Replayability - Getting the big picture right

[IndiraLightfoot]

I've been thinking: Why do I hold NWN2 in such high regard, including of course, the master piece MotB?

And most importantly, how come I've replayed that campaign dozens of times with different characters?

 

The answer isn't the best combat mechanics or a sandbox world. No, the answer is twofold:

 

Firstly, OEI managed to build a very suggestive and convincing fantasy world: They got the atmosphere right, graphics, music and sounds, they populated it very well with lore, monster and places, and especially, descriptions, stories and npcs-dialogues were very nicely written, indeed - sometimes outright brilliant! 

 

Secondly, the huge variety of characters one could make was staggering. Obviously, we have D&D 3.5 to thank for this, but OEI made it work in a computer RPG. And it wasn't just something you did the first level at character creation or the first 8 or 10 levels, it was exciting all the way up till epic levels.

 

The combination of these two is very alluring, and it certainly got me hooked for life!

 

If Obsidian, and I have high hopes that they will pull it off, succeeds in realizing these absolutely essential aspects in PE (essential to me, at least), I think that's more or less half the victory.

 

As much as I loved BG 1-2 and NWN1, I've just replayed them a few times each. To me, NWN2 vanilla + MotB is the pinnacle of replayability in CRPGs, no competition, hands down. And it's weird, coz the dialogue trees weren't that varied, and sometimes your alignment wasn't that important (race and class was even less important), but I think the atmosphere and the creative possibilites that OEI implemented with D&D 3.5 edmade it all a winning recipe for pure joy.

 

Now, I understand that some of you have other games that made you replay them, and the reasons lie in the big picture of those games. Please, feel free to open your hearts and share with us the reasons for why they were so replayable.

 

After all, if Obsidian does make a very replayable game here, it will be legendary, I assure you!

 

[Jarmo]

Secondly, the huge variety of characters one could make was staggering. Obviously, we have D&D 3.5 to thank for this, but OEI made it work in a computer RPG. And it wasn't just something you did the first level at character creation or the first 8 or 10 levels, it was exciting all the way up till epic levels.

 

This was it for me, for both NWN1 and NWN2. Only I didn't so much replay the main campaing or the expansions, but dwell in the community modules. Sort of, hmm... I'd like to make a thief or bard this time.. hmm.. lets see the top 10 modules with limited combat...

 

Oh, I did replay the main campaign and the expansions for both. But that's peanuts compared to the 100 other modules.

And I still haven't tried... not everything, not even close. Haven't tried a specialist wizard, red dragon disciple, assasin..

there's a bewildering variety of characters I haven't tried..

 

 

---

Another one was DA:Origins. I finished it 3 times, human male noble fighter, human female wizard and elven male rogue,

but I played all the origins until Ostagar. And they were all great.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Jarmo

[Sedrefilos]

I, on the other hand, don't replay rpgs although I tried many times :D

The reason I do that is because when I play a rpg I make the choices i would have made if i was in my character's shoes. And whenever i tried to replay a game I find myself doing the exact same things i did the first time, even though i promised myself i'll play it differently
I guess that's just me.

Now, seriously, you find that much stuff in NWN2? I mean Mask of the Betrayer was GREAT, but the original campaign... it was just OK... You know... generic DnD characters n stuff... It was more like Wizards of the Coast introducing DnD to new teenage DMs or like it was one's first DM try rather than an experienced team's unique Forgotten Realms campaign.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Sedrefilos

[IndiraLightfoot]

Jarmo: Gosh, yes! I played loads of good modules for both NWN 1 and 2, I even made one myself for NWN 2: "Trial & Terror". That's how I got into modding.

For me, it certainly gave Obsidian's NWN2 an entirely new reason to love it!

 

May I add to that Neverwinter servers, and then mostly NWN1? I played on one of them for like a year. It was often great.

 

So, basically, Jarmo, you're hinting at a great way to increase the replayability of PE: modding!

 

EDIT: Sedrefilos - Sure, parts of NWN 2 vanilla was certainly a bit basic and indeed teenagey (the Neeshka character, for instance), but somehow it brought me back to what I really liked when I began with D & D in the late 70s - the big-eyed experience of being in a party of adventurers in a bombastic and rich fantasy world, so I guess it was heaps of nostalgia in it for me, too. That is probable true for many backers of this project, BTW. Also, I hadn't played the pen-n-paper version of D&D 3ed when NWN1 came out, nor 3.5 when NWN2 was released, so it all felt like a new PnP-box - which for me is like the smell of a new car for others.

Edited February 11, 2013 by IndiraLightfoot

[IndiraLightfoot]

Heck, I just realized: If OEI plays their cards right and let those creative juices flow like in a high tide, getting PE next year would be like getting a new PnP-version of D&D in your hands! I think I'm gonna swoon!                      

[Jarmo]

Jarmo: Gosh, yes! I played loads of good modules for both NWN 1 and 2, I even made one myself for NWN 2: "Trial & Terror". That's how I got into modding. 

 

Don't think I ever played it. I lean heavily towards low level stuff, at epic levels fights are such

swashSwashPlowKaboomSwisshSwossh explosion discos I can't keep up with the stuff happening.

A hit or miss every couple of seconds is more my pace...

 

And I tend towards combat light adventures, much for the same reasons.

 

Anyway. From the sound of things, modding tools for PE seem extremely unlikely.

Might require potential modders to purchase unity engine or something.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Jarmo

[Larkaloke]

Replayability for me has the most to do with the variety of characters I can make in the game. If I can make any sort of character I like for all six (or however many) characters, that is the best. So, for that reason, the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games have the most replayability to me. They also have the advantage of having no elements I much dislike, and a great many that I am fond of. 

 

Any game where NPCs are the only option for the rest of the characters decreases the replayability somewhat for me, because I like to have an entirely different party each time I go through the game, and that inevitably runs out with NPCs, even if I end up actually liking them all enough to want to take them along. Still, Dragon Age: Origins had pretty good replayability for that, and I can see the possibilities for high replayability in Neverwinter Nights 2 -- unfortunately, I've never been able to get past the camera in the game enough to feel like playing it more than once thus far. 

 

Other than variety of characters, a large enough number of quests that the same thing doesn't have to be done each time helps, as does a few different endings or ways that things can go differently through the course of the game. A goodly amount of history and setting information scattered about also helps, as I like discovering that kind of thing and continuing to do so when I replay the game. 

 

Really, I suppose the character thing is by far the most important to me in terms of replayability. Planescape: Torment certainly has all the other things I'd consider important, and only lacking that, I replay it on the same sort of schedule I'd reread a book -- once I've forgot most of what happens. I love the game, but it has relatively little replayability to me. And Icewind Dale is fairly short and non-variable, but I've played it enough times I don't recall the number right now. 

[TRX850]

Something I discovered about game design while on these forums was the beauty of dynamic on-the-fly design for various aspects:

 

- Custom loot

- Cursed Items

- Certain boss enemies

- NPCs

- Passwords and puzzles

- Environmental skills like Listen or Wilderness Lore

 

If any or all of these were different with each playthrough, for me, that would keep the game alive.

[Pshaw]

I agree with the OP in that the first thing is an interesting world. I won't care how much left I haven't experienced in my first play through if the game world and systems aren't worth another play through. Luckily I think Obsidian will be able to deliver this in spades so I'm not too worried on that account. After that the main thing  needed to encourage re-playability (for me) is having many things that are mutually exclusive.

Classes and NPCs are a good example of this. You obviously can't play every class in 1 playthrough and with the limitation on party size it will take at least 2 playthroughs to play with all the various party members. Still I think that these are less important to having mutually exclusive objectives/content in the game world itself. Simple because you can experience other classes through control of your party members and sometimes you simply might not want to play with every single party member because you might dislike them.

 

I simply hope that you run into many decision points where picking 1 thing excludes you from something else entirely. Preferably with consequences that are not immediately know/felt. If, for example, I join a thieves syndicate I wouldn't expect to continue getting quests to kill my fellow members from bounty boards or town guards. I also shouldn't be able to pull an elder scrolls and somehow become the leader of every major organization in the realm yet somehow remain completely burden free to go of questing where the wind takes me. In my opinion its these sort of in game choices that have me coming back to games over and over again.

 

Also this game will have the re-playability of different play styles with the emphasis they've placed on combat or dialogue or stealth giving different ways to complete the same objectives. If you add that to having plenty of mutually exclusive content you get even more re-playability since you might want to try out a diplomatic noble warrior and later experience those same areas only this time with a kill everything sort of character.

The only downside of that style of content is that if people don't replay the game it leaves lots of content unexplored by the 1 time players so all the time and money spent to make the content they never even saw is a bit wasted. So I can see the point in not taking this sort of path with the game as well.

[mcmanusaur]

You know what they say... "the concern of replayability is always secondary to the concern of playability".

[Tsuga C]

The only downside of that style of content is that if people don't replay the game it leaves lots of content unexplored by the 1 time players so all the time and money spent to make the content they never even saw is a bit wasted. So I can see the point in not taking this sort of path with the game as well.

I've always been left somewhat incredulous when I read that a large percentage of players do not re-play a solid cRPG game...or even bother to finish it once. "Casual gamers" be damned, I funded P:E because I wanted a cRPG worth at least two or three re-plays!

[Heresiarch]

Personally, I hold NWN2 in high disregard. I think the original campaign is the most abominable and stereotyped approach to making RPGs a man could think about. I hated every character, every dialogue, every situation. It seemed like whoever came up with those used the book The Most Used and Abused Fantasy Clichés of All Times. Even MotB wasn't good enough for me. The story was awesome, characters were great, but the gameplay seemed extremely lame. Luck was the most important factor in major battles, not strategy or skill, which I absolutely hated. Also D&D 3.5 class system is terrible to implement in a videogame. I don't like to minmax with my characters, so ultimately all my builds turned out fun, but performing poorly in combat.

 

That gradually takes me from the rant part to the actual thoughts on replayability. I think the most important aspect of whether someone is going to play a game again is not the RP part. It may sound like a paradox at first, but really, there's no RPG out there, where RP leads to vastly different results. Whatever you say, whatever you do, NPCs are likely to forget your attitude and behaviour right about time they are saying their second line. Because that second line and everything after it is pretty much independent of your choice. So on your first play-through it does feel like you have one. But when you replay the game the illusion of choice pops like a soap bubble, since you see first-hand that your action ultimately don't matter. That effectively puts a gun to RP's face and pulls the trigger. The only exception is Alpha Protocol, where exactly every choice has a consequence and the story is tailored by your choice (unlike in The Walking Dead, although the games shamelessly claims it to be so every episode).

 

So the main factor is still the quality of the gameplay. All the games I replayed (including Baldur's Gate 2, Witcher, Dead Space (the whole series), Mass Effect, Max Payne 3, Batman: Arkham something series, X-com, Odium and whatnot) had very engaging gameplay with tactical elements. Simply put, in all of those games killing stuff just never gets old. So if you enjoyed the gameplay chances are you are going to replay the game. Even if it was massacred by a horrible ending like ME3.

[smithereen]

^ You are missing out, Heresiarch. While DnD3.5 and I have our differences, Mask of the Betrayer has the best plot of any RPG since Planescape: Torment. Give it another shot. Do it.

 

As to the OP - replayility is a bonus, but I think it has far less to do with mechanics, and more with ensuring that not all content is available (or at least, readily available) on each playthrough. Sure, I probably won't play the same class on my second or third run through a game, but I won't replay a game at all if I don't think I'll see different character interaction, dialogue, setting exposition, etc.  Interestingly enough, I am dead smack in the middle of my third playthrough of The Sith Lords, and I've already learned far more about the Handmaiden than I ever did before. Prying new secrets from my companions has kept me far more engaged in the game than anything else could have. On the other hand, I certainly appreciate a game that can remain challenging on a second playthrough.

 

 

PS: I should probably try out your mod.