RPGs :: keeping people playing

Something that really bugs me about rpgs is how quickly interest can be lost in them.
The first time you play its exciting and new (assuming the RPG is exciting and not overwhelming and complex), after that you get really into leveling your guy, to do harder dungeons, or get better gear, or to advance the storyline. But once you are the highest level with the best gear what is there to do?

Here is the general convention:
A) many character classes so you can always start again
B) piece of piss PVP system

So, what is the best way to encourage people with high level end game characters to continue playing?
A strong PVP system with rewards would be great, as would having multiple high level items for each 'class' so part of the game would be creating the right build. An interesting idea put forward by Twilight's Eve is the concept of having increased level limit each time a new patch is brought out. This could be expanded to use additional areas, dungeons, items, or even having separate areas in different maps; eg "Krod's Knights: Oasis of Truth" and "Krod's Knights: the Talis Jungle". Krod's Knights would be the RPG with loading, saving, quests etc, and each map (probably epic sized) would present a new area.

This could even build to a Diablo style Acts system; beat Act1 and your code will allow you to load in Act2 etc.

Thoughts?

Make the game dynamic. Have things change between different games based on random numbers, different events, different quest availabilities, different environmental effects, different bosses, the whole nine yards. The more that changes between each game, the more people are going to want to keep replaying it to get healthy exposure to the different combinations.

That steps on the toes of the meta-game then, for example how would you write a boss-guide for a boss that is random each time you play?

How would you discuss dungeon running for a dungeon that is different every time?

Easy, you don't make everything random, otherwise it's chaotic. Certain bosses could appear every time if they are significant to the story - the bosses I'm referring to are randomly encountered bosses. And hey, that boss guide would still be useful whenever you did encounter him.

Furthermore, the dungeon would have certain constants about it, such as the enemies that spawn and their difficulties. Regardless of what's different each time, players could develop builds to handle that specific environment.

There's a point where enough is too much with everything. A healthy balance of randomness in an RPG map keeps players coming back for more, though.

Which is why the RPG I help develop only cares about PvE a lot more.

PvP is just a treat in TBR.

-Av3n

TBR is not to my tastes, it gets boring for me very quickly, the SFX spam doesnt seem to impress me as much as it does others...

Randomising minor bosses etc seems in some ways like a good idea, for example it works well in Diablo, but either they are too weak to really make the game challenging, or they are too strong to make the game balanced. For example in Diablo II you can encounter random bosses, but often you dont even need to adopt differnet strategies to kill them, they are just 'slightly stronger' than others.

Making the a lot more exagerated, for example immune to magic or 10x stronger but 10x slower will make the player enter a minigame style encounter, which would actually be interesting. For those who have played Fable remember the encounter with Twinblades (A giant hero wielding duel swords), he attacks slowly and will knock you down, his retinue form a circle around both of you and you duel, hence entering a minigame; dodge and then stab him in the back.

I'm not sure how practical this is in a warcraft RPG, and how repedative it would become; "ah shit another extra strong, here we go again (*_ _)"

It depends if it really is just an 'extra strong' or if it actually takes brainpower to take the creature down.

hence the minigame aspect

i have found that alliances are very limited. you cannot have more factions/parties than the number of player slots.

bandits
living trees in the forest
elves
humans
undead / cultists
wolf pack, swarm of bees, etc.
etc
etc

considering making a script that has alliances on a per-unit-basis - instead of on a per-player-basis.

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i sorta agree

i wanna implement this feature where an ancient protector named treebeard can escort lowbies through a dark forest just to make 'grinding' more interesting (but at a price or a quest or something, of course).

but then such a feature, or any feature in general, gets old after enough iterations...
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i would think that an rpg would (and should) keep players 'involved'...

Dynamic quests, bosses, and stuff would be interesting, but there's a huge problem with that: If people are trying to find this particular X thing, they would probably keep remaking the game until the quest/boss/stuff activates. That would be more annoying than fun.

Maybe every single dungeon, quest, and boss should be doable, but doing one means that you can't do another one. This way, it's not based on random chances and more on players' decisions. Although, if this were to happen, you'd have to double up on a game when in others, you can normally just do everything in one run. It's not really convenient; sounds like a ploy just to get players playing longer. But- hey! That's our job, isn't it?

I don't participate in PvP, so I have nothing to say about it.

Expansions sound really nice, but that takes a lot of work on a terrainer. Plus, you'd have to create more quests. Then, if you plan to add things, you'd have to do it for each variation of the map. That's a lot of work, and no one's getting paid for this work. I personally wouldn't be so motivated to make more than one variation of an RPG. While in the meantime, NiSAmerica pays their sprite artists, animators, programmers, and such as they add bonus content. This probably includes every other game with DLC.

Making an RPG is hard. So, if I could tell anyone who wants to make RPG who ask, "What kind of unique stuff should I put in it?" I would say, "Don't even start. Make something else."

It's not like an AoS where PvP is the main asset, which one can effectively replay forever. In something like that, item builds must be acquired over a short period of time. This also works, because every primary enemy in the map- namely, other heroes, get stronger too. Not only that, certain hero builds can only be countered by having certain items. That alone is dynamic, because people's item choices are mostly (did I just say that...) based on preference (again...). And, in a PvP environment, you just have to have people who make their imaginary version of a "tier list"- which doesn't really exist in the first place.

However, when you've got an RPG, item builds are more linear because strong enemies now become weak enemies later. The only game I can think of that didn't do that, is Final Fantasy VIII, where they made a preset number of enemies that leveled up according to your average party level. By doing this, they also limited the amount of things you have to equip. All you needed was a weapon (that could only be forged) and a GF (Guardian Force) in that game and you're done with equipment. There's little variation in that, but it creates a TON less work. Compare that to something like Valkyrie Profile- more the sequel than the first. There were tons of items to equip, and most-if not, all builds are for dealing as much damage as possible before the enemy's turn. The other problem with item building for an RPG is that you have to play hours- not one hour- to get what you want. In VP2, there's an item called Magic Dragon Horn- the best accessory in the game, that you can only get in the Seraphic Gate- or the bonus dungeon after beating the game. The only problem with that is that you have to hit a HORN on a dragon that doesn't instant break (so you can't use skills/weapons that cause instant-body breaking). Then, you have to beat the dragon which is a mini-boss after it gets angry because you chopped its precious horn off. That's a lot of work, on a player's and programmer's part. And look- this is all assuming that you even get the Horn accessory itself.

Does anyone remember Poo's Sword of Kings in Earthbound? There was a 1/128 chance of that dropping from ONE enemy that you'll never see again after a certain point in the game. I forgot to mention that that's his only weapon in the entire game. Let's see... I remember that I never got it, even though I came there on level 50+, and finally gave up when my party's level was around their 70's. Talk about cruel. Plus, I remember that hoax that came up about getting Ness' best weapon from only ONE enemy that you fight only THREE times with a 1/128 chance to get it.

But that's what gets you playing longer, doesn't it?

Also, more and more RPGs are starting to make "Second Playthroughs". This has kind of become a staple nowadays, because this does make people play their games longer. Basically, play the game over after beating it the first time, and the second run of the game contains a lot of bonus content. This usually includes- but not limited to: New items, new equipment, new moves for characters, bonus dungeons with new mechanics and new enemies, and super bosses- or bosses that are stronger than the last master.

Do you think that perhaps we should adopt that, as well?

So, someone might be asking, "You're making an RPG. What the hell are you doing?" Er... Things I tend to make end up creating more problems in the long run. "Character building" means that I have to make more items that are FUNCTIONAL, not fluff. By items, I'm talking about the whole lot: weapons, armor, and mostly importantly, accessories/misc. "More enemies" means that I have wait some 30+ seconds for a new unit to appear in the Object Editor. This also means that I have to plan out how much life they have, how much mana regen they have, what level they're on, how much STR/AGI/INT they have, how fast they attack, what passives and abilitiles they have, a new AI for this particular enemy, ye-de-ya-da... A new ability means some 75+ more lines of code. A new environment means two hours of trying to NOT make terrain look craptacular... *sigh* the list keeps going. No wonder why it took me five years to finally decide what it was that I wanted from my RPG! (I'm not being sarcastic; this is all true)

Then there's people cracking into the map that you worked so hard on... Man- you know, that's just discouraging. I'm not getting paid anything- and neither are they, but they weren't the ones who went through years of production and trying to motivate yourself.

I think you sometimes have to accept that there is more to life than getting people to replay your map every five minutes.

I'd rather a man played a map of mine twice in as many years and thoroughly enjoyed it each time, than constantly ground through it (becoming increasingly bored) just to find every last secret.

Though this thread seems to be more about ORPGs...

your not going to get an interesting rpg in wc3 unless you do it like founding of Durotar, it's just not made for it and is going to suck. i never played any of the "open"rpgs becuase they got boring incredibly fast.

Off-topic: If this is what you mean, you can remove most of the wait by disabling the bottom left semi-tool palette thing. It worked for me.

/agree

If you are to make an ORPG which you want to be very replayable, try making leveling slower but more fun. For example, make the level cap higher (or requires more exp to reach than normal) but have the quests and dungeons more unique/fun to play through. Like Dusk said, have some things in the dungeons that change randomly each time it is played- that way the players are always on their feet trying to expect what comes next.

However this is a WC3 mapmaking site... So getting your map replayed is pretty much as good as it gets.

And yet there are many RPG clans, the one i'm part of has over 300 members, and they certainly aren't the biggest.
If you never played them, then you didn't even give them a shot, i would be willing to make the bet that you dislike DotA because everyone else does as well.

Please do not waste time posting pointless posts about a genre that you obviously haven't played or mapped, and putting forward opinions that will obviously contribute nothing to the discussion.

So just make more time to reach the equivalent place, but make it more fun? Hm, I think its doable, for example having puzzles, like playing a game of sudoku or something, which would require no AI, but just an algor to mark it. This once again comes down to minigames, not just hacking and slashing.

There is a major problem with this, more often than not more than 3/4 of the dungeons will be completely ignored by the players as they have a highlevel person to run them to the hardest ones for items, or they are twinks, and hence already have more than powerful enough items!
Its obviously easy to prevent twinks and plevelers, but they always manifest in some way or another.
I think dungeons could also be used as passages between areas, such as the Shrine of Fire from Fable, that lets you travel to the north once you defeat it, or the Dark Passage in Diablo II, which isnt a dungeon but is still a nice example :)




AFAIK it has never been attempted before, but i think it would work fine. As for the extra work, RPG is fairly plain usually in terms of terrain, and its fairly simple to make a desert or a jungle, things get pretty repetitive and simple when you arent creating multiple flora zones. Quests can generally be copy-pasted and the modified, for example the main quest types are "Go here", "kill this", "talk to person", "collect item" or "escort here". Everything else is pretty much just a minor variation of these. You just have to make a system easy enough to modify and work with.
Most RPGs dont even use custom models, they just weigh down an already bloated map, its generally uncessecary, and makes the map practically unplayable on Bnet, and if it fails on bnet then you are all but screwed.



I partially agree, an RPG currently floating around on Bnet called 'Twilight's Eve' optimises this; once you are high level, and have good gear, the only thing to do is farm the hardest dungeon; "Impossible". You require a well made team, usually of 6-8 players (healer, buffer, tank, cc, dps), then you can farm high level drops. To work well each player should have one of each hero so they can swap around when they get their loot. Often it can take 10 or more runs to even get 1 item you want, with each run taking 5 minutes, but having 10 minutes setup time, and the run group taking 30-60 minutes to organise.
So far i have spent probably 6 hours running to get items and forming groups. So i think you have quite a fair point about making people run for items getting them hooked.


This truly is interesting, I would imagine in an ORPG it would work something like this; you enter a circle of power, if you are past a certain level you can create a new 'Second runner', you lose all your items and gold, but you gain access to new hero paths, and new items. That certainly would be cool.
So now there are: A) Hero tiers and B) Player tiers.
That certainly IS awesome!
This could work really really well in an ORPG, I can imagine people playing through as a Theif, then rolling Demonologist, and selecting some kind of Demonic-Assassin, some kind of hybrid hero unlocked by playing through as both!
This is awesome!

Balance is always an issue, in AoS's it is often taken a little more relaxed; 'hey, this hero is uber strong, but dont worry, we will just say we made him that way because he can only be countered by this other hero'.
I am aware of the workload involved, and it is the same for any quality map, it just seems overwhelming in RPGs because it could just as easily be cut back. A lot of map makers have put in a lot of time into bnet, and they were rewarded with success.

IMO.

Whatever RPG your making, no matter the circumstances there will be a weak and strong point of it (Take TBR, PvE > PvP).

I haven't had the chance to play other RPGs since I don't have the time (I don't even play TBR myself until I'm happy with it). One thing is that you can't make it too random (like you stated before (refering to random)) otherwise it just becomes too confusing, it might be enjoyable however.

-Av3n