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《牧场物语》制作人分享RPG设计经验

发布时间:2013-04-01 14:43:44 Tags:,,,,

作者:Christian Nutt

MarvelousAQL公司(《The Last Story》开发商及《牧场物语》系列发行商)首席创意官、《牧场物语》系列制作人Yoshifumi Hashimoto在最近的GDC大会上分享了自己在开发《Rune Factory》系列中收获的5个经验。

《Rune Factory》系列是《牧场物语》的衍生游戏,但其背景是一个奇幻世界,包含战斗及其他传统的RPG元素(游戏邦注:《牧场物语》中并没有这些内容)。

他指出“如果有人因这次会议受而到启发制作了一款RPG游戏,这对他们来说就是一个新开端,不是吗?”

Rune-Fatory(from midlifegamer.net)

Rune-Fatory(from midlifegamer.net)

1.迎合不同玩家的需求

Hashimoto称RPG能够吸引不同技能水平的玩家。在《Rune Factory》中,设计师融入了一些能够给予技能较低玩家一些优势,但高级玩家却可以忽略的元素。

例如,在农场系统中,玩家可以通过探索地下城和培育庄稼来喘口气——但对那些很快就掌握游戏内容的玩家来说,他们无需担心如何应对这一系统。

“已经精通游戏的用户无需停下来休息和照料庄稼,而感觉游戏很困难的玩家却可以这么做。”

据其所言,“游戏设计适用于不同玩家的玩法,它非常有效……我们想避免让玩家产生自己是被迫做X,Y,Z等事项的感觉。”

“我只想确保游戏含有选择,让不同水平的玩家都能玩我们的游戏。”

2.以背景故事掩盖技术问题

《Rune Factor》包含季节性循环。在夏季月份,游戏中的角色会穿上泳衣。

但这种设置存在一个技术问题:“那时候,我们无法让角色的皮肤变成棕褐色,我们找遍了解决这个问题的方法。”

他们的解决方案就是创造一些故事背景:在《Rune Factory》中,角色运用了魔法纹身,使之成为防晒霜。

Hashimoto认为“这是一种不失奇幻色彩的现实主义方法。”

3.将现实世界的调查应用于奇幻RPG

在开发之前提到的泳衣系统时,开发者们并不确定终日被繁重的粗活所累的农民,究竟有没有时尚的概念。最终他们得出结论“因为农民日复一日地干同样的体力活,他们内心当然也会希望自己能够有所不同。”

在开发《牧场物语》时,Hashimoto的足迹踏遍日本,同农民交流与他们日常生活有关的话题。当他提出这个问题时,他发现农民的回答印证了开发者的直觉,“当我们询问这种情况时,他们的回答与我们的设想如出一辙。”

Hashimoto称游戏中的这类现实主义元素很重要,因为玩家“只有在理解你所表达的内容这一前提下,才会觉得游戏很有趣。”

“我想制作一款不仅仅是空想,同时还包含一些现实和可靠元素的游戏。”

4.以合理的方式让游戏永无止尽

你得创造一种允许玩家持续乐在其中的玩法系统。Hashimoto认为给予玩家选择,就是游戏这种媒介超过电影的一大优势。

“在游戏中,我们的一大优势就是玩家可以选择自己的路径。”

在《Rune Factory》系列,主角可以选择一位伴侣,结婚,生子——这也让Hashimoto引申出一个问题“我们在游戏中过的这种日子可以持续多久?”

他如此描述这款游戏的设计,“如果你只是想同自己的伴侣安居乐业,你可以;如果你同时还想与怪兽战斗,这也行。”

要牢记游戏世界的重要性,“我们想制作一款让人希望世界永远不会终结的游戏,因为如果他们能够清除其中内容,游戏世界也就结束了。”(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

Tips for RPG design from the Harvest Moon franchise

By Christian Nutt

Yoshifumi Hashimoto is the chief creative officer at MarvelousAQL — the developer behind games like The Last Story, and also the Japanese publisher of the Harvest Moon series. He works as a producer on the Harvest Moon franchise, too.

Here, he shares five lessons he learned while working on the Rune Factory series. The games are a spinoff from the popular Harvest Moon franchise — but they’re set in a fantasy world, and include combat and other more traditional RPG tropes that the main franchise does not include.

“If there’s one person after this session who’s inspired to make an RPG, that’s a new beginning for them, right?” Hashimoto said, during his session at GDC 2013.

1. Cater to different player types

RPGs attract players of varying skill levels, Hashimoto says. In Rune Factory, the designers included elements that would give a boost to players of lower skill that advanced players could ignore.

For example, in the farming system, players could take a break from exploring the dungeons and cultivate their crops — but players who game’s content quickly, they wouldn’t need to worry about dealing with the system as freuqently.

“People who are good at the game do not need to rest and cultivate crops,” says Hashimoto, “while people who feel the game is hard can do so.”

“The game design adapts to the player’s play style,” he says. “It was very, very effective… what we want to avoid is saying, ‘Hey, this is how you’re supposed to do it,’ to force upon the player how to do X, Y, Z.”

“I just want to make sure there’s an option, and that will be something that will allow players of various levels to play our games.”

2. Embrace your technical problems in the story

Rune Factory, being a Harvest Moon farming game, includes a seasonal cycle. During the summer months, the game’s characters will don swimsuits.

There was one technical problem with this: “At the time, we couldn’t make the characters tan, and we were looking for a way to get around this,” Hashimoto says.

Their solution was to create some backstory: In the world of Rune Factory, the characters apply magical tattoos that act as sunblock, which could be implemented as textures.

“It was a way to take something realistic and put a fantasy spin on it,” says Hashimoto.

3. Real-world research can apply to a fantasy RPG

When developing the aforementioned swimsuit system, the developers weren’t sure if farmers, living a simple life of hard work, would really care about fashion. Eventually they concluded, “Because they were doing the same day-in, day-out, it turns out they did want to stand out,” says Hashimoto.

When developing the Harvest Moon games, Hashimoto travels around Japan talking to farmers about their lives. When he posed the fashion question, it turns out that this intuition was correct. “When we asked the farmers about this situation, it turned out they felt the same way,” says Hashimoto.

Including real-world touches like this in games is important, says Hashimoto, because players are “not going to think [the game] is fun unless they really understand what you’re trying to communicate,” he says. Realistic touches achieve this.

“I want to make a game where we don’t just lean on the fantastical, but somehow include the real and relatable,” he says.

4. Make your game never-ending, in the right way

You should create gameplay systems that allow players to keep enjoying your game if they wish to. Player choice, says Hashimoto, is the game medium’s big advantage over film.

“In games, we have an advantage over games in that players can choose their route,” he says.

In the Rune Factory series, the main character can choose a mate, get married, and procreate — and that lead Hashimoto to wonder “how far can we go in living your life in this game?”

He designed the game so that “if you want to simply live together with your partner, you can,” he says. But, at the same time, “if you want to go defeat the demon together, you can.”

The important thing was keeping in mind that the world of the game was an important thing: “We wanted to make a game where people would feel they didn’t want the world to end, because if they cleared it, that world would be over.” (source:gamasutra


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