Ranger Sheck's Blog

Continuing from Game Design Principles – Part 1.

Game Design Principles behind Aethora (5 through 9 of 9)

5. Good strategy should mean combining lots of different skills. The appearance of a successful strategy that utilizes only one or two skills is an indicator of imbalance.

Everyone who’s ever played a MMORPG knows that balance is always an ongoing issue. The developers are always making adjustments to classes, abilities, equipment, and so forth. The sheer quantity and variety of factors that are involved make the concept of total balance something that’s impossible to achieve during the design phase. You can get pretty close, but one thing a designer has to remember – you design aspects of the game with certain intended uses, and the balancing you provide is based on those intended uses. When players get ahold of the game and start using things in ways you didn’t intend or anticipate, you’re going to discover new imbalances. It’s a fact, Jack.

So one easy rule of thumb that I’m using here, somewhat specific to Aethora, but in general I think a good strategy: If I notice that a player is gearing up all their characters with the same gear, then I can guess that they think they have found an attack or two that is far superior to other attacks. Sometimes, this strategy is a bad one. Other times, the player could be onto something – there may be an attack that makes a battle much easier to win and other attacks are inferior by comparison.

The overall point is, at least for Aethora, the game is party-based. A good party in any RPG should have some variety. Characters tend to fill different roles, such as melee, magic-user, healer, and so forth; or in common MMORPG-speak: Tanks, DPSers (damage-dealers), Buffers, Healers, Crowd-Controllers, and various other “Support” roles. So, in Aethora, I want to see the good players using a broad mixture of skills in combat.

6. Victory in combat on average should be decided by factors in this pecking order: Good strategy > Higher Skill Levels > Better Equipment

Aethora is a tactical, or strategy RPG. Party-based combat on a map is the core of combat, so I try to spend some time thinking about what makes map-based combat fun and challenging. I like to think of a tactical RPG almost as a game of chess; but instead of simply different move-patterns, the pieces have different offensive and defensive abilities. Since the game at it’s core is still a role-playing game, the whole point is to advance character development; so character skill levels should, of course, make a difference when it comes to combat. The secondary method of character development in an RPG has to do with acquiring better equipment, and clearly a well crafted longsword should outperform a rusty fire poker.

So the goal of this principle is this: good equipment is no substitute for adequate skill levels, and skill levels are no substitute for good strategy. In other words, a player should still have a chance to win a fight in which they are outclassed in terms of equipment and skills, to a certain degree, as long as they employ good strategy. Likewise, if a player has a poor strategy going into a fight, expensive equipment will not save them.

To achieve the “Higher Skill Levels > Better Equipment” part of this principle, there is some real basic math going on. The combat formula uses some weighting to give advantage or disadvantage between attacker and defender skill levels, and then a lesser weighting when comparing attacker’s weapon strength with defender’s armor strength. Making “Good Strategy” the most important factor in combat is a little trickier, and it relies pretty heavily on principle #5.

7. No “punishment” paths in missions (quests). Any path that “burns a bridge” should be roughly equal in benefits to any other path.

Mission-writing has been a primary goal of our development team in the last few months, so I felt it necessary to lay down this particular ground rule. It’s very tempting to create a branching point where a player can chose to do the “right thing” or the “wrong thing”; after all, decision making is part of the challenge of doing quests or missions. So if a player chooses the “right thing”, maybe they get a little more gold in the end, or even a better piece of equipment as a reward; and that makes sense. However, it makes me a little uncomfortable to see a situation in which a player might do the “right thing” and gain access to another mission later on, where the player who picks the “wrong thing” ends up at a dead-end.

Mainly this principle has to do with Aethora being somewhat of a “casual” RPG. I’d hate for a player to become frustrated and quit because they missed out on something when they took the wrong path – especially when the decision was tricky (and often these things are not obvious). Since this is an online game, and not a single-player game, there is no previous saved game to reload when you make a mistake.

So I devised a simple formula for “factors of mission outcome equality”: Chance for another mission = 100; unique piece of equipment = 10; monetary reward = 1

In other words, two branching mission paths that both offer another mission are roughly equal (100 vs 100). Two branching paths in which one offers gold but the other offers equipment are close enough to equal (10 vs 1). Branching paths in which one offers a new mission but the other offers only one piece of equipment are not close enough to equal (100 vs 10). But, if you really want to write two branching paths and let one lead to a new mission and another lead to a bag of unique equipment (like say 8 pieces, or 100 vs 80), then I’m more likely to allow such a choice (as long as the storyline makes sense, of course).

What we end up with is less chances for “right” and “wrong” paths and more paths that are just “different” – and I’ve found that these can be much more interesting. You can see that I’ve made an assumption here that what players want most of all is to do more missions; I think for the majority, that’s part of the fun of the game. Completing a quest or a mission is an accomplishment. Therefore, a chance for another mission outweighs material rewards many times over.

8. The best RPGs incorporate fun and engaging gameplay as well as quality story lines. These are two dimensions on one grid; to cover the maximum amount of area possible, both dimensions need to be stretched.

At this point, I’m going to take a moment and re-iterate that these principles are largely based on my personal opinions when it comes to role-playing games. The first part is easy: if gameplay – and by that, let’s be frank, I’m mostly referring to combat – is weak, then I’m not going to play a game. Combat needs to be interesting, engaging, should not feel overly formulaic, should not be too long and should not be too short. That’s a pretty tall order to live up to, but remember, this is a principle – an ideal – I’m aiming for. I’m not claiming that I’ve reached it 100% with Aethora.

To be honest, if the gameplay of a particular CRPG is pretty good but the storyline is inane, there’s still a pretty good chance I will play the game. Let’s face it – storylines in CRPGs for the most part are pretty thin, so players have learned to deal with it. That being said, when I look back on my most memorable experiences with CRPGs, the games that had great storylines stand out the most.

So you see, these two factors can combine to make a great game. However, it’s my opinion that you’ll lose people quicker if gameplay is weak. If gameplay starts out good but becomes tedious later on, you may lose more people that way as well. Ranger Sheck’s inner voice: “If you want people to play the game, you better make the game fun to play.” But, then, I love to write, and I know how memorable a good storyline can be, so with this principle I’m recognizing that good stories are going to help make a mediocre game reach for greatness.

I’m willing to bet some developers (especially browser-based games, where text is easier to work with than graphics) are going to disagree and claim that a good story should carry the most weight. I love a good story! And for that reason, I do a lot of reading. A lot. Even the best storyline in a game cannot come close to a good book, and so when I want a good story, I don’t want to sit in front of my computer screen and read page after page – I’ll sit down with a good book. That’s why it’s my opinion that quality writing can greatly enhance, but not carry, a CRPG.

9. There is a third dimension that is unique to online RPGs: player community and interaction. While more difficult to stretch, this dimension bears much greater potential.

This last principle expands on the previous one, to serve as a reminder of why “online” role-playing games are different than offline CRPGs. Aethora needs a lot of work in this area, because other than buying and selling equipment to other players and some sharing of information through chat and forums, there isn’t much other player interaction. I recognize the fact that having a more interactive community really has a profound effect on the popularity and “stickiness” of an online RPG. Therefore, this principle is here at the bottom, not because it’s the least important, but the one that Aethora needs the most work on.

I have some big plans in this area, and I just need to find some time to work on them: – Player crafting and tradeskills to increase market trading between players. – Contests and tournaments where players can face off against similar groups of NPCs and see who does the best – Player versus player combat (I’m still on the fence about this one, as the nature of a web-based game introduces a lot of potential issues) – The ability for players to own land and populate land with guardians – even to the point at which a player might create an entire “dungeon”, populate it with baddies and treasure and then invite other players to come try their hands at it. My ultimate goal, to put it simply, is to have ways for players to generate content.

Well, that about wraps it up. Comments? Questions?