Designing Character Systems with Josh Sawyer
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The character systems that have most influenced me are the ones in Darklands, Fallout, Mass Effect, and Oblivion. There are things that I utterly despised about the character systems in all of those games, but they were moving toward an ideal that I believe in very strongly: a shallow learning curve that expands into thought-provoking depth.
* Thought-provoking depth? Mass Effect? Oblivion? You simply HAVE to explain that.
Mass Effect starts out with a very simple character creation process. You pick your sex, appearance, background, and class, then you're off. I'd prefer more depth and choice in that process, but it's very easy to get into. When you start advancing your character, you aren't overwhelmed by screens and screens of options, and more importantly, most of the skills that you can advance are wonder of wonders actually worth buying. Over time, you gain more skills by two methods: a) advancing base skills to a certain breakpoint or b) being Shepard. I think it fell apart in two ways. First, there's no weighting to skill progression, so there's almost no incentive to diversify skills within a common pool. Why pick up points in other weapon skills when you can just blow through one tree? Second, there's very little long-term strategy to the advancement system and no choice outside of which skill to advance. In the mid-game, I found myself considering what skills to buy at every level (which honestly is more than I can say for most other RPGs I play). In the long run, I just kept slamming the same skills over and over again. Why not? Starting over in Shotgun would just be a waste of time when my Assault Rifles skill is through the roof.
Oblivion allows you more choice early in the character creation process, and it gives you templates as well as a custom character class option. It's a fully skill-driven game, which is something I also love about Fallout and Darklands. It also features a (not completely terrible) learn-by-doing system. It can result in some degenerate gameplay, but it's not as bad as a lot of other learn-by-doing systems I've seen. Where it falls apart is in the mid-game, where players inevitably realize how broken the advancement system really is. And they also miss an incredible opportunity for player choice by taking away benefit selection from the player. Every character that reaches second level in Marksman will get the exact same benefit. The player is effectively removed from the advancement system process unless he or she wants to engage in horribly broken metagaming.
I think both of these systems could be fixed easily. Hopefully we'll see some revisions to the systems in Mass Effect 2/TES 5.
I want more people to play RPGs, but I don't believe that making the games thoroughly shallow is a great way to do that. I want to be able to introduce a fledgling player to simple concepts that gradually expand over the course of the game. By the same token, I want veteran RPG players to jump in a game and immediately recognize that they have hard choices to make between equally rewarding character builds. Frankly, this is how I look at things: if you have an advancement system where people regularly use the "recommend" button, you have made some collosal errors. You have both failed to engage the player in what is supposed to be an element of gameplay and you have designed a system in which certain character builds are so obviously superior that you'd be stupid not to take them.
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Non-combat skills. I guess the real question is what would you like your character to do when he/she is taking a break from killing things. Any personal preferences? What skills you'd throw in this group and why? Any interesting skills from other games that you liked, perhaps?
Btw, how do you see non-combat gameplay? Is it a viable alternative to combat or gravy on the side? In other words, do you believe that a game that's not focused on combat can appeal to more than a handful of gamers?
I think of non-combat skills the same way as combat skills: I want them to support the player's desired actions in the setting. Want to build a bunch of robots? Well, you'll probably need a Robotics skill. Want to scour the wilderness for goodies? Maybe there should be a Survival or Outdoorsman skill. Even though I didn't like the UI for it, I thought the alchemy in Oblivion was great. I honestly loved running all over the countryside to find herbs. It reminded me of Ultima in some ways, and I liked how it would draw me into exploring areas that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. In a way, all of this stuff has to be oriented toward some sort of fantasy fulfillment within the setting. When I played KotOR, I was kind of annoyed by the lockpicking. I'm here to play a Jedi, dude. How many Jedi pick locks? In my mind, zero. It would have been better if another party member were geared toward that and my character were geared only toward a) lightsabering fools in different ways, b) force x-ing various things in the world, and c) being a conversational mastermind. That's what Jedis do, that's the fantasy I want fulfilled.
I think non-combat gameplay is great as long as good effort is put into making it fun and rewarding. I love sneaking around, picking locks (when I'm not a Jedi), fixing gadets, building/repairing gear, and engaging in meaningful conversations with NPCs. I think combat should be an option for most players, but in my opinion it's very important to support non-combat options in RPGs.
