I always get the feeling that in games with a linear plot and leveling system, players never go back to the older levels because the monsters there are too easy and the world has nothing new to offer there.
Players usually don't go visit floor 1 just for memory's sake or to remember the good times they had there. In fact, they probably forget what happened there and move on like it's nothing. For some reason, this bothers me to no end.
Is there a way to remedy that? I don't want the feeling of certain game areas to become obsolete to the player as the story progresses.
I want my game to be dynamic and ever-changing, with things to offer at every location, at every point in the player's game progress, even if one place is not at the right "level" to match with the player's current overall character levels. There should be a kind of equality, where at no point does the player tire of one place and can move freely from one place to the next. Does this sound slightly open-world ish?
This is not only for replayability, but also to provide a certain kind of elegance to the game. I feel like there is something lacking, and something that might be able to be improved, in RPGs, where the story is everything and so "old" levels are treated as second-class citizens. I was always slightly bored when I had "conquered the world" and ran through every monster like it was spaghetti.
One of the solutions I thought of is to simply update the monsters, treasure chests, items, dialogue, etc. at the old locations. Perhaps even updating the graphics would provide a visual cue that the player can have some more novel experiences there. However, isn't that essentially just changing the very nature of the location itself? The problem I have with that is that players will then forget what happened because the place itself disappeared/changed.
If anyone thinks of any good ideas, I would like to hear them. Thanks!
Answer
Make Locations Evolve with the Player
As a player, I particularly enjoy the game when my actions affect the world (or if I'm presented with an illusion of it). I would come back to the locations I've been in before and meet new characters or seek other significant changes. Nothing in the world should stay the same, static throughout the player's walkthrough. Make the old location feel like a new one, but still remain more or less the same place so that the players will recognize it, and they will love it. It's in human nature to come back to the places we've been to and see how they changed.
A decent example of this is Pillars of Eternity. Throughout the playthrough some locations change, new characters and questlines appear, new buildings arise or fall, and players are interested in coming back and exploring again. For instance, Raedric's Castle, which (spoilers)
can be cleared by the player, but later in the game the King would return in a form of an undead and retake the castle, slaughtering everyone in the way and raising them to serve in his army.
A bad example is Dragon Age 2, where every new quest would take place on the same exact locations over and over without any noticeable changes, rendering the game extremely repetitive.
When the locations never change, and players come back to them only to feel like they've gone back in time, it hurts immersion. For example, the starting town in Neverwinter Nights 2 doesn't change at all during the first stage of the playthrough (which, in in-game time, should take at least a couple weeks). When the players come back to visit and expect the villagers to have rebuilt the town and try to recover, they're greeted with the same town on fire and scared townsfolk they left. Frustrated, they leave to never come back again, feeling like they've been robbed of a potentially interesting experience.
Automatic scaling and autopopulation of locations in RPGs is okay, but the majority of your players will come back for stories and experiences, not additional grinding that they might as well find at the new locations (unless they're desperate for some extra character levels).
No comments:
Post a Comment