Designing RPG mechanics for scalability

[Heretic]

An interesting article.
http://sinisterdesign.net/designing-rpg-mechanics-for-scalability/

Excerpt:

Your game’s mechanics can have knock-on effects that impact content scalability throughout the entire game. To name one example: the choices you make in crafting your game’s combat and character progression mechanics can lead to brittle encounters which only pose an appropriate challenge during a very narrow window of the player characters’ development. Do this, and you’ll have to constantly create new enemy types in order to keep encounters appropriately challenging–and you’ll also have to make your game more linear, exercising fine control over which areas players can access in order to keep them from constantly running into battles they can’t possibly survive. In short, failing to design for content scalability means taking on more work for a worse payoff.

And this, my friends, leads us to our very first technique for achieving content scalability…

1. Let enemy types spawn at differing experience levels

Most RPGs have a fairly brittle way of constructing enemies: there are different enemy types, and each instance of a given enemy type is identical to any other instance of that enemy type. This means that when that enemy ceases to be challenging, it must be replaced with a new enemy type.

This is transparently inefficient, and thus, many RPGs will attempt to alleviate the burden this causes by recycling assets. The goblin won’t be challenging for long, so they’ll add in a tougher goblin that has a shield tacked on, and maybe an even tougher one with a palette swap.



Exhibit A.

However, this approach is still brittle: any given variant still has fixed stats, which means the variant is only usable for a relatively brief period. This, in turn, means that as the developer, you’re going to have to create yet more enemies (or variants of existing archetypes) to plug in those gaps, and you’re going to have to hand-craft their stats every time you do. That’s a lot of unnecessary work.

So, how to get around this? Simple: instead of creating multiple palette-swapped variants of an enemy, each with specific stats, just create one version of the enemy at level 1, then dynamically level-up each instance of that enemy to whatever you desire.

Take this example from Telepath Tactics, for instance: there is an enemy type called “Bloodbeard’s Bandit.” At level 1, every Bloodbeard’s Bandit is identical, possessing 19 Health, 3 Energy, 5 Speed, and 6 Strength. If I stopped there, I’d have to hand-create a new variant of this unit for when the player is no longer challenged by level 1 enemies: a level 4 variant, say. Maybe I’d palette swap that one so its skin is blue. And then I’d need another variant for when the player stops being challenged by level 4 enemies; and again and again, for as long as the player keeps battling this particular faction. The more I try to reuse this content throughout the game, the more of my time will end up wasted creating variants.

Instead of doing that, I gave this enemy some stat growth data: that is, rules for determining which stats improve upon level-up. (Bloodbeard’s Bandits are very likely to have their Health and Pierce Resistance improve upon level up; only slightly less likely to have their Strength and Slash Resistance improve; and fairly low probabilities to have their Energy and Counterattack Limit improve.) I also gave this enemy a skill progression: which is to say, a sequence of skills that it learns as it reaches particular levels.

With both stat growths and a skill progression in place, I was then able to use theexact same level-up function I used for player characters to dynamically improve Bloodbeard’s Bandits on the fly! This meant that I could tune the power level of each enemy to the needs of a given battle.


http://sinisterdesign.net/designing-rpg-mechanics-for-scalability/#imageclose-4573


I could have a battle with all low-level Bloodbeard’s Bandits, plus one higher-level Bloodbeard’s Bandit as a boss. I could have a battle filled with Bloodbeard’s Bandits at whatever the player’s level is. For that matter, I could make a Level 60 Bloodbeard’s Bandit to serve as the final boss of the whole game! That, my friends, is scalable content: one enemy that’s useful as a challenge to the player throughout the entire game.

And this approach needn’t just apply to enemies: the Disgaea series and Fire Emblem Fates both allow equipment to level up, keeping less powerful items relevant for longer. I don’t think I’ve yet seen a game that lets status effects from attacks level up, but that could be useful as well. Think outside the proverbial box!

2. Use linear stat progressions rather than exponential stat progressions

Lest you think that enemies are the only bits of content you really need to be concerned about scaling well, consider this: if you make the wrong choices in how your RPG handles its stock of items and equipment, you can end with the dreaded equipment treadmill. “Equipment treadmill?” you ask. Oh yes! The equipment treadmill is a condition which plagues many jRPGs, and can be described as follows:

[p]rogression through the game involves constantly replacing old items and equipment with newer, more expensive models. That stuff you bought in the last town worked really well against wolves, but now you’re fighting giant toads, and they barely scratch them. So you buy the really expensive new models. And those work exceptionally well–until you get to the next area, which has enemies those weapons can barely scratch, and a town that sells a yet more expensive version of that same equipment. And so on.

If you haven’t designed your mechanics so that item usefulness scales with the player, then as the developer, you’ll have to constantly come up with new item content that–functionally speaking–does the exact same thing as the old content. This is, bluntly, a waste of your time and resources.

One of the oldest and purest examples of an equipment treadmill occurs in Dragon Quest (originally known in the US as “Dragon Warrior”), the game that started off the Dragon Quest series way back in 1986. The reasons why this game has an equipment treadmill start to become apparent when we look at the stat progression employed for the player character and his foes. This stat table, put together by GameFAQs user akira slime, shows how the player character progresses:


http://sinisterdesign.net/designing-rpg-mechanics-for-scalability/#imageclose-4574
As you can see, each stat (strength, agility, hit points and magic points) has one of two possible growth patterns–but in either pattern, you’re looking at a character whose stats increase by roughly two orders of magnitude over the course of 30 levels. Enemy stats, likewise, increase by very nearly as much over the course of the game.


For the sake of making the consequences of this clear, let’s focus on just one part of the game: Cantlin. By the time you reach Cantlin, enemy defense will be in the 60s and 70s, with hit points in the 60s. It is suggested that your character be at level 15 by this point, meaning that your strength will be about equal with these enemies’ defense ratings. Damage in Dragon Warrior is somewhat randomized, but on the whole, this means that much of the damage you’ll do with your attacks will be coming from your equipped weapon. Here, meanwhile, is your weapon table, courtesy of StrategyWiki:

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Kind of disagree with the first bits about goblins and stopped reading (not a diss on the writer, just will go back and read it later).

A scaling system like he describes is not that bad when done properly. For example, Lords of Xulima, a game I'm playing now. It has hard, static stats for each enemy and several "re-skins" of enemies that are tougher. However, the re-skin may add poison damage, or can cause wounds. You may say, big deal. But this is crucial to making combat have new experiences as you go. By adding small details, shifting the pieces with different amounts of enemies and enemy combinations, they can change the strategy in a significant way while only using somewhat subtle changes.

Another thing is, Xulima keeps the lower level enemies around for some encounters as well, but sprinkles them in with tougher monsters. So, while they aren't too much of a problem in most battles, a simple Askary Rider (archer goblin) can whittle away your life a bit more in this encounter because your focus is on the "big guys" who are stronger. The Rider can target your soft back-line casters, for example. Thus the encounter is changed in a subtle but important way.

Also, adding a second enemy of the same type often makes the encounter much more difficult, and you have to devise a different strategy to deal with them. If an enemy type is strong and causes wounds, for example, and now all of a sudden there is a second one in the encounter, the wounds stacking up will be doubled, thus if you don't keep a close eye on that, your front-line characters may even get wounded to the point they can't attack the enemy, or worst-case, they die entirely and you are in an unwinnable situation.

So, these types of scaling systems are not bad at all, they are just largely untapped. A clever developer can use the basic scaling system shown here and get very creative with it, making tons of different encounters by adding different pieces that they have created. Almost like a jigsaw puzzle.

P.S. Ask Celerity about this, I'm sure he knows much more about this stuff than I do. He did design Deepest Dark for Xulima, after all.

 

[Drew]

The author seems to think that you cannot use both pallet swap "new" mobs and scalable mob strength at the same time.

 

[Iznaliu]

The most important thing here is ensuring that new enemies created by this system thematically make sense, i.e. no Level 50 Bandits. Certain areas should also be 'safer' than others by having different maximum enemy levels, adding realism and allowing players to select their risk-reward balance. A game that did this right was Wizardry 8 (this is no excuse for that game's flaws)

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I prefer the Deus Ex approach where the character simply doesn't scale up in power that much. You get more utility but not orders of magnitude stronger in pure stats. Equipment is more influential in the power curve than character levels are. I don't know if you could really apply that lesson to radically different sorts of games though.

 

[Lhynn]

Complete garbage, cant believe anyone would even consider that text as anything more than something born from complete ignorance and laziness.

 

[Keye_]

If I'm reading this right, the article is basically a defense of level-scaling?

[p]rogression through the game involves constantly replacing old items and equipment with newer, more expensive models. That stuff you bought in the last town worked really well against wolves, but now you’re fighting giant toads, and they barely scratch them. So you buy the really expensive new models. And those work exceptionally well–until you get to the next area, which has enemies those weapons can barely scratch, and a town that sells a yet more expensive version of that same equipment. And so on.

If you haven’t designed your mechanics so that item usefulness scales with the player, then as the developer, you’ll have to constantly come up with new item content that–functionally speaking–does the exact same thing as the old content. This is, bluntly, a waste of your time and resources.

The core of the argument: Creating new monsters and equipment costs time and money for the compagny. Level-scaling costs less, thus level scaling is better.

Because God forbid you would actually have to be creative in creating rpgs.

The perfect game following these ideas: You start in a village with a wooden sword and fight rats. After you kill rats, your wooden sword gets stronger and the rats also get stronger. Repeat this until you have created enough filler content to sell your game on.

 

[CryptRat]

Complete garbage, cant believe anyone would even consider that text as anything more than something born from complete ignorance and laziness.

I don't know if that's what you're implying, but the parts where he speaks about weapons, damages, damage reduction are weird because he's discarding/omitting the AD&D approach (to armor class especially, implying the use of multiple attacks per round...).

That said Telepath Tactics is very good and low numbers and big variations of encounters are both reasons why it's good so at least he made good use of its philospohy.

Also, Craig Stern

 

[Lhynn]

Complete garbage, cant believe anyone would even consider that text as anything more than something born from complete ignorance and laziness.

I don't know if that's what you're implying, but the parts where he speaks about weapons, damages, damage reduction are weird because he's discarding/omitting the AD&D approach (to armor class especially, implying the use of multiple attacks per round...).

That said Telepath Tactics is very good and low numbers and big variations of encounters are both reasons why it's good so at least he made good use of its philospohy.

Also, Craig Stern

His first point is about blatant level scaling, his second point is how weapons should go hand in hand with player growth in a linear fashion. He is basically reducing the whole argument to math, and claiming this is how its done well. Its the antítesis of everything i believe.
As for him having a D&D background, i really doubt he does, hes discussing jrpgs. His whole point is about the escalability of mechanics and how to keep the player from braking your encounters with math. Its basically to keep the player at the same power level in relation to the stage of the game he is in, regardless of how strong the game says he gets, minimum work for mathematically challenging encounters.

 

[Dorateen]

Players should be able to run into battles they can't possibly survive. Maybe they get lucky and pull off a triumphant upset, or they come back when their characters are stronger. There's also something to be said for returning to an area with low-level enemies and stomping them.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

The logical conclusion to what this guy proposes frankly sounds dull as dishwater. Oblivion with no/few equipment upgrades? That would be terrible. A lot of RPG gamers love a sense of progression (I know I do) and level scaling/weak itemization can really impact that if taken too far. Now, some level scaling is ok if you do it right and too much equipment can be kinda dumb too (hard to savor a +2 sword if you throw a dozen other weapons at the player all the time that are essentially the same.)

This write up makes me think the author is too obsessed with controlling the player experience. If you don't leave the player room to screw up badly or be a bit overpowered then it can be stifling. There's no reason to fear letting the gamer have control.

 

[V_K]

It's very, very easy to make enemies not grow obsolete after the characters level-up a couple of times: just don't have HP bloat. A character should finish a game with at most 2 times the HP he had at the start. If HP stay low throughout the game, then even low-level can be deadly to high-level characters if they get lucky with to-hit rolls.

 

[Iznaliu]

It's very, very easy to make enemies not grow obsolete after the characters level-up a couple of times: just don't have HP bloat. A character should finish a game with at most 2 times the HP he had at the start. If HP stay low throughout the game, then even low-level can be deadly to high-level characters if they get lucky with to-hit rolls.

I kind of agree with this, but "A character should finish a game with at most 2 times the HP he had at the start" is a bit too extreme.

 

[J1M]

This isn't the first Craig Stern article that sets up a straw man so he can pretend to be vanquishing a dragon. See his ramblings against randomness for additional examples. ("I made a better game than incorrectly stated D&D rules!")

As others have identified Craig's goal here is to come up with a way of scaling encounters that is economically feasible for him and then market it as if it were a good thing. I believe he has also drank this cool-aid, making it a simple puff piece. ("I made a better game than Fire Emblem!")

This has the fatal assumption that RPGs are required to give players an endless treadmill where palette swaps and inflated numbers substitute for real content. Doing a boring thing with slightly less math is not worth writing about. It also misses that a certain group of players want that number progression and like the certainty of a linear upgrade path. Unless it's possible in your game to take a level 10 warrior and turn him into a wizard by level 20, upgrade "choices" are just disguised linear upgrade paths littered with false choices and decision traps.

I really don't understand the trend towards giving players sprawling upgrade trees that cause them, through no fault of their own, to build a character that is less fun to play than the tree selections that result in the most enjoyable gameplay. When you start a game like Mass Effect, the first thing it does is give you a 1 in 6 chance of selecting the most enjoyable class to play. By definition, you are giving the majority of people a sub-par experience, intentionally.

In fact, I will further argue that in Final Fantasy 1 when you upgrade your classes from Thief to Ninja, Mages to Wizards, etc. it had a more interesting and meaningful impact than any JRPG level-up in recent memory. I will go even further and argue that the most enjoyable parts of Final Fantasy 6 are those where your party is selected for you, and the encounters either present opportunities for certain abilities to shine, or the group composition requires that you find novel solutions to an encounter you've seen before.

In conclusion, if you want to actually innovate the tactics genre, remove character levels, remove equipment, and remove talent trees to free up resources for encounter design. Craft a game with a stellar series of encounters and leave party configuration to a New Game+ mode.

 

[Mustawd]

At first I thought he was referring to scalability as a means to making customized encounters more efficient for the developer. Which is fine. Build in a leveling system so you can take your level 1 baddie and make him a level 4 baddie somewhere else instead of having to start from scratch.

But then he goes off the rails talking about making potions scalable, which really is kinda killing any semblance of resource management, but also muddies the waters in his overall point.

So Craig Stern , are you referring to scalability as an efficient means to develop different levels of encounters or are you actually referring to making your game scale with the player? Because to me, the latter option sounds awful. It takes away any incentive of leveling up and progressing your character if the enemies will merely scale as you become stronger.

Yes, some scalability in limited amounts can still be ok as long as they are masked, but that's not the feeling I'm getting here.

 

[MRY]

This has the fatal assumption that RPGs are required to give players an endless treadmill where palette swaps and inflated numbers substitute for real content.

Indeed.

I feel like I've posted about this before, but I really believe that the best part of RPGs is when power-ups open different options as opposed to merely more effective versions of the same option. A classic example of this is the moment in which you first get fireball in a Goldbox game, and suddenly there's this whole new tactic of area-effect damage available to you. (Sweeping enemies is another such example.) This is one reason why the gonzo "make the wookie kill his friend" thing in KOTOR is commendable: cartoonish though it may be, it really is a different level of mustache-twirling than the game has made available before then.

The problem is that most RPGs merely scale up the object of your verb, rather than changing the verb. In scene 1, you can PERSUADE a farmer to give you his rake as a weapon. In scene 100, you can PERSUADE a king to give you his magic sword as a weapon. In scene 1, you can CRITICALLY HIT a giant rat and kill it. In scene 100, you can CRITICALLY HIT a dracolich and kill it. If leveling up were more about new options, lower-level areas wouldn't become obsolete -- they'd become fun. If you can now mind control the goblins to destroy their own brethren, or smash their stone idol causing them to revere you as a god, or whatever, that would be perfectly rewarding even if it were not challenging combat. In fact, I submit that even without new verbs it is much more fun to go through an unscaled area and obliterate the enemies than it is to go through the same area with appropriately scaled enemies. Many of my favorite memories from RPGs as a kid came when I blew through low level areas that had been a challenge when I first hit them.

Craig seems like a brilliant designer, but at the same time there seems to be a certain unawareness of what makes games actually fun in some of what he says.

EDIT: To give a fairly unfair example of what I'm talking about, if you watch the trailer to Telepath Tactics on the Steam page, it shows all these awesome moves and almost all of them do 8-12 damage (about a third of the targets' health), with almost none of them actually killing an enemy except for one fairly boring backstab (which has no death animation). Like five fireballs hit a group of enemies, the screen shakes, fireworks everywhere... 6 damage, a third of the health bar gone. I'm positive that all the cool status effects that are being caused are tactically engaging, and insta-kills are tactically boring, and yet at the same time, watching it, all I can think is that the game looks like a grind and a chore with no visceral "oomph" in it. Rationally I know it to be a great product, one I happily backed on Kickstarter and bought a few times to share with others, but on a more fundamental level it just seems unengaging.

His article above seems to have the same sense to it -- the most important thing is that nothing is brittle, the player never breaks anything, bandits are still deadly adversaries at the end game, etc., etc., without the recognition that a game where you fight a level 60 bandit as a final boss just sounds kind of blah.

 

[TigerKnee]

The specific Fire Emblem mission comparison that's supposed to set up his point bothers me - Birthright is the half of Fire Emblem Fates that was designed for the casual player (compared to the more traditional Conquest), so the supposed "flawed mission design" might very well be completely intentional. That is to say, that particular mission is probably intended to be one that makes the player "feel awesome" that he gets to mow down a ton of units that used to be threatening in the early stages rather than pose a threat.

On higher difficulties on the other path, the mission designers tend to throw a handful of curveballs against the "High Defense Tanks everything" strategy - for example, enemies tend to ignore units they can't hurt, which means on a wide open map they could very well just run pass your meatwall units to go straight for your squishies or sometimes, there's usually a debuffer that will crack open your shell so that the rest of the AI's team can pile in.

It would be a very different design if the damage formula was multiplicative rather than additive/subtractive, but not strictly superior to the current design.

 

[Craig Stern]

So Craig Stern , are you referring to scalability as an efficient means to develop different levels of encounters or are you actually referring to making your game scale with the player?

The former, not the latter. (I, too, hate games that automatically make everything scale with the player.)

 

[Craig Stern]

The specific Fire Emblem mission comparison that's supposed to set up his point bothers me...

So, I'm currently playing through Birthright on Hard mode. Even on Hard the campaign is mostly pretty easy, but that one mission stands out for how absurdly easy it is. I mean, it's certainly possible that it's meant to serve as a sort of "experience point bonus round" type deal, but why on earth would the developers choose a boss fight against the second most deadly of the royal Nohr siblings for that? Everything they do leading up to that fight telegraphs it as a major boss battle, and yet the fight itself comes across about as impactfully as a wet fart.

I really believe that the best part of RPGs is when power-ups open different options as opposed to merely more effective versions of the same option.

Um. Did you actually read the article? That's literally the entire conclusion:

It’s an obvious point, but it bears repeating: developers have limited resources, both monetary and temporal. In this regard, developing a game is a series of zero sum choices about what to prioritize. With every moment a developer spends creating one thing, they choose–consciously or not–to expend resources on creating that thing and not another.

Devoting resources to content that effectively duplicates other content means not devoting those same resources to content that does something different–which enlarges the possibility space, forces interesting decisions, or offers the player role-playing options. Content scalability is not merely about staying on time and within budget: it’s about making a better game.

As for what you wrote about Telepath Tactics itself...yeah, no. The reason the damage numbers appear similar in the trailer is because I created that footage in local multiplayer mode, where the classes are all equally leveled and perfectly balanced against each other...because it's local multiplayer. I'm pleased to hear that you backed the game, but perhaps you should try playing it instead of trying to read bird entrails from promotional footage.

 

[Craig Stern]

His first point is about blatant level scaling, his second point is how weapons should go hand in hand with player growth in a linear fashion. He is basically reducing the whole argument to math, and claiming this is how its done well. Its the antítesis of everything i believe.
As for him having a D&D background, i really doubt he does, hes discussing jrpgs. His whole point is about the escalability of mechanics and how to keep the player from braking your encounters with math. Its basically to keep the player at the same power level in relation to the stage of the game he is in, regardless of how strong the game says he gets, minimum work for mathematically challenging encounters.

I'm afraid you've misunderstood the article. I don't talk about automatically scaling enemies to match the player's level--that's the sort of thing Bethesda does, and I find it deeply unsatisfying as a player. I do talk about developing a game's systems so that enemies can be dynamically generated at different power levels, but I do not advocate forcing those power levels to always be matched to the player. That second thing is boring and lame.

Also, the reason I mostly discuss jRPGs in that article is because they're by far the worst offenders as far as requiring tons of disposable content and forcing players onto an equipment treadmill. I have my issues with wRPG design as well, but by and large, they're quite good at content scalability.

 

[DraQ]

So basically:

1. Have level advancement mechanics and have player's power increase with level, because "muh RPG!".

2. Have level scaling mechanics specifically to cancel out 1. and render it pointless.

3. Have 1. and 2. - in combination and, if 1. gets particularly egregious (and it can still be even if "merely" linear), each on its own - completely wreck any semblance of verisimilitude or having meaningful stats player can actually relate to.

4. ???

5. Profit!
5.

Am I the only one who things the author is plain fucking wrong in the head in addition to being a completely clueless dolt who probably types with his elbows because no one ever told him to use his hands?


If you want to cancel 1. out, the easy way out is to not have 1. You don't need numbers going up. Make a chargen and that's it. Spending tme and effort implementing mechanics you don't want only so that you may spend time and effort implementing mechanics to remove mechanics you didn't want in the first place would be a pointless waste of effort even if it didn't produce side effects wrecking about every last bit of logic in your game. As it does, it's not just a waste of effort but a clear symptom of serious mental health issues.

If you don't want to cancel 1. out, then take effort to implement it in actually thought out manner. Numbers going up are boring. Incrementing shit will only go so far keeping your game fresh because numbers. Going. Up. Are. BORING.
Additionally, numbers going up start causing problems on their own because they make it so that the numbers quickly stop being meaningful and relateable. What does it mean that an artifact sword does 100 damage and an ordinary one 10?no longer means anything. And of course, since normal game-world logic has gone out of the window in goes level scaling to keep everything from falling apart. More than it already has, that is.
But you know what is not boring? Being able to do new things. Learning how to cast proper explody fireball, or how to disarm people during swordfight or how to forge seals on sensitive documents opens new opportunities to players and increases their ability to tackle challenges, especially complex, multi-stage ones (also known as "well designed") without actually inflating their straightforward power and causing problems that would eventually necessitate descent into utter insanity of canceling out your own mechanics so that it ceases having gameplay effects instead limiting itself to merely butchering your game's inner logic.

 

[Drew]

The only issue I have is that your conclusion seems to commend a game like Dragon Age Origins, whereas as a player it got quite boring because, despite the change in challenge throughout the game, frankly fighting the same 3 mob types for 40 hours is fucking boring.
That might've been the mmo rtwp combat though.

 

[DraQ]

It's very, very easy to make enemies not grow obsolete after the characters level-up a couple of times: just don't have HP bloat. A character should finish a game with at most 2 times the HP he had at the start. If HP stay low throughout the game, then even low-level can be deadly to high-level characters if they get lucky with to-hit rolls.

I kind of agree with this, but "A character should finish a game with at most 2 times the HP he had at the start" is a bit too extreme.

Yes, even 1.5x is already quite a lot.

 

[Craig Stern]

The only issue I have is that your conclusion seems to commend a game like Dragon Age Origins, whereas as a player it got quite boring because, despite the change in challenge throughout the game, frankly fighting the same 3 mob types for 40 hours is fucking boring.
That might've been the mmo rtwp combat though.

Nah. I advocate coding in dynamic generation of enemies at varying power levels to give the developer more time and resources to create new, genuinely different and interesting enemy types--if the developer doesn't capitalize on that by then going out and actually creating varied and interesting content, then it's a waste.

 

[MRY]

Yes, I did read it, though it is possible that I missed something amidst the jargon and metaphors. To me, the heart of the article is not so much its end but its beginning, where you say an RPG (1) needs to have 40 hours or more of playtime and (2) presumptively should end with the player doing essentially the same thing (facing scaled up versions of the same enemies at the outset) as he's doing in the beginning. If you think that a 40-hour RPG where players face the same enemy with the same graphic with some kind of behind-the-scenes scaling for the whole duration is an economically viable concept, I guess we'll have to disagree. Again, to me this strikes me as indicative of the same logos-but-no-pathos problem I mentioned earlier: players have more fun facing even reskinned enemies than they do facing the same old thing over and over again.

To the extent that you're saying the reason that RPGs take a lot of resources is because reskinning and individually defining enemy and item stats is too laborious, I can only raise an eyebrow in surprise. It has never been my sense that this is the insurmountable hill for RPGs. And, of course, "RPGs" here is as a very capacious term. At a minimum, you're sweeping in jRPGs and Western RPGs, which have totally different asset distributions. For example, I wrote all the text in the jRPG Infinity (my first paid project) in three days -- granted this was a crazy fugue state, but in any case, it was doable. By contrast, in 15 months I wrote less than 5% of the text in TTON (my last paid project). I read your post as really being about jRPGs, but even there, I never thought that designing enemy or item types was that laborious.

I mean, Dragon Warrior is a perfect example for disproving your point. Dragon Warrior's design may be boring and grindy, to be sure, but it isn't boring and grindy because the design team was overwhelmed with the work of defining seven weapons' stats. It might have been cheaper to make the game with fewer enemy archetypes, but I'm 100% sure that it wouldn't have been meaningfully cheaper if the stats of the enemies in the game were defined by a scaling equation rather than entered by hand. (In fact, coming up with good scaling equations would probably have been harder than just doing the number by guess-and-test.) More importantly, I'm 100% sure that if you got rid of the reskins and reduced the archetypes, the game would've been far less popular. In short, the things that you identify as major labor saving tool, when applied to the very game you picked to prove your point, don't reveal any significant labor savings but do provide a roadmap for making the game overall less fun.

Now, your article does, in its middle, make a very different point, which is that a flatter character progression scale might be better. But it's better not because it saves design time in generating new content, it's better because it serves as a disciplining tool to show that scaled filler content is not good. The one illuminating thing about making the player fight Bandits for 40 hours is that you quickly (or slowly, as the case would be) realize that players don't enjoy it. Reskins and archetype swaps and exponential number growth and showstopper spell effects in jRPGs (and Western RPGs) are all sauces to put on a bad steak. I myself can very much enjoy a bad steak with A1 Sauce ("It gets ya right here!"), and for that reason enjoyed jRPGs when I was a kid and might even enjoy them now if I had time. But the truth is that the steak isn't good. What you're proposing is to save the effort of banging the A1 sauce out of the bottom so that you can serve a slightly larger chunk of the same bad steak. My reply is that this is vaguely rational from a logos standpoint but totally dumb from a pathos standpoint because ultimately the A1 sauce is what's best about the meal.

In short, I think "the equipment treadmill is bad design" is right, but that's not the focus of your article, which is instead, "With fewer items and enemy types, think of all the resources you'll have to devote to other things." I actually think fewer enemy types and items might be better in some instances for some reasons (as I've written elsewhere) but the idea that it will free up tons of resources doesn't persuade me.