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RPG => The Depository => Topic started by: Vince on February 27, 2008, 12:01:43 pm



Title: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on February 27, 2008, 12:01:43 pm
As we all know RPG usually means a game where you kill things. If you are role-playing a good character, you kills things in the name of justice and general goodness, weeping for every life taken. If you are role-playing an evil character, you kill with glee because you are evil (duh!), and finally, if you are playing an undecided character, you kill things and shrug.

You can often see "Different ways to play the game!" on a game box. 12 out of 10 it means "different ways to kill things". For example, venerable Baldur's Gate 2 offers 11 different classes, including bard, druid, and monk. Surprisingly enough (well, not really, but the word "surprisingly" increases the overall dramatic effect I'm going for), even though the manual boldly claims that bard's "strength is his pleasant and charming personality; With it and his wits he makes his way through the world....", the psycho bard makes his way through the world by killing things and singing sons that help him and his buddies kill things in a more efficient manner, which is great if you think that killing things is what RPGs are all about. If not, if you are starting to doubt that diplomacy is for fags, or expecting more than backstabbing from your thief, or simply wondering where the fuck all non-combat classes are, welcome to our PowerPoint "Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths and Reality" FAQ-style presentation:

Q: What is this non-combat gameplay you so obnoxiously speaketh of?
A: It's a form of gameplay that doesn't consist of, require, or revolve around killing things. You play a game and overcome challenges thrown at you without killing anyone, using your character's non-combat skills and abilities.

Here is a generic situation:

You are standing in front of a fortress and dying to get inside because that's where all the cool kids are. There is a gate, but it's guarded. You need a pass to enter. Your options are:

- knock some sense into the guards with your war hammer and go inside.
- persuade the guards to let you in: Hi there! I'm with the Tavern Food & Service Inspection Agency. We've heard rumors that you have rats running around in every cellar. Well, it's fucking better be a misunderstanding because if I see a single rodent-looking motherfucker - which includes this rat-faced bastard over there - I'm shutting this evil fortress down TONIGHT! Now open that fucking door already!
- ask around about the pass, find out who has one, and either steal it or trade it for something.
- create a diversion - Look behind you, a three-headed monkey! - and sneak inside. Or hire some thugs to attack the guards and while the guards are busy breaking some heads, sneak inside.
- wall-climbing text-adventures are fun and very ninja-like: your dagger blade snaps with a loud noise and you plummet to your death cursing stupid non-combat gameplay.
- impersonate an officer - Atten-hut! Is that how you salute an officer of the watch, swine? Stop eyeballing me! You're not worthy to look your superiors in the eye. Stand straight, eyes forward! What is the name of your commanding officer?
- bribe your way in.
- forge a fake pass using your knowledge of what a real pass looks like and skills (lore, literacy, scribing, etc)

Let's count now. Eight different ways to get in, only one requires bashing someone's head. As you can see, non-combat solutions are the core of role-playing because that's where the choices are. Figuring out what you can do in this situation is infinitely more interesting than checking your blade, putting on your reinforced hockey helmet, gulping a potion, and charging the guards.

Q: Your gate example is amazingly awesome but there is a huge difference between passing through a gate that nobody cares about and dealing with bloodthirsty monsters that are completely immune to persuasion, charisma, and personal magnetism.

A: Let's use the Bloodlines' sewers as an example. The sewers are packed with monsters and are often used as a counter-argument in "RPG diplomacy" discussions, pointing out that you can't convince a bloodthirsty monster not to eat you. The sewers, however, aren't floating somewhere in the void, being completely removed and detached from anything. They are a part of the game world and thus could be easily affected by many different things. Flooding the sewers could be a nice and elegant solution, requiring a bit of knowledge (you'd have to research the sewers, find out about the flood controls and where they are) and engineering to operate them. Another great option would have been tipping the authorities about, let’s say, terrorists in the sewers. SWAT teams go in looking for terrorists, run into the monsters, and eventually kill them all. Needless to say, you'd have to be very persuasive to pull that off, and additionally you'd get a strike for breaking the Masquerade, but at least you'll be safe. And finally you should have been able to push on the local vampire clan running that town and persuade, force, or manipulate them into cleaning the sewers for you. You work for the Prince after all, so you might as well use that to your advantage.

So, as you can see, you don't have to deal with in-game problems by charging at them. Obviously, you can't negotiate with big-ass scorpions, but hey, maybe you can find some dynamite and blow up their cave. If you know what I'm talking about, nod in agreement. If not, go play Fallout.

Q: Bandits. You travel from point A to point B and run into some bandits. What are you going to do? Go back and wait for the cavalry to clean up the roads?

Plenty of things, but instead of making things up, let's use Marco Polo as an example. Marco decided to LARP old-school. He formed a small 3-man party (I can only assume that they were fighter, mage, and thief) and decided to go adventuring all the way to China. Back in those days people were still taking their role-playing seriously.

He had received gifts for the Great Khan from Pope Gregory X and travelled 5,600 (!) miles of "bandit-ridden" roads, passing through Armenia, Persia, Afghanistan, and finally arriving to China 3.5 years later and delivering the Pope's gifts to the Khan. If Marco managed to avoid the bandits, ninjas, and pirates for 3.5 years and deliver the valuable gifts, we shall assume that dealing with RPG bandits in non-combat ways is more than possible.

Anyway, the story gets better and suggests a great way to handle hostile encounters in RPGs. Kublai Khan gave Marco a golden tablet, which had the Khan's seal and stated "Fuck not least you be fucked with!". Well, actually it said, "By the strength of the eternal Heaven, holy be the Khan's name. Let him that pays him not reverence be killed.", but that's pretty much the same thing. Needless to say, the magic tablet helped Marco to arrive back to Venice safely and bring back a fortune after serving the Khan for 17 years.

Q: Ok, you’ve dealt with bandits, but what about armies? Surely one can’t stop armies with a flowery speech and a pretty smile?

A: Actually….

In 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte, an exiled French emperor, landed near Cannes with 600 soldiers and started moving toward the capital. Near Grenoble he was stopped by the 5th Regiment. Napoleon stepped forward and using nothing but his charisma, persuasion, and dramatic effects convinced the soldiers to join him. A day later the 7th Regiment failed their roll against Napoleon’s maxed out Charisma. Marshal Ney promised Louis XVIII to bring Napoleon in an iron cage, but the power of Napoleon’s personality was too great and Ney joined his side, bringing in 6,000 soldiers. Without firing a shot (!), Napoleon took over a country and gained a 340,000 (regular soldiers and volunteers) army.

His progress (very RPG-like) could be tracked by the French newspaper Moniteur’s headlines:

March 10: The Corsican ogre has landed at Cape Juan.
March 11: The tiger is in Gap. Troops are on their way and will stop him. He will end his miserable adventure as a homeless refugee in the mountains.
March 12: The monster succeeded in proceeding to Grenoble.
March 13: The tyrant is now in Lyon. Horror has caught the people.
March 18: The usurper is some days’ march distant from Paris.
March 19: Bonaparte approaches in a hurry, but he will not succeed in advancing to Paris.
March 20: Napoleon will be in Paris tomorrow.
March 21: Emperor Napoleon is in Fontainebleau.
March 22: Yesterday evening His Majesty celebrated his arrival in Paris. The jubilation cannot be described.

From ogre to His Majesty in 12 days. Not bad at all.

Q: Well, Napoleon was an ex-emperor, so that doesn’t count. How about a completely hostile town where you can be killed on sight?

A: Sir Richard Francis Burton - the 19th century explorer, linguist, ninja-cartographer, undercover intelligence officer, and swordsman. He spoke 25 languages (40 if you count dialects) flawlessly (can you imagine it? 25 languages! That’s what happens, kids, when you don’t treat your INT as a dump stat) and was able to impersonate native speakers in Africa, Asia, and South America. He was the first westerner who infiltrated Mecca disguised as an Afghani physician. If he were discovered, he would have been immediately executed.

Just think about it. An Englishman was able to enter the holy Muslim city, maintain his disguise all the time, demonstrate an understanding and familiarity with Islamic rituals (asking “what do we do now, guys?” was kind of out of the question), behave like a Middle East man (mannerism, etiquette, reaction) without raising suspicions, study everything and leave to write a book about it.

Anyway...

Next step - the forbidden Muslim city of Harar in Somaly. All non-believers who had entered Harar before Burton had been executed, but he manages to go in, party with the locals like it's 1995, and leave alive AGAIN. Quite a feat.

Imagine infiltrating a town like that in an RPG. Combat is not an option for obvious reasons. You rely only on your knowledge, your “soft” skills and abilities. I’d definitely tap that.

Q: Non-combat solutions to ALL in-game problems? That's crazy and I laugh at this crazy stuff. Ha Ha. Ha. Ha.
A: This is crazy? No! THIS IS SPA ....  Sorry, got carried away there a bit. Have you ever thought about the "traditional" RPG design? Every little problem - and some games have hundreds of problem - can only be solved by violence.

- I was attacked by bandits
- GREAT! LET ME KILL THEM!
- Rats ate all my food
- GREAT! LET ME KILL THEM!
- My neighbours...
- GREAT! LET ME KILL THEM!
- My crops...
- GREAT! LET ME KILL THEM!
- My...
- KILL! KILL! KILL!
- My lord, you've killed everyone. There is nobody left but me....
* the great battle axe swings and a headless body hits the ground* KILL.....

Since everyone's ok with solving ALL problems with combat skills, I don't see why solving ALL problems with non-combat skills should be an issue, but that’s not what we are talking about here today. We are talking about paths. An RPG can have many optional quests, but as long as it offers several distinctive paths through the game, I'm happy. There are few things worse than playing a diplomatic character through the game and then suddenly being forced to fight because we’ve entered the “REAL MEN only!” area of the game, so it should be a complete and distinctive path through the game. I’d settle on at least Combat Boy, Charisma Boy, and Stealth Boy, but would prefer to see more.

Combat is definitely a great and enjoyable way to beat a game, but it shouldn’t be the only way.

Q: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Non-combat gameplay = giving your character high intelligence and choosing the wordiest options available. It's a great read, but from a player-game interaction standpoint, not much is going on there.

That would be bad design again. The way I see it, the diplomatic path, for example, should require a lot of in-game knowledge, interacting with characters, forming relationships, and so on. You do all that and then getting the lines showing your character's knowledge of the gameworld and his ability to manipulate situations would come as a reward when all pieces of the puzzle you're playing with come together.

Let me use one of our optional quests as an example. You are asked to assassinate a noble who's plotting against the local lord. The noble is well guarded, but that shouldn't stop you from going over there and killing everyone. Your fighting prowess should be properly tested, after all.  However, let's assume that you want to be a bit more creative. We support that by offering you 4 different ways to kill the bastard. Naturally, only one requires you to get you well-manicured hands dirty. You can investigate the plotting business and find out that the noble relies on a certain general’s support. Then you acquire a legionnaire’s uniform, put it on, and pay the noble a visit:

Guard: Who the hell are you?
PC:

1. Show him the ring.
2. [disguise] "General Pavolla has been assassinated! Gaelius' guards are on their way here."
3. Attack.

If #2 is successful: "Pavolla... dead..." The guard slowly turns around, visibly shaken by the news.

1. Attack.
2. "Take me to Serenas. We don’t have time to waste."

Serenas looks at the guard and understands everything without words. The details aren't important. What's important is that his dream of ruling House Aurelian is over. "What happened?" he asks weakly.

"General Pavolla was murdered by Gaelius' assassins. Several other patriots were brutally murdered in their own beds. It's a matter of time until they get to you, my lord."

"What do you suggest?"

1. "You must flee at once."
2. "Poison, my lord. It's painless and fast."

"Poison? Are you out of your mind?"

[persuasion] "Have you ever visited your uncle's torture chambers? You will be dying there for weeks, being broken in every possible way and begging for death. Or you can die with dignity, by your own hand." 

If successful: Serenas' hand shakes as he accepts the poison. He looks you in the eyes with determination and hate as he swallows the liquid. His death is quick and painless, as you promised. Your work here is done.

Alternatively, you can have a chat with the guard, expressing your concerns about the whole situation and convincing the guard that Serenas will sell everyone the first chance he gets. Then you go and scare the hell out of poor Serenas:

“I don’t believe it! Gaelius wouldn't kill his own nephew. I'll go to him right now and explain everything. It was that sneaky bastard Pavolla and the others. Yes, the others. If I give them to my uncle..." A well placed strike interrupts his tirade.
 
Grim-faced, the guard withdraws the blade from Serenas' back - "Fucking vappa! You were right. He would have sold us all to save his own skin. Do you have a problem with that, friend?" His nod indicates the dead body.

1. “None whatsoever.” Salute and leave
2. “Actually, I do. I'm sure that general Pavolla might be disappointed too.”


So, as you can see, kids, non-combat gameplay is interesting, realistic, and more complex than clicking on lines with more than three words. If you ask me, that's where all the fun is. Why am I telling you all this? Well, son, I'm building up your expectations and hopefully somehow that would translate into more interesting games with more depth than "poke dis guy with a sword until he's dead, then report back for more killing".


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Mephisto on February 27, 2008, 12:46:46 pm
Great article, Vince. Funny and insightful.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Starwars on February 27, 2008, 01:02:58 pm
I particularly want to enforce your point that it's very important for the game to be inventive about the Diplomatic instead of just providing the "let's skip battle and be friends" type of dialogue option.

Nearly all RPGs feature a dangerous setting, where there the fear of death exists. For the diplo-path, I think that this should mean that even though the *possibility* is there to avoid all combat, this should not necessarily mean that many players should manage to "get it" on their first playthrough. There should be a real difficulty there, and a real fear of dying.

Also, the stealth boy approach is a hard one for me. Most games that feature stealth never actually seem to have much content for it. You might get some optional loot and stuff in certain games, but it rarely feels you're getting rewarded somehow by sneaking vs other ways. Rarely does a game recognize that you've sneaked through a place instead of just killing all the guards before confronting the final boss.
Just more dialogue for the sneaky character would be great (and a well done thieves guild would be a very good start).


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: pnutz on February 27, 2008, 01:03:54 pm
Nicely done. Now I want a Silk Road RPG and a Heinrich Barth RPG.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Priapist on February 27, 2008, 10:49:24 pm
Another entertaining rant Vince. Viral marketed over on the Codex for great justice. Anyway:

The biggest problem I see with typical non-combat gameplay is that there's rarely ever a degree of success. The best you can hope for is a variance in how much you have to pay as a bribe, that sort of thing. There's too much scripting involved, whereas combat generally relies on dynamic interactions within a set of rules. And more often than not, failure means "time to reload" because you're not given opportunities to fail multiple times before "losing the battle".

Of course, this is all because of a lack of design effort in this area, but are there simple, elegant and general solutions that can add a bit more variance to systems like dialogue or stealth? I think there are, and I think this thread is the place to brainstorm them.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Gareth on February 28, 2008, 03:26:29 am
I don't always agree with Vince but that was a superb piece. Great work, now I'm hawt to play a linguist-intellectual-ninja-spy.

Also, good point from Priapist.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Palmer Eldritch on February 28, 2008, 04:38:43 am
Good work, Vince...

I like what you said about how a little research could provide interesting solutions. This could be applied to assassinations: you'd have to gather all sorts of intelligence about someone before you attempt to kill them, for instance:

- with more complex npc schedules, it could be fun to map out the victims daily motions, and you should perhaps disguise yourself if you're gonna follow him around, to avoid suspicion. Once you know his activities, you could place deadly traps at proper locations.

Other options would be stuff like poisoning water or food supply.

One skill I haven't seen in crpg's, is something like "detect traps", but you detect tracks and residue instead. Besides tracking down monsters or whatever, you would also be forced to cover your own tracks for various reasons. Maybe you failed to notice all the tracks due to poor skill, which would increase the probability of some cunning bounty-hunter closing in on your trail.

I need sleep now, I hope this reply wasn't too half-baked


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Gareth on February 28, 2008, 05:22:20 am
Quote
One skill I haven't seen in crpg's, is something like "detect traps", but you detect tracks and residue instead. Besides tracking down monsters or whatever, you would also be forced to cover your own tracks for various reasons. Maybe you failed to notice all the tracks due to poor skill, which would increase the probability of some cunning bounty-hunter closing in on your trail.

They have this kind of thing in Mount & Blade, it is really awesome. You run into a fresh trail of a warparty, you know it's time to turn around and head for the nearest town unless you are prepared. You don't have the skill, you and your party of peasants continue on oblivious.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Lapsed Pacifist on February 28, 2008, 06:43:47 am
A: Let's use the Bloodlines' sewers as an example. The sewers are packed with monsters and are often used as a counter-argument in "RPG diplomacy" discussions, pointing out that you can't convince a bloodthirsty monster not to eat you. The sewers, however, aren't floating somewhere in the void, being completely removed and detached from anything. They are a part of the game world and thus could be easily affected by many different things. Flooding the sewers could be a nice and elegant solution, requiring a bit of knowledge (you'd have to research the sewers, find out about the flood controls and where they are) and engineering to operate them. Another great option would have been tipping the authorities about, let’s say, terrorists in the sewers. SWAT teams go in looking for terrorists, run into the monsters, and eventually kill them all. Needless to say, you'd have to be very persuasive to pull that off, and additionally you'd get a strike for breaking the Masquerade, but at least you'll be safe. And finally you should have been able to push on the local vampire clan running that town and persuade, force, or manipulate them into cleaning the sewers for you. You work for the Prince after all, so you might as well use that to your advantage.

Great read! But I can't stop myself from nitpicking this example. First - I don't think that flooding the sewers would do much - those things don't need to breathe. So instead of having a dungeon full of monsters, you would have a flooded dungeon full of monsters. And some very wet and pissed off Nosferatu. Second idea - calling the cops. Bloodlines is very forgiving when it comes to masquerade breeches, but this goes a bit too far imo. In any vampire city the police force would be kept under control by whatever faction holds power, and you can bet that somebody is watching for just this kind of masquerade breeching stunts at all times. Not only would it not work, but any attempt is likely to be met with extreme prejudice (read - a gorilla with a big sword).

Now the third idea - calling in for help. That is a great idea - why isn't the sheriff and his friends helping you? Where are all Camarilla vampires? And where are the Anarchs? If there is one thing that Anarchs hate even more the Camarilla, it's the Sabbat. This problem isn't limited to Bloodlines only - take Fallout 2. I have friends in power in Vault City, New Reno, NCR, Broken Hills, San Francisco and the Brotherhood. So why am I going after the Enclave alone (or with a few NPCs) and not with a whole army?!

Back to the Bloodlines example - here is another potential non-combat path. By the time you get to the sewers, you already know at least one ugly-son-of-a-bitch that knows how to get to the Nosferatu warrens. Why not pay him a visit, politely remind him of all the favors you did for him for which he has done practically nothing in return (favor trading is very important in Camarilla) and ask him to tell you how to find Nosferatu. And if he refuses, then use favors you have with Therese & Jeannette, the Prince, the Regent or whomever and make them lean on him until he gives you the information. I actually tried to do this when I was playing the game for the first time - it looked like a logical thing to do. It was very disappointing to learn that the only way to the warrens leads through monster infested sewers.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: GhanBuriGhan on February 28, 2008, 06:54:57 am
This is a great piece, and should be pinned above every RPG developers monitor. You are also getting better and better at writing these, its really fun to read your stuff by now.

However, you talk almost exclusively of quest design (which of course makes sense as it is the key strength AoD seems to aspire to), I had hoped it would go a little beyond and also cover other non-combat gameplay elements, like crafting/alchemy/player-made magic, collecting, puzzles.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on February 28, 2008, 09:58:35 am
This is a great piece, and should be pinned above every RPG developers monitor. You are also getting better and better at writing these, its really fun to read your stuff by now.
Thanks.

Quote
However, you talk almost exclusively of quest design (which of course makes sense as it is the key strength AoD seems to aspire to), I had hoped it would go a little beyond and also cover other non-combat gameplay elements, like crafting/alchemy/player-made magic, collecting, puzzles.
I think it's a different topic. I was talking about non-combat ways to play RPGs, while alchemy and crafting are what you do in-between combat. Diablo 2 had a great crafting system with socketed items, gems of various strengths, runes & runewords, and crafting recipes, but the game had nothing but combat. The Witcher had an interesting alchemy system, but it was a story-driven action game.

In AoD, for example, you can make acid and use it on locks, but the way I see it, that's less about alchemy and more about providing alternative solutions.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Euchrid on February 28, 2008, 10:24:26 am
One skill I haven't seen in crpg's, is something like "detect traps", but you detect tracks and residue instead. Besides tracking down monsters or whatever, you would also be forced to cover your own tracks for various reasons. Maybe you failed to notice all the tracks due to poor skill, which would increase the probability of some cunning bounty-hunter closing in on your trail.

CSI: RPG!

Great article, I agree fully that the combat focus is ridiculous, and one of the reasons the RPG genre is folding into others. I mean, put a combat heavy, low choice RPG into FPP, make the combat real-time, what really distinguishes it from an FPS? Stats, levelling and a bit of dialogue, that's not a seperate genre.

Of the alternatives (stealth, dialogue), stealth seems the more achievable as a strong mechanic. Some skills are already there, and the gameplay just needs to be cut and pasted from Thief. I do think it unlikely for a generalist RPG to produce stealth play of this level, it would probably need to be a more thief focused RPG. There is the problem of where the line between player and character skill is drawn, but I'm sure it can be well implemented (ie. having skills affect the light gem), and I certainly don't want stealth as cool as Thief's to be taken away from the player and being controlled by a mere roll of the dice.

When it comes to dialogue as an alternative, there are a number of unanswered questions and much more work that needs to be done. I've not played an RPG with dialogue resolution that was anything but an interesting departure from combat, a dialogue/knowledge mechanic has never been strong enough to stand on its own, like a good combat system can.

Is it possible for it to do so? Has any game come close? Is this likely or imminently achievable? Does Iron Tower think they can achieve it?

The example of dialogue resolution given in the OP is great, and contains some good choice for the player, "how will I deal with this situation: 1,2,3, or 4" as well as having a role for the character, by using character skill checks. Where it is lacking in comparison to combat, is that there are much fewer options, the player does not really get to do anything cool, the gameplay is little different to reading normal dialogue trees that have no real options, it makes the player pay more attention but in the end he's still just clicking on lines of dialogue and seeing more dialogue in response. You are also often depriving the player of content, who would pass up hours of sewer scouring in VtmB for a quick dialogue with the police, leaving all the fun to them?

What kind of dialogue gameplay have we seen in RPGs: choose from various pre-scripted options, character skill checks to determine success of actions, collecting knowledge from various sources via more pre-scripted dialogue and using that knowledge to make better choices.

The fun part of non-combat quest resolution is coming up with the idea, attempting it in game and finding that you can actually take that path. Much like solving a puzzle in an adventure game. Obviously, to have more of these cool moments, the developers need to code many different paths.

I see this kind of gameplay as satisfying, and a very good option in an RPG that also has stealth, combat and other options, but do not see it as strong enough to stand on its own the way combat is able to.

Can dialogue quest resolution be as strong a game mechanic as combat?
Or is it destined to always be an option, or a nice addition to other elements?

I'm not querying whether a non-combat RPG could be made, I'm certain it can, rather whether an RPG which focused as heavily on dialogue gameplay as most RPGs do on combat gameplay could be viable. This may not be a goal worth aiming for, as a game does not need to be so narrowly focused, just questioning how far the dialogue focus can go.

The obvious answer to making dialogue gameplay more compelling, is mini-games. Fahrenheit (adventure game) had a great system where you press a combination of arrow keys at the right time during dialogue and cutscenes.  ;)


I have no answers as to how to improve dialogue gameplay, just some half-baked ideas. One possibility is to have some questions that the PC can always/often ask, and for the responses to these to be partially/mostly unscripted, based on game and PC/NPC states.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Priapist on February 28, 2008, 11:28:46 am
A couple of dialogue concepts I'm bandying about.

Substitution

Rather than every line of dialogue being completely static, I want to breathe a bit of life into them by a simple system of substitution. When parsing raw script, the game looks for curly brackets: { } - which represent optional elements and parentheses: ( ) which represent required elements. Both can potentially draw from the same Lexicon (pool of words/phrases), but only curly bracketed lookups can return NULL. The parser also automatically capitalises the start of each sentence, in case of a script that begins with an optional lookup. So for example:
 
Code:
{exclam_comma} what {the_fuck} was that {shit}?!
can produce any of the following:

    * What was that?!
    * What the fuck was that?!
    * Sweet Jesus, what in tarnation was that?!
    * Mother of fuck, what the motherfucking hell was that motherfucking shit?!

...and so forth. It all depends on what is contained in the Lexicon. That's all well and good for a bit of flavour, but kind of pointless unless it actually interacts with the gameplay. So I introduce the concept of tags:

Tags

All entries in the Lexicon feature meta tags to describe the tone and content of the word/phrase, independent of its literal meaning. Characters then choose their own speech according to the tags they prefer, and react accordingly to ones they don't. Tags may be generated dynamically during runtime, and an instance of the Lexicon effectively becomes a "living document", changing and expanding throughout the course of the game. So for example:

Code:
in_trouble { "in trouble" [default]; "up shit creek" [swearing][shit][colloquial]; "fucked" [swearing][fuck]; "in quite a predicament" [intellectual][wordy]; }

So with those basics in place (as well as a whole asston of other factors, such as skill/stats/emotional state), it's now possible to say the same thing in umpteen different ways, and generate a varied response, such as a character who doesn't like swearing in general, or one who can't stand the word "cunt", and so forth. It's a start, but the actual "gameplay" side of it is still passive unless you give the player "tactical" control over their word/phrase picks. The problem is, that gets clunky in a hurry if you have too much control, like a drop down for each substitution, so I'm considering ways to create interesting macro controls over dialogue lines, such as setting "mode", "tone" or "intent" and so forth.

It's funny. I'm happy to preside over lengthy turn based combat interactions, but the idea of deliberating over a dialogue response for any longer than it takes to read the options abhors me, because I have this notion that it ought to remain "natural" and fairly immediate. Am I the only who thinks this way? What would it take for "chess-like" consideration of each dialogue to be acceptable?


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: rvdleun on February 28, 2008, 12:48:53 pm
Although I definately agree on many points that you made there, Vince, I'm afraid that I do not entirely see this as a realistic goal. At least, not for commercial RPGs. I spoke about this with a mate, and he came up with an explanation that elaborates on it...


The biggest problem actually is that noncombat gameplay is generally EXTREMELY badly repeatable. There are exceptions, of course. Stealth, for example, which requires a fairly advanced AI. Plus of course some environment interaction systems that you just don't need in a combat game.

But say you have a level with 5 obstacles to be passed before you reach Treasure™. If you already have a combat system in place (and you will, even in an indie RPG), you just plop in 5 different monsters, either more and more difficult or in increasingly large groups. JOB DONE! If you want the player to be able to bypass them stealthily, and you have a stealth system in place, well you make sure the monsters patrol in set patterns so they can be avoided and that there's something to hide in (bushes, water, darkness, whatever). So that's two solutions! Yay!

Now if you want the player to use diplomacy or trickery... you have to write branching dialogue for that. And you don't get away with writing one piece of dialogue and just making it harder because that makes no sense. You have to write new dialogue for each encounter, and you need to script the outcomes. And if you're as ambitious as the examples in the first post, you need a DAMN LOT OF BRANCHES. And when you're done, because you're working on an AAA game here, you have to record that dialogue. Then implement it. And then test the whole thing. Congratulations: You just multiplied your workload by 20 


Thoughts?


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on February 28, 2008, 02:00:38 pm
Although I definately agree on many points that you made there, Vince, I'm afraid that I do not entirely see this as a realistic goal. At least, not for commercial RPGs.
Of course not. Currently the mainstream design is based on two firmly held and well documented beliefs:

- most people play games only once
- most people never finish long games

In other words, making alternative paths or long games is a waste of time, so why bother?

In unrelated news, Kieron of the RPS fame liked the article and will add it to his Sunday overview piece.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Gambler on February 28, 2008, 03:33:50 pm
I wouldn't say replayability is directly connected with nonlinearity. Some people replay linear titles (linear in terms of story), some don't replay non-linear ones.

Edit:
Oh yeah, good article. I wholeheartedly agree with the expressed ideas. Combat-orientedness in RPGs got to the point when it's ridiculous.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on February 28, 2008, 09:13:04 pm
...In other words, making alternative paths or long games is a waste of time, so why bother?
Right - it's not considered worth the time investment for most commercial endeavours.
However, the fact remains that going in the scripted-but-highly-non-linear direction is a whole lot of work. You might think that work is worthwhile, but the obvious answer to the "Why is there so much emphasis on combat??" question, is still that a combat system doesn't require an amount of development work proportional to the amount of combat content in the game - adding more content is almost free. The workload for scripted dialogue is at least proportional to the amount of dialogue content - probably more when you factor in the interrelationships between dialogue strands.

The article makes some good points, but only addresses one side of things. It makes the case that a greater amount of interesting non-combat gameplay is a worthwhile, possible aim. It doesn't make any attempt to justify the investment of effort relative to other systems.

From an indie-as-servicing-a-niche-market perspective it's fine to think that it's just going to take a huge time investment, and that indies are the only ones who'll do it. From an indie-as-demonstration-of-viability-of-unconventional-ideas perspective, that's not good enough. Ideally you'd want to show that your ideas are likely to be commercially viable in a more mainstream context.

If this article, and others like it, are intended in any sense as a "This is how things could be...", or "This is how companies could do things...", then the practicality/viability side of things needs to be addressed. In this particular case, it's clear that combat content is a whole lot cheaper to develop than non-linear, scripted dialogue content. To do things as you outline doesn't mean raising the development priority of non-combat-gameplay to the same level as combat-gameplay - it means expending disproportionate effort on non-combat elements. You can argue that this makes sense in some RPG contexts, but it's hard to argue that it does in all RPG contexts.

There'll always be a convincing pro-combat-bias argument, so long as non-combat content takes a lot more effort to produce. For this reason, I'm with Priapist in thinking that it'd help to look at more generalized non-combat-gameplay systems. If there were systems which allow extra non-combat content to be produced without hand-crafting from a designer, there'd be a level playing field for gameplay - and the current combat bias really would look silly.
Such systems wouldn't need to replace hand-crafted content in the small amount of games focused on that specific area - their main role would be in providing good non-combat alternatives for games without PS:T aspirations.

I suppose the two obvious ways to aim for a generalized dialogue system would be through abstraction or through narrowing of the game's scope. A generalized dialogue system with concrete statements for a huge RPG world is unlikely to be convincing (in most settings, without huge effort). An abstracted general system could probably work, but might feel somewhat indirect/artificial (?? or maybe not ??). I'd be inclined to think that a narrowly defined context with concrete statements might be most convincing.
For example, an RPG based in a relatively small prison, (space)ship, or similar could be more manageable if desired - since you could reasonably restrict the issues relevant to all characters to a core few determined by the situation. Once you'd narrowed things down to some core situation-based issues, constructing a range of nuanced conversational possibilities would be much more doable. Of course there's nothing to say that you couldn't include some specific unique-situational stuff too - just so long as both the specific and general choices were interesting and significant.

In some settings/contexts, there might also be non-verbal or naturally restricted solutions - the underlying issue being communication, rather than dialogue specifically. E.g. prisoners using codes; prisoners signalling intent/requests/compromises through agreed signal actions; thieves using glyphs / cants to communicate; robotic setting where characters use a code / small subset of natural language; PC being a foreigner, and communicating through nods, smiles, and the few words he picks up here and there; setting based on primitive tribes with very simple language; chimps...
Mostly absurd, and far from general solutions, but the sort of thing that could work for one game.


Anyway, we can all agree with Vince's argument - and that there are some games we wouldn't like to see with non-hand-crafted dialogue. But we can (presumably) also all agree that it's an expensive way to produce content. I'd be interested to hear thoughts on ways to create a lot of non-combat gameplay with similar (or lower) cost-per-gameplay to combat.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Priapist on February 28, 2008, 09:44:32 pm
Quote
[...]Then implement it. And then test the whole thing. Congratulations: You just multiplied your workload by 20

Thoughts?

That's certainly true, if efforts aren't made to establish general and/or programmatic solutions in the place of scripting. Dialogue is obviously a doozy, but what about stealth? With enough effort, you could establish scriptless guard behaviours. Drop a guard in a room, and their AI decides to alternate between standing in a spot where most of the room is within their field of vision, and walking around the perimeter of the room. If there are adjacent rooms without guards, then poll a list of guards and see if any others have been "assigned", if not extend the patrol path to the perimeter of both, etc. I think it would be a fair bit of work, but nothing too difficult to establish dynamic patrols, it's just a question of how effectively the player can interact, since stealth games basically rely on effective timing to exploit the inefficiencies of the guard agents.

And of course, there's always middleware. So many component of games these days are deemed "not worth the effort" so the developer licenses existing libraries instead. It's just a shame nearly all of them are focused on graphical effect and not gameplay-centric.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on February 28, 2008, 10:28:56 pm
Ideally you'd want to show that your ideas are likely to be commercially viable in a more mainstream context.
The only commercially viable ideas are "let's make the most awesome looking and like totally epic game". Anything else is an equivalent of pissing into the wind.

Quote
If this article, and others like it, are intended in any sense as a "This is how things could be...", or "This is how companies could do things...", then the practicality/viability side of things needs to be addressed.
Well, it's kinda hard to argue practicality when Black Isle, Troika, Zero-Sum are no longer in business.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on February 28, 2008, 11:05:37 pm
I'm not saying that it's easy to argue practicality - just that it's important, and would be interesting to see addressed. It's not as though the Black Isle / Troika / Zero-Sum situations are anything like as simple as "Scripted-Nonlinearity------>Long-Term Commercial Failure" anyway: they're clearly no argument for it, but neither are they a compelling argument against it.

Even if you're not going to go all procedural-dialogue on things, it'd be interesting to look at getting more out of intermediate general systems - if that's possible. You're using this kind of thing already in AoD to an extent: e.g. dialogue results which influence reputations, which influence other dialogues in turn; dialogue results which influence PC gold, which can be used in other dialogues; dialogue results which provide items/information usable elsewhere....
These are more-or-less generic systems that allow you to tie dialogues and quests together without explicitly hand-crafting the connections. Using such systems doesn't extend the amount of dialogue content you have, but it certainly makes the relationships between that dialogue most interesting and responsive - giving more interesting gameplay, for the same content.

Clearly you still need a lot of dialogue content in order for such intermediate systems to be meaningful, but there's no need to hand-knit most of it together.

Perhaps there are other ways to get more bang-for-buck out of hand-crafted dialogue - this is mainly just an example. I think it's an important issue either way.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Scott on February 29, 2008, 09:12:40 am
The beauty of independent development is precisely that you don't have to argue, with anyone, about what is practical, profitable, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

You can make a game that's fun and can be played over and over, without a bunch of moaning about how you just wished there could be more dialogue, but, you know, it's just not possible!

One of the BG2 developers was saying the other month that no one will ever make a game like BG2 again, because it had too much content, and that they overextended themselves and shouldn't have included it all.  Now setting aside the 100 books in the game full of generic Forgotten Realms stories, and the 1,000 magic items each with their own backstory, I think that's a complete load of crap.

Someone please make a game with as much content as BG2!  I am sick, verily unto death, of people telling me about all the 10,000 things that no one can ever do in a computer game!


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on February 29, 2008, 12:52:14 pm
Of course you don't have to argue, just as you don't have to write articles championing your cause. If you do, development efficiency is an important issue - for indies too. It's only not worth addressing if you're 100% sure of your current aims, and 100% sure that there aren't ways to achieve them more efficiently. I don't think that's necessarily the case for AoD, and certainly isn't for the wider non-combat-emphasis issue.

If you're seeking to have any influence on commercial enterprises (which could be small/indie/niche too), efficiency is important. Even if you're not, it's still important, since development time is limited, and only so much will ever get done.

If you want another BG2, you should want another BG2 produced in 80% of the time, with 20% left for the developers to polish/improve/expand/whatever....


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on February 29, 2008, 01:35:04 pm
I'm not saying that it's easy to argue practicality - just that it's important...
My point is that it's impossible since no facts that can be used to argue for or against it exist.




Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on February 29, 2008, 02:59:31 pm
Not all argument needs to be based on historical precedent. Quite often reason will do well enough. Some people might not be convinced until you can support an argument with proven examples - but then such people will resist any novelty, regardless of potential merit.

The central point is about efficiency rather than definite financial viability. It's very hard to argue that X, Y and Z necessarily lead to a financially viable project, but it's very easy to see that efficiency improvements increase the chances of viability. It's also simple enough to justify efficient methods without the need for factual examples: you don't have to carefully measure quest-connection-development-time-without-reputation-system against quest-connection-development-time-with-reputation-system to know that the system is a much more efficient way to make connections - it's just obvious.

It's a little silly to avoid all discussion of efficiency on the basis that a cast-iron argument for financial viability can't be made.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: pnutz on February 29, 2008, 05:48:00 pm
Nearly all of Vince's examples in the "get into the castle" scenario could avoid having to explicitly script every outcome:

Quote
- knock some sense into the guards with your war hammer and go inside.
That would be the combat system.

Quote
- persuade the guards to let you in: Hi there! I'm with the Tavern Food & Service Inspection Agency. We've heard rumors that you have rats running around in every cellar. Well, it's fucking better be a misunderstanding because if I see a single rodent-looking motherfucker - which includes this rat-faced bastard over there - I'm shutting this evil fortress down TONIGHT! Now open that fucking door already!
Instead of a scripted dialog, a general persuasion system could take care of this. Give every NPC an archetype (peasant, authority, official..), demeanor (coward, upstanding, seedy), and a persuadable action or item. The system will construct a conversation, based on this person's archetype and demenor, that negotiates an action (let me in) or item (the key). This could apply to nearly NPC, regardless of importance, as long as they are assigned an appropriate negotiation target. Crucial dialogs (like your conversation with the guy you are about to assassinate) would still be hand-crafted. Tie this into a reputation/beauty system and mood system (NPCs' demenor may shift due to seasonal worries, not a morning person, friends with someone who was recently killed, etc.) and the simulation might be complex and multifaceted enough to "play".

Quote
- ask around about the pass, find out who has one, and either steal it or trade it for something.
Probably should still be scripted, but you could still apply the persuasion system to the keymaster.

Quote
- create a diversion - Look behind you, a three-headed monkey! - and sneak inside. Or hire some thugs to attack the guards and while the guards are busy breaking some heads, sneak inside.
How about being able to hire the thugs to attack anyone. Persuading them about their chances, then sneaking past their slaughter while the guards are in battle mode would just be an application of the system that you would have to deduce.

Quote
- wall-climbing text-adventures are fun and very ninja-like: your dagger blade snaps with a loud noise and you plummet to your death cursing stupid non-combat gameplay.
Make it a sufficiently complex and customizable system influenced by the type of wall and environment, then make all walls like this, text based Assassin's Creed stylee.

Quote
- impersonate an officer - Atten-hut! Is that how you salute an officer of the watch, swine? Stop eyeballing me! You're not worthy to look your superiors in the eye. Stand straight, eyes forward! What is the name of your commanding officer?
I'd love a great impersonation system, one that could be used in any encounter, costume and acting. I'm not sure of how to do it systematically in a way that wouldn't incur excessive content/dialog without tight setting or design restriction.

There would certainly be an investment in these systems, but making them applicable to nearly every NPC and allowing you to utilize any of them when confronted with a problem would add quite a bit of non-combat gameplay.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on February 29, 2008, 07:09:05 pm
Good ideas all.
I particularly like the idea of general persuasion/bribery/disguise systems that govern more hand-crafted outcomes. You could tie these in to general NPC types, or perhaps tie them to NPC values, and have NPC type dictate NPC values unless overridden for specific cases.

In order not to have persuasion/bribery become too formulaic (for cases where there aren't unique "keys" to bribe/persuade an NPC), you'd probably want to introduce a system to get feedback on NPC values. This would be a good place to use perception/etiquette/streetwise... checks, to allow the PC to size up an NPC and take an according approach.

You could also tie it in to a more general NPC reputation system: an NPC who has some set of values, and hasn't tried to hide them, would be known to have those values by other NPCs. It wouldn't be too hard to give NPCs general value-based lines when asked about characters they know - or have them volunteer such information as part of general conversation if it's something which intrigues/annoys them.
A personable PC could e.g. be fairly sure whether bribing the boss of a certain faction was a reasonable option, just by listening to the general impressions expressed by faction members. The reactions to bribery attempts on important NPCs would still all be hand-crafted, but the process of information-gathering could all be generic.

Similar considerations could apply to current NPC mood - perception checks and similar could provide clues, and comments from nearby/connected NPCs could provide warnings to personable PCs.


I think a disguise system could work well in combination with all this. Once you have some generic attitude/value/mood systems for NPCs, and some dialogue to match, it'd be relatively simple to have NPCs converse with one-another based on their values/relationships/current events.... A half-decent disguise (or stealth) could be a means to overhear more private conversations, and gather potentially useful information. This could then be fed back into a disguise system for conversations - once the PC has better information on the attitudes/values/moods/language... of certain NPCs, he'll be better able either to convince them, or to impersonate them (or someone in their position).
In a simple get-past-the-guard situation, this could be as simple as overhearing a password, or expected greeting, then repeating it. In a conversation with a pivotal NPC, it might mean learning that he's receptive to certain character types, then impersonating such a person to get a better reaction, and uncover resulting options. The options needn't necessarily relate directly to the disguise - the disguise can simply be one way to alter NPC reactions.

Also note that NPC reactions needn't be on a linear scale. An NPC might say some things to highly trusted allies who they can't stand the sight of, others to lovable rogues they wouldn't trust for a second, and others to various other types. Once you have triggers for lines based on a range of different factors, it becomes important to approach an NPC in specific ways to achieve certain ends - rather than just finding any means to boost NPC reaction for the same results.

Of course you could still drop in hand-crafted statements/reactions at any stage, but most statements could be generic, and the specific ones could have generic triggers. For example a specific NPC might only say Unique_Statement_X when angry and/or talking to someone he trusted. The PC might hear the statement by overhearing through disguise/stealth, impersonating a trusted NPC, or by making the guy angry (which he might have aimed for after learning about the guy's imprudent outbursts, or might be purely accidental).


Anyway, this is the direction I think things could usefully head: a load of general systems, each tied in to the others, which furnish the PC with information and generalized actions - then specific hand-crafted outcomes triggered by the states of those systems.


Of course the general stealth / hired thugs thoughts are good too, but these are simpler to get right. (though clearly the "hired thugs" option needs to be thought through to make its applications/implications reasonable)


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Saint Genesius on February 29, 2008, 07:10:24 pm
(lots of stuff)

I haven't read the responses yet, so apologies if this has been covered.

I certainly agree that good vs. evil themes are far too common and far too simplistic in video games.  I'd say the same thing about most writing, both fiction and non-.  I think that this is part a problem with the whole black and white notion of good and evil as motivating factors.  Whenever you ask "why did he do that?" and the answer's "because he's evil," something's going wrong.  I also agree that it's a tremendous problem when the difference between a good character and an evil one comes down to whether you do your 100 damage with Smite of Goodness or with Evil Naughty Attack... unless the irony is recognized in-game, in which case there's a ton of potential for deconstruction.

However, I have the same problems with non-combat skills being similarly interchangable.  Conversational skills often work in the same way.  I just played Jade Empire, where the conversational system boils down to Intuition, Intimidation, or Charm.  You click the appropriately labeled dialog choice, make a skill check, and get the desired result on success and the undesired result on failure.  There's really no difference between the options and there's really no difference in how you play the game.

Some of your sample choices work in exactly the same way.  Some of them, I think are great.  Some of them have potential to be good, depending on implementation and context.  Here's my breakdown based on how I'm guessing these would work.

knock some sense into the guards with your war hammer and go inside.
-I've shown my love for this option elsewhere, but it should be noted that I love it if bonking the guard leads to a near-impossible combat or whether he goes down without a fuss.  The important thing is making the player react to a specific situation.

persuade the guards to let you in: Hi there! I'm with the Tavern Food & Service Inspection Agency. We've heard rumors that you have rats running around in every cellar. Well, it's fucking better be a misunderstanding because if I see a single rodent-looking motherfucker - which includes this rat-faced bastard over there - I'm shutting this evil fortress down TONIGHT! Now open that fucking door already!
-This just feels like a skill-check to me.  Maybe if you need to hear about how there's been a rat problem and then make a skill check, I'd be fine with it.

ask around about the pass, find out who has one, and either steal it or trade it for something.
-I love this one.  It rewards exploration, thinking about who might have a pass, etc.  The player who remembers a diplomat in the previous town does well.  The player who couldn't be bothered to talk to people and read what they had to say... not so much.  It rewards the players knowledge and intelligence as opposed to the character's.

create a diversion - Look behind you, a three-headed monkey! - and sneak inside. Or hire some thugs to attack the guards and while the guards are busy breaking some heads, sneak inside.
-Hate the "look behind you" option, love the hired thugs option.  Look behind you is just another skill check, at best.  The thugs involve using something that might otherwise have been a problem to your advantage.  Very creative.

wall-climbing text-adventures are fun and very ninja-like: your dagger blade snaps with a loud noise and you plummet to your death cursing stupid non-combat gameplay.
-...and reload and click the right options.  

impersonate an officer - Atten-hut! Is that how you salute an officer of the watch, swine? Stop eyeballing me! You're not worthy to look your superiors in the eye. Stand straight, eyes forward! What is the name of your commanding officer?
-Depends.  Simple skill-check and I hate it.  If you're impersonating a specific officer, it could be a lot of fun.  Let the player talk to the officer beforehand, then try to copy their mannerisms in the dialog tree.  Only let the player know if they've succeeded at the end, so dumb reloading and trying the other option isn't such an obvious solution unless they're prepared to hit every combination.  

bribe your way in.
-Wallet-check?  Meh.

forge a fake pass using your knowledge of what a real pass looks like and skills (lore, literacy, scribing, etc)
-Knowledge of what a real pass looks like could make this interesting.  I'd be more interested in making the player realize that they could convince that monastic scribe to put his skills to a more practical application.

The options I'm most interested in generally don't come within dialog trees, but between them.  Making connections between two things which aren't obviously related is something I consider to be not just interesting, but at the root of almost all genius.  Surprise the player and leave it open enough that the player can surprise you.

The next Q&As I agree with completely, up until we hit the one that seems directed towards me, of course.

Q: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Non-combat gameplay = giving your character high intelligence and choosing the wordiest options available. It's a great read, but from a player-game interaction standpoint, not much is going on there.

I agree that this results from bad design and that there are ways around it.  However, my point was that there really can be vastly different ways of approaching a pure combat situation.  I didn't set it up against some strawman either like the way you've simplified combat in this article by... wait for it... leaving out all the combat.  I understand that's natural here since the forum's combat engine is non-existant, but my case-in-point wasn't a shitty game with lazy design, it was Fallout.  The only real design problem was that since you could talk to damn near everyone and talk is cheap while dynamite is expensive, it meant that someone interested in the dialog options would breeze by the other aspects of the game.  Why certain skills gave the player interesting options in certain circumstances (reverse-pickpocketing activated time-bombs, for instance), for me at least, speech was virtually always my first, and therefore last, option.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Saint Genesius on February 29, 2008, 08:03:42 pm

The biggest problem I see with typical non-combat gameplay is that there's rarely ever a degree of success. The best you can hope for is a variance in how much you have to pay as a bribe, that sort of thing. There's too much scripting involved, whereas combat generally relies on dynamic interactions within a set of rules. And more often than not, failure means "time to reload" because you're not given opportunities to fail multiple times before "losing the battle".

Of course, this is all because of a lack of design effort in this area, but are there simple, elegant and general solutions that can add a bit more variance to systems like dialogue or stealth? I think there are, and I think this thread is the place to brainstorm them.

This is absolutely spot-on.  Doing these things well doesn't exist in almost all cases.  You either do it successfully or not at all.  A %20 success rate and a %80 success rate mean the same thing after reloads. 

Euchrid:  A non-combat RPG basically describes Shenmue.  They actually spent a fair amount of time on the combat system but it is very rarely used.  "You are also often depriving the player of content, who would pass up hours of sewer scouring in VtmB for a quick dialogue with the police, leaving all the fun to them?" is basically what I was getting after at the end of my post.  I usually go for the do-the-most-stuff option and often times, if I didn't want to do a dungeon, I wouldn't have been playing the game.

Priapist:  This interests me.  I think it's mostly a different discussion though.  I'd have to think about this some more to decide whether it sounds good or not.

Vince: "The only commercially viable ideas are 'let's make the most awesome looking and like totally epic game'. Anything else is an equivalent of pissing into the wind."  Really?  Explain why the Wii and the DS are kicking the shit out of the console market.  We're rapidly approaching the point where art trumps graphics and convenient trumps epic.  Admittedly, MMOs generate the most revenue and are epic, though they don't necessarily have fancy graphics, but their success has more to do with finding a great business model than anything else. 

Can you name the two best-selling computer games of all time?  Here's a hint: both their names begin with "The Sims."  Final Fantasys embody the awesome looking and like totally epic game and they will always sell well, but the biggest seller was 7, and that was a long time ago, plus they're expensive to produce.  Going by wiki, FF7 sold 9.8 million copies.  That's a lot, but after all this time, it's still slightly less than Brain Age 2 and a couple million shy of Brain Age 1.  Nintendogs sold a bit under 18 million.  I'm not going to argue that text-heavy, open-ended RPGs are anything but a bad idea from a financial perspective, but if money is the object, either go after a Ragnarok Online, or program for the DS.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: pnutz on March 01, 2008, 01:00:40 am
Another idea to enrich world interaction is 'Microfactions'. These would be designations of NPCs that exist only to reflect the influence of your actions and the actions of others. They aren't "real" factions and don't have the quests or story interaction that your main factions do. Instead, they're something like "worshiper of Oogbah", "inhabitant of Funkytown", "Employee of Mr. Bigg". Actions against others in the same microfaction have a proportional effect on everyone in the group. This isn't a reputation effect, it's a demenor effect. Robbed the bi-annual caravan from Funkytown? The whole town's prospects just sunk, embittering everyone in the microfaction. Oogbah worship declared legal? His followers all brighten up. Mr. Bigg killed by bandits that you hired? His employees are now jobless and angry. There is an effect on people's mood, even if you weren't the cause (or didn't intend to cause the reaction).

Weather and environmental factors could cause a big influence as well. Some folks may hate being hot. Others may dislike working at night or be annoyed by constant rainfall.

Let's take our quintessential guard of the castle. He hates working in the heat. You arrived in Funkytown (a 2 month journey across the minimap) in the dead of summer and he is leaning on his spear, bitter and miserable under the noon sun. On your way in, you stopped at an outpost where you were to break out a prisoner awaiting transfer to his place of execution. You convinced a tribe of nomads to attack the outpost and in the process they killed 12 members of the Hammer Guild, a kind of private army that hires out elite soldiers and bodyguards. Mr. Castle Guard happens to be a Hammer, and is rather pissed that 12 of his friends were recently killed. Given his current demeanor, he doesn't even care that you have a pass (which you bought off of someone), because he doesn't know you and isn't interested in letting assholes he doesn't know waltz into the lord's castle.

So your actions outside of town kind of soured your chances at this particular mode of entry. By creating a microfaction that this guard and many others belong to and giving it even a rudimentary place in the world, you would create these influences and consequences with little manual effort. If you had got there in March, figured out a less lethal way to bust out the prisoner, or even just waited until sundown/sunset, the guard might have been less ornery, just enough to let a stranger with a pass into the castle. Now you'll need to climb the wall using the dynamic and interactive text-based climbing system, preferably at night lest you attract a crowd of perplexed and bemused guards.

These moods and influences could affect nearly every type of non-combat play. There would be scales of (content<-->embittered), (prideful<-->disgraced), (relaxed<-->guarded), (trusting<-->suspicious). Recent actions against this person's faction(if any) and microfactions combined with their impression of you, your reputation, and specific actions by you would affect your ability to persuade, impersonate, lie, threaten, be stealthy, pickpocket, barter, and get information from this person.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Scott on March 01, 2008, 08:33:40 am
@pnutz:  I like this microfaction idea a lot.

This is exactly what I would like to see on replaying:  first game- I connive my way to a pass, I get in no problem.  Second game- I connive my way to a pass, but the grumpy bastard refuses me entry just because he's having a bad day.  Try something else.

I think a lot more consideration up front when designing a game could make details like this viable.  If a text parsing system for minor character dialogue could be implemented, tons of handcrafted lines could be avoided, and a lot of immersion added.



Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on March 01, 2008, 02:39:46 pm
I just played Jade Empire, where the conversational system boils down to Intuition, Intimidation, or Charm.  You click the appropriately labeled dialog choice, make a skill check, and get the desired result on success and the undesired result on failure.  There's really no difference between the options and there's really no difference in how you play the game.
Meaningless options are a standard Bioware design.

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persuade the guards to let you in: Hi there! I'm with the Tavern Food & Service Inspection Agency. We've heard rumors that you have rats running around in every cellar. Well, it's fucking better be a misunderstanding because if I see a single rodent-looking motherfucker - which includes this rat-faced bastard over there - I'm shutting this evil fortress down TONIGHT! Now open that fucking door already!
-This just feels like a skill-check to me.  Maybe if you need to hear about how there's been a rat problem and then make a skill check, I'd be fine with it.
Definitely.

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create a diversion - Look behind you, a three-headed monkey! - and sneak inside. Or hire some thugs to attack the guards and while the guards are busy breaking some heads, sneak inside.
-Hate the "look behind you" option, love the hired thugs option.  Look behind you is just another skill check, at best.  The thugs involve using something that might otherwise have been a problem to your advantage.  Very creative.
Thanks. The "look behind you" thing was a joke, a Monkey Island reference. In AoD you'd be able to use a black-powder bomb to create a diversion. Or to use the thugs.

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wall-climbing text-adventures are fun and very ninja-like: your dagger blade snaps with a loud noise and you plummet to your death cursing stupid non-combat gameplay.
-...and reload and click the right options. 
Sure. Text-adventures could be solved by trial-and-error, but:
a) it's better to have a text-adventure option than to have your thief stopped by a 3-meter wall. "Sorry, bro, it's the wall. I hope you understand. You can save the world and travel to the fiery pits of hell, but you are powerless against those cursed walls."
b) skill checks! If you aren't fit enough, it doesn't matter if you know the right combination.
c) text-adventure games are awesome.

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impersonate an officer - Atten-hut! Is that how you salute an officer of the watch, swine? Stop eyeballing me! You're not worthy to look your superiors in the eye. Stand straight, eyes forward! What is the name of your commanding officer?
-Depends.  Simple skill-check and I hate it.  If you're impersonating a specific officer, it could be a lot of fun.  Let the player talk to the officer beforehand, then try to copy their mannerisms in the dialog tree.  Only let the player know if they've succeeded at the end, so dumb reloading and trying the other option isn't such an obvious solution unless they're prepared to hit every combination.
If you read our in-game example, it requires the uniform and the in-game knowledge. If you don't know who the general is, his name, his involvement with the plot, you don't get this option.

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bribe your way in.
-Wallet-check?  Meh.
Persuasion mostly.

You make small talk with the gate guards. There isn't a lot of traffic these days, so the guards are bored and grateful for the company. Turns out the guards' captain had recently lost more than he can afford in a game of chance; the guards are underpaid (you note that you've never met anyone who thought he's being overpaid); the Imperial Guards are pretentious bastards; and all women are whores. Strangely enough the last statement is based on the unwillingness of several women to share the guards' beds.

1. So, did the captain pay his debt?
2. I can't believe that the guards who risk their lives to protect us all are underpaid! That is the real crime.
3. What do the Imperial Guards do anyway?

***each line leads to a different solution to a smuggling problem***

If 2:

*the guards enthusiastically agree*
1. [persuasion] You know what, I have a shipment leaving Teron tonight. Instead of paying tax to the Merchants Guild, I'll pay it directly to you. I think that would be fair. 50 imperials each?

If successful:
- 100 coins each, and you can ship anything you want.
- [trading] 75 and we have a deal.
success - Alright. 75 then.
failure - Didn't you just say that underpaying guards is a crime? 100 coins each or you can deal with the merchants.

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forge a fake pass using your knowledge of what a real pass looks like and skills (lore, literacy, scribing, etc)
-Knowledge of what a real pass looks like could make this interesting.  I'd be more interested in making the player realize that they could convince that monastic scribe to put his skills to a more practical application.
How about both?

3. The Imperial Guards have a special shipping mandate. It keeps the local guards away from their shipments. Would be nice to have one.
....

*** you have three options here: steal the real mandate, talk to a loremaster about forging one, and forge one yourself if you have the skills and knowledge:

You spend an hour turning a blank parchment into a document mentioning the Imperial Guards, urgent matters, and free passage. You add a fancy looking seal as a finishing touch and give the scroll to the guildmaster.

You spend an hour turning a blank parchment into an official document stating that the Imperial Guards are given free passage. You accurately copy the seal of House Daratan and give the scroll to the guildmaster.

You spend an hour turning a blank parchment into an impressive looking document granting the Imperial Guards the right of free passage and requesting full cooperation from Teron's guards and guilds' authorities. Your seal of House Daratan looks more authentic than the original you copied it from. You sign the mandate and give the scroll to the guildmaster.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Astargoth on March 01, 2008, 06:29:08 pm
Do you need to have a copy of a Dalaran seal before you can forge it, or is it flavor?


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on March 01, 2008, 07:08:48 pm
Need to have a document with the seal.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Saint Genesius on March 01, 2008, 09:27:32 pm
Thanks. The "look behind you" thing was a joke, a Monkey Island reference. In AoD you'd be able to use a black-powder bomb to create a diversion. Or to use the thugs.

Yah, I know it was a Monkey Island reference.  On the topic, Monkey Island's combat system is one of the most awesome things ever to exist and might be the only good thing Orson Scott Card has written (controversy!).

I liked the longer examples, though the text-thief seems like a patchwork solution to a real problem.  I agree that it's better than thwarting thieves anytime they hit something waist-high, but unless you can get around the disconnect between text and visual, tactile reality, choices in that decision tree might as well be arbitrary.  I'd have to see it to know for sure.  What I'd do here is make all decisions result in success for a skilled thief, but have the ramifications of those decisions be slightly different.  One choice causes more guards to search around the next area, for instance, while another causes someone to lock their door.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Priapist on March 02, 2008, 08:38:26 am
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What I'd do here is make all decisions result in success for a skilled thief, but have the ramifications of those decisions be slightly different.  One choice causes more guards to search around the next area, for instance, while another causes someone to lock their door.

That's poetry, and the sort of thing most, if not all games are sorely lacking. While I wouldn't go with "success for all!", a broad range of possible outcomes is so much more interesting than an obstacle that is either in front of you or behind you. Simple generic behaviours like guards that will walk through the streets spreading the word that a hostile intruder is in hiding somewhere coupled with dynamic responses from NPCs, like locking their doors, carrying a weapon, having a lower threshold to become hostile and so forth provides a great deal of dimension to the already interesting multiple approaches to a specific obstacle.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Briosafreak on March 02, 2008, 01:35:17 pm
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Vince D Weller Watch: The Age of Decadence lead designer writes an essay on Non-combat game-play in RPGs, noting that “You can often see “Different ways to play the game!” on a game box. 12 out of 10 it means “different ways to kill things.”. Which is a tricky one to argue with.

From RPS (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1236#more-1236)


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on March 02, 2008, 02:30:07 pm
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The Vince D. Weller speech - he could sum all that up with his own statement - “Go and play Fallout”. Otherwise, once again, he’s villianising people who use combat in games. I’ll tell you why we use combat in RPGs - because it’s reliable and catered for. Dressing in disguise, talking my way through it, finding the pre-made hole in the wall are all just key finding things that may or may not work and will end up a complete waste of time as a game will never map what you’d do in your imagination. Combat, however, is always the most reliable (and engaging) answer. Killing people presents a challenge, other methods just rely on you having a big stat in your pocket.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Spoon on March 02, 2008, 04:01:01 pm
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The Vince D. Weller speech - he could sum all that up with his own statement - “Go and play Fallout”. Otherwise, once again, he’s villianising people who use combat in games. I’ll tell you why we use combat in RPGs - because it’s reliable and catered for. Dressing in disguise, talking my way through it, finding the pre-made hole in the wall are all just key finding things that may or may not work and will end up a complete waste of time as a game will never map what you’d do in your imagination. Combat, however, is always the most reliable (and engaging) answer. Killing people presents a challenge, other methods just rely on you having a big stat in your pocket.
Comedic gold Vince, you can tell that guy has never played an adventure game before, and his favorite "RPG"s are Dungeon Siege and Oblivion.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Saint Genesius on March 02, 2008, 04:36:30 pm
That's poetry, and the sort of thing most, if not all games are sorely lacking. While I wouldn't go with "success for all!", a broad range of possible outcomes is so much more interesting than an obstacle that is either in front of you or behind you.

To clarify, I mean success in this case as getting past the wall if the minimal requirements are met.  "Success" is a very relative thing and in this case might include having every guard within shouting range camped out on the other side of the wall, waiting for you to finish your inept struggle and giving the player more situations they have to deal with.  Yah, you made it to the other side, but you know what they say about the grass being greener.  I'd rather people deal with the consequences of unoptimal choices than reload or fall down in such a way that they don't have to deal with any consequences at all.  I'm not exactly handing out ribbons for participation, but I do want people to participate in the game.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Mouse on March 02, 2008, 11:09:07 pm
Hey, new here. Found you through Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

To begin: I identify strongly with the aims set out in the first post. It echoes some of the provocative points raised in John Tynes' Power Kill roleplaying metagame:
http://johntynes.com/revland2000/rl_powerkill.html

Even leaving the skewed morality of the computer RPG beside, there's the sheer unimaginativeness of combat stacked on combat to consider. It's a rare computer RPG that has anything to do with roleplaying.

However, before we waste vitriol on big commercial games, it might be sensible to examine some of the difficulties and gameplay issues presented by attempts to make alternate approaches feasible.

Firstly, most obviously, there's dialogue. Trying to represent an actual human-on-human interaction is hard.   If you don't get it right first time - if your explanation to the guard lacks the ring of plausibility - he ought then to regard you with deep suspicion. But then the player appears to have hit a dead end, and many will at that point become a little frustrated. So, many games allow you to talk the most arrant nonsense to NPCs up until you hit on the magic phrase that makes them blossom into friendliness. Gameplay Forgivingness 1, Suspension of Disbelief 0.

On top of this, suspicion is a fairly light consequence of failure. Trying to sweet-talk a noble into believing you're an emissary from Someone Important is fine if it succeeds, but if it fails, swift and serious repercussions are realistic. And if you have to reload and play through again, it can become a game of blindly picking menu options. Not fantastic.

This isn't necessarily insurmountable, with effort; the guard could demand that you show him the Ratcatcher's Guild authorisation, you could make a great show of having forgotten it, and then end up with a subquest to acquire such a thing. The noble could shred your flimsy fabric of lies, worm the truth out of you, and use you for his own ends. But this takes work - every lie told in dialogue means potentially a subquest, another part of the game. But then, with the content developers having put the work into the subquest, games generally then push you into it by providing an NPC who is too tough to fight and too shrewd to believe your lies, diminishing your multiple options to just one.

Game developers barely touch on dialogue because it's hard to do right, adds little if done wrong, and appeals to a narrower segment of gamers than combat. And, frankly, it's not tactical, it doesn't require skill. Dialogue as self-contained problem-solving is uninteresting, and doubly uninteresting if it's deliberately made into a crapshoot (e.g. one randomly picked conversational branch docks twice the resources of another). Dialogue's strengths are to draw you into the game, to create characters out of pixels, to face you with moral quandaries, to immerse you in the world, to push the plot forward. These are narrative strengths, not gameplay ones. Using it as a route past an obstacle in its own right becomes dangerous, because it comes at the expense of gameplay, and, assuming it contains some useful addition to the narrative, the other routes past come at the expense of that addition.

Oh, and the popular choose-a-response-from-the-menu system does much to stop the player actually thinking about dialogue. If you learn some juicy piece of gossip, and when next you talk to the guard you've got a new dialogue option, you click on it even if you didn't remember the information before you clicked on the guard. If dialogue is to have any validity at all as a solution, it should require you to volunteer the response that will let you through, not be prompted for it.

Sadly, the same content explosion thing that applies to the failure of deception in dialogue applies also to some of the other approaches you mentioned in your first post. Trading for the pass becomes a subquest in its own right that will never be visited if another route through is used; or, if the pass is necessary in a number of places, then whole swathes of other subquests will fall into silence. Finding someone willing to create a distraction is a subquest that, again, requires coding and is likely to go completely unused if another route is found. And lest we forget, none of this is non-linear in a big way - there are no major branches yet that affect the rest of the game, these are throwaway quests to add options, possibly doubling or tripling the workload on each main branch and shortening the game by half or two-thirds. This kind of solution must therefore be used sparingly, and only at points that deserve the extra attention.

Bribery is also an option, but a dangerous one. It's hard for games to prevent players who're often diverted from the beaten track from getting rich, and if money is generally unimportant to the player then bribery offers a challenge-free pass. Conversely, you need to consider the end-game for naive players who've not picked up all the cash they could have done, and spent much of what they have done on bribes - will they be able to equip themselves appropriately, or use money for whatever important tasks they might have to use it for?

More interesting are options such as impersonating an officer, (presumably using an officer's uniform), climbing the wall or forging a pass. These hold out the possibility of a more general-purpose solution that could be used in a variety of situations - more options for less work. I'm reminded of Deus Ex, which did a relatively good job of providing multiple useful paths past obstacles: assaulting an organisation's stronghold, you could navigate their trapped back entrance, deactivating these with electronics wizardry and your small collection of multi-tools or draw on your equally precious stock of grenades, placing these with care; alternatively, you might take a more straightforward tack through their main building, evading the guards with stealth, if you were patient, perhaps finding a vent that eased your unseen progress, or instead going in guns blazing. Hacking, electronics, stealth, use of resources and violence all had useful roles to play; and best of all, each of these solutions was easily generalised by the game designers to other areas. Provided that approaches such as scaling walls, lockpicking and forging either necessitate drawing on carefully husbanded resources or lead to mini-games with some entertainment value, they can provide extra options that just keep giving, with relative little cost to the content developers.

Why do I suggest resource management and mini-games? Well, with neither required, the game becomes an unchallenging cakewalk through areas where the player has a useful skill. It does indeed become all about having a huge stat in your pocket. Having to balance resources required by different approaches results in varied gameplay, and the trade-offs themselves give purchase for tactical thinking. Mini-games make the skill use itself entertaining - and, after all, what is combat but a mini-game? Its prevalence reflects that more love gets lavished on making it fun than any other mini-game aspect of an RPG.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: andrewdoull on March 03, 2008, 12:47:19 am
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Why do I suggest resource management and mini-games? Well, with neither required, the game becomes an unchallenging cakewalk through areas where the player has a useful skill. It does indeed become all about having a huge stat in your pocket. Having to balance resources required by different approaches results in varied gameplay, and the trade-offs themselves give purchase for tactical thinking. Mini-games make the skill use itself entertaining - and, after all, what is combat but a mini-game? Its prevalence reflects that more love gets lavished on making it fun than any other mini-game aspect of an RPG.

Have to agree with Mouse on this one. Mini-games and resource management are the way to go. I think mini-games would only work if you already have a mini-game mechanic in place elsewhere e.g. Puzzle Quest.

However, I can see phrases and conversation techniques could be a resource that you can manage. Collecting phrases and information which you can use once in a conversation might be a concept. It'd need a lot more testing/prototyping as to how it would work though.

Regards,

Andrew


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Morbus on March 03, 2008, 03:37:59 am
NOT having minigames is a must in any "true" RPG, at least in any RPG that's good enough NOT to take player skill into consideration. Just as you'll want turn based point and click combat so your own skill doesn't affect your character's, you'll want skill checks (maybe not dice rolls, but skill checks, yes) in non-combat activities, no matter if it is lock picking or persuasion. And I don't agree that there's no "tactic" in skill checking a line of text, because there is. Not in the sense that you go all "oh, should I use it, should I not use it?" but in the sense that it's rewarding in itself that you can use the line, and, in the end, it's role-playing, you make a choice in developing that skill, and your character is good at it. For all I care, a RPG can have no dialog choices at all and still have lots of role-play, just as long as you are given the choice to make your character the way you want, it doesn't matter if it is during or before the dialog.

In the end, making a challenge out of dialog may not be the best design when you are trying to eradicate player skill influence, and bring out his choices instead of that.

So, no, no mini-games for Age of Decadence or any other serious RPG please. Besides, they are frustrating and boring and immersion breaking. It's your character's skill that's supposed to be tested, not yours sucka!


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Priapist on March 03, 2008, 06:29:04 am
Hey, new here. Found you through Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Welcome aboard.

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To begin: I identify strongly with the aims set out in the first post. It echoes some of the provocative points raised in John Tynes' Power Kill roleplaying metagame:
http://johntynes.com/revland2000/rl_powerkill.html

That is an interesting piece. Provocative even. Still, I'm dubious of it's worth trying to translate an alternate world with alternate laws and morals into our own, and the transposition of an act the gameworld considers heroic into an act the real world considers criminal is completely artificial. The onus is really on the GM to establish and evoke a world with more interesting moral texture, rather than simply dress up D&D as a real world allegory where "monsters = ethnic minorities". It would be far more interesting to explore the morality of whether monsters and humans deserve equal rights, rather than simply making the jump to "yes they do".

Still, I guess the idea is to provoke your players into thinking in moral terms, and the "psych ward" RP is a pretty cute way to dress it up. I'm pretty sure my RP group would get a kick out of it.

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Game developers barely touch on dialogue because it's hard to do right, adds little if done wrong, and appeals to a narrower segment of gamers than combat. And, frankly, it's not tactical, it doesn't require skill. Dialogue as self-contained problem-solving is uninteresting, and doubly uninteresting if it's deliberately made into a crapshoot (e.g. one randomly picked conversational branch docks twice the resources of another).

I think that's being overly dismissive. It's certainly true that dialogue presents a lot of difficulties for a developer, but that's no reason to ignore it entirely. Human intelligence is orders of magnitudes more complex than just dialogue, and that doesn't stop developers striving toward more complex artificial intelligence that realistically, resembles nothing of the sort.

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Dialogue's strengths are to draw you into the game, to create characters out of pixels, to face you with moral quandaries, to immerse you in the world, to push the plot forward. These are narrative strengths, not gameplay ones. Using it as a route past an obstacle in its own right becomes dangerous, because it comes at the expense of gameplay, and,

I have to agree here, for the most part. Dialogue is fairly crucial in narrative terms, for the reasons listed above, but I don't think any of those reasons necessarily exclude gameplay, or come at gameplay's expense. Most often, they do, but I think there are (evasive) solutions that can preserve the narrative strengths and build gameplay around them.

 
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assuming it contains some useful addition to the narrative, the other routes past come at the expense of that addition.

That's making the assumption that all branches ought to co-exist as part of a single unified narrative, or at least, the assumption that the best method of development is a single minded push toward efficient use of content. A character expressing affection toward you could be considered a useful addition to the narrative. So could that same character expressing disgust toward you. There's no reason for a character to remain consistent across exclusive dialogues, and one of the great strengths of gaming as a whole is that it permits a mutable narrative with player authorship, and it's worth sacrificing a certain degree of efficiency to achieve this goal. But of course, it's a diminishing return, so the concept of dialogue trees needs to evolve.

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And lest we forget, none of this is non-linear in a big way - there are no major branches yet that affect the rest of the game, these are throwaway quests to add options, possibly doubling or tripling the workload on each main branch and shortening the game by half or two-thirds. This kind of solution must therefore be used sparingly, and only at points that deserve the extra attention.

That's a problem, but it's one that's perpetuated through a complete lack of effort on the behalf of developers. Combat is, in theory, vastly non-linear and dynamic. What happens if I kill this guy, and then that guy? What happens if I swing high? Swing low? Cast a spell? Etc? And at some point, someone had to sit down and nut out a way to model combat in an abstract manner using a variety of generic interactions to achieve a system that readily encourages permutations and adapts to them. There's no reason why a system with generic elements to abstract the many ways of getting past guards couldn't be implemented, though you'd probably have to consider it as an investment for multiple games, unless you had an industrial espionage focus with as many guards to get past as monsters in a typical combat RPG. Even better, have the "gate entry" quest become a product of existing generic systems. Have a climbing system that can be applied in towns, dungeons, ruins, forests, etc. Have a stealth system. Establish some social mechanics in a town, where anyone of a certain caste/profession has a gate pass, which is an item they'd willingly barter with anyone, albeit for a ridiculous sum.

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Bribery is also an option, but a dangerous one. It's hard for games to prevent players who're often diverted from the beaten track from getting rich, and if money is generally unimportant to the player then bribery offers a challenge-free pass. Conversely, you need to consider the end-game for naive players who've not picked up all the cash they could have done, and spent much of what they have done on bribes - will they be able to equip themselves appropriately, or use money for whatever important tasks they might have to use it for?

Anything to do with money generally becomes a risky proposition simply because economies are given precious little thought. The biggest problem I see with game economics is that the concept of "disposable income" doesn't really exist, so you end up with a situation where characters who work hard and become rich translate those riches into functional improvement. But this isn't an insurmountable problem either. Much of this disparity comes from time having little consequence. A character might do a single quest in a day, or they might spend ten days doing ten - in most cases the world remains static, and the character rarely has any kind of ongoing expenses, so you have one guy who has earned x dollars, and another who has earned 10x dollars, and you have to try and establish a market that suits both of them. Of course that's going to fail.

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Why do I suggest resource management and mini-games? Well, with neither required, the game becomes an unchallenging cakewalk through areas where the player has a useful skill. It does indeed become all about having a huge stat in your pocket. Having to balance resources required by different approaches results in varied gameplay, and the trade-offs themselves give purchase for tactical thinking. Mini-games make the skill use itself entertaining - and, after all, what is combat but a mini-game? Its prevalence reflects that more love gets lavished on making it fun than any other mini-game aspect of an RPG.

Very true. If a developer expects a non-combat option to be as compelling as combat, they need to put the effort into developing it as a gameplay option and not just a bypass. "Minigame" is probably not the best terminology though. It's kryptonite to RPG geeks, and implies a disconnect from general play.

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So, no, no mini-games for Age of Decadence or any other serious RPG please. Besides, they are frustrating and boring and immersion breaking. It's your character's skill that's supposed to be tested, not yours sucka!

Here we go with this again. Combat uses player skill in pretty much every "RPG" except Dungeon Siege. Most commonly, the player's tactical skill. The character(s) determine what tools are at the player's disposal, but it still requires intelligent manipulation of those tools to succeed. "Minigame" doesn't necessarily imply anything to with action or reflexes. As I said above, it does imply a disconnect from general play, but what is combat in Fallout if not a turn-based tactical combat minigame in an otherwise real-time game?


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: aVENGER on March 03, 2008, 06:40:58 am
So, no, no mini-games for Age of Decadence or any other serious RPG please. Besides, they are frustrating and boring and immersion breaking. It's your character's skill that's supposed to be tested, not yours sucka!

That pretty much sums up my stance on the issue as well. IMO, while player skill can be emphasized to a certain degree, a good RPG should primarily focus on the choices that you make when you create and develop your character. In short, character skill > player skill.

BTW, great write up VD.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Mouse on March 03, 2008, 07:31:52 am
That is an interesting piece. Provocative even. Still, I'm dubious of it's worth trying to translate an alternate world with alternate laws and morals into our own, and the transposition of an act the gameworld considers heroic into an act the real world considers criminal is completely artificial. The onus is really on the GM to establish and evoke a world with more interesting moral texture, rather than simply dress up D&D as a real world allegory where "monsters = ethnic minorities". It would be far more interesting to explore the morality of whether monsters and humans deserve equal rights, rather than simply making the jump to "yes they do".

Still, I guess the idea is to provoke your players into thinking in moral terms, and the "psych ward" RP is a pretty cute way to dress it up. I'm pretty sure my RP group would get a kick out of it.
I think Power Kill is pretty much a thought experiment by Tynes. Most RPGs do after all let the wholesale murder of sentient beings pass by without batting an eyelid. In the RPG he's most famous for co-writing, Unknown Armies, violence is potentially fatal no matter how good you are and players have psych gauges which can acquire "hardened" and "failed" notches in different areas as their characters get battered with highly stressful situations (such as killing someone in combat). And it would be nice to see more RPGs concentrate some effort on the consequences of charging into battle against everyone you meet.

I think that's being overly dismissive. It's certainly true that dialogue presents a lot of difficulties for a developer, but that's no reason to ignore it entirely. Human intelligence is orders of magnitudes more complex than just dialogue, and that doesn't stop developers striving toward more complex artificial intelligence that realistically, resembles nothing of the sort.
There are entire fields of AI which explore language specifically - machine translation being one, but the chat bots, the attempts to beat the Turing Test, being perhaps the most interesting. These are still some way off realism though, and it's always going to be hard to handle the open-ended nature of conversation in a way that doesn't jar human sensibilities.

It's perhaps because we've realised that human intelligence is not going to be replicated by AIs any time soon that game developers aren't trying to come up with Turing-test-beating conversationalists (though it's worth mentioning one game which did make the attempt: Starship Titanic).

I do agree though that well-done dialogue is worth the effort, though lengthy dialogue requires strong writing ability to hold interest. Planescape: Torment may have had the limitations of other menu-based dialogue systems, but its conversations made the narrative shine.

There's no reason for a character to remain consistent across exclusive dialogues, and one of the great strengths of gaming as a whole is that it permits a mutable narrative with player authorship, and it's worth sacrificing a certain degree of efficiency to achieve this goal. But of course, it's a diminishing return, so the concept of dialogue trees needs to evolve.
Agreed that evolution on this score is necessary. Not sure I understand the "consistent across exclusive dialogues" thing.

That's a problem, but it's one that's perpetuated through a complete lack of effort on the behalf of developers. Combat is, in theory, vastly non-linear and dynamic. What happens if I kill this guy, and then that guy? What happens if I swing high? Swing low? Cast a spell? Etc? And at some point, someone had to sit down and nut out a way to model combat in an abstract manner using a variety of generic interactions to achieve a system that readily encourages permutations and adapts to them. There's no reason why a system with generic elements to abstract the many ways of getting past guards couldn't be implemented, though you'd probably have to consider it as an investment for multiple games, unless you had an industrial espionage focus with as many guards to get past as monsters in a typical combat RPG. Even better, have the "gate entry" quest become a product of existing generic systems. Have a climbing system that can be applied in towns, dungeons, ruins, forests, etc. Have a stealth system. Establish some social mechanics in a town, where anyone of a certain caste/profession has a gate pass, which is an item they'd willingly barter with anyone, albeit for a ridiculous sum.
Absolutely, this is the kind of thing I touched upon in the second last paragraph - the generic solution that keeps on giving. It is desirable to have options that are available with relatively little content creation, which broaden the scope beyond combat.

Very true. If a developer expects a non-combat option to be as compelling as combat, they need to put the effort into developing it as a gameplay option and not just a bypass. "Minigame" is probably not the best terminology though. It's kryptonite to RPG geeks, and implies a disconnect from general play.
Good point. What shall we call it? Tactical simulation?

Combat self-perpetuates precisely because it's had a lot of work over the years, and has become the most engaging solution to problems in most games. Developers understand how to do it adequately. A game that put effort into making other approaches equally engaging would I think see a sharp shift towards more non-combat gameplay. And the discussion on how to make such approaches engaging for the player deserves a number of topics all by itself...


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Scott on March 03, 2008, 08:20:26 am
NOT having minigames is a must in any "true" RPG, at least in any RPG that's good enough NOT to take player skill into consideration. Just as you'll want turn based point and click combat so your own skill doesn't affect your character's, you'll want skill checks (maybe not dice rolls, but skill checks, yes) in non-combat activities, no matter if it is lock picking or persuasion.
Huh?  Who said mini-games had to be skill based?

I think having a few fun, logic-based mini-games sprinkled throughout could add a lot to an RPG provided that (a) they are in no way mandatory to gameplay; (b) the rewards for playing are tangential to quest rewards (ie. not xp and not gold).

Now seems as good a time as any to get my dialogue skill check beef out in the open:  I hate the typical D&D game skill check flowchart (exemplified in ToEE) that goes:

high enough intimidation skill  > initimidate dialogue option > success!
not high enough skill             > no dialogue option           > failiure!   > come back later with higher skill...

I can understand reduced options based on a very low Int, but choosing the right options in dialogue should be a matter of player observation and intelligence.  Otherwise, it just become a boring-ass binary routine.

Imagine if your party encountered 200 kobolds in a cave, and the fight was decided by the party's total strength score.  If it's over 40, you win!  If it's 40 or less, you can't win!  Go take a Potion of Strength and try again!  It reduces role-playing to stacking up beads in an abacus.  If you have enough beads, you da man!


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on March 03, 2008, 10:30:39 am
Alternative opinion:
http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2008/03/being-diplomatic.html

"Dialog trees are one-dimensional. You don't have the ability to back-track, unless the speaking option is included by the dialog designer (And how many times have we experienced repetitive dialog) - instead, it's just a choice of a few options, usually cut down because of constraints of screen space and sentence complexity. You don't know what the ultimate goal of the conversation is to start with, whereas in combat it's clear - kill the opponents. So you don't know which approach to the conversation is best.

Compare this to the multiple options made available in combat, and the complexities of range and terrain that complicate it. Dialog trees just don't have the same level of sophistication.

So how can we improve the diplomacy mechanic? I suspect turning dialog into a mini-game of some kind is the right way. But every mini-game mechanic I've come up with so far makes me cringe even worse than dialog trees."


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Mouse on March 03, 2008, 10:32:49 am
I've been thinking about this some more.

It seems to me that a lot of games can be characterised as a framework hosting sub-games. (I'm going to use this term over mini-games for now). Most frequently this sub-game is combat-based, but it doesn't have to be.

Now, narrative gives an incentive to progress independent of the sub-games. However, if the narrative unfolds too easily, the player may feel unchallenged, and if the sub-games are tedious, the player may grow frustrated. (Branching narrative does help a lot with keeping player interest when challenge is low, but it's time-expensive to implement lengthy branches.)

The main issue with any sub-game is player fatigue. By its very nature, the sub-game is liable to become repetitive. So, as the main game progresses the sub-game broadens - the player gains options, is faced with different challenges. Combat's well understood: the player begins by facing weak-looking foes while equipped with puny weaponry and having only a few options, and progresses to stronger foes, better weaponry, more options. The changes in foes and weapons are largely cosmetic, and can only do so much to halt player fatigue; it's the new abilities, new ways to play the sub-game that are more exciting. It's less well understood how to make lock-picking or climbing or hacking into an interesting sub-game that will be resistant to player fatigue. So non-combat solutions to problems are lost because developers don't know how to make using them fun, or at least don't know how to make them as fun as the combat solution.

To look at an example of this: imagine a building with two entrances. One is guarded by a guard, one has a locked door.

If opening the locked door costs me nothing, I will open the door if I am tired of the combat sub-game (which, these days, having played a variety of RPG combat sub-games, I likely am by default) or if for some reason I think that actually role-playing a character in the game is likely to be more rewarding than frustrating. The first time I do this, there is a sense of novelty. The fourteenth time I do this, it is as if the door weren't locked in the first place. I am going to be aware I'm making a choice only if the game brings some consequences on me for picking the lock.

If it costs me something from a scarce resource (wear and tear on my lockpick, say), I am forced to choose, am made aware I'm making a decision, and gain the notion that I am being challenged, that I have to exert control over the game. The consequences are immediately apparent, and so my perception of the difficulty is raised.

If it involves another sub-game, as long as it's not actively tedious, it will be worth playing sometimes for variety; if it's fun, I am likely to choose the options that let me play it a lot.

If it involves a sub-game and trade-offs, and the sub-game is fun, we have the best of all worlds. If midway through a lock-opening sub-game I realise that opening this particular lock's rusty tumblers will be noisy and possibly alert the people inside, I may elect to look for an alternate route - but the sub-game is anything but wasted, for as a player I feel I've been forced to be clever and make choices, and I have faith that the game will reward me for being clever. Moreover, I identify more with my sneaky character as the game nudges me towards thinking in a sneaky manner.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on March 03, 2008, 11:06:16 am
A couple of quick points:
...Turing-test...
A key difference between RPG dialogue and the Turing-test can be a narrowing of conversation domain. Even if a game designer aims for a Turing-test-type solution, he certainly needn't have it cover the entire range of possible conversations - only those that use worthwhile statements in the "language" of the game world. In some RPG contexts, that might still be a huge range, but in others it could be highly restricted. Getting NPCs to respond convincingly only to reasonable, contextual statements greatly simplifies the situation - though it's still not simple, of course.
In this sense an RPG conversation system might be more analogous to an expert system than a Turing-test candidate: it'd understand the situation in the narrow game world very well, but be all at sea outside this area of expertise.

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Agreed that evolution on this score is necessary. Not sure I understand the "consistent across exclusive dialogues" thing.
I think he means that consistency over dialogues that are mutually exclusive in a single playthrough of a game isn't necessary. I.e. that the character/history/values... of a specific NPC can reasonably be mutable over different playthroughs, even though it should be consistent(ish) within each individual playthrough.
Of course this means that each playthrough is an exploration of a new world, not another journey through the same world - but I'd say that this is desirable, in some cases at least.

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Good point. What shall we call it? Tactical simulation?
Since the point is to emphasize the way such a feature ties in to the rest of the game, giving it a better label in isolation isn't likely to help get away from the issues of mini-game-itis. As to the specific "Tactical simulation" idea, I'm not keen - it's too narrow and prescriptive. I'd go with something generic like "gameplay system" if anything at all.
Either way, the emphasis on connectivity with other systems is more important than the label.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on March 03, 2008, 11:24:24 am
By its very nature, the sub-game is liable to become repetitive. So, as the main game progresses the sub-game broadens - the player gains options, is faced with different challenges. Combat's well understood: the player begins by facing weak-looking foes while equipped with puny weaponry and having only a few options, and progresses to stronger foes, better weaponry, more options. The changes in foes and weapons are largely cosmetic, and can only do so much to halt player fatigue; it's the new abilities, new ways to play the sub-game that are more exciting.
I don't agree that this is the main point. It's not the options within a subgame that are most important - it's the variety and significance of the long-term implications of those options.

X-Com combat relies on the extra weapons, abilities etc. a little to mix things up, but that's certainly not its major strength. Its major strength lies in the wide range of significant outcomes possible from each combat - and the meaning this lends to each action within the combat. Ten X-Com combats in a row can use the same abilities, and very similar immediate context, yet retain edge-of-your-seat tension throughout. That's not through an emphasis on making the actions intrinsically fun - it's through an emphasis on making them meaningful.

This is the reason it's so important to view such a "sub-game" (which I think is also a bad term with entirely the wrong emphasis) as tied in to the rest of the game. Think of it in isolation, and you'll be forever coming up with player-fatigue "solutions" that miss the central point: that player action must be meaningful. Think of it as a part of the whole, and you're much more likely to do things properly.

Note here that I also disagree that RPG combat does things too well - it doesn't, which is why I use X-Com combat as an example. RPG combat most often uses the methods you describe extensively, and gets passable results. X-Com combat uses the above methods (and relatively little intrinsic variety) to achieve far better results.

Of course I concede that it's simpler to give combat sub-actions meaningful medium/long-term consequences than to do the same with other gameplay systems (which makes it even more vexing that it's so rarely bothered with). However, it's a worthwhile aim for all such systems. I'd say that it's usually not done due to an emphasis on decomposition in design - too great a focus on each section, and hardly any on the way they all tie together (beyond functional necessity).

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So non-combat solutions to problems are lost because developers don't know how to make using them fun, or at least don't know how to make them as fun as the combat solution.
Again - I'd say that the central problem is their thinking that to "make them [intrinsically] fun" is the goal. It isn't - it's to make them contextually entertaining. Until someone beats this into them, there's little hope.


EDIT: oh and this
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It seems to me that a lot of games can be characterised as a framework hosting sub-games.
...is just horrible. Perhaps a lot of games can be characterised that way, but to the extent that's fitting, they're badly designed. Improving things within such a context is a waste of effort, since it's a context that needs to be banished from the universe.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: GhanBuriGhan on March 03, 2008, 12:00:54 pm
I think it is certainly worthwile to think about how dialogue could be made to incorporate more gameplay in its mechanics. Dialogue trees are a great narrative element, and can be a great tool to force difficult decisions on the player (which may be considered a gameplay element, at least that is how I understood VD's take on the subject. But still, clicking through a branching dialogue structure determined (at best) by your skill set and a number of game flags isn't much in the sense of engaging gameplay. The only instances I remember where dialogue and gameplay were directly connected was the legendary pirate duels in Monkey Island, and the voigt-kampf test in Bladerunner...

So I'll throw out some random ideas for adding gameplay elements to dialogue and you get to tear them apart:

- have (skill dependent) indicators of NPC intentions (e.g. lying-honest, benevolent-malvolent) or emotional states (e.g. angry, scared, friendly) to assist in decision making
- Make persuasion into a Magic the Gathering style card game
- Make certain key choices timed - not to the level of reflex testing, but to add some drama.
- Make dialogue lines multipart, so that you can choose (skill-dependent) different options with subtle differences in meaning (and effect). This could to an extent be done in analogy to current alchemy systems, only instead of combining ingredients to achieve a certain effect, you combine phrases. OR:
- Provide the character with a (skill dependent) list of openings, interrupts, and good-byes that he can choose according to the NPC he interacts with and the situation. Have an AI system for NPC's that simulates emotional states, and allow these states to be influenced by the chosen options.




Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Mouse on March 03, 2008, 12:35:51 pm
X-Com combat relies on the extra weapons, abilities etc. a little to mix things up, but that's certainly not its major strength. Its major strength lies in the wide range of significant outcomes possible from each combat - and the meaning this lends to each action within the combat. Ten X-Com combats in a row can use the same abilities, and very similar immediate context, yet retain edge-of-your-seat tension throughout. That's not through an emphasis on making the actions intrinsically fun - it's through an emphasis on making them meaningful.
No.

XCOM is strong largely because it gives you enough options from the very start to make the sub-game tactical and interesting. The reaction point mechanic, the broad space and relatively large squad, the explosives (which affect how you should deploy your squad) vs projectile weapons tradeoff - all of this makes it a vastly richer battlefield than RPG combat generally is. I will agree the tension is heightened by the possibility of permanently losing squad members, and the alien-capture goals, but if the battlefield sub-game were no better than standard RPG combat, XCOM wouldn't even have been a particularly memorable game.

And even then, even with all those advantages from the start, XCOM dribbles in new enemies, new ship types, new terrains, new weapons to research, new abilities. And, at times, that's just as well, because the combat can still get repetitive - I currently have an XCOM game going that I've been avoiding for a couple of weeks because it's got about three combats lined up and my hunger for its tactical combat has been largely sated lately.

This is the reason it's so important to view such a "sub-game" (which I think is also a bad term with entirely the wrong emphasis) as tied in to the rest of the game. Think of it in isolation, and you'll be forever coming up with player-fatigue "solutions" that miss the central point: that player action must be meaningful. Think of it as a part of the whole, and you're much more likely to do things properly.

A sub-game with no connection to the rest of the game is, of course, a useless bit of ornamentation. Most sub-games have at least a slight connection, though.

However, the tools XCOM uses to make its conflicts more meaningful are less accessible to the RPG designer - the goals of capturing alien navigators/leaders etc are hard to achieve and most conflicts will end without them being met, while taking advantage of the player habit of caring about the more advanced members of their squad is possible precisely because the squad is numerous and interchangeable; you can't allow RPG NPCs to be slaughtered so casually and retain them in the narrative. We come back to permanent consequences and the resulting combinatorial explosion of content.

Again - I'd say that the central problem is their thinking that to "make them [intrinsically] fun" is the goal. It isn't - it's to make them contextually entertaining. Until someone beats this into them, there's little hope.
You're going to have to explain contextually entertaining to me. I'm getting the impression you're railing against a straw man here. If there's nothing more than an extra click needed, it doesn't matter how contextually relevant and important it is that I climb a wall, or pick a lock, once I've picked a dozen locks or climbed a dozen walls - by the time it becomes routine, it's something I don't need to think about, something that could as easily have been omitted by having an open door there instead. But a game of passing through open door after open door has little by the way of actual gameplay.

Conversely, even if it's really important that I climb the wall, but they've stuck me with some interface to doing so that annoys me (let's say the old jumping puzzle painfully done in too many games), I'm quite likely at some point to decide I'm not bloody-minded enough to complete it. It's nice that solving the sub-game saves me from certain death, or gives me the Amulet of Ultimate Power, or has whatever consequences you feel are important, but if it's actively tedious, I'm not going to enjoy slogging through it.

EDIT: oh and this
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It seems to me that a lot of games can be characterised as a framework hosting sub-games.
...is just horrible. Perhaps a lot of games can be characterised that way, but to the extent that's fitting, they're badly designed. Improving things within such a context is a waste of effort, since it's a context that needs to be banished from the universe.
But I suspect most of your favourite games would fit comfortably into this category. XCOM is very much a main game framework with a couple of combat sub-games attached. Fallout, Planescape, and many others go into sub-game mode when combat's encountered. It's not a symptom of bad design in the slightest, but the very opposite: when a situation is encountered that the main interface is weak at representing, then a new interface is provided. It's folly to think that one interface should be able to handle all situations.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Priapist on March 03, 2008, 01:05:00 pm
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Agreed that evolution on this score is necessary. Not sure I understand the "consistent across exclusive dialogues" thing.

Just a quick clarify on this before I head off to bed. Basically, if you have mutually exclusive branches/threads in your dialogue, they don't necessarily need to correlate. In theory, you could have a character who admits truthfully to being a murderer in one path, and the same character admitting truthfully to not being a murderer in an exclusive path, thus characterising them in a completely different way. Of course, that does have a ripple effect if other characters are required to account for whether or not he's a murderer.

It's a strange point to make, but that simple difference in characterisation could potentially drive player behaviours ("I'm not going to let a confessed murder adventure alongside me!") and unrelated facets of that character could drive ripples down the track. Maybe he's a talented loremaster, and one of very few people who can understand <insert long dead language here>. To that end, Player 1 might happily let the innocent version tag along, and months later while translating an ancient text, he unwittingly unleashes some demonic force. Player 2 might refuse to allow the confessed murderer to come along, and be unable to gain access to a temple that requires an understanding of the language, without first catering to the whims of someone else who can read the same ancient text, which in this tangent, has no associated curse.

My point? I'm sure I had one. Ah yes, that a designer can get a certain amount of mileage through a bit of trickery. Events and characters only need to preserve continuity for each single playthrough - so rather than the situation where the player must pick the "right" dialogue choice, you have dialogue choices that culminate in entirely different events, and it's best if there's no scripted connection between these events.

And to extend it somewhat - let's say there's a one off dialogue branch where an NPC reveals the location of a hidden temple. If the player opts for an exclusive branch, that hidden temple basically doesn't exist in this tangent of the gameworld. But that doesn't mean the assets associated with the temple need to go into a locked file of unused content. There's no reason why (if the gameworld isn't continuous) that temple couldn't appear in a completely different location, for a completely different purpose with a completely different means of discovery.

I'm rambling here, but I don't feel I've nailed this point concisely. Basically what I'm saying is that in a game where you're intending to exclude any significant amount of content based on character choices - there's no reason why you can't smartly use that content within a completely different context. Each instance of the game should be considered it's own little tangent universe, and so long as it's consistent in and of itself, there's no problem.

Make some sort of sense?


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on March 03, 2008, 06:04:24 pm
X-Com...
No.
XCOM is strong largely because it gives you enough options from the very start to make the sub-game tactical and interesting...
Of course there are many reasons, and of course even X-Com could do the variety of consequences bit better.
However one rates the relative importance of its strengths the central point is that X-Com would become tiresome much earlier without the tie-in of many combat actions to medium/long-term consequences. Not just in terms of combat losses, but also the implications of injuries, tactical withdrawals, live-alien capture, valuable equipment capture (vs. a cautious explosive-round-every-corner-first approach).

The "make it intrinsically fun" part is an obvious design aim - which was carried out well in X-Com, as well as in many other games - some RPGs included. The "make individual combat actions matter over the long-term" seems to be less obvious (or at least much less frequently addressed), and is something that hardly any RPG does well with combat. In nearly every RPG, winning the combat is everything, and any losses simply constitute a minor setback that a little grind will offset.

X-Com combat is mechanically richer than RPG combat, but both are aiming at qualitatively similar goals in this respect. The meaningful-long-term-implications aspect isn't simplified/reduced in most RPGs - it's non-existent (the lack of time pressure negates most small setbacks that do exist).

Also, I wouldn't say that X-Com combat necessarily is more complex than quite a bit of RPG combat - e.g. the combat in something like NWN2 is quite mechanically complex. Now why doesn't it come over as complex? Because the complexities are not backed up by meaningful medium/long-term results. It doesn't really matter who dies, who gets injured, what resources are used, and items recovered are fixed... - so it doesn't matter who gets seen/attacked first, which enemies are targeted first, what strategies are used.... It's just down to win-and-spend-time-recovering or lose-and-reload.
X-Com combat would be almost as dull as NWN2 combat if there were no significant consequences beyond victory and defeat. If you wanted you could employ some fairly complex tactics in a NWN2 engagement - only it'd be pointless, since the game doesn't give a damn whether you win with 60% or 90% efficiency. The details of a NWN2 combat aren't inherently irrelevant - they're made that way by the lack of meaningful consequence. (this is slightly less true in MotB thanks to the time-pressure of spirit hunger).


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And, at times, that's just as well, because the combat can still get repetitive - I currently have an XCOM game going that I've been avoiding for a couple of weeks because it's got about three combats lined up and my hunger for its tactical combat has been largely sated lately.
Certainly - X-Com is far from perfect. I think it does something that most games don't bother with pretty well - not perfectly.

However, I'd ask what would make you more inclined to take on those three combats:
(1) A new gun and a new ship design.
(2) Having the results of the combats be in doubt, and highly influencial in the long-term.

In my experience, X-Com combats become tiresome not when the dribble of new ship designs, weapons, aliens... dries up, but rather once the individual mission results start to become predictable and insignificant. The weapons, ship designs... are a nice extra; the significance and unpredictability of mission results is vital.

I'd bet that you have little doubt on the overall outcome of those three combats you have lined up, and little impression that the details are likely to matter - that they're essentially a time-consuming irrelevance in terms of your long-term planning. It's precisely because any combat system will eventually become samey that maintaining long-term significance of low-level actions isn't a luxury.

If you look at X-Com from a designer's perspective, it's hard to see how you'd keep combat inherently gripping for longer - that's done pretty well. It's comparatively easy to see how you'd keep it meaningful for longer, since there's a clear, objective downward trend in the significance of individual combat actions through the game. In the early game the fate of the squad, and perhaps the organization, can hang on the outcome of single action/turn. In the late game individual consequences are hugely less influential. This is an objective problem based on nothing so ethereal/unavoidable as player fatigue with the inherent mechanics.

Of course it's necessary to find ways to make gameplay inherently entertaining - but I assume this goal is understood by all designers (even if the means to achieve it aren't). I think it's more important to emphasize the way things tie together, since this element's impact is too frequently forgotten - or at least seems to be looking at results.


A sub-game with no connection to the rest of the game is, of course, a useless bit of ornamentation. Most sub-games have at least a slight connection, though.
Sure - but I still think "sub-game" is an unhelpful way to categorize it. It gives the impression that this is a complete game in itself - albeit part of a greater whole. That's unnecessary - it's totally fine for the system to get all its entertainment value through context. Calling it a "sub-game" says to me that an aim is to make it a worthwhile stand-alone experience - and that tying it thoroughly into the main game is only a possibility.
I'd want the emphasis the other way around: tying it in properly is an absolutely requirement; having it be entertaining in isolation is a nice extra (so long as it adds entertainment to the whole).

Naturally this isn't precisely implied by whatever label you stick on such systems, but I think that "sub-game" carries the same baggage as "mini-game".

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However, the tools XCOM uses to make its conflicts more meaningful are less accessible to the RPG designer - the goals of capturing alien navigators/leaders etc are hard to achieve and most conflicts will end without them being met, while taking advantage of the player habit of caring about the more advanced members of their squad is possible precisely because the squad is numerous and interchangeable; you can't allow RPG NPCs to be slaughtered so casually and retain them in the narrative. We come back to permanent consequences and the resulting combinatorial explosion of content.
Whether this is true, and in which respects, depends largely on the context. If you've got a tightly defined narrative which relies upon the survival of specific NPCs, clearly you can't have them be casually slaughtered. However, there's no particular need for a tightly defined narrative, or one that revolves around party-members.

Even where it's deemed necessary to give NPC death important consequences, these needn't necessarily involve their own content - and certainly needn't involve multiple sets of new content contingent on other NPC deaths. Naturally it's possible to consider narratives where each possible combinations of NPC deaths require significant rewrites to every section - but it's just as possible to consider ones who don't. Certainly allowing NPC death would restrict the narrative freedom of a designer, but it wouldn't rule out good narrative.
Combinatorial explosion is only an issue where the consequences must be both scripted and contingent on one-another. This is far from a universal situation.

Moreover, the issue isn't particularly about death, but about meaningful consequences. Clearly each RPG would need to use different consequences, and most would have a harder time using death than X-Com (at least quite so frequently). More meaningful injuries are a clear alternative for combat though, as are more meaningful resource gains/losses - all of which are helped greatly by some time pressure.

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You're going to have to explain contextually entertaining to me. I'm getting the impression you're railing against a straw man here.
In a sense I am - I'm not saying that you're wrong in your points (apart from the highly-subjective naming issue); I'm saying that I think the most important emphasis should be elsewhere. Of course it'd help to make other gameplay systems entertaining in the ways you outline. I'm simply saying that other factors are more easily missed.

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If there's nothing more than an extra click needed, it doesn't matter how contextually relevant and important it is that I climb a wall, or pick a lock, once I've picked a dozen locks or climbed a dozen walls - by the time it becomes routine, it's something I don't need to think about, something that could as easily have been omitted by having an open door there instead.
This misses the point: the low-level action decisions need to have significance. If the lowest-level decisions are simply to climb/pick, then they need significance - just as the decision to walk through a door, if your aim is to make that a gameplay feature (which it absolutely can be). Naturally the climb/pick/open-door implications ought to be different in order to justify the inclusion of each.

When you aim to put more gameplay into these systems by including lower and lower level actions, the point remains the same: the low-level actions need significance. X-Com maintains this early on, since something as trivial as time spent reloading a weapon can potentially get someone shot - with long-term consequences. Later on X-Com loses this to an extent, since armour is good and squads have redundancy. By that time the exact position/time-units of squad-members rarely has a great impact - and gameplay suffers to an extent as low level actions lose all meaning, and higher level ones start to become less meaningful.

My point isn't about extending gameplay - it's about making the gameplay that you provide meaningful. A non-feature which provides no gameplay is largely irrelevant. A feature that's time consuming but provides badly supported gameplay is worse.

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It's nice that solving the sub-game saves me from certain death, or gives me the Amulet of Ultimate Power, or has whatever consequences you feel are important, but if it's actively tedious, I'm not going to enjoy slogging through it.
Yes - naturally I don't disagree.
My point remains about emphasis. I think that all designers would aim to make a time-consuming feature entertaining - hopefully this aspect is obvious to anyone. I'd say that this is usually failed through incompetence, rather than from lack of understanding of the goal (maybe I'm wrong). I think the failure-to-include-significant-consequence is more about setting the goal in the first place.

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But I suspect most of your favourite games would fit comfortably into this category....
In this case I think you're just not seeing the same (subjective) implications/associations as I am. I agree that most games can be thought of as a framework hosting subgames. I simply don't think that this is a helpful way to see them. [perhaps this means that my vision is blurred, rather than that yours is lacking - I just presume I'm not the only one with similarly blurry vision]
To me, describing things in such a way encourages a reader to think of independent gameplay sections, and does nothing to encourage thoughts about connectivity/interrelationships. It might well be true that X-Com / Fallout can be thought of in that way, but I highly doubt that their designers did think about them that way.

Quite possibly I'm over-reacting to a harmless description, but I don't think I'm the only one that'd get this impression. "Mini-game" gets bad reactions for the same subjective reasons - not because it's inaccurate, but through negative associations and the perception of undesirable emphasis.

Anyway, again - I agree with most of what you've said. If non-combat gameplay is to be expanded, player fatigue needs to be addresses. I'm simply saying that having low-level actions be meaningful over the medium/long-term is one great, often-overlooked way to avoid player fatigue.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Gambler on March 04, 2008, 03:40:56 am
I think it is certainly worthwile to think about how dialogue could be made to incorporate more gameplay in its mechanics.
There are many things about dialogs that were never tried in games. It would be interesting to be able to speak with an NPC while following him somewhere. The timing aspect of dialogs is also totally unexplored. I don't recall any games where you could fight with someone for a while, but then say "oaky, I give up" or something of that sort. Or where you could have an option of making a quick comment about an event that happens at the time.

Dialogs that involve more than one person are not well-explored either: shouting across the street, overhearing other people's conversations, etcetera.

There is also an almost untapped realm of cellphones, letters, notes (that are written by _you_), emails, and other indirect ways to communicate. Imagine a game where your party doesn't follow you all the time, but rather is called up in the time of need.

In short, anything that challenges the old formula where there are two characters standing still, short distance away, and exchanging phrases would be a huge step forward for all story-based games.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: GhanBuriGhan on March 04, 2008, 04:31:34 am
Thanks Gambler, I was starting to feel ingored among these essays on X-Com :) And good ideas, too.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Morbus on March 04, 2008, 06:32:21 am
"Minigame" doesn't necessarily imply anything to with action or reflexes.
Really? And how's that? If those minigames ain't about twitch skill, then it's fine by me. When I talk about minigames, I'm talking exclusively about twitch minigames, because I can't remember any other type.

In short, character skill > player skill.
It's not that simple. As priapist said, the whole game involves player skill. The thing most game "designers" fail to understand, though, is that there are multiple types of player skill. In this case, there is twitch and tactical skill. I know when you say "player skill" you are talking about "player twitch skill", and by "tactical skill" you understand choices and consequences. Me too.

Huh?  Who said mini-games had to be skill based?

I think having a few fun, logic-based mini-games sprinkled throughout could add a lot to an RPG provided that (a) they are in no way mandatory to gameplay; (b) the rewards for playing are tangential to quest rewards (ie. not xp and not gold).
If your intelligence is all that matters in those minigames, why include an inteligence stat in the first place? Same goes for wisdom, of course.

Now seems as good a time as any to get my dialogue skill check beef out in the open:  I hate the typical D&D game skill check flowchart (exemplified in ToEE) that goes (...)
So what do you propose? Having a character with low intimidation skill be able to intimidate? No, I don't think that's right. What I prupose, and what's been discussed in this thread, is that there are enough consequences so that most actions are understood as choices, and not as failures. I wrote something about that a while ago: [link] (http://megascore.biz/index.php?p=17)


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Mouse on March 04, 2008, 12:15:12 pm
The "make it intrinsically fun" part is an obvious design aim - which was carried out well in X-Com, as well as in many other games - some RPGs included. The "make individual combat actions matter over the long-term" seems to be less obvious (or at least much less frequently addressed), and is something that hardly any RPG does well with combat. In nearly every RPG, winning the combat is everything, and any losses simply constitute a minor setback that a little grind will offset.
Absolutely agreed. However, given we were talking originally about non-combat actions, my initial point was that so far a pitifully weak level of effort has been put forth to make these entertaining to deploy in their own right. They often lack even the shallow level of choice of the crude XCOM ship-vs-ship combat sub-game. The message the developers give by this is that combat matters more than other skills - it's important enough to attempt to simulate, the other skills are not.

And yes, both combat and use of other skills could badly use better modelling of consequences. Many non-skill actions need consequences, come to that - I've played more than a couple of RPGs that let you wander into people's houses, empty the chests in their bedroom and livingroom in their presence, and wander back out again without them issuing any form of protest, or the game pointing out that this is at odds with your character's allegedly lily-white morality.

Certainly - X-Com is far from perfect. I think it does something that most games don't bother with pretty well - not perfectly.

However, I'd ask what would make you more inclined to take on those three combats:
(1) A new gun and a new ship design.
(2) Having the results of the combats be in doubt, and highly influencial in the long-term.
I'd have to say having a useful new option (marginal gun upgrades don't count). I was kept playing through the last few combats by having developed useful psi, which changed the dynamic considerably.

The results are in doubt - I'm still a little uncertain as to whether I can take on Ethereals safely, though my squad is psi-stronger than it was, and it's a good bet that at least one of the combats will be against Ethereals. If I take more heavy squad losses to strong psi it may be fairly influencial in the longer term, but there's more to lose than gain from the fights.

In a way, the two tie together: were it possible to obtain blueprints for a new ship or weapon from the combats, were the gains more than just seeing my Elerium stat creep up, I'd probably be more interested in taking them on. In no small part my neglect has come from having played the novelty out of it.

I'd want the emphasis the other way around: tying it in properly is an absolutely requirement; having it be entertaining in isolation is a nice extra (so long as it adds entertainment to the whole).
I think it's a case of both, to be honest. A game with an entertaining combat engine that inflicts it on me at every opportunity, with little long-term consequence for each combat, will attract me for a while but this attraction eventually may pall. A game which inflicts combat on me only in story-appropriate places but has a combat engine which is as painful to use as poking myself in the eye with a stick won't get played past the first or second combat. A game that doesn't even bother having a combat engine is going to have to give me some other compelling reason to keep playing - some other sub-game I find enjoyable, or a strong and well-written narrative. Good writing is rare, and quite difficult to do, however... I found myself unable to play through Baldur's Gate 2 after having finished Planescape: Torment, primarily because its writing was so cliched and amateurish in comparison that even the sub-games couldn't hold my interest.

Whether this is true, and in which respects, depends largely on the context. If you've got a tightly defined narrative which relies upon the survival of specific NPCs, clearly you can't have them be casually slaughtered. However, there's no particular need for a tightly defined narrative, or one that revolves around party-members.
I had objections, but on further thought I'm going to withdraw them; after all, most RPGs allow you never to take a character along in the first place, and therefore must already be designed around the possible absence of the character. I do think your connection to follower NPCs is significantly weakened when they're effectively disposable and rarely do anything that has any significant impact on you, but it's clearly a matter of taste. I was wrong about a combinatorial explosion being necessary.

Moreover, the issue isn't particularly about death, but about meaningful consequences. Clearly each RPG would need to use different consequences, and most would have a harder time using death than X-Com (at least quite so frequently). More meaningful injuries are a clear alternative for combat though, as are more meaningful resource gains/losses - all of which are helped greatly by some time pressure.
Good point. Injuries having more meaning would make combat more worthwhile. Again, though, the quality of the sub-system matters a lot - if the player feels that there's little he or she could have done better, or that the outcome is largely random, they're liable to be frustrated or annoyed by the game.

This misses the point: the low-level action decisions need to have significance. If the lowest-level decisions are simply to climb/pick, then they need significance - just as the decision to walk through a door, if your aim is to make that a gameplay feature (which it absolutely can be). Naturally the climb/pick/open-door implications ought to be different in order to justify the inclusion of each.
Again, agreed. However, you're lumping together the action and the result. The reaction to someone in the building meeting you after you've climbed the wall or picked a lock to gain an entrance is not a reaction to what you did, but to the fact you're somewhere they feel you shouldn't be. Now, this reaction is absolutely necessary for suspension of disbelief, and I agree that such reactions get too little attention in games, but it's the same reaction obtainable by walking through a door with a sign saying "Keep Out". If you're going to justify your inclusion of climbing and picking locks, they should offer something beyond just having the door and sign. At the simplest level, they could be restricted by your character's background and life choices. A level up from that would be restrictions tied to resources. Finally, you have the same importance and level of simulation attached to them as you do with combat.

My point isn't about extending gameplay - it's about making the gameplay that you provide meaningful. A non-feature which provides no gameplay is largely irrelevant. A feature that's time consuming but provides badly supported gameplay is worse.
I would agree with that.

In this case I think you're just not seeing the same (subjective) implications/associations as I am. I agree that most games can be thought of as a framework hosting subgames. I simply don't think that this is a helpful way to see them. [perhaps this means that my vision is blurred, rather than that yours is lacking - I just presume I'm not the only one with similarly blurry vision]
To me, describing things in such a way encourages a reader to think of independent gameplay sections, and does nothing to encourage thoughts about connectivity/interrelationships. It might well be true that X-Com / Fallout can be thought of in that way, but I highly doubt that their designers did think about them that way.
Actually, I'll bet most developers think of them that way to some degree because that's the way the code will be structured. When you change the interface to better handle some new aspect the old interface is ill-equipped to simulate, you're entering a new module in the code. Perhaps it's better to think of them as lower level interfaces to the game rather than sub-games?

Anyway, again - I agree with most of what you've said. If non-combat gameplay is to be expanded, player fatigue needs to be addresses. I'm simply saying that having low-level actions be meaningful over the medium/long-term is one great, often-overlooked way to avoid player fatigue.
And on that, we can both agree.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Mouse on March 04, 2008, 12:27:53 pm
Oh, and the dialogue discussion is sounding exciting. Breaking away from the two people face-to-face exchanging phrases would produce a deeply unconventional and potentially very interesting new mechanic.

To try and rephrase the mini-game/sub-game thing, we could do with coming up with a word or phrase that encapsulates its meaning in a less controversial manner. Action engine? Sub-interface? In any case, what I'm referring to is the simulation of player actions in a more detailed fashion than the main game interface permits. We usually only notice the change to a new game mechanic when it jars us, hence the often perjorative use of the word mini-game, but this change of interface takes place in a very large number of games, particularly RPGs.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Scott on March 04, 2008, 01:00:14 pm
So what do you propose? Having a character with low intimidation skill be able to intimidate? No, I don't think that's right.
What I propose is that a dialogue's resolution, whatever it may be, is based upon the actual human player's intelligence and observation, augmented by what his PC has discovered in game, and not strictly on stats.

Here is what I would like to see:

You want to intimidate a guard, for whatever reason.  You try out an intimidating line, which is always available.  He's a tough dude, he laughs, you blew it.

However, if you had first went to the tavern where the guards like to hang out and got to know this barmaid he's always pawing, you'd find out he's manically superstitious and has a fear of snakes.  You buy a medallion from a tinker with a snake emblem on it.  You wear it and when you try your intimidation it works.

Admittedly, this is probably a prohibitive amount of writing for the developer, but dialogue reduced to a series of stat checks is so boring, I'd hardly even call it a game. What satisfaction is there in choosing the green highlighted "intimidation" line of dialogue, then chuckling as the guard steps aside?  Wow, that was tense!  I think I'll reload just to click that line again!  If there is a more "game-like" way to do it, requiring thought and considering on the player's part, I'm all for it.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Gambler on March 04, 2008, 03:02:01 pm
Quote from: Mouse
To try and rephrase the mini-game/sub-game thing, we could do with coming up with a word or phrase that encapsulates its meaning in a less controversial manner.
Um, "focused interface"?


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Mouse on March 04, 2008, 04:36:53 pm
Focused interface is good. I'll go with that from now on.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: inhuman on March 04, 2008, 08:11:04 pm
I didn't go through all the pages and thus I can't tell if the subject has shifted drastically;

I just thought that the game "Konung - Legends of the North" was noteworthy in a thread such as this because for reasons you don't need to know, you need to conquer all of the 12 or so towns in the game and you can conquer almost every town either by force, by doing their quests, or by dialogue options either through charisma (stats), bluffing (stats) or using in-game information your character has to blackmail or persuade.

Unless you're an obsessive compulsive, don't bother with the game though. It has lots of nice ideas; freshingly absurd and lighthearted dialogue and usually simple motives for NPCs instead of pretentiously lame ones, party management, town management and whatnot; all gone horribly wrong and often broken. It was a pain to go through the game twice (that's, I gave up during my 3rd play) just to have played with all three characters/heroes and see how different the game would be.

I can tell that the game experience varies only slightly, but there are interesting differences on all game characters' perspectives on other towns/clans, and that was a lot more interesting to me. For a beginning, picking one of the three heroes mean you'll have to go after the other two heroes and face their clans, conquer their towns. Where one of these heroes and his clan can represent evil warmongers to others, others can represent illiterate woodsmen to him. No clear cut "this is the good guy, your friend and that is the evil guy there". Perspectives shift for all three clans. Also, every hero's own clan is particularly good at something initially. If you pick Constantin of Byzantine camp, you'll have tanks in armors with good fighting abilities, best smiths and equipment from the get go. One of the other heroes will recruit other towns more easily etc. but none of the heroes are characteristically limited to the initial clan advantages.

If only the game wasn't %75 grind with huge amounts monsters every screen, respawning every time you come back; a better travel interface instead of having to LARP through all areas (unless you used teleportation scrolls), better and more managable inventory, no broken branching, etc...


I'll play Konung 2 soon, hoping it actually improved on the first and fixed the issues.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Decay on March 05, 2008, 12:50:06 am
Short introduction as a start: Me, lurker.

A BIG "Thank You" to the OP, for his informative article (another proof that the real world is more mind-boggling than most games), and all other participants that contributed more ideas into this article. It's a very very nice post as of the moment I'm typing, and hopefully it'll grow more in the near future (been optimistic here).

As a response to Mouse and galsiah and others' collaboration on incorporating focus interfaces into the over-arching one and on reducing player fatigue, one solution to player fatigue is simply an automation (SKIP button basically) to unwanted/repetitive elements. I.E., I hate the move-mouse-by-pixels to search for item, so I'd love for a button that does what I have to do in seconds (or faster), so I can get to the more entertaining/meaningful part faster. I could substitue the above situation with trying-to-talk-to-everyone-I-see, with a button that checks skills (perception, information gathering, wisdom, etc.) and highlights the person that I should talk to. However, the proposed solution is not as efficient as using current exisiting interfaces, since it needs new code, and maybe changes in the basic engine, as well as its premise on the lack of consequances to pc actions. I.E. if a counter is placed for opening locks, with the significance being that security is raised, nobles/higher class in the hierchy wants better locks, a locksmith is needed, and for a possible way to complete a goal the pc could disguise as a locksmith, etc. Which, however, requires changes in coding as well (more counters, scripts, dialogues), and efficiency is lost as well.

But what is the "efficiency" I'm throwing around? My definition is simply the application of resources in a way that with the smallest input generating the biggest output, in this case being the reasonable development time, money (for graphic engines/scripts/writings, etc.), manpower that will enable the greater enjoyment in players (since this is the indie scene, otherwise replace enjoyment with hype and money) along with some amount of money. So with the resources, it's well possible that impoving the dialogue trees with actual consequences will have more impact on player's experience than writing a new engine to support better simulation of real-life situations (meaning player action besides combat causes consequences). But, just to get out of the supposively-existing efficiency problem (without considering human/natural disasters and humane errors), I'll presume the resources been infinite.

The personal best would be an complex engine with consequences regarding all player actions (of course, some consequences should be negligible) with an emphasis (not overly done) on time. Couple that with a great art direction (like the fallout series minus the new one), PST-grade/better writing, and interesting backgrounds (world, lore, etc.) would make for a dream-game.
However, the time and genius needed for creating a efficent way to manage and implement all the c/c and scripts, or creating good AIs that reflect real-world actions (actually go hostile when pc intrudes into one's home, get scared if pc's intimidating, and more detailed consequences), are beyond my imagination, so for now, I propose a more modest way of improving.

One way at a time.
Yes, one facet of the game world at a time. Starting with better writings, actual c/c from dialogues & actions, going to including consequences for breaking into houses, bribing (reputation as someone with spare money = people asks for more bribes, but greedy people will come to you and offer services/goods, people who dislike "bribing" will have a lower/worse reaction, may even demand explanations. Bribe more times = rich, thieve's guild starts to collect information on you, robbers and thugs may try to make you into their victims if you don't have any reputation that scares them. Bribe even more = etc.), then AIs (not the radiant one, that hurt my eyes), and further down.

... That was a rant, sorry. :-[


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: aVENGER on March 05, 2008, 02:41:33 am
What I propose is that a dialogue's resolution, whatever it may be, is based upon the actual human player's intelligence and observation, augmented by what his PC has discovered in game, and not strictly on stats.

I disagree. This way, investing your hard earned skill points into Intimidation instead of something else (i.e. a combat skill) would be fairly pointless. It's pretty much the same as demanding that a player must move his mouse with the speed and agility of a trained acrobat if he wants to make a successful pickpocket check.

Quote
However, if you had first went to the tavern where the guards like to hang out and got to know this barmaid he's always pawing, you'd find out he's manically superstitious and has a fear of snakes.  You buy a medallion from a tinker with a snake emblem on it.  You wear it and when you try your intimidation it works.

At best, this could give your character a bonus to his Intimidate roll, but it should definitivelly not be the decisive factor.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Scott on March 06, 2008, 01:14:53 pm
I disagree. This way, investing your hard earned skill points into Intimidation instead of something else (i.e. a combat skill) would be fairly pointless.
Yes, if there was a system where your Intimidation skill wasn't ever used, I presume that skill would be cut so that you wouldn't waste your points on it.  I think I'm pretty much in the minority on this subject anyway.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: andrewdoull on March 06, 2008, 05:51:10 pm
I disagree. This way, investing your hard earned skill points into Intimidation instead of something else (i.e. a combat skill) would be fairly pointless.
Yes, if there was a system where your Intimidation skill wasn't ever used, I presume that skill would be cut so that you wouldn't waste your points on it.  I think I'm pretty much in the minority on this subject anyway.

All that this example shows is how useless skill points are as a game mechanic.  (http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2007/01/skills-vs-classes.html for more)

Andrew


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on March 06, 2008, 06:04:07 pm
Quote
Characters may still be able to level up - just a level 10 character should not be any better at backstabbing or casting spells or swinging a sword than any other level 10 character. Levelling up should be about better luck, or improved health, or something else accruable that gives the players a fighting chance against tougher monsters.
Critical fail.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Priapist on March 07, 2008, 03:52:19 am
Quote
Characters may still be able to level up - just a level 10 character should not be any better at backstabbing or casting spells or swinging a sword than any other level 10 character. Levelling up should be about better luck, or improved health, or something else accruable that gives the players a fighting chance against tougher monsters.
Critical fail.

I can't say I'm a fan of the idea, though at a previous point in the blog...

Quote
I want everyone who goes through the process of sneaking up on an unsuspecting monster and hits them in the back with a bladed weapon to get a massive damage multiplier. They've made the effort, they deserve the multiplier. Same with magic spells. If they've got some oil and a big red book of fire magic, and know that the monster they're fighting is vulnerable to fire, then they deserve an easy kill for covering the monster with oil and hitting it with a fire spell.

...it sounds reasonable. It rewards intelligent play and tactics. It gives the player more gameplay avenues than standing toe-to-toe with something and whacking away. But I don't think an entire system should be distilled down to just that.

For instance - setting things on fire ought to be a product of more than just inventory play. If the character is a good enough thrower to toss an oil flask a fair distance and bust it on the head of a monster, then use their skill with magic to cast a ranged fire attack to ignite it, then that's ideal circumstances, and rewards intelligent tactical play, creative inventory use, and also specific character development.

The same thing could be accomplished by a brutish thug with no finesse or magical ability. The character holds a flask in their hand and smashes it as a melee weapon onto the critter's head, presumably splashing a bit on himself. They then use their torch to ignite it at close range. You're still rewarding the intelligent tactical play, the creative inventory use, but you're penalising a bit according to lack of skill.

Of course, there's more to develop, play-test and balance, but the beauty of roguelikes is that they provide that sort of complexity. To gut it of a lot of what makes it charming seems counterproductive, even if it makes life a bit easier.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Squirly on April 08, 2008, 09:19:52 am
The Guild 2.

I've searched the whole forum and I don't think there's a mention of it anywhere so I think I'll throw this in here.

In my eyes this is the pinnacle of non-combat RPG and under-rated to boot. I only found it over the weekend so it's still fresh for me - hence if I seem over-eager it's probably because I haven't stumbled on any game-breaking designs yet. *holds thumbs*  :D

Anyway, the game puts you into the shoes of a commoner in 1400, Europe. You have a choice of maps which have 2-3 towns - usually places like Lyon and Nottingham and Zürich. You can choose from 4 classes, craftsman, patron, rogue and alchemist. Classes can advance in every skill (bargaining, stealth, rhetoric, empathy, charisma, martial arts etc.) but depending on the class, certain skills will cost more XP to increase. Craftsmen specialize in iron and wood work, creating various items from raw materials (which you can either buy or harvest yourself) which they then sell at a profit. Patrons run inns, grow crops, and brew beer (amongst other things). Rogues commit highway robbery, blackmail, extortion etc. (difficult class to play) and alchemists specialize in all things herbal and spiritual, ie: they can create tinctures and ointments and set up a church as well. There's a choice of protestant or catholic for your character too - things can get hairy in the town square.

There is no magic - this is a "real" world for all intents and purposes. You don't complete quests, you get XP for using your skills and actions like charming people, marrying, getting a kid, acquiring a public office (and all it's benefits), bribing people, pickpocketing, burglary, highway robbery, holding sermons, winning a court-case and so on. The list is long and there's lots more to do.

The game is ambitious in what it tries to represent. The world is full of people, other families which will compete with yours for riches and power. Bribing and shmoozing the powers that be is what will get you forward, as well as make things easier if you're being accused of a crime (like, say, bribery). Seeing someone else commit a crime will mark it in your evidence log. Gather enough evidence and you can take them to court or blackmail them if they've been picking on you and yours.

It's very much a stat-based game. If you're being prosecuted and your rhetoric sucks it's usually best to just shut up. Similarly, if you're the one accusing someone knowing that the defendant is guilty won't help you if he/she's more convincing than you. Or if the tribunals characters are made up of un-empathic gits. Or if the evidence you gathered sucks. Or... well, you get the idea.

Some might say the animations are clunky and awkward - I put that down to there being so many of them. In this case it's quantity over quality but the quantity and variety end up making for a richer experience - honestly, I don't care if the woman my character is kissing is currently standing a step above me, turning the animation of kissing into one where I bury my face in here ample cleavage. I mean, that's more of a "woohoo!" anyway. :)

Also, there's so much detail to the world anyway, I'll overlook the odd quirks and focus instead on the sun rising over the hills, illuminating the winding path that leads from my house down to the town square, drawing attention to Archibald Faust who's busy ripping off that noblewoman I've had the hots for. What a dick! Engarde!

I get very involved and it's fun.

So anyway, give this a look. It might require a bit of time to get into but I think it's one of those games which pays off dividends in the long run. I haven't been able to tear myself away.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: caster on April 08, 2008, 10:09:48 am
Great thread with a lot of good and or interesting ideas.
OP was very accurate and entertaining.

I can only agree with this idea of non/combat gameplay as essential to what a RPG is all about.
Lets just hope AoD will have many, many solutions and options in this style and that it will show people that RPGs are really not games in which you can kill enemies by using different skills. Sadly the most commercial RPGs were not anything else but that.

I can still remember playing Icewind Dale for the first time and choosing a bard precisly because i thought i could go through the game in a different way. Compose my own songs based on my adventures and play them in inns, use those same skills to make friends all over the gameworld, earn my living etc. etc.

What a disapointment.


One other thing, maybe not directly related to this discussion i would like to notice and suggest is non/lethal combat.

It is combat, yes, but it provides the player with similar extended options and consequences as non/combat options do.

Lets say you run into some, not so good, robber and manage to subdue him without killing him.
What do you do?
Once he is on the ground, begging for his life, option to start dialogue pops up.
If you dont feel like talking you can finish him off .
If you dont feel like killing absolutely everyone you come across you start the dialogue.

From here a great number of options can present itself.
You can let him go after scaring him and thus you would clean that road.
You can extract some important information from him... for example some murders were dumped on that robber but talking to him reveals that somebody else was pretending to be him and he saw where they went or has some clue about their identity.
You can strike a deal with him and lure some rich people to him and share the spoils, then later turn him in to authorities and collect raised bounty too.
You could discover that he has a poor family and that he did it all from desperation and decide to help them somehow.
And thats just for starters.


Another example would be getting into a fight with a guard or guards.
Or a fight in some tavern.

None of these would need to end in killing anybody or large numbers of buystanders too. And they could all have different effects and provide other oportunities.
Also if you get defeated there would be no need to reload the game because other events would folow that defeat.
Maybe someone would find you lying in the gutter and carry you somewhere to nurse and help you.
Maybe someone would feel gratefull if you started a fight because of them.
Maybe someone would steal your money and items while you were unconciouss thus forcing you to dig through slime of the city untill you find them and your property. With all the different paths that could take you.
Maybe that guard would build some healthy respect for you.


And so on and on. Web of possibilities grows like fields of possible futures in Muad Dib fried eyes. Ahem...

Anyway... even if this is combat it avoids that *killing solution* Vince talked about and provides a player with various choices and consequences, just like non combat gameplay does.

An ideal game, imho, would have healthy portions of non combat gameplay, non lethal combat options and some usual combat. We all love some action. It only turns into a problem when the whole game is based just on that, especially a RPG game, and there is nothing else to it.
There has been too many games like that and its high time we get something better. Where the hell is AOD already??

I just wanted to say that non lethal combat can provide us with many great options and consequences as non combat gameplay could, too. And reduce that *kill everything* stupid game design to something much more enjoyable, interesting and believable.

-edit-
fixed some typos


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on April 08, 2008, 12:16:58 pm
Good thought in general, but I'm not keen on the motivation here:
If you dont feel like talking you can finish him off .
If you dont feel like killing absolutely everyone you come across you start the dialogue.
I'd much rather see a game give the player strong reasons to want to kill / not kill an opponent, than to simply give the player an option and leave it to his whim. In most coherent situations, only a carefree psychopath makes such decisions based on what he feels like at the time. For anyone who cares about their future, practical considerations vastly outweigh gut-feeling - even in the absence of morality.

Of course leaving someone alive should often provide opportunities (/difficulties), but killing someone should certainly not be a dead-end. In most contexts, killing ought to bring serious long-term consequences - particularly if the person killed has some significance. It shouldn't be something a pragmatic player can decide on a whim.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Spacekungfuman on April 08, 2008, 01:31:50 pm
I haven't read the entire thread that closely, but I wanted to weigh in on the problem of developer time and procedurally generated dialog.

The way that I see it, there is no reason that 90% of the dialog in a game which offers viable non-combat options can't be procedurally generated.  The system I propose would involve assigning "dialog stats" and "quest stats" to NPCs, in the same way that combat stats are assigned now.  Essentially, dialog stats will determine how hard it is to convince an NPC of something (think of how the player's  Strength and the NPC's Defense are used in combat).  Quest stats will be fields allowing for randomly chosen desires/fears/motivations to be assigned to each NPC.  An example is the easiest way to demonstrate.

Player wants to get past the gate.  The gate has a guard.  The player has three immediate options:  1)  attack the guard, 2) hide until either the guard says something to himself, talks to someone else, or in some other way gives a clue about motivation (success is based on stealth ability), or 3) go talk to the guard.
When you talk to the guard, you will have a randomly selected set of options, including trying to bribe him, trick him into letting you pass, or intimidate him/appeal to authority.  With a sufficient skill check, you can succeed at any of these, but the skill checks are so high, that you will only succeed if you really outclass him, much like how you can one shot kill rad scorpions later in fallout, because you're so much stronger than them.  You will also always have some sort of small talk/feel out the situation option, the purpose of which is finding out the guard's motivation.  So he may say "I can't be bothered by you now, I'm looking for my lost dagger" or "You can't come in here.  Don't like it?  Tough, I don't like that I forgot my lunch either."  Better writers than me could obviously craft better options.  The key is that all of these possible lines are procedurally generated, so that no two guards will say the exact same thing twice.  The more frameworks, and objects included, the lower the chance dialog which just feels repetitive.

The real aim of the encounter is to obtain some information, either by overhearing, or asking.  In addition, once you initiate the fact finding with the guard, randomly generated NPC's could be placed on a bench talking about a problem the guard is having, or something similiar.  So, armed with knowledge about what the guard wants/fears, you have to set out to find it.  This will be accomplished by randomly generating NPCs who either have the item the guard wants, know a secret about the guard you could black mail him with, etc.  Ideally,  either multiple NPC's, each with a different possible "key" to pass the guard are generated, or multiple existing NPC's have the keys and accompanying random dialog assigned to them.  Of course, these NPC's probably won't just give the item/information up, and they will each have something THEY want.  Again, randomly generated.  In this way, an entire bargaining chain resulting in getting the key to get past the guard has been procedurally generated. 

Of course, it doesn't have to stop at bargaining.  Maybe Farmer Bob won't give you his sandwich unless you get revenge for stealing his pig/having sex with his daughter/building his fence on Bob's property.  So you have to go to the person Bob designates and work out a solution.  Of course, for a non-violent resolution to that, you'll probably have to do a favor for this person too.  This could result in a pretty interesting and unique quest line to get into the castle, and none of it has been custom made.

The key to this whole system is to have a large selection of possible tasks, each with multiple frameworks for the introductory language (since having a randomly picked dialog choice with randomly filled in information will keep things feeling more unique and less procedurally generated) and each with a variety of randomly chosen solutions.  Since we don't want to eliminate combat from the game entirely, we could even have randomly generated combat encounters like saving a daughter from kidnappers or recovering a stolen item from a local street tough thrown in.  Of course, even these encounters could have randomly generated non combat solutions (maybe sometimes the street tough's gang can be turned against him, and sometimes he's standing below a window you could push a flower pot out of to knock him out).

Another important point is that each of these randomly generated quest lines will actually have different possible solutions.  So maybe you don't have the skill set to complete the line for the sandwich, but you do have the skills to get the information to blackmail the guard.  A wide variety of stats could be incorporated into these randomly generated quest lines, to make sure that every skill in the game is actually useful.  When you get to short circuit the entire quest line because you have a high enough medicine skill to cure the sick kid instead of having to barter for the drugs, you'll really feel like you're character is interacting with the world, instead of ignoring his own skill set just because the linear quest design doesn't permit him to remember that he's the chief of surgery.  And unlike with conventional games, no hand written events are skipped by using skills as a short cut, so you don't have to worry about missing content.

I know this is all rough, and maybe a little bit confusing, but I think there is real merit here.  While implementing these random quest fragments is more time consuming than throwing together filler combat, the return on investment is MUCH better than time spent hand crafting dialog.  I think this system is preferable to abstract persuasion too, because it allows the player to use diplomacy in the same way for random encounters as key story dialogs, much like how a combat character uses the same combat engine to fight 30 rats as the king of the trolls.  I'd love to hear what people think of this idea.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: caster on April 09, 2008, 07:10:33 am
Good thought in general, but I'm not keen on the motivation here:
If you dont feel like talking you can finish him off .
If you dont feel like killing absolutely everyone you come across you start the dialogue.
I'd much rather see a game give the player strong reasons to want to kill / not kill an opponent, than to simply give the player an option and leave it to his whim. In most coherent situations, only a carefree psychopath makes such decisions based on what he feels like at the time. For anyone who cares about their future, practical considerations vastly outweigh gut-feeling - even in the absence of morality.

Of course leaving someone alive should often provide opportunities (/difficulties), but killing someone should certainly not be a dead-end. In most contexts, killing ought to bring serious long-term consequences - particularly if the person killed has some significance. It shouldn't be something a pragmatic player can decide on a whim.
Yes, of course . I completly agree with that.
That line was really not a true motivation. I was just hurrying along to provide examples such system could provide. And those were just basic ones.
I would like to see this system in games precisely because in such situations and in most fights killing is not as easy option as it is represented in games. It shouldnt be, as you said.

Why is it easy in games? Because you are not killing characters with any depth but one dimensional "enemies".
That has even become the true prime goal in most of the games - to kill specific NPCs/enemies. Not much else.

So for this system to truly work NPCs should have more depth and the whole game should be designed in a way that makes you think before you act. With short and long term consequences even killing off a particular NPC would cause made known, depending on situation, in a believable way to the player. Sometimes by providing him with pieces of info that would let him anticipate consequences (by thinking and using logic, yes!) and sometimes with just situations in which results of actions are quite clear on in themselves.

So if you decided not to spare that robber you would later on come across a small hut in the woods with mom hanging from the tree and kids drowned in a nerby pond. - and he did tell you about desperate situation of his family, right? What the hell did you expect, huh?
(I would use situations like this to kick that usual non-thinking player in the gonads from time to time)

And of course leaving somebody alive doesnt have to have positive consequences either.
Thats street brawler can come back with his friends. That bully psycho guard can get so ashamed that he will try to kill you when you least expect from some ambush. etc etc.

It really can grow to be a complex system because it only depends on imagination of designers and how far are they going to take it.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Oscar on April 10, 2008, 09:44:01 am
I haven't read the entire thread that closely, but I wanted to weigh in on the problem of developer time and procedurally generated dialog.

The way that I see it, there is no reason that 90% of the dialog in a game which offers viable non-combat options can't be procedurally generated.  The system I propose would involve assigning "dialog stats" and "quest stats" to NPCs, in the same way that combat stats are assigned now.  Essentially, dialog stats will determine how hard it is to convince an NPC of something (think of how the player's  Strength and the NPC's Defense are used in combat).  Quest stats will be fields allowing for randomly chosen desires/fears/motivations to be assigned to each NPC.  An example is the easiest way to demonstrate.

Player wants to get past the gate.  The gate has a guard.  The player has three immediate options:  1)  attack the guard, 2) hide until either the guard says something to himself, talks to someone else, or in some other way gives a clue about motivation (success is based on stealth ability), or 3) go talk to the guard.
When you talk to the guard, you will have a randomly selected set of options, including trying to bribe him, trick him into letting you pass, or intimidate him/appeal to authority.  With a sufficient skill check, you can succeed at any of these, but the skill checks are so high, that you will only succeed if you really outclass him, much like how you can one shot kill rad scorpions later in fallout, because you're so much stronger than them.  You will also always have some sort of small talk/feel out the situation option, the purpose of which is finding out the guard's motivation.  So he may say "I can't be bothered by you now, I'm looking for my lost dagger" or "You can't come in here.  Don't like it?  Tough, I don't like that I forgot my lunch either."  Better writers than me could obviously craft better options.  The key is that all of these possible lines are procedurally generated, so that no two guards will say the exact same thing twice.  The more frameworks, and objects included, the lower the chance dialog which just feels repetitive.

The real aim of the encounter is to obtain some information, either by overhearing, or asking.  In addition, once you initiate the fact finding with the guard, randomly generated NPC's could be placed on a bench talking about a problem the guard is having, or something similiar.  So, armed with knowledge about what the guard wants/fears, you have to set out to find it.  This will be accomplished by randomly generating NPCs who either have the item the guard wants, know a secret about the guard you could black mail him with, etc.  Ideally,  either multiple NPC's, each with a different possible "key" to pass the guard are generated, or multiple existing NPC's have the keys and accompanying random dialog assigned to them.  Of course, these NPC's probably won't just give the item/information up, and they will each have something THEY want.  Again, randomly generated.  In this way, an entire bargaining chain resulting in getting the key to get past the guard has been procedurally generated. 

Of course, it doesn't have to stop at bargaining.  Maybe Farmer Bob won't give you his sandwich unless you get revenge for stealing his pig/having sex with his daughter/building his fence on Bob's property.  So you have to go to the person Bob designates and work out a solution.  Of course, for a non-violent resolution to that, you'll probably have to do a favor for this person too.  This could result in a pretty interesting and unique quest line to get into the castle, and none of it has been custom made.

The key to this whole system is to have a large selection of possible tasks, each with multiple frameworks for the introductory language (since having a randomly picked dialog choice with randomly filled in information will keep things feeling more unique and less procedurally generated) and each with a variety of randomly chosen solutions.  Since we don't want to eliminate combat from the game entirely, we could even have randomly generated combat encounters like saving a daughter from kidnappers or recovering a stolen item from a local street tough thrown in.  Of course, even these encounters could have randomly generated non combat solutions (maybe sometimes the street tough's gang can be turned against him, and sometimes he's standing below a window you could push a flower pot out of to knock him out).

Another important point is that each of these randomly generated quest lines will actually have different possible solutions.  So maybe you don't have the skill set to complete the line for the sandwich, but you do have the skills to get the information to blackmail the guard.  A wide variety of stats could be incorporated into these randomly generated quest lines, to make sure that every skill in the game is actually useful.  When you get to short circuit the entire quest line because you have a high enough medicine skill to cure the sick kid instead of having to barter for the drugs, you'll really feel like you're character is interacting with the world, instead of ignoring his own skill set just because the linear quest design doesn't permit him to remember that he's the chief of surgery.  And unlike with conventional games, no hand written events are skipped by using skills as a short cut, so you don't have to worry about missing content.

I know this is all rough, and maybe a little bit confusing, but I think there is real merit here.  While implementing these random quest fragments is more time consuming than throwing together filler combat, the return on investment is MUCH better than time spent hand crafting dialog.  I think this system is preferable to abstract persuasion too, because it allows the player to use diplomacy in the same way for random encounters as key story dialogs, much like how a combat character uses the same combat engine to fight 30 rats as the king of the trolls.  I'd love to hear what people think of this idea.

It's an interesting idea. It would be nice to create some kind of prototype of this system. As always, I believe this kind of system would work better for a sandbox style RPG.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on April 11, 2008, 06:49:52 am
Like I said on the codex, I think Spacekungfuman's points are good - apart from the overuse of "random", "randomly" etc. A few final decisions might need to be made on a random basis, but as much of a generation process as possible ought to be based on solid game world factors. That's the only way a collection of generated responses/actions/objects/quests... are going to create a world with any coherence. A player can't reason in an incoherent world.

But perhaps Spacekungfuman only means "not-pre-determined" when he says "random[ly]". If so, he probably needs to think a bit more about how these "random" processes would work, and elaborate.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: caster on April 11, 2008, 08:44:34 am
Yeah, i was put off by those "random" words in there too.

Procedural generation of dialogue that folows specific rules and is influenced by character stats and personalities of NPCs , for example... could be a good thing if somebody could really make it.

As oscar said, thats something that at first look would fit better in some sort of sand box game but i think usual more focused RPG could benefit from it if it was implemented with measure for specific NPCs and some of those usual filler NPcs.

I wonder would it be possible to create some system that would create quests like that...?



Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Spacekungfuman on April 11, 2008, 09:30:32 am
When I said random, all I really meant was the choice made at the end (and some other specified portion) of the stat based decision tree.  Basically, at every step where what I called a "random" decision needs to be made, the system will generate an answer using an equation that factors in NPC stats, location, and the number of times that particular answer has been made, to avoid repetition.  So if there are 500 possible goal items some will be eliminated based on what the guard's stats are, so he can't get the pink tutu but it likely to get the dagger, drinks, or money.  Maybe this guard lives in a very pious town though, so the drinks are eliminated too, and the quest start for money will skew towards an option like needing it for a sick kid, vs to pay off gambling debt.  The only reason that I used the word random to describe this process is that you can't have it entirely determined by stats, otherwise you'll get the same outcome every time in any given situation, which kills replay.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: galsiah on April 11, 2008, 10:44:51 am
The only reason that I used the word random to describe this process is that you can't have it entirely determined by stats, otherwise you'll get the same outcome every time in any given situation, which kills replay.
That's true only where identical situations are likely. If enough factors are allowed to be dynamic, it's quite possible to have an entirely deterministic solution that'll never repeat in practice. Certainly you can't have everything determined by static stats/factors if you want variety - but that's fine, since you'll be aiming to construct a world that's as responsive/dynamic as possible anyway.

For NPCs, all that's really necessary is to give them some autonomy, quite a few stats, and medium/long-term responses to their interactions. Bumping into an NPC with exactly the same attributes, skills, health, knowledge, mood, position, finances, desires... is never going to happen, so it couldn't matter less that a deterministic algorithm would select the same response in all such situations.

In any case, I'd say that the repetition problem you outline is exposing a more fundamental flaw: the problem isn't that the algorithm spits out repetitious results in identical situations; rather the problem is that you're allowing identical situations to occur at all. Two real situations are never going to be anywhere close to identical. If two of the situations in your game are considered identical by such an algorithm, it's either a particularly dull world or a needlessly blind algorithm.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vahha on May 14, 2010, 01:47:59 pm
A truly great article. Sorry for necroposting, but this one is worth praise.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: zenbitz on January 13, 2011, 07:15:31 pm
I am poking this thread because it's so full of awesome.   Possibly the best thread on RPG game design on the internet.



Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: GTFO on February 19, 2011, 06:28:07 pm
It's funny that this thread has been bumped to the front page, as I was thinking to myself the other day if we could have a RPG without combat. Additionally, also wondering if we can still have different C&C while at it.

One thing I would like to see in RPGs is a cross-over with adventure games. In my opinion that would make gameplay more interesting while adding alternatives to combat.
Although this is something that probably won't please all audiences.

In AoD, for example, you can make acid and use it on locks, but the way I see it, that's less about alchemy and more about providing alternative solutions.
Instead of the player clicking on the lock/door/etc and a drop-down menu showing up a list of options, why not make things more "adventurish" by choosing an item from your inventory and clicking on the lock.
Some (offtopic) C&C for it:
(i) Picklock tools: perfect, you can open the lock, loot, and close it back with no traces of theft. You'll be long gone.
(ii) Acid: you shall loot and not be heard. Suspicion may arise at a given moment in time.
(iii) Crowbar/sword: the noise may draw attention and you may end up in jail for some time, have to pay a fine, and gain the reputation of thief... all of this as opposed to the traditional fight to the death or game over. Not all is bad with this, you may meet up someone interesting when in jail, which may open another side quest. The only problem with this unsuccessful (iii) option is that it works only once or twice per city. But it still beats the approach in current games.

Quote
You are standing in front of a fortress and dying to get inside because that's where all the cool kids are. There is a gate, but it's guarded. You need a pass to enter.
Some options implemented in a point-and-click way:
- during nighttime, place a coin trail leading to behind the bush, use rock on bush to attract attention, execute ambush
- <use> <metal cross> <with> <rope>, <use> <climbing rope> <with> <wall> (*)
- <use> <gold> <with> <guard> and the appropriate dialog unfolds
Of course the appropriate skill checks apply.

(*) this could be seen as a generalization of the alchemy process: combining items. The same could be done with chemical reagents, but if you don't know the recipe the player would very likely just lose both reagents to make something useless.

This same principle could be applied to dialogs with NPCs. You would interact with an NPC with an item and an appropriate dialog would start.
In FO1 they had implemented the "ask about" button in dialogs where you would type a word. It has been ages since I played FO1, so I can't really remember if it worked as intended or not. At least I don't recall it being necessary to achieve goals.

I think this point-and-click approach, as opposed to pure dialog option selection, gives more interactivity to the user by adding a new mini-game, besides the combat mini-game. And taking adventure games into consideration, I think it's safe to say it's a proven and entertaining one by the way.
For the record: I'm not advocating the use of other mini-games like pick-lock games or others. Maybe the use of the term mini-game is not the best word.




On another note, what type of C&C are desired in a game?
Quote
You are standing in front of a fortress and dying to get inside because that's where all the cool kids are. There is a gate, but it's guarded. You need a pass to enter. Your options are:

- knock some sense into the guards with your war hammer and go inside.
(1) - persuade the guards to let you in: Hi there! I'm with the Tavern Food & Service Inspection Agency. We've heard rumors that you have rats running around in every cellar. Well, it's fucking better be a misunderstanding because if I see a single rodent-looking motherfucker - which includes this rat-faced bastard over there - I'm shutting this evil fortress down TONIGHT! Now open that fucking door already!
(2) - ask around about the pass, find out who has one, and either steal it or trade it for something.
- create a diversion - Look behind you, a three-headed monkey! - and sneak inside. Or hire some thugs to attack the guards and while the guards are busy breaking some heads, sneak inside.
- wall-climbing text-adventures are fun and very ninja-like: your dagger blade snaps with a loud noise and you plummet to your death cursing stupid non-combat gameplay.
(3) - impersonate an officer - Atten-hut! Is that how you salute an officer of the watch, swine? Stop eyeballing me! You're not worthy to look your superiors in the eye. Stand straight, eyes forward! What is the name of your commanding officer?
- bribe your way in.
- forge a fake pass using your knowledge of what a real pass looks like and skills (lore, literacy, scribing, etc)
In this case there are different choices for accomplishing the same objective. But are the consequences of a successful check all the same? It would be interesting to have:
(1) you are indeed successful, but on the next day they found out they were fooled and they end up finding you on a local inn
(2) someone confronts you with your nosiness, you either bribe, or kill, or do nothing and have a nasty surprise latter
(3) some days latter your hear rumors at the inn about an imposter and that the local authority is giving a reward on reliable info on this, because pretending to be authority is a serious crime. If the player didn't wear proper "makeup" (fake hair, beard) he may be at risk if he doesn't lay low for a while, maybe even travel to another city; if he goes through the main gates in plain sight, he ends up caught. If the player did wear proper makeup, he may even plant evidence on someone and collect the reward. This proper makeup could be implement as a skill check: (a) stat above 65: success; (b) stat between 65-50: success that comes to haunt you latter; (c) less than 50: failure on the spot.




BTW, don't pay attention to the structure of my comment. I just wrote some thoughts in response to some things that I read.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Vince on February 20, 2011, 10:36:45 am
In this case there are different choices for accomplishing the same objective. But are the consequences of a successful check all the same?
The best way to provide meaningful consequences for different options is via connecting quests.

For example, in our Thieves Guild questline the first quest is to find a new smuggling route. Naturally, you get quite a few options. Pick one, do what you have to do to get it done, and the quest is completed, but your choice isn't forgotten. In the third quest you have to take something out of the city, something that gets everyone's attention and brings in a lot of heat, and you'd have to rely on the choices made in the first quest.



Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Hiver on February 20, 2011, 11:04:08 am
Thats what i miss the most in quest design in games.
Not a cosmetic consequence of your deed in a sense that someone will mention it or it will affect your stats or some morale meter or, at the most, influence some NPC to be friendly or not later on - but something that you will actively use later on, something that will change your path or expand a specific situation with meaningful, appropriate consequences.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: GTFO on February 20, 2011, 11:27:58 am
That's music to my ears  :approve:


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Gareth on February 20, 2011, 02:15:24 pm
That is, indeed, awesome.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Wrath of Dagon on February 20, 2011, 03:59:40 pm
Yeah, preaching to the choir.


Title: Re: Non-Combat Gameplay: Myths & Reality
Post by: Hiver on February 20, 2011, 04:08:41 pm
Thats the best preaching you can give.

Lay it on brother!