Japanese-style computer-rpg mechanics? [ot?]

[afray]

First off, I realise this may be out of your area of expertise, but thought I'd ask anyway.  :-)

I'm a video games developer who's trying to develop a new computer-rpg as a side project.  I haven't played a lot of table-top gaming, but there's a lot of info on western table-top rpgs and their mechanics.  However, this style seems more suited to the attribute/skill style.  

I've played through a couple of japanese computer-rpgs and they have an interesting attribute/natural atribute approach.  Disgaea, for instance, gives you the standard western rpg attributes (hp, sp[mana, special], atk, spo, res, etc.) but also a percentage "natural" rating for each attribute.  When you level up, each stat increases in proportion to their natural ability.  So everyone starts off pretty equal, but their natural ratings make them diverge quickly.  

This is fundamentally different to most table-top games because each stat increases as you level up, eventually ending with a lvl30 warrior character typcially having around 1000hp, 800atk, etc.  

It also means that your initial class choice is pretty much what you're stuck with, and a high-level theif will look like pretty much any other high-level theif.  In Disgaea there's a very powerful system for creating multi-class characters over time, but I'm not really interested in that at the moment.

I'm wondering how this would be applied in combat.  A straight comparison wouldn't seem to work, as in-game a few levels difference can mean 100 points of atk, but you *can* take someone higher than you.  

Does anyone have any experience of combat in this type of system, or know any good web resources?

Thanks for putting up with my OT stylings!

Cheers,
Andy.

[Bankuei]

Hi Andy,

If you've decided to use a system where characters can infinitely level up, there are definite issues that can crop up.  Many games choose to either cap the maximum power levels, or have areas where the game rises to match your effectiveness(such as Disgaea's Item Worlds).  

Probably the -MOST- useful information you're going to find online is going to come from other videogames.  I'd try taking a look at gamefaqs.com and check out some of the more indepth FAQs that often will break out the exact mathmatical formulas.  A good example is this:

http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/final_fantasy_x_stats.txt

Chris

[afray]

No worries about the infinite levels -- it's essentially a huge random dungeon anyway, and *very* combat-centric.  It's more of an experiment than a practical game, although we can dream. :-)

That link was great, it's exactly what I needed, but you can't link directly to gamefaq faqs.  You have to link to the game page, and say which faq you refer to.  Found it anyway, though.

Cheers,

[Bankuei]

Oh yeah,

And, for random dungeon love, do check out Nethack:

http://www.nethack.org/

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

I'm wondering how this would be applied in combat.  A straight comparison wouldn't seem to work, as in-game a few levels difference can mean 100 points of atk, but you *can* take someone higher than you.  

Does anyone have any experience of combat in this type of system, or know any good web resources?

I think if you restated the question it would help. For example, with regards to the question about combat (it is a question, isn't it?), do you mean that being able to take somebody with 100 points of atk difference is something that a system like Disgaea does, or is it a design goal that you have?

And what sort of comments are you looking for from people who may have experience with this sort of system? How to implement it? How to limit it? How to make it work in combat?

What are your design goals that you're trying to get with such a system?

Then, I'd add, have you considered something more interesting from tabletop? Or, rather, from a TT player's perspective like mine, I've always wondered why CRPGs don't have more complicated systems than they do. It's a strange irony that CRPG systems are often far, far simpler than TT systems (except perhaps in the execution of the math), when computers could handle much, much more interesting modeling.

Mike

[afray]

I think if you restated the question it would help. For example, with regards to the question about combat (it is a question, isn't it?), do you mean that being able to take somebody with 100 points of atk difference is something that a system like Disgaea does, or is it a design goal that you have?  

Not so much 100 points of attk diff, but one or 2 levels -- which, on high levels, in disgaea, can around 100 attk points (or more!).
I want my system to have infinite levels, and allow players to compete to within +3ish levels of themselves.  

And what sort of comments are you looking for from people who may have experience with this sort of system? How to implement it? How to limit it? How to make it work in combat?

What are your design goals that you're trying to get with such a system? [\quote] (<< hmm, I can't get this to parse, but the others will.  why?)

World-on-a-plate-style, a few lines of maths showing how a real-world system like this works for simple physical combat.  Otherwise, pointers on balancing and resolving simple physical combat.

This is more of an experiment for me, tyring to learn what I don't already know.  There's lots of websites on tt mechanics and design, but not so many on this type, which seems to be exclusive to crpgs.  

Then, I'd add, have you considered something more interesting from tabletop? Or, rather, from a TT player's perspective like mine, I've always wondered why CRPGs don't have more complicated systems than they do. It's a strange irony that CRPG systems are often far, far simpler than TT systems (except perhaps in the execution of the math), when computers could handle much, much more interesting modeling.

Mike

Maybe they're not more complex because a few people still have to design and balance these systems, which can get exponentially harder the more complex a system is.  My limited experience of comerical game design is a large management game, where we had to balance the economy with a very big consumer AI.  It was not fun, and it didn't *actually* work, tbh. :-)

Cheers,
Andy.

[Larry L.]

Or, rather, from a TT player's perspective like mine, I've always wondered why CRPGs don't have more complicated systems than they do. It's a strange irony that CRPG systems are often far, far simpler than TT systems (except perhaps in the execution of the math), when computers could handle much, much more interesting modeling.

I'm always perplexed by this untapped area in CRPGs, too. I'm a firm believer that computers are where the future of the Simulationist agenda is at.

Here's my understanding of the "Creative Agenda" of Japanese console RPGs: Originally, games like Ultima & Wizardry, themselves trying to emulate face-to-face D&D, took the Japanese market by storm. Future game designers, exposed to roleplaying only through these games, did not make any attempt to be "like" a table-top game. Instead, they latched onto the process of killing monsters, getting XP and loot, and gaining levels. Thus console RPGs like the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series are drifted beyond gamism into what is effectively a cool-looking spreadsheet interface with fate resolution and elaborate railroad plots. (I don't know that CRPGs actually have points of contact, or I'd be tempted to call them "ultra-pervy.") Therefore, aside from historical origin, such games have become a distinct creative discipline separate from what we call RPGs. There's no social contract, no shared imagination space, none of that.

There have, however, been no shortage of a distict subgenre of fantasy heartbreaker inspired by CRPG mechanics and level-progression. These are usually homebrew attempts by novice gamers who were turned on to RPGs by Final Fantasy. I have not, in my experience, ever encountered one of these which might be considered a good design, or for that matter able to find regular players. The most famous published attempt, Zak McCraken's Synnibar, is in fact something of a target of derision in certain gamer circles. (But puh-lease let's not start a Synnibar bashfest.)

All of which is my long way of saying that I don't see how this thread is relevant at the Forge.

[Mike Holmes]

Oh, I'd say that the relevance is that I think that one could, in theory, create a fun and functional game of this sort. For example, an actual case would be not to look at the failed Synnibar, but at Sen-Zar (http://www.senzar.com/). That game goes in much the same direction, but seems to be much more functional. A "munchkin's" paradise, to be sure, but that seems to actually have been a goal of the design.

I'm not saying that it would be for everyone, but I could see a system like this working for a tabletop game. Especially if you used what I fancifully term CARP, Computer Aided Role-Playing. That is, where each player has a computer in front of them, but it's only used for chargen, computation, and record-keeping.

Anyhow, I think that as long as it's speculatively possible, it's worth at least discussing. Just my opinion.



Back to Adam's needs - if I read you correctly, your goals are to have a system with the "natural" ratings which produces characters that, when within three levels of each other, can compete. I assume you want a curve? Something like the following odds for the weaker character to win:

Same level = 40% to 50% chance to win
1 Level lower = 30% to 40% chance to win
2 Levels lower = 15% to 30% chance to win
3 Levels lower = 2% to 15% chance to win
4 or more Levels lower = Less than 2% chance to win

Is that it? Then you're looking for the math that would make this come out right? I'm assuming a standard IGO/UGO round system, or the typical CRPG model where it's based on attack times and such?

Before diving in, I assume that you're familiar with the algorithms by which this is done in most CRPGS? Or are you completely new to this sort of thing?

Also

[contracycle]

Maybe they're not more complex because a few people still have to design and balance these systems, which can get exponentially harder the more complex a system is.  My limited experience of comerical game design is a large management game, where we had to balance the economy with a very big consumer AI.  It was not fun, and it didn't *actually* work, tbh. :-)

I strongly disagree, not least becuase I used to write die-rolling programmes to balance my die mechanics and detect any results I had not expected.  In this manner I could produce the results of many millions of rolls that I would simply have been unable to do in manually.

I don't think that what Mike was driving at was complexity in terms of the quantity of detail or decision, but rather on the thinking behind the stats and the game reality they seek to model.  It is this aspect, in CRPG, which is still crude and simplistic, IMO.  What we do see in CRPG is an increase in complexity, but not an increase in sophistication.

thus I am still a little confused as to what your question is exactly.  If you wanted proposals for algorithms that use a device like this "natural" score, that should be easy enough to suck out of our thumbs.  I'm pretty cojnfident there are already some existing systems that distinguish between inherent Talent and learned Skill.

One system that could certainly be used in this way is L5R's "roll and keep system", which works by establishing a number of dice to be rolled, and then a subset of those (the highest) to be counted towards the roll total.  So the notaition "5k3" means "roll five dice keep the highest three".  Obviously, you could manipulate acquisition of dice rolled and dice kept to reflect the influence of natural talent.

One such system I could propose off the top of my head is as follows: roll Talent plus Skill where Talent is a fixed number and Skill is a number of dice, so something like X + 3D6.  Depending on your scaling of the range of X in relation to the rolled dice, you could again produce the Talent effect, I think.

To take the levels of competition issue, Conspiracy X has a semi-random system to achieve a similar goal.  This establishes that the raw ability ratings of each character are compared to determine the difficulty of the task to be rolled, with automatic success or failure applying for great degrees of difference.  This means only a subset of conflicts are rolled, those that remain indeterminate.  We descroibe this system as one that mixes Karma (comparison of absolute values) and Fortune (randomly generated output).

There is a huge variety of mechanical designs in RPG, even if the bulk of printed products uses a rather staid convention.  It might be worth your while picking up a few of the small press games to see how weird these can be.

[afray]

Maybe they're not more complex because a few people still have to design and balance these systems, which can get exponentially harder the more complex a system is.  My limited experience of comerical game design is a large management game, where we had to balance the economy with a very big consumer AI.  It was not fun, and it didn't *actually* work, tbh. :-)

I strongly disagree, not least becuase I used to write die-rolling programmes to balance my die mechanics and detect any results I had not expected.  In this manner I could produce the results of many millions of rolls that I would simply have been unable to do in manually.

I don't think that what Mike was driving at was complexity in terms of the quantity of detail or decision, but rather on the thinking behind the stats and the game reality they seek to model.  It is this aspect, in CRPG, which is still crude and simplistic, IMO.  What we do see in CRPG is an increase in complexity, but not an increase in sophistication.

Your dice-rollers are exactly how far I've got at the moment, and it's done its job in detecting the unbalance I'm trying to fix.  Video game designers use a lot of prototyping to make sure their system is balanced, but there are other limiting factors, too.  

The video game industry is publisher-lead, meaning that publishers supply the money to us developers, and they have the final say when it comes to design.  They're lead by margins and profits, which can be *huge* (the latest GTA game mad £60m in one month, in the UK when it came out >_<), so they naturally want easy-to-play large-demographic games.  One side effect of this is that we in the west only get a subset of the best japanese CRPGs.  Another (and maybe this is good design practice) is that overly-complex systems aren't allowed by publishers because it alienates non-hardcore players, hence lowering profits.  I say it's good design practice, because for all the realism you could model in a crpg, it must still be intuitive to the player.  He must be able to know that he's got a chance against this monster even if he doesn't know the wind velocity or the month when these monsters are on heat.  Simple (-ish, it's still more than a few dice rolls and modifers, check out the FFX stats page linked above) stat comparison gives us this.  And at the end of the day, many of these games are brilliantly fun as-is:  See Disgaea, Phantom Brave, Knights of the Old Republic, or Golden Sun.  

So there. :-)

There are more complex games, but they leave behind other elements of RPGs and have morphed into other genres.  First-person shooters, for instance, are incredibly complex when it comes to enemy AI and weapon damage, but it's all intuitive.

And thanks for everyone's help.  You've given me lots of hints and lots to chew on. :-)

Cheers,
Andy.

[contracycle]

I am aware of the problems related to the industry being publisher led (and indeed, these are problems inherent to Capitalism).  But what you have mentioned here is one of the reason many games are actually quite poor IMO: intuition counters mastery.

I do understand that you want the player to be able to play as quickly as possible once they get the disk out of the wrapper.  But that also means the system isnquite opaque, unless your manual is very detailed - and the trend appears to be away from that.  But IME, if you want to grab *and keep* players, you need to give them some way to learn, understand your algorithm and therefore make informed, rather than inuitive, choices.

You see, I specifically did not mention realism anywhere.  Part of what I was trying to get at is that yes, some games do have matehmatically complex, realistic models of the game environment.  But thats actually easy - just the borrowing of formulae from physics.

What I was trying to0 get at, in terms of designing your game systems to govern character interactions, is that increased realism is not the grail, and inution is not the counterpoint to a representative system.

[afray]

I'm not sure if I understand what you're getting at.

Why don't crpgs have complex stat calculations?  The FFX stat page linked to above has damage calculations that involve powers and division.  You couldn't do that by hand.

Why don't crpgs have more stats to simulate more factors?  Disgaea has many hidden stats, including master/pupil skil adoption, spell and item leveling, promotions, buyer/seller ranks, team attack percentages, attack height difference, geosquares, etc, that all go far beyond what you can "see" in the atk/spd/res stats, but those stats still give you a good idea of your chances in combat.  However complex your background stuff is, it still has to be abled to be grasped by an advanced player, or not surprise a novice player with unexpected results.  Disgaea does this *brilliantly*, and it's not easy.

As far as innovation and difficulty in video games go, you can blame the suits.  Many video game designers (and I suspect tt rpg designers) fall into the pit of "designing games for themselves."  This may not sound like a bad thing, but you can quickly loose sight of the novice or newb's point of view.  While the whole game shouldn't be overly simplistic, There should be a learning curve, and hence your system has to be introduced slowly.  

In shooters you get one weapon at a time, so you don't get overwhelmed.  In Disgaea whole aspects of the combat are introduced one-at-a-time, like the geopanels not featuring for a while.  And when it comes to them, you can use them fully and gain a lot, or leave it and play normally.  

All RPGs have a natural learning curve with the leveling, but this has to be augmented sometimes.

[Selene Tan]

I think what contracycle is trying to say is that many attempts to make games more intuitive also prevent the players from making informed decisions. i.e., games will "hide the numbers" from the players to make things simpler, but then the player's decisions will basically be random guesses because there's not enough feedback.

Meanwhile, I'm still confused as to what you want out of this thread. Are you just fishing for ideas?

[contracycle]

We are clearly talking past each other yes.

Let me try this angle: why do you have levelling at all?

I know its a stock staple of the genre, but thats part of the problem, it IS a stock staple and whether or not is being used appropriately or intelligently is open to doubt.

It is that kind of thinking which I suggest needs to be re-examined.  What does levelling do for your players experience of play, and why have you chosen that aspect to be part of your game?

[Mike Holmes]

In any case, you mention stuff that is both complex and intuitive. Why would you assume that more complexity would have to be less intuitive if that's what you want? You seem to assume that any complexity we can add would automatically become unplayable.

We're actually quite a lot better at design than you seem to think.

For example, to add to Contracycle's comment about leveling, what about detailed damage? One thing that's always boggled me is why damage is always doled out as Hit Points making it a very simple resource management part of gameplay. Why not include hit locations and various effects of damage to different locations? My god, how well would a game sell if your character might suddenly have a limp?

Is this hard to understand or counterintuitive? Hardly. Instead of saying "1237 Points of Damage!" wouldn't it be more intuitive to have the display show that the character's arm is broken? Imagine how much more interesting the game-play of healing becomes if you have to decide which wound to heal up. Instead of just taking a potion and getting back a lump sum of HP.

And I can go on and on and on with ideas like this for how to make a CRPG more complicated and interesting without making it one iota harder to grasp. In fact I can make them easier to grasp at the same time. The fact that CRPG designers haven't figured any of this out is beyond me.

We don't do a lot of this stuff in TTRPGs because, as you note, the math is far too complicated to do by hand. Oh, we want to do it, we just can't. With a CRPG you could. But you don't. I don't get it.

Mike