A question of scale

As you might already know, I'm creating the Best RPGs Ever [TM] in my mind, and I have pretty much ideas, and pretty nice ones at that. And all of them with some different concepts and different approaches on RPG design. And one thing I noticed was that the scale of the game really depends a lot on the overall design idea.

Now, if you have a sandboxy game like Darklands or Elder Scrolls, the world should be huge. It should all be on a large scale. Story-based games should be more focused, playing out on a smaller area. But what's the best scale for an RPG? Should there be huge worlds for one kind of RPG and small ones for the other, or is there a golden middle? And what problems does scale bring with it?

For one, a larger scale also means a lot more work. If you want to fill a game as huge as Daggerfall with content, you either need to work and write a lot, or include some system that generates quests randomly so you won't run out of things to do while exploring the overly large world. Small gameworlds can be more focused, you can put a lot more content on a smaller space, but it also has one downside: the world feels linear and limited when it is too small.

But what is the best territory size for a game? Well, in one of my RPG concepts I had an interesting idea. A world as huge as Daggerfall, but only parts of it filled with lots of content, while wilderness parts are mostly randomly generated, and many dungeons, too. Add a lot of content in the towns and quest areas, and let the other parts of the world be procedually generated. That way you can have both a focused game which still offers a lot of exploration freedom. Basically similar to Arcanum, but with a better-looking landscape and more interesting places in the wilderness [procedual generation can create some good stuff, too, as we can see in Dwarf Fortress].

Well, what's your thoughts on the scale of an RPG? Small and focused or large and wide-spread?

Definately the golden middle.

Thing Realms of Arkania 2, Startrail.

Large World, go wherever and whenever you want, yet with a tight plot and goodly npc interaction. (well not as much as I prefer, but it was a 994 game after all)

Another good example would be bg2 vs bg1; bg2 had a tightly focused places to go. that is, huge area but with something to do at each of them, rather than bg1's large empty and boring maps.

Daggerfall scaled world with most of it procedurally generated and parts either handmade or tweaked would be interesting, but I'm not sure if optimal.
It would give makers a procedural canvas on which they could paint using handmade content.

The alternative is some kind of small world.

Small worlds have to either rely on some fairly natural barriers, be scaled down versions of larger environments (Oblibians) or both (Morrowind). Alternatively they can be discretized and spread across illusory large area (Fallout) which proves to be quite effective solution.

Scaling down is inherently dangerous, as it forces the developers to not only cram a lot of locations into a small area, but simplify and reduce those locations as well. Morrowind approached the line dangerously close, while Oblivion boldly strode beyond it into the realm of ridiculous.

Now, excuse my use of Oblivion as an example, but, since it lacks almost any redeeming qualities it is perfect for "what if?" speculations regarding every aspect of gameplay.

If I was in chargeof making Oblivion, It'd either be a DF scaled handmade-procedural hybrid, or, if it was limited to it's current area, a game taking place exclusively in the Imperial City, that happens to be, conveniently, surrounded by water.

I for one prefer as large scale as you can get but if you are focusing on a story based game it's probably better to go with small scale.

One thing I'd like to see developers do is instead of generating quests you design the world in such a way that quests spontaneously generate themselves. An example is in some games like the X series(X2 The Threat, X3 Reunion) you have a living economy where you can find a good price for wares at one place and sell them for twice as much at another place where those wares are scarce.

This is just one example of getting the player involved in a dynamic environment. It's not exactly a quest in the traditional sense but it works much the same. And it's a lot better than generating NPC A to give quest B that tells the player to go to location C to get item D and bring it back to NPC A. It does require a lot of work and pre-planning but the results are well worth the effort.

I was going to keep this to myself but one idea I have for a future space sim/RPG project is to allow the player to be able to buy androids to run some of their ships and outposts as opposed to hiring people to do it. While the androids are more efficient and cheaper in the long run it creates problems in that certain NPCs(namely the Humanized Workers Union) will seek out and attack any ships or installations that have androids operating on them. This creates a sort of choices and consequences scenario that doesn't involve a single line of dialog. It's this kind of thinking that I would like to promote in future games.

A whole continent with the procedural canvas approach. Yes.

With a world map that allows you to "map-travel" on the areas you've already visited.

I don't mind procedural content as long as it is used smartly. Give me a bunch of "go to {place} and {kill/collect/deliver} {number} {person/monster/person} and return here for a reward" type quests quickly get tedious and ruin the immersion of a game. But if you can smartly weave procedural content in your game's story, it's a win-win situation.

I can't explain it very well, so I'll give an example:

Setting:
A medium sized town bordering a large woods known for the unique and deadly monsters inhabiting it. Here many adventurers come to make name for themselves and veteran hunters make a living. Many myths regarding the origin of these creatures exist, but no one knows for certain.

Quest:
Every week or so you have the chance to hunt down the latest monstrosity (random) terrorizing the countryside and slaughtering local cattle. You get the chance to compete against others to hunt down a mighty beast. With every felled monster you get the bounty and a bit of renown. You also have the option of selling the beast's remains to a recently arrived researcher to study, though most hunters frown upon this and prefer to destroy the remains by fire, as local custom.

That may be the entirety of the quest for some players, but for those with a high enough intelligence/lore, happen upon a special encounter in the woods or sell enough corpses to the researcher may learn that there's something suspicious going on. You may then get a quest from the researcher to find out the cause of the monsters. Or, after enough kills, you may earn the trust of a local, who lost a child to a monster, tells you that the monsters only started appearing in the last couple decades and wants you to find the source and put a stop to it so no one else can be hurt.

The more discoveries you make about the origins of the creatures, the more resistance you get from some of the veteran hunters. It starts with simple warnings to wild goose chases to sabotage to threats and even physical violence.

Eventually you'll come upon the cause for all the monsters: A secluded wizard/scientist is creating these monstrosities as a part of his research. When confronted, he'll explain that he needed a secluded place to continue his studies uninterrupted and that by releasing them into the woods it makes it all the more likely no one will bother him. When asked to stop, he'll refuse and point out that without him the local economy would fail. The hunters would be out of jobs, the merchants would have no one to sell weapons and supplies to and the inns and bars would have no visitors. Those hunters who died knew the risks and what they were up against. The death of the occasional towns person is minuscule compared to what could happen without the protection of the numerous strong hunters. When asked what happens if he creates a monster too powerful for the hunters, he decides to ignore you and get back to his work.

Then you'd be left with some choices. You can slay the wizard/scientist putting an end to the randomly generated monsters in the woods which would please the local farmers, but upset the hunters and merchants. Eventually the hunters would leave, followed by the merchants and the town would revert back into a small farming community. Or you can return to the town and lie about what you discovered and gain the trust of the hunters and continue hunting the ever more powerful monster of the week. Though eventually a monster that is too powerful is created and destroys the entire town and all the inhabitants. I suppose another option is to turn this whole process into a money-making business turning the town into a Vegas like city and kicking out all the local farmers.

I don't agree that there's any right size for a game, though I think developers ought to be more wary of simply shooting for an "epic" landscape. Ultimately, it's going to end up feeling pretty sparse.

Story/sandbox has little to do with it. I think you could make a very effective sandbox using very few "sets" to use a movie analogy. Dynamism is the key. If you had a single village, but allowed that village to be flooded, set fire to, over-run, snowed under, etc. then you've got something that could potentially house more interesting dynamic siutations and events than a whole buttload of towns that exist and never change.

Of course, it would be even better to expand that into a world filled with detailed procedural villages. And I don't see why more RPGs don't go for that route. It's a lot easier to define the rules of what a village should look like compared to a "dungeon".

Daggerfall scaled world with most of it procedurally generated and parts either handmade or tweaked would be interesting, but I'm not sure if optimal.

Click to expand...

But that's exactly what Daggerfall had. Alot of procedually generated content, and some handmade content( that, granted, got drowned in all the randomness; for every handmade town/dungeon there were 300 or so procedually generated ones ).

That's why Daggerfall was the perfect concept. It just needed alot less bugs, better random quests and wilderness( roads between cities, for instance ) and alot more handmade content. Heck, the game even had C&C.

Raapys said:

Daggerfall scaled world with most of it procedurally generated and parts either handmade or tweaked would be interesting, but I'm not sure if optimal.

Click to expand...

But that's exactly what Daggerfall had. Alot of procedually generated content, and some handmade content( that, granted, got drowned in all the randomness; for every handmade town/dungeon there were 300 or so procedually generated ones ).

That's why Daggerfall was the perfect concept. It just needed alot less bugs, better random quests and wilderness( roads between cities, for instance ) and alot more handmade content. Heck, the game even had C&C.

Click to expand...

It had no handmade quests save for the MQ and the towns basically consisted of optional rectangular wall with random mess inside.

I was thinking of, for example, changing the town type besed on the surrounding terrain, assembling the town plan from premade building blocks and filling it with buildings. For particualr important towns, the entire plan would be handmade and important landmarks handplaced. And so on.

Daggerfall, which I'm currently getting into, seems decent, but it received way too little personal love from the devs, it seems.

The devs were just far too eager after finishing Arena. Daggerfall was so buggy when it was released, and half the game features were cut( countries were supposed to be able to go to war against each other, cities could become under siege, etc. ), even two more years probably wouldn't have seen the game finished.

It did have some( one or two? ) optional hand-made quests besides the MQ though.

All the main-quest related dungeons were hand-made( although still put together by the same building blocks ), as were the capital cities of the main regions.

Also, the cities do change based on terrain. You'll find desert cities, mountain cities, etc. It basically switches out the 'texture packs' depending on where the cities are located, the building models are still the same.

As I said, they'd thought about everything. It was 'perfect'. They just needed much more time and more capable programmers( random generator sucked big time ).

I think a really huge world with random stuff (dungeons?) as well as a few well-written and content rich areas could be really cool.

Raapys said:

Also, the cities do change based on terrain. You'll find desert cities, mountain cities, etc. It basically switches out the 'texture packs' depending on where the cities are located, the building models are still the same.

Click to expand...

They even change textures depending on weather, but they still could use some actual terrain variation and cities meshing with this varied terrain rather than being, for example "desert themed rectangle".

Yah, but then again, they probably had enough to do finishing the already half-implemented features, let alone fix bugs or add even more stuff.

Ah, if only they had continued on the Daggerfall idea with Morrowind; it could really have been something. Julian Lefay >>> Todd Howard.

Raapys said:

Yah, but then again, they probably had enough to do finishing the already half-implemented features, let alone fix bugs or add even more stuff.

Ah, if only they had continued on the Daggerfall idea with Morrowind; it could really have been something. Julian Lefay >>> Todd Howard.

Click to expand...

Most things >>> Todd Howard

Raapys said:

Yah, but then again, they probably had enough to do finishing the already half-implemented features, let alone fix bugs or add even more stuff.

Ah, if only they had continued on the Daggerfall idea with Morrowind; it could really have been something.

Click to expand...

It was something, but something completely different and almost complementary.
If only they combined the virtues of both and added some character interaction and dialogue quality from, say, PS:T, it would have easily resulted in 'teh best gaem evar!1'.
Instead they decided to combine both games' greatest vices, dumb down the result and there popped Oblivion.

Smaller worlds for me, I much prefer quality content over quantity, interesting quests with multiple solutions, well developed characters with interesting dialogue, dynamic world reactions. These things are too likely to suffer in a massive game with hundreds of towns and thousands of NPCs (likely to get a Tarant in such a game?). I've found all the TES games extremely dull, and even Arcanum suffered slightly from being too long (especially as it had a good story, and good amout of choices, I think a game like this benefits from being a little shorter), I lost a bit of interest in the story towards the end, and its few boring areas (not necessarily due to its length, but I feel a longer game is more likely to have such shitty areas, Fallout 2 is somewhat similar) mean I've not replayed it often.

I'm not into exploring large worlds, especially if they're mostly filled with combat and dungeons. These large worlds tend to have a very strong focus on combat and loot, neither of which I'm too interested in, it's the same reason I have no interest in the current MMORPGs.

On what makes a better game, I do think that games which focus on strong story and C&C benefit from being on the shorter side (C&C, world reactivity, character build variation are some of the biggest reasons I play RPGs, it's these aspects I feel that most strongly distinguish RPGs from other genres). Particularly those with strong C&C as it makes the game more replayable (the longer the game, the less likely I am to replay it), in terms of story, I feel it's difficulty to stretch a strong story over a large play time with many different areas, it is possible, but a tighter focus seems to me the better option.

Games that have good combat (exclude most RPGs) and interesting areas to explore could be playable for me as a massive game, though I've not found any yet. Haven't really tried too hard, as those I have played have been so dull.

I always wanted an RPG where you'd wander through the Jungle forever to find the hidden Temple and there'd be only one and the chances of you simply stumbling across it would be infinitesimal. That you'd have to find that one obscure book which mentioned the temple's location, work it out using the stars at night and the shape of a mountain and figuring out where it is. Crysis would make a good engine for a game like that. I doubt anyone will do it though. Inside, the Temple would be a huge underground complex and you'd need rope, lanterns and mountain climbing skills to make your way through it.

I think it depends on the competence of the procedural generation you have at your disposal. If you have a system that can generate believable content (interactive if not Shakespeare NPCs, relevant quests, plausible terrain) I say go for it.

But remember that your first duty is to provide an entertaining game to the player so don't bore them with slogging through miles of forest unless it serves to enhance the gameplay (though, if your intent is more of a tech demo to see what is possible and what isn't, shrug off concerns of boredom).

Section8 is right in that a smaller environment could be used very effectively and procedural generation still be very important. In this case I think you'll be applying it such that it gives a depth, not breadth, to your world. This will require more programming work, however, as you'll need more systems in place to achieve depth as opposed to applying a handful of systems over and over for breadth.

Personally I'd focus on a smaller environment (maybe a couple of villages with wilderness in between). I think that using procedural generation that supports that local scale could enhance your custom content whereas using it on an epic scale would only dilute it. I think since good procedural generation is so untested it's best to nail it on a local scale and then maybe in the future we can look at making it scale globally.

If you want the feel of an epic scale you could have your player's actions feed into a macro simulation that is epic and then have changes in the macro simulation influence what the player sees in their local space. I.e., if the player supports brigandry and the like maybe on a national scale it helps brigandry and it's simply tweaking some numbers (like lawlessness+ stability-) and you could use those numbers to create quests / town crier items / rumors / what-have-you that reflect that.

I'd really like a Darklands-scale game, with some characterizing set piece vignettes - largely because I haven't gotten a new game like that in years, whereas I just played MotB a couple months ago at the "personal" scale.

DU, I'd buy that. Thrice.

JarlFrank said:

Well, what's your thoughts on the scale of an RPG? Small and focused or large and wide-spread?

Click to expand...

Large and wide-spread.

Not only that, stock it with a vast number of supremely *varied* NPCs : from those moronic ones who utter only a grunt, to those elaborate enunciators who can't stop spewing and spouting their omni-expressive verbiage, and everyone in between those polarized extremes. Make it the ANTI-Morrowind in regards to dialogue and PC-NPC interaction.

Also, if possible, allow us to recruit henchmen who are well developed, dynamic, unpredictable and predominantly autonomous. Also, allow the camera angle to be highly configurable : from a modern FPS view for those who want to solo the game, to classic bird's eye isometric for those who find immersion in the omni-perspective.


I will wait 5-10 years, patiently, and will gladly pay $200.00 (US) for such a game (in 2012-2018).

You do realize that by 2018 video games likely will cost that much?

Andhaira said:

You do realize that by 2018 video games likely will cost that much?

Click to expand...

You realize that by 2018 the mainstream will be obessed with some new kind of media and games will be more styled towards our needs again?

Speaking of 2018, what ever happened to VR glasses? Why aren't we all using them yet, etc.? I've never tried any myself, but surely it would be awesome with today's graphics?

They're right over there, with the Jetpacks we were all supposed to have by 1999.