Overwatched

"Name's McCree". The announcement is jawed and chewed, a cigar playing as much a part as the tongue. Eyes a-squint. Behind the gaze, nary a thought. His six shooter by the name of Peacekeeper is loaded with Justice in need of dispensing. Death brings peace, obviously and I get a sour aftertaste - a meal gone bad, rebelling in the pit of my stomach - in the back of my mouth. On the opposing red team the very same is happening. But nobody cares. Blue McCree steps into the limelight together with other enthusiasts from the cosplay convention. Next to him is Steve in angsty teenage powergarb. Clearly practicing for the upcoming stage show, taking on the most dramatic and threatening pose imaginable. The pose is meant to instill some fear into its beholder. Yet nobody cares. That's just Steve, he does it all the time. Steve dresses up like Darksiders and The Matrix. Steve's favourite class in D3 is the Demon Hunter. Steve is a bit of a prat.

_{Steve sure knows how to work the camera.}

Welcome to Overwatch. Pause for the dramatic musical interlude and late title card. So cool. The concept of Overwatch is quite solid. A team based, competitive, hero based shooter, with familiar game modes. Take inspiration from the rich history of ego shooters and model them onto likable, in some cases awe-inspiring, characters. Soldier 76 is a Call Of Duty facsimile, Mercy seems like the StarCraft addicted daughter of the Medic from Team Fortress 2. Tracer is your flanking, Run 'n Gun class. Widowmaker a Kerrigan inspired sniper. Reinhardt leads, Torbjörn does machines.

_{His name is McCree.}

As hinted at, Overwatch cannot escape comparison with Team Fortress 2. It also can't by proxy of Blizzard sibling Heroes of the Storm, to DOTA. Coincidentally: both of those are Valve games. Sadly for Blizzard, both of those are, as of now, still better games than Overwatch. From a gameplay perspective, and tonally, Overwatch falls closer to TF2. The former has a murder of static hero characters, the latter has a handfull of editable classes. These heroes are Overwatch's main drawing factor. Whereas gameplay surely is the main attraction for TF2. Well, next to the hats that is. The gargantuan divide between the two is their setting. TF2 left much to the imagination whereas Overwatch has a universe that is quite pronounced.
 
To say overwatch has excellent character design isn't a sleight against TF2's characters, because they are iconic and well thought-out. No, I'm not just talking about recognizability of the silhouettes. The actual character designs also show some sophistication. Watch some of the character specific shorts Valve made and you'll get the point instantly. The sniper is a bureaucrat with a sniper rifle. The honest Brawn of the heavy is the perfect counterpart for the sly intellect of the, Frankenstein-like medic. The Demoman design, a rambunctious Scotsman, sidesteps any racial stereotyping with some creativity.

_{Context matters.}

Less specific nature of characters, such as those of TF2, pushes them a bit into the direction of a blank slate - which makes them more approachable. In contrast, Blizzard wants to nail every stereotype as hard as it can. "Name's McCree", his diction is terse, there's no such thing as a chatty gunslinger. Gunslingers smolder menace in silence and need to have the linguistic effeciency of a telegram. Each hero spurts the one liners you'd expect. All of which are said in a vacuum. The characters aren't aware of their colleagues. By comparison Call of Duty: Black Ops 3's heroes, called specialists - yes they have them too - do party banter. So why can't Overwatch's?
These characters are similar to those in Capcom's Street Fighter, each has their own global origin. Yet they do not have the associated cultural link. indian Dhalsim is a yoga master. Japanese Ryu embodies a Ronin lifestyle, Chu-Li wears Chinese garb and does kung fu. Guile is the American family man. Overwatch's Pharah wears metroid armour avec arm-mounted rocket launcher, obviously she's from Egypt. I'm sure the link is clear... Uhm. The Chozo? Ah, Pharah-oh!
For fear of stating the obvious, Street Fighter has a Japanese perspective on the world, and Overwatch has an American perspective on the world. Yet Blizzard has many, many (international) world class creative talents. The flaw of Overwatch's setting is borne out of excess whereas it could have benefited from restraint. It needs some 'less is more'. Why? My real problem with Overwatch lies with the way how gameplay is completely severed from its setting.

_{The Overwatch Cinematic Trailer is full of nice little pictures.}

The game, not very clearly, has a host of less than good-aligned characters. Like Reaper and Widowmaker. But the game doesn't really acknowledge the absurdity that villains are fighting besides the, presumably, heroes. Said good guys are also killing other good guys. The teams themselves have no polarizing element that sets them apart on the battlefield, save for their differently coloured name and outline (UI fixing a problem character design doesn't). Other than that there's no real telling that these are rival factions. Their goals and motivations equally nebulous. Why is defending McCree shooting attacking McCree? Both are claiming justice as their motivation while fighting over a payload on its way from A to B. Presumably the organisation known as Overwatch was created to safeguard the world, like our real world UN, from terrorists like Reaper. So I think it it safe to assume that all these characters are just mercenaries and that, regardless of how lofty their motivations, they are all villains. Or maybe this is just another instance of American policy where it doesn't matter why you have the war.
Rumour has it that Overwatch is all that's left of Blizzard's aborted Titan project, which was rumoured to be another MMO concept. Could it be that faction based gameplay (say: horde vs alliance) was dropped and now anything goes? This also means that whatever reason for conflict there once was, is gone, yet conflict remains.

justice
ˈdʒʌstɪs/Submit
noun
 
1.
just behaviour or treatment.
"a concern for justice, peace, and genuine respect for people"
synonyms:     fairness, justness, fair play, fair-mindedness, equity, equitableness, even-handedness, egalitarianism, impartiality, impartialness, lack of bias, objectivity, neutrality, disinterestedness, lack of prejudice, open-mindedness, non-partisanship.
 
2.
a judge or magistrate, in particular a judge of the Supreme Court of a country or state.

Overwatch has a universe that is really only useful for a trailer. TF2 has could be seen as what happens, or happened, during cold war times where 2 sides of a conflict would be doing very similar things aimed towards the other. Expending gigantic efforts to prolong a stalemate. A zero-sum game of two perfectly balanced parties where neither can get the upper hand - and so the game is played indefinitely - which explains why the game is allowed (do not read as 'granted by an authority') to be played/happens again and again. A more cartoonish take of Orson Welles' '1984'. A capture the flag game mode revolves around "the intel" without ever naming what the intel actually is. Valve could have gone ahead and explain that the intel are the plans of the deathstar, but the game is served just as well by just "the intel", the characters also acknowledge this. All they know is that it needs to be kept. There's only one of them and the enemy can't have it. Grunts as tools, in this instance the players, they are kept unaware because it simply doesn't matter. All the game needs is something to fight over. It's the notion of just because that links it to the often absurd nature of armed conflict. Particularly fitting as the setting of TF2. Its characters are just one amongst many. None of them make any special claim to fame, none of them goes beyond the call of duty.
But Overwatch plays with none of the concepts at its premise. The game seems like it just wants fancy characters to shoot at each other. They could as well not have bothered thinking up a universe for them.
Black Ops 3 has the same problem: factionless characters fighting each other in opposing teams, but solves it by framing death matches as simulated training programs. The game is presented as a video game, which makes it pretty honest.

_{His name is McCree!}

Overwatch adheres to the Big Bang Theory style of funny, where funny isn't actually intellectually stimulating.

One of the most severe shortcomings of Overwatch is that it isn't self aware. Funny though the character designs may have been intended. Each of them only hit one note. His name is McCree. See how that's funny? He's a gun-slinging cowboy, just like in those movies where they all sound like that. She needs to raise her APM... because she's Korean. See how that's hilarious? She repeats it every 2 minutes. Maybe even just to make sure you get the joke. Overwatch adheres to the Big Bang Theory style of funny, where funny isn't actually intellectually stimulating, but just an out of the blue reference that is supposed to contrast or compliment with the current context (I had to strain to come up with that explanation - because there very well may be none). But It usually needs the support of a laugh track to signal when the funny bit happens. His name is McCree, and "justice won't dispense itself". Ha... What justice is that again? The only conflict I can see between characters is because they aren't on the same side for some reason. Is difference of opinion (come to think of it, not even that) a crime that requires justice? I think McCree has seen a few too many westerns and is imitating Clint Eastwood while high on psilocybin and sarsaparilla.

The characters themselves don't care either. His name is McCree... and that's all he has to say on the matter. That's all anyone on the team has to say about it. Other than hitting all the cliché one-liners you'd expect: "it's high noon", "much obliged". I didn't hear "this town isn't big enough for the two of us" yet, but I suspect the line is recorded with cleched jaw seriousness and is archived on a secure server somewhere. In fairness, I'm picking on McCree because he's such an easy target, but every characters received the same treatment. There's no true comic relief, yet it's desperately needed because its subject matter is absolutely gruesome. Unfortunately this game has no wit to it. It just has cool art design.

What it also lacks is good level design. Granted this is a beta but the maps lack sophistication. Sight lines, sniping spots, flanking routes, all these may come with future maps, but the ones I played were very basic. What's makes the maps even worse are their bottlenecks. Fights often result in a prolonged stalemate while everyone is cornercreeping to take potshots till someone forces a breakthrough by activating an ultimate skill.

_{A rough approximation of what Reaper's Death Blossom skill looks like.}

Reapers ultimate skill is called 'Death Blossom'. Where he does The Matrix and people fall down in a series of one-hit-kills. Many ultimate skills resemble hacks or cheats from other FPS games. Reaper pronounces "Die, Die, Die", like the dirty terrorist he is. If you play Overwatch you'll probably hear it more than a few times each match. In no way will it ever become repetitive, boring, dull and trite. Not even after playing the game for one whole hour straight, I know because I tested it. His name is McCree. Who cares.

Each match is ended with the once-in-a-lifetime bookmark moment in Overwatch history. Nobody cares. I'm sure it won't lose its luster.

Another event you'll grow painfully accustomed to is the "play of the game" replay. During which a feat of strength, judged by the algorithm, is displayed to all participants of the game. The feat is set to a really heroic sounding score which indicates that something once-in-a-lifetime has occurred. When I say heroic, I really mean it, it's so heroic that the next Medal Of Honor game will only be able to top it by having Nazi soldiers pause in their combat to salute the player character whenever The Star-Spangled Banner plays on the soundtrack. Masterfully paced, it has both the weight of the unstoppable giant and the speed of greased lighting - which is so vividly evocated on the screen that you'll want to find your graphics card's warranty.
But after a few matches you realize each match is ended with the once-in-a-lifetime bookmark moment in Overwatch history. They are all the same. His name is McCree. Each match is ended with the once-in-a-lifetime bookmark moment in Overwatch history. Nobody cares. i'm sure it won't lose its luster. Make them all the same because otherwise some kids will feel left out when they also do not get the good ending. In a game I played the heroic ending was a killing spree of 2. Which instantly undermines the effect and made it seem much more like mommy enthusiastically clapping. It also made me feel like I was riding a tame theme park ride that assumes it's your first time riding it. Isn't this fantastic? While in reality, you've rode it the entire weekend and you're on it because of the view on Widowmaker's ass.
Play of the game also signifies the discrepancy between its team play concept and its ego-feeding rewards. The PotG makes it seem as though the player on display did something special. But in reality the algorithm only seems to detects spectacular kill streaks. Yet the objective of the game is not to score lots and lots of kills, but to get the payload to its destination. What's even worse is that the defeated team may also receive the PotG. Which alerts players that the game isn't even about playing the objective at all. Yet another sign that this game is only really about fancy characters shooting each other.

Overwatch feels light, loose, flashy and fast. On the scale of sugar rush it feels properly Nintendo.

Overwatch is another Blizzard anime game that tries to appear happy Go-lucky but takes itself way too serious. A bit like Starcraft 2 did. Sure it's expertly crafted: the characters, though cliches, do feel really unique and the range of gameplay the game has on offer is pretty impressive. The game feels like it aught to in all it's arcade-like glory. It doesn't have that heavy movement feeling you'd expect from a serious shooter, nothing really hits hard - but it feels light, loose, flashy and fast. On the scale of sugar rush it feels properly Nintendo. But it doesn't offer the statistical depth, the player customization, gameplay modifiers progression horizon of other games. Yet.
I realize I'm critiquing a beta. The amount of room for improvement is substantial and gives a big hint at the game's potential. If it'll live up to that potential is another matter. I'm sure it'll get a ton of progress bars. I also get the feeling Overwatch has been added much sugar, colours and attitude to make it palpable to the widest possible audience, coating the bitter pill that is team play and has done it up to the point where it's mostly sugar. After playing Overwatch, like the latest binge of sweets I had, I felt really quite bad.

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 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.

Mind of the BeholderPart 1

Introduction

"This post isn't late, nor is it early"

When I think on my role playing game history I have to go back to Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss and more memorably: Ultima VII. When these games were released I was a strapping lad about ten years of age with boundless ambition, destiny and special purpose. I set out into the world of Britannia because it looked impressive in the screenshots but was soon stumped as to what was supposed to happen in this 'game'. It started out with a pretty gruesome murder scene. I could deal with the pixelated blood, but the quartered body was a bit much. The villagers of the town, horrified and stupified, cried out to a future-inter-dimensional-travelling type, the Avatar, to figure it out for them. Unfortunately they got pre-pubecant me to sort it out, which it never did.

_{The opening of Ultima 7. I nabbed this nice HD screenshot from this fine blog, I hope that's ok.}

My English then was of the budding sort and whatever needed to happen, my party members needed food first and they needed it all the time. I particularly remember a needy old geezer who's primary job alternated between taking in all the food I could rob from the townsfolk and nagging me for more when I didn't. The guy consumed entire village stores like a man-shaped tamagochi, yet not once did I see him run off to the privy.
Ultima VII, I remember you fondly for your immersion and interactivity but you shared disk space on the EA collection CD with Wing Commander Academy and thát had space ships that exploded when you shot at them and I was, even at the time, an acclaimed air combat veteran.
The next RPG I got into was The Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES. My child brain couldn't figure out it wasn't an RPG but it had a top down perspective and that was reason enough. After that followed a fallow period. I tried various RPGs, some Hack and Slash from the demo CD's that came with a magazine called PC Gameplay but nothing, save Rage Of Mages, really stuck by me. Until I got the game called Baldur's Gate from Black Isle Studios. Baldur's Gate was a very big deal for me. Like Falcon 3, it changed the structure of my mind.

Now look at me.

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

Like a recurring nightmare, Baldur's Gate starts off with a murder scene. This one even more gruesome. This time I was forced to observe the murder of my foster father. As horror ensued I fled, desperate and alone, towards the safety of any ally I could make in a world who's interest limited itself to either robbing, recruiting or eating me. It was motivating. I was no longer reclining with eyes wide open like I was as the Avater. There was a base purpose. Hunted like a fox, all that mattered right then was to survive. The game presented me with a malleable character with statistics that made the game understandable. Abstracted, yet every element had a use. After the violent intro, the world became open, oddly calm and inviting. NPCs banter amusingly. Most were open to conversation. Every enemy became less threatening given the many tools the game provided. Black Isle even raised the bar when it came to suspension of disbelief when I read, in the manual, that player characters use the latrine when I wasn't looking. My first character was a neutral good half-elven multiclassed mage/thief. I made numerous characters after that but you will never forget your first.

_{Don't scoff, even Baldur's Gate's visuals were very impressive for its time.}

For the first time ever I had come in contact with the Dungeons And Dragons ruleset and loved it. Maybe you've heard of it. It's one of those that needs 20 sided dice to roll for effects. It has classes, it has parties, dungeon parties and presumably Dungeoned Dragons. I wasn't aware of it at the time but in the future it would become a benchmark for me. Years later still I found out that D&D has been quite influencial in cRPG design. The influence was still palpable in the seemingly unrelated Mass Effect by way of Knights of the Old Republic.

These last are but a few games that you'll see mentioned in the coming posts. This is but an introduction to a series of pensers on the topic of role playing game design. There'll be a fair bit of ranting, suggestion making, finger pointing, derailing and theory crafting. I often find that I am rather opinionated when it comes to RPGs and as such see a lot of right and wrongs in games today. Elaborating on this topic has become a compulsion. Writing about it: therapeutic. I may get things all wrong. The upside is we'll all get to learn how to get something, if anything, right.

Related posts:

• 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.

A wider point of view, the inverted Y-axis.

My first foray into PC gaming was called "Falcon" on an Amstrad 8086. It wasn't really a game as such but an F-16 combat flight simulator. At the time, and at the mere age of 7, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Being so young a pilot, some of the flying had to be done for me. So taking off was done on auto-pilot. So was navigating, engaging and landing. All I mostly did in between was steer the plane with the joystick. Whenever things got a bit too hot for comfort, I would press the "a"-button and the game would take care of business.
A while later I got a new PC, a 386, and was given MS Flight Simulator by a relative. Soon hours would be spend in a Cessna zipping around the Detroit city skyline, making a game out of flying between the skyscrapers at breakneck speeds without crashing. This time though, all of the flying was done by me. The sim had an auto pilot but it was too complex for me to configure.
Another PC upgrade to a 486 brought with it another flightsim: Falcon 3. This is the game that would seal my fate: I was going to be a military pilot, because the sim trained the player to be one. I got the game in the deluxe edition, which added an F/A-18 and a MIG-29 sim using the same engine. It had a very thick booklet on how the F-16 works. It had a booklet about how the air force works. It had a booklet about how weapon systems work. I doubt anything like it could be printed today without looking like a wikileaks publication and being treated like one. The box containing all the books and CDs was a treasure trove to my eyes and felt like it too - I could barely lift it. Hope and destiny carried most of the weigth all the way to my father, who was waiting for me at the cash register. The treasure cost accordingly, but my father was somewhat of a flight buff himself and he must have seen a great pilot through my trembling arms and the tears welling up in my eyes. So he bought it for me. In short, yes, the game sealed my fate. As a PC gamer.

Later, my flying carreer came up to speed when I also got Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, and when Pentium came around, expanded with EF2OOO and even later with F22 Air Dominance Fighter from the same company. Flightsims were my thing and I strove to know everything about air combat and fighter jets.
I knew all about navigating airspace using pitch, yaw and banking. And I would use them to great effect in barrelroll, Immelmann, Split-S, and cobra turn manoeuvres. I was in perfect control.

Control is what this post is really about. Control is crucial.
When one plays flightsims one controls aeroplanes like this: push forward on the stick to move the nose downwards, pull back on the stick to pull the nose upwards.
Translated to mouse controls means that pushing the mouse forward, which is perceived as an upward motion when you look at the mouse from the top down, results into the nose going down - not up. This reverse effect along the Y-axis is what lends inverted controls its name. The mechanics of a plane make the controls inverted by their very nature. Knowing about these makes inversion very logical.

You should watch the following clip if you want more info.

After the flight sims came the shooters. Doom revolutionised gaming and introduced the first person shooter genre in a big way. In those early days mice weren't as common as you might think, it was the joystick that accompanied every gaming PC. Gaming in those days was mainly done in arcades the PCs were trying to emulate. Not to mention mouse support in software was almost as rare as the hardware.

Doom was no exception and was played mainly with just the keyboard, in the game there was no actual use for looking up or down. Aiming was done only on the rotation of the player and shooting would result in a hit regardless of the target's height, as long as the shot was neatly lined up.
When online gaming finally swooped me up I got into playing Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. The game was often showcased as the game to play while using a force feedback joystick. Of course, I had to make do with the stick I already had. Through the power of imagination the flight stick became the handle of a lightsaber. But it wasn't very long before I realized there might be a better way. The gun play was too slow to be competitive, because with a stick you need to steer your aim. So I switched to a mouse, which offered the needed speed and precision.
Ever since, I have been pulling back on the mouse to point the camera upwards in the virtual space of a shooter. Just like I always had with the stick and still was in the new flightsims.

Some of you will like a mechanical explanation, so I'll give it a shot. Just to make the point even clearer. More proof, I hope, that inverting the Y-axis has a working, logical explanation. You're steering the virtual camera as if it was your virtual head. A real life comparison would be if you would replace the mouse with the top of your virtual soldier's head and you were pulling his head backwards to make him look up. I threw together an animation to show just what I mean:

In contrast the non inverted control works as if one is pointing the cursor in a 2D environment like windows. If one was to translate this to a 3D space you'd be pointing towards your target on a 2D pane or a windshield. The emphasis is on the pointing. As in a lightgun game or a shooter on the Wii or PS Move. Perhaps this control scheme comes more natural if you have a background with these.
Simply put, you're steering the virtual camera by pointing towards targets.

As it stands today games offer both control schemes, and if the people designing them are capable this will remain to be the case. But gamers shouldn't take the abuse of uneducated people calling them crazy for inverting the Y-axis. The fact that this is happening at all, where it used to be common practice to invert, is a sign of the times. And that many, mostly younger gamers, have no connection to how things used to be. Or in other words, are unincumbered by old ways. Either way, one shouldn't remain ignorant about why the option is there in the first place. But in the rare case of games that feature fighter jets with un-inverted controls, we're dealing with a decision informed by either popular opinion or by ignorance that degrades both every game maker in the industry and the intelligence of the players. And that would be truly crazy. As crazy to me as having a car go left when steering right.

A wider point of view, part two.

In part one I talked at length about current games and their console and PC features. One of which is an often ignored option that has been irking me to no end: A configurable Field Of View (FoV) variable. A limited FoV is usually a telling sign of consolitis, a term the online PC community uses to denote a game that is marred by its console origins. Yet I have not explained just why it's such a big deal. Why the fuss over adjustable features? And what makes the FoV so important?

An example might clarify what I'm talking about. If you want to fully notice the difference between the following clips, watch the peripheral vision, size of opponents, sense of speed and turning speed. The effect is clearly visible when you look at the onscreen size and position of the AK47. This first clip is Black Ops at its standard 65 FoV:

This second clip is Black Ops at its maximum allowed FoV of 80. Which still considered on the low side by most PC gamers who'd want the scale to go as far as 90:

The differences are subtle, yet make a world of difference while playing. CoD might not be the best example of this because the gap between min and max FoV isn't that big. The engine is quite performant and so the standard FoV is still quite wide compared to other games.
But does it make a difference? Of course it does. Compare the render area with this picture in picture image images courtesy of the GamingAU.net Forums). In the picture is a screenshot of Bad Company 2, the numbers on the shot is the used FoV. 55 Is what the console uses, 85 is typically around what a PC gamer would use on a 16:10 monitor.

The difference in number of assets that are displayed on-screen is clearly visible. More on screen logically means the computer will need more system resources to display them. Also note that the 55 FoV screen is zoomed in, enlarging objects in depth. The shot with 85 FoV is less zoomed in, but objects in the distance appear smaller on screen.
There's an additional concern with the zoomed-in view. If we were to apply 3D vision to it, the effect would be less pronounced. If you've ever looked through binoculars and moved from left to right, you'll know that depth perception is minimized. This means that any game with a very narrow FoV will gain little from 3D effects, and might even get in the way of gameplay because it is so unnatural, at least on PC.
If the viewing angle gets to big though, the image will become noticeably warped, like watching through a fisheye lens. What's more, if more image is squeezed into the view port of the monitor, objects in depth will get pushed even further away, making them smaller and, as a side effect, harder to aim at in a shooter. Debunking the claim that increasing the FoV would be some sort of visual cheat, just because you get to "see more". Players need to find a workable medium, one that looks and feels comfortable.

PC gamers demand adjustable FoV because, unlike their console playing brethren, they're sitting quite close to the screen. A low FoV makes you look around constantly in order to take in your environment. Combine this with the screen distance, a lack of peripheral vision and one can easily get motion sick.
What's more, a larger FoV is more immersive because our natural FoV is quite large as well. So it is best to match the natural FoV with the one in the game. The further you sit from the screen, the smaller it can get without appearing unnatural. But when watching a screen up close, as is the case with a PC, it needs to be quite wide. To drive the point home: if your eyes were the screen, logically, you'd want to have the full natural FoV which is about 180 degrees. Fun fact: a large FoV also greatly increases the sense of speed.

So why don't console games provide a bigger FoV? The low FoV on consoles could be there for a number of reasons. As I mentioned before, one is that the player sits a distance away from the TV, his "window" into the virtual world. Making a smaller FoV appear more natural. We'll ignore the naturalistic appearance of a pair of arms more than a meter away for now. One argument against this then is: why don't they incorporate a FoV slider and give players a choice. I can imagine some console gamers are sitting quite close to the screen too.
Perhaps console devs simply can't. And that really narrows down the number of design choices.
Linked to system resources, a low FoV can also be due to the limited horsepower of the consoles. Rendering less makes a console render faster. Here is where we get to the crux of this topic. This highlights what infuriates PC gamers so much about badly ported shooters: inferior hardware dictating and limiting the way a game plays on potentially superior PC hardware.

In the past PC's have always been used for immersive applications that greatly benefit from wide viewing angles. A good example are flight simulators where, even in the early days, multiple screens would be used to simulate a real cockpit in which the pilot could watch not only in front but also to the sides. This was even more useful when piloting a fighter, where dogfights would take place in 3D space. By which I mean a fighter pilot has to keep track of his targets all around him, back, front, left, right, up and down. Watching rigidly ahead would narrow his spatial awareness to less than 1/6 of what it should ideally be. If the used foV is around 90 degrees.
We could quite easily change the context to shooters, where a soldier needs to keep track of his targets in a 3D environment. Perhaps not so much under and above him, but certainly in front, to the left and right and to the back.

With all this in mind. Let's watch the following youtube movie. The commentator, the esteemed El Presador, doesn't have an inkling about how a game engine works technically, but what he's saying from his gamer background is pertinent. And that's what really matters. The game is Killzone 3.

If you enjoyed that, there's more on topic El Presador on Killzone 3.

Killzone 3 is a prime example. A low FoV is its main persisting problem, as it has been present since the first Killzone. And its bad controls are always what people complained about however the "sluggish controls" are wrongly attributed to the controls. The game looks sluggish because the view is so zoomed in. It can make people nauseous. It makes the environment harder to navigate which in turn makes people run into walls. That's also what happened in the video.
I assume Guerilla squeezed the PS3 for performance, making the game look good, by squeezing the FoV. Render less to make it render faster. And despite the sacrifices the game doesn't run any faster than 30fps. Meaning that a TV running at 60hz will display every frame in the game twice, where it would display any given frame only once at 60fps. Twice the frame rate makes a game feel more responsive.

Because engines have gotten harder to run on consoles, the FoV has become more narrow. And in many cases can be blamed for the sluggish or unresponsiveness in console shooters. Which makes all of them fail to topple Call Of Duty. It has the lightest engine, the widest, most natural FoV, the highest frame rate and the most responsive controls on the market. Does this mean it is untouchable? On the current consoles it probably does. But I for one feel that the age of Call Of Duty is coming to an end. The new engines dazzle players with their effects, physics, realism and immersion. The visual fidelity of Cryengine 3 and Frostbite 2 will raise the standard in a way that Call Of Duty players will expect the same quality from their favorite game. Unfortunately though, if Call Of Duty has to upgrade its engine, it will also have to leave behind its 60fps and 65 degrees FoV in favor of 30fps and 55 or less FoV. With the same sacrifices on gameplay in favor of visuals, it would get attributed the same dubious award of looking great, but playing like garbage. Current console hardware only goes so far.

For PC players though, this tipping point is a sweet release from the shackles of console hardware. We're seeing it with Battlefield 3 already, where PC is the leading platform. PC hardware does have the power to run a 64 player battlefield game at 60fps with a 80+ FoV. Which is bound to get the goad of at least some ardent console players who'll have to admit that the PC platform is leaping miles ahead in both gameplay, scope and graphics. The consoles will only be getting a limited version of the very same game. Again, Battlefield 3 will have to use DX9 technology on consoles leaving out all the realism gained with DX11.

Ultimately, it's hard to point fingers. I guess the lead artist or lead gameplay designer of these games are responsible for allowing it. Even though they might not even be aware of the issue. Not knowing about the legacy of shooters or technical limitations. Perhaps they simply have to comply with the lead programmer that the game just doesn't run fast enough with these kind of high-end visuals.
Maybe it's the fault of their customers, supporting bad practice with their money. Though they are even less aware of the issues. And are at a loss about what some other, often PC players, are raving on about. Why are they getting so upset? They only know that this game doesn't feel as good as Call Of Duty but can't quite put their finger on as to why. So they play it for a week and go back to their beloved franchise with the crisp controls and the responsive frame rate. Even though they wished the other game would take them somewhere else.
Then, the newest trailer of Battlefield 3 stuns them into a new dream. The lighting looks amazing! And look at the soft shadows! Will it run at 60fps? But of course it won't. Even Josh Olin, Treyach community manager, hinted at that smirking all the way from his gold plated throne. Disappointed once again console players will go back to Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3, while DICE wonders why only the PC crowd keeps cheering them on. And EA, learning too little, will break their heads over how they could possibly reclaim the FPS crown from Activision once more. Funny that, how this cycle repeats itself.

The Greater Evil, Overlord

In a long standing tradition of me playing Third Person Strategy Action RPGs, it's time to turn a very Evil Eye towards the Overlord Series. With the buzz the sequel was getting. I picked up the first game out of a "why the hell did I never get to play this?" reason. Afterwards, I bought Overlord 2 without thinking twice about it. Written by Rihanna Pratchett, the game has sterling pedigree at first glance. Even though she's obviously a different writer from her world famous father: Terry Pratchett and working in a different medium, my expectations were quite high.

The synopsis to Overlord 1 could be: the story about a young and ambitious Sauron in Albion, commanding an army of mischievous demonic imps. Fixing the world's chaotic evils with his own lawful evil. The game has a good and evil route. The former picturing you as an iron-fisted monarch, the latter portraying you as a ruthless tyrant with a appreciation for black lace and pale flesh. Overlord 2 casts the player as Hades, God of the Underworld. Here to exact revenge on "the Empire" which has usurped your father (Sauron) from his rightful dark throne. You set out to reunite the minion army and claim your rightful place in the evil hierarchy and while you're at it claim Artemis, Aphrodite and Persephone as your mistresses.

The Overlord games are structured a bit like a Zelda game. You explore maps and dungeons sprinkled with enemies and puzzles. In almost all cases your minions with their unique abilities are key in overcoming these obstacles. The level design is quite well done, especially in the first game, where every area literally comes full circle. Design reminiscent of games like Pikmin, Metroid and Zelda, but more directed and not at all dependant on backtracking. Overlord did come as somewhat of a surprise. Coming close to being quite like a Nintendo game, you'd half expect it to become an instant classic. But maybe, like many other games, only a classic in few minds.

There's one flaw that's not very hard to overcome, but it's still there. Harrowing to think what this game might have been, had it been made as a PC game first and foremost. Unfortunately that's not where the market is. Overlord is a console game and it shows. A blessing because it has filled the coffers of Triumph studios and codemasters, opening the door for more Overlord games. A curse because control becomes the game's biggest flaw. The standard PC control scheme in both Overlord 1 and 2 drove me to use my PC gamepad (a Saitek P880) in favor of the mouse and keyboard. Because it simply worked a whole lot better. In fact, the controls work fine. They're functional most of the time. However, it is still baffling to see the game twist and squirm to fit onto a console controller. Evidence of this is that there are functions in which you have to press and hold a button, and then press another button. And that's just to select one type of minion. Which generally leads to the "select all, attack all" reflex, abandoning all strategy. Mostly out of necessity because the chaotic nature of combat generally calls for quick action. In order to fit those controls onto a mouse and keyboard, the scheme twists and squirms some more. It is now twice removed from the ideal mouse and keyboard controls.

Allow me to elaborate even further. From a design standpoint. Overlord must have had the looks of a hardcore PC title reminiscent of Sacrifice. That is to say, if your reflex for troop management is "point the mouse and click". Which in short works like this: select your unit group, like your brown minions. Use a mouse pointer on a target, like an enemy. The mouse cursor changes to an attack pointer. Click the mouse to engage, or hold the mouse button to assign more minions to the target in Overlords case. Clicking the scenery would move the minions about. Instead the game controls a bit more like you would when playing a Necromancer Minion Master in Guild Wars, send direct orders to your minions to attack a specific target. Do note that the Wii title Overlord: Dark Legend, does exactly that. And is claimed to have the superior control scheme.

Quote from Scott Sharkey, 1UP:
"The Wii Remote is just plain perfect for directing your horde of minions around the screen. The mouse or analog stick did the job well enough in other versions, but after experiencing the ease of simply pointing where you want the evil little buggers to go break things, it's actually going to be hard to go back to less precise methods. Hell, my never-played-a-videogame-in-her-life girlfriend had no trouble picking the thing up and just going with it, which is something that just couldn't have happened with any other installment of the series. It really is remarkably intuitive, given how complicated keeping track of both your Overlord and a swarm of gremlins can become." We'll have to forgive Overlord 1 for being a pure console game. Because that's where it had to prove itself. Indeed the game is very easily forgiven since puzzles and pace of the general gameplay feels simpler and more manageable. I can't remember being frustrated with it.

But Overlord 2 was developed simultaneously with Overlord Dark Legend. So the point and click (P&C) controls were no secret. Yet, a similar control scheme was left out of the PC version of Overlord 2. The main reason P&C controls were a no-go, next to higher development costs, was that it would break the difficulty of a few control based puzzles. Puzzles that are so frustrating because of the controls that I outright quit the game a couple of times. Loudly cursing with incomprehension why Triumph would abandon the simple (consoles, remember?) elegance of the first game. I'm pretty sure the "green minion spider elevator maze" will go down in history as one of the biggest game design faux-pas. The concept of the puzzle is that the player must navigate a maze on the wall using the sweep command on the green minions. Controlling the group as one entity with the right analog stick. This whole time, the camera is behind the Overlord and pointing towards the group of minions. Within this field of view the group is controlled. If one minion, or several, is stuck behind an obstacle, it will stop moving. With it the camera, as it can't move ahead with the group. This would be alright if it weren't for the fact that this is a timed puzzle. Get stuck for a second and you loose a great portion of your experience rich green minions. They simply fall of the wall and die, or get squashed between the elevator and die. Start over. What makes the puzzle so unnerving is not the fact that it's pretty obnoxious to begin with, it's in the controls by which you have to solve it. The sweep command is pretty wooly as it is. In theory it's a "charge there" command. Like moving by suggestion, it's pretty imprecise. Now imagine just pointing and clicking your way through the maze. It'd be like setting way points in an RTS game: pixel perfect. It would have made this "after boss" mechanic-tutorial (the hard part was supposed to be done with!) a breeze in stead of a wrist cutting. Another dubious decision was the ship chase. Cool in concept, but rather poorly executed. Another still was a rather lengthy stealth level using possessed Green Minions. Some trail and error sections could have been a little less frustrating. This fallback to "twitch gameplay" in stead of sticking to "logic puzzles" may be a sign of Triumph running out of inspiration and then willingly overstepping the line between challenging and frustrating in these few instances. Overlord 2 is a more complex game than its predecessor, with more gameplay elements, a more "advanced" camera and more elaborate control over the Overlord. Unfortunately, and though slightly, to its detriment.

However, that's about all the bad there is to say about the Overlord games so far. So it's mostly all good. Managing your armour, weapons, spells, minions and dark tower are fun RPG additions I would like to see in a Zelda game someday. It's also great to hear all the different lines of banter and dialog in the game as well. Audio in Overlord is well done all-round. The score from the first game was quite good but becomes fantastic in the sequel. Paired with an improved game engine and more detailled art assets, the second game is an impressive showpiece. So far it one of the best games, or should i say franchise, the Netherlands has ever produced. Not that there's a lot of games coming from there anyway, but it's another glimmer of hope that these regions can produce games that actually matter. Now I'd love to see a hardcore Overlord PC game. Preferably with a strong multiplayer component, and an open endgame scenario. With P&C controls. It'd fill the void Sacrifice left behind and Brütal legend will probably fail to fill, currently not even coming to PC. But one may hope.