Guest Post: Simple Multiplayer in RPGs
While I'm out (hopefully) enjoying the sun in Hawaii on vacation, I have some other people filling in on the blog front. Today's post comes from Curtis Mirci of Califer Games, currently developing the indie RPG Darkened Dreams 2. Be sure and visit the Darkened Dreams blog for more info.

And so, here's Curtis:

RPGs are my favorite genre of games, and I'm the kind of player that loves acquiring everything. Getting all the characters to the highest level, obtaining all the items, maxing out all the skills, and finishing all the side-quests. When I finish getting all of it done (hooray for reading books while I mindlessly grind!) I find that I'm more than a little disappointed. There's nothing left to do, I've hit a dead end! I could just play the game all over again, but by that time I've lost interest.

One thing that could extend the fun past the “dead end” is to add multiplayer gameplay to the RPG. Not multiplayer like Secret of Mana (although if you made a game like that you'd probably do well), nor like World of Warcraft (too much effort!), but on a simpler scale. Letting players pit their team against their friend's team can help keep them interested in the game as well as make them want their friend to get the game as well. Making the characters customizable is important: having two groups of the exact same characters fighting each other would get boring quickly, but if their move sets are limited or their stats are changed by equipment or special training then it takes a lot more strategy and can be more fun.

Another thing to fix the problem of dead-end gameplay is to allow transferring of items or even characters to another save file. This can make it more interesting to get that hard to get, super rare item. This could lead to problems if not well thought out. For example, suppose a player traded in their best team to a new game to just rush through it and get all the items? Would that even a problem? If they beat the game once, who really cares? But then again, what if they are playing it for the first time? You could limit trading until the player hits a certain part of the story line, or you could just have the higher level characters refuse to battle if they're from a different save file. "I don't work with noobs like you".

The thing is, there is already a series of games like this. It's called Pokémon. Some of you may have heard of it. The problem is that it IS Pokémon and thus older gamers are wary of playing a game that on the surface looks like a kids game. Final Fantasy IV for the DS took a step in that direction, allowing you to train a summon creature and letting it fight against a friend's summon creature. It seems pretty basic, and I never tested it out so I can't say if it was good or not.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that RPGs can be expanded to be more fun in many ways, not just trying to make everything an Action RPG. Borrowing ideas from games like Pokémon can help keep things fresh and fun.

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

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