[pythian] DESIGN - Morrowind & Skills
- From: Darryl Long <pythianproject@xxxxxxx>
- To: pythian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 23:42:17 -0700
Sounds to me like this skills thing could be a real problem. I saw the
same thing in Dark Age of Camelot with trades. My friend wanted to set
up a little electical device which would hit the "F" key every minute to
try and build armour or something stupid like that. Apparently his
trade was blacksmith and to become better and gain levels he had to
craft X number of suits of armour. So that's almost all he did. He
travelled around looks for the materials he needed, then spent the rest
of the time pressing the F key and watching television.
At the time, I only associated the problem with trades, and made a
mental note against them, but that was narrow-minded of me. It
generally applies to all skills.
The game-design rule we can all learn from this is that you should only
reward players for doing whatever it is that you want them to be doing
in the game.
If you want players to develop carpal tunnel syndrome by pressing the F
key for hours on end, then reward them for doing so. If you want
players to jump around for an hour every night, then reward them for
doing so. This is not what we want, so why introduce a game mechanic
just because it sounds cool if in practice it detracts from the core
gameplay? Too many game designers get roped into this looking for
buzzwords to put on the back of the box. Let's not fall into that trap.
Let's think of a better solution. It can range from scrapping skills
altogether, to buying skills with XP, to buying skills with money, or
skills only increasing through real role-playing (but how do we measure
that?), or skills only increasing during combat (but do we only want a
fighting game?)
Darryl
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