LordArioch
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Mechanics Overhaul Update
🕑 Added 2019-05-24 19:46:14 +0000 UTC
This week, on the SoC writing team.
Sup, Rein here, with a Paradox style Dev Diary. I’ve decided to take a moment and shed some light on what I’ve been working on in my spare time and recently have focused on entirely – the SoC skill rework.
As it stands now, Rowan has 5 attributes, 19 different skills, on-level feats and 10 equipment slots. As you probably realize, most of that is not used all that often. To a degree, that’s because the design work on how it all should work was never finalized. But this also because the game evolved since its initial conception, from a free roam RPG to a Visual Novel with greater structure. More emphasis was put on character development and plot progression, and less on character and castle management. So the game moved forward, while the skill system lagged behind, growing increasingly disjointed from everything else.
Well, not for much longer.
Over the last 13 months, since April 2018, I’ve been working on overhauling the entirety of it. I went through 8 different skill system drafts, testing and theorycrafting various solutions, and ping-ponging ideas with the rest of the team. I’ve been trying to come up with a system that would build up from what we already have, adequately accommodate for our existing and future needs, and won’t be weighted down by mechanics that are difficult to implement and don’t really add much to the gameplay.
For the most part, the internal discussion often ended up with someone asking: “Do we REALLY need this?”
Do we REALLY need different armor types?
Do we REALLY need different weapon types?
Do we REALLY need attributes? Perks? Nineteen different skills?
And the answer was usually a meek “Not really?”
Of course, one can make a VN without bothering with skills at all, but that was out of question. For all the frustration the system was bringing us, we wanted it to exist in some capacity. We wanted Rowan to evolve through the course of the game, grow stronger from both doing the twins bidding and fighting his secret war against them. We wanted to have the Nemesis system, and that was impossible without a working skill system.
So in the end, I embarked on a quest: Trim all the fat from the skill system - leave only the essentials, and use 100% of them. Have less of everything, but make everything we have MATTER.
The first thing that went out of the window was swappable equipment, for two reasons: It added a layer of micromanagement that really didn't add much to the game itself, and because no matter what items Rowan would use, his sprite would always show him wearing the same clothes and using the same sword anyway. So what few items will remain in the game, will behave as static bonuses that apply automatically. Cliohna got you a cool ring from completing her side quest? Boom, you now always wear it. Simple, and effective.
The second thing that went out of the window were level up perks, which, for the time being, simply doubled as +skills/attributes. In the future, when we flesh out some of the game’s other mechanics, level up perks might be reintroduced into the game. For the time being, there’s simply no need for them.
The third thing that went out of the window was the majority of the skills/attributes, and the distinction between the two. There simply was not enough gameplay in the game to justify having that many of them, separated into two groups to boot.
And so, once that was decided, utilizing trial and error, intuition and some really wonky math, I’ve started cutting and merging skills and attributes, until I’ve narrowed the system down to 8 universal skills:
- Combat Prowess – Handles all the combat checks.
- Brawn – Handles most physical checks, and physical intimidation.
- Agility – Handles dexterity checks, reflexes, might also handle speed checks.
- Stealth – moving silently and hiding.
- Perception – Listening and spotting. Might find occasional use in conversations.
- Deception – Both verbal bluffs and combat feints, sometimes sleight of hand.
- Diplomacy – Persuasion, composure, and verbal coercion.
- Wilderness Survival – First aid, archery, everything concerning outdoors survival.
(You might notice the lack of more traditional rogue skills, like Open Locks and Disarm Device. For these, we went through Rowan’s backstory again, and decided it doesn’t really make much sense for him to have them in the first place, as he’s not a rogue by trade. So we simply cut them. But I digress - back to the topic at hand.)
So, now that we had, more or less, a good idea of what skills we wanted in the game, the next step was bending all of the past events to fit the current philosophy.
And so, for the last 2 months, I have been going through. Every. Single. Bloody. Event in the game, changing skills checks and adjusting descriptions. I have thus far checked 48 Rosaria Exploration events, 54 Rosaria Resource events, and 80 Castle Ruler events. By my estimates, I’m 60% done with the rework, with only Orciad and Helayna Escape Investigation remaining as the two big blocks that need to be dissected.
Of course, not every event required changing. But I have also used the rework to expand on some of the less developed events that I felt did not give the player the freedom of choice I expect from SoC. Many events now sport additional responses and dialogue options, depending on skills levels, past Rosaria actions and whether or not Rowan has access to spies. Usually it’s just a paragraph or two, but some events, like the forest “Necromancer Lair”, have doubled in size.
https://i.imgur.com/WDovUM8.png
The other big chain that had a lot of work done on it was the Helayna’s escape arc, which has been cleaned up and expanded. The whole chain now checks every skill possible, though depending on your choices, you will only see some of them.
The investigation arc will likely receive similar treatment, so all branches hold up to a similar standard. But that’s next week, along with Orciad.
So the big question is: once I am done with checking and adjusting everything, what remains to be done, and when the rework will go live?
Well, there is still some design work to be done, in particular on:
- Wounds, and how to prevent the death spiral that comes with them.
- Level ups, and making sure they’re sparse, but meaningful.
- Guilt impact on skills, and how to prevent putting the player in unwinnable states.
In general, I have ideas on all of these (I’ll discuss them at length in further Dev Diaries later on), so it shouldn’t take that long. But of course, the primary issue is - I am a writer, not a programmer. I will try to have everything on my part wrapped up by the end of the next month, but once that is finished, it will take some time to code all of this into the game in one, big update. So I can’t give you a precise ETA on the rework, but I can say real progress is being made, as seen above.
That’s all from me for now. As always, thank you for your continued support. We will continue to work hard to make SoC rise to your expectations.
Comments
Matthew Prim
I love how you are constantly improving upon your work! this all sounds like great stuff
Robert Arctor
I'm completely on board with the simplification :) I always thought there were far too many stats to be relevant - and I think you still have about twice as many as you need. Do you really need diplomacy and deception? Would it not be better to just have 'charisma' and then track how the player uses it? Stealth and agility, combat and brawn? What even is brawn - 'I want to look like I take steroids and intimidate people but not actually be any good at defending myself'? And why is intimidation a purely physical skill? If the only use of a skill is to allow the player to differentiate their character, but players can't tell what the difference is really supposed to be or why it exists, then I'd say they're not working as intended. I can see you're well aware of all these issues, so this is not a criticism, just voicing my own opinion on the matter in the hope it will contribute something useful to the discussion. I'm not really fond of stats to begin with, as you can tell ;) I prefer metrics that track your behavior and decision making, rather than stats you have to game in order to achieve desired outcomes. Stats that can improve over the course of a game actually distract from the story: players will often have to think about whether to pursue a course of action because it will boost one of their favourite or most required stats, even though it doesn't fit the character they're trying to roleplay. Think bioware: you start taking actions not because your character would, but because you can't possibly afford to get anything less than max paragon/light side points. I was actually really happy that you could mostly ignore stats in SoC up to this point ;) As a player I find stats can lock you out of content in unpredictable ways, and as a developer you become tempted to introduce more and more checks just because they fit the action you're describing. You then have to double-check that it's actually possible for players to get through the whole sequence of checks, and if it isn't you may decide to change your story just because of the stats, or lower the checks into insignificance. The Helayna escape arc would be a good example, as you mentioned - and I confess I'm firmly in the save-scumming-if-necessary camp if I have to be ;) Anyway, more story and more options are always a good thing, so it's great to hear that you're adding more dialogue and options where it makes sense :) Thank you very much for the update and your great work so far!
squarenuts
This explains it all. https://youtu.be/HoLs0V8T5AA?t=34
Cellulanus
That's actually very good to hear. I always did think that it was ridiculous that this game had more skills then Fallout 1.
Rein
Both Combat Prowess and Brawn are being used A LOT, so combining them would create a super skill. I am trying to have all 8 of them feel equally important. At the moment I'm floating the possibility of rolling stealth into Agility, as Stealth is used quite rarely. But I'll likely keep it this way, because as rare as stealth is, when it is used it tends to provide some of the best rewards.
Rein
Nah lad, it's all great advice. Some of that is already being implemented. Level ups, check difficulty and roll randomness will be adressed in a later dev diary, but I will say already that the size of the dice roll is being reduced considerably (down to 1d6, might even be 1d4), meaning skill ranks will matter more, especially in the later parts of the game where rolling max might not be enough to pass the test. I am also thinking about removing rolls from story events that occur on set weeks. While map and ruler events can occur in different time frames, meaning you need a random dice to compensate for the fact the player might still be level 1 when it happens, you generaly know what level the player will be during story events. So in theory I could have the entire Helayna escape arc run on checking Skill ranks rather than making skill rolls. But I know some people want to save scum the rolls to get the best ending - hell, I do it myself - so I haven't made the call yet. Also, I try to be fairly forgiving. If there is a crucial roll, I try to check at least 2 different skills, if not more. For example, to have Delane die in the proper escape route you have to... I think fail 4 skill checks in a row? You get two to kill the orcs silently, then one check not to get wounded, and then another to control the horse. It's almost a hidden scene at this point, though it's MUCH easier to get that outcome if you betray Tarish at the last moment. (Christ I'm tired, I think I replied in three wrong spots to this already >.>)
Desiree Tiffany
I'm Psyched!! I can't wait to replay it with this new detailing~!
Spojenko Sparlic
Nice update. I did feel that all the random equipment and stats felt a bit useless. Streamlining the attributes like this is a good direction, reminds me a bit of what they did in World of Warcraft, and even though it may have upset some people at the time, with the game growing more complex it was the right decision. This game is not WoW though, and I don't even think you're going to upset anyone at all by doing this lol. I do feel like you could have simplified it even more though (Combat Prowess + Brawn, Agility + Stealth would have both made sense) but I guess you're already more than halfway done so oh well. Good luck.
TCoffin
This sounds like a great addition that'll help mitigate some of the unpredictability the game has right now. I've also been thinking of how all this factors into the game and its structure a lot since I first discovered the game, and figure now's as good a time as any to weigh in my thoughts. Some of this might be redundant to some of the changes you're making, but I wanted to at least bring some of it up. So there's a looot of randomness in this game. Random exploration events, random skill checks, and random ruler events every time you return to the castle. Some of these I really don't mind, like most of the checks to resolve exploration that don't have much effect on the story. However, some of the more critical events still use skill checks which, even in multiple to mitigate chance, still leave the player at the mercy of a dice roll and don't really reward choice. I'm seeing less of this in recent events, like Rastdeel, but it's still very present in the Orcaid and Helyana's escape. This can be frustrating because of a second issue with the system: failure is boring. Failure in these instances tends to rob the player of choices rather than make the game more interesting, so when the failure is due to a die roll and not player choice it becomes frustrating. There are two ways to fix this. The first is with good writing. Anybody who's GM'd a tabletop RP for long enough can tell you that failure (in particular due to poor dice rolls) should not necessarily lead to a punishment, but should always make things more interesting. Maybe a character fails a jump roll they should have made easily. Instead of having them plummet to their death having them land out of sight, discovering a hidden ledge leading to a secret path makes the game exciting but adds tension. The rest of the party might not know if they're okay, forcing a decision, and meanwhile the other party member needs to navigate an unknown pathway potentially fraught with danger. You get the idea, making failing large events branch the story rather than simply closing off a possibility will help this immensely. The other way is to remove the randomness altogether. There's another game called Tales of Androgyny that does this to great effect, making stat checks just a comparison of flat numbers with tiers depending on how high said stat is. While maybe not necessary in smaller map events where the outcome is trivial, something like this would greatly improve critical story events. If chance is still a big deal, reducing the range of a die roll (a random 1-6 instead of 1-20) while keeping the stats themselves the same will mean a smaller window of chance to affect the roll and mean that the stats will factor in more. The reason I think these factors are a big deal is because some of them close off player rewards, which are most often the game's sexual content. I've heard it presented that this offers replayability, but I think this only bears true when the various fetishes involved are focused and limited, and the player can easily find another scene that might satisfy their interest. SoC has a wide range, but it means that each player is (in most cases) only interested in a small slice of that pie. The game already has a lot to offer with player choice and how it determines outcomes, so chance doesn't really need to play a part. Anyways, I'll shut up for this post. Hopefully that was constructive, I'll leave it to you or other patrons to tell me if I'm full of shit.
Sommelier
Not at the moment. Sprite changes will occur once we get the substantial amount of CG's and sprites done before going to polishing and extra tidbits like that.
Succusmurf
“leave only the essentials, and use 100% of them. Have less of everything, but make everything we have MATTER....” That's all sounds great! (and like a ton of work). Think a smaller pool that has a bigger effect works better. Out of curiosity will Rowan's sprite change with some of these items in the same way it did with the amultet so would we see Cilohnas ring for example.
Reef
Good job with the skills, I really like the rework you described. Also, those types of the updates are my favorite Patreon posts. It's nice to get a glimpse of what is happening behind the scenes.
