Gameplay: Representation vs. Abstraction

Had a random thought while playing Bravely Default tonight. So as you may know, when you're using a Black Mage and cast something like Fire, you can choose to cast it on one enemy or all enemies. The trade-off for casting on all is that the damage is dispersed, but it's a valuable choice. However, the battles are turn-based, so if it gets to the Black Mage and there's only one foe left, the damage is focused back on one as if it had been a single cast. The game is forgiving in that sense; you're not punished for choosing all foes and you're not expected to be that granular with your strategy. And it makes sense "realistically" too. There's no reason for Ringabel to blindly torch a wide area. He would adjust his target as conditions changed. But not all games make this assumption.

It got me thinking about turn-based battles as they relate to a game's "reality" and I realized there's two ways to handle it. Either the turn-based battle is an abstraction of the "real" battle that is ostensibly occurring in the game's world--a dynamic showdown with real-time parries, blows and blocks (think Pokemon battles in game vs. in the show)--or it's representative of the game's reality, either by the designers embracing and acknowledging the 'gamey-ness' or simply by never addressing it explicitly. I suppose embracing it would be a form of Lampshade Hanging and might be more for humorous games that like to rub against the fourth wall. Ignoring it just relies on the usual suspension of disbelief gamers have had to develop over the years. I think a good example of combat that's Representative is Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (I sadly have yet to play the original, but it may be the same) where the game sort of embraces AND disregards (narratively) the battle system. The rules are presented to the player in tutorials in a very straightforward way, but it's not really lampshade hanging, because it's not treating it as odd or a threat to the suspension of disbelief. It also seems to take the action in game at face value. That is, the turn-based grid battles are not presented as an abstraction of the action, rather they are the action. The cutscenes don't try to imply that something more exciting just occurred underneath the game you're playing, if that makes any sense.

Back to Bravely Default, it could be a valid design choice to make players more closely consider the relative speeds of party members and disperse the damage of spellcasts whether the conditions under which you chose to do so have changed or not. But it would raise questions about what exactly your battles are, as far as the game is concerned. It's a subtle distinction, but I think the best game worlds will have a solid handle on where they stand.

Ganking in MMORPGs

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/01/28/the-soapbox-stop-ganking-you-ganking-gankers/

Reading this, I was trying to imagine some kind of "fight-or-flight" engagement system that could preserve the freedom of open-world PvP without the headache of completely unfair ganks.

I'm imagining the scene as if it were in a movie: you're traveling the landscape and you're set upon by a superior foe. There's a stand-off as you assess each other's abilities. You could try to fight, but you know you're better off running. He lifts his sword and charges, but you dodge and make a break for it instead...

This feels more like the dynamic we want when a max level enemy player wants to fight out in the wild. I can't think of any MMORPGs I've played that have a combat system that supports this. Most have some kind of engage move that you use on players and non-players alike and then you just duke it out and CC until one of you wins. Players sometimes have the ability to disengage and run, but you're never given that choice in a ganking situation. I know when I want to get the drop on people, I do it when they're low on heath and/or in the middle of fighting some NPC enemies.

So lets have some kind of Standoff mode that engages when enemy players come into range of each other. Cameras focus on the foe, your characters slowly approach each other, weapons are drawn. At this point, you choose to fight or to run. If both players choose to fight the battle continues as normal, if one chooses to run, then they use some sort of disengage that allows them to flee with reasonable certainty that they'll escape. This could be a faster run, a big dodge roll, a teleportation, something that gives them an escape advantage. the trade-off here is that fleeing players lose their ability to re-engage effectively until they've fully escaped. Fighting players have engaged too fully to give proper chase.

Now this eliminates the gank as we know it. Both players must choose to engage for the fight to continue and surprising someone isn't the same sort of experience. You can still make a weaker player cower in your presence, but you won't be able to beat them mercilessly unless they foolishly choose to fight. Some considerations:

Enemy NPCs will need to managed. If a player is fighting monsters when a standoff begins, those monsters will either need to disengage or be otherwise managed so the fight between players is given proper attention. I like the idea of them cowering or wandering off until the fight is finished, but the implications of that need to be considered (players gaming the system to handle monster fights, logical/thematic appropriateness, etc).

Stealth is a popular role, and such characters wouldn't approach a fight the same as a warrior or paladin. I think some concession could be made for an initial backstab that applies damage, poison, or some other debuff, after which the Standoff proceeds as normal. In this way the satisfaction of getting the drop on a player from stealth is maintained while still giving those players the choice to fight or flee.

There's obviously other concerns, but I think this could ease one of the major pain points for players on open-world PvP. 

Game musings and differentiation

So I wanted to start a separate blog to organize some of my thoughts on games, movies, and other entertainment. My other blog, (http://nickmatthewsart.blogspot.com/) is meant to be a place for me to post my sketches and character designs, but I've let it lapse into inactivity long ago. Since entering the working world my idle time has mostly evaporated, which is honestly where my best ideas were formed before. Sitting in a boring class, waiting for a ride, or drawing because I had nothing better to do--these scenarios bred innovation for me and I don't often encounter them in wild these days.

I plan to step that up in the coming months, but to start, I'll begin this new blog, Nickstravaganza, to collect my thoughts on games, stories, maybe life itself. It's not meant to be like my LiveJournal of the past, more of a reference for my ideas that are usually wasted in the comment section of Reddit or Massively.