RPG design problems

I need some help or opinions on solving a game design issue.
I'm not making any game, just love problem solving,
and this thing has been bothering me for a while.

Most games have static skill requirements in order for the character to perform.
For example classic wow professions, herbalism; if a herb is 200 but your skill is 199 you can't pick it up. The only way this makes any sense would be, if the character lacks the skill and knowledge to handle and preserve the herb, so not meeting the requirements would render the precious herb useless in a failed attempt of picking it up.

So my problem is, how do you make both the player, and the character,
perceive and interact with the game world (3D mmo) based only on in-game "skills",
without fiddling with the audiovisual hints?


Problem #1, noble vs beast.

If a wild beast appears, the character can't handle the situation, because he is a noble who spent his life inside city walls. His hunting skills and animal knowledge points are 1/10, so he wouldn't be able to identify the beast, or know anything about its behaviour, actions, etc.
The player however sees the beast on the screen, its size, color, shape, sound, and based on his experience irl, he could use that info to kill the beast even with this weak noble character.

It would still be a very hard fight, since the noble has no combat skills,
but there doesn't need to be a fight. The beast might be scared of certain sounds or gestures,
which the player could perform on his character.
This is the type of exploitation that I'm trying to remove from the game;
player experience ruling over in-game conditions.



Problem #2, warrior and herbs.

The player has a warrior with 1/10 herbalism and starts exploring the forest.
The player knows which herbs are the expensive ones, and makes his warrior pick them up regardless of the low skill. You only need to meet the strength requirement to pick things up.
Or wear protective gloves against burning, frozen, poisonous things.
I don't want any retarded magical barriers like wow has with its professions.


This herb issue is kind of solved. The herbs are ruined if the characters herbalism skills are too low, even though the player can identify plants on his screen.

But how would you deal with the beast? Let's say the beast is scared if it sees a human jump.
We can't suddenly lock the players ability to make his character jump, just because this would cause the beast to flee, counting as "exploiting the game" because his noble character can't identify the beast...

I also don't want to blur or distort the visuals or sounds based on characters skill levels.
This only appears if the character is poisoned or drunk, as a overall visual motion blur.
Objects and creatures should still be always displayed in a "true" state, 1:1, regardless what the characters skills are.


How would you solve this problem?

"

Elemenz wrote:

But how would you deal with the beast? Let's say the beast is scared if it sees a human jump.
We can't suddenly lock the players ability to make his character jump, just because this would cause the beast to flee, counting as "exploiting the game" because his noble character can't identify the beast...[/b]

Make the beast not flee if the character who jumps is a noble? Let's say that the beast can "smell" you if you are a library geek or an experienced hunter / warrior. A hunter has the "stench of gutted animals" on him.

also, with herbs, lets say you have 10 herbs in game and you need 10/10 herbalism to identify all. A character with 1/10 would be able to see just two distinct types of herbs in the game world: the one he knows about and "everything else". Literally, you render the other 9 herbs with the same model / icons, for immersion purposes. Which is kinda like in real life - if you know nothing about herbs / botany, all the plants looks "the same" to you.

You can limit the functionality of the "unknown" herb, by applying the effect of the herb that the game character thinks it is, instead of the effect of what actually is, because he has a too low herbalism to know better.

Im not sure what exactly you are asking for.
Are you using a game engine? If so which one? Do you know how to program? Are you handling everything though scripting?
As a programmer it is immediately obvious to me that you just what behaviors based on character skills. A simple text popup with the result of the skill check is the easiest way to display that information to the player if you dont have those specific animations.

1. IRL, animals have sharp instincts. For real. They are able to sense intentions and danger to some degree, they can actually analyze situations quite well. Thus our noble could try to scare the beast away, but the beast can sense that he isn't a threat, thus it continues to attack.
2. As mentioned already, simply make people unable to pick up any plants they don't know ingame. No sane person would just pick up everything they don't know, most of the times games lack that kind of common sense though.

I would love to make a game ;D , but unfortunatly im to stupid to do so.

I think, Procedural generated stuff could be cool, like a lot of Affixes that could make a certain event more or less likely.

In the case of the wild animal, gender,hungry,age,health,speed,etc. A Player would only get hint´s based on his skilllevel, so he may know that the animal is old but not how hungry it is.

The plant´s could be completly randomly generated, so the player cant tell them apart only based on there look. They could have Affixes like, poisones,fragile,root,smell.

The noble could have jewlry skill, which alows him to tell worthy tressure from trash apart.
The tressure could have Affixes like, fragile,worthy,cursed,set. For cursed you may Need another skill to identify it.

Although im not into roleplaying though, i think that concept sounds realy cool.
But i quess, it would be to much for a typical mmorpg.

"

Elemenz wrote:

Problem #1, noble vs beast.

If a wild beast appears, the character can't handle the situation, because he is a noble who spent his life inside city walls.
(...)
This is the type of exploitation that I'm trying to remove from the game;
player experience ruling over in-game conditions.

Problem #2, warrior and herbs.
(...)
But how would you deal with the beast? Let's say the beast is scared if it sees a human jump.
We can't suddenly lock the players ability to make his character jump, just because this would cause the beast to flee, counting as "exploiting the game" because his noble character can't identify the beast...

I also don't want to blur or distort the visuals or sounds based on characters skill levels.
This only appears if the character is poisoned or drunk, as a overall visual motion blur.
Objects and creatures should still be always displayed in a "true" state, 1:1, regardless what the characters skills are.

How would you solve this problem?

You can get into the whole philosophical debate on how much do you separate the real life act of a person in front of a computing device playing a game. You can go a few different ways.

In order of most difficult to produce first...

1.) The total immersion route. Let the player be the character, so whatever the player does is a direct reflection on how they interpret their world. This was popularized in the old text adventure games like Zork. The player has no knowledge of their character, so it's up to the player to determine what/who they are. So in your example of the Noble, you give the player that background through clues/introduction, but you don't come right out and say anything about it. And you don't give any hint as to how to engage in combat. The player would find that out on their own through the game's interface. It actually takes a lot of planning to develop this sort of game, because you have to put yourself in the user's shoes all the time.

2.) The casual disassociation route. The character is pre-defined within the game, but there is still a unique response to what the player does with that character. Good examples are the Portal series and The Stanley Parable. Some adventure games fall into this category. It was really popular in the late 2000s. Everything done in-game is "in-character", but the game lets the player perform unusual tasks that would often break with what their character would typically do.

3.) Role-playing route. This is pretty much most of the games we're talking about and the ones we play, from ARPGs to RPGs, and everything in-between. Most MMOs take this path. Most games fall into this category. Everything in-game is "in character" and the user is expected to fall in line with this fantasy.

4.) The satire route. The character is pre-defined, but the game brings up the topic of the player in real life, and/or includes pop culture references. Good examples are Team Fortress 2, Monkey Island, Kings/Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc. In these games you don't really worry about crossing lines, as almost anything goes. Steam and Sierra made their money from games in this category.

"

SkyCore wrote:

Im not sure what exactly you are asking for.
Are you using a game engine? If so which one? Do you know how to program? Are you handling everything though scripting?

Well he said he's not actually making a game, but you should pay attention to this OP. We can't solve your problems if we don't know what tools you have in your toolbox, and how high of quality those tools are.

It would be like you coming to us and saying 'I need to fix my roof, it's leaking water'. All of the following would be valid answers:

Patch it with shingles and nails.
Put a tarp over it.
Buy a new roof.
Buy a new house.
Put a bucket under it.
Sandpaper and duct tape.
Build a weather machine to control the weather so that it never rains over your house again.

Without knowing all the rules for your game world, or what medium you're using to create these problems, we're very in the dark.

games have abstractions and assumptions and limitations.

noble vs beast: start from the other side to approach the problem

what are ways to kill a beast that count as 'killing' the beast in the game? pretty much all the time, a game isnt some abstract machine-learning infinite tape. its a state machine where state 'beast is killed' is a valid state, and can be reached through a state transition from some other state

you can use a weapon
you can use magic
you can pay someone with weapon/magic to kill the beast for you
you can set a trap with x as bait while beast is unaware and wait some time, hoping he is lured
you can set a trap while beast is aware and use yourself as bait to lure him

and so on and so forth

so easy way is to eliminate all ways that you cannot reach the state and also eliminate all the methods that would not be suitable for noble

if your problem is more of a 'if I know metagame and best strategy I will be able to kill beast even tho my character in-game has skills that shouldnt make him kill the beast', then its a bit of a different scenario:

knowing is part of experience. you cannot completely eliminate that if there are any patterns of how a beast can be killed. especially if you do it for multiple characters. and ideally, by learning the patterns you are also gaining points in beast knoledge. you also can completely roleplay it and choose your own adventure instead by setting an arbitrary rule that noble cannot kill a beast.

there are some ways to limit it in-game, with gear check being the most basic and probably the most powerful. require some specific condition to kill beast, remove most factors from this conditions that do not fit the noble.

there's the artificially make skills that your character is not skilled in way, ie in Deus Ex (obviously the first one), if you cant shoot, the game artificially makes your shooting handicapped.

but overall, again, if you know powergame, its hard for you to not take the most optimal route. unless the solution is always completely random, the more knowledge you gain will translate to you knowing how to maneuver your way with any character. there's no way around it besides your own memory loss. if you know math but the character you'e playing doesn't know math, you can't really obfuscate the math in the game unless its 1)completely inaccessible for you if it passes/fails a certain skill check 2)completely random where solution cannot be derived from your own knowledge of math

The Warrior and the Herbs
To my mind this seems best solved by herbs below your skill level simply being not highlighted and unable to be selected or interacted with, like generic parts of the scenery.

Of course the person at the keyboard could see and identify them but if the character didn't have enough herb-lore they wouldn't pay the herbs any more attention than the mushrooms at the base of a tree in Act 2.

This would also allow another player with the required knowledge to make a quest to gather these flowers for them and completing this quest would allow the warrior to gather those herbs in the future.

The Beast and the Noble
Again, this would be an availability thing.
Perhaps some emotes would be unavailable based on knowledge.

A combination of achievements or quests in some MMORPGs which required using particular emotes, and special emotes which were awarded based on achievements or character.

For example the emote "over here" would have the character wave both of their arms in the air as if trying to get someone's attention and this would have no effect on a wild animal.

But enough knowledge in forestry or hunting, (or whatever) would grant the character the emote "scare animal" which, while using the same animation would have a chance to cause a wild animal to run away.

(For example, in City of Heroes the emote "listen police band" could be used by any hero and would perform an animation of them listening to a police radio channel. This same emote could be used by a villain who had acquired a particular badge for defeating enough police officers with the command "listen stolen police band".)

"

Elemenz wrote:

Problem #1, noble vs beast.

If a wild beast appears, the character can't handle the situation, because he is a noble who spent his life inside city walls. His hunting skills and animal knowledge points are 1/10, so he wouldn't be able to identify the beast, or know anything about its behaviour, actions, etc.
The player however sees the beast on the screen, its size, color, shape, sound, and based on his experience irl, he could use that info to kill the beast even with this weak noble character.

It would still be a very hard fight, since the noble has no combat skills,
but there doesn't need to be a fight. The beast might be scared of certain sounds or gestures,
which the player could perform on his character.
This is the type of exploitation that I'm trying to remove from the game;
player experience ruling over in-game conditions.

1. Randomize encounters. The aim here is to have a robust enough randomization system that players cannot predict what enemies they will face. Note that randomization does not have to affect static visuals, only behavior; for example, the beast could have one "power move" from a set of such moves.
2. Design power moves such that playing around them is somewhat mutually exclusive, and are very strong against the unprepared.
3. Design AI to avoid using power moves in situations where the player would easily avoid it.
4. Tie "knowledge" skills to what "affixes" a player can see on a monster. For instance, most nobles wouldn't have the experience to know whether the beast can use "Rend" or "Furious Charge," but a hunter would have the skills to predict this behavior. ("Scares when you jump" could also be a random affix which is visible or hidden based on skill, although that might be bad design as it could be easily tested, causing players to jump at the beginning of every encounter. Perhaps "won't fight unarmed opponents" would be a better random quirk.)

The result is that the player plays with similar trepidation to their character: the noble doesn't know what's going to happen, needs to take things slower and be more cautious; the hunter can predict what will happen and fight with higher confidence.