This is an attempt at a taxonomy of style choices I've observed in CRPGs (I still refuse to call
the game genre “RPG”; a game is not an RPG unless it in any way involves playing a role). This is
based on “old-school” games I've been playing most of my life, on “massively social” games that
have been popping up recently (and a nod to those that aren't CRPGs as well), and on second-hand
accounts of MMORPGs, which I personally haven't played enough to form opinions on.
If you first need an introduction, refresher, or fact-checker about the “scene”, I'll make a
somewhat heterodox recommendation: Sluggy Freelance's Years of Yarncraft storyline is an
in-depth, insightful, and accurate, if not serious, look on the whole thing. It doesn't cover the
“massively social” phenomenon, but I hope I will do that in the article.
Player styles
I'll start with player and playing styles, because I believe understanding how people play a game
and how/why they enjoy it is necessary before you can even discuss the rest.
Bear in mind, like most taxonomies when applied to people, most of my classifications below are
talking about primary traits; most people will be a combination of different types, either by
combination, or over time (like, on different days you may be an explorer or a role-player).
Primary activity interest
A very, very long time ago, people who played actual RPGs (nowadays relegated to being called
“tabletop RPGs”, sigh) first classified players in two basic camps: the hack-and-slash camp, and
the roleplay camp.
Over the years, and as we got acquainted with CRPGs and adventures and computer strategy games,
this was refined, expanded upon, simplified again, and distilled. Today, while there are many ways
to make this distinction, which are certainly valid in their own ways, I believe a simple split in
four groups is the most useful, in terms of understanding and designing games.
So I call players either: gamer, hack-and-slasher (H&Ser), role-player (RPer), or explorer.
Hack-and-slashers are in it to fight. Nowadays, that doesn't necessarily mean actual in-game
fights; rather, H&Sers like to win. They get fun from the game primarily by enjoying the rush of
victory and superiority. In a classic CRPG, the easiest and most rewarding way to do that is by
combat.
The key aspect to please H&Sers is challenge/reward: it must be relatively easy to find
something that challenges them, the challenge can't be too easy, it can't be impossible, and the
reward after winning must be proportional and appropriate, in order to trigger the reward pleasure
centres.
You can alienate H&Sers with limits. If, for example, they can only run so many fights in a
day, your H&Sers will probably just create second/third/fourth characters, or abandon the game
after a short time. If they defeat everything you throw at them and then there's nothing more to
fight and they need to wait a day, or three, or a week before there's more, they will probably not
log in at all during this period, and there's a chance they will have discovered something else in
the interval, which means you lost the player.
Role-players are run by imagination. They want to “be” someone else and do things they wouldn't do
in real life. They really care about the character. They also form a mental opinion of the
character's personality and preferences, and try to make choices according to that.
The key aspect to please RPers is believability: they must be able to suspend their disbelief
when they start playing, and stay in their imaginary world until they decide to leave. Anything in
the game that pulls them back to the real world is a disruption to that “flow”. Believability is
not the same thing as realism; realism is just one of the ways of doing it, but it would be
boring if all games were realistic; many (most?) RPers go to the games precisely in search of some
“believable” fantasy. My personal “three pillars of believability” are internal consistency,
depth, and detail; I'll expand on another post if there is interest, but I think it's pretty
self-explanatory as it is.
You can alienate RPers (other than the lack of the above) with simple discouragement. RPers
are a relative minority, and many other players think they are a bit weird. Every time you remove
a feature that benefits RPers, or add one that hinders them, their interest will wane. If players
are allowed to openly discriminate against them, they will leave. A good strategy some games adopt
is to offer separate, RP-focused servers where RP is mandatory.
Gamers see the whole thing as a game. Which, technically, it is ;-) A gamer enjoys looking for
edges and tricks to optimise the character, the overall strategy, battle tactics, economics,
party/guild workings, everything.
The key aspect to please gamers is strategy: there must be cool, useful, and difficult to find
tricks. There must be a wide range of possible strategies. But to avoid alienating the other
players, it must be possible to play the game without them. It's also a good idea to “shake things
up” occasionally; change the rules so that some strategies get nerfed, others spring up, and the
gamers have to look for the new ones. They'll complain, but it won't be sincere; while they do
have an attachment to their painstakingly-develop tricks, they have more pleasure in finding new
ones than using what they have.
You can alienate gamers with ephemeral rewards. For example: say you offer a way to greatly
improve weapons. Say it's either hard to do, or expensive; and say it's relatively hard to find.
That's the kind of thing gamers love. But then, after a lot of effort to improve his sabre, he
discovers that your game mechanics require changing weapons every few days. So now, all that
effort is wasted.
Explorers want to see your game. They want to see everything, try everything the game has to
offer. There are subgroups, of course; some want to see the whole world, some want to play every
single last quest, some “collect” items, some want to understand the underlying story, some want to
play many times with every possible class (or profession or whatever the equivalent).
The key aspect to please explorers is rich content: this one is a no-brainer :-) the more there
is to see, the more they'll like it. But it has to be interesting; if every town looks the same,
they'll stop by the 3rd or 4th.
You can alienate explorers with too much or too little obstacle. If I can simply create a
character and explore the whole world, I'll have fun and maybe even write you a good review, but I
will also drop the game after a few days. On the other hand, if I can't explore anything new for a
whole week, I'll get bored and leave as well.
An interesting way to put it is that each of those 4 groups “plays with” a different portion of the
brain. The H&Ser plays with the instinctive pleasure centres, the RPer with the imagination, the
gamer with the intelligence, and the explorer with the curiosity.
Finally, there is of course a fifth group: those that aren't interested in the game itself, at all.
There are many possible cases here; some people play MMORPGs and “massively social” games primarily
to “meet” new people, or to chat. Others like looking at the game, because it's cute or cool or
whatever; although those either don't stick around for long, or evolve into a specialised sort of
“explorer”. Some play because they like the setting; this is especially the case for games that
are adaptations of known fictional settings. Again, those players either leave after a while, or
drift into one of the other categories.
The social spectrum, for the player
A very important point is how much each player wants to interact with others. Some want to play
alone to the maximum extent they're able; others are in the game primarily for the social aspect.
In the middle of the spectrum, players will like to do things in teams (or parties), will want to
join guilds, use in-game chat, ask other players for help (possibly in a forum/message board), and
interact with other characters in the game knowing there's an actual person behind them.
From a strategic point of view, it's a good idea to encourage social interaction. If I play on my
own, it's not a big deal if I don't play for some time; but if I have a few “game-friends”, and I
grew used to chatting with them every week, or every day, or whatever it is, then I have a reason
to come back; I wouldn't want to “miss” my game-friends.
To quest or not to quest
Good quests are one of the best tools of the trade. It's what turns a game into a medium for
interactive storytelling. However, the plain, harsh truth is that some people don't really care
about your story! Some people want to be able to enjoy the “regular” things to do in the game, and
stay away from the quests, or do them just as much as absolutely required. Again, it's a spectrum;
on one end, some players completely avoid quests, while on the other, they play for the quest and
only do other stuff in order to “support” the quest requirements.
Wait, what? Some people like doing the day-to-day character maintenance more than quests, or even
to their exclusion? It's easy to fall in the trap of assuming the day-to-day stuff is boring; but
in reality, people are different and have different tastes. True quote from a real person in my
tweeter feed today: “I hate when my routine gets disrupted. Life without routine is totally boring
and not worth living.” I was amazed at first, but upon reflection, it just proves my old core
belief that people are different; and it matches my observations of game players. Some really do
come back every day for the maintenance routine, and find quests a disruption.
Worker vs. fighter
In the “massively social” CRPGs that are popping up online recently (I'll offer Travians as an
example that I actually like playing), you have other things to do than going around bashing
people's teeth in.
Now, on many MMORPGs you can do other things as well. The stories of “gold farmers” in WoW are a
famous example; real-life sweatshops with people connected to the game making in-game items in an
in-game sweatshop. But in most games, those activities are second-class; you can't be a level 70
tailor or miner, for example.
To explore the case of Travians, it started up not so much as a CRPG, but a kind of RPG-ified “The
Sims”; just like “The Sims” was originally a toy to spy in more detail on the life of citizens from
Sim Cities, and later grew to oversell its “parent” game by far, also Travians grew out of another
game by the same company, called Travian (yeah confusing... but the company is German, and in
German Travian is called Travian, but Travians is called Travianer, which is... well, slightly
better). Travian is a strategy game, a kind of massively-multiplayer Catan/Civ. Then along came
Travianer/Travians, where you get to play one of the actual citizens.
The funny side-effect of this story is that, although there is fighting aplenty and a quest, the
main focus of Travians is not to fight, but rather to be a productive citizen. You harvest one of
the primary resources from Travian (clay, wood, ore, or grain), or you process them into secondary
resources (bricks, boards, coal, iron, flour, bread). Fighting doesn't reward you with money, only
experience; to get money you need to work. (But if you really, really want to be a bum, you can
live off of digging up treasure in the swamp.)
This experiment (and the success of Travians) brought a realisation: some people like doing
things other than fighting. Some people like putting the character to work, or figuring out the
complexities of trade.
And frankly? After the success of The Sims, we really should have figured this out earlier.
Simple vs. rich (or, dull vs. complex)
Complexity in a game is a tough issue. Complexity comes in all levels: quest, rules, user
interface. Make it too simple, and many players will be bored; and, of course, you won't attract
any “gamer” players. Make it too complex, and many players will be bored, or confused.
Personally, I'm a follower of the school of making complexity optional. Offer a very simple
version; the easy-to-find quests, the basic rules, the default UI. But also offer layers and
layers of extra complexity the player can opt in to: extra quests or side-quests that, preferably,
tie into the main quest and enrich its story; additional corner rules for special, rare items, or
for advanced classes, or something; optional elements in the UI that can be configured.
And then there are wizards. This is complete guesswork on my part, but from observation, I believe
people who prefer to play magic-users, also prefer a little more complexity. It makes sense;
understanding large spell lists, with the reward of having more options of action, as opposed to
getting a weapon and bashing stuff — that's clearly a complexity choice.
The trade of trading
Trading is a human pleasure. Like most human pleasures, some people abhor it, others can't live
without it.
In most CRPGs and CRPG-alikes, some form of trading is required. In Crossfire, WoW, or even
old-school Diablo and Ultima, you'll get random stuff from questing, stuff that you don't want but
that is worth money; on the other hand, some items you'll never find, or you won't find often
enough, so you'll have to buy instead. In Travians and others, you need to actually produce and
sell things in order to make game money.
But from that, sprung a funny tangent: some people like doing it. Some people enjoy looking for
the best price, or even finding ways to make profit out of buying stuff in one place and selling it
elsewhere.
I'm told in the Korean MMORPG Ragnarok Online, playing a trader is actually an option. It's still
somewhat limited, as you still need to fight in order to level up; but it's an added choice, and
apparently, lots of people actually go for it. I'd like to see a CRPG where fully playing a trader
is an option; your goal is actually to make profit, and you level by making good deals. Or rather:
I'd like it even more to write it ;-)
Game model styles
Time is money
A trend that is integral part of the “massively social games” phenomenon is limiting how much you
can do based on time. Generally, that's done using some sort of points that regenerate through
time, and which you spend to do some of the things in the game; Travians has “occupational
points”, and Imperial Galaxy has “command bandwidth”, for example. There are ways to get
bonuses to produce these points faster; in Travians you get more OP if you sleep in better beds,
while in Imperial Galaxy it's basically a matter of keeping your “home sector” clean.
Strategy and building games use more resource-centred techniques; in Nile Online and Travian,
your limit is how fast you can harvest resources that are needed as materials to build stuff.
Also, each building takes a fixed time to build, and you can only have one construction going on
(per city) at any given time; so if my current palace upgrade takes 12h, that means I can't build
anything else on that city for the next 12h.
The purpose of these limits seems to be twofold. On one side, you want to avoid giving compulsive
players that have no lives a very big advantage, because that drives everyone else away. But also,
these daily limits are an encouragement for players to come back every day and do a little more.
This is a hard choice to make. And personally, I think there's an enormous risk of limiting it too
much and becoming annoying; everyone I know who plays Travians agrees there aren't enough OPs in a
day.
In some games, the limit can also serve to encourage players to explore other aspects; in
particular, the more social aspects. But doing that well requires your limits to be partial (not
affect the social aspects — Travians fails in this point), and more importantly, it requires the
other aspects you want to emphasise as an alternative to be well-developed and interesting.
Specialise or balance?
This one has been an ongoing argument in Crossfire for as long as I can remember.
Some games strongly encourage you to build an all-rounded character. In Travians, for instance, I
tried to ignore the combat aspects at first, but quickly found myself unable to complete quests.
Then, still unwilling to split my (limited) attention, I decided to focus on combat; but after a
few days, weapon upgrades became too expensive for me, and now I need to spend a few more days
upgrading my tools. So their system essentially forbids focusing.
On the other side, MMORPGs usually encourage teamplay by giving strong benefits to cooperation
between differently-focused characters; the typical successful WoW party requires (at least) one or
two tanks, one or two damage-dealers, a spell caster, and a healer. (The typical D&D party adds to
that recipe one trap finder and one leader.)
In Crossfire, focusing is good on lower levels, but the usual complaint is that pretty much all
level 100 characters are identical (or possibly, can be divided into dragons and non-dragons).
It's all about choice
There are different kinds of players, with different preferences and styles. Do you try to allow
all styles, or do you focus your efforts on pleasing one category? Both are valid choices,
especially if development resources are very limited.
If you think this section is too short, feel free to re-read the first section of this post,
Player styles, and reflect on all the game model choices hidden in there ;-)
The social spectrum
The new batch of (mostly web-based) “massively social” games is all about interacting with other
players. While Imperial Galaxy can be played solo, it's frankly not a fun game if played that
way; the fun is all in belonging to a fleet. Travians has huge benefits for guild membership, it
has “Community Actions”, “Social Points”, and the best ways to acquire experience are fighting in
the arena (against other players) or playing mini-games (against other players). And you make
money primarily by selling goods on the market (to other players). Nile Online is pretty much
impossible to play without making heavy use of the market; and god offerings benefit an entire
nome, and are really hard to make on your own.
These games also incorporate a measure of social networking technology, with friend lists and
features that depend on them, integrated messaging systems, and heavy use of chat.
On the middle of this spectrum lie most MMORPGs, where parties are necessary to complete most
quests, and guild membership offers big, but not overwhelming benefits.
In the web-based arena, most Facebook games offer big, but optional benefits for players who have
large numbers of other people in their in-game “team”; however, this is more an incentive to invite
people to install the game, than an actual social aspect.
Then there is Spore, and its amusing moniker of “massively single-player”. It allows you to
interact with content created by other players (which Sim City and The Sims already allowed,
although it was a little more difficult). An earlier, and possibly better, example of this
approach is the Pokémon (portable) series; the game is primarily single-player, but there are great
benefits and strong encouragement to interact with others (for trading pokémon or PVP battles).
Starting from zero we've got nothing to lose
In Years of Yarncraft, Pete Abrams pokes fun at this aspect, by having Torg's character start the
game armed only with a stick, and having to kill a bunch of salamanders as his first quest.
How low do you want characters to start? The traditional answer, until relatively recent times,
was that a starting character had to be reasonably capable, enough to entice and interest the
player. But now, the trend seems to be starting very close to zero. And if the game offers a lot
of choice, that may actually be a good thing, because then you won't have to make some of those
choices until you have a better understanding of their effects.
Of particular interest to this aspect is the trend of making the first few quests a tutorial of
sorts, teaching some of the most important things in the game. Travian plays this card heavily
(possibly a little too heavily; you don't want people to feel patronised).
This also ties in to game mechanics choices (which I'm covering in the next post) about character
growth and the meaning/algorithms of attributes and skills. It's common in simpler games to start
all attributes at 0, which means normal human average, and then simply add to them a number of
points per level, without any real final cap.
Those pesky economics
All RPG-like games must include some sort of an economy. In single-player games, that's
traditionally just a question of making sure more powerful items are more expensive, while at the
same time your ability to acquire game-money increases as you progress. Additionally, different
items would be available for sale in different areas of the game world.
Then, simulation-heavy games and procedural content came along, and it became fashionable to try to
achieve a “real economy” in the game world. I have personally not played a game that does that, or
even seen positive reviews about one, so the benefit seems questionable.
But there's something better than a simulated “real” economy: a real real economy. Travian,
Travians and Nile Online have all succeeded in doing that, Nile to a much greater extent.
Quite simply, if most (or all) trading is with other players, and you have a sufficiently large
number of them, soon real market factors will emerge, and in a way that players can understand
without too much effort.
Maybe the ideal best is a mixed, real/simulated “real” economy, where player purchases have a
strong (primary even) influence, but where items that players aren't really interested on can also
fluctuate, as NPC demand for them grows and shrinks due to simulated or player-caused events. But
the reason those web-based games have succeeded in creating an actual economy is one that may
defeat this point: simply, those games have staggering numbers of players — thousands upon
thousands online simultaneously at any given moment — which is enough population to simulate the
economy of a small village.
On a side note, someone linked a very funny (but true) article about RPG economics to
#crossfire earlier in the week. While the article is about D&D (and other “tabletop” fantasy
RPGs), it mostly applies to CRPG as well.