Kotaku conducts what is possibly the best round-up of GTA:IV reviews in this inspired review of the reviews.

Pure gold and, (I hope) a new regular feature?

David Sirlin is one of the smartest game designers that I’ve read. In particular he opened my eyes to the design requirements for making and playing games at the highest levels of competition something that I, as a generally casual player of multiplayer games was never really all that aware of.

Here’s him in an interview about the soon to be released Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix which is in charge of balancing.

The last question and answer made me smile.

Does it still look like moves are connecting in the right spots where they did in the past?

DS: It does. I think we’re saved here by, if you analyse what the original game was like, it’s much worse than you think. You think it was pretty good, but there’s all kinds of cases where moves are intersecting pretty far before they hit, or even more cases the other way around, where you think they’re not even close to hitting but they hit — and you get tricked by the hit spark.

We actually had one version of the game that had no hit sparks, and I thought the entire game was broken or something: how come people are hitting from so far away, and nothing looks right? It’s just that those hit sparks solve all your problems for free. There’s a much bigger margin of error than you might realize. I think we’re within the margin.

When we were developing Cars we ran into this exact problem. No matter what we did, collisions would seem off, either cars would overlap or they’d bounce off the air, sometimes both in the same build. It wasn’t until the lead artist added in hit sparks for the collisions that everything came together. Once that visual queue was in place, the exact same hit behaviour seemed smooth and flawless.

Nice to know that Capcom arrived at the same solution all those years ago.

but reading essays like this and this make me want to have.

This is my entrance in James Portnow’s Game Design Challenge. The goal is to create the character types for a fantasy MMO that is group-centric but that does not simply roll out the tired old classes. Based on the preliminary discussion in the forums it seems like most people are going the direction of inventing new fictions for their classes and deriving mechanics from that. I went at it from the opposite direction.

The Goals

1) Create a brand new way to play.

Move away from the classes have defined Fantasy Games since Dungeons and Dragons got started. CAUTION: We need to consider that we don’t want to be TOO different. A totally unfamiliar fantasy world risks confusing and turning players off our game.

2) Game to be group centric.

Make it easy for groups of friends who want to get together to work together irrespective of the avatars that they have created. Tear down the two biggest barriers to being able to just group with your pals.
a) Lack of flexibility in roles: If I have 5 friends but we are all damage dealers, we are doomed to SHOUTing “LF healers” instead of going into battle.
b) Low level characters can’t adventure with high level friends: If I am a level 15 and my friends all quest for a few days and reach level 22 while I’m off doing exams or whatever, they are taking on challenges that I can’t survive. THAT SUCKS.

3) Bonus goal.

Could we please resolve the issue that if I want to try out a different class I need to create a new character, thus resetting all of my relationships with other players?

Proposal – No Character Classes

Do away with character classes. Avatar advancement no longer means strictly better abilities from level 1 to 60.

Instead, we create a skill point system which is marked by diminishing returns for specialization and lots of choices. Players can pick up skills and abilities in all “classes”. Every level the player gets new skill points which they can spend on improving current skills or on choosing new ones. It is cheaper to learn a new skill than to improve a current one. Going up one rank in a skill confers the same relative benefit for more cost. Sometimes one skill will be a prerequisite for another (you can’t learn Mass Heal without Heal rank 4).

For example, the player might get 10 skill points per level. Learning a skill (Healing) takes 1 point, going to second rank takes 2 more, going to third takes 3 and so on. When a skill is at rank 5, the player has invested 15 points in it. With those same points they could have learned 15 rank 1 skills. As a rank 5 healer, they will be 5 times better than a rank 1 healer (who is also a rank 1 swordsman, rank 1 knife fighter, rank 1 wolf trainer etc.).

Meeting our Goals

1) It’s clearly a new way to play. By mixing and matching skills sets, players will be able to create characters that defy conventional fantasy classes and clichés.

2a) A higher level character would be characterized by some specialization mixed with more breadth of skills. A high level sword specialist might grab a few ranks of healing or status magic so that in the event that there are no healing specialists around, they can keep the party alive.

2b) A new player can very quickly get to rank 3 or 4 in a couple of key skills, allowing them to contribute to a higher level group almost immediately after character creation.

3) If a player realizes at level 14 that they wish they were a magic user instead of an assassin type, they don’t need to start a new character and go back to level 1 and then adventure alone until (if) they catch up with their friends. They can just start training magic abilities and switch over to focusing on magic after a few levels.

Balance Concerns

How do we avoid high level players turning in to cyborg-ninja-pirate-penguin-of-ultimate-doom? By restricting the number of skills that a player can use at any given moment.

One option would be a Guildwars-style deck of skills where only a limited number (8) are available at once.

A better option is to link useable skills to carried equipment. If you are not carrying a sword, you can’t use sword skills. If you are not carrying a fire staff, you can’t cast fire spells. You can’t carry both a two handed sword and a staff at once (though maybe a more limited fire wand and a short sword would offer diversity at the cost of less concentrated power). You need certain ranks in key skills to use certain equipment and you need to be using certain equipment to the activate appropriate skills.

Armour and clothing define defense, stealth, and movement abilities. Equipment in your hands (bows, blades, staffs, wands etc.) define offense, healing and status abilities. Rings, amulets and whatnot define modifiers like resistances, bonuses to abilities etc. You can change up equipped items between fights by rummaging around in your carried inventory but during an encounter, you’re stuck with what you’re wearing.

Conclusion

This scheme offers a high level of customization while protecting against degenerate character classes with restrictions that force avatars to pick from a subset of available abilities. The abilities themselves will be familiar to players, but by mixing and matching them we invite highly unique and personal characters. Imagine a stealthy assassin who kills with ice magic or a two-handed swordsman cloaked in flowing robes and magical fields.

We allow players to train in such a way that they can be good at soloing with one equipment scheme and then by changing some of their gear, they can become a better fit for whatever the party needs in the moment. Now instead of “What? We’re all Barbarians, dammit!” we have “Who has a little healing? Can you take on that role for today?” And instead of “It sucks to be a priest, you can’t do anything on your own” we have “I’m mostly into healing and status abilities, but I picked up a few ranks of mace for those days when I want to go off on my own”.

Just read a cool analysis of the appeal of LOST in terms of CRPGs. The treadmill aspect of long running series or games can be done well, as in WOW where in the early levels there are parts of the world where you clearly can’t stay (and which you sometimes have to dash through to get to areas you can thrive (see: the trip from Menethil Harbour to Iron Forge if you are a young Night Elf). It can also be done poorly as in Oblivion where common bandits suddenly started acquiring ELDRICH ARTIFACTES as I gained in levels.

Maintaining the treadmill of a relatively even difficulty curve while also giving a sense of progress is a special kind of art form in and of itself. Even WOW which is overall masterful lost me to the perpetual grind when I realize just how far from level 60 I was and how little marginal value to my life those final 20 levels would have been compared to playing a different game entirely.