Mind of the BeholderPart 5

Looking for group!

Pictured: Ranger, Wizard, Hunter, Guardian, Berserker, Gardener, Ring Bearer, Esquire, Paladin.

Most of the role playing games I like have a class-based and party-based system, a fact that must colour everything I write in this series. They're in the Hybrids I like, MMOs I dabble with, the old D&D Infinity Engine Games I remember fondly, and the modern RPGs they influenced. They're in the Japanese RPGs I am tangentially interested in, the occasional Pokemons, some pixel based Final Fantasy games, an archaic thing called Dragon Quest, the brilliant Nintendo masterpieces called Fire Emblem and the RPG that turns boys into men, Dark Souls.
A subset of western RPG are the European RPGs, a rare and interesting breed. Woefully underrepresented on my played-list, even if I started with them as far back as Rage Of Mages. I still need to play any of the Witcher games and I could have spend a few more hours with our own Larian games. As far as mainstream RPGs go I'm still very much a fan of what Bioware and Obsidian put out. The same goes for Blizzard. I was infatuated with Guild Wars, a game I can't keep thinking about when playing its successor. The monumental RPGs of the last 15 years define much of my tastes in RPGs today and all of them had their own take on the class system.

Role playing games literally fill my days. The RPG I'm currently working on at Larian Studios has me involved in the modest roles of Graphics and User Interface Designer but the fact that I get to work on an actual Computer Role Playing Game that topped the Steam best-seller chart for weeks is enough to make me gag with pride.
The thought that kicked off this series of Mind Of The Beholder was the fact that Divinity: Original Sin is a Classless RPG, which a rare beast to me. 'What is a classless RPG?' I asked myself. I thought the term sets wrong expectations, maybe 'free flow class system' would be more accurate if it allows for characters to use skills and embody traits from both Warriors and Mages. Literally mixing classes. In a classless system the expectation is that words like "Warrior" or "Mage" and the structure they represent would be expunged. I am splitting hairs. Admittedly, most role playing games I stick by, play with this idea. Not by chance, I like such systems.

Defining a class cordons off parts of gameplay. But what happens when those boundaries aren't there? Change is the spice of life so it stands to reason to allow for more freedom. RPGs run the gamut, some games allow complete reclassing, dual classing, multi classing, etc. But even classes themselves could become more flexible. Why not have a sword-wielding Mage? After all, it doesn't take much effort to think of all the magical tricks that could apply to a sword. Why stop there? There's plenty of precedence too: Link wields a sword that shoots magical bolts. this Quan Chi fatality, Mesmers, Guild Wars' illusionist swashbuckler, use swords as a magical conduit. Drizzt Do'Urden dual wields a pair of scimitars, he even named them. Gandalf dual wields a staff and sword. I dual wield a fork and knife on a daily basis.

_{Rangers, like Drizzt Do'Urden, are famous for their dual wielding.}

Character Class?

A character's class could be described as its role or profession in the world and is defined by traits, restrictions, rules, playstyle; A Warrior wears heavy armour and wields melee weapons and shields in close combat. The Warrior is usually suited for absorbing damage, taking hits on behalf of the party as he is most resistant to physical abuse. Or he takes the one to take the slow but sure approach to combat, low damage but high survivability. Depending on the system, a Warrior could also be cast in a ranged or melee DPS role, focusing on dealing damage instead. The particulars of classes often depends on the fiction or context they inhabit.

In many cases classes are derived from the fiction. From Tolkien to Gygax to Miyazaki. The class descriptions are a result of the stories that birthed them. Sometimes classes can be problematic for story reasons. I had a hard time believing Mass Effect's Shepard would be an adept, given the amount of grief Biotics get and the rigours they endure during training. It seems very unlikely that Shepard could get a similar training given his possible origin stories. He also doesn't suffer any from the side effects from Biotic implants. Dragon Age: Origins did this more convincingly. Every Race/Class combination had its own unique origin story that explained them in the fiction. And why there are no Dwarf Mages. It gave the character a motivation to get involved with the main story. Likewise with Star Wars: The Old Republic, where each class starts out in its own corner of the universe, with a unique storyline. Subsequent Bioware games haven't bothered as much with explaining its classes.

On the whole, Bioware class systems are very much inspired by classic D&D. Luckily they aren't the only developer thinking about classes. To name but one, Squaresoft was equally inspired by D&D and rethought classes for their Final Fantasy game and called them jobs. Each character could become whatever job and grow stronger in said job. At any given time, the player is allowed to switch jobs or resume an old one. This new job would start the character from scratch, but the old job would retain its level and benefits gained would carry over. So it became possible to use Warrior perks as a newly reclassed Mage. The more high level jobs, the more character perks.

_{Final Fantasy V's range of jobs, props if you can name them all.}

Nintendo has its own take on the job system in its brilliant Fire Emblem series. Clear and simple as most Nintendo games are, it has base and advanced classes. Each receiving perks. For instance, a character that starts out as a Chevalier receives two class specific perks. It advances to the Paladin (mounted, speed, magic resistance, swords and lances) or Great Knight (mounted, physical defense, swords, axes, lances) class. Each of which yield their own pair of perks. Those perks persist through reclassing. Some of which counterbalance deficiencies from other classes. But it is the characters that makes the system stand out. Each of them has a natural inclination towards certain roles, collecting perks helps unlock their full potential. These inclinations and perks are inheritable, something to consider when you pair up characters and encourage them to have some offspring. Fire Emblem fully encourages the player to experiment.

Characters can serve more uses, for variation, for play styles (ranged combat vs melee combat), lore flavour (a party made up out of evil aligned classes). A class can be a job or role put on a character. A Necromancer conjures up different character image than a Cleric would. Of course those aren't set in stone. Obsessed with the undead, nefarious, self-loathing, eye twitching, nocturnally perverted... all realistic traits for a Cleric, putting those traits on a necromancer may provide an interesting twist on the player's expectations. Putting Malicia and Devotio together in a party where they need to cooperate sets up a comedy that writes itself: Hating each other at the onset, but then becoming fast, complimentary-role-filling-friends after they vanquish the ultimate evil. Each character is a tool in the shed, each challenge in the game could use a selection of these tools, which when put to good use form a sum greater then its parts. Cooperation is key.

_{Guild Wars 2 has a spectacular take on the Necromancer class.}

Obsessed with the undead, nefarious, self-loathing, eye twitching, nocturnally perverted... all realistic traits for a Cleric, putting those traits on a Necromancer may provide an interesting twist on the player's expectations.

It's hard to mistake a Warrior with full plate armour for spellcaster. There are a lot of associations that go with the usual typecasting. Putting a type on characters also helps explain what they are supposed to do. It also makes it easy to explain what its options are. Focus on the weapon in your hand, or focus on the shield in the other. Or go hog wild and ditch the shield to use both hands for weapons. It's also easier to role play. It's easier to get that a Wizard is book smart and a Warrior would know thing or two about weapon smithing. Compartmentalizing reality is something we do naturally and it's no different in games. But there's merit in subverting the player's expectation. It's what makes Pratchett's Discworld novels such fun to read: A Wizard university where it's exceptional to care about books, a Wizard with no affinity for magic, an elderly Barbarian blind to his own age, a society where everyone eyerollingly knows what the deal with ceremony is... in this universe that turns the fantasy genre upside down, the long lost heir to the kingdom, pure as morning dew, strong as an ox and thick as treacle - the usual starry eyed golden boy we find in every fantasy is the subverted element.
It takes much more creativity to come up twists on known formulas than to copy them. One of those being the usual trinity suspects. But the trinity is a system, not a class definition, and it could be made to work with whatever classes you can invent. Who says a Warrior should draw enemy attention when a Jester, or even a Bard, seems much more suited.

As much as I am a fan of the trinity, I do think there's something to be said about breaking it. Especially the healer role is somewhat problematic, it's arguably the most valuable role but the least spectacular to play. It could be expanded to give it a bit more sheen. Either adding defensive skills or an entirely different take on the support class like Guild Wars (respectively: Monk, Ritualist and Paragon), make it an offensive class where its projectiles heal teammates like Wildstar or make it a Mage with an affinity for healing magic. But there's ways around getting health back without a healing class. Which is perhaps the best way forwards. If something doesn't work as well as intended there's merit in replacing or cutting it. In the case of Dragon Age: Inquisition, the healer was replaced with a limited stack of potions. This also prevents the party from healing back up to full in-between encounters. Reintroducing some risk to exploring. This seems to have been inspired by Dark Souls, which puts the fear of dying back into players because of its relentless difficulty and limited healing mechanic. Note the word limited mentioned again, I'm seeing a trend. All of this makes it easy for a game to qualify as hardcore. Otherwise, when healing is available on tap, each encounter has to be potentially lethal. The difference is that in the one you could die from a thousand papercuts, the other could provide a more puzzle like set of encounters where players need to formulate a battleplan. Obviously, I'm more partial to the latter.

If I want to talk about solo play and the god-character in context of this post, I really should mention a single player RPG, right? How about Fallout 3. It didn't have something called a class but specialization would occur anyway. This answers my earlier question of what happens when there is no class structure: I would effectively make my own "assault rifle class". My custom made AR class also had other specializations bolted on top, he was a pretty good hacker! So some solutions could result from hacking, and they may have had a different outcome that the other, more standard, solution of shooting until the conflict comes to a natural end.

_{Fallout 3's box art made quite clear this wasn't a game to take lightly.}

However there was no way to hack, charm or buy your way out of a fight with super mutants. Which exposes a sore point in the system: one has to make and end up with a character that can overcome all obstacles. Or to put it differently, the game has to provide multiple solutions to a problem for a wider range of play styles. However, in a world of limited budgets, limited hard data storage this means either the game has to become relatively more simple or the player has to become, de facto, a god among mere mortals. Which is a way of letting the player brute force his way through the game. Personally I think it also breaks immersion, doubly so if the story casts you as a plebeian, inexplicably rising above the rank and file or worse still: it can make the game boring. While god characters games have to tone down the challenge. Death in a god character game is a problem. Obviously once your character goes down, the game ends. In a party based game there's more leeway, it doesn't finish the fight for the entire group. A downed character can get revived. It also opens the door for perma death, in which a downed character is gone forever. The perma death of a god character is a possibility as well, but it's pretty hard to weave it into the game's narrative if the game ends with it. The only real possible drama is when the player realizes he's wasted a life, possibly his own.

A Warrior using a wand? A Jedi Knight using a blaster rifle? Preposterous! Is it?

A salient problem with class-based structures is player freedom and flexibility. A class will often get skills that lack any ties to the weapon the character is wielding, which means this weapon becomes irrelevant as it basically gets demoted to 'something to hit the enemy with when not using skills' or is just another piece of gear to boost stats. This takes away from the character's uniqueness, leaving nothing but a vessel for whatever range of skills it carries. In most cases, classes get a limited set of equipable weapons. A Warrior using a wand? A Jedi Knight using a blaster rifle? Preposterous! Is it? Why not tie weapons to the greater web of mechanics?
A half-way solution is to specify skills that require X or Z weapon, but this also works against class flexibility - because X or Z skills is then linked to the sword-class, or bow-class. It's easy to see that weapons replace classes here, making them, in essence, one and the same. I would argue that weapons should have an impact. Just like Blizzard took a page out of the action game playbook with Diablo 3, RPG makers may consider taking inspiration from the unique weapon attack cycles in games like Darksiders or Dark Souls even if only for variation.

This is where the classless RPG could provide a solution where, ideally, all the skills have to be usable by all configurations of outfits and weapons. Skills that are weapon agnostic. Taking inspiration from Skyrim's infamous sword swinger. Let's say there exists a skill called 'Sweep Attack' that denotes the character use its weapon in a wide 120° arc in front of it. This could apply to melee weapons - resulting in a wide sweeping attack and hitting everyone in the arc. It could also apply to ranged weapons where it would mean the character fires a volley of arrows in an arc over a long distance. It could even apply to magical staves or wands where it casts an arc of magical fire or ice, burning or freezing enemies caught in the cone-like attack. This would make this skill truly classless since every character, no matter what its build or weapon, could use it.
This also means that weapons could slot their primary function or effect into skills, transforming them in a way. A magical projectile skill could gain a knockdown effect if a blunt weapon were used or become a fireball if a magic wand with a fire damage type is wielded. Weapons as part in the greater web of connected game mechanics, rather than an appendage that just needs to be there.

_{Though not classless but vehemently anti-min-max, Dragon Age: Inquisition let me play a Tank Mage anyway when I specialized my Mage as a Knight-Enchanter. Oh, the Irony!}

As with all things, a classless system should have balance and proper restrictions. For instance to prevent Mage Tank Syndrome where players min-max their character for maximum offence and maximum defence. Another argument for limited skill bars, balanced stat allocation and a party with members specialized for their role in the gameplan. Additionally the power versus defense trade-off could be explained in the fiction.

_{Guild Wars has a class that manipulates the enemy's energy.}

In the end it's impossible to remove specialization from RPGs and we shouldn't strive to. You may as well take the role out of role playing. Better to take the concept and run with it, the more creative the better. As with the theoretical classless system I mentioned. I like systems that lets one class bleed over into the other. I like the way a class or subclass can direct the way you play a character. I like the odd classes too. Final Fantasy Four Warriors Of Light had a Salve-Maker class, Fire Emblem has a Bride class. Think about Blue Mages, Red Mages, Mesmers, ritualists, wayfarers... any game that has odd classes able to play a vital part in a game's gameplay surely points to a game with interesting and creative systems. I like how certain classes are able to focus on specific elements or abilities of the enemy. In guild wars a Mesmer drains the energy pool and directs the enemy spell casting behavior. At the time, I hadn't seen the like. All of these mechanics, and those like it, are symptomatic of a system that offers more depth than the plain "A Warrior absorbs damage". Of course it doesn't exclude this basic function, dealing damage is a primary gameplay element and taking damage is pretty much a given. But allowing the player to pick apart all the different gameplay details and manipulate them is the hallmark of a system complex enough to accommodate it. A system made for player interaction and creativity. Something to aspire to.

Related posts:

• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 1, where I talk about past RPG experiences.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 2, a long overdue rant on leveling and experience grind.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 3, about how RPGs are being influenced, by example, design and market.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 4, simplicity in RPGs and the evolution thereof.

Mind of the BeholderPart 4

Something about simplicity

This is no mere ponder.

There once was a plumber. A simple, practical man, his overalls a second skin which come in handy whenever he needs to get down to business. Ready to collect his due anytime, anywhere - even if he needs to knock a few heads. Never does it tarnish his sunny demeanor. He's not just some plumber, he's the royal plumber. He cleans out all the pipes, in all the castles, in all the lands. He'll never stop, even if his employer gets kidnapped by a capricious giant turtle dragon that shoots fireballs. He scoffs mushrooms to bulk up, gets high on psychedelic flowers, dons a cape to fly like Superman, wears the corpse of a raccoon to use its tail as a flail. He stomps all the wildlife in his way for coin, because there's no such thing as a free lunch and his favorite shrooms are expensive. He's out to slay the dragon and save the princess like Saint George. You know of whom I speak, it's-a-Mario from Nintendo.

_{Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.}

The universe Mario inhabits is related to our reality in the same way an acid trip is and even though it may not make sense, it makes perfect sense as a game where rules rule. They've barely changed: navigate this spacial maze, run and jump, collect coins, splat enemies, defeat the dragon and save the princess. Easy to understand, the crazy world Mario inhabits doesn't get in the way of game logic.

There once was a hero of no repute and no description. He filled in the blanks and did not worry, he worked things out as he went along. He wanted to swing a sword. He'd swing it until he'd become the best Sword Swinger in the whole world. Then he realized the sword swinging was rather ethereal and couldn't deal very well with the realistically fleeing A.I. of the world's inhabitants so he made a career switch to swinging a bow and arrow. A resounding success! When our hero discovered he could perch atop a boulder and snipe giants with impunity he used realism to break the rules governing this universe. He also discovered that the world more or less dictated the way one was to behave and that it didn't make any qualms about breaking its own rules. Rules such as a prison having keys for all but one cell door, ironically this happened to be the only occupied cell. The hero's mission was to bail out the occupant with coin, which he did, but then the guard joked that he'd let him go 'eventually', little did any of us know the key must have been destroyed and this was an obvious bail-out racket. Or else all of this makes little sense.

_{Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.}

We are all sentient machines that explain. The highly interactive world I thought a game like Skyrim would portray is a pipe-dream. Bethesda had to ship the game at some point and I think they did right with Skyrim, even though some elements drove me up the wall. I'm all for an interactive world. I'm all for far-reaching consequences. It stands to reason that if you poison a town's water supply, anyone who drinks from the well gets ill. Yes, this has been done before, but I've yet to see it as mere possibility. Not as part of a task where the game supplies a button to click to apply poison to the water. Entirely different still if the game mandates through a quest text, that the well needs to be poisoned and all that's required is that:

1. The player get the necessary 10 ingredients from slaying glowing rotworms
2. Synthesize the poison by clicking the Synthesize action button supplied with the quest
3. Apply the poison by clicking the well

This final example is usually found in a game that is built for questing and not for interactivity. It's also as exciting to play as flipping switches. On the other hand, having to feed my companions in Ultima 7 was, while funny at times, a chore. I could lead to interesting situations in a highly interactive world, but if feeding is abstracted to the following isolated actions it becomes annoying:

1. Either collect ingredients for food or earn currency to afford it
2. Spend either to obtain food
3. Put the food into the player character

While realistic, it's not fun to play unless it ties into other meaningful game mechanics. In this case, if the food is there to prevent a debuff, and I assume this applies to NPCs and not just the player's party, why can't I poison the well so that I can prevent the removal of the debuff? A game not only has to simplify reality, it has to do something interesting with the result.

Because of their time investment, their associated cost, their hidden complexity, their demanding nature, it seems apparent that MMORPGs may be getting pushed (back) into a niche unless they can solve one or more of the listed issues.

The checklist quest I mentioned before is typical for MMOs. They have a reputation for supposedly being easy. But I feel as though I've made a grave error when I mentioned this before: MMO's are more complex than they let on. Especially at the highest level, where every feature comes into play. I recently continued my stint in Star Wars: The Old Republic and was momentarily lost in its complexity even though I had played it for months before. MMO's demand hundreds of hours which in turn lets players nestle themselves into its web of mechanics and mini games. By which I really mean that the MMO player interested in endgame content isn't casual, but very hardcore. Complex is a way to describe how a raid boss fight is conducted. There's little to sneeze at because this is essentially the multiplayer equivalent of a Metroid boss fight.

_{Wildstar's boss fights are some of the best in class.}

Because of their time investment, their associated cost, their hidden complexity, their demanding nature, it seems apparent that MMORPGs may be getting pushed (back) into a niche unless they can solve one or more of the listed issues. Wildstar's entire success hinges on its ability to appeal to the most hardcore MMO player base. How the genre is to succeed while having to rely on a shrinking audience is worth a guess. But sure, having a MOBA styled PvP map seems like a worthwhile effort.

I thought it curious how hardcore an MMO can get, considering the trend of other big releases. Diablo 3 is a lot simpler than its predecessor. The Elder Scrolls games have lost some of their rules over time. Dragon Age, as seen in the previous post, has been dramatically and ruefully simplified. However, not all of it is bad. Simplification usually happens for good reasons. I buy coffee in its ground-up form rather than as beans. This saves me the hassle of grinding them up myself; I'm not hardcore enough to enjoy grinding.

In general, there's nothing wrong with streamlining. Less is more. But quality of life isn't the only argument for keeping things simple. For instance, Guild Wars is proof that limiting the skill bar in a party based RPG can have great gameplay value. At the time this set it apart from games that would plaster the screen with floating skill bars. With limited options, the player must select the right ones. Synergize skills, build a party with a game plan then test it against the game's challenges.

_{Guild Wars' skill bar, 8 slots is all you have to work with, better make the most of it. This includes an Elite skill, distinguishable by the gold trimming.}

This is the reason I was excited to hear that Dragon Age: Inquisition would also feature a limited skill bar. Eight skill slots is all you have to work with. Eight skills to be carefully selected from a wealth of strategic options. Eight representatives of a tactical plan, each character fulfilling a role in a large master plan that will foil the schemes of the arch-villain du jour. Sadly, I later learned that DA:I doesn't have the wealth of strategic options I would have liked. It still has the trinity roles, but each role only has a handful of skills - leaving some out in favor of others doesn't even factor into it. It is possible to combine roles to a fair extent but suffice to say that the game has a very narrow focus.

_{Dragon Age: Inquisition has a limited skill bar but you won't be able to fill it long before the game's finale. The setup in the screen is that of a Knight-Enchanter, its gameplan is to conjure magical armour while it wades into combat wielding a magical sword. That's it. Strategic choices are quite limited.}

I think the reason for the eight skill slots has everything to do with controller design, the game's UI is a dead giveaway. A controller has four (face)buttons, each of which is assigned to its own activated skill. Swap this initial set of four with another set of four using a trigger and you end up with the total of eight skills. I can't call this a console compromise because the classes were built from the ground up to function with only a few skills, but it does influence the game design taking it a far away from Origins - this was also its main source of criticism.
Dragon Age: Inquisition thoroughly simplified the character building by removing attribute point management - Dragon Age: Origins still had this - and has chosen to put the attribute growth on the passive abilities in the various skill trees. This ensures that if you go down the skill tree of a tank build where lots of hit points are a concerned, enough attribute points will be added to constitution, which governs the HP pool. This takes away user error, but one could argue it also takes away user choice.

I have slagged on god-character RPGs a lot in these series. But, admittedly, Diablo 3 does it rather well. It's where it slaughters demons by the hundreds. This is a class based game, each with its unique style and limited skill bar. The player is allowed to swap skills on the battlefield. Different problems, different solutions. Sadly, the game doesn't really take advantage of this: the players only need to build an effective damage dealing character so there's a tendency towards cookie-cutter builds. Here the game becomes too simple for its own good. Even if Diablo dictates what happens in the action RPG genre, there's plenty of wiggle room for competitors.

_{Diablo 3 has a limited skill bar, skill selection is mostly governed by personal preference rather than the game's challenges.}

It also removed attribute point management, Blizzard did the logical thing by removing a mechanic that just led to Min-maxing. Which is the phenomenon in which players maximize the primary statistic on a character, ignoring less useful stats. Using the game rules and simple maths it's possible to figure out at what stat allocation a character is at peak performance - once known, why deviate from it? In this case you could end up with a warrior with 265 strength, 15 dexterity and 15 intelligence. The requirement on melee weapons and damage output would typically be based on strength, so why add points to anything else? An image comes to mind of a barbarian who can twist open a jar of pickles in one go but can't tie his own bootlaces. I usually feel min-maxing is a bad thing too, because it allows the player to sidestep part of the game design, particularly if it isn't very sophisticated. I think Blizzard did the right thing. Diablo isn't an RPG in the classical sense so it doesn't hurt the game.
Note: During the writing of this text, the Paragon system patch was released in the ramp up to the Reaper Of Souls expansion. This allows max level characters to put paragon points into certain stats to specialize the character even more.

Diablo's story is insanity incarnate. Typically Blizzard, who continue to publish a sort of fantasy anime with a western Warhammer-esque esthetic. Featuring overconfident characters with megalomaniacal vocabularies, wielding words like "misbegotten" as if they were never used in a Blizzard game before. It's really quite funny: Sanctuary is the sort of place that's a one-to-one conversion of real, I use the term loosely, life monotheistic beliefs and superstitions, in a what if it was all true way. This is the setting's most relevant point. An earth-shattering, eternal conflict between good and evil where mankind is victimized, slain, enslaved and ultimately championed. Both forces of good and evil are heinous - only humanity has the right mix of salt and pepper to rise above the conflict - a sentiment I can appreciate. Vanquish demons and angels alike and so remove the conflict that poisons the world. Encapsulated in this caricature of delusions is the solution to it: stomp it out with extreme prejudice. Should you feel a little down on the whole premise there's the materialism needed to stoke your rage, loot fixes everything.
 
A bit of a shame, really. The game could be more thrilling if the pace was turned down a bit, and the enemies tougher, smarter and fewer. Anyone would argue this would make the game less 'Diablo', who am I to argue. Maybe there's another game to scratch that itch.

Diablo 2 didn't have class flexibility (skill trees, no respec) and an even more limited selection of active skills. Hotbars weren't yet current and the game forced the player to only use the two mouse buttons. Skills could be hot swapped by using the F-keys, it was clunky and hard to use. Its sequel fully incorporated modern interface design and made the game much more approachable. Diablo 3's gameplay received a similar treatment. Something as simple automatic gold pickup removes the tedium of having to... "aim and click" the cursor on a few coins then wait for the character to complete the move and pickup routine. Much more satisfying to watch the coins fly into your pockets, like a reverse gold fireworks, and it all happens without forcing you miss to a beat of the action. And let's also be honest: in a game where any sort of grind is involved wasting time is anathema.

_{Health orbs, shown as red spheres, keep the pace of the game up.}

Another noticeable evolution in the Diablo formula is the use of health and mana potions. The first two games had the, presumably unintended, phenomenon of potion chugging, meaning you could 'cheat' your way out of tough spots by using health pots which would restore hit points over a very short time. Chugging one after the other would make the player character near-invincible until they were all spent. In Diablo 3 this was corrected by putting a long cooldown on the use of potions. To compensate, slain baddies now drop health orbs which, like gold, are magnetically absorbed and replenish some health. Notice there's an added bonus for gameplay here, bosses are able to spawn additional baddies that drop health orbs too, making the fight less punishing and potentially more interesting as the developer can count on the fact that health replenishment is available during the fight. Which they cannot if the player has a limited and uncertain amount of potions. Not forcing a restart once health runs out relieves some of the stress while learning the fight too. This kind of regenerative health also makes it almost impossible for a player to get hard locked into a situation where he has neither potions and money, in which he has to restart the game, rerun the level, or grind more mobs for more - all of which are generally a bad experience. Taking a page out of the Zelda and God Of War playbook, health orbs fit rather nicely with the absurd premise of this game and its action gameplay. It's also easier to suspend your disbelief when an abstract idea like 'health orbs' are involved then it is to accept that a character instantly consumed a vial of liquid or in the case of Skyrim: an entire roast pig. Solving this is easy enough: take away the basis in reality is to remove the illusion-breaking issues that clash with said reality.

Many games use the eat-to-heal mechanic. Think of the Bethesda games. Worse yet, think of early World Of Warcraft, where the player character would always have to sit down, eat and drink in between fights to heal up. It coupled the unrealistic idea that food heals wounds with the realistic idea that eating takes a long time. Inanely absurd! It was one of the early signs that this game was not for me - it encouraged me to pull out hair, nails and eyes while waiting for the animation to finish.
An example of a game where I can get on board with the concept of food and cooking is Guild Wars 2 where it is one of the available, and optional, disciplines. The food it yields provides a temporary stat buff. This game's professions even provides a real sense of experimentation as the player is allowed to match ingredients to discover new recipes. It feels more playful than tedious.
When it comes to healing, GW2 adheres to the modern idea of rapid health regeneration, or even resuscitation with a severe stat penalty, once combat has ended. Numerous games use this to bypass the manual healing a player would usually have to do by casting a healing spell, then wait for it to come off cooldown, then to recast it till the character is back at full health. Needless to say, this bogs down pacing and creates tedium.

_{Guild Wars 2 is full of good ideas, but lacks some of the ones that made the original such a unique design.}

Like its predecessor compared to its contemporaries before it, Guild Wars 2 is special and may as well have "Detox MMO" for a subtitle. The reluctance to waste the player's time with grind and nonsense is part of the developer's design philosophy. It doesn't have any signpost quests but area based, timed missions the player just wanders into while exploring. Participating is optional and the rewards are according to player performance. It has flexible classes. It doesn't have a library of skills, its skills are tied to weapon types which in turn also dictate playstyles. Toggle between two weapon sets for adaptability and combos.

_{For comparison's sake and symptomatic of how this game is played: Guild Wars 2's skill bar, 3 slots for the main hand, 2 for the off-hand, a healing skill, 3 class skills and 1 ultimate.}

It has a personalized story that defines your character as a personality and not just as a player avatar. It uses a handful well-defined hero characters as anchors to the world instead of endless anonymous quest givers. It doesn't have separate PvP and PvE gear tracks. It doesn't have a sub fee. Sadly though, it takes a step away from being a Role Playing Game and towards being an open playground theme park. It doesn't have the 'poison the well' interactivity, but it does have spontaneous events that make the world appear more alive than the competition's. However, it also doesn't have the trinity and its mechanics, it doesn't have its predecessor's companion system and its open ended party building. These last two points have a pretty big impact. What makes having a party so valuable? Well, I really should make a separate post on the topic.

Related posts:

• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 1, where I talk about past RPG experiences.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 2, a long overdue rant on leveling and experience grind.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 3, about how RPGs are being influenced, by example, design and market.

Mind of the BeholderPart 3

Divergent paths

Sometimes, you just have to let go.

When talking about RPGs one of my most used phrases "It's just like an MMO" is a slight against some modern RPGs, but not always. Something definitely happened to RPG design after the success of World Of Warcraft (November 23, 2004). Think of the hotbars, checklist questlog, exlamation mark questgivers, quest waypointing, talentrees, gear grind, colour-coded loot, the Trinity. Many of these micromechanics help make sense of the machine that is the game itself. Competitors need to feature most if not all of these in their own games not just because WoW does it, which applied as a general rule is slavish, but because they are good ideas. One could argue that because of the rise of MMORPGs, which must appeal to a wide audience to stay afloat, old school RPGs have been left in the dust. The genre had evolved. For better or for worse, where the money went, there's where developers will (or had to) go. This also left some old school PC gamers feel ostracized. Switching to console RPGs was hardly an option, devoid of MMOs, console RPGs were mostly (third) person action RPGs and geared to a wider audience - a far cry from nineties games such as Baldur's Gate (December 21, 1998). In fact I have heard it said quite often from console gamers, that Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance (October 22, 2002) was their introduction to the franchise - yet the game more closely resembles Diablo than a its PC ancestor. Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a stick.

The drought on the RPG front didn't last forever, though. During E3 2004, A spiritual successor to the classic Baldur's Gate was announced by Bioware under the title of Dragon Age. Key here is that the developer wanted to make this game out of their own volition, for old times sake, rather than meet an explicit demand. Nothing proved it would sell well. Back then, the newest Elder Scrolls game, namely Oblivion (March 20, 2006), was also making a name for itself. It seemingly blew its contemporary Neverwinter Nights 2 (October 31, 2006) out of the water when it came to popularity. Both Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls were seemingly only subtly influenced by what WoW had done. Each had its own way, firmly rooted in their own school of RPG design. Both series are still popular and it's where the market and public eye is at the moment. What expectations do they create? They are different, but the two schools of thinking seem to be converging.

_{Dragon Age: Origins in full realtime-with-pause glory.}

What is the Trinity?

The Trinity is an informal denotation given to the interplay between tank, DPS ('damage per second' or 'deeps') and support roles in RPGs. Each has a main task and has to rely on the other roles to get its job done. A tanks takes the attention and subsequent damage the enemy deals out, but can't dish out a lot of damage. The tank trades hit points for time. If they run out, the fight is lost. The DPS deals out the damage on behalf of the good guys, but quickly swinging whatever weapons around and being quick about it means he needs to wear a lighter sort of armour and as such can't take damage. The support, or healer, is a precarious role that sustains the hit points of the rest of the party often while also boosting the defensive and offensive abilities. Advantages to the trinity: easy to understand, makes people/classes play together.

Since finishing Knights Of The Old Republic (July 15, 2003), Bioware no longer uses the D&D ruleset and has chosen to create their own system that has both feet in computer game design. With it they have made their own highly intricate fantasy universe, that has a lot of parallels to our own world. Politics, racism and sexism, the divide between science and religion, social class systems, Plato's Republic, stuff like that.
But it was also influenced by MMORPG design. For one, DA:O is a party based RPG with three basic classes. The mage, the warrior and the rogue. It also includes the gameplay mechanic of aggro. This a basic set-up for the trinity, very much as seen in World Of Warcraft. When you hear people say "it's single player WoW", they're not far off the mark. There are more strategic options still, but the inclusion of the trinity as a game mechanic was a novelty.

What is Aggro?

It stands to reason that enemy AI will target the party member that is hurting it the most. This is always the DPS, usually a squishy mage. To make the tank work in this scenario, it is given skills such as taunt, or stances that generate an exaggerated amount of "threat" towards the enemy, this forces said enemy to direct their blade to the tank and away from the mage. This "Aggro" mechanic makes fights manageable and the tank reliable. The job of the tank is to smartly manage enemies in addition to his defensive and regenerative skills. It may seem a little unrealistic to be able to pull away an enemy from a friendly mage, protecting her with the push of a button but you have to remember that this is just another way of manipulating and pulling the strings woven into the game's mechanics. Empowering the players, allowing them to master their situation rather than suffer through it. Aggro mechanics are relevant, since they have made it out of the MMO and into the single player RPG.

All in all, Dragon Age: Origins (November 3, 2009) is a rather quiet game. It doesn't have the flash of other games, like a still water belies its depth, its biggest strengths aren't seen during a brief glance at some gameplay. You can't appreciate the characters and humour in this game without spending a little time with it. Nor will it be easy to spot what goes on during a fight, what skills are used during what phase. The active pause makes all this complexity manageable but you'd need a commentator to talk you through the process as a spectator.
You'll also need to finish the game to experience the full range of consequences to your actions - they're quite significant. Made even more so because they influence the sequels. It's true that not many of these changes make the sequel into a different game but the reality of the world is altered, giving it a different connotation and shifting the context.

Bioware had little to prove after Mass Effect (another unique IP, released November 16, 2007) became an immense success, but expectations were high for this new IP nonetheless. Would lightning strike twice? After all, both games and their respective fictional universes were masterfully created. Pop culture was still reverbing from the success of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy and hardcore RPG gamers were tantalized by Dragon Age's promise of a return to form.
Regretably and in spite of critical acclaim its actual success left somewhat to be desired as it failed to become a blockbuster hit. A reality confirmed once its sequel sold less and public interest seemed to have cooled off dramatically.

At the heart of the perceived failing of the Dragon Age franchise, when it comes to marketing, is the discrepancy of developing a core game, and selling it as a casual one.

At the heart of the perceived failing of the Dragon Age franchise, when it comes to marketing, is the discrepancy of developing a core game, and selling it as a casual one. The way this opaque box of mechanics was marketed to a console market (let's be honest: the PC crowd knew what they were in for) with a flashy Lord Of The Rings and 300 inspired trailer that succeeded only in misrepresenting what the game was actually like.

_{This is the trailer for the most important, tactical, party based RPG in recent history.}

Feeling the marketing department didn't do enough with this trailer, it went another step beyond what Dragon Age 2 was like with the Dragon Age 2 trailer, which sold people a different game altogether. This put off both the hardcore, who had to accept a compromised and dumbed-down sequel, and the casual audience who were buying a cat in a bag.

_{And what game do you think this game is like? Here's how this fight really plays out.}

Dragon Age 2 (March 8, 2011) is a game seemingly inspired by Mass Effect 2 (January 26, 2010) which was a tremendous success for Bioware. So it broke away from DA:O, got a named protagonist and story based, linear level design. It banked big on character and story, but left the world design to "functional at best", a polar opposite of "open world". It was also a party based tactical RPG and not a third person shooter. It sold worse than its predecessor and Bioware got the message that this was the wrong direction for their game. Personally, I don't see why some people lose their mind over DA2, I had a lot of fun with it - my only gripe being the respawning enemies that would screw up my carefully planned battles.

_{Skyrim's Logo made quite clear this wasn't a game to take lightly}

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (November 11, 2011) has been the thé ultimate in many top RPGs lists. I'm a little unclear what the criteria are exactly but I'm sure the open world and free-flow class system play a big part in the success of this carve-your-own-path spectacular. The Elder Scrolls has always been known for its open ended gameplay: you're a hero of no repute and no description. Fill in the blanks and don't worry, you'll work things out as you go along. Want to swing a sword? Swing it and you'll get better at swinging swords - presumably this is just like real life - you'll even become the best Sword Swinger in the whole of Tamriel. Skyrim is a game where you grow big, larger than anyone else, larger than life. A god among mere mortals. A god-character. How is all of this made possible? Because a power fantasy is a very marketable idea.

Suspension of disbelief is one of the reasons I am disappointed with Skyrim. It's not just about the MMO-like checklist quests or the lack of a (good) narrative. I have a hard time believing this is a medieval world. Every town has a population of five people. Each of them living in a spacious mansion sized home with room and perishable foods to spare. Why is there a war exactly? But touch any of it and the town guard will descend on you like gnats on a knave. In the name of justice and fair play they'll pick a fight with the man who just slew a dragon at the town gates, mistaking their their paper-thin personalities for plot-armour. In many games I generally don't like very much, I'll keep to the Sith code of morality (thanks, KotoR), which means they either apologize and let me go or I walk away over their dead bodies. Duty bound by stupidity, the AI invariably makes the wrong choice. Enemy tactics are limited to rushing headlong into your sword-swinging and then, when they don't get their due in an explicit death animation, they sometimes flee in a straight path ideal for catching persuing arrows with their backs. When a fight starts it's a pretty chaotic affair with boring, whiffy combat. It seems a theme with Skyrim to make every gameplay element as invisible and uneventful as it can. The interface is horrid. Character growth and specialization are literally covered in smoke and mist - mouse over the dots in the nebula one more time to reveal the tooltip! Sure, it becomes better with mods but I'm afraid the underlying system the game is based on aren't very good. Where is the game-part? It epitomizes the god-character with special purpose and destiny, superpowers and scores of clueless bandits dumb enough to think they can best you. Building you character seems secondary, if you're a sword swinger you'll finish the game by swinging swords. The interesting thing about Skyrim isn't about its combat or strategy. It's about walking this strange world, discovering... what exactly?

_{Lording over Tamriel on a rock with a longbow makes one all-powerful.}

Maybe I aught to do the thing I eventually did with Fallout 3: equip a ranged weapon and believe this an open-world FPS. But the game is boring. Character interaction can make a bland game worth playing but this is a let-down too. The entire population share a handful of voice actors and they all share the same watered down vocabulary. Skyrim also tries its hand at a big living world: if the player makes a splash, the world will ripple. I'm told it's supposed to be open. Elder Scrolls games have always resembled the Ultima games in this regard, its their retro-ancestor. They lied. I remember a particular instance that shattered that illusion...

_{Whiterun jail is where it all came tumbling down.}

At one point in the story I needed to coax the location of a bandit hideout out of a prisoner. Unable to see things my way, story constraints don't you know, the prisoner would only share the info after I bailed him out. Unwilling to cough up coin for the sorry cretin, I decided to search for the cell key by picking the pockets of the 3 present jailers. One of which was seated quite near a wall but I was able to position the camera behind him by jumping on and over his dinner table and crawling into a corner. Stoic and unfazed by my odd behavior he let me rummage through his inventory anyway. It turned out that none of the guards had the relevant key. Odd. I then picked the locks on every chest in the room. Still no key. Hm. Plan B then. As per world design, this jail is also where the player ends up in for crimes against Skyrim', e.g. stealing one to many apples. Since the story can't end with the player expiring in prison, he's allowed to pick the sewer grate in his cell floor to escape. It's game design, alright? The game even provides an easy lock and matching lock-picks under the pillow on the bed. Maybe the guards have more respect for the player than I thought. Ultimately, you escape prison by navigating a linear path out of the sewers and back into the wide world. No questions asked. So I thought: 'I'll open the player cell with one of the keys I did got off the guards, then in the sewers i'll pick the lock of the informant to let him out and that'll win me the info I need.' However, the informant's floor grate doesn't even have a lock! Bloody Bethesda. Extremely annoyed, I paid the guard anyway. Cursing through my teeth that this would end up in a rant someday.

Storytelling in and through the world is also poor. The bar has been raised so many times, even by Bethesda themselves in Fallout 3 (October 28, 2008), that you can't just offer notes and books to tell a story. Since Bioshock (August 21, 2007) we're allowed to expect audiologs that read the text for us, they allow the player to keep playing. Yes, I enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot more and now I wonder if that has anything to do with its pedigree. It at least had some linear sections in which the storytellers could put you through an experience with some flavour.

_{Honest trailer.}

I mentioned trailers earlier, and I recall Skyrim having a much more honest one, showing a first person perspective, in-game footage, the actual game music and the slaying of a dragon; exactly how it's done in game. It didn't have to sell the idea to its audience, as it was already on board. It celebrated its release, rather than sell it. Much to Bethesda's credit. Of course, slashing at a dragon is much more cinematic than watching a party of puppets play a pseudo-turn-based fight from an isometric perspective.

As far as trailers go, Bioware learned its lesson when it came to Dragon Age: Inquisition, which has a much more toned down theme. Danger merely looms here, where in previous trailers it spat of the screen in big red splotches. It has the game's third person perspective in actual game footage, the game's voice-over, classical score and the slaying of a dragon.

_{Honest trailer 2.}

_{This is my Inquisitor. There are many like her, but this one is mine.}

Playing it makes it clear that this game is a consolidation of popular ideas from other bestsellers, in addition to its prequels:

• World Of Warcraft: sidequest design, level gated content
• Skyrim: open world design and presentation
• Guild Wars 2: action RPG combat system
• Dark Souls: limited healing mechanic
• Assassin's Creed: collect-a-thon sidequests
• Mass Effect: character movement, presentation of dialogues, mocap animation, rock-paper-scissors combat mechanics
• Dragon Age: Origins: encounter design, classes, the trinity, segmented open world, story quest experience, choice and consequence
• Dragon Age 2: Class and Skill tree layout, a voiced protagonist

Wether this make DA:I into a patchy rag-doll or a sum greater than its parts, merits examination. Through the grapevine I have heard more than a few voices exclaim 'it's like an MMORPG'. Tabbed targeting, open world, MMO quest design. It's a first glance opinion and therefor doesn't tell the whole story.
The Skyrim-esque open world influence may well be the only chink in Dragon Age's armour as it's the most boring part of the game. One part, mind. Boring mostly at the very start, where it seems the player needs to be eased into the idea of the open world. It should have been faster. Getting to the first real mission where events truly kick off, is paramount. Unfortunately, you may be near ten hours of menial tasks in by then. How very Bethesdian. Yet, this open world's dense enough to warrant exploring. The game world itself is made up out of very large individual zones rather than one large streaming game world. It's what I have to thank the Baldur's Gate flashback for when I first entered The Hinterlands. But it should appear optional at the start of the game, because it is. When I finally arrived at the first major plot spoiler, I found out I was slightly over-leveled (having to use this word in this context is uneasy). But I was happy to do it, because the story has that Bioware charm I keep coming back for. It's here that the game shifts into higher gear and becomes a much more interesting.
Like an MMO, it'll take foreknowledge to determine what is the most efficient way to level-up and get past the level gates. Remembering how good Dragon Age: Origins and even Dragon Age 2 managed their pace makes that last sentence rather depressing to write. Still, being a party and class based game puts it miles ahead of the god-character action RPGs.

_{Spoiler: we won.}

It's hard to ignore the rocky road, if not downwards slope, the Dragon Age games have been on since Origins. Or Bioware's flip-flopping. But the story and characters have remained distinctly Dragon Age throughout. So even if Inquisition goes one step further to broaden its market appeal by introducing action RPG gameplay and a pseudo-open game world, story and attachment to characters will drive you forward.
Given its complexity, a story that needs a long attention span, long character dialogues with many tough choices, I do wonder what percentage of players will finish the game - this could be another cat-in-the-bag scenario. Will the emphasis on open world help sell the game better? If you wanted an open world game, then no. If you wanted a Dragon Age: Origins game, then hell no. It is better than the one in Skyrim for me because it's not as open. But the comparison doesn't really hold water, because at heart this is still a party based RPG with depth when it comes to mechanics and story. It wants you to care about the characters, the conflict, the events and not just about yourself. It's why you'll be willing to do all the menial tasks that you could just as easily skip and keep to slaying dragons in your off hours as the Inquisitor. It's really good on its own merits... but you have to let go of Origins.

Skyrim, which is still selling, has moved more than 20 million units. It has also made a monumental and lasting impact on Dragon Age. Ascribing the open world movement to Skyrim alone is hugely unfair however: MMOs are paramount, The Legend of Zelda should be mentioned, as should games like Assassin's Creed and GTA. As technology progresses, open worlds have become more viable but in themselves don't make for better games. Yet, the trend is clear. As such we will never get another Origins, at least not from Bioware. It falls to other, smaller studios to fill its niche. The vacuum left by the once small now big, is ideal for the still or perpetually small. Think Portalarium, inExile, Obsidian, Larian. As long as the hardcore RPG players are able to support these studios they'll receive the games they want... but you have to let go of Origins.

Related posts:

• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 1, where I talk about past RPG experiences.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 2, a long overdue rant on leveling and experience grind.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 4, simplicity in RPGs and the evolution thereof.

Mind of the BeholderPart 2

Level Up!

"Endurance +1, intelligence +3, wisdom +1, charisma +2"

The Role Playing Games genre is unlike any other. Not only has the face of games with the label changed considerably over the years, it has even been applied to games that aren't RPGs at all. The simple reason is that RPG elements have made it into other genres. Even in Need For Speed: Shift players drive for experience. No, this isn't the advertised Real Driver Experience but the numerical indicator on the top of the screen that climbs higher and higher to suggest your driver's level.
Call of Duty 4 is another example, as one of the first games that kicked of the trend. A brilliant game, unique in the way how it's remembered for its story campaign. However, the multiplayer design in particular stuck with the series, structured a bit like an RPG. It also stuck with EA's Battlefield series, EA's Medal Of Honor series, EA's Titanfall series, Crytek's Crysis series, THQ's Homefront series, Sony's Killzone series. And so on.

What is Prestige mode?

Entering prestige mode in Call Of Duty is the ability to reset one's progress. The player loses all unlocked items, experience points, the ability to make and use custom classes. The idea is to revert back to the very beginning of the multiplayer game. In exchange the player obtains an emblem beside their name to show off their prestige level. This can be repeated about 10 or 15 times, depending on the game.

Safe to assume this system was universally considered a good idea, it enthralled its gamers. To some it ruined the First Person Shooter genre - adding an XP grind for items and prestige system which enabled online boneheads to boast about their levels as if it wasn't an indicator of time played but of actual rifleman skill. The real crux of the matter is if this system makes people play the game because of good gameplay or because of the carrot dangling fifteen minutes in front of their crosshairs. This question isn't as innocent as it may appear: if an opponent prevents our brain from getting the dopamine fix we are expecting, like animals we rage. You can't blame the person for this because that's how people work. Critisism befalls the game. Other than this, CoD really isn't the worst offender: the XP grind to unlock all is short, prestige mode: optional for those with time.

I generally distrust any game where "level up" or any similarly worded bullet points make up part of the main features. Nor do I enjoy the marketing that raises level caps as if the grind to come is something very enjoyable. I say this because I've never found theme park MMOs to have anything resembling a worthwhile story. I'm not averse to theme parks. But if a game is made up of roughly similar looking attractions and I have to ride said attractions until they start boring me, about 3 times, the theme park quickly becomes a vision of hell, where everything that was once enjoyable becomes as stale like food without taste of which no amount will ever satisfy your desire. Until the bell of the next level-up rings, not as a reward but as the sign that the ride on the caravan of the damned has one less stop to make towards the end of the line. Logically, I don't think it speaks in favor of your game design if the host of the game allows you to take a mercy shot taking you to the end of the line if you pay the price of the game over one more time - logical if it means you won't pay to play the game for another few months this way. Only fair to make up for lost revenue, right? Well, your RPG should be a game, not a damn business model.

The back of the box of World Of Warcraft reads:

A World Awaits...
Descend into the World Of Warcraft and join thousands of mighty heroes in an online world of myth, magic and limitless adventure. Jagged snow peaks, mountain fortresses, harsh winding canyons, zeppelins, epic sieges - an infinity of experiences await. So what are you waiting for?

Ask any guildy for the reason why they can't come play in your party and chances are high he won't repeat the box quote but will say... "I'm leveling." Again, WoW isn't the worst offender. Blizzard made old content a lot more rewarding enabling players to do one quest instead of twenty to progress to newer areas - saving time and keeping their playerbase at the latest zones.

_{Star Wars the Old Republic started out spectacular but imagine what if this was the intro to a Mass Effect-esque Knights of the Old Republic 3 instead.}

I don't really mind the limited range of things a player can do in a game (fetch quest, kill quest, escort quest, collect quest, etc) as long as the motivation is right. Proof of this is Star Wars the Old Republic, where the story missions were as highly enjoyable as the ones you'd find in a single player RPG. The fully voiced cast of companions and related NPCs draw you into a world that has more to offer then any vendor-trashable quest reward ever could. However, set foot outside the neatly drawn line of the story areas and you won't see its kind again for literally hours while you, a level 43 imposing and life-destroying Sith Lord, would listen to NPCs whisking you along with their petty sorrows and requests, to get kittens out of the old Bantha tree by either shooting the kitten, cutting the tree down or climbing up there, a right Sith monkey - each solution with its proper light and dark side implication.

Who knows, maybe in-between battles Achilles also had to mend the sandals of scores of Greek villagers in order to allow them to yield unto him the required amount of frustration that would allow him to angrily slaughter his King's enemies on the next battlefield.

Hardly the stuff of legend, but who knows. Maybe in-between battles Achilles also had to mend the sandals of scores of Greek villagers in order to allow them to yield unto him the required amount of frustration that would allow him to angrily slaughter his King's enemies on the next battlefield. No, The Old Republic tragically and quite literally bored me to tears near the end, so I got off the snail train through Purgatory. The uninspired way EA/Bioware decided to turn it into an micropayment advertisement insulted my sensibilities and previous dedication so it lost me as a player too. I could come back to the game, it has many saving graces such as customizable companions, but only if I was convinced the slow progression wouldn't dampen my enjoyment. Unfortunately the game has already caused some offence when it culled my ingame funds when it (partly) transitioned to F2P, deleting everything above the limit - an eye-watering amount.

Another MMO I played for a few months is Wildstar. An impressive design, limited skill bar, creative classes, great art style. It's not even big on grinding - in the sense that you're able to blaze through content rapidly if you have the right class and setup. I clocked in at about 2-3 weeks of intensive playing to take a character from the creator to the endgame. Again, I'm stressing the leveling in this game because there's nothing else to propel you forward. This game has no story, heroes nor villains, no endgame content save for a couple of areas where the player repeats daily quests - another theme park from hell. Each town hub has its own set of quests, with a small narrative red line, but nothing that stands out. The game is made up out of Sci-fi and Spaghetti Western tropes - much more tired than witty. I don't see myself picking it up again even though I really liked the class designs.

No game should consist of boring stuff to pad out playtime. That task should fall to the co-op or competitive PVP modes. No game should be played for the sole reason of gaining XP. If the experience bar is reduced in such a way that all it basically does is exchange rewards or trickle content for time played, why keep jumping those hoops? Real RPGs have levels to roughly indicate where your character should be in regards to the story or place in the world. Each level brings with it more tricks and solutions to tackle the game's challenges. It usually also brings an increase in stat points making the characters stronger in order to cope with increasingly stronger enemies. When the player gets relatively stronger due to more tools and superior stats, there should be satisfaction: all the thinking, building and strategizing is paying off in a real way. Some games don't even need the experience track for that.

_{Despite its age, Guild Wars Factions still stands as one of the finest RPGs I have ever played. Expect it to show up a few more times in this series.}

One of such is Guild Wars. With a top level of twenty that was never raised by expansions mandating their purchase. The game is quite big, yet max level is reached about halfway through a single story, concluding an introductory period. After that the game truly breaks open. You'll become competitive in PVP multiplayer matches, explore zones to hunt for useful elite skills learned from vanquished foes, forge armor that doesn't infer any special benefits other than look splendid. Al the while the XP bar becomes a detail that pops off every so often to announce another spendable skill point has become available. None of this is insanely time-consuming so a player is invited to create a new character and replay the game. Before you ask: character slots are limited to one of each class. Additional slots, one of many but far from necessary convenience items, come at a small fee. The only real cost was the game's box. It didn't waste your time because that would cost the developer. Nor did it chain the player to the game with subscription fees. Considering all it had to offer, Guild Wars as an MMO comes closest to the single player RPGs that came long before.

In its undiluted form, the traditional cRPG, exist mostly in the past. Venerable names such as Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Ultima, Icewind Dale are nearly a decade and half old and have yet to get proper successors. Only now with indie developers and without the nay of big publishers, do we see a resurgence - to slake the thirsty and arguably aging masses. That is not to say that I have a cRPG shaped hole in my nostalgia that absolutely needs to be filled. The bigger need is that of good game design, an engaging story or universe dealing with interesting issues. To drive the point home one more time: none of these old masterpieces even considered wasting their player's time. To nostalgic players these new classics do away with the dictated, often unwanted (in the case of SWtoR) megalomaniacal multiplayer component found in MMORPGs and focus on what RPGs should be about: story, characters, universe building and challenging combat supported by a solid foundation of game mechanics.

Related posts:

• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 1, where I talk about past RPG experiences.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 3, about how RPGs are being influenced, by example, design and market.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 4, simplicity in RPGs and the evolution thereof.

Like it's 2008

Hello there. If you were keeping tabs on my blog, you may have noticed a distinct lack of new content. My schedule has been quite busy and I've had little time to write at length about what I think of the current state of the gaming culture. Luckily, I'm still an active participant and I'm in a pretty happy state of mind, which doesn't help with my usual ranting.

_{If you're not playing Divinity: Original Sin, you're really missing out}

First, The game I worked on this past year, straight out of the gate after Dragon Commander, Divinity: Original Sin has been doing very well indeed. Second, it's been a pretty good year for games so far. Though, I should amend that: it's been a pretty good year for PC games. I feel the new consoles have yet to make an impact.

_{Relatively light on grind and with much on offer, playing Wildstar has been a blast}

Besides Divinity: Original Sin, the games that have been on the forefront for me this last year have been: Wildstar, War Thunder (yes, still), Fire Emblem: Awakening, Guild Wars 2, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Dark Souls 1&2, Bioshock Infinite, Legend Of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Diablo 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Crysis 3, Dragon Age 2, Battlefield 4 and a little bit of Assassin's Creed 2.
This is a short list by my standards. Some of these games only have had a handful of hours, some are about to be uninstalled. That's what I get for putting too many MMO's on that list. But I have already made the solemn vow to never grind in a game again. The frustration I had with Star Wars: The Old Republic is very much alive. Instead I'd like to sample a more varied spectrum of games, and still have some time for blogging (and updating the design) or other more artistically beneficial activities. People also keep mentioning TV has become interesting again. For instance: I have been mostly ignorant about Game of Thrones. I am being assured that it's a lot like some fantasy games with permadeath. If the shock of not controlling the onscreen characters wasn't bad enough, there's an alternative: to watch Breaking Bad and see Walter White haplessly take all the Renegade conversation options and get the bad ending.

Watch Breaking Bad and see Walter White haplessly take all the Renegade conversation options and get the bad ending.

But who has the time anymore with all these games coming out. To name but a few: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Pillars Of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Destiny (sadly not yet coming to PC), The Witcher 3, Ultra Street Fighter 4, Elite: Dangerous, Star Citizen, Assassin's Creed Unity, Gigantic. I'd also like to try (F2P) games like DOTA 2 and Smite, because I get the feeling I'm missing out on some great gameplay.

However, there is one blogging related item I have had the time for: I have been writing about my views on the RPG genre. Between working on Divinity: Original Sin and playing the likes of Mass Effect, Guild Wars 2, Skyrim, Dragon Age 2 and Diablo, my focus has strongly been on this genre. The text has ballooned to the size of half a book, and I'm having some issues carving the whole thing into digestible parts. However, since there's no time like the present, I'll continue to do so tomorrow. Probably.

Whiskey Tango

I write to you a broken man. Before we get into the word man let me focus on broken. Because I have been unable to tear myself away from this game. I strain my brain searching a dusty vocabulary looking for words outside the narrow track of what words fighter aces use. Point in case, I hope not too many of you use the words 'boogie', 'yak', 'bingo fuel' or 'all banged up' on a regular basis. But if you do, do I have a game suggestion for you!

The game is called War Thunder. A game by the creators of Wings Of Prey of which this, basically, is a F2P MMO version of. I'm endorsing another F2P game? I have my reasons.

Yes, I'd repeat this till I'm blue in the face but I'd make a fantastic fighter pilot! In an earlier post I confessed to my deep desire to be a one, if you remember. Since conviction is half the work, the remaining requirements are filled by my basic understanding of physics, eg: stuff falls down when dropped, knowledge of aerial maneuvers: I was learned to 'do a barrel roll' from a very early age, and a keen eye which has since become an artistic eye by which I mean a painting done by me would be blurry and smudgy in the classic impressionist's way. Needless to say, my natural height advantage, which is mostly confidence or arrogance, over other people would make me the Top Gun's Tom Cruise of the Belgian Air Force.
I should attribute part of my aptitude for piloting to my father, who recognized this very potential at an early age. The thought of Falcon 3.0 still makes my knees shake from emotion and the memory of the heavy box that nearly crushed my ambition right there in the software store when I tried to lift the game's box.
Spurred on by my personal fanatical fighting of the Iraq war on my PC, the next step was being prepared. I was promised glider lessons if I kept my school grades up. I had to give up the simulator for study but managed to best my own grades the very same year. The sight of which reminded my father that two more siblings needed food and clothing and a compromise was made in the form of glider models. Which I flew flawlessly. And in this I can be modestly proud by saying I was a natural. Contrary to the norm, I didn't crash my first model. And didn't crash any further models. Except that one time when a freak wind tipped my glider upside down. It dove nose first into agricultural grade barbed wire which pretty much tore the plane in half. As I bit back the tears my father laughed off the incident, but I realized I may have been a bit too emotionally invested in flying. I dialed it back a notch but never lost the interest.

Which is the reason I'm so hooked on War Thunder. If you doubt my word on how good this game is, feel free to try it yourself. All I can still add to the argument that it really is good. War Thunder has gathered a pretty rabbit fan following, the forum is a hive of activity about everything you'd imagine and it has even spawned a couple of Youtube stars. No doubt the game has a bright future because fanatics like me keep pouring cash into the game, which is still even only in beta.

Since this is a free to play game, I should mention the business model. It's not too bad. The game has 2 sorts of currencies: Silver Lions and Golden Eagles. Silver Lions are gained by playing the game, and buy you all the normal planes, repairs, upgrades and ammo belts.
Golden Eagles allow for some luxury. Such as additional plane slots, remember: one slot is one spawn - if a plane is damaged, it has to be repaired, either by time or with lions. Eagles also buy premium planes, which yield additional lions and XP. As of writing, there doesn't seem to be a way to buy yourself an advantage over other players, since the premium planes often have a 'normal' counterpart and some of them are oddities or experimental planes history forgot for good reasons. Eagles also let you pour 'free XP', begot by simply playing the game, into faction progression.
Since this is an MMO, it pretty much adheres to the standard €15/month model. But there is no subscription model as such. Instead there's the option to pay for a time limited premium account - a prepaid system. This doubles XP and Lions income, so progression is faster than that of a free account. Again, the way I like it. Provide people with less time (but arguably: more money) a shortcut to speed up the rate of unlocks. Another nice thing about this game is that losing your premium status doesn't penalize you beyond the lack of the bonus XP and Lions multiplier. And should you fly a premium aircraft, or multiple, the lack premium is slightly offset by their higher income.

_{The German Canadair CL-13A Mk.5 Sabre's cockpit}

One big question remains however is premium progression fast enough? And sadly this is my biggest gripe with the game thus far. It's a rather slow affair, at least compared to progression in other games.
I say this as someone who plays with both a premium account and premium planes. In fact, I couldn't see myself progressing at all without the premium stuff. You won't be convinced unless I share a few statistics. As of writing I have played the game a total of 280 hours. Which is rather a lot. Given the game is nothing more then flying planes in areas, completing an objective. Which can make it hard to justify the price if you're not into flying. It's like Call Of Duty with the slow progression of a hardcore MMO. So what have all these hours netted me? Considering the level 20 cap: both my USA and USSR faction are creeping their way towards level 13. My Germans are halfway through level 16. Britain, my second biggest faction is at a nearing 16. And bringing up the rear is Japan, at level 8.
I could spend a pretty hefty amount of eagles to convert my millions of free XP to get most of my nations to the very endgame. But I'm not yet that desperate. The good news is that having played that much has me sitting on a healthy amount of lions. So I have very few limitations other than time.

At the endgame you get to play with the big boys. Flying jets that cost a fortune to get and maintain. But as someone who got terrorized, even from such low level as 14, by jets in past matches. The big lure is to have insane power. Jets are so fast and hit so hard, that they are almost invulnerable against all but other jets.

The gameplay itself though, which is in essence air combat, remains interesting even after all this time. Maneuvering, dueling, tactics, energy management, getting hits on an enemy (bullet drop is a major thing in this game - and each calibre has its own trajectory), it's all so much more intricate than other games in which you need to hit a target with some sort of projectile. The difference with War Thunder is that it's not a shooter or arcade game. Below the hood is a flight simulator, with rules based in physics. This is game where even the weight of fuel makes a pretty big impact on plane performance.

To be clear. This game has consumed me. I have stopped reading fiction in favor of my old WW2 air combat and history books. I have watched some WW2 movies, countless documentaries... Down the street I pause just that bit longer in front of display window of store that sells model kits. How much longer till the glue and pincers for assembling model planes the way I did when I was so much younger? And that's exactly how I feel. These last few months I have been playing out my boyhood fantasies. I am once again a fighter pilot. When I first saw this game in motion on Youtube, nostalgia sprang to life. Materializing from ashes and smoke, a prop driven Phoenix, its grin mocked my graying mane. Its fires scalding me for the lack of airtime.

Seeing these old planes again brought back memories from Chuck Yeager's Air Combat. Chuck only had a few planes from both Axis and Allies on offer but War Thunder seems to want to include about every warplane from the mid 1930's up to the Korean war. All of them with their unique characteristics.
Flying these things is a challenge. Winning battles in them even more so. For the history nerd inside me, this game is settling the argument the like of 'who would win, Batman or Superman?' on a daily basis if the heroes' names were replaced by names such as Spitfire, Mustang and their contemporaries.
It does it in great fashion. At times you can spot an incoming duel literally miles away and you'll need to plan ahead for the confrontation. If you're ballsy, or stupid, you make it a joust-like head on shootout. Gun on gun. Get lucky and you may survive. But if you're smart. You'll set up the situation to your advantage. Even if your plane is inferior, there's always a fighting chance. This dynamic is what makes this game so rewarding. Spending minutes outflying, outsmarting is tense in ways I haven't felt in an online game since lightsaber duels in Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight, this is no exaggeration. War Thunder demands knowledge of the individual planes, air combat tactics, patience and situational awareness in its highly fluid 3D emergency. As with many arena style games no two games are ever alike and War Thunder's regular content updates help the game even more in this regard.

Convinced? Then join this old boy (31 as of today!) and get into the mix before his premium runs out. Again. And if you want be a wingman, register an account using this link, you'll get 50 Gold Lions right off the bat and I'll get a little kickback once you reach certain milestones. It'll be terrific fun.

A fond farewell to Guild Wars

Sometimes when a game shows up, it burns bright, fizzles and fades. One play through is all you're prepared to give it. It may be that the game is so bad it doesn't deserve it, like the Homefront campaign. It may be that the game is so good that you don't want to play it a second time because it may sully the memory of the first. A case could be made to just not bother. I'm talking about games like KOTOR1&2, Crysis2, Bioshock, CoD4 and pretty much every Zelda Game.
There are are games that stick around in the public mind for a little longer, these are games with legs. Hugely succesful, they become part of gaming history. Or have many expansions, a dedicated fanbase that makes mods, total conversions and questionable fan art. Good examples would be the Civilization series, Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect. All these are nominees for becoming even greater, if the studio that made them is able to keep the quality up.
And then there are games with wings. I'm talking about juggernauts. Mario, Call Of Duty, the Sims, Starcraft, Counter Strike, Team Fortress and World Of Warcraft. I have high hopes of the the Mass Effect Franchise becoming this big too. But there is another particularly close to my heart: Guild Wars.

Perhaps a juggernaut with a smaller footprint compared to the others in my little line-up here, but ArenaNet isn't known for touting statistics as much as the others. And as such they seem very casual about their place in the PC games market, leaning against the wall of the MMO niche, looking the other way while Blizzard shouts its coiffured head off selling plushes. No, Anet goes about its business talking mostly to their community rather than the press.
At the time of writing this, GW2 is in it's headstart period and people are playing the game. But GW2 got announced for what seems like a decade ago. The only thing us fans would hear about it afterwards was when the game's release got postponed. And we were fine with that for one good reason: the first Guild Wars was, still is, pretty damn amazing.

GW2 got announced for what seems like a decade ago. The only thing us fans would hear about it afterwards was when the game's release got postponed. And we were fine with that for one good reason: the first Guild Wars was, still is, pretty damn amazing.

My own active Guild Wars career started when it was launched and lasted right up until after a few weeks when the Eye Of The North expansion was released. This long period included the Factions and Nightfall chapters. I got quite successful as a PVP player, got some name recognition, and as a guild we earned quite a bit of notoriety on the world ranking.
It ended when real life started its inescapable conquest on my spare time. Now it all seems like a lifetime ago. Games are still in the forefront of my mind. But my perspective on Guild Wars has barely shifted. It holds up, It's still a great game.

When I first saw the game I was expecting it to sound like a Korean brand of J-pop. But when I finally dove in, it sounded like Vivaldi. I run the risk at this point to sound like a bad observer, I mean to say that the quick, fluid gameplay and "limited skill bar" mentality, at first sight, belied the depth and elegance of the systems in place. This really was a game and a really well-made one too, more defined by its limitations than its liberties. No screen filled with skill bars, no open world, only 20 levels of progression. Paradoxically, this "less is more" approach gave this game a clear lead over other MMOs. In Guild Wars, you really needed to think hard about your skill lineup, adapting your character to certain challenges. It made all the difference. And that's what the community did. Builds were invented, weaknesses and strengths exploited. This led to a very dynamic metagame, where builds would be balanced and countered by other builds. Not one build was ever able to ruin a class, or by extension: the game.
In contrast, the more classical MMOs would allow the player to use just about every skill on a class, transforming the HUD into what looks like the worst windows desktop. When the 50 onscreen skills were either on cooldown or useless in the situation, the only thing to really do was to use the first one to become available regardless of the tactical situation. Discouraging strategic play where you would ideally use every skill only when the time is right.
Guild Wars' closed world was made out of player owned instances, in which you could take other people, that changed according to your actions or active quests. The opposite from the classical MMO, where everyone shares the same unchanging game world - which makes them feel more like a theme park rather than a large living world.
Another aspect that sets Guild Wars apart from its kin is the ability to build a party. Nightfall introduced customizable Heroes to the game. Now you could add up to 7 more "builds" to your group, directed by you, but controlled by the AI. It felt so very close to that other classic Sacrifice. Of course you had to give them weapons and upgrade their armor. But this was another opportunity to show some prestige. Some of you may remember that I really love playing party based RPGs, because it allows for some strategy to get into the game plan. In this case it reinforced thinking about builds, but taken to a higher level. A party also avoids the situation where one "skeleton key" character needs to be able to solve every situation. This last issue could crop up in Guild Wars 2, but for now, I'm optimistic.
I have to keep this post short but let me dig up another pet peeve of MMOs, Guild Wars didn't split PVE and PVP. Top tier armor was equal across the board. When you had a PVE character (able to also play the story) you had to buy, collect or craft your armors, weapons and mods as per usual, with the added bonus that you could look really cool. But when you made a PVP character (standard at lvl 20 restricted to pvp zones) you could just unlock everything (skills, weapons, armor, runes, heroes, ...) as you played.
SWtoR, in contrast, infuriated me by putting both PVP and PVE on a separate gear track. Doubling the notorious grind that makes the genre so dull to play.
Not so with Guild Wars which had almost no grind to speak of. Sure, you could grind resources, but to get good drops you had to go in alone, and really outsmart the gameplay systems. One such clever player-made innovation was the 55 monk - nearly unkillable without enchantment removal or life steal skills. But rather then nerfing the skills and class, Anet updated the farming spots with smarter AI and a few tweaks. They even embraced the ingenuity of players by making one of the NPC henchmen a 55 monk in a tournament. Which really underlines the generous mindset of the developer. In my mind this is what happens when a company doesn't need to suck a monthly fee out of people. I approve.

Arenanet embraced the ingenuity of players by making one of the NPC henchmen a 55 monk in a tournament. Which really underlines the generous mindset of the developer. In my mind this is what happens when a company doesn't need to suck a monthly fee out of people.

The quality of the game went way up with every expansion, "expand-alones" in practice, because they were even more well-made. Not only did the art-style become more pronounced and interesting, the addition of better PVP modes, balancing, and endgame areas made the whole package much more appealing to keep playing.
Guild Wars factions had unique interpretations of Japan and China, added a forest turned to stone and a sea turned to Jade inhabited by two warring factions (and a focus on pvp combat). Guild Wars Nightfall took us from fantasy Egypt, fantasy Africa and a version of 1001 nights straight into the nightmare of a mad god, which held it's own twisted interpretation of said lands - the realm of Torment.
The Eye Of The North took us back to the original continent and started setting up the scene for a sequel. Here's where I picked up the thread, where my recent trip into nostalgia began but more of this later. Anet added even more post-game quest lines on top of the original game with Beyond.

Not too long ago, GW2 finally got its release date. And with it came the promise of a slew of rewards for longtime Guild Wars Fans, through the Hall Of Monuments. An in-game time capsule that connects your GW1 characters with their descendants in the new game. The tasks placed before the rewards are, to say the least, challenging. And rightly so, there shouldn't be an easy way to sum up, what should be, years of gaming.
Nevertheless, after a 5 year hiatus, I rose to the challenge to fill up my Hall Of Monuments. Luckily, I was on the cusp of getting this title, or that item, or about to craft this armor. So I got the job done in a couple of weeks of casual play. This would have been quicker if it weren't for the fact that titles were only introduced quite a while after I originally started playing. The rules were a bit stricter back then too.
Though now I'm all set to play the sequel. The little samples I took away from the beta tests were enough to get me hyped to the point I can safely say this has become my most anticipated game in years. So why am I not playing during the headstart periods? Because I pre-ordered the Collectors Edition from a local store that had no idea a headstart existed. So I'll be waiting like the rest of us sad saps who still place trust in retailers, and will be among the noobs all over again on release day.
I wondered about that and I should be relatively well off given the fact that I have played the original for a staggering 2413 hours, with 962 on my main character. Don't think too much on that number, it will make your head spin. It did with me. After I typed the /age command as part of a gag with a friend, I had to take a small break. My character just stood there, reflecting on its life. Next to it, its merry band of heroes started a small party, dancing and playing the guitar, as they do.

It was thinking. We had some fun times, didn't we?