Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ed boy]

I have played many games with some form of character advancement system (hereby known as CA). RPGs especially use CA systems. This is, in my experience, a good thing - your character becomes more able as the game progresses, and this tends to make the game experience more enjoyable and believable - after all, if you have the same resources and abilities throughout the game, then why do you not go straight for the BBEG and ignore the other bits of the game? Additionally, if the character starts with a few resources and abilities and slowly gains more, it allows the player to familiarise themselves with the game properly - giving the player a lot of things from the start would overwhelm them, and they may not be able to experience the game experience fully. Thirdly (and althogh it is the last reason listed here, it is not the last reason for CA systems), there is the ego aspect - while an ordinary character in the game world would find certain challendes hard or impossible, the protagonist (and by extension, the player) can strike them down with ease.
The most common method for this, in my experience, is the experience system. By performing certain in-game actions (like killing enemies or going to certain places),  the player gains experience points. They cannot be used for anything (or have very few uses), but once the player accumulates enough, they go up a level, and become more powerful. This has advantages in that it as the player performs regular in-game actions they advance, without having to interrupt the play experience. However, it does have disadvantages, and the player tends to be rewarded more for overcoming bigger challanges. However, it does have its disadvantages, too. The player may be tempted by their ego into powergaming - they do things that are against the spirit of the game (such as kill everything in sight, but it varies from game to game) in order to become more powerful. Additionally, there are immersion problems - the character fetched the macguffin, so he/she now has more hitpoints?

Another CA system involves advancing individual skills through use. For example, a character becomes better at throwing things by throwing thins a lot. This has its own advantagse and disadvantages. Its advantages are that the immersion is generally better - hitting things has no effect on how persuasive your character is. The character reflects the playstyle of the player. It also makes the gameplay a bit more intuitive - if you want to be better at hitting things, you must practice hitting things. However it does have disadvantages. Instead of finding one relatively tolerable way to powerlevel, a player who wants to be the best will have to deal with multiple ways of powerlevelling, which makes the overall experience less enjoyable. Finally, it can be very counterintuitive - I would expect that using tactics and skill to kill an enemy in one hit would mean more advancement than killing it the long way.
In summary, then:
-CA makes games more enjoyable
-some CA systems are counterintuitive
-some CA systems are non-immersive
-when playing games with CA, the player's ego wants to make the most powerful character possible
-making the most powerful character, the player needs to exploit the CA system, by powerlevelling
-powerlevelling tends to be less enjoyable than playing the rest of the game
-if the player powerlevels, then can remove the fun (by removing the challenge) of the rest of the game
-the player often is stopped from completely enjoying the game by their own ego

So what is the point of this thread? Well, I created this thread for a discussion of CA systems. What CA systems have you played, and what were your thoughts? which are better than the others? Is there a 'perfect' CA system (intuitive, immersive, playing the game immersively and intuitively is powerlevelling)?

[Hugehead]

Legend of Zelda had a good way of doing this, as you got farther you got more toys tools. I don't think that there will ever be a perfect way for CA, if you don't get more powerful throughout a game then the only way you get better is through skill, and with XP and skill levels you are stuck with grinding.

[Il Palazzo]

[Compulsory Power Quest Praise]

[ed boy]

LoZ was indeed a good CA system, but it had its flaws. If one sticks to the main quest and only the main quest, then one gets the new tools, which come at a good rate and avoid the need for grinding. However, all the side quests (e.g. collecing pieces of heart, killing gold skultullas) detract from the experience a lot. If they were to get rid of the side quests, then the game would be criticized as being too linear, and it would have little replay value.

[nenjin]

-the player often is stopped from completely enjoying the game by their own ego

This is the really relevant point to all this. You, game designer, make a game because you find the system and the mechanics interesting. Some players will choose to play the system as you intended it. Some will choose to try to bend your system over. Ultimately that's something you can't control without taking something away from the "intended mechanics." So why bother.

The only problem is when your mechanics make "power-leveling" the only successful path to victory. That's a problem the developer can address.

Otherwise everything else is pacing, sprinkled with a few restrictive mechanics. Dungeon Crawl reigns in the PLing because monsters don't repop in full even after a long time. Just some low xp skeletons. To get experience, you have to go deeper, that's just the natural progression.

As for immersive vs. whatever...it's all abstracted anyways. True immersion would not be showing you your skill counts AT ALL, and making the process agonizingly slow. So why worry about immersion necessarily. Focus on giving people options, even options that are less powerful than others but offer the player something intangible, like flavor. The obsession some people have with min/maxing totally overlooks that there are many ways to play a game. Naked challenges? Speed runs? Not everyone focuses inordinately on bending the mechanics over. It only becomes a problem when your average player doesn't even have to try to do that, or is forced to do that. (Unbalanced mechanics.)

Also random thread is totally random.

[Zai]

The only problem is when your mechanics make "power-leveling" the only successful path to victory. That's a problem the developer can address.

Though some people do find power-leveling fun.

[Cthulhu]

The thing though is that powerleveling doesn't necessarily detract from the game.  Some people aren't interested in having a powerful character and only want an interesting story experience.  Some people don't care about the story and want to kick the game's ass.  Both of them are getting their own form of enjoyment.

Semi-ninja'd by Zai.

[nenjin]

Though some people do find power-leveling fun.

Right. But when you have to face an impassable ogre who demands you can soak tons of damage to beat him...and the amount of HP you normally would have gained up to that point is totally insufficient...you force every player to game the system get more powerful, usually through grinding. Properly balanced mechanics (diminishing xp returns, respawn rates, appropriately balanced challenges, multiple paths to victory) remove a lot of the compulsion to power level for people that DON'T want to do it.

If you just have hundreds of roaming enemies that are easy and worth great xp for a long time, even the most non-power gamey person is going to stop and camp for a while.

Also power level is kind of a deceptive term. It originates from MMOs where you exploit the power of one character to dump XP on a lower level character. That's not a concern for a lot of SP games. What power leveling means in a SP context is kind of unclear. Enemies that reward too much, or are too easy? Stats and upgrades that are too easy to get/not balanced for the long run? Straight up exploits? There are a lot of assumed issues that play into character advancement, that don't necessarily revolve around it.

[ed boy]

On the random front, I wasn't sure whether to put this here on in general discussion. Since it's about games, i thought it would be best to put in in the games section.

Although I personally cannot see how the player's ego can be overcome, I was hoping that someone else had found a way.

As for immersion, it can be important to make the player feel more a part of the game. If the game is very immersive, then the player can value the events in game. If the player's sidekick is killed off by the BBEG, then a player who not immersed in the game will think "I can no longer do X/Y/Z, whereas an immersed player will feel sad, and may even find pursuing and defeating the BBEG a more rewarding experience.

When I say power level in the SP sense, I mean "performing an action of series of actions that are not enjoyable in themselves in order to satisfy a desire for a more powerful character".

[nenjin]

Again, people are going to have different definitions of what's fun. Some people like grinding. They like analyzing their moment to moment combat performance to see where they can improve, or to learn something they didn't know before. Some people just see it as grinding. I imagine there's even someone out there that bridges the gap, and gets immersion from hours of endlessly slaughtering the same creatures in the same courtyard.

There is no way to beat the player's ego. Most players, when they sense that is going on, get hostile. When they feel like limitations placed on them are purely arbitrary, or purely ruled by a game mechanic necessity, both power gamers and people that prefer a slower pace feel like they game is actually gaming them. (Read as: MMOs.)

If the player's sidekick is killed off by the BBEG, then a player who not immersed in the game will think "I can no longer do X/Y/Z, whereas an immersed player will feel sad, and may even find pursuing and defeating the BBEG a more rewarding experience.

I disagree. People are going to have one, or both reactions. Either way I think every player is going to see their options reduced, and unless that setup is implied by the game before I start, I get annoyed. Like, really annoyed. When a game lets me know that all choices have important consequences, and not all game play paths are meant to be accessible at once, I'm ok with that. When a game doesn't prepare me for that mentality, ALL I think is "man, there goes a ton of stuff I could have experienced, but can't now, because I didn't know better." Sad ain't got nothing to do with it for me.

[Thexor]

On the random front, I wasn't sure whether to put this here on in general discussion. Since it's about games, i thought it would be best to put in in the games section.

Yeah, best to put it here. We've had some mechanical debates before, and 'General Discussion' is mainly about general DF discussion, not any old random topic. 

Although I personally cannot see how the player's ego can be overcome, I was hoping that someone else had found a way.

I honestly don't see why you need to 'overcome' a player's ego. In a single-player game, at least, I don't consider anything non-game-breaking to be a serious problem. If the player gets an advantage by spending 10 hours grinding XP off the same monster before killing a boss, well, that's fine, so long as smart planning can let you kill the same boss without ridiculous amounts of grinding.

Or, in other words: so long as exploiting the CA system (where 'exploiting the system' is defined as performing actions the developer did not intend or expect) is not mandatory for game completion, then the presence of potential CA exploits is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if grinding is possible; it only matters whether grinding is mandatory.

As for immersion, it can be important to make the player feel more a part of the game. If the game is very immersive, then the player can value the events in game. If the player's sidekick is killed off by the BBEG, then a player who not immersed in the game will think "I can no longer do X/Y/Z, whereas an immersed player will feel sad, and may even find pursuing and defeating the BBEG a more rewarding experience.

I strongly agree that immersion is important to story-line progression, general enjoyment of a story-based game, etc. My one tiny quibble is, I don't think immersion from/with the combat system is quite so important. This is especially true with the way many classic RPGs handled battles; combat took place in what was, for all intents and purposes, a totally different world from the main game; a world in which time progressed only when it was told to, and where people would happily stand there while a 10-story golem smacked them on the head, confident in the fact that this would cause -15 HP instead of turning them into instant pancake. Heck, there's a section in the Gameplay and Story Segregation trope for that, I believe. If your battles, and the combat system in general, are clearly shown to be completely divergent from the actual story, then I don't think a 'non-immersive' combat engine is a real problem.

When I say power level in the SP sense, I mean "performing an action of series of actions that are not enjoyable in themselves in order to satisfy a desire for a more powerful character".

Sort of harks back to my comment above about exploiting the CA system. I prefer to refer to it as 'grinding' - sure, it's used in the MMO context as well, but at least it means roughly the same thing in MMOs and single-player RPGs. Beyond that, I'll reiterate my above statement: there's no problem if power-leveling is possible, such that people can choose to play the game in a non-enjoyable way (or, at least non-enjoyable from the developer's perspective). There is a serious problem if power-leveling is mandatory, in that you cannot play the game while avoiding a non-enjoyable way.

[3]

What I find myself doing, though, is level/item/whatever-grinding even if I don't have to. I don't enjoy it, but because it's there, I feel obliged to do it, and I also find myself having trouble figuring out exactly when I'm expected to progress (without resorting to trial-and-error, of course).

The example of Crawl made earlier on is a decent one (Finished the level? Not skipped any previous levels? Go on ahead), but Crawl renders its superiority in the regard of character advancement almost completely void by placing such an emphasis on randomisation as it does. It's certainly not as bad as other Roguelikes, but it still seems possible to win through sheer luck, and that's not something I like.

In fact, I can't help finding the entire concept of what might be called "optional" character advancement faintly ridiculous. If there's content that only exists in the player's interests (Read: items/experience/whatever), why is any of it optional? It seems better just to have, I don't know, character advancement at specific plot points or something.

[nenjin]

In fact, I can't help finding the entire concept of what might be called "optional" character advancement faintly ridiculous. If there's content that only exists in the player's interests (Read: items/experience/whatever), why is any of it optional? It seems better just to have, I don't know, character advancement at specific plot points or something.

Assuming the game even has a plot to speak of. What exactly do you mean by "optional." As in, you can choose to spend your points or not?

This is why I think many games need to be clear: they're either trying to let you have the whole experience in one sitting, or they're asking you to make choices between which kind of content you want to experience this time. Most games do the latter, but in a shallow way. One or two options that permanently dictate a narrow range of powers, dialog options or whatever.

If a game lets me know that I have to make choices and some are mutually exclusive, I immediately take the game more seriously. If those choices are represented by things like limited experience gain, profession paths or trade offs, I find a lot of depth and get a lot of satisfaction out of both thinking about my choices and living with them.

I don't think randomness hurts all that much, although in DC's case yes, actually winning comes down to a lot of luck. Randomization does however make many choices more meaningful, since you can't predict what you're going to face all the time. Compare DC to a game like Fable, where you get magic, "speed" or combat. The challenges you face...they're generic and predictable. Choosing melee over magic or whatever really never pays off in a meaningful way. (Particularly because you can just mix and match what you want.)

So randomness can be great I think, for making character advancement choices meaningful. DC has the unfortunate tendency however to both randomly dog pile enemies on you, and to throw enemies at you that have a very high bar for beating.

[3]

Whether or not challenges are generic or predictable is determined by whether or not the design is generic and predictable. I dislike games with an emphasis on something close to "true" randomisation, because challenges procedurally generated in that regard aren't designed. They aren't optimised. It's entirely possible to keep challenges fresh by making a large number of variations on a single section, making use of minimal procedural generation (think enemy placement and such), and, in the case of exceptional design, making use of no generation at all.

What exactly do you mean by "optional." As in, you can choose to spend your points or not?

No. I mean side areas. Additionally, user choice in how the character advancement manifests itself is good in theory, but it obeys the same rules as everything else. The game can't be balanced in a way that will make the player's progress far easier if they select certain advancements, lest the entire system be rendered utterly pointless (if the balance is weighted in the direction of one ability, why have any others?).

[jnecros]

I love CA that has character building in it, diablo 2, sacred and I guess even WoW are good examples. I find that going after the perfect build is more effective of a motivator to play my style of gaming than anything else, but the build has to be complex. Fable just does not cut it, while it is a great game for other reasons, character advancement is kindda meh imo.