May 2001

Change with Care
Posted Monday, May 7, 2001 by
PanzerMagi

Words from the Magi
Change with Care

Recently, discussions on the Forgotten World boards have touched on a few sensitive spots for me. In particular, folks have begun to suggest changing some things which I've always thought were central to making Neverwinter work. Such suggestions have raised what has always been my greatest fear about Forgotten World: The world will be improved so much, it'll suck.

There are plenty of things about the original that folks want to change that I was fond of. For one thing, there's death. I not only liked the fact that there was no real harm in death in NWN, I hold it to be central to what made the game great. It kept the game a game - a place to have fun. Challenges should involve attaining success, not in losing it. When you penalize death, you take away something that the player has achieved, rather than simply withholding success.

Discussion has also emerged about what to do to reduce fight bashing. Whatever you call it, triggering the same fight over-and-over again does transfigure adventuring into a sort of "critter farming". That being said, I think the emphasis here should be on coping with the problems caused by bashing. Simply trying to remove bashing because we don't care for it or don't approve of it is a dangerous tack to take with game design. It's fine if you make sure that bashing isn't *necessary* by creating other viable ways for players to max and equip themselves, but you shouldn't remove an aspect of the game just because you don't approve of it.

Bashing had problems - like traffic congestion, for instance. The Vilnask dracs were notoriously bad for creating horrendous congestion difficulties, and I think such congestion should definitely be dealt with. However, part of the reason why the Vilnask dracs were so congested was that they were fun - both as a way to score items, and as a place to hang out and chat. Players enjoyed them, and we shouldn't be too quick to remove things that players enjoyed.

So, instead, we should deal with the problem: Congestion. One way would be for an automatic teleport after battle, sending you out of the fight so you'd have to run back through the gauntlet of battles leading up to the dracs themselves. This would work, but I fear it would destroy one of the game-improving aspects of such battles - the chat and "hanging out" which took place. You don't exactly have time to yammer if you have to race through the battles leading to the dracs each time you defeat them. In fact, if anything, this would turn such battles into *pure* item harvest attempts. There would no longer be the means nor the incentive for chatting and getting to know your fellow player.

The method I'd prefer would be for the occasional automatic death trig - a battle which would be impossible to win or to flee, and which would have a chance of being triggered any time there were more than a few players waiting for a spot at the fight. This would encourage folks to leave of their own free will periodically to go identify and save items, as well as ensuring that the spot never became so crowded that it led to flaring tempers and frayed nerves.

The death trig should be lethal and all inclusive - it should kill everyone on the square, and suck everyone on the square into it. It solves the problem created by bashing, without taking away from some of the good things bashing accomplishes.

I'm also a bit worried about changes to racial restrictions - I liked the fact that the races were different. That there wasn't much reason to play a gnome. That Dwarves and Elves were *different* from humans, and that choosing to play one involved more consideration than "What would I like to role play?"

Sure, I think that player pressure should come to bear on this - by including Drow amongst the player races, for instance. It was a bit silly for all those Drow wanna-be types, running around with the skin paint and ear falsies.

I've got nothing against adding more races to FW than we used to have, but the fact is there are lots of games out there with oodles of player race and class choices - some of what made NWN cool was that there were, in reality, few to pick from. It meant that we all generally *started* from similar points, and what made us different was what we chose to do with those similar beginnings.

It's sort of like PvP. Most folks were clams, and those clams had the same spell grimoires to choose from. What defined success was *how* they used those grimoires - what they chose to mem, and when they chose to use it. It was a level playing field, and that made things interesting. Once you bring things like specialization into the mixture, suddenly classes become even more specialized. Like the spellcaster that can't swing a weapon at all. Even a human mage could wield a dagger in Neverwinter, and that improved the game. A maxxed clam might not be as good for melee beastie slaying as a Palm or Ram, but they *could* kill things that way.

With specialization of skills, a clam made for PvP probably wouldn't have *any* critter killing skill, and that hurts the game as a whole. Suddenly you have players running around with characters that *can't* participate effectively in non-PvP, as opposed to characters that *don't* participate in non-PvP.

This, of course, isn't guaranteed - it's just a significant danger. I've played games with specialization, and I hated the fact that to be "successful" you needed to specialize. I enjoy games where most players have, by default, a bit of the jack-of-all-trades. The fact that we all share so many skills in common makes the differences between us all the more enjoyable. Lose the commonality of skill, and you lose some of the commonality of player. Like making it so that in-game chat from different races showed up as indecipherable gobbledy-gook to each other, such changes might reflect reality, but they don't necessarily make for a good gaming environment.

Keeping abilities as something defined by character class is good because it means that when you select a class, you're choosing a set of abilities - both ones you want, and ones you don't. Allow players too much flexibility in picking their characters, and you'll see characters become specially designed for specific tasks - and unable to participate in aspects of the game. We don't need to build barriers to game accessibility for any players - whether the players want them or not.

I believe strongly that we need to measure each aspect of the game by the following standard: Will it help Forgotten World to achieve the level of player interaction that we had in our old home? I realize that we aren't trying purely to build a clone of NWN - but we *are* trying to match its incredible player environment. Neverwinter worked because we did things with each other. We hung out. We yammered. We killed critters together. We killed each other.

The bane of multiplayer gaming is anything which encourages extensive solo activity. Solo activities in Neverwinter were limited largely to group-supportive activities. Scrolling to prepare for PvP, for instance. Or rolling exp over your next million to reset your saves - such as I was known to do in Westbridge on occasion.

Things we do together by choice will make Forgotten World stronger and better. Those we do by ourselves will not. This doesn't mean we should start fighting solo hunting, of course - just that we should be sure and protect those activities which folks enjoyed doing en masse.

Remember that not everything which you hated should be changed. What we want and what is good for us is not always the same. Some of the things which we clamored for in Neverwinter could have hurt us - like melee PvP. Or character death from old age.

Sure, there are some things I'd like to see changed. Like hacking - it's part of the old game I don't miss one bit. Character loss is another I could do without. Not to mention item loss on punts. Heck, punts themselves, for that matter. What I don't want to see changed are the things which we enjoyed to do - even if we didn't all enjoy them. Nor do I think that all of the restrictions we operated under were a bad thing - even if some of us felt held back by them.

Gnomes should suck. Clams should be able to swing a flail with competence. You should be able to hang out and bash the dracs. The introductory music at the opening credits should be cheesy. Maxxing should take a reasonable amount of time. Death shouldn't be the end of the world.

All of us want to make the Forgotten World as good as it can possibly be. We just need to remember that part of that goal might necessarily be to also make it as bad as it was.