Role playing aspects and character stats

[frobalt]

Hey guys. I'm a games programmer who is soon to be going into this final year of university. For this year, I'll have to do an FYP (Final Year Project) which will naturally be some sort of game. I'm not entirely sure what I have to do yet, but I believe it involves some sort of study.

Anyway, my thoughts at the moment are to include some sort of role playing aspect to my game, without it being a traditional RPG. The aspects I'm talking about are primarily the levelling up system and personal character statistics.

What got me fascinated by this concept is Borderlands. This was the first game I encountered which had these aspects without being a traditional RPG, as it is a first person shooter.

For those of you who haven't played Borderlands, it is a first person shooter where the player and the enemies have levels. As in traditional RPGs, you level up by killing enemies, and the higher your level, the better equipment you can equip.

What I find most fascinating about this game is the fact that there are 2 play-throughs. The first play-through is finished around level 30 (If I remember rightly) with the second play-through basically being the same thing but with slightly tougher enemies that also start around level 30ish. What I like about this is that you can get more game time out of it, as it still has a slightly different feel than the first play-through.

Getting more game time is what I like most about RPG elements. Primarily because people will do anything to level characters up to their maximum potential. It's kind of got me wondering:

Would role playing elements integrated into a game make it more fun by default? (If done right, of course)

If you could introduce RPG elements into a game, what game would it be and how would you do it?

There are numerous way that RPG elements can be introduced into different game types. The easiest way is earning XP for defeating enemies, but other ways could be introduced as well.

The RPG elements wouldn't just be about levelling up, you'd also have to introduce some sort of advantage for being a higher level as well, otherwise the number would be arbitrary.

Forgive me if I've rambled a bit here and maybe not said some things I should have - It's getting late here and it's unbearably hot for me.

 

[skywolfblue]

Would role playing elements integrated into a game make it more fun by default? (If done right, of course)

If you could introduce RPG elements into a game, what game would it be and how would you do it?

There are numerous way that RPG elements can be introduced into different game types. The easiest way is earning XP for defeating enemies, but other ways could be introduced as well.

The RPG elements wouldn't just be about levelling up, you'd also have to introduce some sort of advantage for being a higher level as well, otherwise the number would be arbitrary.

Forgive me if I've rambled a bit here and maybe not said some things I should have - It's getting late here and it's unbearably hot for me.

"role playing elements" is kinda a vague and broad term, everything from choice mechanics to stats and/or leveling.

In order to understand whether it would make a game better you'd probably have to be a bit more specific.

Not every game needs leveling or choice, so adding those doesn't automatically make a game better. Halo would be kinda silly if master chief started off with a pea shooter and ended up carrying rocket launcher machine guns and gained a billion shields over the course of the game.

 

[DoPo]

Would role playing elements integrated into a game make it more fun by default? (If done right, of course)

No, and you partly answered yourself already. RPG elements don't automatically make stuff better, since you could do a bad job at implementing them. Also, they don't really bring value into everything. Arbitrarily grinding your stats wouldn't make the game more compelling to play, it would just make it boring - just an example.

With that said, they could be useful and interesting. Ugh, I really should get around to write that thing I have in mind on this exact topic, though. I've been mulling it over for about 2 months. I'll keep it short and link you to the thing when I'm done: you have to plan what you want to do exactly. Here is something to think about - getting 10 levels, may make give your character 10 times more health and 10 times more damage, but if they also fight against enemies with 10 times more health and damage...well, absolutely nothing has changed since level 1, sans having bigger numbers.

What I personally would use in a game, though - I'd go for a point-buy system, instead of levelling. That is, you gain some currency, probably XP (or you can call it something else, doesn't matter) and you use it to upgrade your skills. For example - getting a new rank in Accuracy, costs 10 XP, getting a new rank in Damage, costs 15 XP. Also, I'll not give out XP for kills, instead for certain goals. This could be quests completion (for a more freeroam-y sandbox-y game) or just sort of achievements ("Shoot X amount of guys in the left hand" or "Find Y hidden stashes") or both. The goals/achievements can encourage people to do more stuff in your game but you should use them sparingly - it's sort of lame having to go all around the map just to get that extra boost and upgrade that one stat you need. XP gain should also be focused.

 

[frobalt]

Would role playing elements integrated into a game make it more fun by default? (If done right, of course)

If you could introduce RPG elements into a game, what game would it be and how would you do it?

There are numerous way that RPG elements can be introduced into different game types. The easiest way is earning XP for defeating enemies, but other ways could be introduced as well.

The RPG elements wouldn't just be about levelling up, you'd also have to introduce some sort of advantage for being a higher level as well, otherwise the number would be arbitrary.

Forgive me if I've rambled a bit here and maybe not said some things I should have - It's getting late here and it's unbearably hot for me.

"role playing elements" is kinda a vague and broad term, everything from choice mechanics to stats and/or leveling.

In order to understand whether it would make a game better you'd probably have to be a bit more specific.

Not every game needs leveling or choice, so adding those doesn't automatically make a game better. Halo would be kinda silly if master chief started off with a pea shooter and ended up carrying rocket launcher machine guns and gained a billion shields over the course of the game.

True, it is a vague term, but that's what makes it good. You can add different role playing aspects to your game based on what suited it.

Some could be there as a mini game sort of things, or it could just be a system in place to make the game that bit more customisable. More on that below.

Would role playing elements integrated into a game make it more fun by default? (If done right, of course)

No, and you partly answered yourself already. RPG elements don't automatically make stuff better, since you could do a bad job at implementing them. Also, they don't really bring value into everything. Arbitrarily grinding your stats wouldn't make the game more compelling to play, it would just make it boring - just an example.

With that said, they could be useful and interesting. Ugh, I really should get around to write that thing I have in mind on this exact topic, though. I've been mulling it over for about 2 months. I'll keep it short and link you to the thing when I'm done: you have to plan what you want to do exactly. Here is something to think about - getting 10 levels, may make give your character 10 times more health and 10 times more damage, but if they also fight against enemies with 10 times more health and damage...well, absolutely nothing has changed since level 1, sans having bigger numbers.

What I personally would use in a game, though - I'd go for a point-buy system, instead of levelling. That is, you gain some currency, probably XP (or you can call it something else, doesn't matter) and you use it to upgrade your skills. For example - getting a new rank in Accuracy, costs 10 XP, getting a new rank in Damage, costs 15 XP. Also, I'll not give out XP for kills, instead for certain goals. This could be quests completion (for a more freeroam-y sandbox-y game) or just sort of achievements ("Shoot X amount of guys in the left hand" or "Find Y hidden stashes") or both. The goals/achievements can encourage people to do more stuff in your game but you should use them sparingly - it's sort of lame having to go all around the map just to get that extra boost and upgrade that one stat you need. XP gain should also be focused.

Which is why I added the qualifier "if done right", which, in this case means the RPG elements that have been added in actually have a measurable effect. To elaborate, adding a levelling up system then doing nothing with it, or than representing how many enemies you killed, would be mostly pointless. Although even that would be debatable really.

You're right there. Those sorts of things would be an RPG system used wrongly, although, you'd probably find that a lot of games do that without RPG elements anyway. After all, a lot of games have some sort of progression, where you are weakest in the first level and strongest in the last level, but at the same time the enemies also become harder too, making the increase in power minimal.

That is a good example of how you could use RPG elements to improve a game. Another could be to provide the player with a wide array of abilities, but limit how many they can have. Like Skyrim, actually. In Skyrim, you get more powerful when you use an ability more, but so do the enemies, and while you could potentially become a jack of all trades, you'd be master of none, and much stronger if you focused on one branch. This lets the player customise how they play somewhat, as well as giving them an option to play through again a different way.


Another way is to provide a player the ability to customise the difficulty of the game without having to present them with the options in the first place. You could set it up so the player can make it easier for themselves by doing side missions etc and thus getting more powerful more quickly, or they could choose to power through the game barely being strong enough to take down their foes.