Comments on: Design at Start vs Design in Play

By: Sadrak

Sadrak — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:38:13 +0000

I’m developing a game right now that pushes as many decisions out of the chargen as possible. In fact, you can only choose a race and a first name.

It drops you into the game in a random family (which you can abandon later to change your last name) and a random location (you can travel to a different city on your own).

The strange thing we’ve noticed form internal testing is that the less options you give at the start, the more emergent behavior develops later.

Spinks’s point about characters making up their minds at creation time (if that’s when design occurs) is dead on in practice. And when they’ve made up their minds but find out several levels later that the developer had a different goal for that class, there’s some major cognitive dissonance.

By: Dragon Age: Faces & Facebooks « MMORPGs

Dragon Age: Faces & Facebooks « MMORPGs — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:42:33 +0000

[...] face heavily in various cutscenes, because otherwise I don't see the use of it. Spinks thinks that choices about your character are better taken somewhat later in the game, and not before you get to play it, and maybe she has a point there. Tobold's MMORPG [...]

By: Tesh

Tesh — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:22:24 +0000

Agreed… noting that I also like the ability to “respec” to be as flexible as possible.

By: Dblade

Dblade — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:51:26 +0000

I agree with design in play, I like to actually test abilities before settling on a final build to play the game. Oblivion was nice that way. Its funny that for MMOs especially, we are asked to invest poentially hundreds of hours in something we cant kick the wheels of until level 20 or so when we start getting the real abilities.

By: Wiqd

Wiqd — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:23:06 +0000

I commented on Regis’ dismissal, but only for the character creator. People have to remember that we’re in the age of DLC packs now so any game that comes out has the potential to grow immensely after release. Just because there’s only 3 classes now doesn’t mean there’ll be 3 classes 3 months down the road.

As for the design, I like to customize my character at the beginning. I’ve never liked pre-mades because it’s not me in control. Someone else made them, gave them the background and has thrust them into my control.

I like to make my characters, give them a story and begin from there.

I think DA:O could be good as long as they continue to expand it, which I think they will. If they don’t … then it’s just another game that will fall by the wayside in a short amount of time.

By: spinks

spinks — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:50:15 +0000

The character generator definitely doesn’t feel like something the game was crying out for, but it is kind of fun to create your own avatar for the social network thing based on a character you know you’ll be able to load into the game later.

But no, it’s not something you’re going to be playing around with for hours. There isn’t much to it.

My main quibble is that you can’t customise the body type, it’s just the face. Then I remember that in the actual game you’ll be about an inch high so probably not able to tell anyway.

By: Sara Pickell

Sara Pickell — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:03:27 +0000

Just to get a quick segue out of the way, I’d also be pretty dismissive about the DA Character Creator. Not to in any way dismiss Dragon Age itself, it’s just that if your character generation is tightly limited and hardly a game in it’s own right… why release it separately?

Anyways, I actually like making my character up front… though usually unless I’m physically prevented from continuing I don’t mind gimped characters. From a detached point of view, though, I see a huge advantage in not forcing people into something they’ll dislike later.