LordArioch
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New Version on the Way, and the Importance of Choice
🕑 Added 2016-05-03 10:53:25 +0000 UTC Hello all,So the first public release is set for Sunday, and I’m currently working on a
new version for the backers with some more content that hopefully should be
with them this week. The plan going forward is to make small, regular updates
until the prologue is finished, and then start to work on adding Events which
will hopefully make the game more replayable as we add more.
In the meantime, I wanted to talk to you a little today about one of the
central design ideas that I am passionate about, to give you some idea of where
the game is headed as development continues. When I wrote the initial design
pitch, there were three keywords that formed the core of what I wanted the game
to be; Quality, Balance, and Choice.
Quality is pretty straightforward, as you might expect. A lot of games on the internet, both in and out of the adult field, made by indie devs do not look, read, or play particularly well. With Kickstarter and Patreon this is thankfully improving, but for everyPrincess Maker, there’s a dozen or so games that use the same RPGMaker assets, generic royalty free music, and poorly written dialogue. I wanted to make something I could be proud of, and I hope that those of you who have played the first release, or even just those of you who have seen the art, can see quality is important to us.
I cannot say a lot about Balance at the moment as we are still in the rudimentary stages of the event system, where it will be the key factor, but we are committed to fine tuning the game through playtesting and player interaction.
Choice, to me, is the most important of the three, and what I would like to talk to you about today. I have always loved the feeling that I got when I felt like I had the freedom to choose in games, from when I was very young playing The Hobbit on an old ZX Spectrum, to when I got a PC in the 90s and played D&D influenced CRPGs, and even recently playing games like Dragon Age, Dark Souls, and The Witcher. I like role playing, and in order to play a role, one has to be able to make choices for that character.
I spent a few months trying to design a combat system for the game, and what
that failure made me realize is that the real strength of a game like this is
not all of the bells and whistles, but simple variable tracking. Seeds of
Chaos, despite all the prettiness, is still a text game at heart. The core of
how its engine works is that it takes in the information given by variables and
then generates content (in the form of Events). Most of these types of games
use stats to do this, but there is also no reason why player choice cannot play
just as large a part. I want the things that the player does to shape the
game, and the world around them.
To that end, I came up with the Three Commandments of Choice:
All Choices should matter – The linear nature of most games means that they have very little in the way of actual choice. There tends to be a couple of big choices made at set stages, the results of which lead to a few different outcomes towards the end of the game. As Seeds of Chaos is less constrained by linearity, there’s more freedom in this area. It can still have the big macro choices, but it can also have micro ones effect the game as well. Not every choice has to be “Who will you put on the throne?”, things like deciding to steal something, what you say about one character to another, or deceiving a stranger should all have small ripples in the game’s world.
Choices should not be easy – Often in games you will encounter what is colloquially known as a Hobson’s choice, in which something is presented as a choice, but there is only one real outcome. For example, you may be asked to choose to take a strong weapon or leave it, in a situation where there is absolutely no reason not to. The goal with Seeds of Chaos is to make the player think hard about all choices, and to do this, they will have consequences. You could take the sword, for our example now an evil one, knowing its power will come with a negative of equal strength, or you could leave it, and risk someone else discovering it. Nothing about choices should feel arbitrary, the player should always feel invested in their decisions.
Choices should not always be clear cut – One thing I never particularly liked about CRPGs (although the modern ones tend to be better about it) is how the choices always tended to consist of one good choice, one neutral choice, and one evil choice. While this is fine, in small doses, there was never really a sense of the shades of grey that occupy the moral landscape of the real world. In Seeds of Chaos, you will be asked to make choices that are far more ambiguous. For example, you may be asked to choose in a situation where it is unclear what is right and what is wrong, or where each of the possible choices only has a chance of being successful. You may be asked to choose from a selection of outcomes that are all bad. People lie, plans fail, and fate is a hoary old bitch, all of which will factor in the choices the player has to make.
I hope you all enjoyed reading this, and it gave you a better idea of what I’d
like to achieve with the game. We are currently working on the prototype for
the event system, and hopefully in a few months you’ll all be able to start
shaping your own events.
Comments
Aetrun
With the Choice mechanic, you described what sounds an awful lot like what I want out of games with choices in them. Now I'm going to have to scrape up extra funds to support you :P The demo was awesome, and I look forward to more.
Lord Arioch
There's only going to be a few "paths", so to speak, so it won't be an issue. Events are modular, and therefore their outcomes, for the most part will either affect other Events, or the Events that available to the player. I spent nearly a year on design before I even wrote a line of code, I have thought about all these issues. We will have to disagree about the first part though, personally I'd rather play a low budget game with interesting choices than an AAA release that is linear as hell (i.e. FFXIII).
Vignum
About choices and quality, you say that choices is the most important thing for you and IMO... Quality should be the most important, mostly because I think that quality is better than quantity. And about choices, you should be careful in here, specially with the "every choice should matter." Because that requires a lot of work and it could make you lose interest very quickly after making so many paths, the quality of each patch would decrease...and we would end up getting an ending like ME 3.... :3
Interesting read, makes me look forward to the game even more. Glad that you focus on the choices, as they quite honestly are my favorite part.
JJATH
That was way to long. Wow yeah I like choices.
Nottravis
Agreed and if you can get SoC to do that it would be amazing......as long as they don't sit down on the ground and sing about gold like Thorin used to ;)
Lord Arioch
Showing our age a bit, but when you think about it, The Hobbit really was the first to use similar ideas of emergent gameplay. It is funny that I just picked it as a random example when writing this, because it actually does some things I want SoC to do (like have NPCs than can act both independently of the player and in a non-predictable manner).
Nottravis
Oh my. The Hobbit on the Speccy - that brought back a few memories :) As to your ideas, I completely understand where you're coming from and I really hope you pull this off. The very best of luck. Looking forward to the 8th.
