Mastery vs Variety

An interesting concept that often comes up in the context of elemental magic/skill systems is whether the player characters should have mastery of a single element of their choice or whether they should use variety.  In many games this choice is truly non-existent as either the element chosen is just based on what the enemy is weak to, if any, or which effect looks prettiest.  Some games allow the player to enhance, via skill points or equipment or levels, into a specific element.  However, under these circumstances, the player only has one correct choice, which is to master one element that seems useful.  It is rarely worth it to try to put skill points or whatever into multiple categories because then the player's power is just simply lower than it would have been otherwise.  The elements often have limited meaning other than, in this specific fight you'll wish you had one over the other.

To this end I am thinking of going with the variety approach, but with the simple caveat of the elements being asymmetric.  Hearth and Tundra will not be opposites, they will cause different effects that will give the player a desire to use one element or the other under various circumstances.  For example, a multi-turn tundra spell will enhance the party's healing spells while it's being cast and then poison the foe when it goes off.  Fire spells by contrast will enhance the party's water resistance while being cast and reduce the enemy's attack when it goes off.  These two effects are very different, and will hopefully lead to players debating how much "mastery" via equipment they want to place in any given element.

Negotiations

Lets talk about Negotiations.

One of the more difficult ideas to put together is a fun and enjoyable way to implement a negotiation system for acquiring souls and other items from enemies without having to fight them.  Considering I want to use the negotiation system as the sole way of acquiring souls, I want it to be robust.

This becomes complicated because there are few negotiation systems I can look to for guidance.  The most comparable game, the Shin Megami games, have relatively poor systems.  You have to guess the answers to demons' questions, and hope to god they're not fickle and leave you with nothing.  This may be on theme for those games, but it definitely is frustrating.  My plan is to take a cue from Alpha Protocol's conversation system, specifically the level of detail and flow charts that they use, and combine that with the simple Q&A format used in SMT.

For example, each demon (not the individual demon, but the family of demons, such as "goblin") will have a personality.  This personality will guide what questions the demon will ask, and the flowchart of what questions will follow based on each answer you provide.  Some demons will ask the same questions as others, but each personality will dictate what the optimum answer is.  The demons will ask about five questions, give or take, before asking you what you want from them.  Based on the answers you provided up to this point, the demon will either agree, or tell you to shove off. 

I plan on giving out "Negotiation Points" for each answer provided, and at the end, when you go to ask the demon for something in particular, a bar will show you how many points you needed in order to have a shot at the demon acquiescing.  Certain answers will be worth many points, some few points, and some will subtract points.  It will be some trial and error, but once you learn how to deal with a certain demon, it should be relatively simple.  I also plan on adding a few sub personalities to each demon family, if possible, in order to keep things interesting for a longer period of time.

Much ado about Mana

One problem that many games have is how to handle a mana. The essence of using mana, or MP, is to create an artificial limitation on the use of certain abilities in and out of battle. This leads to some problems with regards to balance. If abilities require MP to use, then they have to necessarily be stronger than abilities that do not require MP, since you are limited as to how often you can use that ability. However, some people go in the opposite direction to try to balance and make these MP consuming abilities too weak. Lets look at two examples:

Dark Souls

Now I have only played a little of this game, but magic seems overpowered when compared to melee. Since you can only use a spell a limited amount of times, as this quantity is refreshed at save points, the spell must be stronger to compensate. The result is that magic can defeat regular enemies in one attack, occasionally two, which is ridiculous in a game where melee characters must hit enemies four times or more, and must learn to dodge enemy patterns. By limiting magic use, magic becomes too strong.

Etrian Odyssey

Skills in this game are much stronger than regular attacks, as one would expect, but the problem arises from the difference in power between physical and magical attacks. The magic type characters are required to use MP for every offensive action because their default action, attack, deals low damage. However, the power of magic does not scale well, and as time goes on the regular attacks from the melee characters ends up being just as strong, if not stronger, than the mages MP abilities. This makes magic almost worthless in the long run.

So how can this problem be avoided in Shades of Grey? I am going to try to take a different approach to MP and use it as a limitation for all non-attack options. Most skills in the game will require the same amount of MP, currently planned at five, and MP will regenerate each turn by a fixed amount, currently planned at two. Finally, all characters will start at 50mp and will increase that number slowly as time goes on. This situation means that the player must manage how many skills he plans to use in order to avoid running out of MP. However, the player can refill his MP by the class specific skills, each of which requires specific conditions to be met. I will elaborate on what these special skills are in a later post. Full MP will be restored upon the end of each battle

Through this system the player will have to balance his use of skills and MP regeneration skills, and will even use the plain old attack command in order to survive.

Equipment Design

Designing interesting equipment is a challenge that I have decided to undertake, and of course this challenge is further compounded by the existence of my Fusion and Soul systems.

In order for the fusion equipment to be meaningful in any capacity, it is important to make the choices between each possible fusion option meaningful and cater to different play styles, so here are my current thoughts.

Each permutation of elements will have a different name, so Hearth + Ray = Sun.  A 3 slotted weapon with 2H and 1R would then be a Sun Plate, or Sun Sword, etc.  At the higher end of the spectrum, the 5 slotted equipment, 3H + 2R would be Sunbeam equipment.  A similar name to convey similar stats.

When you create a Hearth item, it's going to add ATK, and affinity and resistance for the Hearth element.  Tundra gear will add DEF.  Gales Magic Acc.  Stones will add RES.  Ray will be Magic Acc and ATK, and Miasma DEF and RES.

When you combine elements, you will gain some of the stats from both elements as well as an additional effect (on the offense) or additional resistances or effects (on the defense).

For example.  T+T+H = Boiling Gear.  Weapons that are boiling gain ATK and DEF and inflict a damage per turn effect called Scalding.  Simply, it's just more damage for your weapon.  By contrast, T+T+S weapons would instead be called Arctic, and would reduce the enemy's T resistance.

Some non-symmetric additional effects should make the choices interesting.

Endings

Today I want to talk about game endings.  One thing I have noticed recently, though not to say this is a recent phenomenon, is how poorly structured many games' endings are.   A game will tell you a great story, immerse you in interesting and fun game play, and then right at the end, when everything is feeling great...the whole thing falls apart.  A bad ending spoils the rest of a game by leaving you with worse memories of the entire experience.

This is not limited to just games of course.  I recently read the Nights Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, and the first 3700 pages of the trilogy were really fun and interesting.  The last 100 pages, ruined the entire story.  I would still recommend the series, but the ending saddened me, so I'm going to list off some qualities that I think all endings need.

1st:  A conclusion that does not sneak up on the player and comes out of nowhere. 

A game is not satisfying when the ending makes no sense in the build up of the plot, nor if the final area or encounter does not fit into the larger narrative.  Fans of Stephen King aside, a final boss, such as Necron in Final Fantasy IX, who was never referred to or surprises the player in a, Who on earth are you?, way makes the player feel cheated by the story. 

And 2nd: Don't have your story provide a meaningless choice at the end.

I recently finished Bastion, which again I will recommend others to play, but its ending saddened me.  Without spoiling anything, characters are given new motivations in the last half hour of the game, which do not really make much sense, and the player is given a large decision, which again is revealed quite quickly, and the result of the decision is just a different ending cutscene.  This does not make for compelling game play or interesting stories.  The game would have been better if the last minute plot twist had been introduced much earlier and the characters had discussed it more thoroughly. 

These are just two examples, but I think it is extremely important for a game to leave the player on strong satisfying note so they remember your game fondly.

I shoot you with my gun. You take 5 damage, and heal it with an herb you found on the ground.

Today I want to talk briefly about formulas in games.  One of the sticking points in development, at least so far, has been trying to determine exactly how to value everything in the game.  Armor, Weapons, skills, these all require the developer to assign arbitrary values to them and then later balance them around the fact that one skill seems to be dealing ludicrous damage and armor is doing nothing.

Now, I have been trying to avoid these same pitfalls by creating formulas one at a time, and then testing them in excel under a plethora of conditions.  Of course this is in no way sufficient enough and real world testing will end up being the only true way to see if the formulas work, but oh well.

Here's how the current basic attack formula is set up in excel:  ROUND((2*DMG/(DEF/(ATK*.5*DMG))*(1+.01*(Affinity-Resistance));0)

DMG:  Weapon damage rating.  Each weapon will have a damage rating and the formula makes the weapon extremely important.  Hopefully this will cause people to take an interest in the crafting and fusion systems, especially when they notice that upgrading from a 5dmg weapon to a 10 dmg weapon is a big deal.

ATK:  One of the basic stats.  Goes up every level, buffs increase it, and it can be found on equipment.  It's also used in magic damage too.

DEF:  One of the basic stats.  Can be obtained just as easily as attack.

Affinity:  Increases the damage of a given element by X%.  Not too easy to find, but 100 affinity is double damage.

Resistance:  Reduces damage by X%.  100% resistance is immunity.

Affinity and resistance do cancel each other out, but I think the formula is pretty stable, at least for now. 

Moral Choice Systems

One question that I am sure has come to mind is, “why Shades of Grey?” The title does come from a line of an old Billy Joel song, but additionally it brings to mind the idea of ambiguity in life. Life is seldomly black and white; instead, life is full of choices with both benefits and deteriments to all parties involved and it is up to us to decided which choice produces more good for us than bad. The title is supposed to put the player in the frame of mind ready to see a story where the question of who is actually the hero and villain are not easily resolved.

If the story is told right and the player engages the story, as opposed to just deciding that the PC must be good and the other guy evil, then he should have a enjoyable experience as the motivations of each side are revealed and each character makes choices that we both find outrageous, but also justified. That is the goal.

This IS a lofty goal, I will admit that, and it is a goal that is difficult to reach, but I will do my best to accomplish it.

Now, there is one thing this story will not have, and that is a moral choice system. It is tempting to create moral quandaries for the player and have the player resolve the conflict by making the decision. This increases immersion, since the player is actually making the choice, and also gives the player a stake in the story, since it was he who set part of the story in motion. Finally, it also gives added replayability, since players will want to see what happens if other choices are made. Despite these good and tempting reasons to create a moral choice system, I believe that creating a truly compelling moral choice system creates too many pitfalls for the developer, and rarely will achieve its goal of being compelling to the player.

The best example of this is Mass Effect. For those who do not know, in ME the player is often allowed to make decisions that are either paragon or renegade. These decisions to lead different outcomes in conversation and many of the long term ramification of these actions are set up to occur in the third installment of the series. Whether the player chooses to be a paragon or renegade is based on their attitude, whether the just and right result requires just and right means, or whether the means do not matter as long as the results are achieved. Whether to push someone off a cliff to avoid having him rat you out or try to talk him into cooperating.

These two ends of the spectrum can sometimes lead to interesting choices, but most often they are either being a saint to everyone or being a complete jerk. Now the problem with only choose the paragon or renegade option that you want is that each time you choose paragon you gain paragon points, and to give a paragon answer to later conversations in the game, you must have enough paragon points. The same is true for renegade. This means that you are required to choose which moral choice you want to make very early in the game, and continue to make it all game. This becomes even more important when the player realizes that the paragon and renegade options are almost always strictly superior to choosing a neutral result. In the first game, one of your squad mates refuses to come along on a late game mission. Unless you have the paragon or renegade points to talk him down or smack him and convince him that he's wrong, the neutral options lead to his death. The game rewards you for choosing a moral choice early and sticking to it whether or not it makes sense. This is problematic.

There are plenty of other games with this same sort of situation and it is the bane of the moral choice system. If game play results are in any way shape or form tied to the moral choice system, then the players will not choose their moral options based on the story, but instead on whether they will receive the weapon of angels or the armor of devils. While the developer can solve this problem by simply not providing any game benefit to the choices, that necessarily limits the developer's ability to make the choices meaningful. If the characters on your team cannot be altered based on decisions, or certain items cannot be limited based on the choices, or certain areas or shortcuts can be provided or taken away based on the player's choices, then the moral choice system loses some teeth .

For these reasons, I think it best to have the developer make the moral choices for the player and instead find ways to make the player want to make the choices that the characters do. A well written character can immerse a player in the story enough to make them want to make the best choices for the character. While the choice to save the character from dying may also end up destroying someone else's livelihood, the player will understand why the choice had to be made, but he will feel just as bad about the decision as the character. If done properly, only one moral choice will appear to be the right one, and conveniently, it will be the same choice the story makes.

Navigating long straight hallways from cutscene to cutscene

What game am I referencing with this post's title?  Tell you later.

This post is all about the actual level design in RPGs, and in many cases it is rather horrific.  It's horrific because it's uninteresting, uninspired, and generally just not enjoyable to walk around.  My goal is to avoid this problem, but first lets discuss a few games that have poor level design and good level design.  Feel free to leave your own suggestions and why in the comments.

Final Fantasy XIII and X

Notorious for the main game being almost a single corridor with lots of pretty graphics on the sidelines, both of these games have extremely poor level design.  There is nothing interesting or fun about walking down a straight line.  Now FFXIII and X happen to be two of my favorite final fantasies and that's due to a variety of other factors.  I actually enjoyed that the stories did not require running around to pick up random items in order to move the story along, nor side quests that were required to progress.  However, some puzzles, which FFX did have with its cloisters of trials, and some interesting twists/turns or other sorts of areas to explore would have allowed these games to be more interesting to move through instead of just holding up until a cut scene or an encounter.  Again, X was not as bad as XIII with this problem.

A good examples:

Etrian Odyssey 3 Stratum 4,

Very specific, I know.  Stratum 4 of EO3 had a few really interesting things going for it.  First, it introduced a new mechanic, the gateway door.  If you went through a gateway door the wrong way, all gateway doors on the floor would close.  These could be opened with a nearby switch.  The game first introduces these doors to you under circumstances that show both how they work, it's a room with 2 gateway doors that lead in, how to open them, and then right afterward it demonstrates a second way they will be used.

When you leave the first room with these doors, you notice a FOE (also known as a wandering miniboss) infront of you, however, as soon as you step towards it, the gateway door out of the first room closes, and the FOE is kept safely locked away.  The nearest switch to undo this is a few rooms away, so you cannot accidentally open the door and fight the foe; you have to intentionally go back for it.  This is a neat way to introduce a mechanic, and then the rest of the area plays with the mechanic in different ways.  By the time the player is sick of dealing with these doors, the game moves on to a new feature.  I consider that to be a good way to break up wandering through corridors.

What games have impressed you with their design?  I'm not just talking aesthetics here, which FFXIII has in spades, but in more interesting mechanics on the over world or in the dungeon itself.

Smashing Souls onto Metal for fun and profit

I have a variety of plans to make the combat interesting, but today I want to lay out my Essence Fusion System.

Essence Fusion is the process of taking Souls, unique to each demon in the game, and fusing them into a piece of a equipment in order to transform the equipment from ordinary into unique.  Each demon's soul belongs to one of 9 categories.  There are 6 basic categories, hearth, tundra, gales, stone, miasma, and ray (an attempt to create some more interesting names for the basic elements), as well as 3 special categories, Pure, Abyss, and Unknown.  The special category souls will act slightly different from the rest of the souls and will be acquired slightly differently too.  Finally,  souls will contain a rating of 1-5 stars to indicate how powerful they are.


Basic Souls will be acquired from enemies via a negotiation system.  Enemies will need to be convinced to give you their soul through dialogue and gifts.  A demon may ask you questions that you have to answer (again think SMT) or they may ask for certain combat conditions to be met, such as poison him, or kill all the other demons without hurting him.  Depending on how well you navigate through the negotiation, the soul the demon will give you will vary in quality, and there will be 5 level of quality, each of which produces more gems when you refine.  Perfect souls will produce 6 gems, flawless 5, normal 4, blemished 3, and cracked 2.  


After acquiring souls, the player may refine the souls into soulgems, which can be inserted into equipment, or fuse two souls together to create a new third soul.  The fusion itself will produce a third soul that is nothing like the two components, for example 1 hearth soul and 1 tundra soul will create a miasma soul, but the fusion process will be predictable and create a higher level soul, though you cannot fuse a soul higher level than you.  I have all the permutations charted, but more on this later.
 

Each piece of basic equipment has a certain number of slots available to fit in soulgems, and the unique weapon created will be based what combination of soulgems are entered.  For example, a Flame blade will be created by having a weapon with at least 2 hearth souls of rank 2 or less and no more than 1 of any other element.  The resulting weapon will have higher stats than the basic blade, and will deal fire damage, instead of neutral, and increase the wearer's fire affinity (relevant to combat, will discuss more later).  The soulgems will be locked into the weapon and cannot be reused in the future.  You can destroy a soul in a piece of equipment in order to place a new soul in its place.

Certain unique weapons will require more specific soul arrangements, such as 2 tundra souls of rating 3-5, 1 ray soul of rating 3-5, and 1 gales soul of rating 3-5, and no other souls.  The more specific the conditions, the more specialized the result.  While players may stumble upon one such unique combination, in order for the unique item to be at full strength, a recipe must be acquired, either bought from an NPC, acquired from a chest, or given to the player be demons during negotiations.  Instead of a soul, the player may ask for a recipe.  Recipes are not Equipment slot specific. 

That's the basic idea of A) how equipment will be made, and B) how the soul system will work.  Does this sound like it would be fun to play with and explore?

A Welcoming Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my development blog for the game Shades of Grey. 



This blog's purpose to help me keep track of my development ideas, progress, and receive feedback from you and the rest of the Internet on my first foray into the world of game development.  My goal is to create a compelling game not just through my vision of what the game ought to be, but also what you, the players, will want to play.  This begs some few obvious questions.

So who am I?  My name's Kyle and I am a second year law student (as of the time of this post) at the Benjamin N. Cardozo school of law in NYC. 

So you're studying to be a lawyer, and trying to develop video games.  I don't see the connection.

While being in graduate school is time consuming, I have always wanted to develop my own game, and there's no time like the present to finally sit down and make it happen.  Perhaps one day I can make money from one of these professions to subsidize the other...

So what is Shades of Grey?

Shades of Grey is the working title of a RPG in the vein of Wizardry, Etrian Odyssey, or Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (just to name a few influential games).  The characters will traverse areas from a first person perspective, fight groups of enemies in turn based combat, and use the souls of enemies they negotiate with to create equipment to fight bigger and stronger foes. 

Why such an old school game/RPG?

This is for two reasons:  The first is that I am a big fan of the turn based RPG and feel they do not receive enough love in the modern market place.  Second is that my programing skills are 0 and creating game play systems for a turn based game is easier on the programing and cheapens art costs.  The soul of the game will be in the fighting, story and crafting, not the graphics, and that's fine with me.

Wait...no programing experience?  How are you going to make this?

I'm dodging that issue as long as possible, but I figure I'll either partner up with some programmers down the road, once most of the game is properly conceptualized and reduced to formulas, or I'll teach myself by the time I need it.  Nothing going on here is going to be a difficult programing challenge, at least I hope not.  Instead, the creativity of the systems is going to be the key.

So why am I reading this blog then?

You readers will have the ability to help shape the game as I develop it.  I have plenty of  game play ideas, but I am often my own best echo chamber, and sometimes bad ideas start sounding good.  By sounding ideas off of you readers, I can work smarter, not harder, and create something that is not only fun for me, but also for you.  Additionally, how many opportunities do you have to try to discuss the intricacies of how an ex-con should attempt to fight legions of demons?  Not often I bet.

What platform will this one day be on?

PC.  My goal is to get this onto Steam.

So come join the discussions and I hope to see your comments out in the field.