Variety Friday: Game Design and Balancing

Alright, what I am covering is a little more complicated than the title.  In general I’m going to be talking about some of the challenges that come into play when designing gameplay, levels, and balancing.  The idea to cover this topic came to me while I was DMing a game of DnD and added a player in half way through, and noticed how drastically it changes the game.  Similar problems arise in game design today and I am going to try and cover some of these problems, as covering all of them could easily turn into a book.

First off, designing how a game plays isn’t as easy as simply choosing how you want a game to play and doing exactly that.  Sure you may keep some of the same concepts, but rarely, if ever, do you keep the exact same system you planned to start with.  This is as true for AAA titles as it is for Indies, you always need to adjust your gameplay to “mold” with the rest of your game, because if your gameplay doesn’t match the feel of your art, levels, and enemies, then it wouldn’t be a very fun game and that is almost always true.  Think of Mirror’s Edge, but instead of taking place on rooftops and in buildings, it took place in a farm land, do you think that would be very fun if it still had the same controls and parkour as Mirror’s Edge did?  No.  Though that is a pretty drastic comparison, try Black Ops taking place in much larger maps, at its current state it wouldn’t work.  You would need a way to choose where to spawn, vehicles, and etc. to be able to traverse over a square mile of terrain.

But anyway the point is that one challenge of creating a game is simply making gameplay work with the rest of the game.  Think of a game as an awesome steampunk tank, each golden and/or brass gear represents the art and design of the game, as well as the engine, while the steam represents the gameplay.  And when it all works, you get one bad ass KABOOOOOOOM!!!  But gameplay isn’t the only problem, it is only one of many, another is level design.  Again this needs to take all other parts into account; it must not only work with, but assist gameplay, while also catering to the player.  You need to have enough room for everything, you need to have enough variety to keep everything interesting to the player, and if one of these doesn’t work, well it’s not received well by players.  One example being Dragon Age 2 and its repetitive reuse of the same dungeons and landscapes, this makes it so the game highly lacks variety and after seeing the same map multiple times, even if there are different levels, it can just get boring.  This is also a challenge for DMs as far as DnD is concerned, because you want to convey your story with the maps, while allowing enough room for combat, and traps.

Now, for the biggest of them all, balancing.  Balancing can mean many different things depending on the genre, yet it applies to all of them.  First let’s simply talk about non-RPG and non-RTS games, since they require their own different forum of balancing.  Action and shooter games require balancing in the form of making sure enemies can’t overpower you and making sure guns don’t do too much or too little damage.  But again, this all is determined by the game, you can’t have enemies from borderlands do as much damage as in COD.  You can’t have the tactical Rainbow Six: Vegas co-op in a Halo Campaign.  Because a lot of game characteristics are specific to the game, especially existing IPs, you can’t drastically change the game too much, or it will be too far away from the core concepts gamers come to expect.  Now why this can be challenging for these genres is you can’t have a game too challenging or make the player feel too strong.  Finding the perfect balance between difficulty and not impossible and fun isn’t as easy as it may sound.

Now, RTS games are a whole nother story, because this isn’t simple enemy balancing, but you need to make sure each unit has the correct attack and health relative to its production cost.  Not only, but you also need to have special units with special abilities which aren’t too abusive, yet can give you an edge if used right.  Balancing strategy games is a strategy game all to itself, because you need to keep in mind all the possible strategical uses, which is why it can sometimes be hard to balance strategy games as a single person, because you could lean towards overpowering units to your own preferences, without even noticing it.

Now, for the big one, RPGs.  Although there are many kinds of RPGs, I still hold the opinion that balancing them is harder than in any other game.  Because first, you need to take into account a lot more variables, such as the players’ levels, classes, amount of players or teammates, story, and skills.  While not all of these apply in all games, it is still a general list of some of the biggest variables.  Not only that but you have so many things that can require changing, such as amount of enemies, their levels, and their roles, traps and other environmental challenges, while also the level itself.  Making all these things work can be very challenging and can also change how the player plays, or if they play at all (I’m a DM, trust me)!  Because you can’t make encounters too challenging, yet a simple variable change can completely change the balancing of a level!  As for my example, I learned that adding an extra player requires a lot of addition to enemy numbers and their power.  While you also need to make sure to give players choices in how they play, because no good RPG game is complete without choices in not just dialog, but gameplay.  You need to allow them to play ranged, magic, stealth, allow them to use their environment, look for treasure and become rich and etc. and you need to incorporate all of this into level design, including how dungeons are laid out and what monsters are where.

So ultimately, a good game has every aspect of it working together in unison, because if they don’t the game will almost always not be as good.  Because if the steampunk tank doesn't have steam, it can't fuction, yet without it's gears turning, it isn't as efficient or can't work at all.

Variety Friday: RPGs

I recently decided to give tabletop Dungeons and Dragons a try and have been loving it so far. It then got me thinking the state of RPGs in the currently gaming industry, and, specifically, how there seems to be a lot less traditional RPGs coming out now as of, say, 4-5 years ago.  I don’t mean Final Fantasy 13; I mean more like the original Final Fantasies, The Witcher, and The Elder Scrolls.

Now specifically I am talking about the lack of said RPGs on consoles (as I am majorly a console gamer).  If you look at the release schedule for the past months (again, for consoles), the best you will probably find is Dragon Age 2, which I don’t think really counts as a tradition RPG, because a lot of the good RPG elements from Origins were taken away with 2.  The point I am getting at is that console RPGs seem to be slowly fading away, and I contribute this to a few things. 

First is that the market for console RPGs seems to be going away.  With the amount of money Call of Duty and similar games are making, studios are telling developers “Yeah, that’s a great idea, but our stock holders want money, so go make a game like Call of Duty”.  Due to the limitations based on large studios by investors, publishers, and etc. to make games that sell well, the idea of a “Great Game” isn’t as well received as it used to be, people no longer want to take risks, so instead they misunderstand their entire market and want clones, expecting them to sell well.

That is probably part of the reason why Dragon Age 2 was so different from the original, was that they wanted to appeal to broader audiences, but screwed up, and being under strict deadlines couldn’t have helped.  The second reason I can find is that what IS demanded by modern RPGs is a very tall order indeed.  I don’t think most developers are willing to put so much time and effort into a gamble as big as a new IP.  That is why I honestly believe that good modern RPGs are probably better coming from indie studios.  Now so far the only way that a series of RPGs have been good and from a large developer is if they solely focus on RPGs.  My main example being CD Projekt, and my other being Bethesda (who may have done some other games in the past, but still mostly make RPGs).  CD Projekt recently released the sequel to the loved but unknown game The Witcher, and from what I’ve heard, The Witcher 2 is a great computer RPG, with full support for an Xbox controller which gives it the possibility of a future console port.

Because they focus on one game at a time, it really allows them to take the time needed to make a good RPG.  Then my other example, Bethesda, the developers of the very popular franchise, The Elder Scrolls, who also happen to be some of the only people releasing a traditional RPG for consoles anytime soon, and I am looking forward to trying it.  These have been two developers who stick to the traditional RPG style and who I admire for doing so. 

Now, why traditional RPGs are going away seems to be due to the mixing of RPG Progression and other game elements, for example, Mass Effect.  Specifically recently, a lot of games have been mixing RPG elements with other game elements such as First Person shooters.  Ultimately this allows a compromise between Developers and Publishers, which is appealing to the RPG fans and the Shooters, which is exactly what Mass Effect 2 did.  While Mass Effect 1 was much heavily RPG focused, Mass Effect 2 was essentially dumbed down to accommodate more people, something which usually ruins games (*cough*Deus Ex: Invisible War *cough*) but actually worked quite well, even if it didn’t feel as in depth.  Though Mass Effect isn’t the only game that combines another game genre and RPGs, there is Fallout, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, KOTOR years ago, and even in the MMORPG coming from Bioware, SW:TOR.  Though The Old Republic is staying very much and RPG, it still has some elements which makes it more.

Now, I would like to clarify that I’m not saying combining elements of multiple game genres is bad; on the contrary it is actually very good for the industry!  Though what I am saying is I would like to see more traditional RPGs, and not the “Interactive Movies” that Square Enix tries to pull off as RPGs these days.  But it isn’t always good, in cases such as Dragon Age.  In my opinion, Dragon Age: Origins was such a great game!  It may have had slow combat but I was fine with it, I loved how the character wasn’t voiced, so it didn’t seem like you were playing someone else’s story, but yours.  Then there was the great cast of characters and all the choices, it was one of the closest things to my perfect RPG I have played (A full article of my opinions of Origins can be found here).  Then there was Dragon Age 2…a game which tore out the strategic combat for hack-n-slash, it made you play someone else’s story, made loot pretty pointless and over half the game seemed like (or was) pointless side quests.  I didn’t start really enjoying the game till the last few hours of it.  This is a great example of how mixing elements, and especially trying to make RPG fans and Sword Flailing Action fans happy at the same time, can fail horribly.

I see the RPG branching into two paths as the industry progresses.  There are the traditional RPGs which I believe will rise up once more and play a much larger part in the industry than they do now.  And then there will be the hybrids which include games such as Mass Effect.  Though neither of these are “Better than the other” it all comes down to opinion, as more gamers start to try new things, and more developers start to take risks, then the industry can truly grow into something great.