Development Info Tim Cain at Reboot Develop 2017 - Building a Better RPG: Seven Mistakes to Avoid

[mondblut]

How about you stuff some numberless geometric objects up your ass, Tim.

I am sure he already does.

 

[Lurker King]

If you are going to sell yourself at least do it right. Just forget about cRPGs and go work for Goldman Sachs, or something.

 

[Longshanks]

That's a developmental fallacy. I remember all the 90tie games when they thought doing everything with little intuitive icons would be better than text buttons. Turns out most of those icons where never as intuitive as simple text buttons (e.g. a disk for saving doesn't make sense for kids these days). I wager that the shapes would confuse our gameplaying dumb nut audience far more than plain numbers

That's not what he's doing here.

He's trying to streamline information by repackaging it in a visual style he thinks it's easier to fathom, which I think is a fallacy. It's not

I think it's a fallacy when it's a one-to-one replacement of a text label with a shape. Not when you're creating a fundamanentallly new way of organizing the information for which a geometric shape is the most natural means of visualizing.

Is it dumbed down? Yes, probably. Less intuitive? I don't think so.

Why have stats at all when they're so dumbed down to be almost meaningless. Whether it's number or shapes or whatever, if you keep the same level of complexity it will always confuse dumb nuts, having little triangles won't help you there. If you dumb it down, why not admit you just want to make an action game and completely disregard stats at all. At least that way you're honest about your approach

This is the Action RPG genre though. Stats are almost always virtually meaningless especially from the mid to late game.

Simplifying the stats into those which actually do have an impact on gameplay is the right move. No idea if Tim's geometric shapes idea will work, but it's coming from the right place. It's certainly more honest than having a whole spreadsheet of numbers that really don't mean anything as player skill dominates all.

And completely agree with Tim that stats should not effect chance to hit in an Action RPG. The point of giving the player agency over aiming is to make combat more viscerally enjoyable. To then make that chance to hit somewhat random is frustrating and boring, which means developers make it easy to increase the level of character skill and remove the annoyance. Shouldn't be there in the first place.

Action RPGs are essentially simplified RPGs. Streamlining is pretty much their reason for being, so I don't have a problem with any of the points Tim makes. The only problem is that they've decided to make an Action RPG. If it's on the level of Bloodlines though, I won't be complaining.

 

[Telengard]

Face it mooks, D&D is dead. Soon, they'll take it out behind the shed and put the final bullet through it's head. Now, it's Storyteller* time.

Once RPGs were built around combat. Now it's the story, and once games are going to be built around story, devs are naturally going to switch to a story-oriented rpg-stat system. And story-oriented stat systems are naturally dumbed down in comparison to combat-oriented ones, since it's instead all about getting into the head of your weepy, whiny, whinging vampire while he mopes around on a Saturday night complaining about being immortal and stuff. You know, instead of going on an adventure.

Every one of those 7 listed steps is - in their essence - a How-to Make a Better Story-oriented Game. And thus, ye fans of Torment and Bloodlines, not to mention those who like the story of Baldurs Gate (a pox on you), this is the future you led us to - a place where your character sheet is an expression of your personal desires as you want them to be expressed in the world, especially as you want to see those expressions as reflected in how the NPCs treat you. If you are strong, you want to see a scrawny NPC cower, instead of just die really fast to your +damage. That character sheet of desires is what you want, rather than a random set of values that you must simply deal with as the game assigned, as a strategy game would give you. Everything is about your choice now. More interactivity, more reactivity, more compelling stories, and all of it as you want to tell the tale - this is what you demanded, and now you're getting it.

And so, everyone will now naturally be copying Storyteller instead of D&D. The king is dead; long live the king.

TLDR - It's your own fault. Suck it.



* The system of Vampire: the Masquerade, etc.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Yes but the tards don't wanna play on story mode. They want normal to be story mode so they don't feel bad about their lack of commitment to the game.

People don't like being treated like scrubs. They want to be good but without effort.

This can be fixed by being smart and mischievous

Difficulty name seen by the player__ Storymode__Very Easy__Easy______________ Normal Difficult__Very Difficult__Hardcore__Super Hell__Hell of Nightmares

Real Difficulty __________________ ? ? _______ ?_________Easier than Story Mode___ Storymode_____Easy______Normal_____Hard_______

 

[Lurker King]

Once RPGs were built around combat. Now it's the story, and once games are going to be built around story, devs are naturally going to switch to a story-oriented rpg-stat system. And story-oriented stat systems are naturally dumbed down in comparison to combat-oriented ones.

I don’t buy it.

This story-driven focus is just a convenient excuse for what they were already willing to do even if they were doing linear cRPGs, i.e., dumbed-down cRPGs.

Grognards will use this excuse as an additional excuse to bash storyfags, but that is all there is, an excuse, not a fact.

 

[Telengard]

And now I will explain the number v. attributes thing for the mooks who did this to rpgs. A stat-based attribute is great for when your game's goal is to figure out a concrete difference between your unit's damage versus another unit's damage, ie your unit does 3 more pips than the other. What that system's not so great about doing is telling you whether your character is Strong - it tells you what pips of damage you can do, but it does a poor job of telling you whether or not you loom over regular people with your huge muscles. A simplified system that lets you choose whether to have either Regular strength or Huge strength, that tells you what you are in the world as it exists, and does so very efficiently, since it allows you do so without having to compare actuarial tables of a section of the populace. What's more, the simple one-or-the-other type setup makes sense to people who are in this whole thing just for the story, rather than the strategy. They can quickly define their character as they want to express it without - again - having to go through those actuarial tables to find out what those numbers mean in the populace at large.

For that same reason, this kind of setup makes it easy to tell what kind of story you - the player - can tell in an interactive game world. Normally, a person can't tell at a glance what a reactive world will say differently about a character that has a 13 vs a 14 Strength, since you don't know what the difference means to the people of that world. Hell, you don't even know what either value means alone relative to the general populace, much less have the knowledge to compare the difference and thus determine the percentage of people a 14 is stronger than and by how stronger they are much on average vs a 13. In comparison, you very much do know what the general populace are likely to think of someone who has the description Strong as opposed to Regular, though.

And there you have it - how to make an understandable interactive character system for a reactive game world. The essence of Storyteller.

And, blehh. You all suck for doing this to rpgs.

 

[Black]

Tim thinks character creation in Fallout, Arcanum and other RPGs was too complex.

Alright, I don't need to read any further.

 

[Lurker King]

I can't understand your post, Telengard. It's way too complex. Please, post a geometric shape instead.

 

[Kev Inkline]

And now I will explain the number v. attributes thing for the mooks who did this to rpgs. A stat-based attribute is great for when your game's goal is to figure out a concrete difference between your unit's damage versus another unit's damage, ie your unit does 3 more pips than the other. What that system's not so great about doing is telling you whether your character is Strong - it tells you what pips of damage you can do, but it does a poor job of telling you whether or not you loom over regular people with your huge muscles. A simplified system that lets you choose whether to have either Regular strength or Huge strength, that tells you what you are in the world as it exists, and does so very efficiently, since it allows you do so without having to compare actuarial tables of a section of the populace. What's more, the simple one-or-the-other type setup makes sense to people who are in this whole thing just for the story, rather than the strategy. They can quickly define their character as they want to express it without - again - having to go through those actuarial tables to find out what those numbers mean in the populace at large.

For that same reason, this kind of setup makes it easy to tell what kind of story you - the player - can tell in an interactive game world. Normally, a person can't tell at a glance what a reactive world will say differently about a character that has a 13 vs a 14 Strength, since you don't know what the difference means to the people of that world. Hell, you don't even know what either value means alone relative to the general populace, much less have the knowledge to compare the difference and thus determine the percentage of people a 14 is stronger than and by how stronger they are much on average vs a 13. In comparison, you very much do know what the general populace are likely to think of someone who has the description Strong as opposed to Regular, though.

And there you have it - how to make an understandable interactive character system for a reactive game world. The essence of Storyteller.

And, blehh. You all suck for doing this to rpgs.

I believe I would like to play a storyfaggotry system you described, even if you yourself seem not to like it. (off-topic: we rarely roll anymore in our pnp sessions). I think it was a nice way to put it. However, I think it is fabulously optimistic to assume such a game to emerge. I am afraid it is going to be something lot more simplistic.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I can't understand your post, Telengard. It's way too complex. Please, post a geometric shape instead.

Let me help:

 

[Black]

Hey Vault Dweller, how many geometric shapes does your new game have so far?
I bet not even 20, so much for it being a good rpg, r00fles.

 

[Sentinel]

ITT: people surprised that a triple-A title for consoles is gonna be a retard playground

 

[daveyd]

This takes the SPECIAL system to a whole 'nother level.

 

[Lhynn]

Always been in favor of hidding numbers in rpgs.

 

[Sentinel]

First MCA, now Cain... it appears the only former BIS dev who want to make proper rpgs is Sawyer now.

After MCA and Tim Cain got seduced by the Dark Side, now Sawyer is the Codex's last hope.
What a twist.

 

[DeepOcean]

You can place the stats wherever you want on this shape I propose, it is truly an incline shape, really erect to inspire the imagination on any poor mainstream player all too tired from work. I think cylinders work better than triangles as you can see on this picture:

Spoiler

You know, when you are going to allocate your stats on the awesome and yucky centers, I had this idea, why not make it a quick time event to make stat distribution not so boring? You know, you pull the cylindrical shape up and down, up and down, quick enough and if you do it enough times and hard enough, you will have an explosive random reward at the end. Of course, the first shot will be a 100% chance hit to frustrate nobody.

 

[Severian Silk]

8th Mistake to Avoid: Post on Codex

 

[huskarls]

VTMB and New Vegas are fairly good RPGs with simplified combat, but these are in 3D engines. Its one thing to make a twitcher game when you have voice acting, graphics, and money, but no one wants to play an isometric with all the strategy removed and nu-obsidian's stupid text dumps. No one wants to play a click to win fan fiction novel, numbers are 2/3rds of isometric gameplay

 

[Mozg]

Gonna be real, I don't remember why I ever liked number-crunchy character generation at the start of RPGs. The granddaddy, D&D, was "roll, pick one of the 2-3 classes you qualify for, play it", and the profusion of build shit came later. At the start of a game you have no context to make gameplay decisions besides likely false preconceptions (e.g. I'm playing Darklands, it's a medieval setting, better learn horseback riding - wrong) which is a recipe for annoyance.

 

[Junmarko]

I can't understand your post, Telengard. It's way too complex. Please, post a geometric shape instead.

 

[Severian Silk]

Which one is Tim Cain?

 

[Black]

FROM THE MAKERS OF FALLOUT AND OTHER CULT CLASSICS, HERE COMES ANOTHER HARDCORE CRPG

Spoiler

 

[abnaxus]

I want to be a rhombicuboctahedron.

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

Tim Cain's presentation in a nutshell