Sorry Sandi, yes, I was replying to him. Actually, I missed your post entirely, since you must have posted it while I was replying to Runter. :sad: (Sometimes I wish there was a "somebody posted while you were writing" feature.)

But I agree with you too that "game design" is a very broad concept, and one shouldn't speak of good game design in general if one means one's own preferences. I think it's a hard thing for all of us to remember though, sometimes, that what we like isn't the One True Way. :lol:

The point I was making though, is that it's nonsense to compare one character vs. another character. In any given game environment, you can always find an example where one person easily beats another, AND you can find counter-examples where that same person loses horribly to a different other person.

A generalist will lose to a specialist if they're both using the same subset of skills, that's obvious. However, a generalist has a broader base to draw from, and (if your system is designed to allow it) may find counters that the specialist can't overpower.

Will generalists always win? No. I said that. Generalists will win more often when pitted against random foes. Specialists will win far more often if THEY get to pick who they fight. If you're a specialist fire mage and you go up against an earth tank, make sure your will is in order. But you'll have a lot of fun burning other stuff to a crisp. :)

I don't think he was saying that at all. He's saying that in his contrived example, the generalist has won because he can do something the specialist cannot.

Going back to my original point that numbers are not the whole game, this kind of thing can be actually used to a game's advantage. If you have a mix of generalist and specialist players, if you can make the (stories | games | scenarios) fit the crowd by providing foes that actually require teamwork.

The point of the game (like ZaVir said) is that everyone should have fun. By fun I don't think anyone means "having it easy", that's not really fun (well, not my idea anyway).

Take a slightly better example than the gollem:

The Final Fantasy genre has been amazingly successful. You have a team of characters, and each can do different things. Some are weak at fighting, some are strong and hit hard, some do magic. You don't even really get to choose them you just feel like you do.

I can wander around the entire game kicking the crud out of stuff with a general, non specialist set up and get xp and so on. But that doesn't advance the game for me. Sometimes the story throws me a curve ball, and I end up dying no matter how hard I try the first time. I can have 1000 healing potions, but if I can't get to them in time or the foe is just too powerful and I don't have the right equipment on/healing spells/weapons I can still die. I'm too generalised and need to arrange my equipment better or cast better protective spells over the team. Whatever. If I cannot reach that potion in time or don't have enough mana because I have the wrong ring on I'm dead. You may reach a stalemate with some foes in that you will just be "keeping yourself alive" and not really winning as well. The numbers are unimportant, I just need to shuffle them more one way than the other to beat the foe.

All this would become boring and frustrating on its own. However it's the game play AND the advancing the story that keeps me playing. The random encounters are useful to help me level. BUT, levelling alone is not the game, and nor is arranging my equipment. Its fun, its part of the game, but without the story I'd soon get very, very bored.

Likewise in a MUD, the game should throw the characters a curved ball (obviously, with some degree of warning as I said before otherwise you will get calls of foul play). There is no reason whatsoever that a 300th level mage with a tonne of mana should not die because he made a mistake and walked in on an ogre and his wife "at it", or that a dead hard 100th level fighter should not fall off a building and break his neck whilst climbing a tall tower to free the maiden. Its a game, I expect to die sometimes. I also expect to win sometimes, but not because (and solely because) the numbers say so. I want the story to say so too.

Well done, you have freed the Froods from their evil captor. You are now considered King of the Froods! 

You gain 10000 xp.

You are now know as "Flumpy King of the Froods". 

[Flumpy is now King of the Froods]

Zancar congratulates you.

>thank zancar
etc

*

[edit: that last part I just wanted to be king of the Froods. i wasn't trying to make any kind of serious point with it :)]

Then here's a real example:

In my mud, three of the mage powers are Fire Magic, Air Magic and Water Magic. The first rank in each of these powers unlocks the firebolt, lightning bolt and icebolt spells respectively, and each additional rank makes them a little stronger.

Casting firebolt requires the 'snap fingers' gesture followed by 'pointing finger'.

Casting lightning bolt requires the 'pointing finger' gesture followed by 'open hand'.

Casting icebolt requires the 'open hand' gesture followed by 'snap fingers'.

Each gesture takes 2 seconds, unless the gesture completes a spell, in which case the time depends on the individual spell. The bolt spells listed above each take 3 seconds. Therefore it takes a total of 5 seconds to cast a firebolt from scratch.

However the previous gestures aren't cleared after you cast a spell, which means that after casting firebolt you only need to add one more gesture to cast a lightning bolt as well, then one more for icebolt, then one more for firebolt again, etc - and you can keep doing it, over and over, as long as your gesture sequence isn't disrupted.

Thus while the fire specialist can cast 4 firebolts in 20 seconds, the generalist can cast 2 firebolts, 2 lightning bolts and 2 icebolts in the same amount of time. Of course the specialist will also have the (higher rank) fire protection spells, so he'll take far less damage from the 2 firebolts cast against him - and equally, his higher rank will slightly increase the strength of his own firebolts. Overall, the two mages would likely inflict around the same amount of damage on each other in a magical duel.

The specialist will obviously have additional offensive spells as well, such as fireball, firestorm, immolate, etc. But while these are more powerful than firebolt, they also have a longer casting time. For example fireball has better range, accuracy and power, and explodes on a critical hit (effectively inflicting a double attack), or even on a regular hit if enhanced - but it requires a total of 8 seconds to cast.

The specialist will do badly against creatures that are highly resistant to fire, such as red dragons and fire giants. However such creatures also tend to use fire attacks of their own, so the specialist will at least have good protection against them. The generalist will also be at a disadvantage against such opponents (because a third of his spells will be ineffective), but overall he should find himself inflicting more damage (and receiving more damage) than the specialist.

Of course a mage could choose to master all three powers, and some do exactly that. But there are 22 mage powers, and you can only max out 4-7 of them.

In your example KaVir, it's somewhat unclear what the average-case advantage is to adding several points into the same elemental field. It seems that you're only gaining an advantage in fairly specific cases. In particular if specializing doubles your damage but halves the number of attacks, it seems that you basically haven't gone anywhere.

The discussion is rapidly growing to the level where the whole system needs to be specified, as do the bounds of the discussion. It matters a great deal if we're talking about a rock-paper-scissors game, a PvP game, a PvE game, a team game, a solo game, a game where one person controls a party of characters, and so forth. Are we trying to balance the average case, where average is defined as the sum over your encounters with all possible enemies? Or is average defined simply as the sum over your wins and losses, regardless of which enemy you were facing?

So I'm not sure how much sense it makes to talk about specific game design until the above parameters have been given fairly specifically. For example, team play vs. solo play can make a huge difference in the role that specializing plays, even disregarding every single other parameter.

I think KaVirs system is noteworthy. What he didn't mention is the high level of specialization I've seen on his game (albeit I haven't had time to play much.). So it's likely there is a big range of difference between not only a full fire wizard vs a generalist but also between a full fire wizard and another full fire wizard. So I am left to wonder if those choices can make a big impact on how well the character plays? Ergo the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I'm not sure this should be any different, btw.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say that it's not noteworthy, it's just that it's hard to get a grasp on discussions like this without knowing what the full context is. It's another discussion where everybody is coming at it with their own baggage and we're trying to interpret other people's words in our own contexts, which of course will lead to confusion.

FWIW, I was much more interested in the distinction between random and deliberate choices than I was in the question of specialization, because I easily imagine being happy with systems with and without specialization. It's the notion that essentially random play (even in the name of "fun") should be as good as deliberate play that bothers me.

I agree completely with you on that. That would basically result in a game playing itself if your goal is to make the best choices. All choices being equal regardless of what they are. Regardless of what the goal is.

It's nowhere near as simple as that, but that's not a bad way of looking at the fundamental concept; you can choose to specialise (double your damage per attack), or generalise (attack twice as often). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that both approaches give the same basic damage output - and as long as the rest of the game (such as armour, dodging, etc) is designed with the specialised-vs-generalised approach in mind, they should remain reasonably balanced and viable alternatives.


You said you found it "difficult to believe that one could create a character weak in all aspects that somehow beats a character very strong in just one". Quixadhal provided a fictional scenario to demonstrate how it might be possible, but you responded that you "don't think that a contrived example is worth spending much time discussing".

I've given you a real example from an actual mud, showing that it is indeed possible. I'm not sure what need or benefit there is in describing my system further.

In that case you haven't really presented specialization vs. generalization, you've just put chrome on the same mechanics.


Quix gave a contrived example where a character has an advantage in a single case, not one where on average the two are equal. It's not interesting to talk about some random case, maybe even a fluke, where a character loses to another. We were, after all, talking about general cases, not one-offs – at least I thought we were. Furthermore, Quix's example was PvE, not PvP, hence why I asked the question you seem to think silly: what exactly are we talking about?


EDIT:
BTW, I didn't ask you to define your system further. I was pointing out that specifics are only confusing, to not say useless and harmful, when the general discussion hasn't been narrowed down to a given type of game.

Not so. I've provided two different mechanics, one improved through specialisation, the other through generalisation, but both comparable in power. That is what you asked for, is it not?

At the risk of being repetitive… what exactly are we talking about? It feels like this is degenerating into some kind of verbal point-scoring sparring match?

A system in which a jack-of-all-trades can compete with a specialist. You said you found it "difficult to believe that one could create a character weak in all aspects that somehow beats a character very strong in just one", and weren't willing to discuss fictional scenarios, so I described a real implementation that does exactly that.

I thought we were talking about something else entirely, if you go back to the post that started this whole tangent.

BTW, I don't think you've given an example of a character "weak" in all aspects, just saying. :shrug:

You mean your disagreement with this comment?

elanthis: Put simply, a min-maxer should not be able to create a better character than someone who's just making choices based on how fun he believes the options are.

David Haley: I heartily disagree with this statement. The logical conclusion of your argument is that essentially random choices should yield a character just as powerful as choices made very deliberately, which strikes me as a far more broken game design.

That was fair enough - I agree with your disagreement. The problem I had was with the example you used afterwards:

David Haley: Surely, somebody who adds a single point to ten kinds of elemental magic will be less powerful than somebody who adds all of the points to a single one: it's very hard to justify that the first character should be equally able to function in the world on average as the latter.

elanthis: Why not?

David Haley: Well, give me a game design where this would actually work, and then we can talk. I find it difficult to believe that one could create a character weak in all aspects that somehow beats a character very strong in just one.

quixadhal: Easily done [fictional example follows]

David Haley: I don't think that a contrived example is worth spending much time discussing.

KaVir: Then here's a real example [real example follows]

In other words, said you believed part of my game design wasn't possible, and then challenged anyone to prove otherwise. That's not really the sort of statement I can resist responding to…


I gave an example of a character with 1 point in each of 3 powers. I'm afraid my powers are whole numbers, so I can't get any lower unless I reduce the example character to 0 ranks in his powers.

But if you really want to be that pedantic about it, then yes - a character who put 0 ranks in each of his powers will be just as strong as a character who puts the same number of ranks into a single power.

KaVir, what exactly are you trying to accomplish at this point? Do you really want me to start a similar dissection of everything so that we can both enjoy a protracted and very enjoyable word-by-word, comma-by-comma refutation that will go on for, oh, another 50 posts or so? Don't we have better things to do with our time? I'm surprised at how you can't help agreeing with things without making this much hay about disagreeing with them at the same time. How about we talk about the more interesting things, hmm?

I already hinted at it. You are making this premise that points in a skill equates to making the skill more powerful in terms of raw numeric output. That 10 points in Fire Magic means you do 10x the damage (or some other increase, specifics irrelevant) with every Fire spell, while having 1 point in each element means you do only base damage with those elements.

There's no reason at all that skill points have to equate to damage bonuses like that, or saving throw modifiers, or whatever other numbers you use to determine potency of magic. One very simple solution is to merely have the skill point put into a spell determine how often it can be used, while the raw power of magic spells is either based solely on the spell cast, or on a sum of all magic skills. So if you have 10 points in Fire then you can cast your Fire magic 10x as often as someone with just 1 point in it, and you have a Magic Potency of 10. If you have 1 point in 10 elements, you also have a magic potency of 10, but you will be forced to cycle through your magic elements more often because of how long the "cooldown" is for each element. You can spit out just as much damage as the FIre specialized caster, but you have more versatility at the cost of not being able to whip out a ton of Fire magic in situations where that's what you really need.

Balancing those two may be hard, but a close-enough approximation can be found. If you find that 95% of your players pick one approach over the other, you know youv'e got a balance problem to identify, and you need to fix it.



No, I said that you should only give choices that are fun. My main point is not "lots of choices makes games fun" (I somewhat disagree with that actually) but that "choices that obviously suck are not fun."



Of course. No argument there. For the most part, the choices in an RPG/MUD/MMO that screw over a player the most are his character development choices. That is because these choices must be made, usually cannot be undone, and require a large amount of meta-information about the game. For example, the player might have a choice between two exclusive spells, both of which do area-over-time damage but differ in element and a few numeric tweaks. Say, Acid Storm does a total of 10,000 damage over 5 seconds and caused metallic armor degradation while Fire Rain does 25,000 over 10 seconds, so Fire Rain does more damage but Acid Storm makes it possible to do more damage with weapons. However, if the end-game monsters are all wearing magic-immune dragon-hide super armor, then the metal erosion effect of Acid Rain becomes useless, so the spell becomes a very obvious red herring compared to Fire Rain… but only if players actually know that the end-game monsters are immune to its special effect. A player who doesn't troll the forums and read up about all the stats and abilities of every monster in every area in the game to find out the best meta-strategy to being powerful may well end making a very logical selection of Acid Storm only to later find out he now has an underpowered spell and can't hope to compete in the rankings with the more lucky players and the meta-gamers who picked Fire Rain since those guys are getting an extra 25% damage output with their spell.

Yeah, balancing that is hard because it's not just the spell itself – there is perhaps nothing wrong with Acid Storm at all. The balance issue with Acid Storm in the above scenario is entirely a problem with the stats of the top-level end-game monsters. I wouldn't at all be surprised if someone who puts a ton of effort into balance made that mistake, since it would almost certainly go unnoticed without a lot of testing. So long as they fix it once it becomes known, it's a completely excusable mistake. :)



Sure. But Checkers doesn't eat up 60+ hours (or as with most MUDs/MMOs, many full weeks) of the player time just to find out that the move he made 40 turns ago is now screwing him over. Losing is something the player wants to avoid, but screwing up isn't a truly huge deal in the grand scheme of Checkers playing. Just play again. With a MUD, or even a large RPG, making a poor choice in character development can mean getting to the end-game and finding out you can't raid effectively or can't compete in top-tier PVP no matter what you try, aside from starting all over again from scratch and spending another month power-leveling a character.

It is worth clarifying between permanent/long-term choices and transitory/recoverable choices.

If players make a stupid choice in the middle of a battle and lose, oh well, that is the game. But they just heal up, repair equipment, and jump back in and do another. There are consequences, but they can be recovered from. At worst they may have to adventure a little to regain lost XP or earn gold to repair equipment or otherwise undo the negative consequences of death, but they have a clear path of what they need to do, and doing those things (which aren't _too_ time consuming or irritating, hopefully) can return them to the top of the rankings. They aren't stuck with that one poor combat choice forever after.

Good games where the player can fully lose are in general designed to be short games. If you die in Mario and have to start over it's not a huge deal, because you can beat the game in a few hours or less. In a large-scale RPG or MUD/MMO however, losing means a lot more than just a couple hours of lost time. Losing (be it perma-death or just ending up with a character that can never hope to compete) means having to redo days or weeks or months worth of adventuring, much of which will be boring and repetitive level grinding.

Larger games like RPGs can often be broken down into a series of mini-games. Combat can be thought of as its own game inside the larger RPG context. Losing combat has localized consequences – at absolute worst, the player loads up from the last save game or from the last checkpoint/auto-save, or he respawns back at the Temple with some lost XP, gold, etc.. He perhaps has to do a little bit of boring work over again or go fetch a corpse, maybe a couple hours of work at worst. Then he keeps playing and having fun. The character building in an RPG however is not easily classifiable as a mini-game because its effects are not localized, but influence every single other part of the game. Screwing up there means that you lose combats more often. It means that you have to reload or respawn more often, and go through that "punishment" time more often. It means spending less time enjoying the game and more time being bored and frustrated. And worst of all, you can't expect to get better at it with practice and expect the player to overcome the challenge of it, because character building isn't something that you can just do over and over as building even a single character to mid-level power is a very long and involved process. The player is required to come in and make all the right choices without having any prior experience with the game. With combat, almost every game starts off the initial combat as very very easy in order to give the player a chance to learn how it works. By the time he's fighting dragons and using complex skills, he's expected to have won hundreds or thousands of combats already, and hence can reasonably be expected to have learned something by then. Even if the player kept dying when he was still new to the game, by the time he's fighting those more powerful monsters the consequences of those early loses are entirely negated – there is no difference between the level 60 fighter that lost twenty fights before he was level 10 and the level 60 fighter that lost thirty fights before he was level 10. Those early combat mistakes caused a lot of negative consequences at the time perhaps, but they don't permanently screw over the player for the rest of the time he plays the game.

Starting over at Checkers after losing is no big deal at all. Starting over a character with 200 hours invested into it is a huge freaking ordeal that drives many players to just say "screw it" and go play something else.

hi

You missed it by two posts Crat.

100 :)