there is a lot of content (see: Asheron's Call).

The downside of actualy having a 'big' worth with content is, morns will say your world is too small.  I've seen people bitch about WoW's size, and try to tell me it's a small game.  You can't win.

[Pococurante]

Sometimes I'm a  "morn" to be sure. ;)  But I like huge vast worlds.  More to explore.  That I'm not constantly dodging traffic makes it that much better.  WoW works for me mainly because the zones are fairly unique.  I know some folks don't like a barren Barrens lands or deserted deserts but to me that all makes sense.  But then I live in Texas so overwhelmed with green trees I am not...

[Viin]

I also think that WoW is one of the first games (that I've played, anyway) that has good the 'big world' thing right. Just because there's a lot of land mass doesn't mean there is a lot of content (see: Asheron's Call).

The downside of actualy having a 'big' worth with content is, morns will say your world is too small. I've seen people bitch about WoW's size, and try to tell me it's a small game. You can't win.

You can tell the quality of our typing is just superb! My poor typing skills must be rubbing off.