[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] NPC-oriented gameplay and XPmodel:GURPS/EveOnline vs. D&D/Diku

[Lachek Butalek]

On 10/17/07, Mike Rozak <Mike at mxac.com.au> wrote:
> Adventure games provide a sense of progress. When you solve a puzzle, you're
> rewarded with a cut-scene and/or entry into a new part of the game.
>
> However, adventure games do NOT:
>
> - Have frequent rewards for progress in micro-milestones. (Unlike a typical
> CRPG/MMO that hands out gold and XP every 30 seconds.)
>
> - Attach a number to the progress.

I beg to differ. The original adventure games, the Infocom classics,
as well as the Sierra "Quest" games and others, had a "score"
associated with your performance. Advancing your score was an integral
part of gameplay, which (before the days of ubiquitous walkthroughs)
gave you easy bragging rights with others:

"I scored 244 points on Leisure Suit Larry 3 the other day"
"No way! I've finished it and I only got 220!"
"Well, you must have missed this side puzzle..."

Getting that "ding" was reaffirming that you were advancing in the
game, found a "secret", or otherwise played the game "right". Modern
adventure games instead tend to "reward" with a cutscene or obvious
plot advancement (A Cruise for a Corpse, for example, would advance
the in-game clock whenever you solved a major puzzle, indicating to
the player that things could have changed and old leads should be
re-investigated).

The difference, as I see it, is that your game seems to be far more
non-linear than those games of old, and perhaps it would be
counter-productive to inform the player they are playing "correctly"
or "on-track". In that case, it may be preferable to simply show
progress via the relationship sliders and in-game events.

So to answer your question - are those two things important - I'd have
to say yes, but at what cost? If players are striving for the "ding",
will it detract from your game model of non-linearity? Will you be
enforcing your view of what's important in the game onto an
unsuspecting player, who may even be in disagreement with you about
how your game should be played? Will you unknowingly steer people into
linear play by your reward system?

If these things concern you, but you still want to keep a mechanism by
which people can discover new game modes and features over time, the
GURPS/Eve model of XP reward seem appropriate. I would suggest,
though, to take a note from games like Ultima Online - rather than
allowing the player to spend such points to increase their abilities
linearly, implement a cap on "skills" such that people will spend XP
to balance, not increase, their character's abilities.

An alternate way of looking at it might be to reward explicitly for
one type of behaviour (combat, for example) and implicitly for another
(exploration and plot advancement, for example). The player might then
find hirself in a position where they have to balance increasing in
martial prowess or maintain good relationship with NPCs. If that's a
form of gameplay you'd like to encourage, a traditional MMORPG/Diku
reward system may be in order.