This is one of ideas that flew around on IRDC, I thought it's worth saving for the future, if not as a viable approach, then at least as a food for thought.
New users often feel overhelmed by large complexity and richness of roguelike games. One way to mitigate this problem is to make the beginning of the game relatively simple, and add functionalities as the game progresses. For example, you can let players develop new skills for their characters as they level up. This common technique is somewhat spoiled by the fact that at the point where the players are expected to make the decission about which skills to improve, they know very little about the game and about the skills themselves. It's also very hard to pick the most important skill at the moment, as each of them is (should be) useful in some way. It also leads to the desire of maxing out all the skills.
That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as the game progresses you are asked to remove them. Each time you remove a skill, all skills that are left improve. This way you have the opportunity to test the skills before you make a decission that affects your future. It also forces you to differentiate your characters, to specialize -- hopefully leading to more variety in the later parts of the game.
The idea could be extended even further: instead of getting stronger, the player character might actually be getting weaker -- and the game harder. This could play well with the "reversed dungeon" idea, where you start at the bottom of the dungeon and make your way to the top.
-- Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl> "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
> This is one of ideas that flew around on IRDC, I thought it's > worth saving for the future, if not as a viable approach, then > at least as a food for thought.
> New users often feel overhelmed by large complexity and richness > of roguelike games. One way to mitigate this problem is to make > the beginning of the game relatively simple, and add functionalities > as the game progresses. For example, you can let players develop > new skills for their characters as they level up. This common technique > is somewhat spoiled by the fact that at the point where the players > are expected to make the decission about which skills to improve, they > know very little about the game and about the skills themselves. It's > also very hard to pick the most important skill at the moment, as each > of them is (should be) useful in some way. It also leads to the desire > of maxing out all the skills.
> That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes > to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as > the game progresses you are asked to remove them. Each time you > remove a skill, all skills that are left improve. This way you have > the opportunity to test the skills before you make a decission that > affects your future. It also forces you to differentiate your characters, > to specialize -- hopefully leading to more variety in the later parts > of the game.
> The idea could be extended even further: instead of getting stronger, the > player character might actually be getting weaker -- and the game harder. > This could play well with the "reversed dungeon" idea, where you start at > the bottom of the dungeon and make your way to the top.
> -- > Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl> > "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, > it's time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
Sounds like 1kBRLs: the PCs tend to get weaker with every step in these :).
> On 22 Wrz, 11:52, Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <n...@sheep.art.pl> > wrote:
> > This is one of ideas that flew around on IRDC, I thought it's > > worth saving for the future, if not as a viable approach, then > > at least as a food for thought.
> > New users often feel overhelmed by large complexity and richness > > of roguelike games. One way to mitigate this problem is to make > > the beginning of the game relatively simple, and add functionalities > > as the game progresses. For example, you can let players develop > > new skills for their characters as they level up. This common technique > > is somewhat spoiled by the fact that at the point where the players > > are expected to make the decission about which skills to improve, they > > know very little about the game and about the skills themselves. It's > > also very hard to pick the most important skill at the moment, as each > > of them is (should be) useful in some way. It also leads to the desire > > of maxing out all the skills.
> > That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes > > to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as > > the game progresses you are asked to remove them. Each time you > > remove a skill, all skills that are left improve. This way you have > > the opportunity to test the skills before you make a decission that > > affects your future. It also forces you to differentiate your characters, > > to specialize -- hopefully leading to more variety in the later parts > > of the game.
> > The idea could be extended even further: instead of getting stronger, the > > player character might actually be getting weaker -- and the game harder. > > This could play well with the "reversed dungeon" idea, where you start at > > the bottom of the dungeon and make your way to the top.
> > -- > > Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl> > > "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, > > it's time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
> Sounds like 1kBRLs: the PCs tend to get weaker with every step in > these :).
> That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes > to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as > the game progresses you are asked to remove them.
New skills improve gameplay - they give you new possibilities when you play longer. Removing them would limit your actions and would make game frustrating.
Jakub Debski wrote: > Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski pretended : >> That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes >> to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as >> the game progresses you are asked to remove them.
> New skills improve gameplay - they give you new possibilities when you > play longer. Removing them would limit your actions and would make game > frustrating.
Isn't removing them right at the beginning, when you don't even know which ones of the you will need, even more frustrating? Because that's what the race/class selection effectively does...
-- Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl> "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski has brought this to us :
> Isn't removing them right at the beginning, when you don't even know > which ones of the you will need, even more frustrating? Because that's > what the race/class selection effectively does...
It's not frustrating because of "promise" of receiving them :)
Jakub Debski wrote: > Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski has brought this to us : >> Isn't removing them right at the beginning, when you don't even know >> which ones of the you will need, even more frustrating? Because that's >> what the race/class selection effectively does...
> It's not frustrating because of "promise" of receiving them :)
You don't have such a promise, for example, you usually don't have "weapon crafting" skill unless you select a blacksmith class, you don't have "kung-fu" skill unless you select monk, etc.
In this reversed model, you just choose your class at the end of the game instead of at the beginning :)
-- Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl> "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
I've been thinking of "retraining" instead of "levelling". You would be able to redistribute your skill points (or equivalent) for an XP- cost, or simply over time, but you'd never gain more points. It seems that if the starting classes (actually skill packages) have broad and non-maximised skill in their skills, you would get a lowering of the number of skills as time passes. Say the "Warrior" starts with 5/10 points in 10 skills (some weapon skills, Armor Use, Athletics, whatever) and the optimal strategy is to max out 5 skills at 10/10 (retaining a total of 50 points).
My original thought about that was more to allow people to take back bad decisions ("Basketweaving seemed like a good choice at the time") rather than simplify the skillset over time, though.
> This is one of ideas that flew around on IRDC, I thought it's > worth saving for the future, if not as a viable approach, then > at least as a food for thought.
> New users often feel overhelmed by large complexity and richness > of roguelike games. One way to mitigate this problem is to make > the beginning of the game relatively simple, and add functionalities > as the game progresses. For example, you can let players develop > new skills for their characters as they level up. This common technique > is somewhat spoiled by the fact that at the point where the players > are expected to make the decission about which skills to improve, they > know very little about the game and about the skills themselves. It's > also very hard to pick the most important skill at the moment, as each > of them is (should be) useful in some way. It also leads to the desire > of maxing out all the skills.
> That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes > to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as > the game progresses you are asked to remove them. Each time you > remove a skill, all skills that are left improve. This way you have > the opportunity to test the skills before you make a decission that > affects your future. It also forces you to differentiate your characters, > to specialize -- hopefully leading to more variety in the later parts > of the game.
The player still won't know what skills are worth having when he is first asked to ditch some of them. Not when the remaining skills power up to new unknown levels and he doesn't know what he will face later in the dungeon.
This is also not the same as simply "picking a character class at the end of the game," at least not without guarantees that the player regardless of choices will have a useful skillset at the end of the game. Character classes are designed with at least some consideration placed in being able to complete the game. Who knows what skills a player will delete though, particularly when he is acting without full information.
Such a system may even discourage skill exploration in some players, if they get into the habit of always discarding certain skills. And when it may take a near full game to find out whether it is worth having Wrestling over Dodging, or to find that Alchemy is broken.
As for more variety in latter parts of the game, that would depend. At a guess, many players will likely stick to certain skill sets. Likely, certain skills will be found to be the most valuable, and many players will gravitate towards those skills, particularly if your game is popular enough for people to discuss it. Some will likely continue to experiment and perhaps even attempt crazy challenges, but that is true for other skill systems as well.
Though there are already games that take this approach to a degree. The difference is that the player is only encouraged to whittle down his skill set to certain skills, and can generally try to correct any mistakes with late pick-ups. Games like Sangband and Crawl give the player nearly everything at the start, but raising everything equally is impractical if not impossible.
Billy Bissette wrote: > Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <n...@sheep.art.pl> wrote in > news:slrngdeqmg.c8v.news@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl: >> That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes >> to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as >> the game progresses you are asked to remove them. Each time you >> remove a skill, all skills that are left improve. This way you have >> the opportunity to test the skills before you make a decission that >> affects your future. It also forces you to differentiate your > characters, >> to specialize -- hopefully leading to more variety in the later parts >> of the game.
> The player still won't know what skills are worth having when he > is first asked to ditch some of them. Not when the remaining skills > power up to new unknown levels and he doesn't know what he will face > later in the dungeon.
Well, he can at least ditch the ones he did try already and didn't like. You don't ned the skills powered up to incredible levels, because they should work with near sure success rate on the first level monsters. As for skills that change dramatically after a powerup -- you shouldn't have them anyways, the thing that is confusing is the fact they change, not the fact you have to ditch them. It would be equally confusing in a more traditional system.
> This is also not the same as simply "picking a character class at > the end of the game," at least not without guarantees that the player > regardless of choices will have a useful skillset at the end of the > game. Character classes are designed with at least some > consideration placed in being able to complete the game. Who knows > what skills a player will delete though, particularly when he is > acting without full information.
I think that if you can make a game unwinnable without making a really silly mistake (or consistent carelessness, or bad luck), it's broken already. If some choices are obviously useless, the player shouldn't be offered the choice at all.
> Such a system may even discourage skill exploration in some > players, if they get into the habit of always discarding certain > skills.
Somehow I don't see it. You don't risk much with a freshly generated, first level character, you can experiment all you want and the worst that can happen is that you get back to square one.
> And when it may take a near full game to find out whether > it is worth having Wrestling over Dodging, or to find that Alchemy > is broken.
If it takes a full game to know one skill from another, then why there are separate skills at all? If your skills are broken, your game is broken, and no character development system will help you with that.
> As for more variety in latter parts of the game, that would > depend. At a guess, many players will likely stick to certain > skill sets.
That's ok, we are all different, have different preferences and different styles. Personally I think this is something beautiful that should be highlighted and encouraged, not something to hide and be ashamed of. Still, different players should choose different sets. If you have a "winning set", optimal set of skills, then you can just remove all the other skills, they add nothing to the game.
> Likely, certain skills will be found to be the most > valuable, and many players will gravitate towards those skills, > particularly if your game is popular enough for people to discuss > it. Some will likely continue to experiment and perhaps even > attempt crazy challenges, but that is true for other skill systems > as well.
So we lose nothing here :) What you are saying is basically "if your game is unbalanced, then your game is unbalanced". I think that this system at least lets you easily notice when your game is unbalanced and which skills need fixing.
> Though there are already games that take this approach to a > degree. The difference is that the player is only encouraged to > whittle down his skill set to certain skills, and can generally > try to correct any mistakes with late pick-ups. Games like > Sangband and Crawl give the player nearly everything at the start, > but raising everything equally is impractical if not impossible.
Yes, this idea was in large part inspired by Crawl's design "rules". It is an extremal approach, and as such is probably not perfect; I think it shows an interesting approach to character development and shows that "development of character" doesn't have to mean "becoming more powerful and stronger in everything".
-- Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl> "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
> That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes > to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as > the game progresses you are asked to remove them.
Id much rather read the descriptions of 3 abilities I get to choose one of to gain than read all about 100 abilities I have to choose one of to drop.
> > That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes > > to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as > > the game progresses you are asked to remove them.
> Id much rather read the descriptions of 3 abilities I get to choose > one of to gain than read all about 100 abilities I have to choose one > of to drop.
> -Numeron
Sorry fat fingers hit send, I wanted to say I actually quite like your idea :) However I think a good way to extend it would be to still start with a class. this way you restrict the abilities you start with and not give a new player 1000 spells, and not even the time to test them all out before they have to throw some away. And then have further restrictions on what you can drop at each level (like the most unused ones) so that you dont overwhelm people with choice.
[about inverse development, where at each step one skill is removed and the remaining ones get stronger]
> At Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:12:16 -0500, Billy Bissette wrote: >> And when it may take a near full game to find out whether >> it is worth having Wrestling over Dodging, or to find that Alchemy >> is broken.
> If it takes a full game to know one skill from another, then why there > are separate skills at all? If your skills are broken, your game is > broken, and no character development system will help you with that.
I think that the Sheep is right: each skill should be meaningful in the end, else it would be useless to have it in the first place. (Roguelikes don't need red herrings.) In a sense, such a game should have the number of different playing styles to be (at least) the number of skills.
Billy has a point, though: I would suggest the skill set being small (say 4 or 6 rather than 20). One reason is that it is pretty hard to come up with many genuinely different playing styles; the other that this game will be about specialising _only_. In contrast to the standard additive approach to skills, in Skills--RL you are going to be less and less flexible as the game goes on. In other words, this roguelike should be well on the tactical side of things.
>> Though there are already games that take this approach to a >> degree. The difference is that the player is only encouraged to >> whittle down his skill set to certain skills, and can generally >> try to correct any mistakes with late pick-ups. Games like >> Sangband and Crawl give the player nearly everything at the start, >> but raising everything equally is impractical if not impossible.
> Yes, this idea was in large part inspired by Crawl's design "rules".
Hehe, now that you mention it, I had to chime in. Call me Pawlow :)
> It is an extremal approach, and as such is probably not perfect; I > think it shows an interesting approach to character development and > shows that "development of character" doesn't have to mean "becoming > more powerful and stronger in everything".
I think the basic idea is absolutely worth investigating. The format of 7DRL seems really fitting in my opinion. Apart from the fun aspect and the novelty, I find it always interesting if a basic and standard mechanic is reversed like this. We learn something about standard roguelikes from this, too.
By the way, the concept lends itself very well to offbeat themes. A silly one: goal is to pacify larger and larger masses of humans; skills are cooking, performing, use of blunt instruments; gameplay consists of using and improving randomly found items (food, water etc.)
> > That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes > > to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as > > the game progresses you are asked to remove them. Each time you > > remove a skill, all skills that are left improve. This way you have > > the opportunity to test the skills before you make a decission that > > affects your future. It also forces you to differentiate your > characters, > > to specialize -- hopefully leading to more variety in the later parts > > of the game.
> The player still won't know what skills are worth having when he > is first asked to ditch some of them. Not when the remaining skills > power up to new unknown levels and he doesn't know what he will face > later in the dungeon.
First, that assumption is only true for the first few playthroughs of the game. A point of a roguelike is that you are meant to play it more than once. Have a separate tutorial to teach how the skills work.
> This is also not the same as simply "picking a character class at > the end of the game," at least not without guarantees that the player > regardless of choices will have a useful skillset at the end of the > game. Character classes are designed with at least some > consideration placed in being able to complete the game. Who knows > what skills a player will delete though, particularly when he is > acting without full information.
Okay, rather than character class, try a skill-based game. Each time I pick a skill in a skillbased game I reject the other skills - I'm narrowing the skills I can pick. Diablo II is a good point - spending a skill point means I don't spend it elsewhere.
As it happens, in Diablo II, I can spend a point in Thunderstorm only to find out it sucks for my playstyle. At least with negative development I could find out it sucked, and then drop it, freeing up a skill point for one of my other abilities I actually like.
> Such a system may even discourage skill exploration in some > players, if they get into the habit of always discarding certain > skills. And when it may take a near full game to find out whether > it is worth having Wrestling over Dodging, or to find that Alchemy > is broken.
I think the opposite. Skill gain systems do that - if I can only try out a deeply nested skill by spending most of a game working to get there, I'm unlikely to try it out and instead concentrate on a known skill. THe idea of this system is that you can try out all of the skills day 1. Start a new game, test the skill.
> As for more variety in latter parts of the game, that would > depend. At a guess, many players will likely stick to certain > skill sets. Likely, certain skills will be found to be the most > valuable, and many players will gravitate towards those skills, > particularly if your game is popular enough for people to discuss > it. Some will likely continue to experiment and perhaps even > attempt crazy challenges, but that is true for other skill systems > as well.
This is flaw of all skill systems - even if they are balanced, people will behave otherwise and bore themselves to death.
> At Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:12:16 -0500, > Billy Bissette wrote: > You don't ned the skills powered up to incredible levels, > because they should work with near sure success rate on the first > level monsters. As for skills that change dramatically after a powerup > -- you shouldn't have them anyways, the thing that is confusing is the > fact they change, not the fact you have to ditch them. It would be > equally confusing in a more traditional system.
If everything is going to power up with equal usefulness, and will not change in any other meaningful way, then why power them up at all? Just so the player won't complain that "advancing" causes him to sacrifice skills rather than gain them?
>> And when it may take a near full game to find out whether >> it is worth having Wrestling over Dodging, or to find that Alchemy >> is broken.
> If it takes a full game to know one skill from another, then why there > are separate skills at all? If your skills are broken, your game is > broken, and no character development system will help you with that.
How different are your skills going to be? Having a bunch of effectively identical skills is a design cheat. The more different the skills are, the more likely they will be of different usefulness.
Even if you roughly balance Wrestling, Swords, and Dodging for level 1, how much should each be increased for level 2? How much extra damage avoidance is equivalent to an extra 5% to hit with Swords? At level 3? Level 4? And while +5% to hit might beat +5% to evade, by the end of the game +50% to evade might beat +50% to hit.
And when your skills are even more different? How does Set Traps compare to Fire Magic? Create Potions to Reduced Hunger?
Will monsters change as the player progresses? Even basic details like damage and health can throw off skill balance. Special abilities create more issues though. Fire Magic is worth less when more creatures show up that resist fire. Dodging is worth more when creatures show up that get extra effects on successful hits, or just do extraordinary damage.
Of course, we haven't even gotten into skill interactions. The more variety there is between skills, the more likely there will be combinations that simply work better that others.
Billy Bissette wrote: > Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <n...@sheep.art.pl> wrote in > news:slrngdgdb5.ph9.news@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl: >> At Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:12:16 -0500, >> Billy Bissette wrote:
>> You don't ned the skills powered up to incredible levels, >> because they should work with near sure success rate on the first >> level monsters. As for skills that change dramatically after a powerup >> -- you shouldn't have them anyways, the thing that is confusing is the >> fact they change, not the fact you have to ditch them. It would be >> equally confusing in a more traditional system.
> If everything is going to power up with equal usefulness, and will > not change in any other meaningful way, then why power them up at all? > Just so the player won't complain that "advancing" causes him to > sacrifice skills rather than gain them?
Well, I'm assuming the usual model of a roguelike where the more you progress into the game, the stronger and more dangerous monsters and other challenges you meet. Thus, both your combat skills and support skills need to grow in power/magnitude to accomodate the increase in power of the adversaries. This is, however, a quantity, not quality difference: lockpicking skill won't suddenly allow you to hit harder with your weapon, and fencing skill won't let you open the door more easily.
>>> And when it may take a near full game to find out whether >>> it is worth having Wrestling over Dodging, or to find that Alchemy >>> is broken.
>> If it takes a full game to know one skill from another, then why there >> are separate skills at all? If your skills are broken, your game is >> broken, and no character development system will help you with that.
> How different are your skills going to be? Having a bunch of > effectively identical skills is a design cheat. The more different > the skills are, the more likely they will be of different usefulness.
There is no such thing as a single measure of "usefulness". The whole point of decissions in character development is not to make a guessing game for the "only right" optimal character. It's to allow a variety of playing styles, chosen by the player both as a preference ("I like playing mages") and progress of the game ("I found a book of death ray early on, so I decided to become a mage").
> Even if you roughly balance Wrestling, Swords, and Dodging for > level 1, how much should each be increased for level 2? How much > extra damage avoidance is equivalent to an extra 5% to hit with > Swords? At level 3? Level 4? And while +5% to hit might beat +5% > to evade, by the end of the game +50% to evade might beat +50% to hit.
They are not equivalent, and that's the whole point. Why should they be? The "balancing" is not about making all characters play the same. It's about making all characters interesting. You can have a fighter character that runs over opponents without even blinking, because he's got high figting skills and a mathcing weapon. You can also have a mage that has to keep the distance, carefully choose spells and manager magic points. A stelthy character, a nimble character, even a character that gets beaten up really bad all the time but has tremendous healing powers. Obviously, these characters have different strengths and different monsters are dangerous for them. They also approach problems differently and consider different loot valuable. You fight differently when you have high evade rate than when you have high to hit; the choice of weapon, the choice of whether to just stand and hit or maybe move around while fighting, whether to stay in corridors or stick to open spaces, whether use that potion of berserk strength when fighting a heavily armored monster, or better save it for monsters with dangerous special attacks -- it all changes depending on the skills, and you can't really say "this is better than that". If you can say it, then you have too many stats in your game.
> And when your skills are even more different? How does Set Traps > compare to Fire Magic? Create Potions to Reduced Hunger?
They don't compare, that's the whole point. You use them differently.
> Will monsters change as the player progresses? Even basic details > like damage and health can throw off skill balance. Special > abilities create more issues though. Fire Magic is worth less when > more creatures show up that resist fire. Dodging is worth more when > creatures show up that get extra effects on successful hits, or just > do extraordinary damage.
Yes, changing the situation dramatically in the middle of the game is a general problem with all character development systems: the game the player prepared for is no longer the game he plays. Obviously, rapidly changing environment will favour universal, Jack-of-all-trades characters with no characteristic features and strong or weak points, while the point of character development is to create interesting, varied characters with specific strenghts and weaknesses.
> Of course, we haven't even gotten into skill interactions. The > more variety there is between skills, the more likely there will be > combinations that simply work better that others.
... with particular play style. Maybe even with particular set of starting conditions, like the equipment you find early on or out of depth monsters you encounter on low levels. Or even some parameters of the whole dungeon that could be chosen at the start -- so that player has to adapt their playing style for them.
-- Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl> "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
I have no idea why you are so negative about the idea, but perhaps the following thought experiment will help.
Don't think in terms of dozens of skills. Suppose a game only had three skills, for example Melee, Magic, Ranged. You can use each of them to overcome monsters and you can nicely mix them. At 1/3 in the game, you have to select one and stop using it (but become more proficient with the others). At 2/3 in the game, you have to select the remaining one. As I said before, this is about specialising. In my opinion, it is pretty obvious that such a system could work.
In this particular example, you would have three largely different types of gameplay (depending on the skill you end with), or six minor types (taking into account the skill still left in the middle part). As I also said before, this original idea focuses on _playing styles_. If you cannot come up with gameplay that allows for choosing "lockpicking" as a universally useful playing style (i.e. winning 1/3 of the game with it), then don't add that skill. So while "lockpicking" might not do it, skills like Stealth+Stab or Subterfuge (aka Diplomacy or Charming) or Summoning may do.
I think this kind of game would be interesting in praxis just for trying to distill pure playing styles. The game should be small (on a RL scale) for reasons I explained before.
> > At Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:12:16 -0500, > > Billy Bissette wrote: > > You don't ned the skills powered up to incredible levels, > > because they should work with near sure success rate on the first > > level monsters. As for skills that change dramatically after a powerup > > -- you shouldn't have them anyways, the thing that is confusing is the > > fact they change, not the fact you have to ditch them. It would be > > equally confusing in a more traditional system.
> If everything is going to power up with equal usefulness, and will > not change in any other meaningful way, then why power them up at all? > Just so the player won't complain that "advancing" causes him to > sacrifice skills rather than gain them?
> >> And when it may take a near full game to find out whether > >> it is worth having Wrestling over Dodging, or to find that Alchemy > >> is broken.
> > If it takes a full game to know one skill from another, then why there > > are separate skills at all? If your skills are broken, your game is > > broken, and no character development system will help you with that.
> How different are your skills going to be? Having a bunch of > effectively identical skills is a design cheat. The more different > the skills are, the more likely they will be of different usefulness.
> Even if you roughly balance Wrestling, Swords, and Dodging for > level 1, how much should each be increased for level 2? How much > extra damage avoidance is equivalent to an extra 5% to hit with > Swords? At level 3? Level 4? And while +5% to hit might beat +5% > to evade, by the end of the game +50% to evade might beat +50% to hit.
> And when your skills are even more different? How does Set Traps > compare to Fire Magic? Create Potions to Reduced Hunger?
> Will monsters change as the player progresses? Even basic details > like damage and health can throw off skill balance. Special > abilities create more issues though. Fire Magic is worth less when > more creatures show up that resist fire. Dodging is worth more when > creatures show up that get extra effects on successful hits, or just > do extraordinary damage.
> Of course, we haven't even gotten into skill interactions. The > more variety there is between skills, the more likely there will be > combinations that simply work better that others.
One thing you're not taking into account is what if the game itself is balanced towards the skills chosen? For example, if the player chooses lockpicking, double the number of locked doors. Or, here's another example: you could do the opposite. If the character selects firebolt, generate monsters that are resistant to fire. The game could be balanced so that the play receives optimum challenge based on skills chosen instead of a static world.
Quoting Pointless <mail...@nym.hush.com>: [Entire previous article quoted and QP-brain-damaged, sigh.]
>One thing you're not taking into account is what if the game itself is >balanced towards the skills chosen? For example, if the player chooses >lockpicking, double the number of locked doors.
Ingenious, but I wonder if it's exploitable (for example, by choosing skills that meet with nonlethal challenges where possible)? -- David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field! Today is Thursday, September.
> >One thing you're not taking into account is what if the game itself is > >balanced towards the skills chosen? For example, if the player chooses > >lockpicking, double the number of locked doors.
> Ingenious, but I wonder if it's exploitable (for example, by choosing > skills that meet with nonlethal challenges where possible)? > -- > David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field! > Today is Thursday, September.
I've dealt with this by creating a "pool" of skills depending on game success and then awarding a random skill from that pool whenever a new level is reached.
>I've dealt with this by creating a "pool" of skills depending on game >success and then awarding a random skill from that pool whenever a new >level is reached.
Trim the quoted text, willya?
Random character development. Hm. Bit of a risk of ending up with a mixed bag which don't work together at all, don't you think? -- David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field! Today is Thursday, September.
On Sep 23, 3:01 pm, David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Trim the quoted text, willya?
You're just being crotchety. And no part of my brain is damaged.
> Random character development. Hm. Bit of a risk of ending up with a mixed > bag which don't work together at all, don't you think? > -- > David Damerell <damer...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field! > Today is Thursday, September.
It depends on what skills are implemented. Combat skills are easier to balance.
But it is a problem. I've solved this by having "basic" monsters that don't pose any specific challenge, so if the character receives a general skill, the player faces the basic monsters.
Designing a game based on negative character development should be thought of differently than designing a game with positive character development. Instead of focusing on monsters, you should focus on inventories and dungeon loot/monster drops. Positive character development usually implies that you will depend on your inventory from the beginning and it will become less useful as you grow in power in such a way as to overcome obstacles. Negative character development implies that the inventory grows more valuable as the player becomes more specialized against specific obstacles.
What was brought up earlier was specialization in the end game. This specialization should be enough to overcome most obstacles that couldn't be taken down before (status/element immune/resistant creatures will become less so). This would mean that a player focusing on specific classes would have an easier time against specific obstacles in the end game while using his or her inventory to fill in other roles to a lesser degree. I can see several effects on the player inventory from this: 1) The inventory at the beginning of character development is trivial, but grows more valuable as the player specializes more and more, 2) as a result of a trivial beginning inventory, players will have more of an inventory when they start to actually utilize it, 3) due to specialization certain items will become more or less useful to the point of being completely useless or a godsend, and 4) as the game goes on, instead of having an inventory of full of many useless items, he/she will have a dwindling inventory of useful items due to increased use.
In class-based roguelikes (pick a class and adhere to its restrictions), you have a fixed useless pool of items, a fixed useful pool of items, and items that are meant to fill in the gaps for each class (ie, wands for warriors). In a "build your own class" styled system where the player is given positive character development, you have a a growing pool of useless and filler items and a shrinking pool of useful items as the character progresses. In a "build your own class" system with negative development (this topic), you have a growing pool of filler and useful items and a shrinking pool of useless items.
> On Sep 22, 4:12 pm, Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote: >> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <n...@sheep.art.pl> wrote >> innews:slrngdeq > mg.c8v.n...@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl:
>> > That's where negative character development (undevelopment?) comes >> > to the rescue: you start with all of your skills available, and as >> > the game progresses you are asked to remove them. Each time you >> > remove a skill, all skills that are left improve. This way you have >> > the opportunity to test the skills before you make a decission that >> > affects your future. It also forces you to differentiate your >> characters, >> > to specialize -- hopefully leading to more variety in the later >> > parts of the game.
>> The player still won't know what skills are worth having when he >> is first asked to ditch some of them. Not when the remaining skills >> power up to new unknown levels and he doesn't know what he will face >> later in the dungeon.
> First, that assumption is only true for the first few playthroughs of > the game. A point of a roguelike is that you are meant to play it > more than once. Have a separate tutorial to teach how the skills > work.
The same could be said for regular Roguelikes. Excepting skills that don't show up until later, that the player may have never have obtained. But in a class-based system, they should at least get some feel for how the class as a whole operates.
> I really think Skill--RL would be an excellent *short* roguelike.
I have no objection to that belief. Mind, lots of ideas can be the basis for an excellent *short* roguelike.
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