Promotions can be more than just increases to stats?

[ShadowScythe]

Something I thought about while looking at this thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1764

In the original Wasteland, or rather from what I've played so far (up to Needles) when you gain enough experience you radio your chief and get a promotion at which point you can add +2 to your base stats. Meanwhile the skills follow a learn by doing system.

I was thinking, what if the promotion also had a more tangible effect than the addons to stats. Simple stuff like people respecting you more and treating you differently if you're at higher ranks but also more complex stuff like opening up new quest paths. Maybe higher rank characters get access to some other administrative duties as part of their new promotion which requires handling some bureaucratic elements within the organisation. Maybe players have to deal with the chain of command differently now that they're moving up...what if demotions are possible (minus the loss to stats though of course!) ?

Anyone else have any other thoughts?

[Drool]

The manual mentions that people of a higher rank get more respect and can get into places that normal folks can't, but for the life of me, I can't think of a time that actually happened. I mean, my level 50-60 team can show up in the Ag center wearing Power Armor and Proton Axes, and the old man still doesn't think I stand a chance.

So, yeah, it would be nice if level/rank had some sort of effect on the game world. Kind of like how the dude with the .223 in the Hub wouldn't give you his quest until you had enough of a Rep.

[Woolfe]

The manual mentions that people of a higher rank get more respect and can get into places that normal folks can't, but for the life of me, I can't think of a time that actually happened. I mean, my level 50-60 team can show up in the Ag center wearing Power Armor and Proton Axes, and the old man still doesn't think I stand a chance.

So, yeah, it would be nice if level/rank had some sort of effect on the game world. Kind of like how the dude with the .223 in the Hub wouldn't give you his quest until you had enough of a Rep.

Agreed....

[Game_Exile]

I love this idea, and I think that the focus should be taken off of stats in every part of the game. A low level cap and the ability to rearrange stats somewhat through "training" or whatever, would help shift planning away form character stats and into the game "world".

[krellen]

I love this idea, and I think that the focus should be taken off of stats in every part of the game. A low level cap and the ability to rearrange stats somewhat through "training" or whatever, would help shift planning away form character stats and into the game "world".

it would also make the game less of an RPG, as who your character fundamentally is would make less difference in how you proceed tackling in-game challenges.

[Game_Exile]

it would also make the game less of an RPG, as who your character fundamentally is would make less difference in how you proceed tackling in-game challenges.

This is completely ass-backward thinking. Who your character "fundamentally is" (lol) should be less about character stats and more about the things your character does and the choices he and you, the role-player, make. It makes the game more of a role-playing game when your character's talents make more "story" sense. If your character is going to have super powers, he better damn well be getting a cybernetic enhancement, or be from the planet Krypton.

Besides, Wasteland 2 will feature a playable party/faction, not a playable character. That means that working out a combination of party members should feature more prominently, and individual character stats should be less important than in single character CRPGs.

[suz]

stuff

Not sure if trolling or just very stupid.

I recall perks being spoken of in one of the videos, so we're likely to get those to spice things up

EDIT: can't find it in the 2 videos now though, perhaps I'm wrong about seeing it

[grot]

Not sure if trolling or just very stupid.

I would love to see you try and explain this.

Well, you *do* seem to be arguing not only that stats and active character-building should have their importance dramatically reduced in the much-heralded successor to a stat-heavy game, but also that these things are intrinsically less important in a party-based RPG in which every party member has their own distinct role, when the truth is the precise opposite. I mean, how exactly do you hope to 'work out a combination of party members' without using individual character stats to define said party members?

If, as you argue, characters should be defined by 'the choices the player makes', then in a party-based game where the player is making decisions for an entire group, then...all of the characters will turn out the same. Stats are how you make party members distinct and give them unique usefulness within the group.

[krellen]

Besides, Wasteland 2 will feature a playable party/faction, not a playable character.

Which just makes statistics even more important, is it will be nearly impossible to let "choices" (more on that later) differentiate your party members and statistics will be vital to having Character A different from Character B.

EDIT: insert grot's post here, he just said everything I had to say about stats.

As for your idea that "making choices" defines a role-playing game: it's a stupid idea, and I feel bad that so many gamers have latched on to this marketing meme. It is harmful, not only to the RPG genre, but to all of gaming. If "making choices" becomes the defining feature of RPGs, not only are you taking away the ability to make choices in every other gaming genre, you are likewise relegating RPGs to a very tight definition of story and mechanics that require character/player "choices" to define gameplay.

Whatever you think the definition of "role-playing" is as a word, the definition of "role-playing game" as a sub-genre of video games are those games that seek to replicate traditional table-top RPG experiences. That has virtually nothing to do with story and choice (any game can, and most games should, have story and choice) and has everything to do with the construction of game mechanics; in this specific case, mechanics wherein the character's ability ultimately trumps the player's ability in every respect.

[Game_Exile]

I mean, how exactly do you hope to 'work out a combination of party members' without using individual character stats to define said party members?

What I meant was that you should have a low level cap so that the choice of which character gets which stats/traits/attributes becomes more important. The 2nd post was an argument for why there should be a low level cap or no levels at all. That's why I began the last paragraph in that post with the word "Besides".

And I never said that you should get rid of character stats altogether. I meant that planning should be shifted away from arranging character stats and into arranging things in the game world. Collecting XP and allocating character points after each level up until your characters become gods= bad design. Something like having the player find and choose members/recruits who have the right skills/stats, or alternatively, to spend resources retraining them= better design. More complex and interesting mechanics is what I'm after. Perhaps I should have made myself clearer, but you should have tried to understand what I was saying before trying to call me stupid, stupid.

If, as you argue, characters should be defined by 'the choices the player makes', then in a party-based game where the player is making decisions for an entire group, then...all of the characters will turn out the same.

No, for the reasons stated above. And on a (sort of) side note, you should be differentiating the stats of the PCs in your party due to the game's challenge, and for no other reason.

Whatever you think the definition of "role-playing" is as a word, the definition of "role-playing game" as a sub-genre of video games are those games that seek to replicate traditional table-top RPG experiences.

Why in the world should a video game mimic a table top design just because of genre "definitions"? Why should the player be thinking mostly about how to collect XP and distribute stat points, when the player characters are "thinking" about how to be conquerors and heroes? What the player is thinking about should be closer to what the characters are "doing". I'm not saying there needs to be anything revolutionary, but there should be small steps in making the game revolve less around character stat rules and more around "game world" rules. As it is, the player's "game world" goals have too much to do with getting simple XP rewards.

If "making choices" becomes the defining feature of RPGs, not only are you taking away the ability to make choices in every other gaming genre, you are likewise relegating RPGs to a very tight definition of story and mechanics that require character/player "choices" to define gameplay.

I don't understand what you are saying here. How am I taking away anything? What is bad about "tight" game mechanics?

[krellen]

Story AND Mechanics, as one unit. If role-playing games are games where you make choices (and, by assumption, those choices have in-game consequences), you have cut off a whole swath of games from being "RPGs", while likewise including a whole swath of games as "RPGs" that have traditionally not been so.

Why should a game try to replicate a table-top experience? Because you're calling it an RPG, and that's what RPGs are as video games. It's like taking out the shooting from a shooter and then trying to call it a shooter because it has a linear story design.

[grot]

And I never said that you should get rid of character stats altogether. I meant that planning should be shifted away from arranging character stats and into arranging things in the game world. Collecting XP and allocating character points after each level up until your characters become gods= bad design. Something like having the player find and choose members/recruits who have the right skills/stats, or alternatively, to spend resources retraining them= better design. More complex and interesting mechanics is what I'm after. Perhaps I should have made myself clearer, but you should have tried to understand what I was saying before trying to call me stupid, stupid.

I didn't call you stupid; but I can absolutely understand why your original post got suz's hackles up. I mean, what you're talking about now is design that works to preserve the value of stats by keeping the number of allocation events strictly limited and forcing the player to choose carefully - a low level cap can potentially make the initial party-creation all the more important. It's a pro-stat stance, even if it's advocating less actual levelling. Whereas a few posts ago you wrote;

I think that the focus should be taken off of stats in every part of the game.

That's a fairly totalitarian (and, I think, perverse) attitude to take towards RPGs, and actually, it doesn't gel with the position you've now clarified. But I certainly didn't, and wouldn't, call you stupid.

[krellen]

But I certainly didn't, and wouldn't, call you stupid.

I called the idea stupid. Smart people can have stupid ideas (for that matter, stupid people can have smart ideas.)

[ShadowScythe]

Oh boy, this really wasn't what I'd intended.

So something else I was thinking about, maybe Promotions can be split up into a kind of tree. So rather than a linear progression of ranks characters can start to be promoted into different roles based on the skills they mainly specialise in.

This would be kind of like a class system but instead of the player choosing the class for the character from the outset it instead means that as the character builds up certain skills they start to find themselves promoted into certain classes. Those promotions could give a passive bonus to those stats but also get reflected in the game world. So a guy who specced in Medicine and Doctor gets promoted into some kind of paramedic/medical officer and this changes how other people in the world respond to them and the quests they get access to, such as being asked to attend to some injured troops at the home base.

[Game_Exile]

I think that the focus should be taken off of stats in every part of the game.

That's a fairly totalitarian (and, I think, perverse) attitude to take towards RPGs, and actually, it doesn't gel with the position you've now clarified.

Yes, that sentence was overly vague and phrased in a way that could be very misleading. What I meant is the focus should be taken off character stats in the following ways:
-From a design perspective, before you're throwing in a bunch of character attributes and rules, you should have solid and interesting game world mechanics they refer to.
-From a player's perspective, stats should be more a way to help you estimate what you can or can't do in the game world, less the whole point of doing every quest (XP reward).

Also, to Suz (apologies to grot), take a long walk off a short pier, asshole.

Story AND Mechanics, as one unit. If role-playing games are games where you make choices (and, by assumption, those choices have in-game consequences), you have cut off a whole swath of games from being "RPGs", while likewise including a whole swath of games as "RPGs" that have traditionally not been so.

I still don't understand what you're saying? The old CRPGs designed after pen-and-paper games are still RPGs, they are just outdated designs for videogames. It's not as if InXile is trying to sell a rulebook like D&D, right? They are building a game from the ground up. And every game is in some sense, an RPG.

Why should a game try to replicate a table-top experience? Because you're calling it an RPG, and that's what RPGs are as video games. It's like taking out the shooting from a shooter and then trying to call it a shooter because it has a linear story design.

The shooter example is a bad example. With CRPGs, I just think that there should be some more complex underlying mechanics behind the settings (like economic or political systems) and more complexity in the quest mechanics. And everything should be efficiently designed and interconnected so that choices the player makes have more impact, whether those choices be about quests, base building, promotions, or character stats.

If that means that this or that one-off scenario becomes more difficult to implement, then so be it. If you have challenging and complex mechanics that revolve around how to reach your end game goals, it will keep every choice interesting through the length of the game. And I don't see why you can't have your frivolous side stories, too, as long as they have proper risk+reward in the big picture.

So rather than a linear progression of ranks characters can start to be promoted into different roles based on the skills they mainly specialise in...and this changes how other people in the world respond to them and the quests they get access to...

Having more stuff tied to the quest system is a good idea, but what quests you do or don't do should be based more around informed choices, rather than arbitrary ones. This is also part of what I'm saying above. I don't like variety for variety's sake.

[ShadowScythe]

But it is an informed choice. You are the one building your character a certain way and as a result your character is being promoted into a certain field based on that build you intentionally created.

And please don't derail this thread into an argument about how RPGs shouldn't have stats. There's got to be another thread specifically for that.

[Game_Exile]

But it is an informed choice. You are the one building your character a certain way and as a result your character is being promoted into a certain field based on that build you intentionally created.

But why would you choose to build your character one certain way over some other? That is what I mean by informed choice.

And please don't derail this thread into an argument about how RPGs shouldn't have stats. There's got to be another thread specifically for that.

Ideas like this are potential alternatives for some character stat mechanics (XP), and I wanted to bring it up. Notice, I tried to keep it short in the beginning, lol.

[ShadowScythe]

But why would you choose to build your character one certain way over some other? That is what I mean by informed choice.

Uh...because you knew that it'd be an important stat because you either read the manual or the description of the stat sounded like it was important to the team? That's a pretty informed choice.

Ideas like this are potential alternatives for some character stat mechanics (XP), and I wanted to bring it up. Notice, I tried to keep it short in the beginning, lol.

Well, sorry to sound rude, but please stop. The majority of the discussion here has instead been about your topic. And of course it was going to be about your topic, there was no way you could have kept it short. You posted an incredibly controversial idea in a thread so of course you were going to derail it once you riled up everyone with it. If you want to talk about how RPGs should no longer have stats, please make a different thread for that.

That said, don't expect the developers to listen to you. Wasteland 2 is being made specifically because RPGs of late have been watered down and their stats slowly being removed...resulting in worse gameplay for the fans of the older style. If you want an RPG without stats (for the record that's basically a paradox) you aren't going to get it here.

[grot]

Something I thought about while looking at this thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1764

In the original Wasteland, or rather from what I've played so far (up to Needles) when you gain enough experience you radio your chief and get a promotion at which point you can add +2 to your base stats. Meanwhile the skills follow a learn by doing system.

I was thinking, what if the promotion also had a more tangible effect than the addons to stats. Simple stuff like people respecting you more and treating you differently if you're at higher ranks but also more complex stuff like opening up new quest paths. Maybe higher rank characters get access to some other administrative duties as part of their new promotion which requires handling some bureaucratic elements within the organisation. Maybe players have to deal with the chain of command differently now that they're moving up...what if demotions are possible (minus the loss to stats though of course!) ?

Anyone else have any other thoughts?

I think it's a really interesting idea.

Mind you, it could also be pretty problematic to figure out a middle ground between 1) a steady progression marker and 2) a semi-demi-quasi-realistic part of the gameworld. When it's just a unique method of keeping track of/building progression with fun throwaway references, you can treat it as that - a bit of fun. But if these promotions start being treated seriously by the game's setting, as genuine promotions, with associated quests and duties and all sorts, you're going to end up with obvious conflicts between RPG and world arising - if your evil party murders a bunch of orphans and steals their nun, can they gain a promotion directly as a result of their monstrous crimes? If yes, you end up with fidelity to the RPG system, but none to the game's internal logic, and if no, vice versa. I'd rather have the former than the latter, but it's still turned into an issue where there was none before.

Or, to use your example, let's say your party of Generals Argent commits a chaotic act that goes against the chain of command (sheeeeittt) and is demoted, en masse, to private. Obviously they wouldn't lose their stats, as you've said, but would they have to work their way back up through all the ranks, grinding XP without gain, before they could reach their former position and start receiving stat increases once again, or would they continue gaining stats as if they were starting the game fresh?

In short, I think the real nitty-gritty to get into here is the problem of making promotions genuinely relevant to the Rangers and how they're portrayed in-game without implicitly encouraging the player to play in a certain restrictive way.

[ShadowScythe]

Mind you, it could also be pretty problematic to figure out a middle ground between 1) a steady progression marker and 2) a semi-demi-quasi-realistic part of the gameworld. When it's just a unique method of keeping track of/building progression with fun throwaway references, you can treat it as that - a bit of fun. But if these promotions start being treated seriously by the game's setting, as genuine promotions, with associated quests and duties and all sorts, you're going to end up with obvious conflicts between RPG and world arising - if your evil party murders a bunch of orphans and steals their nun, can they gain a promotion directly as a result of their monstrous crimes? If yes, you end up with fidelity to the RPG system, but none to the game's internal logic, and if no, vice versa. I'd rather have the former than the latter, but it's still turned into an issue where there was none before.

Those are some really good points. I guess if you make the promotions more relevant to story then it makes the gameplay and story segregation of getting promoted by murdering innocents even more obvious which can really mess with the setting and (I hate using this word but it seems apt here) 'immersion'.

Deus Ex had a way of doing it, if you killed "good" people you'd lose exp vs killing bad people. I'd go one step further, if no one sees you killing an innocent then you can get away with it without a reputation loss or an exp loss but no exp gain either. If people see you killing innocents then you lose experience- in this case exp would represent the higher ups' opinion of you I suppose. As well as some kind of loss to reputation, assuming Wasteland 2 will have a reputation meter.

So maybe it'll create an interesting choice where the player may have to kill some 'good' people as the easy way out of a quest but it'll translate to a loss of exp. In a sense it could be a kind of situation where the player has to make ruthless, 'hard' choices at the expense of losing approval with the bosses, becoming a kind of loose canon in their eyes. Gameplaywise that'd translate into the player being delayed a 'level up' and it may encourage being a bit more diplomatic with the bosses at the cost of doing things the player may not want to do.

And maybe losing exp isn't just for killing innocents but doing anything the bosses may not like but that might be going a bit far.

Or, to use your example, let's say your party of Generals Argent commits a chaotic act that goes against the chain of command (sheeeeittt) and is demoted, en masse, to private. Obviously they wouldn't lose their stats, as you've said, but would they have to work their way back up through all the ranks, grinding XP without gain, before they could reach their former position and start receiving stat increases once again, or would they continue gaining stats as if they were starting the game fresh?

=D The Wire was exactly what I was thinking of when I started talking about getting more administrative duties and dealing with chain of command.

So continuing with what I was detailing above, if you lose enough exp from doing things the bosses don't like you'd get demoted, but no loss to stats.

I guess the way I see it, it'll inflate the exp needed for your next promotion. So, using a less extreme example to what you said, let's say your team were Corporals and took enough exp hits (I've had it with you loose cannons! You're an embarrassment to the department! I'm too old for this!) to get demoted down to Senior Specialists. To get back up to Corporals again they'd need the equivalent of the exp needed to be promoted from Corporal to Lance Corporal. This may not sound like much but they've been periodically losing exp to be getting down from Corporal to Senior Specialist so in effect that's a lot of exp they've not been gaining on top of the exp they need to gain to get back up to Corporal.

Functionally it means that the player is still levelling up in a conventional manner, but instead the gameworld is changing to reflect their demotion and reputation and maybe the story changes a fair bit because this team, or a character on the team has gotten on the bad side of the boss and they remember what said character has done.

Also now that I think it, there's a new factor I need to consider. When newly promoted there is a grace period of X exp per rank where the player can mess around a little before the chief will actually demote them. Gamewise this prevents a newly promoted character from being immediately screwed over because they did a 'bad' action as soon as they got promoted and storywise this can be seen as the bosses willing to let a few slip ups happen and not wanting to immediately demote a newly promoted soldier for slipping up in his new job.

In short, I think the real nitty-gritty to get into here is the problem of making promotions genuinely relevant to the Rangers and how they're portrayed in-game without implicitly encouraging the player to play in a certain restrictive way.

This is a major issue that comes up according to the system I'm proposing. I guess the incentive to not play by the rules would be other stuff like loot or alliances with major factions that could be really important or useful additions to the homebase. That said I'm still not sure if the player would care enough about those rewards to consider a loss to exp as worth it for their playstyle.

Those were some really good points you raised, thanks for that.