Dan’s Blog

So we had a large play test today on the latest Eternal Silence 3.0. It was sort of bittersweet. I had fun, but got personally frustrated at some point because of all the weapon spam.

Most of our play tests are in the 10-14 people range because we have trouble getting lots of people together. In my mind this is when the game really shines. Teamplay is the most important thing for 16 players or less and the objectives are easy to capture with a little teamwork. The game flows nicely, things move around. No one weapon dominates all others. If you communicate via the microphone, the game is absolutely enjoyable.

Unfortunately, past the 16 player mark things start to deteriorate. The maps are tight, and you start getting groups of 3v3 which end up in bloodbaths. The game gets reduced down to deathmatch as grenade launcher, flamethrowers and ion cannons take up the spotlight.

It’s really difficult to capture anything when the game is that large, and it just ruins the fun for me. All of a sudden the rules break, the whole thing falls apart and rather than being in a giant space assault, you’re back in a multiplayer game. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a problem with ALL multiplayer games out there. The same was true of Insurgency, Battlefield, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike. You name it, they lose their fun at some point.

I think developers these days cram a lot into their games. If 10 players is fun and 16 players is more fun, it seems only fair that 32 players, or even 64 would be absolutely amazing. I’m starting to disagree, I think 16 players is the sweet spot for multiplayer games. Any server can handle it, the extra bandwidth allows you to spend more per player and provide them with a better, more accurate experience. The game plays more predictably and moves gracefully.

That’s why I am seriously considering imposing a maximum server size of 16 or 20 on Eternal Silence. Not for 3.0, since it’s too late for that, but maybe for 3.1. I would much rather have 30 servers with 16 players all having a blast than 15 servers with 32 players in spamfest games which aren’t much fun at all.

The game is balanced, the game is fun. The only problem is things get sticky with more than 16 players, and I really don’t think it’s a design problem I want to tackle. We’re much better off simply imposing the limitation and force every server admin out there to make the game fun. The extra bandwidth we can use on fancier effects and environmental changes.

I’m going to be pushing for this as 3.0 gets released to the public. We’ll see how it fares. All I can say is personally I prefer a smoothly flowing game without stalemates, and with more than 16 players it becomes extremely difficult to do that.

Ok this may seem out of left field, and I know I was supposed to make a nice GDC update, but I’m too busy. I don’t like RPGs, there I said it. I’m afraid of getting pummelled by a bunch of D&D nerds now, but it’s true. I’ve never liked RPGs, and I probably never will. It’s not the idea that I don’t like, hell I think that the idea of being a character in a grand story trying to save a fantasy world is great stuff. My problem lies in the execution.

For some reasons RPGs like to number everything, and I mean everything. This is actually a defining aspect of RPGs. My question is why? Why do I need to have a number associate with how well I can speak or not? Why do I need a number for how good or evil I am? Why is it that RPGs need to publish this information to the player… I was reading about D&D rules (I’ve never played, and I have absolutely no appeal for it), I read that you had to roll a dice to know how lawful/unlawful your character was… but why? Shouldn’t your actions speak for themselves. RPGs should just let these things emerge from the game itself, of course then they wouldn’t be RPGs. The last thing I need in any game I play is a backstab meter.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. Some people thrive on these games and on numbers. They thrive on the sheer complexity of it and admire the amount of possibilities. When I play an RPG I don’t see possibilities, I just see a large set of generic content controlled by a few sliders. Take Oblivion for example. Can a player really tell the different between blacksmith 32 and blacksmith 33? Probably not, which begs the question why are they even presented with the info. Sometimes things just work on their own. People will be people, relationships will change. As a game designer you don’t need to assign numbers to all these things. The best games are the simple ones, the ones that rely on people’s interactions rather than numbers. And if it’s not a multiplayer game, then the best games have well developed characters.

If you asked me, the best RPGs aren’t even RPGs. I want games with clearly defined uses for things, and lots of items, but not some generic crap. Zelda is the best example I can think of for the whole thing… and I know it’s not an RPG but it could very well be. Every item you get in Zelda means something and adds a new dimension. Your player gets progressively stronger throughout the adventure in a meaningful way, and there are side quests and everything. The whole thing is wrapped in a nice convenient package that doesn’t wreak of arithmetic and lame items like “Rusted Small Sword”. The very fact that RPGs need to attach numbers to all their items shows how failed they are. If you pick up a sword, you should know if it’s a better weapon just by looking at it. Have you ever picked up a sword in real life and wondered “I wonder how much DPS I could get on this”.

That’s what bothers me about RPGs… they use numbers to cover up poor game design, and people like it?! Some people live for this stuff, I sure don’t, and you’ll never see me build an RPG. I’ll make games with character progression, items, etc… but it will be deceptively simple and really appreciated by players. The worst part of RPGs is through all this, they manage to make loads of content which is entirely monotone because it has to stick to numbers. Items in Zelda allow me to scale cliffs, ride around on a spinning top, sink to the bottom of a lake etc. It’s actual variety in gameplay rather than the same old number crunching.

Anyways I will stop this rant here before I get really nasty. If you make RPGs, I’m sorry, but make something better.

Dan

So I’m leaving for California tomorrow for the Game Developers Conference. I’m all packed up and ready to go, you will hear more about that as I start writing my trip-log. Anyways I was bored and was reading a bit of Slashdot (news for nerds). I came across this post about the future of video games. That then led me to this blog post about games as art.

So all this got me thinking, and I’m thinking games aren’t really art. I know this is like the most terrible thing for me to say as a game developer, but I think very very few games could be considered art. I say very few because there are bound to be exceptions to this, but your run-of-the-mill FPS like Team Fortress 2 or Halo is not art. No matter how much effort the developers put into these games, it’s still just a commercial product for people to compete in. Compare this to sports, board games etc… I don’t think anyone has ever claimed Monopoly is art, so why on earth are we trying to make Halo art?
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