Stats in games with RPG elements

[Itisnotlogical]

Jadzia, I may not be the best at programming, but I'm free to write a story outline for your game, if you want. Just explain how serious you want the story to be and how long it'll take for the average player to beat the game and I'll be able to give you a short synopsis, that you can take and tinker with until you're satisfied. If you just want an opening paragraph and a little ending sequence, I can do that too

 

[Vance]

Jadzia, you almost make me want to go back to Bethsoft to work... almost. It's been a bit since I've worked on an RPG, and I admit I've been itching to. Unfortunately the genre I'm dealing in now is Gundam!

 

[Jadzia]

Jadzia, I may not be the best at programming, but I'm free to write a story outline for your game, if you want. Just explain how serious you want the story to be and how long it'll take for the average player to beat the game and I'll be able to give you a short synopsis, that you can take and tinker with until you're satisfied. If you just want an opening paragraph and a little ending sequence, I can do that too

If you want to write a story, you're more than welcome. However, I don't know how far I'll get with the game, and I wouldn't want you to put time in to a story and be disappointed if the game doesn't get properly finished. I finish about 50% of my projects, as I see them as experiments more than anything.

The premise of the game is that the player will select four heros who have various strengths and weaknesses. Some will be seasoned warriors, while some will be magically gifted. You have to choose a combination you think will work well together.

The player then guides them through the dungeon, slaying monsters, finding armor and weapons, leveling up, and carefully rationing food and water to survive. There will be some puzzles to solve too, such as locked doors and pits, that require keys or switches to be flicked in order to advance.

I was aiming to have about 20 levels in the dungeon, and heros will have a similar number of experience levels they can advance through. Players may aim to complete one or two levels each day, making the whole game last a couple of weeks.

If you want to read the original dungeon master manual, you can find it here: http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.451

Jadzia, you almost make me want to go back to Bethsoft to work... almost. It's been a bit since I've worked on an RPG, and I admit I've been itching to. Unfortunately the genre I'm dealing in now is Gundam!

I'm not sure why RPGs are fun to work on, but I feel that pull myself even though I'm not an RPG fan! Can I ask, what games did you work on at Bethsoft?

 

[Vance]

I was an assistant program (IE, code lackey) at Bethesda for Daggerfall, and I also did the original design doc for Battlespire. I left the company a long, long time ago due to the rediculous work schedule, though. I was putting in over 65 hours a week and 'that wasn't good enough'... Really made he lose interest in being a pro.

 

[Jadzia]

I was an assistant program (IE, code lackey) at Bethesda for Daggerfall, and I also did the original design doc for Battlespire. I left the company a long, long time ago due to the rediculous work schedule, though. I was putting in over 65 hours a week and 'that wasn't good enough'... Really made he lose interest in being a pro.

You could always make an RPG as a personal project, if that's the genre you wish you were working on.

With the industry experience and skills you have I expect you wouldn't need to devote that many hours to it.

 

[Vance]

You could always make an RPG as a personal project, if that's the genre you wish you were working on.

I've done a number of games since. I've just had many, many other projects on the plate as well for the past few years. I am getting back into development, finally leaving pencil-and-paper role-playing games behind largely for good. (Aside from the occaisional Trek gaming thing.)

With the industry experience and skills you have I expect you wouldn't need to devote that many hours to it.

Depends on what needs to get done, what language I'm using, and how much frackin' Windows code I have to put up with.

 

[Unicron]

Personally, I like the stat system in Kingdom of Loathing, which I consider one of my favorite online games. You have three stats, which might be considered an amalgamation of the six typical stats you'd have in a system like D & D. These are Muscle, which represents your physical strength and health and determines how much damage your attacks do; Mysticality, which represents your magical abilities and controls your MP; and Moxie, which represents both charm and dexterity. Whichever class you choose will have one of these as its primary stat, and the strength of that stat controls when you level up.

You typically receive stat points from fights, but the exact mix can vary considerably by where you're adventuring. There are many items that can also influence stats, though some of them have a limit restriction (i.e. you can't wear more than one, or if you have multiple items that increase your chance of a critical hit, only the highest buff counts). I'm not really sure if there's a specific level cap or not, but if it is it's pretty high. So it's not that difficult to become a powerful character by the time you run out of quests.

It's good to focus on some measure of balance, of course. If you're a Muscle class you'll have an edge in combat, but having good Moxie helps you avoid tougher monsters and a decent Mysticality will let you use spells more effectively.

 

[Jadzia]

Personally, I like the stat system in Kingdom of Loathing

That sounds like a variation on the Three Stat System, which is quite commonly used, and is admired for it's simplicity.

STRength- determines health and regeneration
AGIlity - contributes to attack speed and defense
INTelligence - determines mana capacity and mana regeneration.

Characters will do damage based on one of these three ~ their Primary Stat.

Warriors, Knights, and Paladins will be STR based, and do damage based on that value.
Hunters, Ninjas, and Thieves will be AGI based.
Mages, Mystics, and Priests will be INT based.

The difficulty comes when we want allow characters to multiclass. How do we make a character with both Knight and Mystic skills? Should it be STR or INT based?

 

[Unicron]

It wouldn't surprise me if that sort of thing is more common; the KOL version is the only one I'm familiar with, but I think it works very well there and it fits with the ease of use of the game engine. You can't really multiclass in KOL, though you can switch between classes under certain conditions and you can keep skills from more than one class. But your main stat is based on whichever preference your current class uses.

Easily my least favorite stat system would be AdventureQuest's. I like the game engine in many respects, but I hate their stat system. You have the usual six RPG stats with a max of 200 points possible in each stat. These affect not only individual facets of your character but also things related to class training, since AQ has an open class system (you can train in just about any classes you want, and wearing class armor lets you access specific abilities).

You can improve your stats with NPC trainers, but the catch is that they charge money for said training as well as stat points, which are only awarded each time you gain a level. The number of points you can get from training is fixed but the cost tends to scale according to your level and/or the existing stat, which means you're basically paying more each time for the same base increase. At the higher levels, where it takes a long time to level up even with regular play, you can easily have enough money but no stat points to train with. Worse, and endlessly frustrating to me, the stats related to class quests are tied into the game's RNG. If you're training to be a fighter, the necessary stat will naturally be STR. You'll have to quest for several days and defeat all opponents, with not quite enough rests for every single day.

Before you fight the last battle, which determines whether you can gain a class level, you have to pass the RNG based on your existing stat. If you fail the random result, which happens quite often unfortunately, you automatically fail the quest and have restart it again. So you could be strong enough to defeat the necessary enemies, but still fail because the RNG hates you.

They did improve the stat system considerably with MechQuest though, whose engine is an improved version of the AQ one. The RNG is less frustrating because it occurs more frequently, thereby making the overall results less blindingly bad, and in some cases you can actually use items that increase your chance of passing a specific RNG roll. And the overall stats are more balanced and more easily trainable.

 

[Jadzia]

Easily my least favorite stat system would be AdventureQuest's. I like the game engine in many respects, but I hate their stat system. You have the usual six RPG stats with a max of 200 points possible in each stat.

I've never heard of AQ, but I've never liked any of those stat systems where you have to share out points. I think that character customization should be handled through training, rather than through numbers.

There are systems like that. In one system you choose a level 3 character, and it can have training in any available classes. eg, a pure wizard may have 3 wizard levels, while a paladin type character may consist of 2 warrior levels and 1 priest level. The starting stats and skills are then determined by the training you choose.

Here are some more pictures I've made,

This one has radiosity shading. It's not done in realtime, but uses precalculated map. I'm quite pleased with the light attenuation here.

Without the floor and ceiling, this one shows a random grid of wall squares.

Walls at a short distance.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

Are the enemies going to be polygonal, or sprites?

 

[Jadzia]

I've been mulling over both options.

Polygonal is harder to program and I'm not sure it would be suited to the style of the game. I also don't enjoy 3D very much.

Sprites would be easy to program, but require more drawing, because they need to be drawn at multiple angles, and animated.

- Facing player, 3 frames: left foot out, right foot out, attacking
- Facing left, 2 frames
- Facing right, 2 frames
- Facing away, 2 frames
total = 9 frames.

But those sprite sheets can be produced from 3D modeling programs to make the task easier. Either way, I'll probably need to find volunteers to produce monster models/sprites.

 

[CaptainStoner]

"Stat creep" or "power creep" is the result of players min/maxing their characters. In RPG history you can see the effect with the 1st edition Unearthed Arcana, or worse in Palladium's Rifts series.
Originally, D&D gave no bonuses for higher or lower stats, although the DM would use them to adjudicate various things. That was very early though, and it's hard to imagine an 18 Strength without a bonus to hit/damage. I mention it because simplicity of design is often a good thing.

My preference is a mixture of classic D&D and AD&D stats: basically the 3-18 scale for humanoids, generated on a bell curve with 3d6 (or 4d6 discarding the low). I strongly prefer random generation to point-buy systems - therein lies an example of "power creep", where a large part of the game becomes min/maxing - the power gamers would whine incessantly about so-called "game balance", so eventually they gave everyone the same points to allocate to the same base stats - namby pamby stuff IMO which harms RPG's, CRPG's to a lesser extent.
It's interesting to see how much the development of RPG's has been driven, I would say to its detriment, by power gamers. The fourth edition of D&D is so "balanced" now that the distinctiveness of the class archetypes is blurred.
Anyway I think if you're designing a CRPG the thing to do is pull back the focus to the big picture. What is the tone of the game, what is its story, what type of character(s) are involved, and then work on tuning the mechanics. If you want a gritty, realstic game, you'll want more numbers, detailed encumbrances, food/water/supples usage, environmental effects, movement rates, etc., whereas a high adventure type or a simple dungeon crawl requires less crunch.

 

[Jadzia]

A couple more pictures.

I've changed the illumination model to consider the brightness of the player's torch. A new torch will allow you see 7 squares in front of you, but beyond this distance will be solid black. A player should not be able to cheat by turning up their monitor's brightness.

As a torch burns away, it's brightness will fade, and the distance you'll be able to see will reduce. With no torch, you'll only be able to see (touch) immediately adjacent walls, and they'll appear rather dark.

This picture includes the floor and ceiling, showing detail at arms reach and at distance.

This one shows a pit in the floor, and a second pit in the distance. I've also dropped the camera down slightly in this picture. The floor needs to be visible, as it may contain things to pick up, and we have to be able to see them to click on them!

 

[Jetfire]

That is some pretty awesome stuff Jadzia.

 

[Jadzia]

I'm pleased you like it, Jetfire.

Readers are free to make contributions, such as posting some new textures to try, ideas for monsters and loot, and WoW-like icons for all the different items one can collect. Projects are more fun when others join in.

 

[Jetfire]

You are going to need a Murloc like creature.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Are you going to require items to be "identified" in order to be used? This would go hand-in-hand with a "lore" skill: rarer/more powerful items would require a high lore skill, or have something like a scrying glass which will identify items for you.

You might also consider the typical status effects: poison, stone, paralysis, confusion, berserk, etc.

 

[Jadzia]

Are you going to require items to be "identified" in order to be used?

I had thought about doing that, even though it wasn't a feature in dungeon master. I thought about tying it to INT or having only certain characters with the ability to identify things.

Then I tried to imagine how the game would feel. Carrying something unidentified would be quite frustrating, especially if it's an item we really need, and there's a risk that unknown items could be dropped and abandoned if we're overloaded.

Having to go through the scyring glass every time we pick something up, would be tedious I think, and I'm not sure it would make the game more enjoyable, than if all items were instantly identifiable.

As far as weapons go, a low level character having an high level weapon will drain the character's Energy at an unsustainable rate. Also the character won't have enough experience to have unlocked all of the actions associated with that weapon. All they may be able to do is Throw it, which is something you can do with all items, and makes for a relatively weak attack.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

You need something crazy and original to be a defining image of your game, like Nemesis was for RE3 and Creepers are for Minecraft. I personally kind of like the idea of there's a long shadow somewhere. You look into the shadow, and all the sudden two globes of orange light show up and this thing steps out. It's like a silhouette of a person, that's completely black with glowing eyes. It proceeds to stomp your face into the curb, walks back into the shadow, and disappears without a trace. I think that'd be pretty cool.

But that's just me.