Sunday, October 20, 2013

Aw, Do I Have to Replace My +4 Awesome Sword with that +5 Slightly More Awesome Sword?



What do Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, Diablo III, D&D, Pathfinder, and Skyrim all have in common? If you said Magic, you’d be correct, but not what I was aiming for. What I’m talking about today is Character Progression.

In RPGs of the single-player, MMO, and tabletop persuasions, players get more powerful by progressing their characters. Sometimes you can substitute skill for numbers -- look at the disparity in gear between world-first raiders in WoW and what the average player actually is wearing the first time they beat the same fight -- but more often than not your character power is limited by the curve that the developers deliberately designed. Most of those games the curve is based on either character levels (and the powers that come with them), gear, or a combination thereof.

Sometimes you’ll see alternate progression paths -- an example is the original Guild Wars, which had a max level of 20 that you pretty much hit in the tutorial, and then progression was based on discover new skills and mixing and matching -- but mostly it’s levels and gear.

Tabletop RPGs such as D&D and Pathfinder often end when you hit max level, and the gear you get during your campaign is a calculated part of your power progression curve. +1 Swords at level 3, +5 swords at level 23. Video games aren’t much different there. Final Fantasy VI you had Mithril weapons early on, and later in the game you had Diamond Swords, or the Atma Weapon, on top of the levels you had gained, but the maximum level was 99. MMOs are a bit of a unique beast here in that often you’d hit maximum level, and the game continues. But since you can’t gain any further levels, it’s only the gear that changes over time.

So with that in mind, I find it a bit of an interesting point that folks balk at the idea of what is often maligned as “the gear treadmill.” The idea that gear is transient is something of a sticking point for many people, because they put in a lot of effort to get those purple pixels, and replacing it is anathema.

Now, this isn’t the case for every piece of gear out there. An example is the D&D 4E game I’m running. Pretty sure our melee characters will be wearing their level 2 boots that allow them to stand up as a minor action until I pry them off of their cold, dead level 30 feet.

But for MMOs like WoW, almost nobody complains about replacing gear as they level up, but once they hit maximum level and have to raid for a bit to get it? Suddenly the gloves come off. Or, well, they don’t come off, those gloves are gripped even more tightly because the player doesn’t want to replace them. There’s something about levelling versus gearing that once the two concepts are disconnected a switch seems to get hit in people’s brains that makes it feel like everything’s changed. You see this pretty well every expansion of nearly every MMO out there. Items get replaced, and people get upset because things in the first zone of the new area replace the stuff that the players earned over the past year.

Interestingly enough, Blizzard is attempting to combat this by having the final boss of the current expansion drop weapons that will scale to maximum level of the next expansion (though they will likely be replaced by the first raid drops of the next expansion), so I’m immensely interested to see how that plays out psychologically.

A hypothesis of mine is that levels feel cumulative, whereas gear, while cumulative in practice to a certain extent, feels wasteful. You don’t replace level 59 with level 60 and throw it away. The stats you gained for level 59 still apply, the skills and powers you learned are still (mostly) available, but for gear when you get that new sword, you end up throwing the old one away. Despite the fact that you probably needed your old sword to help you get the new sword (hence why gear is also somewhat cumulative), the act of throwing away the old equipment may feel like you’ve devalued your previous experiences. That old boss kill no longer matters.

My D&D players recently ran into something similar. In 4E, once you hit level 10, you start replacing some of your older abilities with newer ones. You don’t just keep getting new abilities, but the pool of available abilities that you can choose increases. But this still frustrated them. They had come to love and rely on those older abilities, and losing that ability, even though they were getting something new, rankled. You also see this on WoW forums when Blizzard takes away abilities, like Sentry Totem. Even though it was nigh useless outside of a few very niche uses, its removal was decried.

So as a game designer, what do you do? People love getting stuff. Getting new powers, new loot, new weapons, new armor, new levels, they all rock. People hate losing stuff. Replacing old items and losing abilities, they blow chunks. You can’t just add forever, because then you run into ability bloat and a bajillion buttons that you pretty well never use. Gear must get replaced eventually, because continuing to use the same copper short sword you had when you started your adventure running from the dragon at the end of the game is pretty lame, from both a narrative and a progression perspective.

I have no idea, but the first studio to figure this out will probably have a hit on their hands.

15 comments:

  1. What may be a way around the Favoured Gear issue is to never actually replace it, only to ever upgrade it. Imagine you picked a warrior-type character and got to pick the basic armours and weapons normally associated with that. Later, you may choose to change these (like a sword for a hammer, if you decide you didn't actually like swords), but you'd never be forced to, and you'd be changing them for the base, not a better weapon.
    Once you have the base weapon - your sword for example, you'd upgrade it. One would spend money to re-balance the skills and attributes of your weapons and armour at certain experience levels. Perhaps potential item abilities are the things that drop, rather than items themselves. Or, items that drop can be sold for money or "deconstructed" to learn how to upgrade your own weapon.
    Heck, you could then even opt to skin your gear, so it looked the way you envisioned it. There's no reason why you have to run around in gnarly solid black armour with gold accents, and a ridiculous clown-wig of +10 might.

    A re-balancing centre might allow you to change a Fire Sword to an Ice Sword and back again, depending on a) the components you have and b) the scenario you are about to face. No weapon is ideal in every game instance.

    By using a re-balancing system, I think one would get away from the attachment factor - they aren't actually losing the item. In fact, it's the same item they had since the first level. It just became better, like their character. Plus deciding which bonuses you really want, really makes the item your own. Heck, you could even give the player the ability to name their gear.

    Just my two-cents. I think that would address the issue you've presented.

    -Cp.

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    1. Oooh, I certainly do like that idea.

      It's interesting to see how WoW seems to get about 1/4th of the way to the system you propose. You can skin weapons (Transmog), you can rebalance the stats (Reforging), and you can add effects (Enchanting), but it's all super limited, and doesn't really take customization far enough in my opinion.

      Elder Scrolls: Skyrim gets a bit closer with their crafting system. Disenchanting magic items gives you the ability to use that enchant permanently, as well as providing materials to apply more enchants to other objects. You can also enhance your weaponry via smithing, but only to a certain extent. Eventually you'll want to upgrade the base material of your armour/weapon (ie: Steel -> Dragonbone).

      The Lord of the Rings MMO actually implements something along a different vein with their Legendary system (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Legendary_Items), where the items themselves gain levels, get traits, and so on, but not quite to the same level of customizability that you're proposing here, as I don't believe they can be undone.

      But overall I rather like the idea. You could also still get that random drop factor that game designers love so much with the deconstruction of items found as you play. It would also add a level of complexity to a game that implemented the idea, for better or worse. In a game like Skyrim, where complexity is a given, it could work wonderfully. In a game like WoW, where everything has been streamlined and simplified, it might no work so well. On the other hand, maybe it would. Who knows?

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  2. "Items get replaced, and people get upset because things in the first zone of the new area replace the stuff that the players earned over the past year."

    Now I feel bad for mentioning this in the comment on my blog.

    "
    A hypothesis of mine is that levels feel cumulative, whereas gear, while cumulative in practice to a certain extent, feels wasteful. You don’t replace level 59 with level 60 and throw it away. The stats you gained for level 59 still apply, the skills and powers you learned are still (mostly) available, but for gear when you get that new sword, you end up throwing the old one away."

    Most definitely.

    "What may be a way around the Favoured Gear issue is to never actually replace it, only to ever upgrade it."

    Here's the problem -- often this isn't as interesting.

    Which scenario sounds cooler?

    "SWEET! We slew the Fire Lord and he dropped a warrior Fire Weapon Rune that I can use to improve my current weapon!"

    or

    "SWEET! We slew the Fire Lord and I pried an awesome new weapon from his dead hands that I'm going to use!"

    This also brings up other issues because you have to make it clear what stacks and what doesn't stack. If you get a Fire Rune does it replace or add to the Frost Rune on your weapon? If it replaces, then what if the RPG is trying to do elemental damage and thus you need to keep a weapon with frost damage around?

    If it doesn't replace, can you get a new starting weapon and simply upgrade to the power of the Fire Rune? If so, why would you ever upgrade your weapon instead of upgrading new weapons each time -- and now you're back to effectively replacing your weapon!

    See the problem?

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    1. That's an excellent point. There's definitely something awesome about getting an entirely new sword over what's an incremental upgrade. Perhaps it's the other side of the coin of replacing gear all the time. Going from an ilvl 522 weapon to an ilvl 540 weapon is still an incremental upgrade, technically, but because it's a separate item it feels shiny and new.

      As far as the "Why would you ever upgrade your weapon instead of upgrading new weapons each time," perhaps it's the difference between min-maxers and folks who are just playing the game without trying to optimize every little thing. Is it onerous to upgrade all the way to the same level? If it is, then perhaps only a subset of the population (equivalent to World first raiders) would go that far. But there's definitely a slippery slope here where the system could devolve into the same-old.

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    2. "Going from an ilvl 522 weapon to an ilvl 540 weapon is still an incremental upgrade, technically, but because it's a separate item it feels shiny and new."

      Indeed.

      "I got a freaking awesome sword" sounds cooler than "I increased by DPS by 1.94%."

      "But there's definitely a slippery slope here where the system could devolve into the same-old."

      Yeah -- it's something you'd have to do extremely carefully. And I think there's a certain elegant simplicity about the default model.

      1. Kill dragon
      2. Take sword from dragon's loot
      3. Kill stuff with new sword

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  3. As a general principle, I don't have an issue with replacing old gear with new gear. The issue I have with the WoW system is the PACE at which gear is replaced combined with the WORK to deal with the new gear. I personally do not find it very much fun to obtain multiple pieces of new gear from whatever sources they come from (raiding/questing/instance running) to have to then reforge/gem/enchant/upgrade the pieces which takes time and effort to do well (well as defined by me personally). At first all the effort to do the reforging/gemming/enchanting/upgrading seems fun until you realize that you are going to do this again over and over and over again. I have saved new items to replace old ones and have often "had" to deal with 4-6 pieces after one week's worth of play. The next week I've had 4-6 pieces to deal with - some of which replacing the upgrades from the week before. This pace is way too fast for the amount of effort you spend to replace items and perfect the new gear.

    If the gear replacement was at a slower pace, than the effort to "perfect" it can be much greater as it is not some weekly chore. For the WoW gear paradigm, the gear should be "drop and wear" with no alterations or thought being put into it except for a few special pieces. This makes even more sense when people use programs like Ask Mr. Robot to optimize their gear for them. The game could optimize your gear for you mathmatically everytime it drops if the software was developed to do so.

    While leveling, I think the big difference to end-game is that people are less likely to reforge/gem/enchant/upgrade their gear as they know that they do not need to for the content they are working on and understand that the gear will be replaced at end-game anyway. This automatically makes the gear system during levelling a "drop and wear" system. Very few people will go to the effort to stop their questing to reforge/gem/enchant/upgrade their gear every few drops or so as it takes away from their immediate enjoyment or purpose - levelling their character.

    Therefore, the term "gearing treadmill" is an apt term for MMO gearing. The question is how fast the treadmill should be moving. I believe that most people despise the treadmill when they are forced into a flat out sprint, or they are forced to move at a snail's pace. The trick for the MMO is to find that liesurely stroll to light jogging pace where the majority will be comfortable.

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    1. That's a great point. There is a disparate amount of energy involved in keeping gear up to date with gems, enchants, reforging, etc. once you hit the level cap versus while leveling. You may be on to something here about the amount of preparation for each item of gear needs to be in proportion for how long you're expected to keep that gear. There certainly isn't a whole lot of work involved when you level up.

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    2. I definitely agree that there has become too much needed after you get a piece before you can use it. Most of it came about in an effort to make the same gear work for many different people. One leather piece could drop instead of three different ones, and a rogue, druid, and monk can all gem and reforge it so that it suits them better and works around their caps. Actually the thing that seems to have become the least useful is the first one, enchanting. Pretty much the rogue druid and monk are all going to enchant the same way for the most part, but they will most likely gem and reforge differently.

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    3. Yeah, outside of weapons, there aren't really many choices to be made for enchanting in WoW, and even the weapons it's usually just a choice between the cheap one and the expensive one. Enchanting at the moment is really just maintenance for the sake of maintenance.

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    4. "The next week I've had 4-6 pieces to deal with - some of which replacing the upgrades from the week before."

      Holy cow you're lucky. I probably average one item a week and I consider myself lucky if I get two -- and I'm in a guild that full clears heroic modes.

      That said, Blizzard has admitted reforging hasn't worked out as they hoped and said they do agree there is too much work going into using a new item -- one of the reasons they removed helm enchants.

      There technically are different enchants (which are all used) for cloaks, chest, gloves, leggings, and boots.

      Maybe we'll see a decrease in enchantable items, gem slots, and a change to reforging next expansion.

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  4. Legendary Items in LOTRO are - in theory - a bit like that. They grow with you, get XP of their own, can be reforged to reveal new "legacies". You can spend points on them to customize them to your playstyle.

    The only trouble is. they set the system up in a way that you still outgrow them about as often as you outgrew the regular weapons.

    Well... that's not 100% true. If you have an item that is not important for its DPS but for the other enhancements it gives you, that item can be useful for a very long time.

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    1. Thanks for the clarification :) I knew that LOTRO had something, but the wiki page on it wasn't super illuminating on the intricacies.

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    2. Thunderfury was similar to that last sentence. It was relevant for the entirety of vanilla and actually BC too at times because of the proc. The problem with this was that we had to keep running MC every week for a chance of another one when MC held no challenge and just wasted time we could have been working on new content every week.

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  5. I still like the weapon system in Mabinogi. There's no real gear treadmill because there's no real tiers, yet there's still a ton of grind to be had with the range of upgrades you can apply which has to complement your character. My swords which do around 70+ damage per hit in the hands of a newbie will only do 1 damage for example, because I sacrificed the balance attribute to increase the max damage. It only works for me because my character has super high dex (200+) to make up for it.

    Since the weapon progression is still tied to my guy (and technically is always available for anyone with the money and time to do it), it doesn't really have that impact of "I have to get a better item". The best items are already available, you just need to improve your character enough to be able to use them. :P

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    1. I had to look that game up, I had never heard of it. A game based on Irish mythology is pretty neat.

      Combat sounds as if it is somewhat like TERA with using skills and movement to ensure you don't take damage in the first place, so it seems like this is a case where skill can replace a dearth of stats.

      The weapon progression system sounds interesting though. You mentioned you "sacrificed" balance. Do weapons only have a certain number of points and you can move them around, or can you add to them?

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