RPG-like advancement & motivation

pwd · 2001-01-31T08:31:46

Reality check please: Basic concept: RPG-like advancement based upon player/character motivation, rather than traditional kill x monsters, practice skills x times methods. Basically, a characters advancement (improvement of skills/gaining of traits) would be tied in to a driving motivation that would somehow be selected by the player. As they draw nearer to the goal that they have set (for example, a greedy character would advance by gaining more wealth, a character driven by revenge would advance by thwarting their nemesis, etc) they will grow more skillful. Skills that apply more directly to the driving motivation will grow more quickly (for example, haggling/thievery skills for the greedy character). This could possibly work in conjunction with a "class" but I was seeing this more as a replacement. The driving motivation could be selected in one of a number of ways - a flat question: "What motivates you?", a little psychology test (Ultima IV?), or even more subtle - it could be based on initial gameplay. Perhaps the opening area could be a form of test, and the decisions made by the player would affect them for the rest of the game??? AI characters could work on the same motivation system, whether as teammates (perhaps you would have to keep an eye on a teammate with less than noble motivations) or other major characters, as long as the motivation pool were large/varied enough. Some motivations would have to be good/noble/selfless, some bad/ruthless/selfish, and some inbetween. Possible motivations: Greed, Revenge, Power, Justice, Spiritual Enlightenment, etc... Possible Problems: Balancing a wide variety of advancement conditions/skill sets/gameplay formats. Generating a story for each motivation, or tying each motivation into a story may be difficult. Could confuse players - "I gained skills last game by doing this, now I don''t" Possible Advantages: Different forms of gameplay, based on what the player {hopefully} wants. Motivations seem to tie in at a deeper level, not the character is a "thief", but why does the character steal? Kind of sketchy, but any thoughts? Has this been discussed/done before? Have I lost my mind? -pwd

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by pwd January 23, 2001 09:58 PM

55 comments, last by pwd 23 years, 4 months ago

pwd

122

Author

January 25, 2001 08:42 AM

Nazrix,

People are more rounded/complicated than the basic idea that I''ve put forth, but I think this idea would help in making characters in a game closer to that reality - even if it''s tunneling them into another stereotype, at least they are not motivated to be mindless killing machines. (I think this is starting to tie into some of the other threads

)

When I do stuff that goes well with my world view, I will be more motivated to improve myself, while if I do something against my world view, I will not be motivated, and could sink into a depression, etc. For example, I am very much against stealing, and if I were forced into a situation where I had to do that, I would not be trying to get better at doing what I was doing, and that would probably affect other areas of my life as well.

And yes, I am looking at this as a mechanism for skill advancement - possibly being tied into another system. An alternative was applying traits to the character, that would affect their abilities/gameplay in a variety of ways and be determined by their behaviour/motivations.

I feel that it is sort of like an alignment system, but coming from a different angle. It is not a question of good or evil, law or chaos, it is a question of following your own personal goals/desires. I think that this would be applicable to any setting, be it fantasy, science fiction, or modern, multi-player or single player. The original game idea that inspired this was not even an RPG... Perhaps this is part of the reason for the over-simplification/exageration of personality.

This is an attempt to change the fundamental dynamic of gameplay - hopefully giving characters more depth. By using a reward system for the appropriate behaviour, the player will {hopefully} be encouraged to identify with their character more, and really play out the personality they have chosen. By not penalizing this will allow for greater depth of personality, a character can make that other choice without a noticable penalty. If they do it all the time, however, it will become noticable - a sort of penalty for going too far against the personality by denying reward. The idea is to expand the possibilities, not limit them. Hope that makes some sense.

Another way of saying this, is why reward the behaviour we don''t want? If we want players to "roll-play" then reward them for doing so, but if we want them to "role-play" then that is what should be rewarded.

And thanks for the great discussion so far

I would like to see how far this can mature - and if it can make it to implementation.

-pwd

Nazrix

307

January 25, 2001 09:22 AM

Yes, I definitely agree that this is a great step in the right direction.

A little more on advancement...Were you thinking the more the character adheres to the personality type all their skills go up?

Yes, the reward/punishment concept is very important in game design.

Thanks to you too for such an inspiring idea

http://www15.brinkster.com/nazrix/main.html

"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself. "Just don't look at the hole." -- Unspoken_Magi

pwd

122

Author

January 25, 2001 09:56 AM

The actual advancement would depend on the implementation, I see 3 possibilities:
1) Abstract - all skills go up, some may be weighted based on personality/motivation. Probably good for a cross-genre sort of game, that doesn''t want to bog the RPG mechanics down too much.
2) Practice based - Allows for more variation. Skill use/training is tracked, and when the player achieves their advancement criterion, the practiced/trained skills will advance. Allows greater customization of character at the cost of extra complexity. Good for a traditional RPG.
3) A trait/perk system. Kind of like Fallout 2 without the other monster slaughter based advancement. Traits/Perks would be based on the motivation. Maybe could work, but kindof iffy on this one.

I personally like #2 the best, as it allows for a greater variety of character types, but there are cases where a simpler system would be more appropriate.

Nazrix

307

January 25, 2001 11:17 AM

I like #2 as well. This is quite a fascinating idea. If there was a way to allow the player to attain an ultimate "level" in their chosen personality goal, then it could even solve the problem we have talked about where you have an extrememly non-linear game.

In a very non-linear game where the player can do activities (quests or whatever) in any order and none of them are a "main story", then it''s hard to find a way for the game to end.

This could allow there to be an ending not based on a resolution of a story, but when the player reaches the ultimate level of their desire in life.

"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself. "Just don't look at the hole." -- Unspoken_Magi

pwd

122

Author

January 25, 2001 12:06 PM

I agree. I envisioned there being some sort of ultimate level, whether it be x amount of $, the final defeat of a nemesis, or achieving a certain level of spiritual enlightenment - and this being the victory condition/or a victory condition. I still believe that for multiplayer at least, a player should be allowed to continue on for a while if they wish, but they could be confident in the fact that they have already won.

And I like the idea behind non-linear gameplay. There could be chunks of unrelated story(ies), and the player could pick and choose, or ignore them altogether. Some work would have to go into balancing everything vs. the advancement scheme, so that a player could jump into any story at any time and expect to have a chance to complete it.

There seem to be a lot of repurcussions to this idea...

I still see a potential problem in actually tracking some of the more abstract motivations. Some of the more concrete motivations like greed would be childs play, but how would you track say spiritual enlightenment?

I see one possibility being that the player would be drawing closer to their goal by visiting holy sites, going on pilgrimages, and having interactions with spiritual leader NPCs. There could also be other factors as well...

Ultimately, being able to track the motivations will lead to the success or failure of this idea.

Another possibility could be to allow the characters motivation to change over time: If the player consistently makes choices that are not in sync with their original motivation - perhaps they could start to shift, changing the advancement and victory conditions. If we are able to track one motivation, tracking all of them should not be a problem, and perhaps this could lead to even deeper gameplay.

-pwd

Nazrix

307

January 25, 2001 12:16 PM

quote:Original post by pwd

I agree. I envisioned there being some sort of ultimate level, whether it be x amount of $, the final defeat of a nemesis, or achieving a certain level of spiritual enlightenment - and this being the victory condition/or a victory condition. I still believe that for multiplayer at least, a player should be allowed to continue on for a while if they wish, but they could be confident in the fact that they have already won.

Yes, I think that should be an option at least for multiplayer as well.

quote:
And I like the idea behind non-linear gameplay. There could be chunks of unrelated story(ies), and the player could pick and choose, or ignore them altogether. Some work would have to go into balancing everything vs. the advancement scheme, so that a player could jump into any story at any time and expect to have a chance to complete it.

Yes, exactly what I was thinking.

quote:
Another possibility could be to allow the characters motivation to change over time: If the player consistently makes choices that are not in sync with their original motivation - perhaps they could start to shift, changing the advancement and victory conditions. If we are able to track one motivation, tracking all of them should not be a problem, and perhaps this could lead to even deeper gameplay.

I think this should certainly be included. It goes along w/ what I was saying about people being more compex than having one personality type. So, basically, you''d adjust the game according to the most dominant personality trait.

You most certainly have something here

"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself. "Just don't look at the hole." -- Unspoken_Magi

pwd

122

Author

January 25, 2001 09:21 PM

quote:
I think this should certainly be included. It goes along w/ what I was saying about people being more compex than having one personality type. So, basically, you''d adjust the game according to the most dominant personality trait.

Now, would it be possible to keep this change from being too abrupt? There would have to be a way of giving the motivations a rating, so that as the player starts shifting, one will phase in and one will phase out. You would start receiving less reward for following the original motivation, but would start gaining reward for the new motivation. It would still be possible to go back to focusing on the original motivation, and phasing the new motivation back out. It could be possible to balance more than one motivation, for example, a character seeking revenge, but also a little greedy, they would gain from following the revenge goals, and would get a lesser reward for the greed. There would probably have to be a minimum level of a motivation to be able to win off of its victory condition. Maybe at least 60%. This would probably be limited to two different motivations at once, just to keep things from getting too complex

You don''t normally just wake up one morning, and realize that your basic philosophy is off...

Perhaps a sort of listlessness would settle in if a player started following two diametrically opposed motivations consistently?

Would definately have to pay particular attention to the tracking mechanism - for example, what if a player decided to emulate Robin Hood? He''s robbing from the rich (greed) and giving to the poor (charity). The greed motivation would probably have to be an accumulation, you would have to hold onto what you obtain, whether it be gold or items. So you could purchase, say a decorative fur cloak with the money you just stole, and as long as you keep the cloak for a signifigant period of time, it would qualify as greed. However, in the Robin Hood example, because the player is only holding on to the money for a short period of time, they will only qualify for the charity of giving to the poor.

Or, take the Robin Hood example again. What if the player were to steal from a rich baron, give the money to a beggar, and then steal it again? Or worse yet, attempt to start an infinite loop, stealing from the beggar, giving it back, then stealing again. Most likely, there would have to be a delay mechanism in the reward system to prevent this sort of behaviour. For greed, the wealth would have to stay in the players possession for a few days, and for charity, it would have to stay in the receivers possession for a few days for the reward calculation. An event que? (spelling, that definately does not look right, but I''m tired)

Any other ideas for a good tracking mechanism/ways of judging player intent? Or potentially difficult situations?

-pwd

Nazrix

307

January 26, 2001 10:22 AM

Great thoughts.

I would like it to be possible to balance more than one motivation, but it should be difficult. Perhaps, it could be even like being "two-faced". Like you show the greedy side around the NPCs who are also greedy, and try to look good or nice around the the nice NPCs.

This starts getting into combining systems...but if there was a reputation system or something of the sort, perhaps some NPCs may not accept the player''s generocity if they really hate the player. Or maybe if they''re self-rightous and don''t want help (like a nobleman or something). That way the player isn''t just handing out things to everyone so that he attains a generocity motivation.

Also, as far as giving things, there should be more points allocated according to the worth of the item. The player should be rewarded more for giving $100 than giving $1.

BTW, not to be picky, but it''s spelled "queue"

"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself. "Just don't look at the hole." -- Unspoken_Magi

Anonymous

January 26, 2001 11:22 AM

I think the reputation factor would be a possibility. A greedy character could be nominally generous when being watched - but "character is who you are when noone is watching". With a proper weighting system, this could well be accomplished.

The Robin Hood infinite loop example was probably not the greatest (a halfway decent AI wouldn''t allow for it to happen). I was trying to think of ways that the system could break down/be exploited. I think the idea of delayed rewards would help make the system more robust. Set an event, and then check a set of conditions (stored in the event) at a later point in time to ensure that it is valid. This is one way I can think of of trying to judge player intentions. And it should work out, you wouldn''t immediately reap the rewards of your actions.

I was thinking of storing the amount of wealth an NPC had - the less they had, and the more you gave the greater the reward (if you have the generosity motivation). If they are past the self-sufficiency level (and don''t have the greedy motivation - bribes could work this way!) they would refuse the handout, possibly getting offended. And if you give them enough wealth, and tried to give them more at a later point, then they would refuse...

The Robin Hood example does show how the non-linearity could work with this system - the player could come across a town, with a rich noble and destitute peasants. They could just ignore it, or there could be a little story depending on how they decide to deal with it. Characters with different motivations would see the situation differently, for example the greedy character would see it as an opportunity to acquire some wealth, the charitable character could decide to redistribute the wealth, the vengeful character might have a beef with the noble, or the nobles superior, a chivalrous character might want to challenge the nobles knights to a joust, etc... But it wouldn''t be vital to do anything at all about the situation. Of course, doing something or not doing something could have repurcussions elsewhere, but it wouldn''t bring the game to a halt either way.

No problem on the spelling correction, I was tired, and no matter how I wrote it, it still looked wrong

-pwd

Nazrix

307

January 26, 2001 11:56 AM

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster

I think the reputation factor would be a possibility. A greedy character could be nominally generous when being watched - but "character is who you are when noone is watching". With a proper weighting system, this could well be accomplished.

Yes, very good point. Reputation and character should be basically seperate.

quote:
I was thinking of storing the amount of wealth an NPC had - the less they had, and the more you gave the greater the reward (if you have the generosity motivation). If they are past the self-sufficiency level (and don''t have the greedy motivation - bribes could work this way!) they would refuse the handout, possibly getting offended. And if you give them enough wealth, and tried to give them more at a later point, then they would refuse...

Yes, that''s a better idea.

quote:
The Robin Hood example does show how the non-linearity could work with this system - the player could come across a town, with a rich noble and destitute peasants. They could just ignore it, or there could be a little story depending on how they decide to deal with it. Characters with different motivations would see the situation differently, for example the greedy character would see it as an opportunity to acquire some wealth, the charitable character could decide to redistribute the wealth, the vengeful character might have a beef with the noble, or the nobles superior, a chivalrous character might want to challenge the nobles knights to a joust, etc... But it wouldn''t be vital to do anything at all about the situation. Of course, doing something or not doing something could have repurcussions elsewhere, but it wouldn''t bring the game to a halt either way.

Yeah this is really a great opportunity for having the game be very different for different players. I have thought about letting players deal w/ situations in different ways to add non-linearity, but this rewards players for being consistant w/ their character. This is such a clever idea. I can''t believe that only you & I are talking about it

quote:
No problem on the spelling correction, I was tired, and no matter how I wrote it, it still looked wrong

"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself. "Just don't look at the hole." -- Unspoken_Magi

RPG-like advancement & motivation

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