作者：Rampant Coyote

有些旧款RPG游戏需要前期投入大量时间学习游戏系统，随后才能感受到游戏的趣味性。例如，我在玩《魔法门之英雄无敌1》时感觉很失意，直到我花时间研究了用户手册。随后，我便开始疯狂玩这款游戏。有些其他的游戏也需要进行前期的时间投入。

Heroes of Might and Magic V(from guides.gamepressure.com)

我认为游戏的学习过程应当简单有趣，这是根本问题。如果你在游戏的前5分钟内未感受到乐趣，那么肯定有些地方出了问题。我愿意花些许时间来学习某些RPG，但或许我不应当这么做。这确实是个问题，尤其当你的游戏系统有大量富有深度的机制的时候，这种游戏恰恰是我所喜欢的。事实上，在我最喜欢的那些战略游戏中，每次玩游戏我都能学到新的技巧和领悟到新的深层次内容。这便是良好的游戏设计，创造无需理解所有细节便可以体验其中乐趣的游戏，同时不断为玩家体验游戏和探索深度提供奖励。

不幸的是，我认为行业现状并不令人满意，诸多公司在“简化”游戏难度上存在如下问题：

1、教程。教程往往令人感到厌烦，而且通常趣味性不高。玩家体验教程的过程感觉像是受人操控，这往往是因为教程的脚本化过强。当我处在教程中时，我常常会希望能够尽快结束，体验游戏真正的内容。这是不对的，游戏应该允许玩家一开始就能玩游戏。

2、削减复杂性。这也是广为采纳的方法之一，简化游戏减少了玩家需要学习的内容。我认为游戏深度与复杂性并非同一回事，但常有开发商在降低复杂性的同时，把游戏深度也省略了。

3、克隆玩家熟悉的游戏玩法。游戏开发商正在努力制作类似于流行动作游戏的RPG，这样资深玩家无需学习过多新内容就可以体验游戏。对我来说，这似乎让RPG正在不断流失其独特性，成为动作游戏的变体。我并非歧视动作游戏，但我玩这两类游戏的目的并不相同。

还有个我认为多数“老玩家”都会遇到的问题，那就是玩游戏的时间有限。我们喜欢游戏，但是我们必须通过零碎的时间来打通游戏，而不能像孩子们那样通关玩到底。我发现自己经常回到游戏《Slay》中，因为我可以在15分钟的时间里完成游戏。我能够用在游戏上的时间往往不超过1个小时，通常少于45分钟。如果在这段时间里，因为死亡和重新开始，或者因为我需要在游戏中到处与人交谈来回想起自己上次的游戏进度，导致游戏几乎无所进展，那么我便不会再有启动这款游戏的冲动。

面对上述问题，行业所采用的典型应对方法是操控和线性化。早期游戏所使用的固定保存点可以直接解决这个问题，但设置得当的目标暗示也可以解决这个问题，而不需要在屏幕上古板地显示指引玩家移动方向的图标。

对此我的看法如下：

1、优秀RPG应当易于学习，而且能让玩家在不完全掌握系统的情况下在游戏的头几分钟里就能感受到乐趣。

2、优秀RPG应当在头15分钟内用剧情和激情来吸引玩家的注意力，而且在那段时间里玩家应当真正可以“玩到”游戏（游戏邦注：而不需要按照游戏教程的步骤来走）。

3、优秀RPG应当随游戏进展而不断呈现可供玩家探索和掌握的深度，前提是玩家已经掌握了系统的基础。游戏不应“简化”深度并且在十数个小时内不断重复基础内容。

4、RPG玩家应当可以在很短的游戏时间内（游戏邦注：理想时间为15到30分钟）取得可察觉的进展。

5、优秀RPG游戏不可过度线性化，应当允许玩家有一定的自由去尝试以不同的方法来实现目标，如果玩家没有明确提出要求（游戏可通过难度等级觉察到玩家的需求），游戏不可有意引导他们采取某种解决方案。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2011年12月20日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Can RPGs Be Easy to Learn Without Being “Dumbed Down?”

Rampant Coyote

I feel a little hypocritical after my (day-job related) business trip to Asia. I loaded up my computer with some really serious RPGs – probably way too many – as entertainment. I had some other game types, too, but I filled my hard drive with a good subsection of my “unplayed RPGs” library. I figured I might get into one or two. That didn’t really happen.

I did spend some serious time doing game development, especially after the first week and I’d made my peace with jet lag and my work schedule. So I wasn’t totally slacking off. But the massive RPG love-fest I anticipated didn’t really happen. I gave it a decent try, but I don’t think I put more than three or four hours into serious RPG playing.

This actually caused me some concern. Was I just getting burned out after spending the better part of the last five years *making* a game inspired by the old-school sensibilities, and now I just wanted to play some hack-and-slash action RPG or real-time strategy game?

Maybe that was part of it. I think a little bit of burnout probably enhanced my lethargy, but really I was experiencing the fundamental problem from which modern RPGs have been “saving” us for the last decade or so… these older games require too much work up front to learn the game system before they become fun. I mentioned a few months ago how frustrated I was with Might & Magic 1 until I actually took the time to study the manual. And then I started having a blast playing it. That initial outlay of time can be even more significant for some other games. I found myself wanting to retreat to easier, or at least more familiar, territory – like re-playing an old favorite.

(I think a small part of the problem was that I have some games in progress back home, and I felt a little reluctant to start a new game that I didn’t think I’d finish before returning home and having Yet Another Half-Finished game on my hard drives…)

It’s a fundamental issue. Games should be easy (and fun) to learn. If you aren’t having fun in the first five minutes, something is wrong. I give RPGs a little more leeway, but maybe I shouldn’t. This is a problem, especially if you have a game system that has a lot of mechanical depth – which I have always enjoyed. In fact, some of my favorite strategy games are the ones in which I learn new tricks and expose new layers of depth every time I play. This is good game design – to create a game that’s playable and fun without having to understand all the details, but which rewards continued play and exploration with ever greater depth (and more skills to master to improve play).

Unfortunately, the industry’s answer to this quandary has not been satisfactory, in my mind:

#1 – Tutorials. Tutorials usually suck and are generally not much fun. They feel like hand-holding, often because they are so tightly scripted, and I often find myself looking forward to being “allowed to play the game” once the tutorial section is over. That’s wrong. We should be playing from the get-go.

#2 – Eliminate Complexity. This is too often the other approach – to “dumb down” games so that there’s not nearly so much to learn. I will admit that depth doesn’t have to be the same thing as complexity, but this streamlining effort often throws out the baby with the bathwater.

#3 – Clone Familiar Gameplay. Game developers are making RPGs play “just like” popular action games, so veteran gamers don’t have to learn much new to get into the game. To me, this feels like RPGs are losing their distinctiveness and becoming just a minor variation on action games. I have nothing against action games – don’t get me wrong – but I play them for a different reason than I play RPGs.

There have got to be better approaches to the problem than this. While this isn’t exactly the same as “dumbing down” the genre, I’d say “watering down” is an appropriate description.

Another issue I think most of us “older gamers” have to deal with is limited time to play games. We love games, but we have to get our gaming in small segments than we could as kids. I find myself going back regularly to a game of Slay, simply because I can play a complete game in fifteen minutes. My gaming time is usually in segments no longer than an hour, often less than forty-five minutes. If that experience ends with my having made little or no progress – due to dying and restarting, or simply wandering around talking to people trying to remember where I’d left off last time I played, or whatever – then I’m a lot less excited to double-click the icon again when I find myself in need of a gaming fix.

Again, the typical industry answer to this problem is hand-holding and linearity. Although the earlier love affair with fixed save points runs directly counter to this, and I find the inability to save and exit abhorrent in a PC game. But a decent “quest journal” and other goal suggestions can help here, without requiring an on-screen icon that tells the player to “walk here.”

So we have several potentially conflicting goals here:

* A good RPG should be easy to learn, and “playable” (and fun) without fully learning the system within the first few minutes of play.

* A good RPG should grab the player within the first fifteen minutes with drama and excitement, and the player should actually be able to “play” the game in that time (rather than stepping through a tutorial).

* A good RPG should have plenty of depth for the player to explore and master as the game progresses, once they’ve mastered the basics. It shouldn’t be “dumbed down” and simply repeat the basics for a couple dozen hours.

* An RPG player should be able to make measurable progress in short game sessions (15 – 30 minutes, ideally) even if they don’t have a clear recollection of where they last left off.

* A good RPG should not be excessively linear, and should allow plenty of freedom for the player to attempt (and succeed) in achieving goals with different approaches, nor should it hold the player’s hand to guide them to a “preferred” solution unless explicitly requested by the player (through difficulty level or whatnot).

I cannot claim some kind of miracle approach that resolves all of these goals simultaneously – and I’d probably reject any claim of a “one true approach” that did so out-of-hand. And I think for most of these points, you could replace “An RPG” with “A Game” and they would hold equally true.

But these are good things to think about, both as a player and game designer. RPGs have a reputation for being hard to get into and play, which is why modern RPG developers do all kinds of genre-distorting contortions to overcome that legacy. I can’t really say I blame them, and I can’t argue with the fact that Bethesda appears to have hit the mother lode with Skyrim with something that appears from my vantage point to have only a passing resemblance to an RPG. Their approach works, I enjoy these games, so it’s one solution. But I think there are others. This lightly-explored territory is a place that other RPG developers that aren’t named Bethesda or Bioware should definitely explore.

In the meantime, I have a couple of games to develop and a crapload of half-finished games to finish on my desktop now that I’m home. (Source: Rampant Games)