Ah, the cry of the long term gamer, heard often as new versions or sequels of their favorite games come out and they’re simplified, or streamlined, or optimized, or one of a dozen buzzwords all gaming industries use to describe their games.
The buzzwords are pretty pathetic (since every company picks a new one), but there’s a deeper issue here. Why are gamers bemoaning less complicated designs?
Rewan took the time to talk about the gamer’s view of the industry last week, and I’m thankful he did, since now I can balance it with the designer’s look at the gamer this week!
When games get simplified, their established player base often lashes out at the new version for being ‘dumbed down.’ Rewan’s post approached this topic, describing the backwards trend of the Fable series. I guarantee, he was much more reasonable about it than some fans!
Another grand example is Dungeons and Dragons. I won’t go into the oldest versions (Though I have read and tried to play ‘Classic’), but I want to focus in on 3rd edition against 4th edition.
3rd edition was a remarkably flexible system without changing the rules. Because of things like skill ranks, you could micromanage your characters abilities to a razor edge, and the ‘best’ players did. If you add in other things, like spell casting and multiclassing you could eventually end up with any character you wanted. After a few dozen levels of play.
Then 4th edition came along. 4th Edition simplified almost everything. Skills now had a binary state (Trained or Untrained), advancement happened at the same rate for everyone, no matter what class you chose. And they introduced Powers. Powers functioned much like the spells of 3rd edition, but everyone got them, and they were the primary place the flavor of your character came from. With a little work, you could make the character you want to play right now, and then see where the game takes them.
Now, obviously, a lot of players were a bit upset about the changes, and 4th edition has been unfavorably compared to the Devil himself, but the design was a solid thing that produced some wonderful game play. For certain things! And no, I don’t mean the ‘roll playing’ vs ‘role playing’ dichotomy, stop that right now!
There’s a quote I love that I keep in mind when I go about playing with design:
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Complexity, in and of itself, is not a good thing. If two games can produce a similar experience, with a similar end result, the one that is less complex is the better game. So while Mass Effect had a much more complex and customizable character creation system, a large portion of the choice was illusory, as only every fifth or so point actually changed the way the game was played. Mass Effect 2 took care of this by making every character point matter. That’s a good thing. (I’ve not finished Mass Effect 2, so I won’t comment on the game holistically, but the character sheet is much better than Mass Effect.)
So do me a favor, the next time you call something ‘dumbed down’ make sure it’s not just trying to deliver a similar experience easier.
Your turn! Give me an analysis of two games, comparing a complex game to a similar, but simpler, game in the comments!
This is something I frequently come across being on the Bioware Social Network and seeing a lot of so-called “true” fans speak for the rest of us about what Mass Effect should be.
I think the biggest fire storm was caused over Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2. I much preferred the combat and skill trees in DA2, they kind of just slimmed it down and gave you more abilities to pick from rather than just spending a point on improving your weapons spec, how well you pick locks or your ability to persuade/intimidate someone.
There’s certainty a balance to be met, but just in my opinion I think DA2 had a better system. They just needed to keep a few small things from the first game and it would have been really great.
P.S – I am putting that quote in my list of clever sayings to remember.
I haven’t played either Dragon Age to comment reliably, but I’ve heard two arguments about both games. The primary one I discussed up above: A large outcry of ‘they’re dumbing it down!’ But another group has told me the story in DA2 is not nearly as good as DA. That’s a point of contention I can get behind. Quality writing in modern RPGs is as important as quality writing in movies, if not more so. (Would you suffer through a bad script for 100 hours as compared to 2?)
Obviously, some people like more complex systems, and for those people, I totally get preferring the more complex game, but to call out the simpler one as bad just because it isn’t as complex is a pretty folly argument.
With Dragon Age 2, I thought the combat and skill trees were definitely improved from Origins, but I definitely had a beef with the way Hawke interacted with her companions. In Origins, you could start a conversation with them anywhere — and sometimes those convos led to unique side quests and character development — and there were tons of options for how you created the relationship with that character. In DA2, you can ONLY talk to them at their home base, and even then it’s only at certain specified times in game play — once or twice per act. That…sucked.
As for the story, I actually liked it. I enjoyed Hawke’s character and what they did with a couple other characters who had been introduced in Origins and Awakening (the logical progression of Anders from goofball to compassionate “abomination” to vengeful man taken over by a spirit in particular). What I didn’t like was the relationship aspect of the game. The quests were generally pretty interesting (MUCH more so than Fable 3′s “go fetch” bazillion quests), and I thought the emphasis on politics played well into the culmination of Origins and the Awakening expansion.
I hear that outcry every time the designers of World of Warcraft make a change, especially in the talent trees for the different class specs. For someone like me, who’s a casual player and doesn’t have hours to spend researching before assigning each new talent point, I appreciate the streamlining as it allows me to actually spend my time playing the game.
You just hit on the key part of my general arguments when this comes up. (I bet everyone can tell this is a topic I spend a lot of time on!) Streamlining and simplifying a game system is made to make it easier to access so that you have more players. That’s a key design goal and is good for almost every game. I don’t play WOW, but my brother does, and we talk design on a regular basis, so I keep abreast of the things they’re doing. The new talent system is the most brilliant thing I’ve heard out of WOW since its inception, and I’ve almost decided to jump in to see it in action! This coming from someone who categorically dislikes MMOs in general!
Very illuminating, and thanks for referring to me as reasonable (well, more reasonable than most)! I suppose, having read your thoughts Patrick, that I’m not against streamlining; I think what game developers perhaps have yet to perfect is a game where you can do the customisation or not – for those that want to do it, it enhances the game, for those that don’t, they don’t even notice that there are things they are not doing. Kind of like how in the Total War series, (from Rome onwards), if you just want to fight the battles, you can have the computer manage your settlements, and vice versa.
I’ll agree, there may be a lot of things, especially among video games, that can be done to customize the experience that aren’t being done yet. Mass Effect, the first one, took a dramatic first step with its automatic autolevel option. You grab the soldier and autolevel and Mass Effect can be a straight shooter. That’s an absolutely good thing!
For my time in Mass Effect 2, I love the customization there, because it took a key problem with Mass Effect’s mechanics, and fixed it so that every level mattered. Now the rest of the game play was really up to taste. The much smaller number of abilities, the more focused shooter elements. There’s definitely potential problems there!
Thanks for stopping by again, and you’re definitely a reasonable conversationalist! That’s what game design discussions need.
This afternoon my son gave me a short dissertation on the differences between Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. He hasn’t played New Vegas, only watched videos of it. His main complaint was that New Vegas had too much ammunition, that after an apocalypse you wouldn’t be able to find tons of bullets…or something like that. I grew up playing Monopoly…
While his logic is sound, I’ve heard some really good things about New Vegas in general and I think he should withhold judgement until he plays it.
As for growing up on monopoly: Most everyone did. It’s a credit to the power of Milton Bradley (EDIT: I of course, meant Parker Brothers), and then Hasbro. But really, most of their games are decades or more out of date, and someone has developed games that do what they did, better. Always worth trying out something new!