Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Big World, Small Dungeon: Does Size Matter in RPGs?
Wizardy: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. Eye of the Beholder. Ultima Underworld. Dungeon Master. These were computer fantasy role-playing games that used a single underground complex as the game area. Granted, the dungeon was many, many levels deep. And often pretty intensely detailed (compared to other RPGs of the same time, which had greater scope).
Even Diablo kinda-sorta had one dungeon, but it was randomly generated each time, and had four different entrances, so its harder to call it a "single-dungeon" experience.
Nowadays - with the exception of the best-selling indie RPGs "Cute Knight" and "Fastcrawl" (both with randomly generated dungeons and replayability - so I'm not sure they count), most commercial RPGs are sprawling affairs, taking place over a wide geographical area. There's lots of changes of scenery, lots of content, lots of people to see and talk to (once). This isn't a new, modern invention, by any stretch. Ultima started the trend, giving the player a whole world to explore. Console RPGs, inspired (at least indirectly) by Ultima III, tend to emphasize overland movement and exploration across many different towns. Each of which seems to have progressively better equipment for sale as you move further from your starting city.
I even remember back in the day a brief stage where games would brag about their world size. I saw ads that actually listed how many square miles the world included. Nevermind the fact that every tile was supposed to represent a square mile that you could traverse in a quarter-second, and a thousand miles of boring random battles doesn't exactly make for a good game.
The idea of an entire game taking place inside a single dungeon is almost alien to me now. But that never seemed to bother me when I was playing Ultima Underworld or Eye of the Beholder II in the early 90's. And I do not remember those games being particularly short. I mean, 8 levels of dungeon... I'd go through that much in about 2 hours in a game like Oblivion. It's been a long time since I fully played through those games, so I don't recall why those claustraphobic experiences still seemed to have plenty of playability to them. They weren't even turn-based... even EoB2 had timed-turns that lasted only about 4 seconds each.
In theory (based upon dim memories - we're talking over a decade here!), the experiences of those games made up for lack of scope with a wealth of detail. Lots of puzzles and interesting challenges. They packed in stuff to explore and do as well as fight. In some cases, you had to backtrack - like in an adventure game, a mystery in room 3 might only be solved by finding a clue in room 10 and a necessary tool in room 26. I don't remember it being excessive, but I do remember territory getting revisited.
From a development perspective, adding detail and variations to content seems to be a bit cheaper than creating all-new content. Packing a single town with more - and more interesting - people and making more buildings active and capable of being explored seems to me like it might be less expensive than creating a whole new town, unless you are simply cloning visuals and geometry.
But how would a major roleplaying game be received by today's audience if, like Ultima Underworld, it included only a single dungeon (maybe with a single Tristam-like town to visit between forays)? Would todays roleplaying gamer accept depth as an acceptable substitute for scope? Would they simply open up an Internet walkthrough in one window, the game in the other, and blitz through an Eye of the Beholder II in a matter of five hours, and then go and complain on forums about how short and easy it was?
Yes, there's a reason I'm curious. No, I'm not making a single-dungeon RPG, though I did scope the design down a couple of months ago to something I thought would be far easier to manage. Is that a concept that became extinct due to natural evolution of inferior games, or simply a lost tradition in the push of marketers who took the cry that more and bigger is always better?
(Vaguely) related wordstuffs:
* Wandering Monsters and Random Encounters
* Game Moment #9: Ultima Underworld
* The Evolution of Computer RPGs
* No Design Survives Contact With the Players!
* Kitchen Sink Game Design and Magic: The Gathering
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Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:26 AM (Permalink)
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I personally would love a more detailed single dungeon. I played the first Wizardrys and Ultimas as well. I remember taking out my graph paper and mapping the dungeons out, and placing symbols for certain important things such as teleporters and levers and such.
While I did find Oblivion entertaining, all the dungeons looked basically the same. Not much variety. In a word, unnoteworthy.
If a single dungeon was intelligent in design, with a variety of challenging encounters, puzzles and locations, then I'd be hooked.
While I did find Oblivion entertaining, all the dungeons looked basically the same. Not much variety. In a word, unnoteworthy.
If a single dungeon was intelligent in design, with a variety of challenging encounters, puzzles and locations, then I'd be hooked.
# posted by 
: April 04, 2007 11:46 AM
: April 04, 2007 11:46 AM
A single randomly or semi-randomly (preferably the second, since it still allows special levels to be thrown in like "the medusa level") are at least as good but just harder to market, as long as you handle them right. I would count Rogue-like games (such as Nethack) in general as "doing this right", because they give a huge scope from square one, use the death thing to both add real tension and make you repeat the thing, it's nonlinear even for a randomly generated dungeon (you don't even have to do what the RNG says with the right items, rather less some arbitrary author) and made sure the whole thing is fun rather than just the end. If you stuck the average modern RPG into one huge dungeon, though, it'd be a joke. They rely on being linear, haven't got enough tension, and tend to fall back on letting their story carry them the half the time where it isn't fun--you just can't pull off a reasonable story in one dungeon. They don't have enough scope and show no signs of being even capable of attaining it if you told the designers that was the goal. Plus seeing the same walls for the whole game is boring; high graphics standards means you can't just pull off "representative" anything, and switching the building style every five levels is silly as well. Mostly, they've just got too many eggs in the scale basket to pull it off without it, and more importantly so do their marketers and the money.
I think that games that take place in one dungeon can be and are fun, if done right, but they represent a very different type of game which has to be treated as such--maybe not a different genre, but somewhat close. The only thing sillier than a food system like Nethack's in a globe-trotting modern RPG would be a "food items heal you" system in Nethack, and there's simply a huge difference between designing a game where almost all control is in the designer's hands (even if you randomly generate them this is really the case in modern games) and a game that can turn out anything. Neither is objectively, definitely better when done right, but one definitely sells better and is more familiar to devs, so you won't see much of the other in big names in the future.
I think that games that take place in one dungeon can be and are fun, if done right, but they represent a very different type of game which has to be treated as such--maybe not a different genre, but somewhat close. The only thing sillier than a food system like Nethack's in a globe-trotting modern RPG would be a "food items heal you" system in Nethack, and there's simply a huge difference between designing a game where almost all control is in the designer's hands (even if you randomly generate them this is really the case in modern games) and a game that can turn out anything. Neither is objectively, definitely better when done right, but one definitely sells better and is more familiar to devs, so you won't see much of the other in big names in the future.
# posted by : April 04, 2007 2:25 PM
: April 04, 2007 2:25 PM
You also have to ask yourself just how much is nostaligia? I sometimes find that games I remember as being great were simply great for their time. We have gotten used to more these days, more everything, so it seems almost mundane to us now, but I still think we'd notice its absence. Personally, I love exploring in RPGs, the Indiana Jones thing, finding lost temples and scraps of lore about forgotten civilizations. Hence, my RPG is going to have plenty of diverse environments to explore. Now, hopefully I can make enough fun content for those regions!
Fate is the most recent single-dungeon RPG I know of. Graphical Diablo-style Rogue (well, not the class Rogue, the game).
Loonyland: Titan Tunnels (possibly Loonyland: Outcast) is the next upcoming single-dungeon RPG that will roxorz all known boxorz. And forget changing styles every 5 levels, I plan to have it randomly pick styles every level, so even the same level might be a different dungeon type next time! And even worse, I'm going to include snowy pine forests as one of the options. I think I'll include some sort of "What is going on down here!?" message when you first hit one of those.
I'm kind of intrigued by going the slightly different route of the more recent Angbands - a simple overworld links a bunch of shorter dungeons, so what would be levels 1-5 are in one mini-dungeon, then 6-12 might be another, and so on. It's a slight concession to worldliness while at heart being the same old dungeon crawl. But since one big dungeon is easier, I'll probably go with that.
Loonyland: Titan Tunnels (possibly Loonyland: Outcast) is the next upcoming single-dungeon RPG that will roxorz all known boxorz. And forget changing styles every 5 levels, I plan to have it randomly pick styles every level, so even the same level might be a different dungeon type next time! And even worse, I'm going to include snowy pine forests as one of the options. I think I'll include some sort of "What is going on down here!?" message when you first hit one of those.
I'm kind of intrigued by going the slightly different route of the more recent Angbands - a simple overworld links a bunch of shorter dungeons, so what would be levels 1-5 are in one mini-dungeon, then 6-12 might be another, and so on. It's a slight concession to worldliness while at heart being the same old dungeon crawl. But since one big dungeon is easier, I'll probably go with that.
I, like gareth, think that this might be partly nostalgia. Diablo was really one dungeon (though it did change styles a few times). Diablo II attempted to create more diversity including outdoor environments. I suspect this was partially to do with extending the size of a dungeon just makes it feel more of a grind. Changing landscape helps alleviate this, the new location makes the game feel more fresh. Dungeon Siege also did this, despite the title.
I get the reuse being cheaper to the developer (hopefully meaning that the money/time can be invested in other bits of the game) and I suspect you can find a balance between trying to insure that your dungeon remains interesting while not diverging the feel overly.
As for backtracking and such many games, such as Oblivion, do this on a much larger scale. The standard "find out about this, then travel to this city to talk to her, then kill him in this city to get item A to finish the quest".
So I'm not convinced about the one dungeon game now-a-days; I think we gamers have just become too picky.
I get the reuse being cheaper to the developer (hopefully meaning that the money/time can be invested in other bits of the game) and I suspect you can find a balance between trying to insure that your dungeon remains interesting while not diverging the feel overly.
As for backtracking and such many games, such as Oblivion, do this on a much larger scale. The standard "find out about this, then travel to this city to talk to her, then kill him in this city to get item A to finish the quest".
So I'm not convinced about the one dungeon game now-a-days; I think we gamers have just become too picky.
The random dungeon generation helps offset the limitation of the single dungeon, especially in terms of replayability, but I think that random dungeons lack some of that detail I was talking about - the very specifically placed stuff - the puzzles and craft of a human designer. Although I've seen too many levels (especially in FPS games) that look like they could have been set up by a machine. And admittedly, a semi-random dungeon could have the best of all worlds. And all too often (more often in FPS games).
I worry that nostalgia might be a part of it... maybe too big a part of it. It's hard for me to decide. I enjoy being all retro and playing older games, and I'm not one who gets turned off (well, too often) by antiquated graphics.
I actually played a few minutes of Ultima Underworld last night to see if I could remember the deal with it. Gotta admit - I didn't get very far. Each of the levels are pretty huge - even if they didn't have slow-downs like locked doors, monsters, and submerged passages, it would take a while to run from one end to the other. And you have to bring up a separate automap screen - you can't just run along the automap in 2D like you do in many games today.
Maybe that's where the linearity factor comes in, like you say, Brickman. The dungeons in these older games are mazes. They are convoluted and confusing. Probably not a good thing, especially when making the jump to 3D. But is boringly linear dungeons with little side-rooms that you HAVE to go into to find the key to the end of the level really the answer?
Some really fascinating thoughts here, folks. Thanks!
I worry that nostalgia might be a part of it... maybe too big a part of it. It's hard for me to decide. I enjoy being all retro and playing older games, and I'm not one who gets turned off (well, too often) by antiquated graphics.
I actually played a few minutes of Ultima Underworld last night to see if I could remember the deal with it. Gotta admit - I didn't get very far. Each of the levels are pretty huge - even if they didn't have slow-downs like locked doors, monsters, and submerged passages, it would take a while to run from one end to the other. And you have to bring up a separate automap screen - you can't just run along the automap in 2D like you do in many games today.
Maybe that's where the linearity factor comes in, like you say, Brickman. The dungeons in these older games are mazes. They are convoluted and confusing. Probably not a good thing, especially when making the jump to 3D. But is boringly linear dungeons with little side-rooms that you HAVE to go into to find the key to the end of the level really the answer?
Some really fascinating thoughts here, folks. Thanks!
I was not alive when Nethack was released, so there's no nostalgia tainting my experience when I say I've spent more time playing it than games like Dungeon Seige 2 (which I paid for), and enjoyed that time more.
And replayability is higher for a random/semirandom single dungeon than a world hopping game, because in a world hopper you know everything already the second time--even if the level layout is randomized, you know where every dungeon is, what order you'll visit them, which are more/less deadly, exactly what items/spells you'd better bring to each one due to knowing exactly what monsters you'll find in it, an the usually single solution to every single puzzle and challenge. Random levels mean the game can still surprise you and give you something new in areas you've already beaten, and the puzzles will change each time; also the puzzles will often be less arbitrary and linear.
Using "puzzles" as my strongest example, the one puzzle I can think of in the part of Dungeon Seige 2 I've bothered to see is when you had to turn a bunch of mirrors into specific positions to make a beam of light hit the right spot (without any monsters or other normal hazardous game elements to interfere); anything which has to do with normal gameplay elements is either a brute force fight or arbitrary traps/locks which play out according to numbers rather than input or, heaven forbid, strategy. A typical puzzle in a random single dungeon game is "Ok, how can I either defeat, incapacitate or escape this dragon who is too high of a level for me given my current allotment of random items? Can I afford to use that one up? If I try to run, will I make it? If I try to run and don't make it will I still be able to do something else?" Fluid, with many solutions, fits within the game rather than halting it, requires careful thought rather than brute force and you can't look up the solution in the guidebook and can replay the game without spoiling it. What most CRPGs call a puzzle is something that doesn't belong in that game; random single dungeons don't have that problem.
The other reason I think single-dungeons have mroe replay is early parts of globe-trotting CRPGs are BORING (generally). The challenge bar is intentionally set so low noone wants to play through it again (since the only thing that kept you going the first time was seeing what came after and now you already have). Single-dungeons I've played, even the bad/easy ones, have you fighting cool stuff while globe trotters are still rewarding you a wooden longsword for beating up twenty dire rabbits. Single dungeons don't rely on "what comes next" to keep you going, so they actually stick stuff of the at least some level of challenge earlier on; not every game is Nethack, but there's at least a chance of dying and the enemies sound cooler than "17 goblins". But then, I can only speak for games I've played, which admittedly isn't all of them.
And replayability is higher for a random/semirandom single dungeon than a world hopping game, because in a world hopper you know everything already the second time--even if the level layout is randomized, you know where every dungeon is, what order you'll visit them, which are more/less deadly, exactly what items/spells you'd better bring to each one due to knowing exactly what monsters you'll find in it, an the usually single solution to every single puzzle and challenge. Random levels mean the game can still surprise you and give you something new in areas you've already beaten, and the puzzles will change each time; also the puzzles will often be less arbitrary and linear.
Using "puzzles" as my strongest example, the one puzzle I can think of in the part of Dungeon Seige 2 I've bothered to see is when you had to turn a bunch of mirrors into specific positions to make a beam of light hit the right spot (without any monsters or other normal hazardous game elements to interfere); anything which has to do with normal gameplay elements is either a brute force fight or arbitrary traps/locks which play out according to numbers rather than input or, heaven forbid, strategy. A typical puzzle in a random single dungeon game is "Ok, how can I either defeat, incapacitate or escape this dragon who is too high of a level for me given my current allotment of random items? Can I afford to use that one up? If I try to run, will I make it? If I try to run and don't make it will I still be able to do something else?" Fluid, with many solutions, fits within the game rather than halting it, requires careful thought rather than brute force and you can't look up the solution in the guidebook and can replay the game without spoiling it. What most CRPGs call a puzzle is something that doesn't belong in that game; random single dungeons don't have that problem.
The other reason I think single-dungeons have mroe replay is early parts of globe-trotting CRPGs are BORING (generally). The challenge bar is intentionally set so low noone wants to play through it again (since the only thing that kept you going the first time was seeing what came after and now you already have). Single-dungeons I've played, even the bad/easy ones, have you fighting cool stuff while globe trotters are still rewarding you a wooden longsword for beating up twenty dire rabbits. Single dungeons don't rely on "what comes next" to keep you going, so they actually stick stuff of the at least some level of challenge earlier on; not every game is Nethack, but there's at least a chance of dying and the enemies sound cooler than "17 goblins". But then, I can only speak for games I've played, which admittedly isn't all of them.
# posted by : April 05, 2007 12:46 PM
: April 05, 2007 12:46 PM
Yeah - the puzzles of most RPGs are borrowed from Adventure Games, really. Not that I don't think a little dose of adventure gaming in an RPG is necessarily a bad thing... unless the puzzle is stupid / frustrating / annoying. Which might be in the eye of the beholder...
One semi-organic puzzle that was more specific that I enjoyed was in Ultima Underworld, where there was a guy who had a necessary item. I suppose you could have killed the guy and just taken it (I can't remember). But the other trick was that he had nyctophobia - a very bad thing when you are imprisoned underground. With the bartering system, he valued light sources more highly than other items, so you could trade him lots of money for the item... or a few candles and torches.
Not exactly rocket science or highbrow, but it was fun and stuck with me.
I am also fond of the idea (but not sure if I'm willing to risk it) with putting some overpowered threats in a dungeon, requiring a non-brute-force solution. I may get shredded on that one if I do it though :) We'll have to see.
One semi-organic puzzle that was more specific that I enjoyed was in Ultima Underworld, where there was a guy who had a necessary item. I suppose you could have killed the guy and just taken it (I can't remember). But the other trick was that he had nyctophobia - a very bad thing when you are imprisoned underground. With the bartering system, he valued light sources more highly than other items, so you could trade him lots of money for the item... or a few candles and torches.
Not exactly rocket science or highbrow, but it was fun and stuck with me.
I am also fond of the idea (but not sure if I'm willing to risk it) with putting some overpowered threats in a dungeon, requiring a non-brute-force solution. I may get shredded on that one if I do it though :) We'll have to see.
I love the idea of monsters that are intended to be impossible or near-impossible to beat at the player's level. You just gotta make sure you don't punish the player for finding a way to kill it if he does. Make sure it's so strong that you can't just run around it in circles shooting at it (most easily done via regeneration), but then don't punish the player for figuring out some other way.
I remember in Dungeon Seige 2, I got to the blacksmith quest which you're not supposed to do yet but instead are supposed to come back to later even though it wasn't barred. It's full of monsters many levels higher than you (Tacklaks or something), and for some reason in this game that means they can kill your tank in a maximum of 3 hits in melee and your mage in one while you deal pitiful damage to them and they have ranged units with only slightly weaker attacks too. Well, even though it was mostly a matter of running around them a lot (their thrown spears missed if you moved), I managed to whittle down the entire dungeon's Tacklaks (only partly with the help of quicksave/load), and it was the most fun and challenging thing I did at any point I reached in the game (bosses in there took, like, seven minutes of concentrated fire to kill). And I was then absolutely insulted by what they rewarded me with--because the Tacklaks were TOO HIGH a level I was granted virtually no experience (less than for a level-appropriate enemy--apparently the idea was so you'd have to go to level-appropriate areas to level new party members rather than staying in the hard area and letting them shoot up on the party's coattails), and you don't recieve the quest reward until you complete the plot arc and get to the next major city. But what really makes it insulting is that later, when you get to roughly the spot where you get the quest reward, you run into the same enemies again as level-appropriate encounters and they fall like flies.
Never do that. Don't punish the player for being better at the game than you expected. But similarly, make sure your extra-threatening enemy can't be killed by something so simple as abusing movement and ranged weapons. Also, don't make your extra-threat enemy just be a level/stat/whatever drainer or thief; those don't make it harder, just less fun, and instead of extra challenge what they really do is make ranged attacks a requirement and a melee-centered build impossible (and heaven forbid you make an enemy that permanently drains stats from afar; I'll probably be among the players who turns the game off right there). And don't make him rely just on resistable attacks either, though you can give him some.
Making it work does, though, also rest on there being a significant risk factor; you don't need permadeath, but it won't work well with save anywhere--if you're gonna implement that you need either save points or no saving within dungeons.
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I remember in Dungeon Seige 2, I got to the blacksmith quest which you're not supposed to do yet but instead are supposed to come back to later even though it wasn't barred. It's full of monsters many levels higher than you (Tacklaks or something), and for some reason in this game that means they can kill your tank in a maximum of 3 hits in melee and your mage in one while you deal pitiful damage to them and they have ranged units with only slightly weaker attacks too. Well, even though it was mostly a matter of running around them a lot (their thrown spears missed if you moved), I managed to whittle down the entire dungeon's Tacklaks (only partly with the help of quicksave/load), and it was the most fun and challenging thing I did at any point I reached in the game (bosses in there took, like, seven minutes of concentrated fire to kill). And I was then absolutely insulted by what they rewarded me with--because the Tacklaks were TOO HIGH a level I was granted virtually no experience (less than for a level-appropriate enemy--apparently the idea was so you'd have to go to level-appropriate areas to level new party members rather than staying in the hard area and letting them shoot up on the party's coattails), and you don't recieve the quest reward until you complete the plot arc and get to the next major city. But what really makes it insulting is that later, when you get to roughly the spot where you get the quest reward, you run into the same enemies again as level-appropriate encounters and they fall like flies.
Never do that. Don't punish the player for being better at the game than you expected. But similarly, make sure your extra-threatening enemy can't be killed by something so simple as abusing movement and ranged weapons. Also, don't make your extra-threat enemy just be a level/stat/whatever drainer or thief; those don't make it harder, just less fun, and instead of extra challenge what they really do is make ranged attacks a requirement and a melee-centered build impossible (and heaven forbid you make an enemy that permanently drains stats from afar; I'll probably be among the players who turns the game off right there). And don't make him rely just on resistable attacks either, though you can give him some.
Making it work does, though, also rest on there being a significant risk factor; you don't need permadeath, but it won't work well with save anywhere--if you're gonna implement that you need either save points or no saving within dungeons.
# posted by : April 05, 2007 6:23 PM
: April 05, 2007 6:23 PMLinks to this post:
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