Frayed Knights Critique, Part IV
I have been involved in the development of about a dozen commercially released games. Three were relatively big hits, and spawned sequels that also went on to become big hits. Twisted Metal, in particular, became not just a series but an entire franchise. There were many magazine pages and forum threads devoted to some of these games.

Still, I don't think I have ever seen any of my games critiqued as thoroughly in one place as Diego Doumecq has critiqued my little Frayed Knights pilot. I think the dude has played the game more than anybody else in the world who isn't me. I do not agree with everything he says, but I can't dismiss any of his points.

He has finally concluded his four-article critique that began in October of last year. He's been gentle, acknowledging that yes, the pilot was an experimental playtest release and not supposed to be a full, polished experience. But it was released in order to solicit feedback - a task which I can only call a stellar success - and Diego went way beyond the questionnaire I asked of players. Thanks, dude!

Anyway, part IV is up - bigger than any of the previous parts. Here are links to every part of the series.

Frayed Knights Critique, Part I
Frayed Knights Critique, Part II
Frayed Knights Critique, Part III
Frayed Knights Critique, Part IV

I'm not really going to do an in-depth response here. He's devoted quite a bit of time and wordcount to each point, and most of them have gone into my churning bucket of redesign already. I'll probably be devoting full-fledged posts to some of them. But I can't resist some quick-and-dirty responses, because I am a weak-willed individual. So here goes.

World scale - part of the problem stems from having people be actual "human size" rather than "Kork-Sized" (the name of the Orc model that comes with Torque). Based on the recommended scale by GarageGames, Kork is somewhere between 7' and 8' tall. People tend to model around his proportions. But there's another factor: Play City of Heroes sometime and have your character sit on a bench or something. Compare sizes. Now, part of this is also because players like to make their characters as big as possible, and the world has to accomodate the largest-sized PCs. But you get this (to a degree) in every game - things appear too small on the screen in 3D when modeled exactly to scale. So they always get a little exaggerated.

That doesn't mean I don't need to wrestle scale issues more in Frayed Knights. That's still a given, and something I hope the learning experience with the Temple of Pokmor Xang has taught us to be more dilligent about. But some of it won't ever go away.

As far as random encounters and randomness in general: I've talked about the "wandering monster" issue in games before. I'm not satisfied with how encounters in Frayed Knights - and the entire combat system - are handled, either. It strayed too far on the "bad" side. It was one of those things that looked just fine on the page and in my head, but so far hasn't translated to the screen very well. Unlike Diego, I am a fan of a certain level of randomness in RPGs. I think the "skill" in playing RPGs comes down to managing the risk of the random. But there's a certain threshold in any game where it just becomes irritating, and not fun. And I think Frayed Knights combats and encounters strayed too far down that path.

But I also changed how the whole "wandering monster" / "random encounter" thing worked about seven months ago. So I've almost forgotten how the old system (which is still in the pilot) played. I'm not totally happy with the new system either, but it works much better and is a lot less random.

Drama Stars - You know, for all the focus this system received before the release, the system sure did end up landing with something of a "thunk" noise. They are hardly ever used - even by myself. This is an argument that they either need to be dropped altogether, or expanded upon and enhanced to be more integrated into the game experience, and given a broader mandate than simply being an encouragement to avoid optional reloading. Me being the kind of overeager optimist and nutcase that I am, you can probably guess in which direction I'm shooting now.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

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