Tuesday, November 27, 2007
How To Enjoy Character Creation in a CRPG
Scorpia just wrote up her "first look" at the new indie RPG Eschalon: Book 1. I am amused. She didn't get past the character creation system. For most reviewers, would probably be a bad thing. I, myself, have ranted in the past about the frustration of dealing with character creation systems for games for which I don't yet understand the rules. Like many gamers, I'm too excited to jump right into the action.
Not Scorpia. She delighted in the character creation system, and ended up making three different characters. Admittedly, Eschalon does a pretty good job of providing you with explanations of what all the different options do, and gives you a lot of stuff to play around with. She ended up making three different characters.
And she reminded me how enjoyable that experience can be.
I usually enjoyed the experience in "dice and paper" RPGs, although that usually comes with my experience with the system. Imagining the path your character might take in life - choosing some unusual options and figuring out how to best take advantage of it. In CRPGs, there's always the fear that you are choosing something poorly. Will "Stealth" actually be of any use? Or "Medium Armor" (probably the worst armor specialization option in Morrowind)? Should I generalize or specialize?
I lost count of the number of characters I made for Neverwinter Nights - just because the D&D 3rd edition rules system was so fun. But I understood the system before I made my first character for the game. I have never heard anyone complain about how much time designing a costume in City of Heroes can take. And maybe RPGs could do a better job of making the character system part of the fun instead of an obstacle to "getting to the fun part."
Some things that work:
* It can teach you about the game system.
The character-creation process can be a tutorial - literally or figuratively. When you enter the adventuring portion of the game, you can already have a good basic understanding of how the magic system works, or what sort of opportunities you need to look out for to take advantage of your character's strengths.
* It can build up your anticipation for the rest of the game
Some fun visuals and text can introduce you to the game's back-story, and hint as to what may be in store. Are there any hidden clues here?
* It can be a game by itself
Eschalon: Book 1 uses the oh-so-old-school randomness as part of the process. While many players get frustrated by this, Las Vegas has proven that human beings are thrilled by gambling. Do you stand on a decent set of rolls, or do you try for something better, or something more specialized? Eschalon helps offset the negatives by giving you bonus points you can use to offset the randomness. And do I even need to mention the awesome Gypsy sequence of the middle Ultima titles?
While much of this depends upon the game's design, it's nice to remember that creating a character doesn't have to be a chore. It really should be part of the fun.
UPDATE: Added a screenshot of Eschalon's character generation screen, complete with the help dialogs turned on.(Vaguely) related randomness:
* How To Get Me To Buy Your Indie RPG
* Scorpia's New Tale
* What If Ultima IV Were Written Today?
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Labels: Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:34 AM (Permalink)
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I didn't think Eschalon did enough to teach me about the game system during character creation; my first character got 30 minutes of play, then was replaced by one with a similar build. There's the usual set of problems I have with a skill-based game: there are 3 defensive options (dodge, light armor, heavy armor), and it's not clear which to choose. (Heavy armor seems to interfere with magic. My experiments show dodge to be significantly less effective than light armor at low skill levels, but although we know the effect of improved dodge skill, I can't predict how more levels in light armor will help me.) There are half a dozen weapon types. Only two magic skills, but how many levels do I need to take in one to make an effective mage? (My answer: breakpoints are at odd numbers, so 2 or 4 is pointless. 5 is much more convenient than 3; 7 seems unnecessary/impractical at low levels.) Do I need lore, or is it for later?
This is why I prefer skill-based games in theory, but in practice seem to be happier when there's a template or a bit more guidance than the wide-opening beginning of Eschalon.
On level-up, you only get 3 skill points, so you can get one new skill, or a modest increase to your current skills. But what skill level do you need? With the effects of many skills opaque, I can't tell. How fast should I be pushing meditation? Do I need more levels of arcane magic, or does the fact that I can comfortably defeat current foes with magic mean that I'll be able to defeat future foes for several levels? As I wondered above, will more levels of light armor actually help with my starting minimal gear?
And then there's cartography. Level 2 cart is a step forward, but level 3 is a step backwards - the minimap becomes less functional with it. Aargh - I spent 1/3 of my levelup for this??
This is why I prefer skill-based games in theory, but in practice seem to be happier when there's a template or a bit more guidance than the wide-opening beginning of Eschalon.
On level-up, you only get 3 skill points, so you can get one new skill, or a modest increase to your current skills. But what skill level do you need? With the effects of many skills opaque, I can't tell. How fast should I be pushing meditation? Do I need more levels of arcane magic, or does the fact that I can comfortably defeat current foes with magic mean that I'll be able to defeat future foes for several levels? As I wondered above, will more levels of light armor actually help with my starting minimal gear?
And then there's cartography. Level 2 cart is a step forward, but level 3 is a step backwards - the minimap becomes less functional with it. Aargh - I spent 1/3 of my levelup for this??
It's true that there's some room for improvement is Eschalon. But compared to many other games I've played, it does a pretty decent job of showing you what stat influences what aspects of gameplay, for example.
And I don't know if any game will (or should) go into too much detail as to how everything effects the final numbers and percentages as you level up. It SHOULD tell you that armor interferes with casting, however. I seem to recall it warning how armor can affect rogue abilities in the chargen screen, but I don't remember for sure.
The author has admitted that the cartography skill is effectively capped at... gah, I can't remember now... 14? 17? That's something that should be noted, and isn't (not that it matters when you first create your character, but since you keep returning to that screen as you level, it'd be nice to have noted).
Nice analysis on the numbers, BTW. Looks like you went through a lot of work on that. I wonder if anybody's working on a strategy guide?
And I don't know if any game will (or should) go into too much detail as to how everything effects the final numbers and percentages as you level up. It SHOULD tell you that armor interferes with casting, however. I seem to recall it warning how armor can affect rogue abilities in the chargen screen, but I don't remember for sure.
The author has admitted that the cartography skill is effectively capped at... gah, I can't remember now... 14? 17? That's something that should be noted, and isn't (not that it matters when you first create your character, but since you keep returning to that screen as you level, it'd be nice to have noted).
Nice analysis on the numbers, BTW. Looks like you went through a lot of work on that. I wonder if anybody's working on a strategy guide?
I wish I had the time to strategy guide this game. Scorpia makes a great point that character creation is a great aspect of any RPG. Character creation adds strategy and replayability. Lack of character creation always annoyed me with Final Fantasy games, but tactics made up for it with a great professions system.
I didn't even finish the demo when I bought the game. I had already created three characters, all of which I used to throw against the wall to see how the stats effected the game world. Once I bought the game, I played one old character for a bit, then created another and spent 10 hours in the game. Then, I went back and created the character I am playing with now, and have almost gotten as far in 4 hours as I was in 10 hours of game play.
I do this with any decent RPG with a character creation system. Wizardry 7, 8, NWN, Baulders Gate 2, Fallout 1, and 2 have all gotten the tires kicked time and time again by me.
For this reason, I think the first few hours of gameplay needs to come with few restrictions, and lots of options because I play this part of the game over and over. Baulers Gate 2 is incredible, but the first of the game drives me crazy so it stays in the box. NWN got it right, and allowed me financial, social, and conflicting freedom very quickly in the game.
I think Eschalon has officially made it onto the list of my favorite RPG's. I will finish this game, I just have to remember to get everything else done first. :-)
I didn't even finish the demo when I bought the game. I had already created three characters, all of which I used to throw against the wall to see how the stats effected the game world. Once I bought the game, I played one old character for a bit, then created another and spent 10 hours in the game. Then, I went back and created the character I am playing with now, and have almost gotten as far in 4 hours as I was in 10 hours of game play.
I do this with any decent RPG with a character creation system. Wizardry 7, 8, NWN, Baulders Gate 2, Fallout 1, and 2 have all gotten the tires kicked time and time again by me.
For this reason, I think the first few hours of gameplay needs to come with few restrictions, and lots of options because I play this part of the game over and over. Baulers Gate 2 is incredible, but the first of the game drives me crazy so it stays in the box. NWN got it right, and allowed me financial, social, and conflicting freedom very quickly in the game.
I think Eschalon has officially made it onto the list of my favorite RPG's. I will finish this game, I just have to remember to get everything else done first. :-)
Yeah, that's my problem. I'm in the middle of 12-hour days at work, plus Frayed Knights / Rampant Games stuff at night, and then there are several RPGs I really want to play - including LOTS more of Eschalon and Depths of Peril. Oh, and I just downloaded Sam & Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die. Haven't even started it yet, but it's installed for when I find a spare minute.
Baulers Gate 2 is incredible, but the first of the game drives me crazy so it stays in the box.
Dungeon-Be-Gone is a Baldur's Gate 2 mod that lets you skip the starting dungeon: http://tinyurl.com/ytmmh
Baldur's Gate 2 does work really well for trying lots of different characters due to the extremely open-ended start-to-mid-game. Interestingly, a dev described this as a design mistake in the game postmortem. The rest of the game is kind of linear, but since they wanted to allow the player to recruit all NPCs and do all class specific sidequests right out of the initial dungeon, the second stage of the game ended up really huge. The feeling of being able to take just about any path right from the start of the game is something really important for CRPGs and something that very few games seem to have grasped. The older Ultimas, Fallouts and the Elder Scrolls games do this, and all of them have rabid following.
As for Eschaton, I found some things annoying in the character creation. The simulated dice rolls for the stats don't seem to contribute anything and encourage to maximize the sum of the stats by rerolling lots of times. Dangling an explicit reward to the player for doing something very stupid and repetitive isn't good game design. Skill systems in CRPGs have a general problem which Eschaton shares: Skills are likely to see very different amounts of use. It seems likely that the sword skill is going to see a lot more use than the lore skill, so I care a lot less about whether lore is at 4 or 5 points compared to sword. The not-so-often used skills might be better implemented as on-off traits, the character either is good at lockpicking or id'ing things or isn't. Thinking in story terms, in a heroic fantasy story there are specific skills like rope-making or lock picking which some characters are good at and others not good at at all, but the story can generally do well without ever ranking the characters in the order of rope-making skill. On the other hand swordplay, magical skill and leadership ability are abilities where a ranking scale is often important to the story. This suggests that skills related to the core themes of the story should have a number attached that allows detailed ranking, and more incidental skills should be on/off traits.
Other thoughts: Choosing a cultural background is a lot more interesting than race. Why do I need to choose a class though? There is already a strong skill-based system, with the same skills for all classes. Classes should either have a clear effect on the character's build througout the game or be dropped in favor of a purely skill-based system. It's not at all clear that the former happens in Eschaton. Choosing the character's philosophical outlook is fun, but shouldn't this be determined in-game? I'd much rather kill some puppies and reanimate them as zombie servitors in-game than just declare my character "Nefarious" on character creation. On the other hand, determining in-game choices that distinguish between "Atheistic" and "Agnostic" might be a bit tricky.
Speaking of this, "Atheistic" and "Agnostic" sound like anachronisms. I'm assuming generic fantasy CRPGs to have some sort of Medieval/Renaissance equivalent culture, and these concepts seem to belong to the Enlightenment or an even later era. Of course this may be deliberate on the part of the designer. Another thing that rubbed me slightly wrong is spelling magic "Magick". This doesn't make me think of Medieval occultism but modern-day New Agers who think magic really works and want to separate their magic from stage magic. And if the magic is generic armor spells and fireballs (I haven't tried a mage character yet so I can't tell), it might be best to not even go for Medieval occultism connotations and just keep the spelling standard.
Dungeon-Be-Gone is a Baldur's Gate 2 mod that lets you skip the starting dungeon: http://tinyurl.com/ytmmh
Baldur's Gate 2 does work really well for trying lots of different characters due to the extremely open-ended start-to-mid-game. Interestingly, a dev described this as a design mistake in the game postmortem. The rest of the game is kind of linear, but since they wanted to allow the player to recruit all NPCs and do all class specific sidequests right out of the initial dungeon, the second stage of the game ended up really huge. The feeling of being able to take just about any path right from the start of the game is something really important for CRPGs and something that very few games seem to have grasped. The older Ultimas, Fallouts and the Elder Scrolls games do this, and all of them have rabid following.
As for Eschaton, I found some things annoying in the character creation. The simulated dice rolls for the stats don't seem to contribute anything and encourage to maximize the sum of the stats by rerolling lots of times. Dangling an explicit reward to the player for doing something very stupid and repetitive isn't good game design. Skill systems in CRPGs have a general problem which Eschaton shares: Skills are likely to see very different amounts of use. It seems likely that the sword skill is going to see a lot more use than the lore skill, so I care a lot less about whether lore is at 4 or 5 points compared to sword. The not-so-often used skills might be better implemented as on-off traits, the character either is good at lockpicking or id'ing things or isn't. Thinking in story terms, in a heroic fantasy story there are specific skills like rope-making or lock picking which some characters are good at and others not good at at all, but the story can generally do well without ever ranking the characters in the order of rope-making skill. On the other hand swordplay, magical skill and leadership ability are abilities where a ranking scale is often important to the story. This suggests that skills related to the core themes of the story should have a number attached that allows detailed ranking, and more incidental skills should be on/off traits.
Other thoughts: Choosing a cultural background is a lot more interesting than race. Why do I need to choose a class though? There is already a strong skill-based system, with the same skills for all classes. Classes should either have a clear effect on the character's build througout the game or be dropped in favor of a purely skill-based system. It's not at all clear that the former happens in Eschaton. Choosing the character's philosophical outlook is fun, but shouldn't this be determined in-game? I'd much rather kill some puppies and reanimate them as zombie servitors in-game than just declare my character "Nefarious" on character creation. On the other hand, determining in-game choices that distinguish between "Atheistic" and "Agnostic" might be a bit tricky.
Speaking of this, "Atheistic" and "Agnostic" sound like anachronisms. I'm assuming generic fantasy CRPGs to have some sort of Medieval/Renaissance equivalent culture, and these concepts seem to belong to the Enlightenment or an even later era. Of course this may be deliberate on the part of the designer. Another thing that rubbed me slightly wrong is spelling magic "Magick". This doesn't make me think of Medieval occultism but modern-day New Agers who think magic really works and want to separate their magic from stage magic. And if the magic is generic armor spells and fireballs (I haven't tried a mage character yet so I can't tell), it might be best to not even go for Medieval occultism connotations and just keep the spelling standard.
# posted by 
: November 27, 2007 2:36 PM
: November 27, 2007 2:36 PM
That second chapter of Baldur's Gate II was what made me fall in love with the game. Seriously, they called this a design flaw? (I may have to see if I can find that old issue of Game Developer).
I did have one friend who felt overwhelmed by that section of the game, but I thought it was perfect. I loved wandering around the city gathering quests up the wazoo. They were mostly INTERESTING quests, too. My only big regret was that after I took control of the thieves' guild, it became kinda uninteresting.
I did have one friend who felt overwhelmed by that section of the game, but I thought it was perfect. I loved wandering around the city gathering quests up the wazoo. They were mostly INTERESTING quests, too. My only big regret was that after I took control of the thieves' guild, it became kinda uninteresting.
That second chapter of Baldur's Gate II was what made me fall in love with the game. Seriously, they called this a design flaw?
Pretty much: http://tinyurl.com/2ythaa (Link to Gamasutra article, needs free reg or bugmenot)
Pretty much: http://tinyurl.com/2ythaa (Link to Gamasutra article, needs free reg or bugmenot)
# posted by : November 27, 2007 3:30 PM
: November 27, 2007 3:30 PM
Thanks for the link Risto. You just breathed some new life into a game I have been wanting to play for a long time, but dreaded going through the intro. It is amazing how something like that can kill your fun. :)
Must admit, the Eschalon demo did nothing for me, even though I wanted to like it. Mainly because of the weak story/dialogue, you know I'm big on those ;)
But I wasn't amazingly impressed with character creation.
Dice rolling, I've always hated that. Coyote makes the point that humans like to gamble? True. But gambling implies risk. There is no risk since you have unlimited rolls. So really it is just boring repitition until you get a "good set".
I found the stat descriptions a bit vague and redundant. Why have concentration as a stat? It says it affects many things...but HOW MUCH? Is it worth the points? I dunno. Just seems like he could have cut some of the stats and been fine.
The axioms seem unbalanced. Why would I pick nefarious? An occasional 5% damage increase and I sacrifice divine healing? Ack no.
The skills themselves were ok though. Does anyone know if there are special "prestige skills" to unlock?
But I wasn't amazingly impressed with character creation.
Dice rolling, I've always hated that. Coyote makes the point that humans like to gamble? True. But gambling implies risk. There is no risk since you have unlimited rolls. So really it is just boring repitition until you get a "good set".
I found the stat descriptions a bit vague and redundant. Why have concentration as a stat? It says it affects many things...but HOW MUCH? Is it worth the points? I dunno. Just seems like he could have cut some of the stats and been fine.
The axioms seem unbalanced. Why would I pick nefarious? An occasional 5% damage increase and I sacrifice divine healing? Ack no.
The skills themselves were ok though. Does anyone know if there are special "prestige skills" to unlock?
I contend that the gambling aspect comes from risking your current roll in hopes of a better one. Maybe I'm just weird, but I really wasn't pleased with D&D 3rd edition pushing the point-buy system. The problem was that the characteristics for all players of a particular class tended to look the same that way. Maybe some slight variants as to which stat got the second-highest roll, but I felt it led to pretty carbon-copy characters at level 1. At least things got interesting beyond that point.
I went ahead and posted a screenshot of the information available in chargen. My personal feeling is that it's pretty decent - but as far as overall presentation of data, what would you guys recommend as far as general improvements?
(Yes, I acknowledge that some of the descriptions are a little lacking, the one for Concentration included... I think I only found one skill that listed Concentration as complimentary attribute).
I went ahead and posted a screenshot of the information available in chargen. My personal feeling is that it's pretty decent - but as far as overall presentation of data, what would you guys recommend as far as general improvements?
(Yes, I acknowledge that some of the descriptions are a little lacking, the one for Concentration included... I think I only found one skill that listed Concentration as complimentary attribute).
Oh, and incidentally, as someone looking forward to Scars of War, I'm very happy to know that you are big on story and dialog, Gareth... :)
Heh, thanks Coyote.
Just one last point about the gambling thing...maybe my problem wit it is rooted in memories of D&D sessions. I remember playing a session where I and a friend rolled 1st level fighters. He rolled an 18/95 Str, I had a 12. He rolled high Con, I didn't. Etc. Do you know what it feels like to play in a party with another char of your class who just totally "outclasses" you in your profession. Sucks :(
And since most of the time I play mages, a low Int means I don't get to learn my coolest spells :(
That being said, I don't want to seem like I'm totally bashing Eschalon. In all fairness it has the BEST production values I've seen in an indie game. The intro, menus, the little touches like the fireflies at night...great. A fantastic, polished product. Kudos to Thomas, I hope he sells enough to make Book 2. Just not my thang ;)
In terms of the character creation screen, it is very good overall except for the vague descriptions in some cases. I want to know *exactly* what stats do. Expose the numbers to me, I LOVE that, character building, playing with stats. I WANT to agonise over where to put a point, not just shrug and go "I think this is a good place to put it".
Just one last point about the gambling thing...maybe my problem wit it is rooted in memories of D&D sessions. I remember playing a session where I and a friend rolled 1st level fighters. He rolled an 18/95 Str, I had a 12. He rolled high Con, I didn't. Etc. Do you know what it feels like to play in a party with another char of your class who just totally "outclasses" you in your profession. Sucks :(
And since most of the time I play mages, a low Int means I don't get to learn my coolest spells :(
That being said, I don't want to seem like I'm totally bashing Eschalon. In all fairness it has the BEST production values I've seen in an indie game. The intro, menus, the little touches like the fireflies at night...great. A fantastic, polished product. Kudos to Thomas, I hope he sells enough to make Book 2. Just not my thang ;)
In terms of the character creation screen, it is very good overall except for the vague descriptions in some cases. I want to know *exactly* what stats do. Expose the numbers to me, I LOVE that, character building, playing with stats. I WANT to agonise over where to put a point, not just shrug and go "I think this is a good place to put it".
I often wish that I could give the character a spin during character creation, just to see how the combinations I picked would pan out. Just a sandbox with some monsters, weapons, traps, etc. to give me a feel for what skills the game uses and how they fit with my style.
The gambling aspect is fun, I agree. I'm trying to remember a pen & paper game I once knew that had a truly insane character creation routine -- your character could actually die in the process of character creation, forcing you to start over.
The gambling aspect is fun, I agree. I'm trying to remember a pen & paper game I once knew that had a truly insane character creation routine -- your character could actually die in the process of character creation, forcing you to start over.
Gareth - Yeah, I know what you are talking about. You know how many kids in Junior High swore up and down that they'd legitimately rolled up the character that didn't have a stat under 17?
John - I believe the game you have in mind is Traveller, one of the very first science-fiction RPGs (and very rooted in the envisioned space opera technology of the late 60's and 70's...) I loved that game.
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John - I believe the game you have in mind is Traveller, one of the very first science-fiction RPGs (and very rooted in the envisioned space opera technology of the late 60's and 70's...) I loved that game.
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