问题探讨：开发者谈RPG中事件与时间的关系

原文作者： David Stark 译者：Megan Shieh

一款游戏可以有一个玩家能够在里面自由行动的开放世界，也可以有一个随着情节的发展而变化的世界；但它如果同时拥有两者的话，玩家将会错过游戏中的大部分内容。不过，有一些方法可以解决这个问题。

我一直在思考角色扮演游戏中的“《天际》问题”:

在《上古卷轴5：天际》中，玩家发现的第一件事就是可怕的巨龙回来了。游戏的主要情节是关于这些龙的回归，但是也有数百项可以在闲暇时完成的支线任务。的确，我有一次在碰到巨龙后无意间走进了附近的一个村庄，接着我被要求去完成一个“送戒指”的任务，还遇到了一个想教我锻造匕首的好人。

但是想想你的角色：刚刚逃出了巨龙的魔爪，TA会关心一个破戒指？TA会想着将锻造匕首发展成为自己的事业？这些小事难道比巨龙回归还重要？？！

sunless shot（from gamasutra.com）

没错，你可以认真对待巨龙回归这件事，尽快去告诫人们并保护他们（直接开始玩主线任务），但是这也意味着你会错过游戏中的大多数内容。不过你也可以先完成所有支线任务，因为那些可怕的巨龙会耐心地等着，等着你学会怎么做匕首、等着你帮助人们解决情感问题，直到你准备好要玩主线任务的时候才“恰到好处地”出现。

如上图所示，玩家（蓝色）可以在空间中自由移动，但是游戏中的时间基本上是冻结的，直到他们去到一个特定的位置（时间节点），然后时间（红色）才会推进。

其实有些人并不介意这种矛盾的设计，但是对于我和许多其他人而言，它毁掉了我们在游戏中的沉浸感。这是一款角色扮演游戏，可是它想让我扮演一个奇葩的角色，竟然会在屠龙的过程中无止境地被一些无关紧要的小事分散注意力，而且我的三心二意还不会产生任何后果。
当然，故事驱动型的游戏也不全是如此。以下几款游戏就有办法避开这个问题：

（一）呈静止状态的世界

《无光之海（Sunless Sea）》就是一个很好的例子。就像在《天际》中一样，玩家几乎可以去到任何想去的地方，也无需遵循特定的任务顺序。但不同的是，《无光之海》中没有一个需要遵循时间节点的主线剧情。

《无光之海》中的世界并没有受到巨龙的威胁，玩家也无需为此去屠龙。你可以自己选择获胜的条件，看你想要的是金钱、名声、权力还是其他东西。

但最终，游戏世界的静止状态会变得显而易见。按照推测，所有的这些力量（金钱、名声、权利等）都是相互对立的，但游戏中的一切却始终没有改变。即使是当你获得了一场巨大的胜利（比如赚了很多钱）之后，除了一条“恭喜你”的信息，游戏世界中的所有东西几乎都不会出现任何变化。

在《无光之海》中，玩家（蓝色）可以自由移动，但是整个世界几乎是完全静止的。（游戏邦注：有少数事件会永久地改变游戏世界，但与《天际》不同，这些事件没有特定的时间节点限制，可以随机进行。）

（二）线性的事件序列

电子游戏开发商Choice of Games在这方面就做得很好。他们旗下的部分游戏基本上遵循的是线性的事件序列，尽管如此，游戏还是允许玩家做出有意义的决定。虽然游戏让玩家去哪玩家就得去哪，他们基本没得选，但是他们做出的决定最终会改变后台的统计数据和后续剧情的触发要素（flag），而这两样东西最终都会影响到玩家的走向。

如上图所示，在Choice of Games旗下的一款游戏中，玩家（几乎）不能决定自己要去哪里，需要沿着一条固定的路径（红色）在故事中前进。取决于玩家前期作出的选择或后台的统计数据，路径中会出现少数变化，而且在故事快要结束的时候会出现几个分支，这些分支的故事情节都大不相同，但是，玩家不能依据自己的喜好在时间线上的某个地方逗留。

（三）由时间静止的小世界组成的线性序列

《杀出重围（Deus Ex）》和《耻辱（Dishonored）》就使用了这种方法。关卡很大，允许玩家进行大量的自由移动和动作，但一旦玩家完成了某个关卡就再也不能回去重玩了。

在这个例子中，关卡的静止状态不那么重要，因为你最多只会在里面花上几个小时。你可以在《杀出重围》的第一关中玩上10天（现实世界中的时间），但无论如何黎明都永远不会到来。

如上图所示，游戏允许玩家（蓝色）在类似开放世界的关卡中自由移动，但这个时候游戏中的时间（红色）是静止的，接着在玩家进入下一关卡的同时游戏中的时间线也会推进。

要么弄静态世界，要么限制行动:

我们要么得限制玩家在游戏世界中的行动能力，要么就得限制世界自主发展的能力。

如果玩家可以随心所欲地去任何地方，而且世界会随着玩家的行动而自主发展，那么玩家将会错过游戏中的大部分内容。因为它将不再是一个一维的地点或时间列表，而是一个地点X时间的平面区域，而且在这个区域中，玩家将会走一条直线路径。这就意味着在通关过程中，玩家不会接触到开发者放入游戏的大多数内容，反过来意味着开发团队的大部分努力都白白浪费了。

《杀出重围》的做法（游戏邦注：带有静态开放式关卡的线性序列）是一个折衷的解决方案，但它始终存在一些限制——玩家不可能像在一个开放世界里那样自由地漫游，而且故事仍需做到相当线性。的确，除了结尾处需要玩家抉择的重大决定之外，原版《杀出重围》拥有一个完全固定的故事。

跟踪改变并将它们记为统计值:

Choice of Games采用这个方法是为了缓和游戏对玩家行动的限制。尽管玩家不能决定事情发生的顺序，但是他们仍然可以在这些事件中作出选择，而这些选择最终也会影响到未来可能发生的事件或这些事件的结果。

Arkane 工作室的《耻辱》主要跟踪一个统计数据，那就是所谓的Chaos rating（混乱值），而这个混乱值会稍微改变游戏的关卡和最终结果。（游戏邦注：“混乱值”是一个根据玩家在游戏中的行动而改变的值，这是一个隐藏的机制，你只有在“任务结束”的屏幕上才能看到自己的混乱值。玩家角色的混乱值将改变故事的结果，并导致在整个游戏中的其他各种差异，比如更多的敌对角色、食人鼠，或不同的场景/环境和对话。Ps. 混乱值越高，后期的游戏就会越难。）

因此，在一定程度上取决于数据可以把事件的范围缩小成一个列表，同时允许一定程度的可控变化。这样一来，游戏可以根据统计数据换掉整个事件或修改这个事件的细节，从而形成一个会对玩家的选择作出更多反应的世界。

根据统计数据来选择事件:

你甚至可以把所有东西都编成统计数据。如此一来，游戏就会完全根据统计数据来选择将要发生的事件。1986年发布的《芝加哥之王（ The King of Chicago）》就是这一手法的先驱。

但这样做的主要问题是，有些事件会持续发生，而另一些事件则永远不会发生。

理想情况下，在通关的过程中玩家会遇到所有游戏事件中的大部分事件（一次）。但如果它一直绕回到同一个地方，故事就会重复，在这种情况下，玩家还是会错过游戏中的大部分事件，而开发团队之前所付出的大量精力也等于是被浪费了。

那么，怎么做才能在避免浪费精力的同时避开“《天际》问题”呢？

在由静态小世界组成的线性序列中统计更多数据:

设置一堆不同的统计数据，用它们来修改（但不取代）每个开放式关卡。这么做可以在不花费大量成本的前提下，形成一个能对玩家的决定作出更多反应的游戏世界。

打造一个会随着时间的推移而出现一点点变化的静态世界:

要想正确做到这点，时间的推移不应该限制玩家能做的事情。为了高效地完成这个任务，大多数时候，时间的推移应该改变细节，而不是创建多个带有相同内容的版本。

如上图所示，在《无光之海》的静态世界中，玩家可以自由行动，但是随着他们的移动，时间会一点一点地推进，游戏中的不同部分也会出现变化。随着时间的推移，每个位置可能会出现1-3个版本。

一个由数据驱动的方法:

最后，通过在数据层面适当控制玩家的行动、谨慎布局游戏事件（允许根据数据改变细节），游戏可以根据数据变化来安排玩家的走向、控制时间的推移速度，同时避免重复或者是浪费时间的内容。

根据游戏数据挑选事件。注意，这里的维度不再是时间和空间。相反，上图是一个高维统计空间的平面图表。一次通关的过程是指为了穿过这个空间所走过的复杂路径，而在这个过程中发生的事件则是根据当前的统计数据而被挑选出来的。

那么结论是什么？在一个非静态世界中的自由移动会不可避免地导致玩家错过许多内容，限制玩家的行动或使世界静止，会让游戏感觉不那么有活力。为了改善这一点，我建议你以微妙的方式限制玩家的行动，不要改变世界中的太多东西，并且使用统计数据在不完全重写事件的前提下改变其细节。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

A game can either have an open world where the player can move freely, or a world that changes as the plot advances. If it has both, the player will miss out on most of the game’s content. There are some approaches to deal with this, though…

So I’ve been thinking about the Skyrim Problem in RPGs.

In Skyrim, pretty much the first thing you find out is that big scary dragons have returned. And the main plot is about the return of these dragons. But there’s also hundreds of side-quests you can do at your leisure. Indeed, once I stumbled into the nearest village after my dragon encounter, the first things that happened to me were a quest to deliver a ring, and a nice man who wanted to teach me all about smithing daggers.

But think about your character: would they at this point care about rings or taking up a career in smithing? Might not the whole dragon thing weigh a bit more heavily on their mind?

And indeed, you can play Skyrim like this, actually taking the dragon threat seriously, moving to warn and defend people as quickly as possible. This will also mean you skip most of the game. But you can also do all the side quests, and the dragons will wait politely as you learn how to make daggers or fix people’s love lives, only arriving at the maximally plot-convenient time once you decide to take back up the main quest.

A diagram of how player movement and world time works in Skyrim. The player (blue) is able to freely move in space, but time is essentially frozen, until they go to a particular place, at which point time advances (red).

Now, some people don’t mind this contradiction, but for me and a lot of others, it destroys my suspension of disbelief. It’s a role-playing game, yet it wants me to play the role of a weird, endlessly distractable person whose dawdling somehow never matters.

Not all story-driven games are like this, though. Here are three ways to get around this:

Static world

Sunless Sea is a good example of this. Much like in Skyrim, you can pretty much go wherever you like and do things in any sequence. But there’s no overarching main plot that would require any kind of timing.

The world isn’t being menaced by dragons, nor are you in any position to fix it. There’s a choice of victory conditions you can pick from, whether you want money, fame, power or something more.

But eventually, the staticness of the world does become apparent. Supposedly, all these powers are moving against one another, yet nothing ever moves. Even when you deliver a major victory for one of the factions, once the nice big “congratulations” message has passed, little or nothing changes in the world.

Player movement and world time in Sunless Sea. The player (blue) can move freely, but the world is (almost) entirely static. (There are a few events that permanently change the world. Unlike in Skyrim, these can be done in any order.)

Linear sequence of events

Choice of Games has done some excellent work with games that are mostly linear sequences – with some deviations, but no loops – that nevertheless let the players make meaningful decisions. While the player has little or no input on where they’re going, their decisions end up changing stats and flags that do end up mattering down the line.

Player movement and world time a Choice of Games title. The player has little or no control over where to go, and is moved through the story in a fixed path (red). There are a few variations of the path depending on choices or stats, and the story usually branches heavily right at the end, but the player can’t decide to stay in one place in the timeline.

Linear sequence of small static worlds

Deus Ex, or more recently the Dishonored games, use this approach. The levels are large and allow for plenty of free movement and different player actions, but once one level is done, the game permanently moves on to the next one.

The staticness of the levels matters less, because you only spend a few hours there at most. You can spend ten real-time days in the first level of Deus Ex, and dawn never comes. So the game alternates between giving the player free movement and letting the game’s timeline advance.

Player movement and world time in Deus Ex. The game alternates between large open-world-like levels with free player movement (blue) but no time passing, and fixed timeline progression between the levels (red).

Static worlds or constrained movement

We need to either restrict the player’s ability to move in the world, or the world’s ability to progress on its own.

If the player can go wherever they like, and the world moves on its own, this means the player will miss most of the content. Instead of a one-dimensional list of places or times, it’s a two-dimensional field of places x times through which the player will take a linear path. This means that most of the work that went into the game will not be touched upon in a playthrough. Which in turn means that the game will take a lot of effort to make compared to the experience it delivers.

The Deus Ex approach of a linear sequence of open worlds is a compromise solution. But it also doubly constrains what can happen – the player cannot roam as freely as in a single open world, and the story still needs to be pretty much linear. Indeed, the original Deus Ex has a completely fixed story throughout, until a final massive decision for the player.

Tracking changes as stat values

Choice of Games does this to soften its restriction of player movement. While you can’t decide the order in which things happen, you can still make choices within these events that end up influencing what events happen in the future, or what their outcomes are.

Dishonored tracks exactly one stat, the chaos rating, that changes the levels and the final outcome somewhat.

【So, encoding the player’s choices or the world’s progression through time as stats reduces the field of events back down to a one-dimensional list while allowing for some controlled degree of variation. 】Events can be swapped out entirely or modified in their details on the basis of the stats, making for a more reactive world.

Picking events on the basis of stats

You can even encode everything as stats, both the player’s choices and the world’s progression. Now, events are picked from a pool based on the stats. This makes for a simulation-esque game that nevertheless has hand-written content. The King of Chicago pioneered this approach.

The main problem here is that it’s very possible that some events will keep happening, while other events never happen.

Much like above, a play-through is a linear path through a space of player and world stats. Ideally this path will touch a large proportion of the possible events exactly once. If it keeps coming to the same place, the story will be repetitive, and if it goes past most of the events without touching them, there’s a lot of wasted effort.

So what are some concrete possibilities to push the envelope while avoiding wasted effort and the Skyrim Problem?

More stats in linear sequences of open world levels

A bunch of different stats that modify but not replace each sandbox level could make the world more reactive to the player’s decisions without breaking the bank.

A static world with a little bit of change over time

【To do this right, the passage of time should not close off opportunities for the player in frustrating ways. And to do it efficiently, most of the time, the passage of time should change details rather than requiring multiple versions of the same content to be created.】

A variant on Sunless Sea’s static world. The player can move freely, but as they move, time slowly advances and various parts of the world change. Each location may have 1-3 versions that appear over time.

A stat-driven approach

Finally, 【by gently controlling a playthrough’s movement through the space of stats and careful placement of events that can change their details based on stats, a game can let stat changes encode both player choices and the passage of time without becoming repetitive or wasteful.】

Picking events based on game stats. Note that the dimensions are no longer time and space. Rather, this is a 2D representation of a high-dimensional space of stats. A playthrough is a complex path through this space, and the events that happen are picked on the basis of the current stats.

So what’s the conclusion? Free player movement in a non-static world inevitably leads to a lot of unseen content. Obviously constraining player movement or making the world static makes games feel less alive. To ameliorate this, constrain player movement in subtle ways, don’t change the world too much, and use stats to change things without having to completely rewrite them. （Source: gamasutra.com  ）