tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-324805032024-03-13T12:24:07.128-07:00Game TheoremThis is a place to discuss game design concepts. Not the nuts and bolts of programming, but more theoretical concepts.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32480503.post-60712990403991816382008-02-29T09:43:00.001-08:002008-02-29T09:44:10.838-08:00What is Role Playing?<p class="MsoNormal"> Every culture on the face of the earth has games and every generation of humanity its unique forms of entertainment. Our civilization is no different. We have sports games, board games galore, card games, and centuries of gambling games that are still with us. One of the more creative types of games recently developed is the role-playing game, or RPG. RPGs cover every conceivable genre, time period and location. While each of the various games has complicated rules involving how actions are to be performed, the real mainstay of RPGs, specifically the non-computer versions, is the assumption of a role (other than yourself). This is one of the main features of role- playing games, the distinction between player and character. The player is the person and the character is the fictional person in a fictional world.<o:p></o:p><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> To the uninformed, it is very hard to describe a role-playing game. Most people understand games. Games have winners, but the very nature of the role-playing game makes it impossible to win. There cannot be a winner because role-playing games are not a competition. It is not a race that ends with the first to cross the finish line, nor is there points that accumulate to determine the victor when the game ends. It is a game of pretend, of make-believe. The only individuals who could even possibly be considered the winner are the players who play well. The old adage of "It doesn't matter whether or you win or lose, but how you play the game" is the rule of winner determination in role-playing games.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"> In the introduction of every role-playing game is a notice of the impossibility of winners, but there are still those who play the game to win. These are the players who record their successes by the amount of numbers they can rack up on a character sheet. They believe strongly that he who dies with the most toys wins. The other people in the game, whether fellow players or individuals designed and run by the GM, are only the means to an end. Opponents are there to provide experience points and treasure items. They manipulate game mechanics and search for loopholes to make themselves even more powerful. These sad souls are frustrated with the role-players who, they feel, slow the game with wordy explanations of simple game mechanics.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">These "power gamers" play as one might play a board game. They often follow the logic of "Kick in the door, kill the monster, and on to the next door." These gamers do not play any type of role. Their characters have no personality.<span style=""> </span>They just move their characters on the playing board collecting items. They are just waiting until they pass the mythical GO to collect what ever the rules say they should receive. This same mentality assumes that once a goal is reached, one has only to extend a palm face up to receive a reward. These individuals cannot wait to meet the grand vizier, as he is the one to ask for the powerful magic items. Never mind that the situation might not warrant such requests. Unfortunately, these non-role-players believe that every event within a game has some reward associated with it.</p>Sadder still are the gamers who play their characters as they might play themselves should they have access to the fantastic powers and abilities that abound within games. They act as if they were suddenly able to kill with impunity, fling lightning bolts at their enemies, and steal with the skills of a master cat burglar. There is no difference between who they are and who their characters are.<span style=""> </span>Game after game, each of their characters has the same personality regardless of abilities, race, or genre. Rarely do these characters even have names, being called whatever the player's name is! <p class="MsoNormal">Some players view their characters as some third person puppet. They speak as if they were some omnipotent god controlling their characters. "James wants to stand watch first." No one sounds like that. A real person would say, "I'll take the first watch." Good role-players note that real people do not walk into Sears, look at the salesperson and say, "I want to ask the salesperson about buying a lamp." Good role-playing is acting, or trying to act, just as that person would. It is talking as a real person would, even if the person you are interacting with is a lowly merchant who is never dealt with again. The good gamer plays out negotiations with others, speaking just like a person in real life, and such acting is major part of any quality role- playing games.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Role-players, good role-players, understand that the character they create is not a human raised in the modern world. It is someone else, someone who has had different social factors to shape their psychological makeup. It is very difficult to imagine how one might behave if one had centuries to live, could smell gold, or was raised in the lap of fourteenth century luxury. Therein lies the true test of a good role-player and the reason for participating in the role-playing game instead of playing chess. Role-playing is akin to improvisational acting. It is about people becoming someone other than themselves, but with no script, just motivational cues. It is becoming people who have had different factors shaping their lives, affecting their social views and their outlook on life in general.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Like a good writer, the true goal of a quality role-player is to create the feel that characters are more than scraps of paper with a series of numbers upon them. We've all seen those great role players who worked to avoid the use of game mechanic terms. Even the players who enjoy number crunching often take notice of players who worked hard to find real life expressions to state mechanical terms. "I have 1 hit point left," became, "I've been severely wounded, but I'll live". "Faster than a speeding bullet," may be a fine way to describe a superhero, but not a fantasy character in a world that has yet to develop gunpowder. This is the heart and soul of the role-playing. This is the reason for the game, not the how high you can rack up statistics.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The best role-players work to make their characters seem alive. After a gaming session, you get the feeling somebody else was in the room with you. They seem like another person entirely. It is like some otherworldly presence that invades the room during your gaming session. You may walk away angry that your dark lord was turned in by the player running the chivalrous knight, but you should respect when the knight refuses to take part in an adventure because the line between right and wrong was unclear. He has sacrificed for the sake of the role, which is the name of the game.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32480503.post-10385381472622529062008-01-15T10:20:00.000-08:002008-01-15T10:30:26.726-08:00Core Combat Attributes<span style="font-family: arial;"> Buried deep within every game system, whether paper & pencil, console, or MMORPG is the engine that drives combat. Hardcore mathematicians spend countless hours discussion these core mechanics. Testers spend even more time helping to perfect the exact details and values of the base line numbers. But, when you strip away all the superfluous additions, addendums, discussion, and even testing, what remains are 4 core concepts; Avoidance, Mitigation, Chance, Damage. While their names are subject to the whims of game designers, these four fundamental attributes form the utmost basis of good game design. Each one is juxtaposed by another, and it takes a great deal of work to have all four in perfect balance.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br />In any given combat, it all starts with an act . . . something, somebody desires to do. Whether that somebody is a computer controlled object or a player, all combat starts something initiating a combat maneuver. Regardless of the genre, game system, graphics, professions or any other details, every single game uses something to represent a degree of success in that act. For lack of a better term, that is the Chance. Depending on the game mechanics, this could involve hundreds of variables, but when all is said and done, a random number generator fires off and the result checked against that Chance.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br />Avoidance is the counter to Chance and is perhaps the easiest to understand. Like all four attributes, numerous mathematical computations can take into account the ability of the object (object being any given person or entity within a game) to deflect, dodge, duck, parry, weave, jump, and other such verbiage to describe an objects desire to just not be hit. Depending on the desire of the core team, this could represent either a reduction in the chance to hit, or even another randomized chance representing a complete negation in the successfully determined hit.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">After determining if a combat action has indeed connected with its target, how much damage the initiator inflicts on the target must be calculated. Damage is the simplest of the four. It is the raw amount of damage being inflicted and can be affected by several factions including, but not limited to skill, weapon type, weapon size, weapon construction, training, hit location, or any thing game designers can imagine. Here to, a balance must be achieved in determining the overall damage by taking into account the rate of damage attempts versus the potential value range. Large possible damage values have a lower frequency rates. The massive, but slow two handed sword as apposed to the small but quick dagger.<br /><br /> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Having determined if the combat action succeeds and how much potential damage is, the last stage is to determine the amount, if any, of mitigation occurs. This fourth statistic reduces to incoming damage to reflect the ability of the target to absorb the incoming blow rather than deflecting it. Mitigation is to Damage what Avoidance is to Chance to hit. Some games use a general damage allocation system and bundle Avoidance and Mitigation in a single statistic. Some even adjust the mitigation factor by damage type to achieve combat harmony. In game design, good game design, the lower the Mitigation the higher the Avoidance.<br /><br /> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">In any given game system, there are far more factors that those listed above; however, these attributes form the core of the mathematical combat engine. Balancing these attributes is among the hardest to perfect and consume large amounts of test and design time. If not perfectly in tune, a game system can collapse. In practice, perfection is never fully achieved, but it is a goal the designers strive for nonetheless.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32480503.post-1155868117087517882006-08-17T19:27:00.000-07:002006-08-17T19:28:54.090-07:00Game Balance<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There is already a great deal written about game balance, such as how to achieve it, its importance, and even the pitfalls in dealing with it. Game balance is one of the most difficult areas of game design. Both paper & pencil and on-line multiplayer games need to ensure that each class or profession is balanced. This is vital to the overall health of a game and while it may be an impossible goal, it is a goal the designer must strive for nonetheless.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Game balance imperfections do not often show up during theoretical discussions or even during internal testing. Games are often pushed into a live environment with flaws that make a class out of balance with the others. With the dynamic nature of MMORPGs, changes can be made and pushed live as a patch. When such a change occurs and a given class is reduced in ability to bring it in line to other classes, the term used is "</span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerf_%28computer_gaming%29">nerf</a><span style="font-family: arial;">".</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">While the hard-core role-players might pick their class based on a preconceived idea and not on the over/under powered nature of a given class, the out of balance nature of a class cannot be ignored. When these nerfs appear, players affected cry and whine in frustration demanding to understand why the change occurred, and more importantly, why even bother with game balance. A select few even try to argue that their out of balance character really wasn't and instead of reducing the ability of the out of balance class, the other classes should be raised to compensate. So a class was more powerful than one or more classes (or all of them), what is the harm in that?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">At its most fundamental level, when one class possesses the ability to outstrip other classes in terms of advancement potential players will flock to that class. The other classes cease to serve a purpose. To look at it another way, you have 2 very distinct and different classes, each with a different set of abilities. A third class can do both just as effectively, why would anybody run the other two. In order to balance the "draw" of the third class, its ability to mimic the other 2 classes need to be reduced. Yes, this third class can do both, but at the expense of the other specialized professions. Raising the ability of the two specialized classes can set a bad precedent. It encourages even more whining by the player community and serves to increase the overall power level of the game, requiring even more powerful opponents, something already a problem in long term games as an aspect of </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation">mudflation</a><span style="font-family: arial;">.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">When a game possesses a player versus player combat option, the need for class balance is even more pronounced. There has to a check and balance. Each class should have something it can defeat and something it cannot – someother class must do that.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32480503.post-1155518888898428752006-08-13T18:26:00.000-07:002007-01-15T08:53:13.140-08:00Developer Arrogance<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">There is no other profession that offers the same exhilaration as game designer, especially MMORPG designer. Your thoughts and dreams become seen and experienced by thousands if not millions of players. In some ways, it is similar to the script/screen writer or even the director of a movie, but where the movie patron is passive in the experience, the gamer is interacting with your vision. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Under these conditions, it is little wonder that game designers often develop a horrible condition known as “developer arrogance”. This disgusting malady drives away paying customers and frustrates those that remain. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">What is Developer Arrogance? Well, it is a condition where a designer stops having any type of internal or self-criticism for their own work. It is the belief that their work, no matter how bad, no matter how foul, is the best in the world. Those suffering from this condition believe, quite strongly, that their creations, theorems, algorithms, and concepts are beyond inspection. They have stopped creating imaginative designs and no longer think about what they are creating because they firmly believe that all that spews forth from their mind is perfect, beyond belief, and awe-inspiring. Worse yet, the long time sufferer of this infection starts to have a low opinion of the paying customer and the scum who have the audacity to criticize their work. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So many games have been corrupted, if not destroyed, by Developer Arrogance. Games loaded with poorly thought out ideas because the lead designer never paused for a moment and thought things through. His arrogance blinded his viewpoint. Instead of good concepts, we get junk. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Perhaps the best example of Developer Arrogance run amok is Star Wars Galaxies. It’s a shame that I have to keep beating on the same MMORPG for bad examples, but SWG is loaded with so many choices made out of arrogance, it's hard not to. In SWG, before saner heads prevailed, the lead designer’s planned path to opening up a special option of a Jedi character was starting, mastering, and then abandoning several professions in the hopes of discovering the six randomly selected professions. It was arrogantly thought that the professions were so well designed, so wonderful to behold, that players would be unable to contain themselves from wanting to experience the width and breadth of the various professions that a Jedi would emerge in only a mere three months. Developer Arrogance at its finest.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In a worse case scenario, you would have to start, completely master, and then abandon 144 professions (the 24 professions 6 times). When 6 months came and went with no unlocking a Jedi appeared, players became to complain that such a thing was never really part of the game, it was nothing more than a trick to entice players. To offset this bad press, designers introduced ways to speed up the process. Through the use of special devices in game, players could discover 5 of the 6, but they would still have to cycle through every profession until they discovered the last random one. More details regarding this can be found found <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Galaxies#The_Jedi_in_SWG">here</a>.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Game designers, especially lead designers, should remember some ideas, even theirs, are not ALWAYS the best in the world, Instead of arrogantly believing that every single idea is beyond belief, a good designer should retain a certain amount of modesty and self-reflection. Nor, should designers believe that the paying customers are mindless, marching morons willing to salivate at all their creations. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32480503.post-1155264647107334282006-08-10T19:47:00.000-07:002006-08-13T18:47:13.976-07:00Group Versus Solo Play<span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >While on the subject of grouping, game designers in MMORPGs are faced with a difficult dilemma when it comes to solo versus group play options. Back in the day when Everquest was the only game in town (MMORPG speaking), its designers had free reign over the amount of options available for solo play. In their case, none really. Unless you selected a one of the few classes that could solo or were very skillful you really were stuck if you could not find a group of players.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >With the plethora of MMORPGs now available, each one is vying for a market share. That means trying to provide an even balance of both solo and group options. This may be an impossible goal. Gamers, by and large, are anti-social. Perhaps it’s this anti-social nature that draws them to games, or perhaps playing so many stand-alone games makes them anti-group. Regardless, if players CAN solo, regardless of the benefits of grouping, they will, and in large numbers.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >In nearly every MMORPG, the advancement gains for grouping far out way those soloing, yet the die-hard anti-social of the anti-social soloers loudly clings to the firm belief that solo play is faster. They cite how much they gain per defeated creature; all the while neglecting to take into account that while the individual gains are much more than when in a group, a group gains more over time.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >For example:</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><br /><DIR><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >Nevehcus defeats High Cleric Amica, gaining 1000xp in the process. The combat took 5 minutes leaving poor Nevehcus drained and needing another 5 minutes to replenish his powers before taking on another creature. A group of 5 players defeated the same High Cleric Amica but were rewarded only 200xp per person. But, in that same 10 minutes, they defeated High Cleric Amica's entire 6-person entourage, her outer chamber guards, and a few wandering creatures that were foolish enough to get in the way. During the non-stop action, each player was able to draw on the group strength to share the burden of combat. When the dust clears, each group member gained more than 1,200xp. Using these fictitious numbers, Nevehcus would see 6,000exp in an hour, but the group members would see 7,200.</span><br /></DIR><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >If a solo play option exists, even if it’s just a mindless grind of wandering opponents, it will be the major option selected by the player base much to the frustration of players who prefer to group. Making a game more group friendly is not a matter of penalizing soloing, it's a matter of overcoming that innate anti-social nature. The rewards for grouping must be far greater than those for soloing; otherwise, you have almost all soloers. However, if any options that exist for groups only, the soloers become very vocal and demand equal access. It starts a viscous circle that spirals down until everything that can be done, can be done solo, and that is all anybody does. Groups effectively cease to exist.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >Why is grouping so important? Why does it matter? From a design point, it doesn’t. From a long-term growth viewpoint, it does. Grouping forces players to interact with each other, in some fashion. Players may chafe and grind playing in a group, but under these conditions they will, eventually, build a social network that will keep them playing even when the next MMOPRG game comes along. It fosters a need to play, to socialize, to be with friends made during these grouping sessions. It helps make a game, to use a web development term – sticky. Players stick with it through the ups and downs, and long after the game has ceased to be envogue.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32480503.post-1155179617503188732006-08-09T19:28:00.000-07:002006-08-09T20:47:22.490-07:00Dynamic Group Interaction<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">Understanding the concept of dynamic group interaction and its proper implementation is one of the core concepts of any good MMORPG. It provides a solid foundation of game design and shapes the development of classes or archetypes available to players. Unlike stand-alone games, massive multiplayer games thrive on a diverse environment and play styles. Most importantly, players in these games frequently form cooperative units for mutually beneficial goals. The interaction of players within these groups is a driving force of any popular MMO.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">Dynamic group interaction is the concept of how and why each of the different professions, a common element to role-playing games, interacts within one of these groups. When players form a group, each player must enter knowing not only what their role will be, but with certain pre-conceived expectations of the other members as well.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">At a fundamental level, there must be somebody to:</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">Suck up the damage (tanker type).</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">Mitigate or heal damage (healer type).</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">Dish out the damage (dps, or damage per second type).</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">Control the number of opponents to prevent or limit damage (crowd control).</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">Each profession, regardless of the genre of a MMO must fill one of these roles to achieve not only game balance, but, more importantly, provide the other members of the group a clear understanding the role each person will play within the group dynamics.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">For game balance purposes, when a profession exhibits a strength in more than one of these roles, each are less than a dedicated person, a.k.a. the hybrid. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">These core roles must exist in some capacity, even if they are ignored. Such as when a group is comprised of all DPS classes. Here the output of damage is greater than the input so the need for the other roles is diminished. However, the DPS classes still know their role, and know what the other group members will be doing.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">A fine example of the importance of dynamic group interaction is the MMO, Star Wars Galaxies (SWG). On its initial release, SWG failed to understand the concept of dynamic group interaction. Player professions/classes were not created with a specific role in mind, but instead the idea of “wouldn’t it be kewl if players could . . .” Each player could fill any role at any given moment depending on skill and/or equipment selection. Players entered into groups with no preconceived expectations of group dynamics - of who would do what and when.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">While this creates an unprecedented level of diversity for players, the lack of dynamic group interaction created a certain level of chaos and fostered player frustration with the uncertainty of what professions are designed to perform what task.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">In COH, Everquest, Everquest II, World of Warcraft, and a host of others, each player joins a group instantly knowing not only what his/her role is, but from the professions of his/her teammates, what roles they will be fulfilling.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">Why is dynamic group interaction important? Because it allows players to instantly know what their role in a group is, and what they expect other players to do. This is a core requirement in the design of any good MMORPG. It also allows for an ebb and flow of combat – another stable in RPG games. The CC person limits the number of combatants, the tanker absorbs damage, while the DPS classes return damage, and when required, the healer type repairs the incoming damage. It is an equation of group dynamics that most players know, if only at a superficial level. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0