Learning by doing systems (long post warning)
Posted: 27 Feb 2006, 04:22
The purpose of a stat system in an rpg is a) to be plausible to the player and b) to motivate players to play the game as it is supposed to be played. Most game designers who use a LBD (learning by doing) system in their game have either a very strange idea how their games should be played or they horribly fail at the latter. The reason is that they try to make the system as authentic as possible while forgetting the results for the gameplay. That way they accidently create a lot of design problems. Realism is generally a good thing but only when it adds to the playing value instead of lowering it. i would like to point out the most common problems of LBD systems so that we needn't make the same errors:
Getting a reward for getting beaten up
Some LBD Systems do something really stupid: they award characters for letting the enemies beat them up. they do this by awarding exp for the defensive stats when the character loses hit points. the more hits the character takes the higher his def stats will raise. this system means basically the game rewards the player for playing bad. of course it would be unfair when an archer or mage in the 2nd line gets as much def stats as the warrior who takes all the beating, but that players torture their chars for hours to make them more tough instead of protecting them can't be the right way to play a game.
Goal: The increasing of defensive stats may not be propotional to the amount of damage the character takes.
Too many stats that are raised by the same action making specialisation impossible
One problem of most LBD systems is that the player can't really influence the direction their combat stats evolve to. The character for example has a weapon profincy stat, a strength stat, a parry stat and a health stat. when he fights in the often fully automatic combats all of these stats increase depending on the outcome of the fight. when he receives a lot of damage his hp increase, when he hits a lot his stength increases and so on. but the player got not many posibilities to influence the development of his character.
Goal: Every aspect of the playing style of the player should affect one stat and not more
Making inefficient playstyles more exp rewarding
There is something else that is weird with many LBD systems. They raise offensive stats equal to the number of successful hits or the ammount of damage they deal. that means instead of encouraging the players to defeat enemies as quickly and efficient as possible they encourage them to make the fights as long as possible. it may even lead to the weird situation that players use weaker attacks or even heal their enemies to gain as many exp per enemy as possible.
Goal: Support a high kill count instead of weird playing styles.
Giving stats for useless behavior
This weakness of LBD system often applies to magic skills. instead of rewarding the player for using their offensive and defensive magic in combat they give exp whenever they use it. this might be a plausible approach from the realistic point of view but the result is indeed weird: people running around blasting their spells at everything that moves and senseless healing and buffing of strangers. of course mages would have more fun when they would use their spells only when necessary. but we are talking about MMORPG Gamers here. MMORPG Gamers are always powergamers. they want to advance as fast as possible and they expect it to be fun that way.
Goal: no reward for useless skill spamming
No awards for specialisation
In a level and statpoint based system you are forced to specialize because stat points are rare and when you aren't very good at something specific it will get more and more difficult to gain levels. When you put statpoints onto the wrong skills your character might become too weak for his level and eventually unplayable. But in a LBD system you can learn new skills whenever you want without limiting the posibility to raise your main skills later. This may sound good, but the problem is that it seduces the players to create "omni characters" who can do everything and have no weaknesses.
Goal: encourage players to specialize but do not limit their posibilities
THE SOLUTION
-killing monsters (and not just fighting them) is the only way to gain exp for combat related skills
-every monster is worth a fixed ammount of exp
-the exp are divided up evenly on all skills that helped defeating it
-exp for indirect combat skills (like healing and buffing) is only awarded when they influenced the outcome of a fight
Examples:
Monster X is 30 exp points worth and is defeated
-Player one received a significant amount of damage* from the monster
-Player one inflicted a significant amount of damage* with his sword
-Player one inflicted a significant amount of damage* with fire magic
-Player two inflicted a significant amount of damage* with his bow
-Player two healed a significant amount of damage* with his healing magic that has been inflicted upon a player that received a significant amount of damage* from the monster (Player one)
-Player one had an ice magic based buff from Player two most of the time**
)*a significant amount of damage should be about 10% of the max. hp
)** most of the time should be about 75% of the time between the first and the last hit
That would mean that player one receives 5 points for his health, sword and fire skills while player 2 receives 5 points for his bow, healing and ice skills.
this reaches most of the goals above but one: the specialisation problem. i thought about some ways to do this but i am still not sure which one is the best:
Explicitly reward specialisation
A mage for example who has low combat skills might even become more powerful at spellcasting.
Making many different high skills difficult to archive
This could be done by either increasing the exp needed to raise lower skills when the char already got some much higher skills or making the character "forget" skills he doesn't use while concentrating on raising others. this wouldn't make omni chars impossible but it would require much more work to raise them.
Role Switching
Another way would be to allow players to become a warrior archer spellcaster cleric thief when they want to, but not everything at the same time. one way to reach this might be to limit the number of skills that are available at the same time like guildwars does. another way would be to specialize equipment (swords and plate armors might have a horrible penalty for spellcasting while robes and wands are useless in melee combat) and make it impossible to swap equipment outside of citys. that would give characters the chance to play every role they want but not the chance to switch roles spontanously. that would also add a lot of strategical depth to dungeon raids when fighting the boss requires a different equipment than fighting the small mobs on the way to him. The mob killers got to protect the boss killers until they reach the boss and then the tasks switch and the boss killers got to protect the mob killers.
Getting a reward for getting beaten up
Some LBD Systems do something really stupid: they award characters for letting the enemies beat them up. they do this by awarding exp for the defensive stats when the character loses hit points. the more hits the character takes the higher his def stats will raise. this system means basically the game rewards the player for playing bad. of course it would be unfair when an archer or mage in the 2nd line gets as much def stats as the warrior who takes all the beating, but that players torture their chars for hours to make them more tough instead of protecting them can't be the right way to play a game.
Goal: The increasing of defensive stats may not be propotional to the amount of damage the character takes.
Too many stats that are raised by the same action making specialisation impossible
One problem of most LBD systems is that the player can't really influence the direction their combat stats evolve to. The character for example has a weapon profincy stat, a strength stat, a parry stat and a health stat. when he fights in the often fully automatic combats all of these stats increase depending on the outcome of the fight. when he receives a lot of damage his hp increase, when he hits a lot his stength increases and so on. but the player got not many posibilities to influence the development of his character.
Goal: Every aspect of the playing style of the player should affect one stat and not more
Making inefficient playstyles more exp rewarding
There is something else that is weird with many LBD systems. They raise offensive stats equal to the number of successful hits or the ammount of damage they deal. that means instead of encouraging the players to defeat enemies as quickly and efficient as possible they encourage them to make the fights as long as possible. it may even lead to the weird situation that players use weaker attacks or even heal their enemies to gain as many exp per enemy as possible.
Goal: Support a high kill count instead of weird playing styles.
Giving stats for useless behavior
This weakness of LBD system often applies to magic skills. instead of rewarding the player for using their offensive and defensive magic in combat they give exp whenever they use it. this might be a plausible approach from the realistic point of view but the result is indeed weird: people running around blasting their spells at everything that moves and senseless healing and buffing of strangers. of course mages would have more fun when they would use their spells only when necessary. but we are talking about MMORPG Gamers here. MMORPG Gamers are always powergamers. they want to advance as fast as possible and they expect it to be fun that way.
Goal: no reward for useless skill spamming
No awards for specialisation
In a level and statpoint based system you are forced to specialize because stat points are rare and when you aren't very good at something specific it will get more and more difficult to gain levels. When you put statpoints onto the wrong skills your character might become too weak for his level and eventually unplayable. But in a LBD system you can learn new skills whenever you want without limiting the posibility to raise your main skills later. This may sound good, but the problem is that it seduces the players to create "omni characters" who can do everything and have no weaknesses.
Goal: encourage players to specialize but do not limit their posibilities
THE SOLUTION
-killing monsters (and not just fighting them) is the only way to gain exp for combat related skills
-every monster is worth a fixed ammount of exp
-the exp are divided up evenly on all skills that helped defeating it
-exp for indirect combat skills (like healing and buffing) is only awarded when they influenced the outcome of a fight
Examples:
Monster X is 30 exp points worth and is defeated
-Player one received a significant amount of damage* from the monster
-Player one inflicted a significant amount of damage* with his sword
-Player one inflicted a significant amount of damage* with fire magic
-Player two inflicted a significant amount of damage* with his bow
-Player two healed a significant amount of damage* with his healing magic that has been inflicted upon a player that received a significant amount of damage* from the monster (Player one)
-Player one had an ice magic based buff from Player two most of the time**
)*a significant amount of damage should be about 10% of the max. hp
)** most of the time should be about 75% of the time between the first and the last hit
That would mean that player one receives 5 points for his health, sword and fire skills while player 2 receives 5 points for his bow, healing and ice skills.
this reaches most of the goals above but one: the specialisation problem. i thought about some ways to do this but i am still not sure which one is the best:
Explicitly reward specialisation
A mage for example who has low combat skills might even become more powerful at spellcasting.
Making many different high skills difficult to archive
This could be done by either increasing the exp needed to raise lower skills when the char already got some much higher skills or making the character "forget" skills he doesn't use while concentrating on raising others. this wouldn't make omni chars impossible but it would require much more work to raise them.
Role Switching
Another way would be to allow players to become a warrior archer spellcaster cleric thief when they want to, but not everything at the same time. one way to reach this might be to limit the number of skills that are available at the same time like guildwars does. another way would be to specialize equipment (swords and plate armors might have a horrible penalty for spellcasting while robes and wands are useless in melee combat) and make it impossible to swap equipment outside of citys. that would give characters the chance to play every role they want but not the chance to switch roles spontanously. that would also add a lot of strategical depth to dungeon raids when fighting the boss requires a different equipment than fighting the small mobs on the way to him. The mob killers got to protect the boss killers until they reach the boss and then the tasks switch and the boss killers got to protect the mob killers.