RPG Systems: A Balance of Freedom

Do you get tingles at the end of your spine when thinking/working/playing with game mechanics? When a new MMO or RPG comes out do you pour hours (or days) into creating character builds, even though you do not have any plans to actually play it? I sure as hell do; my current fascination is the Smite "closed" beta since Hi-Rez did a lot of work adding options for players. If you haven't played in awhile (last I played was when Cupid came out), fire it up and look around.

Besides Smite, the past few weeks have been spent absorbed in pre-production system design for my first title. It has been wonderful. I could (and do) work on systems all damn day. There's just something magical about weaving math and narrative together. Working systems reminds me of why I got into this business; for the tingles.

In an earlier post I talked about the 3 ways RPGs balance their games: Homogenization, Anomalization, and Self-Limitization. These are used to make sure that each choice a player can make is as good as the next in the context of completing a game's victory conditions. That's the "golden rule": all decisions, while different, must be equal; especially in games with PvP. Off the top of my head, only a handful of games have achieved this: Final Fantasy X's wonderful spheregrid comes to mind, Guild Wars 2 has a great omnipotent approach to it, and the new World of Warcraft talent system is a wonderful example of Self-Limitization.

But how do all of these systems work? Why do we think they are fun?

Limited Freedom

Most game designers set out to create a "playstyle" that revolves around doing the "same thing but different", or the choices revolve around a pre-defined meta. WoW's new talent system, for example, lets the player make choices within the very strict tank/dps/heal mechanic. The fact that the game's "meta" is pre-set and hammered in place by the developer allows them to cage-in the player's choices. The player cannot make bad choices because the game's systems do not allow it; I cannot make a Mage to tank heroic raids because it's simply impossible due to a lack of gear, talents, etc., although I do remember blink-kiting (with ice block) the last boss of UBRS back in the day.

RPG systems are simply limits on the player's freedom. "Skills" are the actions a character can take that differentiates them from other characters. Here they are in order from most freedom to least:

• Blank Slate (Skyrim)
• Populate character with any selection of Skills
• Customize those Skills to differentiate from those with the same Skills
• No limit on how Skills can be employed
• Archetype/Class (World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2)
• Choose from a collection of Skills that work toward a gameplay concept
• Customize those pre-selected Skills to differentiate from the same archetype
• Hero (League of Legends, Smite)
• No choice of Skills; only choice in how Skills are prioritized
• Customized by choices shared among ALL heroes
• Linear (Devil May Cry, Mega Man)
• No choice of Skills; only when/if they are unlocked
• Skills designed to make meeting victory conditions easier, but they are not required to do so

Character statistics (Stats) systems (Int, Agi, Str, etc.) are different from Skills in that they do not enable new actions (for the most part), they are just another way to customize Skills. When playing D&D I can still try to punch an ogre in the mouth with a 1 strength character , but I will most likely fail horribly.

RPG systems of all types are so much damn fun because they create the illusion of freedom; freedom players can explore in their quest to find the ultimate solution to the problem of the game. When we play Black Ops II we are striving to find the optimal set of weapon, attachments and loadout based on our preferences. We are able to form opinions that certain weapons perform better than others, or certain perks are better for certain maps. Opinions are just choices relevant to a specific context. It is my opinion to re-play Fallout: New Vegas as a silver-tongued master of stealth and hacking, who utterly lacks any useful combat skills.

Note that limiting your player's freedom is not negative: Mega Man and Devil May Cry, while extremely linear, are extremely fun. In fact I think some gamers thrive on linearity. They do not wish to form opinions; that is not fun for them (and there is nothing wrong with that). Not all games have RPG systems after all. But for me it's all about talent trees, character builds, equipment guides, numbers and stats. And the tingles.