2012
18MAY
I Am Not Makin' This Up - Part 2
Last time: The beginning of the end... for now?
Today's music choice: Shit, I still owe you one from last week. Okay, if I remember to upload something tonight, I'll double-up.
As promised, the first two songs for you! The theme this time is "classics" from The Reconstruction. They're not completely unrelated to IMTS, though.
Origins
Naught To Lose
Progress Report: Strangely, with my hurry to get as much done as possible before summer sets in, Episode 5 is already more than halfway complete. Data and tactical maps are in, as is 95% of the post game content; really, the only things left are the final encounter and ending sequences. Looks like I'll be able to polish it up a bit before its late July release date after all. Speaking of which, here is a brief list of things I want to add but am making absolutely no guarantee that I will before the next episode, so stay your pitchforks:
Since the dawn of Unix time, weapons have been the most common "interface" to the game world by far. Almost every game ever made has been rooted in a primal desire to kill, or destroy, or stomp, or trap in a tiny bubble and pop. And because of this, the choice of or powering-up of weaponry is a staple gameplay element, if not the primary strategy itself. It's kind of strange to think about the conduit between the player's actions and the game world being distilled into one little white rectangle of pixels, but here we are. Sure, there might be secondary tools or abilities for situational use, but if you were to simplify all input to an Atari 2600's joystick, you better believe the lone action on that red button is gonna be "attack."
Why, then, do so many RPGs play "follow the leader" with their weapon selections, as opposed to trying something new? It's actually kind of funny; the earliest RPGs expressed weapons in the simplest of terms: varying levels of "attack power," whatever that means, and maybe accuracy too. Real-life weapons are situational, cultural, and completely pragmatic in their own ways, but few if any games really translate this into a strategically interesting manner.
The simplest handling of weapons is as I said before - "attack power goes up." This is about as displaced from reality as you can get, but most of the time it's part of the adaptation of the escalation of power that many RPGs call "progress." After all, shouldn't a solid gold sword worth 10,000 G's cut better than a steel one worth 1,000? It's all numbers. Numbers go up, player gets a mild euphoric rush that lasts until the next tier of enemies is encountered, and the cycle repeats. The weapon itself - a knight sword, a bo staff, a pair of kitchen knives - makes no discernible change on gameplay except for maybe a different combat animation or icon on the equipment screen. It's a name, a number, and a price, and that's it.
The next step up is forced diversity. Every character or character class specializes in exactly one type of weapon, but this is entirely for flavor, and all it means to the player is having to scroll down and buy one of each weapon instead of just buying 4 broadswords and moving on. This sort of goes hand-in-hand with the concept of weapon "skills" and "specializations" found in many western-style and strategy RPGs, but there is still no diversity to be had. Thieves use daggers, because the games in the previous generation deigned it so; the generic "Attack" command remains exactly as-is, regardless. Skill rating is just another number, and you're purposefully gimping yourself if you choose to wield a hammer instead.
A slight step up from this is secondary effects on weapons. Maybe that hammer grants +1 to sneaking skill? Okay, it doesn't make much sense, but, magic! Unfortunately, the problem here is that these sorts of weapons tend to just amplify the effects of the classes they're meant for. You'll find daggers with +5% to Backstab skill, which are useless to everyone but thieves anyway, so any attempts at a creative loadout are stifled from the get-go, and you've got that "illusion" of diversity yet again which I've ranted upon numerous times. Skyrim is great fun, but it does this to a disturbing degree, even with armor. So, even though it's a supposedly classless system, you're already being railroaded into the plain vanilla prerequisite abilities of the fighter/mage/thief class system if you want to get the most out of your character.
Finally, finally, we get to actual differences between different weapon classes, either in equipment restrictions or damage "types." A two-handed sword means your forfeit a shield; everyone knows that. Unfortunately, this instance more often than not is reliant on whether the game's own balance means the difference in damage output is worth forfeiting blocking opportunities. Sometimes it is; sometimes it is not; the only way to know is trial and error, and by that point you've invested enough points into one branch or the other than you may regret your decision. Polearm weapons may have a lot more reach than daggers, but this is almost universally pointless; you'll get maybe one extra attack with that polearm before the enemy is up in your face (most AIs aren't ready to handle any actions more complex than "rush in and attack"), so the faster attack speed of the dagger basically trumps all. This is especially noticeable when damage caps are in play, especially by late-game - you will always, ALWAYS choose the weapon that gets more hits in per period, regardless of other factors. Ranged weapons meet a similar fate, almost always with damage reductions to compensate for the initial lack of danger (except for stealthy or "snipe" attacks).
Then, there's the good old "crush/edge/pierce" weapon "element" triangle (guilty, of course). Weapons may innately be one of the three, and certain enemies will resist or be more vulnerable to certain types. However, in practice, this almost never makes an appreciable enough difference to be a consideration, and worse yet, sometimes designers may throw it in without really considering the weapons in play - knights almost always use swords, while healers almost always use crushing weapons, so if your only mace-wielding character is not suitable for melee combat, then that 25% boost in damage is going to be worthless anyway. It should be less of a balancing act and more of an integration into many factors of gameplay - the characters, the enemies, the weapon availability, and the sacrifice of a turn of attacking instead of doing some other action. Plus, when you get right down to it, it's still just a number. Granted, when I implemented such a triangle in TR, it was part of the philosophy of enemies being slightly randomized enough that there were many potential actions a player could take in a turn, but likely only one "best" action. Sometimes that may be clubbing a bug with a hard shell; sometimes that may be zapping it with lightning. The damage difference was significant enough to make it less of an afterthought. The Fire Emblem games mostly do this well, too.
A subset of this is "elemental" weapons; they are generally useful for exactly one dungeon or boss fight, and never again, and there is usually maybe one weapon for each element in the entire game. Seems like an extreme waste of code to me, especially since I tend to just go non-elemental anyway for fear of getting caught with my pants down and inexplicably healing the enemy when attacking it. There is also the matter of "enchanting" weapons with elements, which is almost always a wasted action as well, except against particularly devious bosses.
Finally, the top echelon of RPG weapons is almost exclusive to action RPGs - different weapons have different swing styles, speeds, reach, attack patterns, and (ugh) skills or finishing moves. The problem here - if you could call it that - is that it's less of a strategic choice and more of a playstyle preference. Some people like to exploit dodge mechanics and use huge, powerful strikes at a steady rate. Some people like to block and counter. Some people just "kite" enemies with arrows and never take a direct hit. Variety is always nice, but oddly enough, weapons within the genre itself have basically stagnated to the degree that any quirks or variances between titles are minor at best. And they still all achieve the same end - put out as much damage while taking as little as possible. Modern-setting games with projectile weapons are no different. The four or so weapons we got in Wolfenstein 3D have been repeated ad nauseum for 20+ years, and the subtle differences that designers incorporate for that "realism" sense aren't necessarily a good idea from a game design standpoint.
It's time for something new. If weapons aren't going to go all the way in making real-world sense, then, why keep repeating the same trick over and over? Is it gamer complacency? Ugh, gamers ruin everything. Anyway, why not have a light sword play different from a battle ax, either by way of "Attack" command or swinging animation? Why the oversimplification of "damage versus defense" as pure numbers? What if, when I miss with that ax swing, the blade gets embedded in the ground and I have to expend stamina pulling it out while being open to attack? Game balance seems to center around trade-offs, but right now those trade-offs seem to be "attack speed versus attack power" and that's it. The counterargument, I guess, is that gamers don't want to deal with micromanagement and just want to hammer on the R1 button. Demon's Souls and its followup get it half-right - weapons have distinct attack patterns that need to be learned and exploited, and doing something stupid like trying to use a huge two-hander inside of an enclosed tunnel just makes the blade bounce off the walls, which makes logical sense. Too bad the rest of the game amounted to NES-platformer style memorization, but it was a step in the right direction.
Sorry for such a long rant. I recently tried Gothic 3 off Gamefly, and immediately upon seeing the sword-swinging animation in that game and realizing that the developers thought "yep, this is a high-quality production easily worth $60 USD", I had to explore the issue in general and vent some. Maybe some day, I'll actually implement a design choice in one of my own games that runs counter to what I rant about on the internet!
Next time: Stop saying you want to make an MMO, people! You have no idea what kind of pain you're about to bring upon yourselves!
Today's music choice: Shit, I still owe you one from last week. Okay, if I remember to upload something tonight, I'll double-up.
As promised, the first two songs for you! The theme this time is "classics" from The Reconstruction. They're not completely unrelated to IMTS, though.
Origins
Naught To Lose
Progress Report: Strangely, with my hurry to get as much done as possible before summer sets in, Episode 5 is already more than halfway complete. Data and tactical maps are in, as is 95% of the post game content; really, the only things left are the final encounter and ending sequences. Looks like I'll be able to polish it up a bit before its late July release date after all. Speaking of which, here is a brief list of things I want to add but am making absolutely no guarantee that I will before the next episode, so stay your pitchforks:
- Right now, there is no difference in a Quality 1 X-Type property protection and a Quality 10 one. I would like to add an additional defense boost to the type (either Hull, Systems, or Pilot) for higher quality ones. This wouldn't be retroactive, and I can't guarantee that it will be plausible, but it's something I will consider.
- Speaking of defenses, it seems like defense stats start meaning less and less after about Episode 2 as enemy skill levels get higher and higher. I might retool the damage formula - if not for enemies, then at least for player defenses. It's a dangerous move this late in the game's lifecycle, but it might be a necessary one.
- I promised an e-bro that I'd see into making a "sticky" cursor in battle that remembered and automatically selected your last weapon choice. I had this half-working, but a quirk in the processing events means I'd have to inject a fix into every battle map in the game (of which there are probably around 50). I'll also have to make a kiosk to let the player turn it on or off. Maybe I'll get to that eventually?
- I also wanted to add a menu option in the tactical screen to pop up the mission objective as a reminder. However, some missions have objectives that change halfway through, and any that have special objectives usually have a counter or some other interface-based reminder on-screen anyway, so this one is kind of low priority.
- Lastly, a couple of folks asked about a "low performance" mode that removed flourishes like scrolling backdrops and whatnot. Kind of a slog to implement, but feasible. I'll see what I can do.
Since the dawn of Unix time, weapons have been the most common "interface" to the game world by far. Almost every game ever made has been rooted in a primal desire to kill, or destroy, or stomp, or trap in a tiny bubble and pop. And because of this, the choice of or powering-up of weaponry is a staple gameplay element, if not the primary strategy itself. It's kind of strange to think about the conduit between the player's actions and the game world being distilled into one little white rectangle of pixels, but here we are. Sure, there might be secondary tools or abilities for situational use, but if you were to simplify all input to an Atari 2600's joystick, you better believe the lone action on that red button is gonna be "attack."
Why, then, do so many RPGs play "follow the leader" with their weapon selections, as opposed to trying something new? It's actually kind of funny; the earliest RPGs expressed weapons in the simplest of terms: varying levels of "attack power," whatever that means, and maybe accuracy too. Real-life weapons are situational, cultural, and completely pragmatic in their own ways, but few if any games really translate this into a strategically interesting manner.
The simplest handling of weapons is as I said before - "attack power goes up." This is about as displaced from reality as you can get, but most of the time it's part of the adaptation of the escalation of power that many RPGs call "progress." After all, shouldn't a solid gold sword worth 10,000 G's cut better than a steel one worth 1,000? It's all numbers. Numbers go up, player gets a mild euphoric rush that lasts until the next tier of enemies is encountered, and the cycle repeats. The weapon itself - a knight sword, a bo staff, a pair of kitchen knives - makes no discernible change on gameplay except for maybe a different combat animation or icon on the equipment screen. It's a name, a number, and a price, and that's it.
The next step up is forced diversity. Every character or character class specializes in exactly one type of weapon, but this is entirely for flavor, and all it means to the player is having to scroll down and buy one of each weapon instead of just buying 4 broadswords and moving on. This sort of goes hand-in-hand with the concept of weapon "skills" and "specializations" found in many western-style and strategy RPGs, but there is still no diversity to be had. Thieves use daggers, because the games in the previous generation deigned it so; the generic "Attack" command remains exactly as-is, regardless. Skill rating is just another number, and you're purposefully gimping yourself if you choose to wield a hammer instead.
A slight step up from this is secondary effects on weapons. Maybe that hammer grants +1 to sneaking skill? Okay, it doesn't make much sense, but, magic! Unfortunately, the problem here is that these sorts of weapons tend to just amplify the effects of the classes they're meant for. You'll find daggers with +5% to Backstab skill, which are useless to everyone but thieves anyway, so any attempts at a creative loadout are stifled from the get-go, and you've got that "illusion" of diversity yet again which I've ranted upon numerous times. Skyrim is great fun, but it does this to a disturbing degree, even with armor. So, even though it's a supposedly classless system, you're already being railroaded into the plain vanilla prerequisite abilities of the fighter/mage/thief class system if you want to get the most out of your character.
Finally, finally, we get to actual differences between different weapon classes, either in equipment restrictions or damage "types." A two-handed sword means your forfeit a shield; everyone knows that. Unfortunately, this instance more often than not is reliant on whether the game's own balance means the difference in damage output is worth forfeiting blocking opportunities. Sometimes it is; sometimes it is not; the only way to know is trial and error, and by that point you've invested enough points into one branch or the other than you may regret your decision. Polearm weapons may have a lot more reach than daggers, but this is almost universally pointless; you'll get maybe one extra attack with that polearm before the enemy is up in your face (most AIs aren't ready to handle any actions more complex than "rush in and attack"), so the faster attack speed of the dagger basically trumps all. This is especially noticeable when damage caps are in play, especially by late-game - you will always, ALWAYS choose the weapon that gets more hits in per period, regardless of other factors. Ranged weapons meet a similar fate, almost always with damage reductions to compensate for the initial lack of danger (except for stealthy or "snipe" attacks).
Then, there's the good old "crush/edge/pierce" weapon "element" triangle (guilty, of course). Weapons may innately be one of the three, and certain enemies will resist or be more vulnerable to certain types. However, in practice, this almost never makes an appreciable enough difference to be a consideration, and worse yet, sometimes designers may throw it in without really considering the weapons in play - knights almost always use swords, while healers almost always use crushing weapons, so if your only mace-wielding character is not suitable for melee combat, then that 25% boost in damage is going to be worthless anyway. It should be less of a balancing act and more of an integration into many factors of gameplay - the characters, the enemies, the weapon availability, and the sacrifice of a turn of attacking instead of doing some other action. Plus, when you get right down to it, it's still just a number. Granted, when I implemented such a triangle in TR, it was part of the philosophy of enemies being slightly randomized enough that there were many potential actions a player could take in a turn, but likely only one "best" action. Sometimes that may be clubbing a bug with a hard shell; sometimes that may be zapping it with lightning. The damage difference was significant enough to make it less of an afterthought. The Fire Emblem games mostly do this well, too.
A subset of this is "elemental" weapons; they are generally useful for exactly one dungeon or boss fight, and never again, and there is usually maybe one weapon for each element in the entire game. Seems like an extreme waste of code to me, especially since I tend to just go non-elemental anyway for fear of getting caught with my pants down and inexplicably healing the enemy when attacking it. There is also the matter of "enchanting" weapons with elements, which is almost always a wasted action as well, except against particularly devious bosses.
Finally, the top echelon of RPG weapons is almost exclusive to action RPGs - different weapons have different swing styles, speeds, reach, attack patterns, and (ugh) skills or finishing moves. The problem here - if you could call it that - is that it's less of a strategic choice and more of a playstyle preference. Some people like to exploit dodge mechanics and use huge, powerful strikes at a steady rate. Some people like to block and counter. Some people just "kite" enemies with arrows and never take a direct hit. Variety is always nice, but oddly enough, weapons within the genre itself have basically stagnated to the degree that any quirks or variances between titles are minor at best. And they still all achieve the same end - put out as much damage while taking as little as possible. Modern-setting games with projectile weapons are no different. The four or so weapons we got in Wolfenstein 3D have been repeated ad nauseum for 20+ years, and the subtle differences that designers incorporate for that "realism" sense aren't necessarily a good idea from a game design standpoint.
It's time for something new. If weapons aren't going to go all the way in making real-world sense, then, why keep repeating the same trick over and over? Is it gamer complacency? Ugh, gamers ruin everything. Anyway, why not have a light sword play different from a battle ax, either by way of "Attack" command or swinging animation? Why the oversimplification of "damage versus defense" as pure numbers? What if, when I miss with that ax swing, the blade gets embedded in the ground and I have to expend stamina pulling it out while being open to attack? Game balance seems to center around trade-offs, but right now those trade-offs seem to be "attack speed versus attack power" and that's it. The counterargument, I guess, is that gamers don't want to deal with micromanagement and just want to hammer on the R1 button. Demon's Souls and its followup get it half-right - weapons have distinct attack patterns that need to be learned and exploited, and doing something stupid like trying to use a huge two-hander inside of an enclosed tunnel just makes the blade bounce off the walls, which makes logical sense. Too bad the rest of the game amounted to NES-platformer style memorization, but it was a step in the right direction.
Sorry for such a long rant. I recently tried Gothic 3 off Gamefly, and immediately upon seeing the sword-swinging animation in that game and realizing that the developers thought "yep, this is a high-quality production easily worth $60 USD", I had to explore the issue in general and vent some. Maybe some day, I'll actually implement a design choice in one of my own games that runs counter to what I rant about on the internet!
Next time: Stop saying you want to make an MMO, people! You have no idea what kind of pain you're about to bring upon yourselves!