Valkyria Chronicles is an unusual series. Starting out on the PS3, it was an attempt by Japanese developers to create a squad focused turned base strategy title. This genre is normally popularized by Western or European developers. The first game did not have a huge success in the US and the series was moved to the PSP. Now with Valkyria Chronicles 2 we have an unusual situation where a sequel is released on a weaker platform, but has more content than its predecessor.
The general plot of the series has to do with an alternate setting for World War 2. The Axis and the Allies have been remained and the conflict is centered on a special mineral used to power tanks and battle suits. The story doesn't take place in either side, but instead focuses on a small neutral nation that is full of that mineral.
VC2 takes place after the events of the first game, which finds the neutral nation now dealing with a civil war due to the nationality of the acting queen. Taking place inside a military school, you're job is to lead class G to victory.
For those not familiar with the series here's a primer, combat is a mix of turned base and real time squad based strategy. Each turn you are given command points or CP, each CP allows you direct control of one squad member. Once you've taken control of a unit, you control them in similar fashion to a third person shooter. Every step you take drains the unit’s action points or AP. The unit's turn ends either after they attack an enemy, or run out of AP and there is no one nearby to attack. You can use the same unit multiple times in a turn by using more CP. However, each subsequent time you use the unit, they'll have less AP to use that turn.
Your squad is broken down into 5 base classes. Scouts, that have the most AP and decent at mid range combat. Shock troopers, which are powerful close range troops with machine guns. Lancers, who are anti-armor units that use missile launchers of the same name, but have only a few rounds of ammo. Engineers provide ammo and can heal. Lastly are Techs who are new to the series, that wield heavy shields and can clear mines and are the only melee class.
Tanks which are separate from the other classes cost 2 CP per action are the heavy hitters. Immune to conventional weaponry, only explosive weapons or hits to their exposed power source will do damage. Tanks can be equipped with specific equipment that can affect the battlefield. You can also opt to take an APC instead, which uses less CP and can transport units. The downside is that APCs do less damage and have weaker armor. Any CP you don't use in a turn will carry over to the next one.
There are several changes and additions from the first game added to VC 2. The first of which has to do with the map sizes. With the power of the PS 3, the designers had the luxury of creating huge maps for each level to take place in. However, with less memory, the PSP couldn't handle having massive maps. Instead the designers condensed the maps into multiple areas. Base camps which can be captured by either side act as reinforcement points and allow travel between the areas. Strange as it sounds, this actually works and gives the maps a sense of having multiple fronts to deal with.
Since you are limited by the max # of people occupying an area at one time does lead to important decisions about who and where to deploy. The different classes fall into a somewhat hard counter system, however things become muddy once you start unlocking advanced classes (more on that further down.)
Another change is the mission structure. The # of missions has grown considerably from the first game. Missions are broken down into required, optional and plot and grouped by the month they occur. Each month's worth of missions requires the player to complete several required missions to open up the plot mission. Finishing the plot mission will unlock next month's group and the cycle continues. Players can replay most missions except for plot missions for more resources.
As in the previous game, classes level up instead of individuals, allowing new members to start contributing the second they are unlock. The new class system and the ability to upgrade your gear act as specialized upgrades. While the main gameplay is great, it feels like there are rough patches with the side content.
Upgrading units to a new class is more of a chore then it should be. To upgrade someone, they first need a prerequisite # of credits. Credits fall into specific categories like attk, arms, support etc, and ranks like attk X, attk L and so on. When you're looking at the conditions for a mission at the mission select screen, it shows you what credits can be earned from that battle.
Upgrades become more important as the game goes on, as each class has two upgrade paths. The first one takes the base properties of said class and enhances them, while the second one completely changes the utility of the class. For example, the scout is a high mobility mid range unit, but it can become a sniper: a low mobility, long range anti infantry unit. Going even further down the skill tree offers more changes to the utility. For example, giving a shock trooper a flamethrower which reduces the defensive bonuses from cover. With how powerful class upgrades are, I wish the developers made it clearer how to do it.
To actually compare what a squad member needs to upgrade and where to get it, requires the player to go through two different menus and several screens to do it. First you go to the training grounds to look at the squad member. Then you go to the briefing room to find the mission with the needed credits. The whole thing is very clunky and it only gets worse when you realize you have to do it for every squad member you're interested in. Compounding the convoluted design is that it's not guaranteed that they'll get said credits.
After a mission is completed, the game tallies up who contributed the most in a mission and determines what credits each active member gets. From what I saw, I couldn't find any pattern to follow. For example, a lancer who single handily destroyed 2 tanks and a turret got the lowest participation in a battle. Another example, a medic who got the final kill in a different battle earned the highest credit type when he was only selected once the entire battle.
Another area that feels underutilized is character traits and potentials. Another defining feature of the series is that each person in your squad is unique. Besides have different values for attributes like health, they also come with traits and potentials. Traits are personality quirks that can benefit or hurt them in the field. For example: someone who hates scouts and gets a bonus to damage when attacking them. Or someone having allergies and loses accuracy when running across grass. Potentials are special bonuses that can happen at specific times and are always good.
The problem with the system is that besides a few really good traits and really bad ones, the quirks from the system don't have a huge impact. Once again, to check this requires going down every member’s page, looking at every trait.
Next problem has to do with the uneven difficulty. While the required and optional missions are fine, it's when the player gets to the plot missions that things get annoying. After a few months, plot missions will have leaders from the enemy army on the field. These characters do major damage, are immortal, have huge AP pools and can move between the different areas like your squad.
The game suggests that you avoid them, but when you have maps that require you to hold a point, that’s just not possible. That is due to leaving someone at the point to prevent it from being captured. All the strategy and counter system flies out the window during these sections. It's like playing a game of rock paper scissors, when someone shows up and uses "meteor" to win every time.
My last issue with the game is the story. While the backdrop of having a civil war in the midst of a bigger war is an interesting premise. The game seems to focus more on the anime inspired soap opera of the characters. While each person is unique, they still fall into the same archetypes that make up anime these days. The lazy, poor at school student who is like Rambo meets Sun Tzu when it counts, the overly cheery girl who believes everything is going to work out and so on.
Like the first game, there are a lot of mature issues going on: racism, genocide and different ideologies battling it out. However, all of this seems to be overshadowed by the characters and their quirks, instead of them dealing with said issues. This problem is made worse by having played Tactics Ogre last year, which told a very mature story dealing with war, politics and honor. In Tactics Ogre, the impact of the war could be seen through every cut scene and major character. In VC 2, only a few cut scenes show the damage of the war, then it's back to dealing with the anime drama.
With all that said, Valkyria Chronicles 2 is still a great game. The developers deserve praise for not only successfully porting the series but also making improvements to the gameplay on a weaker platform. There has already been a third game released in Japan, but it's still up in the air if we'll ever get it over here. Hopefully this post will get more people interested as I want more strategy game goodness on my PSP.
Josh Bycer.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tracing Over the Line Between Inspiration and Plagiarism
( A few weeks ago there was an interview on Gamasutra with Brian Reynolds on the subject of game plagiarism. After it was posted I wrote up an opinion piece that I submitted to Gamasutra. However it turns out that everyone had the same idea. The point however was important to get across which is why I'm posting it here.)
Zynga is once again in the news, with more plagiarism accusations regarding the game Tiny Tower and Zynga’s title: Dream Heights. A recent interview was published on Gamasutra with Zynga’s chief game designer: Brian Reynolds. In that interview Brian Reynolds talked about how social games are “inspired” from each other, comparing it to the game industry at large. As someone who has been playing and analyzing games for the majority of his life, I find that assertion a tad disingenuous. This kind of mindset is a dangerous one to have and something we as an industry have not talked about.
There has always been a fine line between inspiration and plagiarism in the Games industry. The Sonic the Hedgehog series was started as a direct competitor to Mario. The majority of First Person Shooters have their foundations base within the Doom and Quake series. 100% completely original games are few and far between these days. Designers are always looking at existing titles for inspiration and refinement to create successful games.
That last point is important and part of Brian’s response in the interview. On the subject of the success of Civilization he said:
“Actually you know, some of the best games ever made, I’ve felt like were actually, the best way to put it -- the most favorable way to put it -- might be a "glorious synthesis" of stuff in previous games. I bought the very first Civilization, I think one of the greatest games really of all time. I felt like, "Hey wow, what a great synthesis between the Empire game from the PC and the Civilization board game, you know? So it was like some of this and some of that, and then some completely new stuff thrown in.”
This point he is 100% correct on. The highest rated games released were not developed in a vacuum. The designers looked at their respective genre and the industry as a whole for inspiration to help guide them with their project. A quote later on about the concept of games being “reskinned” is where my disagreements with the interview start:
“Well so in theory you want to add something, right? You want to, if you’re working in the genre, add something to the genre. You know it’s funny you were talking about "reskinned," but I just think back in the industry, I’ve actually seen some things that kind of felt like reskins, but were pretty cool, you know? You can do a really good "reskin" and people like it? You take the Star Wars game [LucasArts and Ensemble's Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds], that was kind of a reskin of Age of Empires. I mean in fact, they licensed the engine and used the engine, I felt, "Oh that was kind of cool."
Comparing building a game off of an existing engine, to reports of social games wholesale copying mechanics, aesthetics and design are two completely different situations. To explain why, we need to go back in time to the NES era.
After Super Mario Bros became a massive success, we saw a lot, a lot, A LOT of plat-formers released. In no particular order, here are a few examples:
CastleVania
Metroid
Kirby’s Dream Land
Ninja Gaiden
Tiny Toons
Mega Man
If we look at the absolute base mechanics of those games, they all share similarities to Super Mario Bros. They all involve the player moving and jumping to get through areas and defeat enemies. However each one of them took said mechanics and went in a different direction, not only from Mario, but from each other.
Relisting those titles, let’s briefly touch on some of their unique qualities:
Castlevania: Combat system, setting, boss fights.
Metroid: Exploration, player upgrades, setting, main character.
Kirby’s Dream land: Character, setting, inhaling and exhaling enemies, floating.
Ninja Gaiden: Story, close ranged combat, difficulty.
Tiny Toons: Multiple characters each with their own move set.
Mega Man: Character, long range combat, acquiring power ups from bosses.
This is where the creativity and inspiration of our industry comes from. Each game drew inspiration from Mario and then did something different. With reports and accusations of social games just changing a few graphics and the title, that is plagiarism in my eyes.
Waiting for the next big thing then copying it, instead of trying to create it yourself is not a part of a creative industry. For me personally, I’m not trying to become a designer with the goal of just copying other people’s work. I have been inspired by the games I’ve played for my game ideas, as well as for my analysis and articles. Every one of my ideas is about doing something different with the mechanics or genre as a whole.
I don’t know how much of a profession suicide I’m making by saying this, but no matter how desperate I’ve been to find a job, I have not applied to any positions at Zynga or other Social Game companies. The thought of having a copying mindset instead of a creative one, does not interest me in the slightest.
For social games to evolve, designers have to look beyond the goals of monetization and profit. As they pigeon holed the genre in a “horse before the cart” scenario. How can you create something different, when your game must have an “actions per day” mechanic to allow people to spend money on more actions?
As the competition in both retail and social games grow, I have a feeling that we are going to come back to this discussion of inspiration. Hopefully the outcome to these issues of plagiarism will be a better defined line between inspiration and plagiarism.
Friday, February 24, 2012
The Devil Is in the Details of Action RPGs - Part Four: Dabbling in Diablo 3
(Note: This examination of Diablo 3 is based on the beta; since there is no NDA I'm free to spill my guts on it. However as with all betas, this is not my final word on Diablo 3, and the positives and negatives posted here may not be in the final version. I will be spoiling elements from the beta, so for those who want a completely clean slate going into Diablo 3, you've been warned.)
Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes. This multi-part post all started from me wanting to play Diablo 3, and right before part 2 was posted, I got into the beta. From my time spent with the beta, I've maxed out every class and tried to get as many achievements as I could.
Let's start with the classes; the only 2 that are returning from D2 are the Sorceress and Barbarian. Joining them are the Demon Hunter, Monk and Witch Doctor. The first of several changes to the formula is how skills are used. Instead of everyone using the same mana bar, each class has a different source of power for skills. The barbarian for example gains fury from giving and receiving damage, which fuels their skills. While the Monk gains spirit by using specific attacks and can attack more rapidly.
If you've been following Diablo 3, then you should know about the changes to how skills works, but I'm going to repeat it here for everyone. Skills are still unlocked via leveling, but unlike Diablo 2, you now have a limit on how many can be active at one time. As you level up, you'll eventually increase the amount allowing you more options in combat. However, you'll never reach a point where you can use everything at once.
What I like about the skill system is that every skill from I saw is built around scaling to the player's DPS. As I talked about in part 2 that was one of the big issues with Diablo 2's systems: how some skills were useless due to flat damage. Now, with everything built around scaling, there is more variety and options for the player. At this point in the beta, you can switch your skills at anytime, but there is a 30 second cool down before you can use them.
Passives are also available and add more utility to your character. Like active skills, you can only have a few equipped at anytime with that # increasing as you level up. A big change that was just added to the beta was with the removal of rune stones. Previously, it was revealed that the player could find rune stones while exploring that could be attached to skills, modifying them. The stones would also play a major role in the auction house system of being able to buy and sell them.
In a recent designer blog post, the designers posted that the amount of work needed to create a system on par with loot generation would be too much for too little gain. Along with the tedium of managing so many runes, this led to their decision to change it. Instead, rune stones have been replaced by skill stones which are specific to each skill and unlock at specific levels. Each stone provides a unique modifier to the specified skill.
At this point, I'm not a fan of the current implementation. The reason is that the designers already had a linear path of progression with the way skills and passives unlock. The change to skill runes appears to be a way for them to pad out the leveling content up to level 60. In part 2, someone commented on an upcoming game: Path of Exile, which had skills in the form of socket-able drops from enemies. I was really looking forward to seeing Blizzard's version of the same theme with the rune stones.
Also seeing as how this is the first iteration of the new system, Blizzard redesigned the UI for selecting and managing skills. While the system is far easier to understand for newcomers, it is very convoluted and clunky for expert players. Skills are now separated into different categories and screens and lack the focus of having everything on a single page. However, since the game is in beta, I'm pretty sure that they will redesign it before the end of beta.
While I like the idea of scaling skills to DPS, one thing that I am concerned about in this regard has to do with the weapons themselves. With exception to the Demon Hunter and their crossbows, everyone can equip a variety of weapons and still use their skills. What that means is that a Sorceress can equip an axe or a club that can give her skills more damage than a wand starting out. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out over the course of the game.
Going back to the classes themselves, my current favorite is the Witch Doctor as I was a fan of the Necromancer from Diablo 2. My least favorite would have to be the Demon Hunter. They seem to be the slowest to deal major damage and their mana bar which is actually 2 in 1, didn't get a chance to shine in the demo. When comparing the Barbarian to the Monk, the Barbarian is about pure damage potential. While the Monk has some utility built in with group buffs and area of effect attacks.
Another area that is different from Diablo 2 to 3 is with the world itself. In Diablo 2, the world was largely randomized with set areas for story or quest related challenge. In Diablo 3 it is reversed (at least from the start): the over world map is linear with the chance of finding randomized dungeons as you explore. At this point with how short the beta is, I'm neutral regarding this choice.
One thing I liked that happened near the end of the beta was the chance of a random quest showing up. One of them was a last stand situation where you have to survive against waves of enemies. I hope that there are more quests like this as the game goes on. As for the rest of the beta, it's pretty much a straight path to the game's first boss.
Returning from Diablo 2 is being able to recruit a NPC as a follower. Each follower now has their own skill tree and will team up with you when there are no other players in your game. Looking at the game site, there are several followers you can choose from in the main game.
The last new feature in the beta is the crafting system which acts as a positive money sink. You can use gold to upgrade the blacksmith which in turn will unlock new crafting recipes. To craft a new piece of equipment, you'll have to get raw materials. The blacksmith can breakdown any magical or rarer item to give you said materials. After that it's just a matter of spending more gold and you'll get an item. Each item that the blacksmith can craft has several base stats, and a few random properties. That reduces the chance of getting the exact same gear twice.
My real concern above all else has to do with the loot table. As it stands in the beta, the loot table is nowhere near the same level of variety seen in Diablo 2. Currently in the beta, the only two rarities of items are magical and rare. The problem is that rares only have a chance of dropping after fighting the boss or crafting. This is a big difference from Diablo 2 where items could drop at anytime. Now of course I have to remind everyone that this is the beta, and I'm crossing my fingers that this should be fixed by the release date.
Overall I enjoyed myself playing the beta, unfortunately for now; it's too linear to make a judgment about Diablo 3. That does it for part 4, once again I'm taking submissions for future topics and if you have any ideas feel free to post. Our next part is a submission and is going to talk about level design in ARPGs.
Josh Bycer
Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes. This multi-part post all started from me wanting to play Diablo 3, and right before part 2 was posted, I got into the beta. From my time spent with the beta, I've maxed out every class and tried to get as many achievements as I could.
Let's start with the classes; the only 2 that are returning from D2 are the Sorceress and Barbarian. Joining them are the Demon Hunter, Monk and Witch Doctor. The first of several changes to the formula is how skills are used. Instead of everyone using the same mana bar, each class has a different source of power for skills. The barbarian for example gains fury from giving and receiving damage, which fuels their skills. While the Monk gains spirit by using specific attacks and can attack more rapidly.
If you've been following Diablo 3, then you should know about the changes to how skills works, but I'm going to repeat it here for everyone. Skills are still unlocked via leveling, but unlike Diablo 2, you now have a limit on how many can be active at one time. As you level up, you'll eventually increase the amount allowing you more options in combat. However, you'll never reach a point where you can use everything at once.
What I like about the skill system is that every skill from I saw is built around scaling to the player's DPS. As I talked about in part 2 that was one of the big issues with Diablo 2's systems: how some skills were useless due to flat damage. Now, with everything built around scaling, there is more variety and options for the player. At this point in the beta, you can switch your skills at anytime, but there is a 30 second cool down before you can use them.
Passives are also available and add more utility to your character. Like active skills, you can only have a few equipped at anytime with that # increasing as you level up. A big change that was just added to the beta was with the removal of rune stones. Previously, it was revealed that the player could find rune stones while exploring that could be attached to skills, modifying them. The stones would also play a major role in the auction house system of being able to buy and sell them.
In a recent designer blog post, the designers posted that the amount of work needed to create a system on par with loot generation would be too much for too little gain. Along with the tedium of managing so many runes, this led to their decision to change it. Instead, rune stones have been replaced by skill stones which are specific to each skill and unlock at specific levels. Each stone provides a unique modifier to the specified skill.
At this point, I'm not a fan of the current implementation. The reason is that the designers already had a linear path of progression with the way skills and passives unlock. The change to skill runes appears to be a way for them to pad out the leveling content up to level 60. In part 2, someone commented on an upcoming game: Path of Exile, which had skills in the form of socket-able drops from enemies. I was really looking forward to seeing Blizzard's version of the same theme with the rune stones.
Also seeing as how this is the first iteration of the new system, Blizzard redesigned the UI for selecting and managing skills. While the system is far easier to understand for newcomers, it is very convoluted and clunky for expert players. Skills are now separated into different categories and screens and lack the focus of having everything on a single page. However, since the game is in beta, I'm pretty sure that they will redesign it before the end of beta.
While I like the idea of scaling skills to DPS, one thing that I am concerned about in this regard has to do with the weapons themselves. With exception to the Demon Hunter and their crossbows, everyone can equip a variety of weapons and still use their skills. What that means is that a Sorceress can equip an axe or a club that can give her skills more damage than a wand starting out. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out over the course of the game.
Going back to the classes themselves, my current favorite is the Witch Doctor as I was a fan of the Necromancer from Diablo 2. My least favorite would have to be the Demon Hunter. They seem to be the slowest to deal major damage and their mana bar which is actually 2 in 1, didn't get a chance to shine in the demo. When comparing the Barbarian to the Monk, the Barbarian is about pure damage potential. While the Monk has some utility built in with group buffs and area of effect attacks.
Another area that is different from Diablo 2 to 3 is with the world itself. In Diablo 2, the world was largely randomized with set areas for story or quest related challenge. In Diablo 3 it is reversed (at least from the start): the over world map is linear with the chance of finding randomized dungeons as you explore. At this point with how short the beta is, I'm neutral regarding this choice.
One thing I liked that happened near the end of the beta was the chance of a random quest showing up. One of them was a last stand situation where you have to survive against waves of enemies. I hope that there are more quests like this as the game goes on. As for the rest of the beta, it's pretty much a straight path to the game's first boss.
Returning from Diablo 2 is being able to recruit a NPC as a follower. Each follower now has their own skill tree and will team up with you when there are no other players in your game. Looking at the game site, there are several followers you can choose from in the main game.
The last new feature in the beta is the crafting system which acts as a positive money sink. You can use gold to upgrade the blacksmith which in turn will unlock new crafting recipes. To craft a new piece of equipment, you'll have to get raw materials. The blacksmith can breakdown any magical or rarer item to give you said materials. After that it's just a matter of spending more gold and you'll get an item. Each item that the blacksmith can craft has several base stats, and a few random properties. That reduces the chance of getting the exact same gear twice.
My real concern above all else has to do with the loot table. As it stands in the beta, the loot table is nowhere near the same level of variety seen in Diablo 2. Currently in the beta, the only two rarities of items are magical and rare. The problem is that rares only have a chance of dropping after fighting the boss or crafting. This is a big difference from Diablo 2 where items could drop at anytime. Now of course I have to remind everyone that this is the beta, and I'm crossing my fingers that this should be fixed by the release date.
Overall I enjoyed myself playing the beta, unfortunately for now; it's too linear to make a judgment about Diablo 3. That does it for part 4, once again I'm taking submissions for future topics and if you have any ideas feel free to post. Our next part is a submission and is going to talk about level design in ARPGs.
Josh Bycer
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Great Game Design Debate: Saves - Integral To The Design or Time Killers?
This is another one of those topics where I get to sound old at the age of 27. Gamers these days really do have it easy with their disk drives and cloud saves. Back during the NES era, if you wanted to finish a game, you were sitting there until the credits rolled. During the early days of the industry, saving during a game was reserved for RPGs and Computer games which were a step ahead with the hard drive. For everything else, you had to be lucky if your game had a password save. You youngsters out there are fortunate that you'll never have to deal with a 30 character password system.
As games became more complex and technology improved, saving went from being a luxury feature, to now standard. However, the actual implementation has several variations. Some games allow the player to save at any point, while others only allow it at specific locations. As the use of saves became standard, it allowed designers to increase the amount of content knowing that someone won't have to do it all in one sitting. Today, the act of saving has changed to be a part of the design process with how to properly pace and challenge games. This brings us to today's debate: should saving be an integral part of the game design, or not?
A lot of designers are trying to inject meaningful choices into their games such as the little sister decision in Bioshock. Being able to reload any choice you want undervalues making important decisions. Raise your hand if you ever created a separate save in a game before a major choice so that you can go back to it and select the other one.
Another detail of saves is with challenge; games where the player can save anywhere can ruin the challenge or mood of the game. In Amnesia: The Dark Decent, with the ability to save anywhere and infinite lives, it killed the tension of the game for me. However, playing the mini expansion where the player can't save and there is only one life, I was feeling nervous due to not knowing what's going to happen.
Saving can be used as a way to jack up the tension and challenge in a game. The Resident Evil series up until 4 (if I remember right) not only had specific save points, but a limit on how often you could save a game. Each time the player wanted to save they had to use an ink ribbon at a typewriter. However, there was a limit of how many were in the game. Games aimed at expert gamers, lose a lot of their "bite" if you can just quick save and quick load your way out of trouble.
With that said however, fixed saving can be a major hassle to deal with. Free time as most adults know, is not always guaranteed: family emergencies, plans and even a job can get in the way. Some games have their save points anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes apart from each other with checkpoints dispersed between. The problem is that checkpoints won't save the player's progress if they need to go somewhere.
Is it fair to force people to replay sections they already beat because of outside issues? An even harder blow to take is having a save point after multiple sections and the player having to go before finishing the whole thing. The length and complexity of games has increased over the years which also mean the amount of time that has to be dedicated to play. That's one of the reasons why mobile and casual games have become so popular: They're quick to get into, can be played in short bursts and there is very little progress lost if the player has to stop all of a sudden.
Now this is the part where I normally talk about where my opinion falls on the topic, however I'm going to mix things up. Instead of deciding between A or B, I'm going to purpose option C, a way of having your cake and eating it too.
I purpose that the option of having a "temporary save" become the new standard for design. A temporary save which is used a lot in Rogue-likes, is that besides having a permanent save. The game allows the player to save at anytime, but upon saving the player quits the game. When they load the save up, they are right where they started and the save is deleted.
This will allow gamers to not have to worry about outside issues stopping them from playing while still preserving the game design. Games can still have permanent saves in select places, but the player is no longer forced to lost progress if they can't reach a save point.
There is one game that I've played that used this system to great effect - Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. BoF is one part rogue like and one part RPG, in how the player is supposed to play it multiple times. The player has a rank that affects what story events, or sections they are allowed to visit during the game. Each time the player beats the game or is defeated, there score is tallied up and their rank is updated. One of the details that are factored in is how many times the player saves in the game.
Like the early Resident Evils, the player can make permanent saves, but at the cost of a save token which are limited in the game. Players can also create temporary saves in the same way I described further up. To get the best ranking in the game, one of the conditions is that the player cannot have any permanent saves in their run.
The beauty of this system is that the act of saving is still a part of the design by being a score factor, but at the same time it's not punishing people for having a life. For such a challenging and hardcore experience, both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are very lenient in this regard. Both games are constantly saving your progress behind the scenes and the player can quit out of the game at anytime returning to their exact position next time.
In today's world there are numerous ways for people to play games: consoles, handhelds, phones and computers. Free time for many people is a precious commodity and if given a choice, will prefer to play something that they have a chance at making progress with. Instead of playing a game where they have to effectively plan out when they can play it beforehand.
And that takes us to the last part of these posts, what do you think? One last thing that should be factored in to your decision: How many of you have stayed up way past your bedtime to try and reach a save point before bed? My current late night record is being up to 5:30 in the morning to finish the final level of Rayman Origins. As there was no way in hell I was starting that one from scratch again.
Josh Bycer
As games became more complex and technology improved, saving went from being a luxury feature, to now standard. However, the actual implementation has several variations. Some games allow the player to save at any point, while others only allow it at specific locations. As the use of saves became standard, it allowed designers to increase the amount of content knowing that someone won't have to do it all in one sitting. Today, the act of saving has changed to be a part of the design process with how to properly pace and challenge games. This brings us to today's debate: should saving be an integral part of the game design, or not?
A lot of designers are trying to inject meaningful choices into their games such as the little sister decision in Bioshock. Being able to reload any choice you want undervalues making important decisions. Raise your hand if you ever created a separate save in a game before a major choice so that you can go back to it and select the other one.
Another detail of saves is with challenge; games where the player can save anywhere can ruin the challenge or mood of the game. In Amnesia: The Dark Decent, with the ability to save anywhere and infinite lives, it killed the tension of the game for me. However, playing the mini expansion where the player can't save and there is only one life, I was feeling nervous due to not knowing what's going to happen.
Saving can be used as a way to jack up the tension and challenge in a game. The Resident Evil series up until 4 (if I remember right) not only had specific save points, but a limit on how often you could save a game. Each time the player wanted to save they had to use an ink ribbon at a typewriter. However, there was a limit of how many were in the game. Games aimed at expert gamers, lose a lot of their "bite" if you can just quick save and quick load your way out of trouble.
With that said however, fixed saving can be a major hassle to deal with. Free time as most adults know, is not always guaranteed: family emergencies, plans and even a job can get in the way. Some games have their save points anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes apart from each other with checkpoints dispersed between. The problem is that checkpoints won't save the player's progress if they need to go somewhere.
Is it fair to force people to replay sections they already beat because of outside issues? An even harder blow to take is having a save point after multiple sections and the player having to go before finishing the whole thing. The length and complexity of games has increased over the years which also mean the amount of time that has to be dedicated to play. That's one of the reasons why mobile and casual games have become so popular: They're quick to get into, can be played in short bursts and there is very little progress lost if the player has to stop all of a sudden.
Now this is the part where I normally talk about where my opinion falls on the topic, however I'm going to mix things up. Instead of deciding between A or B, I'm going to purpose option C, a way of having your cake and eating it too.
I purpose that the option of having a "temporary save" become the new standard for design. A temporary save which is used a lot in Rogue-likes, is that besides having a permanent save. The game allows the player to save at anytime, but upon saving the player quits the game. When they load the save up, they are right where they started and the save is deleted.
This will allow gamers to not have to worry about outside issues stopping them from playing while still preserving the game design. Games can still have permanent saves in select places, but the player is no longer forced to lost progress if they can't reach a save point.
There is one game that I've played that used this system to great effect - Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. BoF is one part rogue like and one part RPG, in how the player is supposed to play it multiple times. The player has a rank that affects what story events, or sections they are allowed to visit during the game. Each time the player beats the game or is defeated, there score is tallied up and their rank is updated. One of the details that are factored in is how many times the player saves in the game.
Like the early Resident Evils, the player can make permanent saves, but at the cost of a save token which are limited in the game. Players can also create temporary saves in the same way I described further up. To get the best ranking in the game, one of the conditions is that the player cannot have any permanent saves in their run.
The beauty of this system is that the act of saving is still a part of the design by being a score factor, but at the same time it's not punishing people for having a life. For such a challenging and hardcore experience, both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are very lenient in this regard. Both games are constantly saving your progress behind the scenes and the player can quit out of the game at anytime returning to their exact position next time.
In today's world there are numerous ways for people to play games: consoles, handhelds, phones and computers. Free time for many people is a precious commodity and if given a choice, will prefer to play something that they have a chance at making progress with. Instead of playing a game where they have to effectively plan out when they can play it beforehand.
And that takes us to the last part of these posts, what do you think? One last thing that should be factored in to your decision: How many of you have stayed up way past your bedtime to try and reach a save point before bed? My current late night record is being up to 5:30 in the morning to finish the final level of Rayman Origins. As there was no way in hell I was starting that one from scratch again.
Josh Bycer
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
The Devil Is in the Details of Action RPGs - Part Three: Downtime
Downtime is an important part of any game and helps with pacing. Games that have constant action, will lead to the player becoming bored. While not having anything happen for hours on end will produce a similar result. When it comes to Action RPGs, downtime serves several purposes.
First is simply a respite from the combat. Most ARPGs feature some kind of town or quest hub that the player starts in on loading a game. By starting in these safe areas, the player doesn't have to worry about being jumped the second they load up and can take time to prepare for action. Options like stores or item repair are usually placed here to keep things centralized.
Another use of save zones is that they are the perfect places for players to take a closer look at their character. In both Demon's and Dark Souls, the game is never paused which makes it impossible to do any kind of inventory management during combat. Speaking about Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, both titles have a different mechanic involving downtime.
In Demon's Souls, the nexus acts as the game's hub and home base. NPCs that offer spells and item storage are situated here. New NPCs will show up here after certain actions are done in the levels of the game. The player can only level up and assign spells in the nexus. What this does is give the player a clear understanding of "home base" and combat or safety and danger.
Contrast to Dark Souls, where the concept of a home base has changed. Since the game is open world instead of level oriented, bonfires spread throughout act as safe points in the game. Stopping at a bonfire will revive all normal enemies in the game and is where the player can change spells and level up.
There is only one area in the game that technically acts as a home-base: firelink shrine, however without spoiling it, the shrine won't remain a home-base for the entire game. Unlike Demon's Souls, item storage is unneeded as only worn equipment will factor into the character's weight limit.
Between the two, I prefer having the centralized location of the Nexus as opposed to checkpoints in the form of bonfires. The reason is that I like having all the downtime options featured in one area as opposed to having to find them in the world. This also has to do with pacing, I'd rather do everything that involves downtime in one area as opposed to having to stop and start while in the world.
Another game that had a different view of downtime was Din's Curse. Unlike most ARPGs, the player is not truly safe while their in town. For those not familiar with the game, the player travels from town to town clearing out the randomized dungeon underneath it. Each dungeon has a boss and while the boss is alive, the game will randomly create problems for the town. Such as a missing food supply, or raids by monsters. Players have to balance between making headway in the dungeon while performing quests to help the town. You don't want to be resting in town, as the longer you're there, means that you're not making progress in the dungeon.
The other aspect of downtime has to do with money sinks. In order for something to have value in a game, there must be a use for it. Currency in most RPGs will always reach a point where the player has more money then they know what to do with. ARPGs in particular with how rarer items sell for more money, reach that point quickly. That's where money sinks come into play: a mechanic whose purpose is to give money a use. Now it's important to make the distinction that buying supplies like health or mana potions are not a part of this. The reason is that they retain a use no matter what point of the game the player is at.
There are two kinds of money sinks: positive and negative. A positive sink is something the player can do to make their character or equipment better. While a negative sink is something used to basically punish the player for messing up. Now before we get to some examples, it's important to note that the two categories are not mutually exclusive as we're about to see.
The most common negative money sink is durability: where equipment will slowly degrade with use. When an item's durability drops below a certain threshold, the item will take a stat penalty. Most often if durability hits zero, the item will lose all or most of its value. Most games that feature durability require the player to return to town to repair (at a cost of course.) Durability also acts as a slap on the wrist for lower skilled players, as the player's equipment usually degrades each time the player dies.
Interestingly enough, durability acts as a scaling money sink, as better gear requires more money to repair. However the problem with durability as the main money sink, is that it's only for less experienced players. Once you've gotten good enough at the game, you will rarely die and durability degrades very slowly through normal use. This reduces the money sink considerably among expert players.
An example of a positive sink is from Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Both games allow the player to upgrade their equipment at the blacksmith. Upgrades require a prerequisite amount of materials along with souls. Upgrading a weapon will boost the base attack damage. Players can also add unique upgrades to weapons based on the current upgrade path of the weapon. For example: adding mana recovery or lightning damage.
This is an example of a pure positive sink, as there is no downside to making your weapon better. The only real catch is that you won't know what the upgrade paths are without spending money and resources going down each one (unless you have a guide handy.) Because there is no downside to making your equipment better, the designer placed two caps on the system.
First is that the material to max out an upgrade chain, is very rare and may only spawn once or twice in a play-through. Second is that there is a hard limit on how far you can upgrade pieces of equipment. That means that eventually the scaling effect (which was talked about in part 2,) will be your only source of improving your damage output.
Before we move on it's important to mention that the Souls games don't have the same problem with currency as other ARPGs. Since enemy souls count for both money and experience, there is always a viable use. This area is where I prefer Dark Souls, as leveling up will improve your character's base defenses. Whereas in Demon's Souls, you have to increase specific attributes to improve your defenses.
Some ARPGs and many MMOs feature a crafting system, which acts as a scaling positive money sink. Crafting requires the player to spend money and resources to create equipment or items. Most often there is a way to upgrade the quality level of equipment produced. Some games require the player to spend money for experience, while others just require the player to constantly create items. The players who stick with it to the high levels will usually be rewarded with very powerful crafting formulas.
The more interesting money sinks are both positive and negative. Many ARPGs feature a "gambler" NPC. How it works is that the player can view the type of equipment the gambler has and a price. The price is usually more expensive then buying the same equipment from a shop. The player however won't know the rarity of the item until they bought it. That sword could be an ultra rare weapon, or a piece of crap and you'll never know until you put your money down.
Torchlight featured a different kind of money sink in the form of the enchanter. The enchanter works by being able to enhance any piece of equipment you give him. The enhancement could be a new property on the equipment or added slots. The price for enchanting scales with how many times you use it successfully on the same piece of equipment, and the base level of the item. However there is a catch, there is a chance that the enchanter will wipe all properties off the equipment leaving it with its base stats. That chance also scales up with each successful enchant.
Another use of save zones is that they are the perfect places for players to take a closer look at their character. In both Demon's and Dark Souls, the game is never paused which makes it impossible to do any kind of inventory management during combat. Speaking about Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, both titles have a different mechanic involving downtime.
In Demon's Souls, the nexus acts as the game's hub and home base. NPCs that offer spells and item storage are situated here. New NPCs will show up here after certain actions are done in the levels of the game. The player can only level up and assign spells in the nexus. What this does is give the player a clear understanding of "home base" and combat or safety and danger.
Contrast to Dark Souls, where the concept of a home base has changed. Since the game is open world instead of level oriented, bonfires spread throughout act as safe points in the game. Stopping at a bonfire will revive all normal enemies in the game and is where the player can change spells and level up.
There is only one area in the game that technically acts as a home-base: firelink shrine, however without spoiling it, the shrine won't remain a home-base for the entire game. Unlike Demon's Souls, item storage is unneeded as only worn equipment will factor into the character's weight limit.
Between the two, I prefer having the centralized location of the Nexus as opposed to checkpoints in the form of bonfires. The reason is that I like having all the downtime options featured in one area as opposed to having to find them in the world. This also has to do with pacing, I'd rather do everything that involves downtime in one area as opposed to having to stop and start while in the world.
Another game that had a different view of downtime was Din's Curse. Unlike most ARPGs, the player is not truly safe while their in town. For those not familiar with the game, the player travels from town to town clearing out the randomized dungeon underneath it. Each dungeon has a boss and while the boss is alive, the game will randomly create problems for the town. Such as a missing food supply, or raids by monsters. Players have to balance between making headway in the dungeon while performing quests to help the town. You don't want to be resting in town, as the longer you're there, means that you're not making progress in the dungeon.
The other aspect of downtime has to do with money sinks. In order for something to have value in a game, there must be a use for it. Currency in most RPGs will always reach a point where the player has more money then they know what to do with. ARPGs in particular with how rarer items sell for more money, reach that point quickly. That's where money sinks come into play: a mechanic whose purpose is to give money a use. Now it's important to make the distinction that buying supplies like health or mana potions are not a part of this. The reason is that they retain a use no matter what point of the game the player is at.
There are two kinds of money sinks: positive and negative. A positive sink is something the player can do to make their character or equipment better. While a negative sink is something used to basically punish the player for messing up. Now before we get to some examples, it's important to note that the two categories are not mutually exclusive as we're about to see.
The most common negative money sink is durability: where equipment will slowly degrade with use. When an item's durability drops below a certain threshold, the item will take a stat penalty. Most often if durability hits zero, the item will lose all or most of its value. Most games that feature durability require the player to return to town to repair (at a cost of course.) Durability also acts as a slap on the wrist for lower skilled players, as the player's equipment usually degrades each time the player dies.
Interestingly enough, durability acts as a scaling money sink, as better gear requires more money to repair. However the problem with durability as the main money sink, is that it's only for less experienced players. Once you've gotten good enough at the game, you will rarely die and durability degrades very slowly through normal use. This reduces the money sink considerably among expert players.
An example of a positive sink is from Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Both games allow the player to upgrade their equipment at the blacksmith. Upgrades require a prerequisite amount of materials along with souls. Upgrading a weapon will boost the base attack damage. Players can also add unique upgrades to weapons based on the current upgrade path of the weapon. For example: adding mana recovery or lightning damage.
This is an example of a pure positive sink, as there is no downside to making your weapon better. The only real catch is that you won't know what the upgrade paths are without spending money and resources going down each one (unless you have a guide handy.) Because there is no downside to making your equipment better, the designer placed two caps on the system.
First is that the material to max out an upgrade chain, is very rare and may only spawn once or twice in a play-through. Second is that there is a hard limit on how far you can upgrade pieces of equipment. That means that eventually the scaling effect (which was talked about in part 2,) will be your only source of improving your damage output.
Before we move on it's important to mention that the Souls games don't have the same problem with currency as other ARPGs. Since enemy souls count for both money and experience, there is always a viable use. This area is where I prefer Dark Souls, as leveling up will improve your character's base defenses. Whereas in Demon's Souls, you have to increase specific attributes to improve your defenses.
Some ARPGs and many MMOs feature a crafting system, which acts as a scaling positive money sink. Crafting requires the player to spend money and resources to create equipment or items. Most often there is a way to upgrade the quality level of equipment produced. Some games require the player to spend money for experience, while others just require the player to constantly create items. The players who stick with it to the high levels will usually be rewarded with very powerful crafting formulas.
The more interesting money sinks are both positive and negative. Many ARPGs feature a "gambler" NPC. How it works is that the player can view the type of equipment the gambler has and a price. The price is usually more expensive then buying the same equipment from a shop. The player however won't know the rarity of the item until they bought it. That sword could be an ultra rare weapon, or a piece of crap and you'll never know until you put your money down.
Torchlight featured a different kind of money sink in the form of the enchanter. The enchanter works by being able to enhance any piece of equipment you give him. The enhancement could be a new property on the equipment or added slots. The price for enchanting scales with how many times you use it successfully on the same piece of equipment, and the base level of the item. However there is a catch, there is a chance that the enchanter will wipe all properties off the equipment leaving it with its base stats. That chance also scales up with each successful enchant.
Downtime is a must for any ARPG, allowing players to relax while looking at the other gameplay systems. At this point, the end of the series is up in the air and if anyone has suggestions for topics by all means post. For part 4, I'm going to talk about a certain game that started this examination in the first place.
Josh Bycer
Josh Bycer
Sunday, February 12, 2012
The Three Layers of Control in Strategy Games.
Recently there has been major news surrounding Double Fine and the kick starter funding success. I know that several people (including me,) took it as an excuse to replay the various games from the studio. First up on my list was Brutal Legend which I have a love-hate relationship with. I loved the story, art design and writing, but just hated the stage battles. The stage battles for those who didn't play it, were Real Time Strategy styled battles. With the defining feature that you control someone on the field at all times. As I sat there thinking about my issues with it, a thought occurred to me about control, and what it has to do with strategy titles.
When you think of the term "control" with video games, thoughts like responsiveness or how well the buttons are laid out come to mind. With strategy games however, there are several layers of control that the designer has to get right. For this post we're going to define them as: "micro", "wide" and "macro".
The micro layer deals specifically with individual commands for units or an order for a small number of units. For example: telling your templar in Starcraft 2 to use psionic storm. Micro commands are one of the hallmarks of expert RTS players, who can quickly shift between individual units to deliver multiple commands quickly and accurately. As an example of an expert use, I remember watching a pro Starcraft 2 match where the Protoss player picked out multiple templar from his army. Then launched several psionic storms across a wide area completely covering the enemy army and decimated them.
Turn based games don't have too much to deal with at this level of control. Since players have all the time in the world to make their decisions. Controls at this layer don't require as much thought as other ones. The most complex action here would be deciding what special skills (if applicable) to use.
The wide layer is made up of commanding multiple units for a battle, or to put it in perspective, dealing with a screen's worth of information at a time. This is where using control groups and keyboard hot-keys are important for RTS players. Games that deal with the real world concept of flanking require the player to be able to command multiple squads of units on screen quickly to set up maneuvers.
For TBS games, this is the layer for fighting a multi-unit battle, such as two armies going at it in Civilization 5. For TBS games, there isn't as much of a difference between the micro layer and the wide layer, due to the lack of urgency with making decisions.
The macro layer is both the biggest in terms of decisions and where a good UI design is needed most. Here, the layer encompassing all major decisions dealing with the match and where high level thinking comes into play. In the wide layer you were just focusing on one screen of units, at macro it's the entire map. Balancing multiple groups, base building, research and unit production are all elements at this layer. Because of the importance of the macro layer, this is where UI design is focused on, and where strategy games are praised and criticized the most.
For TBS games, this layer is different compared to RTS games. For 4X strategy games, this is the layer that deals with all the multiple cities and systems of the game. If the wide layer was about winning the battle, the macro layer is about winning the war. There is so much we can talk about in terms of UI design at this layer but that would be too much to go into for this post.
The challenge when it comes to RTS games is balancing control between the micro and macro layers. One of the problems that I had with Starcraft 2 was how the same skills of control at the micro layer were also needed for the macro layer. With how the player had to set unit productions structures at hotkeys and making sure that rally points and such were set up.
Supreme Commander 2 was one of the few titles that did a decent job of balancing the three layers. As the player could switch to strategic view, allowing them to see the entire map and command their troops from there. Then zoom in to command armies in battle without missing a step. Another game that had a great UI was Sins of the Solar Empire. Like Supreme Commander 2 the player could zoom in and out at anytime, while issuing commands to solar systems while zoomed all the way out.
Finally with all that said, we can talk a little about where Brutal Legend fits in on this. Using the three layers as a guide I can see where my problems with the battles come from. Let's start with where BL succeeds: at the wide layer. The player can use the directional pad to issue commands to all nearby troops, it's quick, efficient and allows the player to focus on other tasks.
At the micro layer is where the problems start. There are two ways to issue individual orders: on the ground and in air. On the ground you have to hold a button down then run over to a unit to highlight them, and then use the directional pad to issue an order. The system is clunky and in the heat of combat you can't really stop your army from fighting to pick out a unit for a specific command.
Selecting units from the air is part of the macro layer and where BL just falls apart for me. While the player is flying in the air it's incredibly hard to see your units on the ground (at least for me on a SD TV.) There is no mini-map functionality and the only way to see if your units are fighting is a popup showing the general direction of the conflict.
The problems with BL's macro layer stem from the designers using the same HUD-less UI for the battles as they did for the open world gameplay. You can only see how many units you have and your current resource total by bringing up the unit recruitment screen. This kind of information should always be displayed on the main screen due to its importance. Even from the secondary screen, you can't quickly see how many of each unit type you currently have.
There were plenty of times where I was fighting a group of enemies to then switch back to the unit deployment to find that the majority of my army was gone, without any warnings from the game. Trying to organize your army at this layer is also a pain due to how rallying works. To set up a rally point you have to play a guitar solo (the game's version of spells) to create a flag. You can only summon the flag while on the ground, forcing you out of the macro layer to make macro layer plans.
The simple fact is that a good UI is required for the macro layer, as the player needs to know quickly the shape of the battle to make decisions. Imagine playing Starcraft 2 without being able to see your unit counter or resources at a glance. What I would have done for BL, was while the player is flying around, they could see and interact with icons that represent enemy and friendly positions. Also I would put on the main screen the current unit counter and resources.
If we go back to the RTS game: Sacrifice, which also featured a third person control scheme. It still had a UI designed to give the player all the information they need to win. Brutal Legend is unfortunately a case where gameplay was put aside in favor of art direction and has an important lesson for designers. Sometimes you have to sacrifice art direction for gameplay, especially when the player has to make informed decisions that affect the game.
Josh Bycer
When you think of the term "control" with video games, thoughts like responsiveness or how well the buttons are laid out come to mind. With strategy games however, there are several layers of control that the designer has to get right. For this post we're going to define them as: "micro", "wide" and "macro".
The micro layer deals specifically with individual commands for units or an order for a small number of units. For example: telling your templar in Starcraft 2 to use psionic storm. Micro commands are one of the hallmarks of expert RTS players, who can quickly shift between individual units to deliver multiple commands quickly and accurately. As an example of an expert use, I remember watching a pro Starcraft 2 match where the Protoss player picked out multiple templar from his army. Then launched several psionic storms across a wide area completely covering the enemy army and decimated them.
Turn based games don't have too much to deal with at this level of control. Since players have all the time in the world to make their decisions. Controls at this layer don't require as much thought as other ones. The most complex action here would be deciding what special skills (if applicable) to use.
The wide layer is made up of commanding multiple units for a battle, or to put it in perspective, dealing with a screen's worth of information at a time. This is where using control groups and keyboard hot-keys are important for RTS players. Games that deal with the real world concept of flanking require the player to be able to command multiple squads of units on screen quickly to set up maneuvers.
For TBS games, this is the layer for fighting a multi-unit battle, such as two armies going at it in Civilization 5. For TBS games, there isn't as much of a difference between the micro layer and the wide layer, due to the lack of urgency with making decisions.
The macro layer is both the biggest in terms of decisions and where a good UI design is needed most. Here, the layer encompassing all major decisions dealing with the match and where high level thinking comes into play. In the wide layer you were just focusing on one screen of units, at macro it's the entire map. Balancing multiple groups, base building, research and unit production are all elements at this layer. Because of the importance of the macro layer, this is where UI design is focused on, and where strategy games are praised and criticized the most.
For TBS games, this layer is different compared to RTS games. For 4X strategy games, this is the layer that deals with all the multiple cities and systems of the game. If the wide layer was about winning the battle, the macro layer is about winning the war. There is so much we can talk about in terms of UI design at this layer but that would be too much to go into for this post.
The challenge when it comes to RTS games is balancing control between the micro and macro layers. One of the problems that I had with Starcraft 2 was how the same skills of control at the micro layer were also needed for the macro layer. With how the player had to set unit productions structures at hotkeys and making sure that rally points and such were set up.
Supreme Commander 2 was one of the few titles that did a decent job of balancing the three layers. As the player could switch to strategic view, allowing them to see the entire map and command their troops from there. Then zoom in to command armies in battle without missing a step. Another game that had a great UI was Sins of the Solar Empire. Like Supreme Commander 2 the player could zoom in and out at anytime, while issuing commands to solar systems while zoomed all the way out.
Finally with all that said, we can talk a little about where Brutal Legend fits in on this. Using the three layers as a guide I can see where my problems with the battles come from. Let's start with where BL succeeds: at the wide layer. The player can use the directional pad to issue commands to all nearby troops, it's quick, efficient and allows the player to focus on other tasks.
At the micro layer is where the problems start. There are two ways to issue individual orders: on the ground and in air. On the ground you have to hold a button down then run over to a unit to highlight them, and then use the directional pad to issue an order. The system is clunky and in the heat of combat you can't really stop your army from fighting to pick out a unit for a specific command.
Selecting units from the air is part of the macro layer and where BL just falls apart for me. While the player is flying in the air it's incredibly hard to see your units on the ground (at least for me on a SD TV.) There is no mini-map functionality and the only way to see if your units are fighting is a popup showing the general direction of the conflict.
The problems with BL's macro layer stem from the designers using the same HUD-less UI for the battles as they did for the open world gameplay. You can only see how many units you have and your current resource total by bringing up the unit recruitment screen. This kind of information should always be displayed on the main screen due to its importance. Even from the secondary screen, you can't quickly see how many of each unit type you currently have.
There were plenty of times where I was fighting a group of enemies to then switch back to the unit deployment to find that the majority of my army was gone, without any warnings from the game. Trying to organize your army at this layer is also a pain due to how rallying works. To set up a rally point you have to play a guitar solo (the game's version of spells) to create a flag. You can only summon the flag while on the ground, forcing you out of the macro layer to make macro layer plans.
The simple fact is that a good UI is required for the macro layer, as the player needs to know quickly the shape of the battle to make decisions. Imagine playing Starcraft 2 without being able to see your unit counter or resources at a glance. What I would have done for BL, was while the player is flying around, they could see and interact with icons that represent enemy and friendly positions. Also I would put on the main screen the current unit counter and resources.
If we go back to the RTS game: Sacrifice, which also featured a third person control scheme. It still had a UI designed to give the player all the information they need to win. Brutal Legend is unfortunately a case where gameplay was put aside in favor of art direction and has an important lesson for designers. Sometimes you have to sacrifice art direction for gameplay, especially when the player has to make informed decisions that affect the game.
Josh Bycer
Monday, February 6, 2012
Speed Cleaning: An Analysis of Dustforce
2D games have been recently reinventing themselves as a hardcore gamers’ paradise. With Super Meat Boy and Rayman Origins last year and now Dustforce by Hitbox Team joins the group. Don't let the stylized graphics and peaceful music fool you though, as Dustforce could be the most challenging 2D game to come out yet.
The premise is that you play as janitors who also seem to be masters of parkour. Your goal on each level is to clean it up, which involves clearing up patches of trash and trash monsters. Movement is the name of the game as you're able to wall and ceiling run along with performing double jumps. Combos are earned by constantly cleaning up and you'll lose the combo if you go a few seconds without cleaning or getting hit. What makes Dustforce so interesting is the progression system and how it rewards expert players.
Currently, there are four areas in the game for players to go through. In each area you'll find doors that represent levels. There are three things the game tracks per level: how much you cleaned, your total combo and your time. The later is purely used for the high score list/bragging rights. The former however determines your grade in the level. The highest grade you can earn in a level is S/S, which means that you cleaned up everything and you preserved your combo chain for the entire level. In other words, you'll have to get a perfect run to earn that rating.
Getting a S/S rating on a regular level gives you a silver key. Doors locked with a silver lock represent medium difficulty levels, which of course require more skill to complete. If you S/S those levels, you'll earn a gold key that opens up expert level courses. Getting through a level with anything less than a S/S won't give you anything.
As both a hardcore gamer and a completist I don't know how I feel about this system. While having the key system allows expert players to feel rewarded. I would have liked something to be given or unlocked for getting through a level. Especially when you try out the gold rated levels which are incredibly difficult. Beating a level feels like a hollow victory when you finish it and have nothing to show for it. Since all progress is tied to perfect runs. Now some may argue that the knowledge from clearing the level is progress enough. However the challenge of Dustforce isn't getting through each individual element in a level, but doing it all at the same time without any screw ups.
The other problem I had was some issues with the responsiveness of the controls. The player can either double jump or air dash one time once the player is in the air, and resets only when they touch ground. There were times where neither was going off when I wanted them to. This becomes a major pain during sections where the player is moving faster than the camera can pan which require precise movement to get through. Now, I was using keyboard controls and can't comment on if it happens with a game pad. Because of these issues I don't think I'm going to see the end of the game.
Dustforce is an interesting game which takes the whole "easy to learn, difficult to master” motto to a new level. If you enjoy challenging games and know what you're getting into, this is a great game to test your platforming skills.
Josh Bycer
The premise is that you play as janitors who also seem to be masters of parkour. Your goal on each level is to clean it up, which involves clearing up patches of trash and trash monsters. Movement is the name of the game as you're able to wall and ceiling run along with performing double jumps. Combos are earned by constantly cleaning up and you'll lose the combo if you go a few seconds without cleaning or getting hit. What makes Dustforce so interesting is the progression system and how it rewards expert players.
Currently, there are four areas in the game for players to go through. In each area you'll find doors that represent levels. There are three things the game tracks per level: how much you cleaned, your total combo and your time. The later is purely used for the high score list/bragging rights. The former however determines your grade in the level. The highest grade you can earn in a level is S/S, which means that you cleaned up everything and you preserved your combo chain for the entire level. In other words, you'll have to get a perfect run to earn that rating.
Getting a S/S rating on a regular level gives you a silver key. Doors locked with a silver lock represent medium difficulty levels, which of course require more skill to complete. If you S/S those levels, you'll earn a gold key that opens up expert level courses. Getting through a level with anything less than a S/S won't give you anything.
As both a hardcore gamer and a completist I don't know how I feel about this system. While having the key system allows expert players to feel rewarded. I would have liked something to be given or unlocked for getting through a level. Especially when you try out the gold rated levels which are incredibly difficult. Beating a level feels like a hollow victory when you finish it and have nothing to show for it. Since all progress is tied to perfect runs. Now some may argue that the knowledge from clearing the level is progress enough. However the challenge of Dustforce isn't getting through each individual element in a level, but doing it all at the same time without any screw ups.
The other problem I had was some issues with the responsiveness of the controls. The player can either double jump or air dash one time once the player is in the air, and resets only when they touch ground. There were times where neither was going off when I wanted them to. This becomes a major pain during sections where the player is moving faster than the camera can pan which require precise movement to get through. Now, I was using keyboard controls and can't comment on if it happens with a game pad. Because of these issues I don't think I'm going to see the end of the game.
Dustforce is an interesting game which takes the whole "easy to learn, difficult to master” motto to a new level. If you enjoy challenging games and know what you're getting into, this is a great game to test your platforming skills.
Josh Bycer
Thursday, February 2, 2012
The Devil Is in the Details of Action RPGs - Part Two: Leveling Up
In the last part, I talked about the importance of loot as a motivator and game mechanic in action rpgs. The other half of the equation when it comes to character progression is leveling up. Improving characters through leveling has not changed all that much over the years. Probably because many designers copied Diablo 2's style, but that doesn't mean that it’s the de facto best way.
The challenge with the leveling up mechanic is how much should it affect the gameplay? Most action rpgs on level up, allow the player to improve their character's attributes and unlock/improve a skill. The attributes won't affect the gameplay but have an effect on what equipment is available. Skills are a big deal, as they affect the utility the player has.
One of the issues with designing skills is with the issue of scaling: where players will run through the game multiple times with stronger enemies. If a character has skills that do flat damage such as: "20-30 fire damage," those skills become noticeably weaker on repeat plays. In Diablo 2, each higher difficulty boosts the stats of all enemies which made set damage skills a waste.
To combat this, the most popular way is to implement skills that scale. Many action RPGs have skills that do: "X % of weapon DPS," where DPS stands for damage per second. Scaling allows skills to keep their viability and feeds back into loot as a motivator as now better equipment also equals more powerful skills.
Demon's Souls and Dark Souls also had scaling but it was done differently. In both titles, various weapons had an attribute that it would scale to. For example: magic wands with intelligence, or bows with dexterity. The respective attribute would also be graded on a scale of F to S if I remember right. The better the grade the more of a bonus that attribute would apply to damage. It's important to note that in both titles, there is a dropping off point of around 50 where the scaling will stop being as useful. This was probably done to prevent players from just power leveling through the game.
With that said, we can turn our attention to a few of the leveling formats used in action RPGs. Starting off with the most well known which is Diablo 2. Here, each character class has 3 completely unique linear skill trees. Each tree has the skills in order from top to bottom, or from lowest level to highest. While the final skill unlocks at level 30, players can continue leveling much further than that. Leveling up gives players 5 attribute points to distribute and one skill point. Skills can be improved multiple times with different boosts based on the skill.
The problem with Diablo 2's progression comes at how the skills are unlocked. Besides having a level requirement, each skill requires a point in a previous skill on the specific tree to use. Because of that, it led to a lot of skills that are more or less a stepping stone for a better skill. For example, the Necromancer class has two skills relating to confusing enemies. The first one will cause one enemy to attack other enemies. The second one makes one enemy the target of all nearby enemies. Now in terms of utility, the latter is miles above the former, but you still need to waste a point in the former to get it.
This issue is even worse for the damage causing skills. Why would anyone use the bone teeth skill (level one necro attack spell) once they get access to bone spirit (level 30)? Interesting enough, Blizzard tried to fix this issue with a later patch that added synergy bonuses. Basically, some skills would provide bonuses to more powerful skills giving the player a reason to pump them up. While it helps, this issue is still one of the few problems with Diablo 2.
Torchlight, which was talked about in part one, fared better in terms of progression. Like Diablo 2, each character had 3 skill trees and received attribute and skill points on level up. However unlike Diablo 2, there were no prerequisite skills, instead only the player's level was the factor. This meant that as a player, you would not need to take any skills that you didn't want to in order to progress through the game.
There were still some skills that were better than lower level skills, but there was more utility offered compared to Diablo 2. What also helped was that many skills were built around scaling with fewer exceptions. The only real knock I have with Torchlight's progression is that several skills are shared between the three classes, which do cut into some of the diversity.
Our last example for this post and my personal favorite progression system comes from Din's Curse. The game begins differently in terms of character development compared to other ARPGs. At the start you can choose from either a predefined class or create a hybrid one. The difference is that a pre-made class comes with 3 skill trees, while the hybrid lets you choose any two that you want. So if you ever wanted to be an archer necromancer, this was your chance.
Each skill tree had two different types of skills. The first are proficiencies, which determine what equipment your character can wear, along with any special bonuses. Second are the actual skills you can learn over the course of your game. Like previous ARPGs the skills are arranged in order from top to bottom going from least expensive to most. The big difference is that there are no level requirements for skills, only money and skill points which are earned at level up.
Without any level requirements, it gave the player complete freedom in defining their character. Allowing them to either get several cheap skills starting out, or save up for an expensive skill. By not having to set strict limits on acquiring skills, gave the designers the option of creating more utility skills to make characters personalized. Some players may not even get the most expensive skill on their tree and instead favor improving skills from each skill tree.
Providing meaningful choices in leveling up is an important part of any good ARPG. For the next part I'll be examining downtime in ARPGs and money sinks.
Josh Bycer
P.S As a strange coincidence I got into the Diablo 3 beta on my birthday. The skill system is interesting, but without being able to see everything there, I don't want to include it in this examination.
The challenge with the leveling up mechanic is how much should it affect the gameplay? Most action rpgs on level up, allow the player to improve their character's attributes and unlock/improve a skill. The attributes won't affect the gameplay but have an effect on what equipment is available. Skills are a big deal, as they affect the utility the player has.
One of the issues with designing skills is with the issue of scaling: where players will run through the game multiple times with stronger enemies. If a character has skills that do flat damage such as: "20-30 fire damage," those skills become noticeably weaker on repeat plays. In Diablo 2, each higher difficulty boosts the stats of all enemies which made set damage skills a waste.
To combat this, the most popular way is to implement skills that scale. Many action RPGs have skills that do: "X % of weapon DPS," where DPS stands for damage per second. Scaling allows skills to keep their viability and feeds back into loot as a motivator as now better equipment also equals more powerful skills.
Demon's Souls and Dark Souls also had scaling but it was done differently. In both titles, various weapons had an attribute that it would scale to. For example: magic wands with intelligence, or bows with dexterity. The respective attribute would also be graded on a scale of F to S if I remember right. The better the grade the more of a bonus that attribute would apply to damage. It's important to note that in both titles, there is a dropping off point of around 50 where the scaling will stop being as useful. This was probably done to prevent players from just power leveling through the game.
With that said, we can turn our attention to a few of the leveling formats used in action RPGs. Starting off with the most well known which is Diablo 2. Here, each character class has 3 completely unique linear skill trees. Each tree has the skills in order from top to bottom, or from lowest level to highest. While the final skill unlocks at level 30, players can continue leveling much further than that. Leveling up gives players 5 attribute points to distribute and one skill point. Skills can be improved multiple times with different boosts based on the skill.
The problem with Diablo 2's progression comes at how the skills are unlocked. Besides having a level requirement, each skill requires a point in a previous skill on the specific tree to use. Because of that, it led to a lot of skills that are more or less a stepping stone for a better skill. For example, the Necromancer class has two skills relating to confusing enemies. The first one will cause one enemy to attack other enemies. The second one makes one enemy the target of all nearby enemies. Now in terms of utility, the latter is miles above the former, but you still need to waste a point in the former to get it.
This issue is even worse for the damage causing skills. Why would anyone use the bone teeth skill (level one necro attack spell) once they get access to bone spirit (level 30)? Interesting enough, Blizzard tried to fix this issue with a later patch that added synergy bonuses. Basically, some skills would provide bonuses to more powerful skills giving the player a reason to pump them up. While it helps, this issue is still one of the few problems with Diablo 2.
Torchlight, which was talked about in part one, fared better in terms of progression. Like Diablo 2, each character had 3 skill trees and received attribute and skill points on level up. However unlike Diablo 2, there were no prerequisite skills, instead only the player's level was the factor. This meant that as a player, you would not need to take any skills that you didn't want to in order to progress through the game.
There were still some skills that were better than lower level skills, but there was more utility offered compared to Diablo 2. What also helped was that many skills were built around scaling with fewer exceptions. The only real knock I have with Torchlight's progression is that several skills are shared between the three classes, which do cut into some of the diversity.
Our last example for this post and my personal favorite progression system comes from Din's Curse. The game begins differently in terms of character development compared to other ARPGs. At the start you can choose from either a predefined class or create a hybrid one. The difference is that a pre-made class comes with 3 skill trees, while the hybrid lets you choose any two that you want. So if you ever wanted to be an archer necromancer, this was your chance.
Each skill tree had two different types of skills. The first are proficiencies, which determine what equipment your character can wear, along with any special bonuses. Second are the actual skills you can learn over the course of your game. Like previous ARPGs the skills are arranged in order from top to bottom going from least expensive to most. The big difference is that there are no level requirements for skills, only money and skill points which are earned at level up.
Without any level requirements, it gave the player complete freedom in defining their character. Allowing them to either get several cheap skills starting out, or save up for an expensive skill. By not having to set strict limits on acquiring skills, gave the designers the option of creating more utility skills to make characters personalized. Some players may not even get the most expensive skill on their tree and instead favor improving skills from each skill tree.
Providing meaningful choices in leveling up is an important part of any good ARPG. For the next part I'll be examining downtime in ARPGs and money sinks.
Josh Bycer
P.S As a strange coincidence I got into the Diablo 3 beta on my birthday. The skill system is interesting, but without being able to see everything there, I don't want to include it in this examination.
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