Roleplaying Game Mechanics Rant

[Tam]

This is just a rant I need to get out to like minded people…or anyone who reads this!

I’m an Admin on a text based multi-genre RPG site (sounds geeky as hell when I say that O.o) and obviously I’ve made a few RPGs and help others make theirs. The thing though is I’ve made a simple Freeform Bleach RPG that was easy to do since I knew locations from fact books etc and stuff was easy to organise, since players get approved and then I don’t need to bat an eye lash.

That’s easy to do really easy to do in fact with some time. Though I also run a Star Wars Traditional mod based RPG too, now here is where the rant starts! I didn’t create this game, a pal of mine did before he needed some help and I gladly jumped in with my fanatical Star Wars fanboy attitude. Everything was fine I knew what to do, I knew the setting, I had great ideas for character stories and such. So everything was fine. My pal did a few changes after a site change and I was fine with it UNTIL I decided to look into the Mechanics of the game itself and then things got troublesome.

There’s one thing to have a fun game that plays well, which I hope it does since I mod it, but there’s another when it plays well but the mechanics behind it are so flawed and unbalanced and just plain wrong it hurts a gamer like me. That way you play MyBrute and its fun to watch them play along till someone kills you with a 7 hits in a row with a dagger and they win! It’s just wrong! Unbalanced settings like this infuriate me so much and I hate how I’ve been blind to this injustice to faithful players!

So I’ve taken it upon myself to fix this injustice and to give balance and proper progression that should have been in place from day one. Which brings me to actually thinking of how a game plays, a very large chunk of what we do here but personally I never thought too much into it. Other than click here or shoot that and win woohoo! Simple Mechanics are easy to do but then you think of an RPG mechanic. Levelling up, skills, exclusive skills, power ups, items, currency etc and then things get really mind boggling.

I know have a book 20 pages full of ideas and number crunching to fix a simple Star Wars RPG that I love modding and playing. I’m obsessed with getting things balanced! All things must be balanced now so Non-Force Sensitive’s have some chance against a Force Sensitive even if it is running away and not dying. How many levels should I have? What sort of XP range should there be? What skills do I need? What stuff is missing? What stuff really needs taken out? Why the heck is that here? Why does a Padawan have Force lightning!? So many thoughts and questions to figure out and adjust.

I just wonder how the smeg do the like of Blizzard or other MMORPG makers balance stuff like this out. I can just picture one guy in a cubical with walls lined with pages upon pages of notes and ideas and scribbles or “The game is balanced” written in their own blood. It’s not easy I’ve realised at all, our games are simple so far point click shoot win, SIMPLE!

It’s now clear to me that though we have the skills to make a game, there is still so much to learn that it hurts your blummin mind! I just need to rant this off before thinking of what skills a Kushiban can and cannot have drives me to insanity.

So if you read this far well done have yourself a cookie!

[Ross Drew]

I don't care if everyone hates them, DKs are cool :D and more fun than the other classes...well...on a par with undead mages :D

Nah, I've never seen a perfectly balanced RPG, not one with more than like 3 variables to keep track of.

[Richard Dalziel]

I would say it's fairly unfair to say Blizzard have it "easy".

I've been playing World of Warcraft for several years now and there always has been issues of balance between PvE(Player versus enemy) and PvP content (Player Versus Player) content;. Balancing one aspect can cause in-balance, and specific "buffs" to classes can have synergistic effects on combinations of classes in small player areas (Arenas, 5 man groups) which cause them to be more powerful than other classes which don't benefit much from each other.

The one common trend i have noticed that most of the balancing issues are based around RNG issues, where a game can be pretty much decided by a lucky RNG stun etc. These things are generally the cause for most complaint. There's also an element of some classes requiring much more "skill" to play than others.

Balancing issues will always be there, in my opinion it's not possible to have things 100% balanced. I could rant forever about the balancing issues on WoW (I often have to defend myself being a Death Knight at the moment!) but there's always a counter arguement to everything!

[Tam]

I was only ranting O.o This is alot more responce than I woulda have immagined.

Though I deffinetly will check out those books in the library help me with further projects for sure, that and I wanna eventually get into Game design later ons. Thanks Daniel!

[Daniel Livingstone]

oh and this one...
Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on game design / Andrew Rollings, Ernest Adams.

and there are more books in there too...

[Daniel Livingstone]

From my understanding...

Blizzard know that warriors are weaker in many cases, but they don't care about getting everything *exactly* balanced. Warriors have a particular role to play in groups, so what if they get beat up by hunters and mages? I say this because I can recall that when WoW was launched at first there were huge protests about warriors being weak compared to other classes.
And they still are!
But the game is still fun, right?

Or Bioware/D&D...
Up to D&D 3.5, classes are only very broadly balanced... but Clerics are actually a bit over powered (and in NWN 1 at least they can walk through a lot of the game like a stroll in the park). Why? Cos generally they reckoned that people don't want to play the healer of the party, so they made the healer class more powerful.

Have you looked in the library Tam?
These are just *some* of the books in the library that you might find useful:
Swords & circuitry : a designer's guide to computer role playing games / Neal Halford, Jana Halford
Rules of play : game design fundamentals / Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Game design workshop ; designing, prototyping, and playtesting games - Author FULLERTON, Tracy.
The game design reader : a rules of play anthology / [edited by] Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Game architecture and design / Andrew Rollings, Dave Morris. (Has a section specifically on balance - though the section looks at RTS not RPG)
The computer game design course : principles, practices and techniques for the aspiring game designer / Jim Thompson, Barnaby Berbank-Green, Nic Cusworth
Massively multiplayer game development / edited by Thor Alexander

http://146.191.33.6/TalisPrism/ is your friend!

[Ross Drew]

Theres two major factors to the way Blizzard did it I think:-

1. Trial and error, they are constantly changing it to (apparently) be more balanced based on complaints for fanatical players

2. They haven't go it right. A very decent warrior has NO change against a decent hunter or Mage 5 levels below him, the healing is WAY unbalanced and Horde travel much easier than Alliance.

It just appears to be balanced because when there are enough complaints about something thats unbalanced, they fix it.

[Ross Forshaw]

That's the joys of game development! As programmers it's less of an issue, we set ourselves a goal & then complete it. Whether that goal unbalances the game is not a concern to the programmer. But it is to the designer!

Creating the idea and putting it into practise is very easy. However tweaking it to near perfection(perfection is never reached) is the challenge. You might not notice it but what you've arisen can also be seen in Level-Design. A good example is multiplayer maps. How do you create a level that looks unique in all areas, but doesn't lean to one team.

The same can be seen in multiplayer weapons. How do you create unique weapons that are cool, but have enough advantages & disadvantages, that not one weapon is best in all areas.

You might not realise it, but a vast amount of play-testing is used to make sure gameplay, level-design, AI, etc, is well balanced and flows together.

[ScottDPurdie]

I think Blizzard would test out there ideas in a game environment first either an actual video game or as a rpg book based game among the designers. After all why spend all that time coming with character classes, templates, npcs etc just to implement them in a game and realise they arent as good as there seemed on paper.

I think for any game its good to test out your ideas before you comit time and resources to them only to find out there not fun or broken etc.

Also maybe not every encounter should be balanced if the creator wants more of a challenge for a player. Theres a difference between broken, unbalanced and un-winnable.

[Tam]

Its insane it really is! I'm doing this cause I like it and I'm doing it myself with umptene reference sources for Star Wars and so far its taken me 3 weeks to just get templates ready and a basic format ready (Shoulda been 2 weeks but Infamous really killed sometime there) Atleast with coding its "I need it do to this "*codes it up to make it do this* thats simple thoughts. Its mechanics that stretches the perceived type and do scenario we got so far.

I forget what module does the "Think of a game and write documentation down" but even then thats simple everyone does a side scroller or something or a shooter. Never a full blown RPG with so much to think about it hurts :(

[Kalakian]

Mmm, cookie ... what was the bit before the cookie about? ;)

Blizzard have it easy, they have large teams of people working on things like this and they have, whats it called ... money!

There is so much to games development that just can't be taught within the 4 years at Uni, and I'm glad you've realised this. Now think about the 'balance' for how the degrees work ... we have to teach you more than it is possible to cover ... there are only 24 modules available ... there's got to be some non-games modules ... we've got to cater for a wide range of skills and still give everyone a fair chance ... we've got to deal with the (lack of) ICT support ... argh!

We know how you feel, but we're trying our best to cover as much as possible without overloading you :D