Asymetric Play and Skill Diversity.

[JFSOCC]

As Project Eternity has moved into the production phase this topic is possibly academical, nevertheless I think it's a worthwhile discussion.

 

1. Asymmetric play.

 

Steve and his party have been given a task of clearing out a bandit stronghold. There is a walled encampment adjacent a small river tributary. Instead of going in head first and being slaughtered, the team does some preparation work.

 

Steve, the party rogue sneaks successfully into the camp, and finds a position where no enemy patrols come by save the one he quietly killed. He has a fairly high mechanics skill, and is preparing to set off an explosion in the camp's storage of gunpowder.

 

Meanwhile, Martin, the party barbarian has used his athletic strength to traverse the river, he is hiding in the bushes near the back of the camp, where he can see canoes coming in and going. it is a mere twenty paces of open terrain to enter the camp from behind, where it is unguarded.

 

Charles, the party wizard can't reach these places, he can only enter through the front door, he prepares a few illusion school spells from his grimoire, meant to give the enemy the idea that there are more enemies about than there really are

Further more he uses his familiar to fly over the wall innocuously. The familiar will be delivering spells from where the wizard cannot.

 

Bart, the party druid finds a small crack in the wall, just large enough for his animal to go through. It stealths through the encampment to a point where it could easily attack the gate guard from behind.

 

Mira, the cypher uses her non-combat abilities along the wall, trying to find the respective strengths and numbers of the enemy, finding a gathering of weak willed individuals near the wall, she prepares her confusion spells, making enemies into unwitting allies when the moment is there.

 

Finally Jennifer the priest uses her diplomatic abilities to go straight through the gate in order to "tend to the sick". Using her knowledge of medicine she drugs the food, and the party waits for nightfall.

 

 

When nightfall comes, an explosion rocks the camp. A few groggy guards are trying to get up from bed but can't. Others are running towards the explosion drawing away some men from their positions. However the gate gets some reinforcements. Steve the rogue spots a commanding officer trying to organise his team, he decides to attack him before he can do too much damage. Right at that moment a the weak-willed guards start attacking their own team near the wall. Meanwhile at the gate guards are fighting phantoms while a cone of cold is launched at them from behind. Martin is just wreaking havoc near the back of the camp, dealing with stragglers together with Steve and Jennifer. The final fight is at the gate, as the guards finally realise they've been flanked, the team rejoins each other and fights them from all sides. What's left of the camp is quickly dispatched.

 

--

That's an example of asymmetrical play. Each member of the party had an ability allowing them to pick a task other party members could not do. Each character has a chance to shine and show off their personal skillset. Most importantly, their skills are radically different, helping each character to be distinct from their party members.

 

What's also important is that each task still worked towards the same overarching goal. It wasn't a case of "Now Steve gets to be useful, next time it will be Mira". All party members got to be useful in this encounter. And they got to be useful in their unique and personal ways.

 

I believe asymmetrical play is at the core of what differentiates characters in and out of combat. With this I mean that each player character has their own method of dealing with problems and their unique benefits to bring to combat.

 

Too often in games, this kind of distinctive gameplay isn't available. Instead we have to make do with class exclusive quests or narrative reactivity, but nothing where the use of a unique skill or ability fundamentally changes the way you approach an encounter.

 

It gets so bad that skills in some games are mechanically identical or similar, with palette swapped icons failing to hide this. Often different skills/spells/abilities offer hardly any variation on how to approach any encounter, instead are so similar as to be nearly interchangeable means of dealing damage.

 

 

2. Skill diversity and as it pertains to Asymmetric play.

 

I'm a big fan of P:E's intention to make all skills available to everyone, I believe that this allows more choices available to your character, while full parties can still enjoy uniquely specialized characters.

 

However, in order for characters to have truly unique methods of approaching their objectives, to have more than one method of contributing to the same goal, you need a sufficiently unique skill-pool. If Steve can sneak to point A, Martin can climb to point A, Mira can fly to point A, Bart can jump from point B to point A, then the differing skills offer no unique gameplay. If I can hire a medic, or use my own medicine skill or use a medkit to save the life of a soldier, that offers no unique gameplay. If I can bluff, use diplomacy, intimidate, or seduce an answer out of a guard, then these skills are not sufficiently distinct.

 

These are different routes with the same end result, what you want is different routes with different results.

 

I submit then, that it is better to have a small skill pool of significantly distinct and specialized skills, than a large pool of skills with overlapping uses. Not only do distinct skills help differentiate and specialize your player characters, but it allows you to use a six man team to to their maximum effectiveness, each adding to the team in a unique way.

 

I realise that it would require a lot of animations for different means to get around obstacles. (climbing, sneaking, jumping, crawling, squeezing through, carrying bodies and what not)

Personally I find character animations a worthwhile investment. A large pool of character animations is useful for several reasons, and I'm pretty confident that modders will be grateful to have a large pool of animations to work from.

 

Another benefit of distinct skillsets is functional replayability. If it is impossible for a party to master every (significantly distinct) skill, then each playthrough* offers different methods of dealing with challenges and perhaps different choices will cause players to face different challenges altogether.

 

*provided you don't roll the same character every time.

[JFSOCC]

I was hoping for some discussion...

[Labadal]

It's an interesting idea but I don't know how easy it would be to implement something like this. How would this be handled? Once everyone is in position, does the game automatically win the battle for you? Do you have to manually control each character? If so, that sounds like a nightmarish task, keeping track of all the fights, scrolling the camera back and forth between fights. I could see this working very well if it was a game focused on cooperative play. 

[Yonjuro]

I was hoping for some discussion...

 

 Dude, how can the barbarian be named Martin?

 

 Just kidding. If I'm getting your main point, the idea is that each party member is making the contribution that they are suited for and the environment is such that they may need to do completely different things, depending on their abilities, to get into the encounter at all.

 

 As opposed to: thief opens door, everyone rushes in and either shoots arrows (or spells) or jumps into melee.

 

 The main point here is that the choices you make for your characters will affect how each character will participate in the encounter.

Am I getting your main point here?

 

 This looks like a special case of having meaningful choices, but it's an interesting special case because the differences are played out per encounter so it doesn't require the developers to write an exponential number of, say, dialog nodes.

[JFSOCC]

Yonjuro gets it; Labadal, read Yanjuro's post

It's an example of a concept. The idea is that you provide ample opportunities for your characters to show off their distinctness within the party's shared experience.

 

I believe this requires skills to be sufficiently different and distinct from each other in order to provide enough variety for your characters.

[Labadal]

I do understand the idea and I think it's an interesting concept in general. I'm simply asking myself how it could be implemented in (any party based) game.

[Silent Winter]

 Do you have to manually control each character? If so, that sounds like a nightmarish task, keeping track of all the fights, scrolling the camera back and forth between fights.

Only if it were for every fight - otherwise I'd be quite happy to do this (your portrait-icons + health-bars will tell you if a character is suddenly in deep trouble).

The point is more that each character has a special contribution to the engagements, that doesn't overlap with what everyone else can do (by a different name - e.g. stealth v. invisibility-spell).

I'd certainly like to see this kind of game design - various locations would need to be designed with multiple options for resolution.  Not sure how much of this could be included in PE but it's certainly worth considering.

[Osvir]

Commandos, Desperados & Brink uses asymetrical play & skill no?

[tajerio]

I think very elaborate instances of asymmetric play as mentioned in the OP should be fairly small in number, because that's a lot of balancing and branching for the devs to handle for anything but a very important fight.

 

But generally speaking, I agree that ideally different skill sets should lead to different outcomes.  The problem is that a multiplicity of branching paths for every encounter simply isn't feasible if they all lead to different outcomes, and may not even be feasible if they all lead to similar outcomes.  My guess is that you will see a few instances where different skill sets do lead to substantively different results, and a number of instances where different skill sets lead to different methodologies for producing similar results.  Asking more than that on this kind of budget is probably too much.

[neo6874]

I think it would make more sense if there was a way to "lose ground" (or better yet - assess a situation, like in the example).  In cRPGs, a fight turns into "die, reload, try again" instead of "oh crap, we didn't anticipate there'd be a lich with the orcs ... RUN AWAY!" where the BBEG and (some|all) of the other minions won't chase you all the way across the map. Edit -> This is mostly because of how the "fog of war" works (or at least the "exploration" of the map) coupled with the computer always being able to know "yup, *that* particular house cat is definitely the player's familiar, even though there are 37 other cats wandering around our camp". 

 

It'd be nice to get it more like PnP gaming where you can have BBEG fight, lose ground (say down 20' of corridor to the previous room, where baddies won't follow (and/or be stupid enough to let you draw them out for easy killing), and then bar the door behind you), and then re-check the room (or accidentally find the secret passage lever) where you can sneak a rogue up to a balcony and survey the room ... then get a mage up there to rain firey death on at least the minions, so it's your party and the lich... 

Edited January 6, 2014 by neo6874

[JFSOCC]

I don't think you should design an encounter so that every player has something to do, thhat would be a cconvoluted and time intensive way of making this happen.

 

Instead, each encounter should have a few things you can do by having a specific skill or ability. If a team member has said skill or ability, it's available, otherwise, they'll have to solve the encounter in a different way.

 

So as per my OP example. I'd set up a mechanics skill check for causing the explosion, an athletic skill check for crossing the river, sneak skill check for passing the guard, a willpower check for the weak willed guards is not intended play design, but is available, a crack in the wall that small animals companions can cross, flight is the mage's familiar standard ability and works across all (outdoor) maps. Getting through the front gate by a diplomacy check is really the only open door given to the player.

 

If your party has these skills, they can make use of them, if not, they'll have to solve the encounter differently.

 

So, instead of setting up the encounter with certain play in mind, give many encounters a few options which are tied to specific skills or abilities. Sometimes you can capitalize on them, sometimes not.

 

I imagine this would vastly increase replayability

[jamoecw]

well i can see the familiar getting focused due to hurling cone of cold (obviously a threat), the rogue getting swarmed right after killing the captain, and the animal companion i doubt can hold his own when the familiar dies.  so it would come down to the controlled guards+the barbarian+the priest fighting those that aren't poisoned towards the back of the camp, a tough battle, but i think they could win.  a good plan, though had the controlled started fires in order to burn down the camp, the rogue waiting until the barbarian and priest join battle at the back of camp to strike at the captain he may have lived, the controlled would have taken much higher casualties, but with the camp burning there would be more disruption to offset the captain living longer, and i'd have the familiar back up the fight at the back of the camp, and then have the druid and wizard help the animal companion escape at the gates after striking.  they would have 'only done a feint' but should the guards give chase then the druid and co can turn the tables once in the wilderness, if not they can't exactly abandon their posts, nor can they ignore the fire that needs to be fought to save those that are too sick to fend for themselves.  the majority of the work would be done by the barbarian and co, so it wouldn't be an equal split of power for the encounter, but each would help out in their own way.

 

conversely a party of 3 barbarians, 2 druids, and 1 cypher would do better.  the cypher could cause disruption by having those she controlled start fires, the druids could put more pressure on the gates (again fleeing after the initial strike due to more reinforcements coming.  3 barbarians at the back would probably offset the increase of non sick personnel, as well as the captain's influence.  as things settle down and the element of surprise wears off that combo of characters would have better combat capability than the other with similar advantages.  the downside would be in more discreet encounters and more traditional dungeons and such (so long as they use a fair amount of puzzles, instead of kill everything type).

 

as for the animations thing, there could be text 'scenes' and generic icons to represent certain things happening, reducing the animation load on the devs (they already have much more scripting to do with stuff like this).  i think that instead of bosses (or sub bosses) they had situations like this that could be handled in an asymmetric fashion would be a good compromise, especially since they are making most 'non essential' encounters bypassable without losing out on the reward, so neat thinking like this could be the normal way of handling situations, without having to script stuff like this for every little thing.  so if you have a party of asymmetrical fighters (not fighter class), you wouldn't be hemmed in by having to deal with 500 non asymmetric fights for each asymmetric one (resulting in a much harder game than intended due to a 'bad' party comp).

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

as for the animations thing, there could be text 'scenes' and generic icons to represent certain things happening, reducing the animation load on the devs (they already have much more scripting to do with stuff like this).  i think that instead of bosses (or sub bosses) they had situations like this that could be handled in an asymmetric fashion would be a good compromise, especially since they are making most 'non essential' encounters bypassable without losing out on the reward, so neat thinking like this could be the normal way of handling situations, without having to script stuff like this for every little thing.  so if you have a party of asymmetrical fighters (not fighter class), you wouldn't be hemmed in by having to deal with 500 non asymmetric fights for each asymmetric one (resulting in a much harder game than intended due to a 'bad' party comp).

 

I really think this is the way to go. Using a system of strategic choices, followed by appropriate text scenes or even plain text with neat classic illustrations, could make this kind of improved party roleplaying a most valid option for Obsidian and their budget. The FF-books approach to this can certainly be a prolific one for everyone that don't mind reading a few sentences once in a while as opposed to clicking like a maniac.