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关于持久世界vs.静态前进机制的设计辩论

发布时间:2011-10-09 14:55:22 Tags:,,,

作者:Josh Bycer

这是继上一篇关于恢复命值与治疗物品的联系之后的另一种设计辩论。寿命最长的角色扮演游戏系统作为一种静态的前进机制出现在人们的面前,这就意味着玩家只能在起始城镇外面能够发现一些耗子(即能量较小的敌人),并在探索游戏世界的中途才能遇到庞大的龙。然而,随着角色扮演游戏越来越开放,其它类型的游戏也开始模仿它们的游戏机制,以此进一步推动了持久游戏世界的出现。这时候,游戏世界是围绕着玩家的游戏级别而形成的,即刚开始,除了一些能力较弱的敌人,玩家将不会遇到任何敌人,但是随着他们级别的慢慢提升,那些虚弱的敌人将会被一些更为强大的敌人所取代。

上古卷轴4:湮没(from gamepro.com)

上古卷轴4:湮没(from gamepro.com)

《上古卷轴4:湮没》也许可以称得上是持久游戏世界的最典型例子。从那以后,关于这种设计辩论的观点便开始慢慢浮现了,而我们也是时候在此对其好好评述一番。

一开始,我们来看看这个所谓的持久世界所存在的正反面因素。持久的游戏能够提供给玩家平衡的游戏体验,保持敌人的级别与玩家的级别相一致或相接近。也就是你无需担心游戏角色是否在与敌人几次对决后便会死去。另一方面,这也意味着你无需担忧着如何打击虚弱的敌人才能获得游戏升级,因为你们的每一次战斗都会对敌人的平均力量有所削减。这同样也能帮助玩家更好地与好友一起游戏,如果游戏大势倒向玩家一方,那么你也就可以放心地带领那些低级别的好友进入游戏了。

(补充说明:允许好友一起游戏。《City of Heroes》使用了“密友”系统。在这里,如果你是与一些低级别的好友一起游戏,那么他们将成为你在游戏任务中的密友,帮助他们提高级别同时也能增加你的级别,而且你们不需要学习任何新的技巧。这就使得他们不仅能成为你的战斗小组成员,同时也不会削弱团队的战斗力。)

持久世界设计也存在着一些缺点。首先便是因为它的这种平衡感不偏不斜刚刚好,或者说这种系统很容易遭到破坏。在《上古卷轴4:湮没》中,敌人总是掂量着如何去阻止玩家的升级。然而,这款游戏却与其它角色扮演游戏有所不同,包括在角色创造以及玩家分配主要和次要角色属性方面。主要属性的升级将能够带动角色的升级,但是次要属性却没有这种功能。

这意味着什么?如果玩家选择将非战斗属性作为主要技巧,那么他们便能够在提升战斗技巧之前提升这些非战斗技巧了。也就是说,在他们拥有能够获胜的战斗技巧之前,便会遇到更高级别的敌人。另一方面,一些精明的玩家会故意这么做,花费所有时间去磨练自己的战斗技巧,以靠打败总是比自己弱小的敌人而通关玩游戏。

平衡游戏的另外一方面便是能够让玩家面对更多挑战,即会出现各种不同类型的敌人。因为如果游戏世界更倾向于玩家一方,那么便因此需要出现更多不同类型的敌人才能保持游戏的新鲜度。在《死亡岛》里有7种不同类型的僵尸(游戏邦注:有2种一般的与5种不同寻常的)将与玩家进行对决。但是问题便在于,一旦你打败了一只僵尸,你便能以相同的方法打败其它相同类型的僵尸,因为它们用来阻止你升级的唯一武器便只有自己所拥有的能量和破坏力了。

死亡岛(from games-review.info)

死亡岛(from games-review.info)

如果你只想要安插一些核心的敌人类型,那么你便可以设置它们,让其在玩家开始迈向更高级别时相继出现。我们再次回到《死亡岛》,在这里僵尸可以随时出现并阻碍玩家前进,或者它们不会因为玩家所发射的电流或攻击而退缩。

第二个问题便在于它将抹灭玩家对于各种独特挑战的探索或者对于漫游的享受。因为每一个敌人以及每一个环节的设置都是按照玩家的级别进行定制,这就意味着玩家找不到更加困难的挑战或者更有威力的设置了。同时它也将给这个虚拟的游戏世界蒙上一层人造感,即新的敌人会再次出现于早前虚弱的敌人出现的地方。带着更强大的力量回到早前所无力面对的困难挑战中,玩家将会清楚地看到自己的成长,但是这种感觉却不适用于持久世界中。

静态前进机制存在着以下的一些优点。首先,它让玩家能够轻松地理解游戏进程。你离起点越远,你便会遇到更多更危险的事物。也就是当你的角色级别是10,而敌人的级别却已达到20了,那么便很容易看到谁更占优势了。

这种机制在一些观点描述中也是行得通的,即龙等强大的怪物不会出现在一开始的城市中,因为玩家不可能知道自己将会在地牢中遇到什么,所以这种机制将帮助他们进一步去探索这个世界。

关于敌人的类型方面,越多敌人类型越好这一点并不适用于持久世界。因为即使是最一般的敌人类型,当他们跃到更高级别时,也会对玩家的挑战造成威胁。

静态前进机制所面临的问题便是,虽然游戏平衡仍然很重要,但是却区别于持久世界的不同平衡类型了。关键问题在于:级别究竟有何影响?在不同的游戏中,玩家的级别也不同,例如在绝大多数日式角色扮演游戏中,升级将会帮助你提高角色的基本属性,但是在其它游戏中,升级有可能只会对你的角色状况有帮助。很多角色扮演游戏都是以战斗为基础,这么做没有什么不妥,因为你的角色属性和敌人的属性都有可能影响你的游戏结果。但是,当你进行一种实时或者基于技巧的战斗时,问题便会出现。

《Borderlands》就存在着这种问题。这是一款基于回合制的第一人称射击游戏,但是同样也拥有角色扮演游戏的级别设置。不论什么时候,在游戏中,玩家和敌人都存在着级别差异,即低级别的角色不会对高级别的角色造成威胁。如果级别差只有1、2级,那就没什么大不了了,但是如果玩家的级别低于敌人3级或更多,他们就会发现自己的攻击对于敌人完全不存在震摄力了。那时候,不论玩家有多么厉害,他们所发出的攻击也不会有太大的破坏力了。

这听起来也像是一种挑战玩家的仿造方式,但是它却对技巧没有任何要求。如果敌人变得比你更加强大,但是你们之间的差距却只有2级,那么也可以通过发射5-10倍的子弹而提高攻击的破坏力,打败敌人。

一个有趣的解决方法便是忽略所谓的级别机制,Nis America旗下的《魔界战记》系列便是一个典例。当游戏角色拥有级别时,它们的属性便是战斗中的关键因素。赋予低级别玩家强大的武器不仅能够帮助他们提升级别,也能帮助他们更好地对付敌人。当游戏角色再次从级别一开始游戏时,能力级别便开始起作用,但是这时候这些角色却已经拥有了较为强大的能量了。也就是说从级别再次开始时,角色其实已经是拥有50级别能力的游戏角色了。

《恶魔之魂》这款游戏也削弱了级别机制的重要性。每当玩家的级别提升时,他们便能获得一些更强大的能力(如果他们能够提高活力属性,那么相应获得的能力便更多了。)但是事实上,在此对于战斗有所影响的破坏力都是来自于武器本身而非玩家的能力。也就是说,在《恶魔之魂》中,即使是高级别的角色但是却仍在使用最初较低能的武器,那么你也不可能快速杀掉敌人。但是如果玩家的属性能够对他们的行为产生影响,那么这就真的是一种有用的机制了。

说了这么多,我也该与大家分享一下我的选择了。比起持久世界,我更青睐于静态前进机制,因为:首先我喜欢探险,并乐于从中挖掘一些危险却让人惊奇的新鲜事物,并清楚我所遭遇的每次危险都会对我的级别晋升造成影响。其次,我着实是一个执拗的人,因为我很喜欢深入研究一些细节问题,以了解我的游戏角色到底有多大的能耐,这也是我为何如此喜欢《魔界战记》系列的原因。如果我花费一些时间去进行升级,那么我便会希望我的角色能够压制住级别较低的敌人,并迎接更多的挑战。

其他题材的游戏也开始融入了角色扮演元素,设计师也在寻找更好的方法在游戏中植入这些元素,而前进机制就是一个重要的部分。通过属性去定义玩家如何在回合制游戏中变得更加强大其实很简单,但是如果你面对的是实时性战斗场景,而且其中还包含了玩家的技巧级别,那么问题就棘手了。相信在角色扮演游戏和动作类游戏中,我们可以看到更多游戏将这种讨论落实其中。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

The Great Game Design Debate: Persistent World vs. Static Progression Edition

by Josh Bycer

It’s time for another design debate. The last one regarding regenerating health brought some interesting discussions and hopefully we can have a similar discourse here. RPG systems for the longest time were designed around the world being a static progression, meaning that players will find little rats outside the starting town, and dragons halfway around the world. However as RPGs became more open-ended and other genres adopted their mechanics, there has been a push for persistent world design. This is when the world is built around the player’s level, at the start, the player will find nothing but weaklings, but once they level up, those weak enemies will be replaced by stronger ones.

Perhaps the most recognizable example of a persistent world was The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Since then, this debate has grown and it’s time to talk about it here.

To begin with let’s look at the pros and cons of each, starting with persistent. As a way of providing a balanced experience, persistent works by keeping enemy levels either equal to, or close to the player’s level. You don’t need to worry about wandering around and running into an enemy who can kill you in a few hits. On the flip side, it also means that you don’t have to worry about grinding weak enemies for experience to level up, as every fight will be against an enemy of average strength against the player. This also has the side effect of making it easier to play with friends, if the world scales to the group, then you don’t have to worry about bringing in a lower level friend and having them useless for the game.

(As a quick side note regarding: allowing friends to play together. City of Heroes’ utilized the “side-kick “system. Here, if you are playing with a friend who is a lower level then you, they can become your side-kick for the mission, raising their level up to yours, but not learning any new skills. This allowed them to be a part of your group without weighting it down.)

There are a few disadvantages to persistent world design. First is that the balance has to be just right or it’s very easy to break the system. In Oblivion, the enemy scaling worked off of the player’s experience level. However, the game determines that level differently from other RPGs, at character creation, the player assigns primary and secondary character attributes. Leveling up primary attributes will go towards raising the character’s level, while secondary attributes will not.

What that means, is if the player chooses non combat related attributes for their primary skills, there is a good chance that they will level those up before leveling up their combat skills. In other words, they’ll be facing higher level enemies before they have the combat skills needed to win. On the other side, crafty players could do this on purpose and spend all their time honing their combat skills, thereby keeping the enemies weaker and just walk all over the game.

Another part of balancing the game is that to provide challenge, there needs to be a lot of enemy variety. The reason is that if the world is scaling to the player there needs to be variety to keep things from becoming stale. In Dead Island, there are 7 types of zombies (2 common, 5 uncommon,) that scale with the player. The problem is that once you fought one, you then know how to fight every other enemy of that type, since the only things that change with leveling up, are the amount of health the enemies have and how much damage they do.

One solution to this is if you’re going to only have a few core enemy types, throw in unique modifiers that start to show up when the player gets to a high level. Going back to Dead Island, there could have been zombies that can jump and tackle the player, or zombies that can’t be stunned with electricity or kicked.

The second issue is that it kills that thrill of exploring for unique challenges or the feeling of wanderlust .Because every enemy and piece of gear are tailored to the player’s level, it means that they won’t be able to find tougher challenges or powerful gear. Also this gives the world an artificial feel to it as new enemies magically appear where weaker enemies once were. Going back to hard challenges with the power to now beat them easy, shows players just how much they’ve gotten stronger since getting stuck there, which is a feeling that doesn’t work in a persistent world.

Moving on, static progression has the following advantages. First, it gives players an easy to understand progression. The further you go from the start, the more dangerous things are going to get. It’s easy to understand if your character is level 10 and an enemy is level 20, who has the advantage.

This also makes sense from a world building point of view, dragons and other powerful monsters aren’t going to move right next to the starting city, likewise it also helps motivate people to explore the world, as you never know what you’ll find in a dungeon somewhere.

In terms of enemy variety, while the more enemy types the better (as with all games,) it’s not as vital compared to a persistent world. The reason is that even basic enemy types, when pumped up to a higher level can still be a threat to a player.

Now the problems with static progression, game balance is still important, but it is a different type of balance compared to a persistent world. The key detail is: what exactly does leveling affect? Different games will have the level of the player mean different things, for instance, in most JRPGs, leveling up will improve the base attributes of your character, while in other games it could only affect your health. In RPGs with turn based combat, this is ok, as the attributes of both sides will affect the outcome. However, when you have real time or skill based combat, this can present a problem.

Borderlands had this issue, the game was all about twitch base shooting as in a normal FPS, but it also had RPG leveling. Whenever there was a level disparity between the player and enemies, the lower level character will do less damage to the higher one. When the level difference is one or two, it’s not a big deal, but when the player is three or more levels below an enemy, they’ll find that their bullets do negligible damage. At that point it doesn’t matter how good the player is when their best shots are only doing one or two points of damage.

This also feels like an artificial way of challenging the player, and it removes the need for skill. While having enemies grow stronger along with the player breaks the immersion, so does having your bullets from the same gun magically do five to ten times more damage to an enemy because you are now only two levels below it instead of three.

An interesting solution is to downplay leveling, the Disgaea series from Nis America is an example of this. While characters have levels, their attributes however are the key factor in combat. Giving a low level character, powerful items can overcome being a lower level then the enemy. Power leveling comes into play when characters can restart at level one, but with enhanced stats. What that means, is after enough restarts, a level one character could have the stats of a level 50 character.

Demon’s Souls also downplayed the priority to level. Every time the player levels up, they will gain a little more max health (more if they increase their vitality attribute.) However, the actual stats and damage that affect combat come from the weapons themselves. Being a high level in Demon’s Souls won’t help you kill bosses quicker, if you’re still using the weapon you started the game with. While the player’s attributes do dictate what they can or cannot use, it’s the actual equipment that does the work.

With everything said so far it’s time for me to share where my preference lies. I prefer static progression to persistent for several reasons. First, is that I like to explore and see what dangers and surprises I can find and knowing that every encounter out there is going to be even to my level kills that thrill. Second is that I’ve always been a numbers man, as I like getting into the details to see how much power I can squeeze out of my characters, which is also the reason why I love the Disgaea series. If I spend the time power leveling, then I want to see my characters utterly dominate lower level enemies, while still having ultimate challenges to face.

RPG elements have been finding their way to other genres and as such, are forcing designers to find the best ways to implement them and progression is a big part of that. Defining how a player becomes more powerful in a turn based game with attributes is easy, but when you are dealing with real time combat and the player’s skill level has to be factor in, that causes complications. With the line between RPG and action titles blurring, we are going to be seeing more games that will bring this discussion back up.(source:gamasutra


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