Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Development => Programming => Topic started by: Gr3yling on November 13, 2013, 04:44:29 AM
-
Since Xecutor's recent topic about "legalized experience and item farming" turned into a discussion about the role and implementation of realism in roguelikes, I figured that it might be worthwhile to create a new topic devoted to that subject.
There are a least two parts to what I have to say. Here is the first one, and if anyone is actually interested in what I have to say, I’ll get into the second later.
I think it is reasonable to say that you have to prioritize what realistic aspects to include in a roguelike, because complete realism, or even anything close to it, is impossible. I think that as you add more realistic elements the game does obviously becomes more realistic, but I think that the returns also diminish with each new element.
Take the idea of attributes, for example. When I think of increasing realism, increasing the number of attributes used to describe the PC is the first thing I think of. The PC is arguably the most important part of the game world, so it seems reasonable to start adding realism there.
Lets use the system of attributes in ADOM as an example. It has 8 visible attributes (I think), one of which is dexterity. There is no agility attribute per se.
I think it would be more realistic to have a separate attribute for dexterity and agility. This is because fine movement, performed relatively slowly, using mostly hand muscles (lock picking, some forms of craftsmanship) probably develops independently from coarser, faster movements, performed with large numbers of muscles over the entire body (leaping, dodging, running).
But, the problem is that there really aren’t that many tasks that would use this new, more specific dexterity attribute. There’s lock picking, pickpocketing, playing music…And that’s about all I can think of. The game isn’t improved in any significant way by its addition. If having just dexterity simulates reality with 99% accuracy (just to make up a number here) having dexterity and agility might increase the accuracy of that simulation to 99.9%. I want to believe that matters, but I'm just not sure it does.
Even if you did decide to go ahead and implement a separate dexterity and agility attribute, there’s no reason to stop there. For greater realism, you could separately assign each limb attributes, like strength of muscle contraction, speed of muscle contraction, coordination, and endurance. Perhaps the hands could even be separate from the rest of the arms to account for manual dexterity.
So, the question is, where do you stop? How realistic is “realistic enough?” How many attributes and skills describe the PC accurately enough to create a sense of immersion? If it does make sense to add a bunch of additional attributes, how do could you communicate all this additional information to the player in a clear, concise way? And, incidentally, should each attribute be equally useful? Can having a perception score of 20 rationally be made as beneficial as having a strength score of 20?
By the way, I do think it would be cool to add the more detailed attribute systems that I was just describing, I’m just not sure there’s actually any merit in doing so.
-
Can having a perception score of 20 rationally be made as beneficial as having a strength score of 20?
It's not very realistic to have attributes as numbers. It could be possible to model a realistic enough game world, or at least give that kind of impression to the player. It wouldn't be impossible, but you should also think about how powerful monsters are, because with typical roguelike monsters the player (if human) would not survive.
-
I think I disagree with the notion of increasing the number of attributes being the best way to increase realism. As you pointed out, it makes some sense and could be cool if done right, but would be hard to balance and in the end would likely add a lot of complexity and bookkeeping without actually adding a ton of depth to the game. Sure, you could have separate strength and dexterity stats for each limb, or seperate agility and dexterity stats, but creating compelling gameplay from either of those ideas would be difficult. You could also do things like have a food system where you actually have to worry about your character's nutrition and not just hunger, but a lot of people find hunger-only systems to be a nuisance, let alone a nutrition system.
I think to some extent, as Krice pointed out, you have to accept that a Roguelike will always be a simplification of things. You're essentially reducing your character to set of numbers in any turn-based roguelike, after all.
However, it might actually be an interesting idea to try to represent your character's attributes as things other than numbers. Consider health, for example. It's not at all realistic that your health is represented as a number, and that the number being low is, in most games, meaningless, except that when it hits 0 you die. If you really wanted to make a game more realistic, you could try to have a more realistic injury system. Of course, the downside is that a fully realistic injury system would involve your character having to recover in bed for weeks after suffering a bad sword wound and possibly never being able to fight again, so you still have to find a balance.
One thing I think could be interesting would be trying to implement a "realistic" magic system. I realize that the phrase "realistic magic" is silly, but what I mean is trying to create a consistent mythology of how the magic in the game works and actually implement the gameplay that way. A lot of books have magic systems akin to a set of scientific laws governing how magic works, what it's capable of, etc, but most games just represent spells as things that drain from a meter that recharges over time. It would be cool to see a game that actually has a complete mythos behind the magic system with a more complex end result than "spells cost mana and you can't cast spells when your mana's empty."
-
I think you shouldn't confuse realism with detail and complexity.
You could have a perfectly realistic game about a fight between two swordsmen of equal skill. If the whole fight is decided by a coin toss, this is totally abstracted, yet completely realistic.
Abstraction (lack of detail), can just as well support realism. For example the early days D&D hit points do this - they represent wounds, stance, stamina, fighting spirit, etc. It's highly abstract, but it's believable I think.
As for detail, complexity and simulation. Humans (mammals) are so complicated machines (to humans), and hard to simulate in a Roguelike without Dwarf Fortress level of dedication. What if we have a Roguelike only about robots? Still very complicated, but far more plausible to get a decent simulation of. Many of the traits could be expressed as SI-units.
-
Many of the traits could be expressed as SI-units.
Heh, that'd be hilarious :) You could have them fight on a frictionless plane and such too, so that all the physics equations can be correctly modelled...
On the many stats thing, what I'd maybe prefer to see some time is a many traits system. So the basic rules are extremely basic - say you die in 3 hits, every attack hits for 1 damage. But there are numerous traits you can have which modify this, some of them to great complexity, yet you only ever have a few traits active in the game. The gameplay becomes about balancing the traits you have, with a bit of gamification around that. I'm mostly modelling this off Small World, a board game that's a bit like Risk but much more fun, with the conquering rules being simple but various exceptions to the rules adding complexity.
As an example, you have a Tough trait which gives +1 max health. A Dodge trait that gives 25% chance to avoid damage. A Heavy Swing trait that does double damage but attacks take double time. A parry trait that deflects attacks from people you attack. Etc etc... You'd build it in a way that everything has interesting interactions with each other, and it would be easy to expand and add new traits as the game is updated.
-
I think I disagree with the notion of increasing the number of attributes being the best way to increase realism. As you pointed out, it makes some sense and could be cool if done right, but would be hard to balance and in the end would likely add a lot of complexity and bookkeeping without actually adding a ton of depth to the game.
Okay, you mentioned that more realistic attribute systems might be cool if it they were “done right”. Are you thinking of any particular ideas when you say that?
Sure, you could have separate strength and dexterity stats for each limb, or seperate agility and dexterity stats, but creating compelling gameplay from either of those ideas would be difficult. You could also do things like have a food system where you actually have to worry about your character's nutrition and not just hunger, but a lot of people find hunger-only systems to be a nuisance, let alone a nutrition system.
Right, but I’m trying to figure out approximately how many numbers I can throw at the player and the game still be enjoyable. Are ADOM's 8 attributes too many? Would you take some away? If so, what would they be? What games have you played that you feel have done a really great job of describing the PC to the player in a detailed yet streamlined way?
I guess maybe the ultimate question is how rapidly a player can comfortably interpret information. I mean, we’re talking about attributes here, but the same basic question applies to the information conveyed by the systems for modelling injury that you mention later. Heck, someone may have even done research on this sort of topic.
I think to some extent, as Krice pointed out, you have to accept that a Roguelike will always be a simplification of things. You're essentially reducing your character to set of numbers in any turn-based roguelike, after all.
Oh, I completely agree. But, again, I want to know more specifically what degree of simplification is the most appropriate. Say, for fantasy themed games like ADOM, Nethack, Crawl, etc. I’m looking for a more concrete answer to these questions, basically.
However, it might actually be an interesting idea to try to represent your character's attributes as things other than numbers. Consider health, for example. It's not at all realistic that your health is represented as a number, and that the number being low is, in most games, meaningless, except that when it hits 0 you die. If you really wanted to make a game more realistic, you could try to have a more realistic injury system.
I realize there is some truth to that, but I think the idea of quantifying health numerically might be more realistic than some people think. Vital signs do just that, for instance. So do most lab results. A lot of aspects of a patient history and physical examination are qualitative rather than quantitative, it's true, but numbers can give you a reasonably amount of information about someone's physical status.
Even in a more realistic model for injury, it seems like you are still going to have to use some sort of numerical system. If injuries are highly localized, aren't we just talking about the HP of an arm instead of some sort of global HP value? Or were you thinking of something else?
One thing I think could be interesting would be trying to implement a "realistic" magic system. I realize that the phrase "realistic magic" is silly, but what I mean is trying to create a consistent mythology of how the magic in the game works and actually implement the gameplay that way. A lot of books have magic systems akin to a set of scientific laws governing how magic works, what it's capable of, etc, but most games just represent spells as things that drain from a meter that recharges over time. It would be cool to see a game that actually has a complete mythos behind the magic system with a more complex end result than "spells cost mana and you can't cast spells when your mana's empty."
I agree. That sounds really cool. How would you do it?
-
I think you shouldn't confuse realism with detail and complexity.
You could have a perfectly realistic game about a fight between two swordsmen of equal skill. If the whole fight is decided by a coin toss, this is totally abstracted, yet completely realistic.
But this is a really specific case, wouldn't you say? Most outcomes aren't really decided by a single binary variable. I hear the point you are making, but I feel like it is making this problem sound simpler than it is.
EDIT: My point is, it seems that a decent amount of detail/complexity is required to approach realism in most situations a player encounters. So, maybe detail, complexity, and realism are different, but they are certainly closely interrelated.
Or, maybe you have ideas for a more elegant solution to these sort of questions than I have come up with? I'm certainly open to any new ideas you want to put forth.
Abstraction (lack of detail), can just as well support realism. For example the early days D&D hit points do this - they represent wounds, stance, stamina, fighting spirit, etc. It's highly abstract, but it's believable I think.
Okay, and this is what I'm really trying to get at. What is it about the information that D&D gives the player which makes their character believable and allows immersion in gameplay? What is about those numbers that makes the PC seem more real? Do you think D&D's six attributes are the "magic number" or would you use more or less in your ideal game?
-
It's a matter of how much you love numbers. I don't like stats like charisma that merely affect shop prices and such. For me, a more interesting mechanic would be different gender combinations interacting differently. It would be more realistic too, I think. Is there any game where a female PC gets lower prices if the shopkeeper is male?
-
My point is that my idea of realism is not tied to how detailed the game is.
For me, realism is something more like:
* The game's features are consistent with the setting.
* The game's mechanics, text, AI, etc does what you'd expect, based on reality. This reality may be modified to allow magic, elves, zombies, etc, it can still be realistic within that premise, and must still behave like you'd expect a world with elves to behave (I cringe every time I hear the argument "the game has elves and magic, don't complain that it's unrealistic that you can eat an apple to instantly heal all your wounds")
* Features should primarily be added to enhance immersion in the game world, not to add abstract gamey little mechanics. If you add dynamite, it should be because it would make sense that the game world has dynamite, not because you want to add an area of effect attack.
I'm mostly concerned with immersion and atmosphere.
If I take my own game Infra Arcana as example. Imagine I add gold coin items, and put shops where friendly cultists sell you items for gold. From a purely game-mechanical perspective, it would be a fun mechanic. But it would be ridiculous and unrealistic - in the sense that it would break immersion. Sure, the game is all about unnatural monsters and magic... but that's a completely different thing. I try to create a virtual world with the premise that there are unnatural monsters and magic. I don't need detailed simulation to do that, but I need consistency and a heavier focus on immersion than abstract mechanics.
As for detail, I just try to keep it as simple as possible (to develop and for the player) to convey the things I want.
With that said, I'm really fascinated by high detail simulation-oriented games like Dwarf Fortress, Aurora, Cataclysm DDA, etc. It's a noble pursuit :)
-
It's a matter of how much you love numbers. I don't like stats like charisma that merely affect shop prices and such. For me, a more interesting mechanic would be different gender combinations interacting differently. It would be more realistic too, I think. Is there any game where a female PC gets lower prices if the shopkeeper is male?
ADOM as far as I can remember. I think ToME 2 did it too, in the past.
Gry3ling: I think 6 are ideal as long as they are all useful. I've added Luck, because I felt it was missing, but I wouldn't exceed 7 attributes in any case.
-
It's a matter of how much you love numbers. I don't like stats like charisma that merely affect shop prices and such. For me, a more interesting mechanic would be different gender combinations interacting differently. It would be more realistic too, I think. Is there any game where a female PC gets lower prices if the shopkeeper is male?
ADOM. But it's done in a pretty horrible way: For male characters, shop prices are determined by Charisma, and Appearance is completely useless. For female characters, shop prices are determined by Appearance, and Charisma is probably useless (except for bards and other characters with pets). From a gameplay perspective, this means all your elves should be created females and all other races male, since that minimizes shop prices (since obviously orcs share the beauty ideals of humans and find their own species just as disgusting as we would; poor orcs).
But I think it could be interesting in a RL to try to implement gender and sexuality in a more meaningful way. I know Anamnesia does this to a certain extent, but I haven't played it enough to say much about how it's done. Considering how RL settings are often a bit over the top, the least I would expect of a gendered RL would be that sexual life is as diverse as the rest of the world, rather than implicitly measuring everything from the perspective of white, human, male heterosexuality. Imagine stuff like magic items to swap your gender (see the myth of Tiresias), allowing you perhaps to seduce an NPC who'd normally not be interested, or gain access to areas that are taboo for one gender. One starting point could be The Thousand and One Nights, with its portrayal of all kinds of romance (from "prince rescues princess" to "lesbian mocks fat guy who lusts for her"). In a scifi setting, you wouldn't even have to limit yourself to two genders. There could be species that reproduce though agamogenesis, parthenogenesis, or why not even trigametogenesis!
As always,
Minotauros
-
How realistic is “realistic enough?” How many attributes and skills describe the PC accurately enough to create a sense of immersion?
I hear this all the time but I don't get it. Why is it good for video games to pretend that they're not video games? Why is that necessary to achieve immersion?
By "immersion" you mean becoming completely absorbed in a task or a piece of media until it has your complete attention and the rest of the world just sort of falls away, right? Heavily abstracted games can do that just as well as simulationist games with a thousand character stats.
Like, one of the most immersive things about ADOM is how the world is really mysterious in a way that directly affects you, the player. You want to give the game your full attention and figure out what's going on.
It's a matter of how much you love numbers. I don't like stats like charisma that merely affect shop prices and such. For me, a more interesting mechanic would be different gender combinations interacting differently. It would be more realistic too, I think. Is there any game where a female PC gets lower prices if the shopkeeper is male?
I really don't like this.
You're assuming that every shopkeeper is out looking for sex or romance or whatever. You're assuming they're all interested in the opposite sex. You're assuming they will all be attracted to your particular character and that personality won't have a significant effect on any of that. Mechanically, you're giving the player an incentive to choose their character's sex based on which will give better advantages instead of picking whatever they like.
It isn't realistic at all. An expert haggler with an imposing presence will always get better prices in a barter system. A meek personality is a huge disadvantage in negotiation regardless of sex and sexuality.
I agree. That sounds really cool. How would you do it?
There are usually two methods suggested for this kind of thing. The most common is to come up with a set of pseudophysics for how magic works in your setting. Real life physics are used as a common starting point (eg come up with magical analogues for Newton's laws of motion and the laws of thermodynamics). Mana is a quantifiable form of energy that can be converted into other forms of energy, wizards are effectively scientists in the context of a world with different physical laws, etc etc.
So let's say that in your fantasy world, the sun is the source of all magic. Wizards need exposure to sunlight to regenerate their mana. Mana potions are solar energy that has been somehow forced into a liquid form. Or maybe wizards can only cast their spells while standing in sunlight, and the brighter it is the stronger their magic. During the day wizards might be incredibly powerful, but completely helpless at night, so non-magical fighters tend to use tactics and equipment that are appropriate for night time and darkness. You could have wizard towers full of mirrors to better focus solar energy. Maybe all magical effects are based on heat and light, or maybe other types magical effects exist, but are weak and inefficient because of the need to convert solar energy to electrical energy or whatever.
Basically just come up with any idea for where magic comes from and draw the appropriate conclusions from that.
The less common and cooler method is to base your game's setting on conceptual rather than physical laws. Use myths and fairy tales as your inspiration. Look at the weird way the human mind perceives the world and build your fantasy setting around that somehow.
So for example, say that you want to go with an animistic setting. Everything that happens in the world is because of spirits rather than physics. The spirits that live in stones are stubborn and conservative, and the stone's nature is derived from its spirits nature. Night time in a forest doesn't feel spooky because of wild animals or irrational paranoia, it's because hostile and frightening spirits like to be there at that time.
Maybe wizards are people who can communicate with the spirits and give them commands. Maybe they have to give the spirits something in exchange. Or about spirits that like beautiful people and want to protect and help them so a higher charisma stat means stronger magic? But what if the spirits' idea of beauty is really different from most humans' ideas about beauty? Maybe different types of spirits like different things, like earth spirits appreciate power and durability, so being really xstrong means you can cause earthquakes and rockslides.
It doesn't need to be the usual natural/elemental stuff either. Everything has a spirit. There are spirits living in the road you travel on, and if you offend them, all of the wheels on your wagons break when you travel. Doors have spirits too, and the person who earns their favor can bypass any lock.
-
You're assuming that every shopkeeper is out looking for sex or romance or whatever. You're assuming they're all interested in the opposite sex. You're assuming they will all be attracted to your particular character and that personality won't have a significant effect on any of that. Mechanically, you're giving the player an incentive to choose their character's sex based on which will give better advantages instead of picking whatever they like.
It isn't realistic at all. An expert haggler with an imposing presence will always get better prices in a barter system. A meek personality is a huge disadvantage in negotiation regardless of sex and sexuality.
Well you usually make assumptions when designing a game. You don't have to take those particular ones if you don't like them. I'm assuming males are more easily manipulated by females, even if they're not looking for sex. This may or may not be true in real life, let's not go into this.
My point is, before you go into adding attributes like charisma and appearance, you can consider using sex for the mechanics, and I argue that it would be more interesting. I really like AgingMinotaur's ideas above, by the way.
-
I'm assuming males are more easily manipulated by females, even if they're not looking for sex. This may or may not be true in real life, let's not go into this.
Good call.
-
Gry3ling: I think 6 are ideal as long as they are all useful. I've added Luck, because I felt it was missing, but I wouldn't exceed 7 attributes in any case.
I do feel like the attributes you chose for Veins of the Earth are good ones, but what made you pick seven? It is a somewhat magical number, I agree, but I'm just curious what was behind your decision. And why did you pick those in particular? Are there mechanical reasons that you felt others, like perception, just wouldn't "work" in the game?
As far as the number seven goes, I thought I had read that US phone numbers are seven digits without the area code because this is the longest number of that you can easily recall, maybe for reasons related to chunking? I am not well educated in this area, so I could be wrong. Was your decision related to that?
I'm really not sure the number attributes has to be limited by the ability of the player to memorize them as long as they have a really rough idea of whether the PC is good or bad at something. A lot of times you aren't even paying much attention to some of them. You often don't care a lot about the PC's strength if they are a wizard, or their mana if you are a warrior, right?
-
It's not very realistic to have attributes as numbers.
Although, to be fair, both the attributes that I mentioned in the part of my post that you quoted for this reply can very easily be represented numerically. Perception (visual acuity) is routinely described by numbers (20/20, 10/20, etc). I realize you could argue that some aspects of visual perception are harder to quantify, but I think you still see what I mean.
Whole body strength seems like it would also be fairly easy to quantify using a weight lifting exercise that involved a number of widely distributed muscle groups, maybe something like deadlifting? I'm not very athletic so I couldn't say for sure.
I also like the idea of attribute values that allow the player to compare the PC to a normal human in an understandable way. In ADOM, I think an average human being is described as having 10’s for all their attribute values. So, you can easily imagine exactly what having a strength of 20 means: that the PC has the strength of two people.
You could think about perception the same way, I think. For instance, if the PC had a perception score of 15, they would probably have they had 30/20 perception. Again, I realize I’m oversimplifying the idea perception in a lot of ways, but you still see what I’m saying.
It could be possible to model a realistic enough game world, or at least give that kind of impression to the player. It wouldn't be impossible, but you should also think about how powerful monsters are, because with typical roguelike monsters the player (if human) would not survive.
There’s an argument that what really makes a hero is luck, not the more mundane attributes that they possess. In most fantasy stories, the characters are stronger than the average person, but not strong enough to beat an orc, or even a goblin in single combat (I figure that goblins are at least as strong as chimpanzees). They are more agile, but not agile enough to successfully dodge their enemies’ attacks over, and over, and over again.
So, to me, the answer is that a “normal person” could survive just fine in a fantasy world, if they had the gift of luck that is given by the gods or whatever other supernatural powers influence such a world.
-
Take the idea of attributes, for example. When I think of increasing realism, increasing the number of attributes used to describe the PC is the first thing I think of.
What about heading in the opposite direction? You could remove attributes completely.
Perk systems work really well in games like Infra Arcana and Mage Guild. They carry most of attributes' mechanical benefits without any of their problems. It's easier to form a mental image of a knight with the "very strong" perk than one with 52 strength.
-
My point is that my idea of realism is not tied to how detailed the game is.
For me, realism is something more like:
* The game's features are consistent with the setting.
* The game's mechanics, text, AI, etc does what you'd expect, based on reality. This reality may be modified to allow magic, elves, zombies, etc, it can still be realistic within that premise, and must still behave like you'd expect a world with elves to behave (I cringe every time I hear the argument "the game has elves and magic, don't complain that it's unrealistic that you can eat an apple to instantly heal all your wounds")
* Features should primarily be added to enhance immersion in the game world, not to add abstract gamey little mechanics. If you add dynamite, it should be because it would make sense that the game world has dynamite, not because you want to add an area of effect attack.
I'm mostly concerned with immersion and atmosphere.
This is definitely closest to my take on realism. Of course in some other genres it`s much easier to define - for example when somebody says "It`s a realistic flight sim" you instantly know what`s up, but upon hearing "realistic roguelike" I wouldn`t know what to expect to be honest. But, the above encapsulates the whole thing rather well - "consistency" being the main word here.
And definitely wouldn`t say that number of attributes affects realism - it can of course, but it can also detract from it, if done badly. Realms of Arkania spring to mind, an old school cRPG so loaded with stats and attributes that character creation is kind of a separate game. But the problem is, majority of these stats are just for show and either affect nothing at all or the effects are minuscule and invisible to the player (fact it`s an implementation of a tabletop system probably being the cause, it`d make much more sense in live DM session)
Linley`s Crawl has only 3 main stats and yet it`s superbly "realistic" for me - I simply feel during playin that that`s how things would turn out during real dungeon exploration. It`s full of beautiful little touches that should be mandatory - monsters fall into traps, there`s "friendly fire", a monster can pick up a weapon or potion and use it and so on (one thing it`s lacking and which is my absolute favourite is monsters duking it out with each other - think Powder has something like that. I love games that include this mechanic).
So instead of investing in countless attributes - these suit in-depth strategy games much better - I`d prefer to see better monster AI...though by better i don`t mean more ruthless, in fact I`d love to see monstas make mistakes or even avoid me sometime and do some other stuff - why is every goblin hellbent on taking on heavily armed Draconian Skirmisher? Logically, some of them would think twice about that. And spellcasters could fail their creations and cause harm to themselves too. Or conjure a demon that would be a threat to them as well as a player.
Also simple physics could help a lot the realistic cause - it`d be nice to open the door and bash someone with it or maybe block it with a table (loved that in DDA). Or say you hit that suicidal goblin strong enough, he staggers and squashes the poor rat behind him. Things like that.
-
I agree with the others that number or granularity of attributes is mostly orthogonal to the realism of the game, whatever that means ;)
I think the answer to "how many attributes" is "as many as you need for the playstyles you're going to support".
If you're trying to make a completely open-world game, where there are a huge number of ways to play the game, you might need more, if you have a tightly focused game where there are a limited number of well-defined actions, you might not need many at all.
For example, suppose your game is 100% combat oriented, no crafting, lockpicking, writing, or any other kind of activity requiring fine motor control. Then depicting fine motor control is completely irrelevant. Likewise it's not too much of a stretch to make a game where an "int" score is irrelevant, or "perception", or strength, con, or any other stat. Maybe you have a space exploration roguelike where the dominant stat is mathematical ability so you can better plot courses with calculus. In short, what attributes are significant is entirely based on what you're going to be doing with them, which leads to the question of...
What you want to accomplish with attributes? Do you want attributes to provide a way to differentiate between character builds chosen at game start? Do you want attributes to provide an aspect of advancement for the player? Are they a mechanic to enforce character specialization? Do they provide a thematic grounding to relate character abilities in understandable ways?
Similarly, what do attributes themselves accomplish within the framework of the game? Do they provide prerequisites for other aspects of character creation or progression? Do they provide a bias to a RNG for various actions? Do they act as prerequisites for performing actions directly?
Another question is "what's an attribute?". Clearly you mean something like "numeric scores representing intrinsic ability to perform various actions", but the function that kind of thing performs can be replaced by other systems (e.g. traits as Vanguard points out) or as often the case in action games, removed entirely. DDA has less than a handful of attributes (4), but a large number of skills(28), and a huge number of traits(195).
I'd be very interested in building a system that has *only* traits, possibly arranged in a hierarchy of prerequisites. I don't see anything particularly unrealistic about that approach. Some might be "attribute-like", like "strong", "very strong", etc, but it's not absolutely necessary, for example if you have multiple "trees" of trait dependencies, the lower-level traits can provide all the functions of attributes in other games. Perhaps you have a tree of strength-based traits, and your effective strength is the sum of traits in that tree, so each time you chose a complimentary trait the related ones become more powerful.
The answer to "why numbers" is simply "so you can plug them into formulae", and the answer to "why show the player the numbers" is "so they can predict the outcomes of the formulae". All other purposes can be filled some other way, such as boolean trait checks instead of threshold or RNG based checks, or descriptive labels.
-
What about heading in the opposite direction? You could remove attributes completely.
You could, and I'm open to the idea. There are a couple of problems, though. First, you are essentially asking the player to "just trust you" when it comes to game mechanics. If I don't have at least some insight numbers the game is using to calculate the outcome of the PC's actions, how do I know that the mechanics are rational at all?
Second, you need numbers to make accurate comparisons. Who will do more damage, the PC who is "very strong" and has a "dull" sword, or the PC who is "weak" and has a "very sharp" sword?
Honestly, though, I do really like the idea you are bringing up here, and I have thought a lot about it in the past. I think that a definite plus of that sort of system is that you can have incredibly detailed statistics used to simulate the outcomes of player actions, because you don't have to their limit complexity to a level that the player can easily understand.
It's easier to form a mental image of a knight with the "very strong" perk than one with 52 strength.
On the contrary, it's easier to form a mental image of a knight who is twice as strong as the average person (20 strength) than one who is "very strong".
-
I hear this all the time but I don't get it. Why is it good for video games to pretend that they're not video games? Why is that necessary to achieve immersion?
Nobody is “pretending” video games are anything they’re not, because video games can be whatever you want them to be. There’s not some sort of role boundary that is being inappropriately transgressed here, any more than there would be if any other medium incorporated realistic elements in an attempt to mimic reality more closely.
Why is realism, or detail necessary to achieve immersion? I think you answer your own question later in your post. Even though you are not interested primarily in using attributes to vividly describe the PC, you enjoy magic systems that are detailed and realistic. You have the same desire for realism that I do, we just look for it in different aspects of games.
By "immersion" you mean becoming completely absorbed in a task or a piece of media until it has your complete attention and the rest of the world just sort of falls away, right? Heavily abstracted games can do that just as well as simulationist games with a thousand character stats.
For some people they can, sure. But not for me. And, honestly, some realism is required to be able to relate to the PC, to role play. I can’t identify with a tetrad the way I can with my PC in ADOM.
And we are focusing mainly on role playing games in this discussion, right?
Like, one of the most immersive things about ADOM is how the world is really mysterious in a way that directly affects you, the player. You want to give the game your full attention and figure out what's going on.
Can you please explain that more, Vanguard?
I agree with the others that number or granularity of attributes is mostly orthogonal to the realism of the game, whatever that means
But, I don’t understand. You’re trying to implement an extremely detailed system for modeling injury to the PC. It’s at least as detailed as adding a few more attributes. Why do you prefer one over the other?
I think the answer to "how many attributes" is "as many as you need for the playstyles you're going to support".
Right, and I’m mainly thinking about a fantasy themed game world similar to ADOM. So, that may help narrow it down somewhat.
What you want to accomplish with attributes? Do you want attributes to provide a way to differentiate between character builds chosen at game start? Do you want attributes to provide an aspect of advancement for the player? Are they a mechanic to enforce character specialization? Do they provide a thematic grounding to relate character abilities in understandable ways?
Similarly, what do attributes themselves accomplish within the framework of the game? Do they provide prerequisites for other aspects of character creation or progression? Do they provide a bias to a RNG for various actions? Do they act as prerequisites for performing actions directly?
Yes to all of those. Were you thinking some of them were mutually exclusive?
I have to think more about the rest of your questions.
-
You could, and I'm open to the idea. There are a couple of problems, though. First, you are essentially asking the player to "just trust you" when it comes to game mechanics. If I don't have at least some insight numbers the game is using to calculate the outcome of the PC's actions, how do I know that the mechanics are rational at all?
Second, you need numbers to make accurate comparisons. Who will do more damage, the PC who is "very strong" and has a "dull" sword, or the PC who is "weak" and has a "very sharp" sword?
None of this is unique to perk systems. Every game expects the player to trust its mechanics. Attributes can be unclear too. Perks don't prevent the developers from revealing their games' internal formulas.
On the contrary, it's easier to form a mental image of a knight who is twice as strong as the average person (20 strength) than one who is "very strong".
It isn't, though. What we call strength is really a combination of a huge number of different traits. To say that a given person is numerically and exactly twice as strong as another is nonsense.
"Very strong" is subjective but there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe in your mind a very strong character is a towering mass of muscle or maybe they're really lean and fit. Either is fine. The important thing is that it gives your imagination a starting point.
If you still feel that it's important to know exactly how strong your guy is, you could always include flavor text on the perk screen that says "You are twice as strong as the average person."
-
The tendency to include a bunch of stats is probably a legacy from tabletop RPGs, where the stats also serve as aids to roleplaying. Eg. a good player will reflect the character's Charisma score in dialogue. (Nonetheless, back in the days when I played a lot of tabletop RPGs, the most immersive sessions came after we ditched stats and dice altogether.)
In a CRPG or RL, I think you should only have as many stats as are meaningful. If Intelligence is only used for a few rare skills, better to drop it or merge it with another stat. To take an example from my own game Squirm, I had a single stat for skillfulness/finesse: basically intelligence, dexterity and charisma baked into one.
I did at some point toy with the idea (again lifted from RPGs such as Nephilim and Everquest) of a game using the four classical elements as stats: Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Some skills/feats might test a single stat (eg. Fire to determine melee damage), others could rely on a combination (eg. Fire+Air for archery, Earth+Water to resist magic effects). That might not be the most realistic system, to try to get back on topic, but it could make for interesting and immersive gameplay, methinks.
As always,
Minotauros
-
None of this is unique to perk systems. Every game expects the player to trust its mechanics.
That’s kind of a vague statement. Every game does necessarily expect a player to trust it’s mechanics to some extent, just like every game has to reveal those mechanics to the player to some extent in order to be playable.
I can give you plenty of examples of successful games where the player has total access to the mechanics, like D&D, for instance. The mechanics of crawl and DDA also seem to be mostly, if not completely, transparent to players. I don’t think they are any worse off for that.
I’m less concerned with the expectations of other game developers than I am with making rational design choices. And I think having transparent mechanics is such a rational choice.
Any game is going to have some mechanics that seem counterintuitive. You can’t just give the player a game and say: “play this in a way that makes sense” because the mechanics that make sense to the developer may not make sense to the player.
Honestly, I think the main reason a developer would want to hide mechanics from players isn’t to generate a mystique about the game world, but because those mechanics aren't rational.
And there are at least some other people who think game mechanics should be transparent. Games like final fantasy tactics have lengthy documents exclusively devoted to explaining game mechanics (check out Aerostar's Battle Mechanics Guide on gamefaqs for a good example of what I am talking about).
Attributes can be unclear too. Perks don't prevent the developers from revealing their games' internal formulas.
It sounds like you are saying here "bad systems of character development are bad." Sure, any type of character development system can be done well or badly. However, in the specific example we are talking about, the numbers give you a lot more information about the PC than just saying they are “very strong”, for all the reasons that I already pointed out.
Am I misunderstanding what you were saying? Would your "very strong" perk explicitly say "+3 to strength" in its description? If it would, well, that would require using attributes too, wouldn't it?
It isn't, though. What we call strength is really a combination of a huge number of different traits.
What I call “strength” is a single trait, and unless you want to get incredibly complicated, that’s probably fine. I of strength think of it as being a measure of the contractile force of a muscle. That, or something similar to that, is what just about anyone else who hears the term “strength” is going to think.
We don’t need to delve into muscle physiology. I am aware there are *many* complicated ways of measuring muscle performance. Even I’m not crazy enough to stumble down that rabbit hole, and it’s hard to believe that anyone else would feel anything was being lost by the omission of that type of esoteric information.
To say that a given person is numerically and exactly twice as strong as another is nonsense.
You know I’m going to ask you why you say that, Vanguard.
Are you wanting to model each muscle group individually, now? I think I was wrong to have suggested that originally. The characters we are modeling aren’t just going to the gym and just doing upper body exercises, they are engaging in activities that use almost all their major muscle groups when they do things like fighting in heavy armor. So, they wouldn't rationally have really strong biceps but really weak quadriceps, for example.
As I already pointed out, deadlifting is probably a decent way of measuring whole body strength. It uses a number of different muscle groups (quadriceps, biceps, pectorals, a number of back muscles, etc). I’m not sure why you couldn’t reasonably say that if person A could dead-lift twice as much as person B, A was twice as strong as B.
"Very strong" is subjective but there's nothing wrong with that.
I already mentioned what I thought was wrong with it. I’ll be happy to debate those claims with you, but right now you aren’t specifically addressing any of them.
*Edited because I can't spell "sense", apparently.
**Edited again because there were a lot of errors that I missed.
-
In a CRPG or RL, I think you should only have as many stats as are meaningful.
And I realize you are right. Attributes should probably just be a way of choosing the PC's specialization, rather than a source of realism.
EDIT: The next question would be what attributes should be used. I think the four element idea that you pointed out is very cool, AgingMinotaur, but my personal preference is to go with a more traditional system. It would probably include things like strength, dexterity, intelligence, and so on.
I really like the idea of attributes or skills opening up new content to the player. For instance, in fallout 2 (I think) if the PC has a high enough perception score, they can notice that the village guard is using a sharpened stick as a spear. And this allows them to ask the guard to show them how to make such a spear. In fallout 3, if your strength score is high enough, people will notice that you are strong and give you quests that they otherwise would not have. That sort of thing.
Any other ideas?
-
EDIT: The next question would be what attributes should be used. I think the four element idea that you pointed out is very cool, AgingMinotaur, but my personal preference is to go with a more traditional system. It would probably include things like strength, dexterity, intelligence, and so on.
I like the way how talk about realism degenerates back into traditional rpg system.
-
Increased number of attributes have one serious problem. It's much harder to balance them.
At least if you have attribute bonuses on items.
The more attributes you have, the harder it is to focus (equipmentwise) on attribute that class of your character depends on.
About developing strength thru training. When completely untrained person comes to the gym, he will develop
quickly for several weeks. Then his development suddenly stops. Any further advancement requires huge effort.
That is if you don't use drugs. You need an enormous willpower to continue to develop and stay natural.
JFYI.
Some attributes are better as numbers. Strength for example. It can be objectively measured.
On the other have IMO charisma is more subjective attribute.
Strictly speaking can only be estimated by other person. And might even depend of mood of that person.
Dexterity and agility are more like attributes that can define whether you can or can't perform some trick consistently.
IMO it is almost impossible to develop dexterity. You have it, or you don't have it. You can train some trick to perfection, if you can do it at all.
Agility feels more like production of reflexes and flexibility...
-
I like the way how talk about realism degenerates back into traditional rpg system.
Agree, I must admit I find the whole fixation on attributes a bit bizarre.
About developing strength thru training. When completely untrained person comes to the gym, he will develop
quickly for several weeks. Then his development suddenly stops. Any further advancement requires huge effort.
That is if you don't use drugs. You need an enormous willpower to continue to develop and stay natural.
This is quite a weird statement - I suppose you refer to bodybuilding and steroids as "drugs" - but even so, it`s definitely not as straighforward as that. I disagree that your development will "stop" - it will slow down, obviously, and become less observable compared to the first stage, but I wouldn`t call that stopping. Also, you don`t need "enormous" amounts of willpower - it all depends on the person`s mentality, and what his/hers goals are too.
-
It sounds like you are saying here "bad systems of character development are bad." Sure, any type of character development system can be done well or badly. However, in the specific example we are talking about, the numbers give you a lot more information about the PC than just saying they are “very strong”, for all the reasons that I already pointed out.
Am I misunderstanding what you were saying? Would your "very strong" perk explicitly say "+3 to strength" in its description? If it would, well, that would require using attributes too, wouldn't it?
It could be something like that. But it doesn't have to. The cool thing about perks is that it's easy to mix and match attribute-like perks and perks that are nothing like attributes. "Very strong" could be +2 to hand to hand damage and +20 to maximum carrying weight, like a strength attribute. Or it could just be one of those things. Or it could unlock a better outcomes to events where you need to lift something heavy.
Perks are good for believability because you can be as vague and subjective as you want, while attributes are inherently ultraspecific and imply objective correctness. If you want a perk to describe exactly how your dude looks or what they can do, you can put that down. If you want to just give a general idea, that's fine too. It gives you, as the developer, more direct control so you can easily address implausible elements.
I’m not sure why you couldn’t reasonably say that if person A could dead-lift twice as much as person B, A was twice as strong as B.
Because a person might be stronger in some muscles and weaker in others in ways that aren't easily reflected in deadlifting. Because being able to lift something quickly takes more strength than lifting it slowly even though that isn't being measured at all. Little things like that.
I dunno where I was planning to go with this when I first brought it up. Maybe I was just being pedantic.
I already mentioned what I thought was wrong with it. I’ll be happy to debate those claims with you, but right now you aren’t specifically addressing any of them.
Is this what you're referring to?
Second, you need numbers to make accurate comparisons. Who will do more damage, the PC who is "very strong" and has a "dull" sword, or the PC who is "weak" and has a "very sharp" sword?
You can tell the player the exact numeric values or you can assume they will know that sharp swords are better than dull swords. It's fine either way.
The point of perks isn't to pretend that games aren't really a series of numeric calculations or even to hide the numbers. It's just a way of giving the developer and player more control and better variety while avoiding a lot of the baggage that comes with attribute systems.
-
*sigh* I have disappointed Krice:
I like the way how talk about realism degenerates back into traditional rpg system.
...And Akeley just thinks I'm weird:
Agree, I must admit I find the whole fixation on attributes a bit bizarre.
Regarding what Krice said: okay, okay, I take it back. We don't have to limit ourselves to discussion traditional systems in this topic.
As far as Akeley's comment: I think the reason that attributes are interesting to me is that I have an interest in anatomy and physiology. And I keep asking questions about them because there are a lot of questions that are unanswered and are apparently very hard to answer.
For instance, a lot of people in this thread seem to prefer attribute systems that have 4-7 attributes. But it's hard to get a concrete answer why. Some might say any more than that would make the game too complex, but there are games with zillions of perks and skills that people find completely playable.
And there really is more to this topic than just discussing attributes. I wanted to look at the role of other realistic elements, like the need for food/water, maintaining body temperature, and in depth modeling of injuries. The question was, essentially, which of these elements has a payoff that is worth the complexity that they add to a game. I thought we could try to come up with some sort of objective criteria to evaluate each of these elements.
So that would be phase two of the topic. Just a preview.
-
Not trying to derail, just wanted to comment.
I barely think about realism at all. I like a strong theme. I like a robust modeling of the setting and mechanics, sure, but realism bogs me down man.
-
Not trying to derail, just wanted to comment.
That's cool, I appreciate your input.
I barely think about realism at all. I like a strong theme. I like a robust modeling of the setting and mechanics, sure, but realism bogs me down man.
Hmm. "Robust modeling of the mechanics" certainly sounds like realism, or at least something related to it. What do you mean by that?
-
I believe "robust mechanics" are "cohesive mechanics" aka mechanics which fit together.
That's why I'd pick 6-7 attributes - I believe 2-3 is too little and 7+ is needlessly detailed.
Alternately, a system based on the four elements sounds cool, too.
-
...And Akeley just thinks I'm weird
You`re reading too much into the forum-style syntax, methinks. I mostly just think out loud, not aiming the comment at anyone in particular (unless I do of course ;). In this case it just seemed strange to me that we should be stuck on "how many attributes on a pin`s head" conundrum when there`s so many other avenues to pursue realism (plus, as you admitted yourself, attributes are not necessarily connected to the issue at hand)
It also seems that - as it`s often the case with such a broad term as "realism" - it might mean different things to different people. How would you define realism in a roguelike to start with?
-
You`re reading too much into the forum-style syntax, methinks. I mostly just think out loud, not aiming the comment at anyone in particular (unless I do of course ;).
When will I ever be good enough for you, akeley? When?!
No, really, I didn’t take what you said seriously at all. I was just being melodramatic when I said that you thought I was "weird". Although, if you didn't before, you probably will now.
In this case it just seemed strange to me that we should be stuck on "how many attributes on a pin`s head" conundrum when there`s so many other avenues to pursue realism (plus, as you admitted yourself, attributes are not necessarily connected to the issue at hand)
Well, part of reasons I keep coming back to attributes is because it is so hard to answer basic questions about them. Why is seven the magic number? Surely a player can comfortably interpret and manage more than seven numbers.
Why are we so much more tolerant of large numbers of perks and skills than large numbers of attributes? Is it because the function of perks and skills is clearer? That would make sense, but I’m not aware that anyone has mentioned that yet.
As far as my definition of realism: I feel like “realism” means the game is an accurate simulation of reality. It involves modeling the game world in a way such that outcomes of fictitious events there are the same as the outcome of the corresonding real events in the real world. We do make exceptions for things like magic, of course, but as people have previously alluded to in this topic, even magic can be made realistic, in a sense.
As a result, I do feel like attributes are connected to the issue at hand. A realistic set of attributes (one that allows for an accurate simulation) are certainly not all you need for realism, but they are a good start. The PC can't interact with the game world in a realistic way if they themselves aren't, in some sense, "real".
Another question is "what's an attribute?". Clearly you mean something like "numeric scores representing intrinsic ability to perform various actions", but the function that kind of thing performs can be replaced by other systems (e.g. traits as Vanguard points out) or as often the case in action games, removed entirely. DDA has less than a handful of attributes (4), but a large number of skills(28), and a huge number of traits(195).
The problem is that proficiencies at different tasks are intimately interrelated. If the PC has the perk “strong lifter” which allows him to pick up heavier objects than normal, this increase in strength should rationally affect his ability to perform in other circumstances (like combat).
So, it’s tempting to say that all you need are “output” stats, things like to hit, damage, carrying capacity, etc, but because these things all influence each other, it makes more sense to have some sort of more fundamental number that influences all of them.
Incidentally, that's probably how I would define attributes: as the most fundamental numbers that determine who the player is, the input that influences all other numbers generated about the PC.
I'd be very interested in building a system that has *only* traits, possibly arranged in a hierarchy of prerequisites. I don't see anything particularly unrealistic about that approach. Some might be "attribute-like", like "strong", "very strong", etc, but it's not absolutely necessary, for example if you have multiple "trees" of trait dependencies, the lower-level traits can provide all the functions of attributes in other games. Perhaps you have a tree of strength-based traits, and your effective strength is the sum of traits in that tree, so each time you chose a complimentary trait the related ones become more powerful.
The idea of trait trees/webs sounds good, I would just incorporate attributes into the game also. If you are going to have a tree of strength-based traits that sum, why not just have, well, strength? Like, the attribute? It seems like ultimately, avoiding attributes lead to more complication than just including them.
The answer to "why numbers" is simply "so you can plug them into formulae", and the answer to "why show the player the numbers" is "so they can predict the outcomes of the formulae". All other purposes can be filled some other way, such as boolean trait checks instead of threshold or RNG based checks, or descriptive labels.
Can you please expand on this idea, Kevin? What do you mean by Boolean versus threshold checks, and by descriptive labels?
-
Well, part of reasons I keep coming back to attributes is because it is so hard to answer basic questions about them. Why is seven the magic number? Surely a player can comfortably interpret and manage more than seven numbers.
It's just tradition. There's no particular advantage to 6-8 attributes. You could make fantastic games with dozens of attributes or with zero.
As far as my definition of realism: I feel like “realism” means the game is an accurate simulation of reality. It involves modeling the game world in a way such that outcomes of fictitious events there are the same as the outcome of the corresonding real events in the real world. We do make exceptions for things like magic, of course, but as people have previously alluded to in this topic, even magic can be made realistic, in a sense.
This is why words like believable, plausible, and consistent are better here than realistic - they describe more precisely what you're going for and you don't need to post occasional disclaimers on why wizards are still ok.
-
This is why words like believable, plausible, and consistent are better here than realistic - they describe more precisely what you're going for and you don't need to post occasional disclaimers on why wizards are still ok.
Well before you said that, I was thinking of using this title for my game: "Greyling's Realistic Roguelike (Disclaimer-Wizards are still OK)". But maybe your way is better.
The elemental attribute idea is interesting, it kind of reminds me of Magic the Gathering. In a good way, I mean.
One of the interesting consequences of using abstract mana flavors as attributes is that all classes could plausibly be able to use powerful magical abilities, rather than just a few classes being magi. Characters who specialized in the fire attribute might be mostly melee fighters, but they would be able to enchant their weapons with fire and use other short range fire magic.
I had an idea for this a game that incorporated this idea a while back. Mana was also called “godspark”. All living things were animated by this substance, presumably as a result of the creator gods breathing it into their bodies when after they were formed from clay or whatnot.
The different “flavors” of spark corresponded to elements, but also to the different characteristics that the real world ancients saw as desirable as exemplified by legendary figures and gods.
But then there's the problem of figuring out what characteristics should go with what element. Fire seems like it would correspond with physical strength, right? But, what about water or wind, which are strong enough to wear down mountains and carve canyons out of rock. And rockslides are certainly powerfully destructive. And so is lightning. And so on.
I spend most of my time working on game ideas agonizing over this kind of stuff, to be honest.
There’s also the idea that attributes of opposite elements could be antagonistic, so that the PC couldn’t have high levels of fire and water mana at the same time.
-
Well before you said that, I was thinking of using this title for my game: "Greyling's Realistic Roguelike (Disclaimer-Wizards are still OK)".
I'd play it.
-
Well before you said that, I was thinking of using this title for my game: "Greyling's Realistic Roguelike (Disclaimer-Wizards are still OK)".
I'd play it.
Most certainly, a Roguelike entitled GRR is just begging to be played ;)
As always,
Minotauros
-
Well, part of reasons I keep coming back to attributes is because it is so hard to answer basic questions about them. Why is seven the magic number? Surely a player can comfortably interpret and manage more than seven numbers.
Why are we so much more tolerant of large numbers of perks and skills than large numbers of attributes? Is it because the function of perks and skills is clearer? That would make sense, but I’m not aware that anyone has mentioned that yet.
You have some good points here, there may well be some underlying principle indicating than more than 7 or so attributes becomes problematic, but I'm afraid I have no particular insight into that, so I'm picking at the issues around the edges I feel like I do have a handle on :)
Another question is "what's an attribute?". Clearly you mean something like "numeric scores representing intrinsic ability to perform various actions", but the function that kind of thing performs can be replaced by other systems (e.g. traits as Vanguard points out) or as often the case in action games, removed entirely. DDA has less than a handful of attributes (4), but a large number of skills(28), and a huge number of traits(195).
The problem is that proficiencies at different tasks are intimately interrelated. If the PC has the perk “strong lifter” which allows him to pick up heavier objects than normal, this increase in strength should rationally affect his ability to perform in other circumstances (like combat).
"lifting based" combat certainly, but... I'm not so sure that's a major combat form ;)
Similarly you could have a "hard puncher" trait that gives bonus damage when punching, but has no effect on carrying capacity.
I think that's specifically one of the attractive things about perk based systems, in that there's little to no expectation that they'll have this bleed over effect like with attributes.
e.g. in DDA we have a disadvantage called "bad back" that indicates you have poor carrying capacity, but has no impact otherwise.
If it says "bad back", or "strong lifter", then you can take it as given that it's all it does. You do have to be careful to indicate what you mean clearly. We had a poorly named disadvantage "hardcore", the result of which was extremely low HP*, which has since been changed to "frail", which still isn't perfect, but it's an improvement. While it was still named "hardcore" there were a constant stream of requests to make it "more hardcore", or rebalance it somehow. After changing it to "frail", the effect matches the name and description well enough that there's no confusion about it.
*The real goal there was to provide an optional more realistic scale for taking damage, more like being incapacitated with a single serious hit. Actually making it one hit is extremely unreasonable as there are many sources of minor damage in the game.
So, it’s tempting to say that all you need are “output” stats, things like to hit, damage, carrying capacity, etc, but because these things all influence each other, it makes more sense to have some sort of more fundamental number that influences all of them.
Incidentally, that's probably how I would define attributes: as the most fundamental numbers that determine who the player is, the input that influences all other numbers generated about the PC.
I'd be very interested in building a system that has *only* traits, possibly arranged in a hierarchy of prerequisites. I don't see anything particularly unrealistic about that approach. Some might be "attribute-like", like "strong", "very strong", etc, but it's not absolutely necessary, for example if you have multiple "trees" of trait dependencies, the lower-level traits can provide all the functions of attributes in other games. Perhaps you have a tree of strength-based traits, and your effective strength is the sum of traits in that tree, so each time you chose a complimentary trait the related ones become more powerful.
The idea of trait trees/webs sounds good, I would just incorporate attributes into the game also. If you are going to have a tree of strength-based traits that sum, why not just have, well, strength? Like, the attribute? It seems like ultimately, avoiding attributes lead to more complication than just including them.
You could tell the player what their effective "strength" score was, but it's a derived stat instead of a source stat in this example, making it not an attribute for the purposes of this discussion. Arguably it might still count as an attribute, and you might even allow the player to manipulte it, for example with "cheap" and potentially stackable traits that just increase the derived strength stat. I'm not sure how that's any more or less complicated than the alternative, as you'd likely be choosing the various abilities, skills, perks, etc anyway, so it just eliminates setting attributes.
The answer to "why numbers" is simply "so you can plug them into formulae", and the answer to "why show the player the numbers" is "so they can predict the outcomes of the formulae". All other purposes can be filled some other way, such as boolean trait checks instead of threshold or RNG based checks, or descriptive labels.
Can you please expand on this idea, Kevin? What do you mean by Boolean versus threshold checks, and by descriptive labels?
Within the game logic itself, you have your various formulae to determine the outcome of actions. An example of a threshold check is, "the player can force open a locked door if their strength is 12 or higher", which you could replace with a "door smasher" trait/ability, which would be a boolean check, and also gives you a descriptive label for being able to break doors instead of it being implied by having a certain strength. The thing that attributes bring to the table is that it exposes a major input of those formula to the player.
Which is superior? I'm not at all sure, I've only dealt with thoroughly hybridized systems
A really major quality of attributes from tabletop gaming is that they can be used for arbitrary checks, the player wants to perform some novel action, and you can use a bare attribute check to determine success. Obviously this isn't helpful in computer gaming, as novel actions aren't allowed.
-
"lifting based" combat certainly, but... I'm not so sure that's a major combat form ;)
Similarly you could have a "hard puncher" trait that gives bonus damage when punching, but has no effect on carrying capacity.
I think that's specifically one of the attractive things about perk based systems, in that there's little to no expectation that they'll have this bleed over effect like with attributes.
I realize it is irrational, but for some reason this still bothers me. Surely having greater lifting strength implies greater strength in general? I mean, people do *lift* weights to get stronger? I feel the same way about "hard puncher" honestly. How can someone's arm muscles generate more force when punching but not in any other situation?
But, like I said, I realize these concerns probably do not have any affect on gameplay.
Here is another question: isn't the "hard puncher" perk pretty much the same thing as adding an extra skill level in a martial arts discipline? In general, I feel like a lot of perks are just differently packaged skills. Like, in fallout 3, many perks amounted to just upgrading several skills at once. I don't feel like this is terrible or anything, it just seems like a decent goal might be to differentiate perks from skills.
One way of looking at it would be that you have three "tiers" of specialization in abilities. Attributes would be the most generalized, then skills, and then perks would be super specialized.
Have you thought about naming negative traits like "frail" after real world diseases? Frail could be osteogenesis imperfecta, or something like that.
You could tell the player what their effective "strength" score was, but it's a derived stat instead of a source stat in this example, making it not an attribute for the purposes of this discussion. Arguably it might still count as an attribute, and you might even allow the player to manipulte it, for example with "cheap" and potentially stackable traits that just increase the derived strength stat. I'm not sure how that's any more or less complicated than the alternative, as you'd likely be choosing the various abilities, skills, perks, etc anyway, so it just eliminates setting attributes.
I'm afraid I'm having trouble following you here, Kevin. Can you maybe give another example of what you are talking about?
Within the game logic itself, you have your various formulae to determine the outcome of actions. An example of a threshold check is, "the player can force open a locked door if their strength is 12 or higher", which you could replace with a "door smasher" trait/ability, which would be a boolean check, and also gives you a descriptive label for being able to break doors instead of it being implied by having a certain strength. The thing that attributes bring to the table is that it exposes a major input of those formula to the player.
But door smasher would just give a bonus, right? I mean, you wouldn't set it up so that a player with super high strength couldn't smash a door without it, right? Or are we not using attributes in the system you are describing here?
On an unrelated note, I think it probably makes sense that you can only select traits at the beginning of the game in DDA, verses how you can choose talents during gameplay in ADOM.
-
"lifting based" combat certainly, but... I'm not so sure that's a major combat form ;)
Similarly you could have a "hard puncher" trait that gives bonus damage when punching, but has no effect on carrying capacity.
I think that's specifically one of the attractive things about perk based systems, in that there's little to no expectation that they'll have this bleed over effect like with attributes.
Yeah, that's why I like them. They allow the player specialize their characters in really specific way. So you can have a wizard who can carry a lot of things, but isn't good at punching monsters or whatever. In a pure attribute system that could only work if you had a million attributes, which comes with a whole other set of problems.
Attribute systems typically imply that all attributes have roughly equal value. This is especially true for systems where the player can directly spend resources to improve their attributes - why would you invest in the inferior option? It can be made to work but it's limiting. Sometimes the player only needs one of an attribute's functions (eg. carrying capacity from strength), and some functions are inherently less useful than others. Plenty of RPGs give the player the option to buy and sell at better prices through a charisma stat, but it's basically never as useful as things like attack power and defense.
In a perk system, all of those things are easy to deal with. You could make one perk that reduces prices and five perks that increase your attack power. Now maxing out your charisma only costs 1/5 of what maxing your strength does. It's a more reasonable option.
Building a perk system can be more work than doing an attribute system, but the end result is equal or better in every way.
I realize it is irrational, but for some reason this still bothers me. Surely having greater lifting strength implies greater strength in general? I mean, people do *lift* weights to get stronger? I feel the same way about "hard puncher" honestly. How can someone's arm muscles generate more force when punching but not in any other situation?
This is so easy to justify. Maybe the lifter and the puncher are each stronger in different muscle groups. Maybe the puncher isn't as strong, but achieves more damage through better technique. Maybe the lifter doesn't like violence and their psychological discomfort makes them less effective in a fight. You could come up with a million ways to explain this.
But door smasher would just give a bonus, right? I mean, you wouldn't set it up so that a player with super high strength couldn't smash a door without it, right? Or are we not using attributes in the system you are describing here?
No, boolean means true or false. If you've got the door smasher trait, you can smash any door that can be smashed.
Threshold checks are more fluid. They measure different degrees of ability, like attributes. Under a threshold system you could have a door that can be smashed by an average person, but not a weak person, and then a more sturdy door that can be smashed by a strong person but not an average person.
-
I'm not sure I've got much more to say about attributes, honestly.
I would still like to talk some about other elements of realism. What do you guys think about hunger, thirst, the need to protect the PC from the environment, detailed injury modeling, that sort of thing?
-
While I realize that you're saying you're done with attributes, one other thing I wanted to throw in:
The current discussion's been focused on getting carried away with excessive attributes to represent different things, either for flavor or gameplay purposes, but if we're trying to split up all the different gameplay mechanics into different attributes to avoid bundling unrelated gameplay concepts together (e.g. it's annoying when your wizard can't carry anything because he has low strength because it doesn't help him survive otherwise), do we need "attributes" in the "strength/dexterity/intelligence/etc" sense at all? Why not just have stats like "melee damage" or "carry amount"?
Part of this idea is coming from some games in a different genre entirely: League of Legends vs. Dota. In DotA, you have three attributes - Intelligence, Agility, and Strength. Strength boosts health and health regeneration, agility boosts attack speed and armor, intelligence boosts mana and mana regeneration, and one of them will also boost your attack damage depending on your character. You can also get items that directly boost certain stats like damage or attack speed, but many items work in terms of attributes.
In League of Legends, the stats are just named directly after what they do. There's no strength or dexterity or intelligence. There's just "attack damage" and "ability power" and "mana" and "health" and so on.
So the question is, from a gameplay standpoint, do we need to name attributes at all? I think one of the reasons having too many attributes can be a problem is that it can be hard to keep track of what each one does. If you've got 7 different attributes, you have to know what they're all for in order to decide which ones to raise. But it's much easier if one of your attributes is just called "attack damage". There's no question of "wait, what exactly does wisdom do again? Will that help on this character?" Just "I need more damage, I'm gonna put this point into that."
You lose flavor in the process, of course, but you get transparency. Some would accuse LoL's stat system of being overly simple or lacking in any flavor, but one of the things I really like about it is that it's extremely transparent. The effects of each stat follow very simple, easy-to-understand formulas. Even armor and magic resist function in such a way that makes it really easy to estimate off the top of your head how much difference they make (physical damage taken is damage/(100 + armor), and same for magic resist and magic damage).
-
While I realize that you're saying you're done with attributes, one other thing I wanted to throw in:
Oh, whatever you want to talk about is fine. I appreciate your input. I just figured everyone else was probably getting sick of me asking attribute related questions.
And as far as the rest of what you mentioned, yes, I think what you are saying definitely makes sense. It probably is the most sane way to do things, but for whatever reason, attributes make me feel more like I "am" my character. I'll have to think more about that and the perks/traits ideas, though.
-
Why not just have stats like "melee damage" or "carry amount"?
Good point! This is a lot better for realism or believability or w/e because you can make whatever character you imagine instead of struggling to make the character building cooperate with you. Want to be a really skillful character who does a lot of damage through precision? Stack melee damage. Want a be a hulking monster who crushes their foes with overwhelming strength? Stack melee damage.
You don't have to worry about whether the attributes will agree with what you have in mind. I like it.
-
About developing strength thru training. When completely untrained person comes to the gym, he will develop
quickly for several weeks. Then his development suddenly stops.
You must be talking about strength, because muscle development takes much longer - years. Even in the first case the strength "limit" they reach is a result of poor training, poor eating and possibly overtraining. It's the usual way. That limit is what they get with just ape rage training without any plan or knowledge about it.
-
I just wanted to say one more time that if anyone is interested in discussing hunger/thirst/temperature management/realistic injury modeling I'd still like to hear what you girls/guys have to say.
Otherwise I won't post in this thread again.