Strong recommendation for Josh Sawyer's GDC talk on attribute design/tuning in Pillars. Really great insight about the history of D&D attributes and how they designed Pillars'.
Yep, he did another one talking about companion relationships in PoE 2, but he spends an hour blaming and depreciating himself, and it's pretty sad to see. Especially from one of the best game designers around...
Tim just wanna say Fallout came out the year I was born and my introduction to the series was with 3. I recently played through fallout 1 during my final semester in college and it was a blast. I love your work and you are an inspiration ❤
FWIW, Todd Howard has explicitly said that they've made an overt decision to make Starfield "more hardcore of a role playing game than we've done", to "go back to some things that we used to do in games long ago that we felt have really let players express the character they want to be." Which, at least to me, does sound like BGS actually registered the lukewarm reception of Fallout 4's basegame (for, among other things, the dearth of stat checks).
Registered it? Definitely. Addressed it? Doubtful, but I still hope those statements meant what so many think they meant. They didn't discuss story structure or how backgrounds, skills, etc. actually work in the Starfield deep dive. What they did show of dialogue and story gives off the distinct impression of flavor text of the kind seen in 76 Wastelanders and "choices" that don't actually impact anything at all aside from the occasional gate pass. Guess we'll see, but the simple fact that he said "let players express the character *they* want to be" just solidifies in my mind that the industry believes all players essentially want to play themselves or a prewritten protagonist in a supposed RPG as opposed to creating multiple, actual characters from the whole cloth of their own imaginations for multiple playthroughs. The character systems of old had a sometimes enormous impact on how the game itself actually played out, often with the outcome of seemingly insignificant choices depicted in ending slides, occasionally even taking the player by surprise at just how impactful they'd been, encouraging subsequent playthroughs to see the outcomes of different choices. RPGs today boast multiple endings, but one I can think of right off the bat actually has the player literally choose one from a list and another that received a great deal of criticism because it essentially chucked player decisions made over the course of the entire series straight out the window in favor of "pick one." The complexity of impactful player choices were once depicted in ending slides because the game itself literally couldn't handle all the possible permutations in actual gameplay. I'd certainly settle for that over the cinematics in which the illusion of choice is patently obvious.
@@darth_crumbo Fortunately, we don't have to imagine that. There's more than one decision in Witcher 3 that affects the world so drastically, I had to stop the playing the game for a while just to process what had happened, the ramifications were so impactful. But that's a prewritten character. What of those we create ourselves? New Vegas had quite a few. Impactful choices are becoming pretty rare, though.
I'm one of those people that really enjoy complexity in character building, and appreciate the fact that you can create hyper specialised characters or generalists but not master of everything, unless you cheat, which is your choice I guess. I also love in dialogue stat choices because it's just one of the ways where you can roleplay your specific character and see the impact of the character you chose to make.
I think the way Attributes are setup in a game is more important than some realize. Since they are typically sort of your 'base layer' of your character build, they tend to effect everything in some capacity. They are a foundation for the rest of your character system. Even simply removing them all together has a profound effect on a system. It's an interesting area to tackle and think about.
I think one issue regarding your thoughts on the next Fallout, is the expectation now a player should be able to do all the content of the game on one character, mainly because the games are so huge and long. So in the end class or attributes mean nothing because your character can do everything at the end. I’d much rather have a shorter game where you cant experience everything on one playthrough yet each character you make feels and plays different and the world reacts differently to the character. I’m not sure if you have insider knowledge but it seems the mantra in the industry is that longer equals better.
This, except the game will still be huge... you just have to have closed off pathways from early decisions. Play#1... you help group you find under fire from other group. Other group hates you, now you can't access that content. Play#2... help other group, first group hates. Play#3... just watch and do nothing, only minor access to each group. But end all roads have to reach end content in similar way with similar power levels.
Todd Howard did an interview years ago in which he talked specifically about Bethesda's desire to remove as many systems as possible. I don't remember exactly what he said, though I saw a snippet of that interview in a player critique only recently. I think the gist of the the idea was to streamline their games by removing systems they thought were redundant or overly cumbersome for the average player to easily grasp. Something along those lines. "it seems the mantra in the industry is that longer equals better" -- And bigger and more. This is what I've referred to in the past as the "bigger is better" and "more is good" design philosophy that pretty obviously has taken over the industry. (Well, with the possible exception of Obsidian, The Outer Worlds having come in at a digestible 30 hours or so.) There seems to be an unspoken demand that a studio be the one that produces the next "blockbuster" video game the very same as in Hollywood that a studio must be the one to produce the next "blockbuster" movie. CD Projekt Red's developers talked about this very thing in a NoClip documentary on The Witcher 3's quest design process. They estimated they needed 60-65 hours worth of playtime and even joked that that they were very bad at estimating playtime, so don't ask. :) What publishers and developers perhaps have yet to realize is that an awful lot of players are fed to the teeth with meaningless, boring filler content. (That's what I'm hearing from communities, at any rate.) Yet, longer games have been released since and there are apparently more on the horizon, claiming 100s of hours of playtime. Well, there is only so much time in the devleopment cycle to produce a good, quality game in the time period allotted. Yet more and more hours of content, procedural and otherwise, are being shoved into them. The old saying perhaps applies here: "You can have too much of a good thing."
While i kind of like the possibility of the PC becoming very good in pretty much all areas i also like what tim talked about (flawed heroes, shortcomings making interesting characters) so either can make a legendary game. But if the hero can become very good in all areas it should take a very long time. What i disagree with is the idea that should be able to do everything with one character because the choices should lock you out of other sides (like going NCR makes you an enemy of the legion etc)
@@lrinfi the average player problem could be solved with things like auto leveling, auto balancing, all kinds of difficulty adjustments and similar tricks. sometimes i think, the problem is that those average players want games to be just for them, not for everyone. in the past "elitism" used to be an issue, now it's a tyranny of the average...
OMG, Amber. Such great memories of playing it in the late 90s. Another thing about the bidding process in it is that you could overspend, and then you'd get Bad Stuff! And if you underspent, those points would become Good Stuff! Amber was a fun game, full of intrigue and just the craziest sh*t happened. Some of the ideas contained in that book still influence my game design lobe to this day. On 0-5 attributes... It depends on how your 'dice system' works. A bonus of "1" in V:TM isn't the same as a 4pt bonus in D&D or a 20% bonus in a d100 game.
Yes Karma was a very interesting design concept, and worked very well for the themes and narrative of the game and the source material. Creation points where xp (no difference), and the positive or negative credit you get by having spent less or more than your real total was akin to Luck: power hungry people tend to have negative Karma, and tend to if not pay the price for it at least be challenged more by destiny.
The thing with Amber DRPG, is that the bidding system is there to emulate a narrative theme. In the novels there is this group of princes and princess who mostly all grew up together, and knew each other. They competed against each other all their life. So they knew, in advance, who was the strongest, or the best fighter, and so on. Because they tried to beat that brother or sister dozens and dozens of time before, and they couldn't (they're all immortal, so we're talking as fully formed adults). That's what the system tried to emulate. Which of course can very easily fall flat, when new characters come in, or if player character didn't grew up together or at least competed for years together as adults. Because that narrative of close knit family works for that generation of protagonists in the novels, but not often in a rpg campaign, and indeed in the novels the second generation doesn't follow this narrative theme. But to its credit, that system also handled something from the book, is the unknown. Some people could chose to buy attributes but not bid, so they could not be the best, and if tied they would lose to the official bidder, but nobody else knew what they had. Plus, that point pool to buy things, covered everything. Not only attributes, but also powers and abilities. But indeed, there are a lot of interesting thing out there. As an old far, one of the less old interesting thing I've seen is the system in FATE Core, where skills and attributes are merged. There is no distinction between them. There is a list set for a campaign, with a default generic list provided as example in the rulebook. And that default list has to be the best one I've ever seen. It's short but not too short, a total of 17 irc. And it cover everything, from shooting or coercing people, but also money (or general resources), or contacts and networks and allies. So in FATE when you're presented with a challenge, you can attack it in many different ways. Sure you can get into combat with the tower guard that's stopping you from entering, and sure you can sneak past, or bluff them. But you can also try to build a contraption to get you to zipline from another tower, or you can bribe them, or you can have a ally give you permission to enter. And every single example there can be handled with a single skill check, each with the same mechanics and difficulties. But however elegant it is, it does remove one of, imo, the greatest aspect of attributes in most system: they are additive to skills, and broad. In many rpg there is a variation of "well you're very strong, sure it help to bonk people on the head and move things, but it can also help you move someone past traps now roll Strength+Traps, or help your male show off to someone compatible roll Strength+Seduction, and so on. Skills tend to be vertical, they rule over a single specific domain of actions; while attributes are more horizontal and can affect many things. Bonus design points to rpg who let this additive property freeform (with guidelines of course), to cover edge cases and inventive usage by players: yes maybe this part of the heist could be done by swapping out faster a whole computer rack from two different datacenter buildings, roll Strength+Computers.
As a hobby, I've been writing a homebrew Fallout campaign/ruleset piggybacking off of 5e's rules [Yes, I know what that sounds like.] for quite a while now, and this insight gives me confidence that I'm doing something awesome for my friends and I. Thank you so much for this channel.
I comment on your videos more than any other youtuber I watch. I hope you never stop saying, "oh, I could make a video about that." Also, I tend to have to rewatch parts of the videos because you will say something that sends me down a rabbit hole of design in my brain while I'm trying to watch.
@@CainOnGames you absolutely do Tim! im currently lucky enough to be involved in a games development, and i am loving your content while it develops! id love to hear your thoughts on planescape torment, did you play it back in the 90s ? fallout and planescape are tied #1 GOAT games imo in planescape Wisdom is insanely OP because of how dialog driven the game is and the extra options that come via Wis are almost essential to completing the game, but it works out because you get more of the amazing writing that is so good, win win :D
One thing, I think, that doesn't get brought up in these cases is how long these games are. If they were shorter but more replayable, i think many problems with choosing your attributes at the beginning of the game goes away. In fact, if games were shorter, more people would probably play more characters. Tyranny did this somewhat but it was still long(20h-ish) for a playthrough, Outer Worlds to some extent as well.
I would go much further, and say that fixed blind attributes (unless some über specific narrow case where it's a design decision, and for good reason) are probably always wrong. They are a left over of early decades of D&D, although not early rpg since (as with many, MANY things) Runequest came out just two years after and solved that problem. Fixed attributes are counter intuitive, almost anyone can start lifting weights and get stronger. But they are, or were in ye olden days, often punishingly restrictive to the point where creating a character is actually a game in itself, and a competitive one at that, where you could lose for arbitrary badly written rules. I don't that much about really modern games, but I don't think I have heard about a rpg with fixed attributes for quite a long time.
How delightfully complex attribute design turns out to be, and how fun tinkering with it seems, playfully turning knobs aiming for balance. Great video as always, thank you.
Morrowind and Fallout prove that balance in single player games is over emphasized. These games shine the most when you actually play the character how you intend.
The main reason DEX is overvalued by RPG systems is because it subsumes too many characteristics, while all other stats subsume too few in comparison. Compare DEX and STR in classic D&D terms. Dex is often understood to include the following: hand-eye coordination, reflexes, running speed, fine motor activity, balance, agility, the list goes on. Arguably, these are completely unrelated characteristics (for example, I have very good reflexes but my sense of balance is not good). Meanwhile STR is generally understood to only mean raw physical power. STR often doesn't even include physical health (this is what CON is for), which seems absurd, since if any characteristics can reasonably be justified as being intrinsically connected it would be physical strength and health. It's no surprise we see 5th edition D&D and even Pathfinder going the same way, with a plethora of DEX-based fighting styles (and DEX-based feats/perks) that have begun to eclipse classic STR-based build - for many of the same reasons you mention here. The answer is to break up DEX into multiple attributes and collapse other stats together. Imagine something like the following: POWER which designates both physical strength and the amount of damage you can withstand (collapsing STR and CON together), AGILITY which designates reflexes and balance (so, initiative, dodging), and FINESSE which designates ranged accuracy and fine motor activity (so, lockpicking, bow use). This breakdown raises the possibility of high Finesse, low Agility characters who are good at shooting things at range but who are slower to take actions. Similarly you could have high Agility, low Finesse characters who are always the first to act and to scramble out of harm's way but whose own actions are reckless and inaccurate.
This kind of theory crafting is that's why I am coming here. In my system I have been considering the Dex as a subset of Agility ( quickly adjustable reactive power and sensorics to all body parts). Low Agi and high Dex which is completely realistic case for many trade skills professional - cheap and shallow way is put some perk (Dex= Agi + x) or attach some card to Agi atribute saying specific conditioning increasing the effective Agi for specific activity. With having covered bunch of corner cases of activities generic hand craft bonus can come... would it feel interesting from player perspective, let's hope for simulationists yes.
Hi Tim! I am late to thia conversation, but being an indie tabletop rpg designer, I absolutely ADORE this discussion. I've built a system that is a low stat 1-5 system that allows players to hand craft their skills and combat abilities completely. What makes it great is that players have agency in deciding what stat dictates what bonuses to skills and combat abilities as long as it is contextually relevant. Those attributes will stay MOSTLY static through a campaign and instead what players gain are new skills, combat abilities and items that offer quirky new features. My brain has always felt that the players should have that agency to make the character the way they want and as a DM, you build your campaign around the features of the players. So if someone wants to be a half-orc bard that is low charisma and cant sing, we can now adjust the system to allow the chance to hit of their bardic abilities to be bonused by the inverse of their charisma modifier and since they hand made their combat abilities, they could be more offensive damage based. Talking attribures and design is so fascinating and I can not stress enough how enriching it is to hear your talks on design.
As usual a great video, Tim! I'm currently writing a cyberpunk TTRPG (which btw started as my own little unofficial Fallout RPG) and one of the choices I made when deciding to make the game into its own thing was to have attributes permanent, but skills and derived stats could shift with bonuses or penalties and advantages and disadvantages. I was never exactly sure if that was a good idea and wondered if I'd be shooting myself in the foot, but to hear you talking about how you'd do something like this if you were designing attribute balance right now when you have so many years of RPG experience is very encouraging! It is always wonderful to hear your insights.
Hey Tim, I wanted to piggyback on your comment about brainstorming. Having led some groups in events, I came to eventually follow a 3-point method for capturing the environment you are talking about, I think. Here it is: 1- Would the idea be cool/fun to do? Is it in the *spirit* of the project? Answer the question yes/no, and why. Make a note of why. If yes, move to 2. 2- What are the requirements of doing it? Importantly, this comes *after* whether or not it is in the spirit of the project, and the question is, "is it possible to do?" This is requirements testing, not feasibility testing. No comments need to be made at this point regarding whether or not it can be done. We are gathering all of the requirements, not stopping at the first unfeasible one. 3- Is it feasible? Are there costs you cannot afford, or opportunity costs you cannot afford? This is where you go down the line of items in 2, and see if you can get the idea to work. When there are no requirements unmet, the requirements are met, and it is feasible (in theory). If it's not feasible, you have a readymade explanation of why. You can file that idea away on a shelf of things you thought would have been great to do, if you could have done it. Check back in on it from time to time to see if any requirements are no longer relevant. This has kept me from having some meetings go over time
I like the idea of Attributes/Stats mixed with Perks/Passives, it gives it a broader horizon for customization and deeper means for specialization. For now i'm sticking with a form of stat that involve three main categories Might, Mind and Moxie, each with subcategories, like Might having Strength and Muscle. Point being subcategories are what directly affect you in the ways you interact with the game while the categories determine bonuses and other stuff, so having balanced spreads on Might, for example, help a lot. Then there's perks that could help niches, like bonuses on specific actions that, for example, use strength.
Very interesting video on attribute design. One of the advantages of attribute design for video games as opposed to tabletop RPGs is that the designers know exactly what's going to happen throughout the whole game at any point (because the game runs itself rather than needing a game master), therefore they have a much better grasp at the usefulness of each individual attribute and can balance them accordingly (i.e. a game that makes less use of, say, Perception than Charisma can compensate this by having each point of Perception worth more or each point of Perception cost less, for example). With regards to the DEX god stat, that can be split into Reflexes and Coordination. Alternatively, some of the functions of DEX can be handed off to other attributes (i.e. stealth and/or ranged combat can be given to Perception) or a very powerful function can be made into its own attribute (i.e. Fighting, Accuracy, etc.) Last but not least, one of the things that has greatly alleviated the anxiety of attribute allocation during character creation has been the respec option that has become more and more available in more modern games. While some hardcore players may hate it, I find it to be a blessing, as it allows me to experiment more with the same character and the game ends up respecting my time more.
What games are you most anticipating Mr. Cain? I feel Starfield will be a good indicator of where BGS is at with Character Creation. They’ve confirmed the return of traits, but time will tell if they are successful.
@@TheMylittletony The end goal would be a spiritual sequel to the oldschool Elder Scrolls games, fantasy life sim in a very large world. We'll see if it'll ever get past the paper design though, I'm not the best programmer and I lack patience to do super big projects lol.
I'd love to see a video on brainstorming. Just being able to glimpse into that creative process and sharing and bouncing ideas must be such a good process.
I remember how fun making different characters in fallout and arcanum was because of how unique attribute distribution made each one. The game changed around who and what your character was for better or for worse. It made the world feel real and your character being a real participant in it instead of your character being some weird power fantasy that’s just plowing through the world as the OP main character
bloodline's concept of multiple skills adding into what is actually counted is the best and things like tyranny's magic system that allows for crafting unique solutions with underlying mathematics in an easy to understand way
The really fun part I love about flaws like traits and the like is that it gives depth to the character, as it becomes more unique. And I like using the Fallout games as an example there, as having low intelligence while talking to another character with low intelligence actually made them have an eloquent and verbose conversation with each other. And high luck with the jinxed trait with the better critical perk creates a really entertaining and useful character it its own right
In video games one of the most common criticisms I see can be summed up with "Show me the numbers." Since an amazing number of modern RPG's and RPG-Likes, have this issue of making it very unclear what anything does, to the point years later still next to no one knows. Monster Hunter with it's Hidden Scaling attacks being one of the biggest ones where it says something like 200 damage, but none of your attacks have 100% scaling so it's really like 150 or less. Attack speed is never shown either. Hidden checks for things also compound onto this, which you will see as well, requirements for stats or unknown ability scaling for a Feat/Perk will also have this issue, even more so if it's class based game where you'd never know the Gunslinger uses Intelligence for his special attack or whatever. Meanwhile if you just showed all the perks, and let people see all the information, and ideally had like a test arena, ideally an optional one, none of that would've been an issue.
Another thing that I wish you mentioned about attribute design is the sliding towards "Max is the new normal." I know that player mentality generally trends towards min-maxing, but the fact that so many games feel like they assume that your character is min-maxed towards something and then balance it around that is very frustrating for someone like me who prefers to play more well-rounded characters more often than not.
I have to say, finding your channel feels like I've accidentally tripped and fallen into an absolute goldmine. with video games being as young an art as they are, this almost feels like being able to talk to one of the old masters of the renaissance about art or sculpting. thank you so much for your fascinating thoughts and please continue to share!
Brainstorming ideas and talking about them is one things I find enjoyable. Bouncing off ideas and expanding on them and talking about how they influence other aspects is so much fun!!
Character creation and progression is the main reason I play games these days, which is why I only play RPG's now. Give me all the choices, positive and negative, because more choice lets me play how I want and makes me feel truly engaged and motivated to play. Attributes are important because it helps us understand the game mechanics in a way we can relate to. I do like your idea on derived stats and skills being from multiple primary attributes. Your games were never balanced, but it is impossible to have perfect balance while also keeping things fun and easy to understand. You and your colleagues made some incredible games that live in all our hearts and minds.
The internal debates I've had with myself about attributes in different tabletop games I've crafted. It really is a hard balance to strike. In my own system that was initially a bad photocopy of Fallout SPECIAL, I ended up taking a lot of computer science principles to making sure the attributes I ended up with had enough significance in the functional parts of the game. How many references to the attribute were made by skills, traits, hp, etc... I even charted up an ER diagram, along with system components, to visualize it all and see if there were weak relationships or just practical islands. I think I got it decently evened out, especially with having a branching skill system where the 10 base skills used the values from 3 attributes to get your initial starting proficiency. Grab the values for 3, double two of them, and add them up. And since skill use took priority over an attribute check, you'd had to really dedicate to having the maxed out attributes to get the best starting proficiency. (And since attribute scores for a base skill determined how many points you'd get to spend on skill in that branch when you progressed, it was sometimes a sacrifice you'd be willing make to really ramp up in that area.) In another simpler game I made, attributes served as the basis for all rolls. Skills, so to speak, gave you small bonuses. Attributes were also your "health", and you could decide how to take damage and reduce your current attribute level. And you'd have so many rolls you could make for each check: Always had a roll, but if you didn't like you could press your luck if you had more rolls. The fun part of that game was either increasing a stat or exchanging a stat from somewhere else to add another roll in another. You'd take drop one place to get another chance somewhere else. My first real RPG experience was Fallout, so I always seem to gravitate towards in my designs. They was just something about the core of things in background that felt good.
About setting your attributes. I do remember, vaguely, that in your one Arcanum videos you mentioned idea of having multiple background (race -> young background -> adult background) when creating a character. Each one of them could give stats up and down for your basic set by races attributes. Tyranny had a VERY GOOD idea with it Conquest that gave you control of what you did before the game, it could be interesting to make Biography/life when you make various decisions and gives you bonuses to attributes and skills. Such thing would be an interesting way to create your character. I like attributes set in stone btw, with option to modify various things that multiply various action you do. With flaws lowering them and maybe changing how they are calculated.
A tabletop game did that in the 80s and 90s. Well, several. I'm trying to remember which was the first, and I can't. There was an old French one all about roguish characters and thievery which I think did it early... maybe Dark Earth did that too? Can't check, it's deep in boxes at the moment. Basically, expanding the single line background "you're a farmer", or "you're a scribe", with various moments of your life. Maybe who were you born from, and your childhood, and your teenage years and apprenticeship.
Would love to see that video on brainstorming sessions. A crucial process that can and should be very fun. Thanks as always for these vids! Extremely insightful.
I think your approach to make games easier to grasp comes from tabletop background, making it easier for everyone to grasp to fill in quicker and talk about(!), while most people enjoy that, some of players are mad scientists that like to solve complex systems and to those at least 1 optional system in the game that will make whole experience better. Make reward for digging into advanced stuff and something like attribute chemistry(it can be choice of companions(counting in disposition towards them) add speciefic random rewards and reward you for playing your character and adding stats in a speciefic order ( you added some strenght then willpower you get the trait called "persistent gym freak"(adds callus making grip with firearms better for example) which on its own spices up your whole leveling process(you can do cool stuff with it like modifying it later"ex gym freak"(making your gain weight and lose muscle tone visually adding some blunt resistance) or tieing it to compaign/town whatever location you got the trait from that could support you in that), you are not playing game to powerlevel and figure out how to break the game at that point, you are more interested what progression system is going to throw at you if you keep leveling your way. What i dont like about fallout 3-4 is that attributes system is more of a legacy thing of rpg games than actual practical implementation. Those games' gameplay loop has more common with borderlands and diablo likes than with any rpg ever. I bet 80% of playerbase didnt even play original game. Would be better off with attribute system(perk) that supports combat or sandbox survival gameplay without all those. Objectively those are not a fallout games, its an action game spinoff made in same universe(why not make your own? i guess starfield?but it kinda copies outer worlds???). I think games should be more creative with how they portray difficulty, if its done right even the most casual infant journalist and not technically impaired normal player will both get satisfaction from playing game. I understand for example systems that are made to make game harder by their own exist(like monster-player linked level progression or wacky controls made to make you lose your mind) and those are gross, but whats more gross to me is ditching cool systems that increase difficulty as a side effect. Those are the best things that could spice up the gaming as whole not just one game, best examples are improved monster ai behaviours and complex level designs(not just bland arenas).
Jus throwing an idea out there - have attributes be tied to the god you worship (chosen during creation), but changing gods wipes out all bonuses/drawbacks, and they slowly ramp up again. This makes it a long term decision instead of choosing whatever is good at the moment.
Hey Tim I’ve been loving your videos! It’s made me replay the original Fallout! With the new Fallout show on the horizon, I’d be curious to hear what it’s like to see something you created be taken in so many directions and be expanded on by so many different people? I know there are large contingencies of the fallout community who gatekeep what is “true fallout” do you have a feeling similar? Not necessarily the aspect on the quality of newer content, but to see it become so great. Is it comforting seeing a creation worked on by so many different people or does it become something feel completely different than what you were proud of you? Love the vids keep it up
Oh dang, I LOVED Everquest back when it came out. On the Attribute side of things, I was a clueless kid who's main experience with fantasy was the R.A. Salvatore books, so when I made my first EQ character I wanted to be a Wizard, but I liked being a human so I chose a Human Wizard (Some of you may be cringing right now). During character creation, I of course put some points into INT, but I also wanted to be able to carry more stuff and hit people with my stick while I was in between spells so I also put points into Strength (I think everyone is cringing now). Needless to say, after I told my build to a few people I had become friends with around level 15 they basically told me to re-roll my character haha. While my Dark Elf Enchanter quickly became my favorite MMO character of all time, I still look back fondly on that Human Wizard. He could barely handle a Gnoll, but damn did the world feel so real. The level of adventure and exploration in that game was second to none (beyond maybe early Star Wars Galaxies). I feel like Wikis basically killed the adventure in MMOs, where everyone wants to min/max their way to end game instead of trek through a world and explore and get really engaged with it. Maybe I should try out an RP server or something.
I think a good example of an attribute system was Star Wars: Galaxies. You just got proficient at things, blasters, blaster carbines, etc. and then you picked a profession and hopefully all of that lined up. Picking bounty hunter was a good option for gun skills, but maybe farmer wasn't, but you were still handy with a gun. It offered a lot of flexibility, even if the end result was obvious.
Very interesting video. One thing that I always hate about attribute design (and by extension skill design) in RPGs is when the game uses them to pretend it's deeper than it actually is. For instance the game might have all sorts of interesting stats/skills like charisma, social skills, stealth, stealing, hacking... But then you play it and it turns out that 80-90% of the time all you need is the biggest gun or the heaviest sword. All those cool attributes/skills are only useful like 3 times in the campaign. You can never actually be a hacker or a speech focused character. It's all just a small addition to killing things. I don't mind a game that's combat focused... but I feel cheated when the game is combat focused yet it still pretends that you have all those options - even though they're just a bonus at best. That's why Deus Ex is still a better RPG than many "true" RPGs because you can totally skip all the combat if that's what you want. As opposed to many "orthodox" RPGs where you can't ever get away from fighting. And on that note, here's a question to hardcore RPG fans: is there a cRPG where you can go in guns blazing but you can also stealth / talk your way through the entire campaign and you don't ever need to fire a bullet? I'd love some examples because every time I think I've found one it always turns out that being able to efficiently kill stuff is still infinitely more important than anything else. Maybe I keep choosing the wrong games.
That's more of a tabletop thing, because the GM can rule over anything, it doesn't need to be designed and programmed in advance. But yes, I've played in rpg campaigns with little to no violence for long stretch of time. I've played in campaign where the strongest character at the table, who could bully anyone, is not the best with a gun or a sword but the best sweet talker (age of sail piracy setting, where talking to the crew and shaping opinions can be critical).
I would love to see a game where the randomness and ultimate strength and characteristics of your character was revealed over time. You would be able to influence the process to some degree, but you would still need to largely improvise. It would in large part hinder min-maxing, make level-ups more exiting, create very unique and memorable characters, and feel more realistic as well.
the 2nd edition of ad&d also used exceptional strength for fighters, paladins and rangers. both baldur's gate games use it too since they're based on the 2nd edition.
Thanks for this video, attributes are a tricky one so it’s nice to hear the discussion. There’s clearly a trend of moving away from them and I think there are a lot of good reasons. Personally, I’m not super excited to be greeted with a math problem upon launching a game for the first time. I don’t think attributes are wrong, but they’re simply a way to represent a theme for your character, right? Strong, smart, charismatic. I think if it were immediately clear to the player exactly how attributes will affect your build, they wouldn’t be such a problem. But most of the time, you’re assigning numbers to stats without that confidence. Personally I favor being more direct in how my character will be themed, which is why I like traits or perks. I want to be strong, so I pick the strong trait, and it’s a binary choice of being able to lift a large object or not. I picked Thief, so yes I can pick locks whereas other classes can’t. Probably not ideal for everyone out there, though.
I think a nice way to manage attributes would be that every few levels you can unlearn a skill or take just one attribute out, as if you don't want to use it anymore and forget about it, then you use the points somewhere else. Only if you want of course 👌
Picking attributes as a beginner: I like the general approach in Bethesda games to have a tutorial section that lets you reconfigure your character at the end. So new players have some more idea what attributes they want to focus on.
To translate some of the bidding idea to a single player game- if you were able to track what every player was putting points into, the cost or maybe even effect of every attribute could adjust over time, either automatically or at the dev's discretion.
I think reducing or outright removing more diverse ways of character control, choice and consequence, and character development might reflect not only gaming trends (of placing immediacy of play over learning or digesting game rules) but also designers' own inability to fully flesh out these systems. Modern day Bethesda will never create something with Daggerfall's depth again (the TES series has undergone similar simplifications as well), let alone understand how these structures aid in character role-playing, diversity and ultimately player experience. As such, any Fallout that they develop is always cause for concern.
My favorite implementation of perks was Fallout New Vegas. It's trade-off perks system makes really unique characters. I almost wish flaws had trade-offs, maybe they make you a little better at one thing but much worse at another thing. (ie. Scared of heights, 20% accuracy penalty above land, 1% accuracy buff on land) I think even a small benefit would have made me use more flaws, because unique characterization is so important in rpgs.
I'm not sure I really "Got" negative attributes in video games until I went back and reloaded an old Outer Worlds save and realized that I didn't want to go through the effort of loading up another companion's equipment, so I threw the robot in the party-- only to realize my hacking skill took a hit due to my robophobia and I needed other drugs to balance out how freaked out the giant killer cleaning robot was making me. I laughed really hard at myself.
Regarding starting attributes you've talked about ~3:10 onwards, my biggest thing when making a character is not knowing whether it's possible to increase attributes during the game or not - and which ones (e.g. in Fallout you can increase all of them in Fallout 2 you can't (excluding perks)).
I would love to see you do a video where you talk to Josh Sawyer about this topic. I remember he did a GDC talk on the attribute system in Pillars where he revealed that he actually didn't want the game to have one, but that the team decided to make the game with one anyway because the game was for fans of Infinity Engine games, which all had attribute systems.
oh interesting, you bring up EQ, I was about to start typing about balance in the tri-realm MMO Dark Age of Camelot and how there while there weren't any copy-paste characters and skills, there were overlapping similarities that made sense mostly a great system - skill+class selection/variance and balance (once it got to a certain point) chanters can do 100x damage but also die 100x quicker - that sort of balance ( :
Hi Tim, what is your thoughts on "non-conventional" attributes like the Disco Elysium ones? Too confusing for a player to make a conscious decision? Or Even more "broad" attrbitues like those in Pillars of Eternity, where Might is about being strong, be it physical or spiritual. Thanks!
1. Deciding on attributes on character creation, before you understand what they do, is a problem in paper RPGs as well. The most common approach is to show the core conflict resolution mechanic (typically fighting) so one can get an idea of how attributes factor into that part of the game. Some even give you probability tables to chew on. I've seen some (very few) TTRPGs where you can leave certain things blank and you fill them in during the first or maybe second session, as you go. This is typically done for things other than atts but I'm pretty sure you could do that for attributes as well. Respeccing character is also not uncommon in (video) games. Ultimately people who complain about attributes from the "hard to balance" angle tend to forget that for any given system depth, complexity won't just evaporate once you remove attributes. Your problems simply move elsewhere. 2. I feel like characters often become meaningfully different primarily through means different than attributes. Atts are great in terms of transparency if you're heavily into min-maxing and math is heavily in favor of attributes instead of anything else (skills, talents, perks, relationships, feats, you name it). In that case, yeah, attributes are meaningful to your style of play (and by no means is this style wrong). But at the same time it seems pretty uncommon for the attributes to have this much of a sway (unless the range is pretty small like you've mentioned) and I'm not sure what percentage of gamers min-max like that. In other words: I'm guessing that a larger percentage of gamers cares about meaningful narrative differences (which can be affected by attributes but it very rarely is the primary source of narrative variety). 3. Bonuses from stats are very D&D-y. A lot of games (that aren't D&D-derived) use attributes directly (attr+skill+mods vs. diff for instance). One could say it's just a nit and I'm sure Tim knows this very well but I've seen so many people who have experience with just one ecosystem (typically D20) who try designing something but lack any experience outside of that sphere of influence. Try different things, people. It's great for the flow of creative juices. Even if you loop back to D&D, at least you'll have pockets full of inspirations. :) 4. Weighting DEX effect on skills against contributions from other attributes is a nice idea. One of the common ways games attack this issue is by splitting reflexes out of DEX into, say, agility and reflex/reaction or something. Ultimately whether DEX (or any other skill) is over-represented depends on the type of actions game lets people take. If game defaults to physical violence, dexterity (and maybe strength and/or constitution equivalents) will tend to be OP. But if you allow for a social "combat" and deescalation through that, suddenly there are other viable paths to victory. 5. Amber is great. :) Bidding is indeed a pretty rare TTRPG mechanic (I only know Amber and Mortal Coil off the top of my head; and I think Epiphany did that too?) but it is represented in board games in many clever ways. Outside of chargen, In Spaaace! and James Bond 007 use bidding mechanics during play. Ultimately I agree with something Josh Sawyer said in one of his talks - what matters is character viability. If you can finish the game with most (and by most I mean as close to 100% as possible) different character builds, the game is probably fairly well balanced. The only exception to this rule would be, IMO, if you're deliberately building a game where stat exploration and failure are part of the fun. But you can only build rule-breaking things if you understand rules first. ;)
14:36 It would be interesting if it was an RPG where you begin the game in a group, but you only make one character and the AI creates the other characters. The AI could use templates such as "This is a strong & brave fighter-type" or "This is the clever rogue" but not communicate that information to the player beforehand. The AI & player then bid as the different AI characters try to achieve their desired attribute standings. While it would have the same problem as re-rolling like Baldur's Gate has, I believe any PC game that has an element of chance in character creation will be subject to re-rolling. On the subject of balancing attributes, I think Disco Elysium did a really great job at this. Each attribute and group of skills felt like an expression of the character you wanted to play rather then "if you don't take a high physique you are making a bad character".
2:20-2:25 I've heard people be euphemistic about bad ideas instead of chewing on them like you said. "Let's not try your bad idea, let's try something else!" but said "nicely". California.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that stats and skills shouldn't just add to each other, but should function in different ways. In particular, I like the idea of stats raising the *ceiling* for a roll, while skills raise both the *ceiling* and *floor.* E.g., your Dex might give you a 30% hit chance, but your Gun skill adds a flat +50 to your roll, so any Gun check is guaranteed to land between 51-80 (excluding botch/crit mechanics). High stats increase your _potential_ in many things, but skills increase your _reliability_ for specific things. Voila, a high dex is still valuable, but skill selection is now much more valuable. You could even give players a pool of points which can be assigned to either stats _or_ skills, allowing them to choose between happy-go-lucky generalists or amazingly competent specialists. This could also encourage players to "break type" a little: e.g., a fighter who sinks a decent chunk of skill points into Speech can feel like they're getting a good return on that investment without wringing their hands over their Charisma stat. It could also allow for greater customization within stats: maybe instead of Strength and Endurance, you just have a Body stat (for overall physical fitness), but can invest in skills like Lift/Carry, Speed, Endurance, Toughness (additional HP/soak), etc.
There is a great RPG out there called Darklands. At the beginning, you don't just pick attributes and skills- you decide your character's story - I loved that. Even age matters - you can make an inexperienced teenager character, or a 50 year old one with a lot of experience. Perhaps there is even a tradeoff in terms of health - younger character is healthier, older character is less healthy.
In my hobby RPG system I've been working on, I've been playing with making attributes more abstract (instead of "Strength" the closest I have is "Force") and then instead of governing skills or physical attributes they govern specific gameplay mechanics. Like Force is tied to "Clash Rolls" (i.e. opposed rolls) and that could be in the context of clashing swords or perhaps in resisting a telepath's invasion of their mind. Other factors like Training, Equipment, and Traits then define all the concrete details and give varying bonuses to specifc kinds of situations. Like say if the character is trained in Spears, they get a bonus to their Clash Roll in Melee or their Poise based "Skill Check" when throwing one. We'll see how it holds up when I playtest 😅
I really like systems that have softer formulaic attribute mechanics. For example, instead of a 'minimum strength', tie attack speed to weapon weight. Don't tell the player they're being penalized; let them decide where a good place is for the weapons they want to use
In some games you play a little bit of the game before you get to the attribute selection, so that you have a bit of a feel for it before selecting. You obviously can’t get too far into the game without attributes but it’s a possible approach to be played with.
Hey Tim! Good to hear from you today as per usual! In general i agree with what you said in the video. Traits would have been nice to have in both f3 and f4. But skills being lost in fallout 4 is a little semantics as they are simply called perks now but they are still there (i would have liked them still seperate and called skills for tradition, but the perk tree is beutiful and fun in fallout 4). If they remove SPECIAL for Fallout 5 that would be horrible (then again after seeing f76 and starfield my hope for fallout 5 is low). I think you are spot on with attributes not getting any bonuses to make them meaningful. I also think if you make a legendary game like Fallout or Arcanum the replay value is testing different builds and if you get a little messed up character sometimes that is fine.
When tim talks about the early days of fallout and the team he sounds exactly the same as what the 2000ad team when they talk about it. A shame the two groups never met
Bethesda isn't going to get rid of SPECIAL, I think. Their current leveling model seems to be streamlining the old 2 stat system (i.e. "Attributes" + "Skills"=effectiveness) to a single stat for players to maintain. With Skyrim, they only had skills which perks were used for improving those skills. Fallout has both skills AND the SPECIAL stats, but which of those is both a cornerstone of the series and a marketable brand that's unique only to Fallout? I believe if SPECIAL was just a normal attribute stat, Bethesda would've gone with a skill perk system just like Skyrim did. They won't get rid of either perks or SPECIAL for Fallout 5. And with Starfield out now, we may see a resurgence of traits.
I'm currently designing my own system just for fun and maybe to play with friends, and one of the things I've done is make it so that every skill is associated with two attributes rather than just one. By then carefully controlling which skills are associated with which attributes I'm hoping I can avoid one attribute being overpowered compared to another. The main downside with it (though personally I quite like it) is that there are 12 attributes in total, 6 physical and 6 mental, as opposed to only 6 like in DnD. That said, based on my very limited testing so far, it does seem to allow for a lot of unique character builds.
Hey Tim. Could you do a video on the different methods of handling Leveling Up. E.g. Traditional level up, point buy, and level by doing. I think there is a lot of space for an interesting decision.
Have you seen Monsters and Memories? It's an indie MMO by a few old EQ guys, they did a few interviews with old EQ devs that are really similar to your videos.
I really hope they keep SPECIAL for Fallout 5 If its just perks, then its going to be too much like Skyrim, and that game has so many ways to build what ends up feeling like the same character every time. I also wanted to add in the suggestion for an attribute system that starts with everything at 1, and you build it as you level up. It has the advantage of removing the issue of "oh idk what to put points in i havejt played the game yet" But it runs the risk of homogenizing characters in the early game Fallout 76 does it that way and its not bad
Hey Tim! You should take a look at Starfield, Bethesda's new IP. They've created a different form of character creation than their previous games. Would love to hear your thoughts on the game's showcase, but also about the challenging and exciting design choices associated with creating a new IP in general.
Many games do not make "perception" as an attribute. It is often derived from another attribute, or skills. We have 5 senses that allows us to percieve the world around us. Its an inherent attribute for living creatures to survive.
I find that the easiest way to ensure that the player doesn't feel like they're missing out when they pick a certain attribute is by adding enough unique content (unique dialogue, items, companions, quests, etc.) for each attribute. This won't balance the attributes gameplay-wise, but it's a solid enough band-aid solution that will help avoid the worst shortcomings of poorly balanced attribute systems and offer more replayability. As a side note, one big mistake I see game designer make all the time but no one ever talks about is that most CRPGs throw you into the character creation screen without giving you any context about the world you're about to play in or, even more importantly, your character's role in that world. Oftentimes this context may be crucial to deciding what kind of build you want to play. Some modern CRPGs (e.g. Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny) avoid this by feeding you lore through text blobs during character creation, but generally the best solution to this is to have the player create a character AFTER they see the intro cutscene (this is what New Vegas did) or, better yet, complete an intro level (Fallout 3).
Yeah both Fallout and Arcanum have fun attribute systems for sure. Dex and agility are the best attributes in both but the attribute system works very well in both and are very fun!
I think you could actually make a really engaging character building system without Attributes or Skills, just by using Traits and Perks. Whereas Attributes and Skills are numerical, Traits and Perks are evocative. They have catchy names and descriptions, and often give a variety package together of bonuses which exist primary to convey a specific character concept. They put the focus on expressing your character, in a way that Attributes and Skills don't. And we relate to their narrative context in a way we can't relate to numbers. So with just those two players could still make interesting and unique characters. Traits would offer playthrough immutable advantages and disadvantages that define a build. And Perks would offer pre-packaged bonuses & mechanics that evoke specific fantasies.
Check out FATE Core, or variations. They do both. They have a single Skill List (which includes attributes), which is numerical. But each character also has Aspects (which are freeform wide ranging aspect of your character), and Stunts which aren't freeform (but much easier to create than whole new skills) but are rule exceptions and special cases to cover special abilities or weirdness of a character, or give big bonuses to a limited action. Things like Sea Legs (Your Athletics skill works unimpeded by conditions like storms, water, or high seas while on board a ship), or Dazing Counter (When you succeed with style on a defend action against an opponent’s Fight roll, you automatically counter with some sort of nerve punch or stunning blow. You get to attach the Dazed situation aspect to your opponent with a free invoke, instead of just a boost) or Mountaineer (+2 to overcome with Athletics when faced with mountainous terrain). FATE and Stunts do also this thing that I personally find admirable, they allow for limited Skill substitution: you can buy a stunt to substitute a Skill for another Skill under specifics circumstances. For example Well-Travelled (You may use Lore instead of Rapport when you have visited the homeland or home state of the person you are speaking to). It's a reasonably well ruled mechanic, falling under several guard rails and examples. But it's freeform enough that it allow to create exceptions or to simulate edge cases that rpg players are so fan of, without breaking the game. It also allow to create the character you want, that is logical for you in your head, without having to arbitrarily spend point in things you don't want just because of a quirk of the rules, which is huge. Of course anything freeform works well on tabletop, would not for a computer game.
My biggest problem with attributes was always the fact some of them were necessary and game never said it but playing without maxing them was just not viable. Yes, it is Agility in Fallout and fact that only 10 Agility gave you 10 Action Points per turn which translated to 2 shots per turn (5 Action Points per turn). That's double damage from the start of the game. It's similar with Intelligence in D&D for a mage. Highest Intelligence gave you more spells in the book, playing mage without it was just counterproductive. Another thing is dialogue - you play RPGs for the story, characters and getting to know the world. Low intelligence dialogue is not something you want for your first run. But usually only getting Charisma and Intelligence really high allows you to really get deep into the lore, unlock many dialogue options, read scrolls/books, hack computers etc. Without high Intelligence it's like going around your life without being able to read. Well, I guess you can get by, but you won't really learn anything. If the game 'punishes' the character but not making him able to fix weapons it's fine; if it strips me of possibility of immersing myself in it then I will always max intelligence.
I like when I have to compromise for something, and I have always thought that the more a character is specialized in something the more should suck in something else. At the beginning of a game my ideal character should be well all-rounded, I don't know the game I don't know the mechanics...but once I'm experienced I can specialize my character while buying perks and traits and can decide the price I'm ok to pay for being the best sniper: I started as an average joe, turned out a great sniper with decent knife ability but really suck at mid range fights
Yeah the trend is less choice, less complexity, less player agency, I'm hoping that the success of Baldur's Gate 3 brings some of those things back, because I'm hoping that the standard of RPG you guys setted back in the day makes a comeback to be the standard for RPGs of this decade. And I call it a standard, because at least for me it is, I can't play a single RPG nowdays without going "I cant believe this feature doesn't exist, this a 20+ year game mechanic", and it really makes me mad that some studios/devs are publicly saying "don't expect us raise our standard to a BG3 experience", I mean what are you talking about???... Anyways I'm just ranting at this point so I'm going to leave it there 😂. Always a joy to hear Tim's point of view.
A good solution for DEX is dividing it into body movement AND hand movement. A professional typer isnt a professional runner. Or you could move all finesse actions done by hands to a PERCEPTION attribute too.
I think the best attribute system recently was how Wasteland 3 did it. The core problem with attributes is that RPGs are fundamentally about player growth. So you have a game where you go from minor speech maker to god of tongues who can convince the big bad to stand down...but you never benched once along the way? At a wider level, from a game design perspective, far too much is pulled from DnD in single player games. DnD's limitations make sense under the consideration that it's designed around a party of people who need clear cut roles. But this doesn't work for single player character RPGs because it often makes people overly limited. And it also means far fewer tools in the toolbox. A DnD party can access a wide variety of content because it has a person for each role. A single player character RPG, by contrast, will have much more of its content gated off. The argument is off course: replayability. But there's a very narrow slice of games which are legitimately replayable. Most games, if played every year or two, can be played with the same character and feel fairly new. I've got a Fallout template character that can pretty much access all of the game's content. But games where the point is to do another run immediately after need to be short. Most importantly, it needs to have as little meaningless combat as possible. Clicking button to see numbers appear isn't engaging and combat is mostly a time and skill points tax. This clashes with modern RPG game design (outside of games like Tyranny) which trend towards being big and expansive. IMO: the longer a game is, the freer character design should be and the less content should be gated off from any one playthrough.
It's really makes me sad how bethesda seens be to be removing all rpg from Fallout. I know you not in the lead of the franchise anymore, but i really wish someday see another Fallout game with the name "Tim Cain" in the credits
I know Tim does not make reviews but I still wonder what he thinks about newer crpgs like pathfinder handled his questions about such design approaches
Seems like your fears for Fallout 5 are pretty warranted because from what we seen of Starfield all it has is perks. If that’s popular I would expect Bethesda to probably use that same system for Fallout 5.
Bethesda Fallouts are just reflavored Elder's Scrolls. They've been stripping down anything resembling roleplaying more and more, and aiming towards something of a looter shooter. That's why everyone hopes that maybe with the Microsoft acquisition Obsidian might do another real Fallout game. Have you tried the Pathfinder games from Owlcat? Now these are some proper RPGs! The roleplaying and replayability especially in Wrath is mind boggling.
Strong recommendation for Josh Sawyer's GDC talk on attribute design/tuning in Pillars. Really great insight about the history of D&D attributes and how they designed Pillars'.
Yep, he did another one talking about companion relationships in PoE 2, but he spends an hour blaming and depreciating himself, and it's pretty sad to see. Especially from one of the best game designers around...
Tim just wanna say Fallout came out the year I was born and my introduction to the series was with 3. I recently played through fallout 1 during my final semester in college and it was a blast. I love your work and you are an inspiration ❤
Nice profile pic comrade ;)
@@blingkong1045 Someone has to fight for Revachol and its proletariat after all, may as well be hobo cop
@@s7robin105 HAHDCAW TO ZE MEGA
“A hug a day keeps the bourgeoisie away” and “the first death is in the heart, Harry” are hands down two of my favorite lines from Disco Elysium
Mazovian spotted
FWIW, Todd Howard has explicitly said that they've made an overt decision to make Starfield "more hardcore of a role playing game than we've done", to "go back to some things that we used to do in games long ago that we felt have really let players express the character they want to be."
Which, at least to me, does sound like BGS actually registered the lukewarm reception of Fallout 4's basegame (for, among other things, the dearth of stat checks).
Registered it? Definitely. Addressed it? Doubtful, but I still hope those statements meant what so many think they meant. They didn't discuss story structure or how backgrounds, skills, etc. actually work in the Starfield deep dive. What they did show of dialogue and story gives off the distinct impression of flavor text of the kind seen in 76 Wastelanders and "choices" that don't actually impact anything at all aside from the occasional gate pass. Guess we'll see, but the simple fact that he said "let players express the character *they* want to be" just solidifies in my mind that the industry believes all players essentially want to play themselves or a prewritten protagonist in a supposed RPG as opposed to creating multiple, actual characters from the whole cloth of their own imaginations for multiple playthroughs. The character systems of old had a sometimes enormous impact on how the game itself actually played out, often with the outcome of seemingly insignificant choices depicted in ending slides, occasionally even taking the player by surprise at just how impactful they'd been, encouraging subsequent playthroughs to see the outcomes of different choices.
RPGs today boast multiple endings, but one I can think of right off the bat actually has the player literally choose one from a list and another that received a great deal of criticism because it essentially chucked player decisions made over the course of the entire series straight out the window in favor of "pick one."
The complexity of impactful player choices were once depicted in ending slides because the game itself literally couldn't handle all the possible permutations in actual gameplay. I'd certainly settle for that over the cinematics in which the illusion of choice is patently obvious.
Haha Todd is in full marketing. Starfield 76 is no way hardcore rpg
@@lrinfiWow, different ending slides! Imagine if player choices had an effect during the game rather than after.
@@darth_crumbo Fortunately, we don't have to imagine that. There's more than one decision in Witcher 3 that affects the world so drastically, I had to stop the playing the game for a while just to process what had happened, the ramifications were so impactful. But that's a prewritten character. What of those we create ourselves? New Vegas had quite a few. Impactful choices are becoming pretty rare, though.
I'm one of those people that really enjoy complexity in character building, and appreciate the fact that you can create hyper specialised characters or generalists but not master of everything, unless you cheat, which is your choice I guess. I also love in dialogue stat choices because it's just one of the ways where you can roleplay your specific character and see the impact of the character you chose to make.
I think the way Attributes are setup in a game is more important than some realize. Since they are typically sort of your 'base layer' of your character build, they tend to effect everything in some capacity. They are a foundation for the rest of your character system. Even simply removing them all together has a profound effect on a system. It's an interesting area to tackle and think about.
I think one issue regarding your thoughts on the next Fallout, is the expectation now a player should be able to do all the content of the game on one character, mainly because the games are so huge and long. So in the end class or attributes mean nothing because your character can do everything at the end.
I’d much rather have a shorter game where you cant experience everything on one playthrough yet each character you make feels and plays different and the world reacts differently to the character. I’m not sure if you have insider knowledge but it seems the mantra in the industry is that longer equals better.
RPGs (and strategy games) are best when you have to make difficult decisions, especially when those decisions lock you out of certain content.
This, except the game will still be huge... you just have to have closed off pathways from early decisions. Play#1... you help group you find under fire from other group. Other group hates you, now you can't access that content. Play#2... help other group, first group hates. Play#3... just watch and do nothing, only minor access to each group. But end all roads have to reach end content in similar way with similar power levels.
Todd Howard did an interview years ago in which he talked specifically about Bethesda's desire to remove as many systems as possible. I don't remember exactly what he said, though I saw a snippet of that interview in a player critique only recently. I think the gist of the the idea was to streamline their games by removing systems they thought were redundant or overly cumbersome for the average player to easily grasp. Something along those lines.
"it seems the mantra in the industry is that longer equals better" -- And bigger and more. This is what I've referred to in the past as the "bigger is better" and "more is good" design philosophy that pretty obviously has taken over the industry. (Well, with the possible exception of Obsidian, The Outer Worlds having come in at a digestible 30 hours or so.)
There seems to be an unspoken demand that a studio be the one that produces the next "blockbuster" video game the very same as in Hollywood that a studio must be the one to produce the next "blockbuster" movie. CD Projekt Red's developers talked about this very thing in a NoClip documentary on The Witcher 3's quest design process. They estimated they needed 60-65 hours worth of playtime and even joked that that they were very bad at estimating playtime, so don't ask. :)
What publishers and developers perhaps have yet to realize is that an awful lot of players are fed to the teeth with meaningless, boring filler content. (That's what I'm hearing from communities, at any rate.) Yet, longer games have been released since and there are apparently more on the horizon, claiming 100s of hours of playtime. Well, there is only so much time in the devleopment cycle to produce a good, quality game in the time period allotted. Yet more and more hours of content, procedural and otherwise, are being shoved into them.
The old saying perhaps applies here: "You can have too much of a good thing."
While i kind of like the possibility of the PC becoming very good in pretty much all areas i also like what tim talked about (flawed heroes, shortcomings making interesting characters) so either can make a legendary game. But if the hero can become very good in all areas it should take a very long time. What i disagree with is the idea that should be able to do everything with one character because the choices should lock you out of other sides (like going NCR makes you an enemy of the legion etc)
@@lrinfi the average player problem could be solved with things like auto leveling, auto balancing, all kinds of difficulty adjustments and similar tricks. sometimes i think, the problem is that those average players want games to be just for them, not for everyone. in the past "elitism" used to be an issue, now it's a tyranny of the average...
OMG, Amber. Such great memories of playing it in the late 90s. Another thing about the bidding process in it is that you could overspend, and then you'd get Bad Stuff! And if you underspent, those points would become Good Stuff! Amber was a fun game, full of intrigue and just the craziest sh*t happened. Some of the ideas contained in that book still influence my game design lobe to this day.
On 0-5 attributes... It depends on how your 'dice system' works. A bonus of "1" in V:TM isn't the same as a 4pt bonus in D&D or a 20% bonus in a d100 game.
Yes Karma was a very interesting design concept, and worked very well for the themes and narrative of the game and the source material. Creation points where xp (no difference), and the positive or negative credit you get by having spent less or more than your real total was akin to Luck: power hungry people tend to have negative Karma, and tend to if not pay the price for it at least be challenged more by destiny.
The thing with Amber DRPG, is that the bidding system is there to emulate a narrative theme. In the novels there is this group of princes and princess who mostly all grew up together, and knew each other. They competed against each other all their life. So they knew, in advance, who was the strongest, or the best fighter, and so on. Because they tried to beat that brother or sister dozens and dozens of time before, and they couldn't (they're all immortal, so we're talking as fully formed adults).
That's what the system tried to emulate. Which of course can very easily fall flat, when new characters come in, or if player character didn't grew up together or at least competed for years together as adults. Because that narrative of close knit family works for that generation of protagonists in the novels, but not often in a rpg campaign, and indeed in the novels the second generation doesn't follow this narrative theme.
But to its credit, that system also handled something from the book, is the unknown. Some people could chose to buy attributes but not bid, so they could not be the best, and if tied they would lose to the official bidder, but nobody else knew what they had.
Plus, that point pool to buy things, covered everything. Not only attributes, but also powers and abilities.
But indeed, there are a lot of interesting thing out there. As an old far, one of the less old interesting thing I've seen is the system in FATE Core, where skills and attributes are merged. There is no distinction between them. There is a list set for a campaign, with a default generic list provided as example in the rulebook. And that default list has to be the best one I've ever seen. It's short but not too short, a total of 17 irc. And it cover everything, from shooting or coercing people, but also money (or general resources), or contacts and networks and allies. So in FATE when you're presented with a challenge, you can attack it in many different ways. Sure you can get into combat with the tower guard that's stopping you from entering, and sure you can sneak past, or bluff them. But you can also try to build a contraption to get you to zipline from another tower, or you can bribe them, or you can have a ally give you permission to enter. And every single example there can be handled with a single skill check, each with the same mechanics and difficulties.
But however elegant it is, it does remove one of, imo, the greatest aspect of attributes in most system: they are additive to skills, and broad. In many rpg there is a variation of "well you're very strong, sure it help to bonk people on the head and move things, but it can also help you move someone past traps now roll Strength+Traps, or help your male show off to someone compatible roll Strength+Seduction, and so on. Skills tend to be vertical, they rule over a single specific domain of actions; while attributes are more horizontal and can affect many things.
Bonus design points to rpg who let this additive property freeform (with guidelines of course), to cover edge cases and inventive usage by players: yes maybe this part of the heist could be done by swapping out faster a whole computer rack from two different datacenter buildings, roll Strength+Computers.
As a hobby, I've been writing a homebrew Fallout campaign/ruleset piggybacking off of 5e's rules [Yes, I know what that sounds like.] for quite a while now, and this insight gives me confidence that I'm doing something awesome for my friends and I. Thank you so much for this channel.
I comment on your videos more than any other youtuber I watch. I hope you never stop saying, "oh, I could make a video about that." Also, I tend to have to rewatch parts of the videos because you will say something that sends me down a rabbit hole of design in my brain while I'm trying to watch.
Thank you! I hope my videos inspire people to design and make their own games
@@CainOnGames you absolutely do Tim! im currently lucky enough to be involved in a games development, and i am loving your content while it develops!
id love to hear your thoughts on planescape torment, did you play it back in the 90s ?
fallout and planescape are tied #1 GOAT games imo
in planescape Wisdom is insanely OP because of how dialog driven the game is and the extra options that come via Wis are almost essential to completing the game, but it works out because you get more of the amazing writing that is so good, win win :D
Wow, this came at the perfect time, literally when I was in the middle of figuring out the attributes for my TTRPG!
One thing, I think, that doesn't get brought up in these cases is how long these games are. If they were shorter but more replayable, i think many problems with choosing your attributes at the beginning of the game goes away. In fact, if games were shorter, more people would probably play more characters. Tyranny did this somewhat but it was still long(20h-ish) for a playthrough, Outer Worlds to some extent as well.
I would go much further, and say that fixed blind attributes (unless some über specific narrow case where it's a design decision, and for good reason) are probably always wrong. They are a left over of early decades of D&D, although not early rpg since (as with many, MANY things) Runequest came out just two years after and solved that problem.
Fixed attributes are counter intuitive, almost anyone can start lifting weights and get stronger. But they are, or were in ye olden days, often punishingly restrictive to the point where creating a character is actually a game in itself, and a competitive one at that, where you could lose for arbitrary badly written rules.
I don't that much about really modern games, but I don't think I have heard about a rpg with fixed attributes for quite a long time.
How delightfully complex attribute design turns out to be, and how fun tinkering with it seems, playfully turning knobs aiming for balance. Great video as always, thank you.
Morrowind and Fallout prove that balance in single player games is over emphasized. These games shine the most when you actually play the character how you intend.
The main reason DEX is overvalued by RPG systems is because it subsumes too many characteristics, while all other stats subsume too few in comparison.
Compare DEX and STR in classic D&D terms. Dex is often understood to include the following: hand-eye coordination, reflexes, running speed, fine motor activity, balance, agility, the list goes on. Arguably, these are completely unrelated characteristics (for example, I have very good reflexes but my sense of balance is not good). Meanwhile STR is generally understood to only mean raw physical power. STR often doesn't even include physical health (this is what CON is for), which seems absurd, since if any characteristics can reasonably be justified as being intrinsically connected it would be physical strength and health.
It's no surprise we see 5th edition D&D and even Pathfinder going the same way, with a plethora of DEX-based fighting styles (and DEX-based feats/perks) that have begun to eclipse classic STR-based build - for many of the same reasons you mention here.
The answer is to break up DEX into multiple attributes and collapse other stats together. Imagine something like the following: POWER which designates both physical strength and the amount of damage you can withstand (collapsing STR and CON together), AGILITY which designates reflexes and balance (so, initiative, dodging), and FINESSE which designates ranged accuracy and fine motor activity (so, lockpicking, bow use). This breakdown raises the possibility of high Finesse, low Agility characters who are good at shooting things at range but who are slower to take actions. Similarly you could have high Agility, low Finesse characters who are always the first to act and to scramble out of harm's way but whose own actions are reckless and inaccurate.
This kind of theory crafting is that's why I am coming here. In my system I have been considering the Dex as a subset of Agility ( quickly adjustable reactive power and sensorics to all body parts). Low Agi and high Dex which is completely realistic case for many trade skills professional - cheap and shallow way is put some perk (Dex= Agi + x) or attach some card to Agi atribute saying specific conditioning increasing the effective Agi for specific activity. With having covered bunch of corner cases of activities generic hand craft bonus can come... would it feel interesting from player perspective, let's hope for simulationists yes.
Hi Tim! I am late to thia conversation, but being an indie tabletop rpg designer, I absolutely ADORE this discussion. I've built a system that is a low stat 1-5 system that allows players to hand craft their skills and combat abilities completely. What makes it great is that players have agency in deciding what stat dictates what bonuses to skills and combat abilities as long as it is contextually relevant. Those attributes will stay MOSTLY static through a campaign and instead what players gain are new skills, combat abilities and items that offer quirky new features.
My brain has always felt that the players should have that agency to make the character the way they want and as a DM, you build your campaign around the features of the players. So if someone wants to be a half-orc bard that is low charisma and cant sing, we can now adjust the system to allow the chance to hit of their bardic abilities to be bonused by the inverse of their charisma modifier and since they hand made their combat abilities, they could be more offensive damage based.
Talking attribures and design is so fascinating and I can not stress enough how enriching it is to hear your talks on design.
As usual a great video, Tim!
I'm currently writing a cyberpunk TTRPG (which btw started as my own little unofficial Fallout RPG) and one of the choices I made when deciding to make the game into its own thing was to have attributes permanent, but skills and derived stats could shift with bonuses or penalties and advantages and disadvantages.
I was never exactly sure if that was a good idea and wondered if I'd be shooting myself in the foot, but to hear you talking about how you'd do something like this if you were designing attribute balance right now when you have so many years of RPG experience is very encouraging!
It is always wonderful to hear your insights.
Hey Tim, I wanted to piggyback on your comment about brainstorming. Having led some groups in events, I came to eventually follow a 3-point method for capturing the environment you are talking about, I think. Here it is:
1- Would the idea be cool/fun to do? Is it in the *spirit* of the project? Answer the question yes/no, and why. Make a note of why. If yes, move to 2.
2- What are the requirements of doing it? Importantly, this comes *after* whether or not it is in the spirit of the project, and the question is, "is it possible to do?" This is requirements testing, not feasibility testing. No comments need to be made at this point regarding whether or not it can be done. We are gathering all of the requirements, not stopping at the first unfeasible one.
3- Is it feasible? Are there costs you cannot afford, or opportunity costs you cannot afford? This is where you go down the line of items in 2, and see if you can get the idea to work. When there are no requirements unmet, the requirements are met, and it is feasible (in theory). If it's not feasible, you have a readymade explanation of why. You can file that idea away on a shelf of things you thought would have been great to do, if you could have done it. Check back in on it from time to time to see if any requirements are no longer relevant.
This has kept me from having some meetings go over time
I like the idea of Attributes/Stats mixed with Perks/Passives, it gives it a broader horizon for customization and deeper means for specialization.
For now i'm sticking with a form of stat that involve three main categories Might, Mind and Moxie, each with subcategories, like Might having Strength and Muscle. Point being subcategories are what directly affect you in the ways you interact with the game while the categories determine bonuses and other stuff, so having balanced spreads on Might, for example, help a lot. Then there's perks that could help niches, like bonuses on specific actions that, for example, use strength.
Very interesting video on attribute design.
One of the advantages of attribute design for video games as opposed to tabletop RPGs is that the designers know exactly what's going to happen throughout the whole game at any point (because the game runs itself rather than needing a game master), therefore they have a much better grasp at the usefulness of each individual attribute and can balance them accordingly (i.e. a game that makes less use of, say, Perception than Charisma can compensate this by having each point of Perception worth more or each point of Perception cost less, for example).
With regards to the DEX god stat, that can be split into Reflexes and Coordination. Alternatively, some of the functions of DEX can be handed off to other attributes (i.e. stealth and/or ranged combat can be given to Perception) or a very powerful function can be made into its own attribute (i.e. Fighting, Accuracy, etc.)
Last but not least, one of the things that has greatly alleviated the anxiety of attribute allocation during character creation has been the respec option that has become more and more available in more modern games. While some hardcore players may hate it, I find it to be a blessing, as it allows me to experiment more with the same character and the game ends up respecting my time more.
Wow, I never thought of penalties in that way. That puts an entire new perspective on attribute design. Thanks!
What games are you most anticipating Mr. Cain?
I feel Starfield will be a good indicator of where BGS is at with Character Creation. They’ve confirmed the return of traits, but time will tell if they are successful.
I was just thinking about attributes for a hobby project over the last few days, this video is gold, thanks Tim!
What kind of project?
@@TheMylittletony The end goal would be a spiritual sequel to the oldschool Elder Scrolls games, fantasy life sim in a very large world. We'll see if it'll ever get past the paper design though, I'm not the best programmer and I lack patience to do super big projects lol.
I'd love to see a video on brainstorming. Just being able to glimpse into that creative process and sharing and bouncing ideas must be such a good process.
I remember how fun making different characters in fallout and arcanum was because of how unique attribute distribution made each one. The game changed around who and what your character was for better or for worse. It made the world feel real and your character being a real participant in it instead of your character being some weird power fantasy that’s just plowing through the world as the OP main character
bloodline's concept of multiple skills adding into what is actually counted is the best
and things like tyranny's magic system that allows for crafting unique solutions with underlying mathematics in an easy to understand way
Tim, your attribute system is phenomenal
The really fun part I love about flaws like traits and the like is that it gives depth to the character, as it becomes more unique. And I like using the Fallout games as an example there, as having low intelligence while talking to another character with low intelligence actually made them have an eloquent and verbose conversation with each other. And high luck with the jinxed trait with the better critical perk creates a really entertaining and useful character it its own right
In video games one of the most common criticisms I see can be summed up with "Show me the numbers." Since an amazing number of modern RPG's and RPG-Likes, have this issue of making it very unclear what anything does, to the point years later still next to no one knows. Monster Hunter with it's Hidden Scaling attacks being one of the biggest ones where it says something like 200 damage, but none of your attacks have 100% scaling so it's really like 150 or less. Attack speed is never shown either. Hidden checks for things also compound onto this, which you will see as well, requirements for stats or unknown ability scaling for a Feat/Perk will also have this issue, even more so if it's class based game where you'd never know the Gunslinger uses Intelligence for his special attack or whatever.
Meanwhile if you just showed all the perks, and let people see all the information, and ideally had like a test arena, ideally an optional one, none of that would've been an issue.
This have become my favorite game design videos ive ever seen. Love to see how you chat in depth about these systems!!
Another thing that I wish you mentioned about attribute design is the sliding towards "Max is the new normal." I know that player mentality generally trends towards min-maxing, but the fact that so many games feel like they assume that your character is min-maxed towards something and then balance it around that is very frustrating for someone like me who prefers to play more well-rounded characters more often than not.
i just found this channel and its like the fountain of wisdom about fallout i always wanted
I have to say, finding your channel feels like I've accidentally tripped and fallen into an absolute goldmine. with video games being as young an art as they are, this almost feels like being able to talk to one of the old masters of the renaissance about art or sculpting. thank you so much for your fascinating thoughts and please continue to share!
Brainstorming ideas and talking about them is one things I find enjoyable. Bouncing off ideas and expanding on them and talking about how they influence other aspects is so much fun!!
Character creation and progression is the main reason I play games these days, which is why I only play RPG's now. Give me all the choices, positive and negative, because more choice lets me play how I want and makes me feel truly engaged and motivated to play. Attributes are important because it helps us understand the game mechanics in a way we can relate to. I do like your idea on derived stats and skills being from multiple primary attributes. Your games were never balanced, but it is impossible to have perfect balance while also keeping things fun and easy to understand. You and your colleagues made some incredible games that live in all our hearts and minds.
The internal debates I've had with myself about attributes in different tabletop games I've crafted. It really is a hard balance to strike. In my own system that was initially a bad photocopy of Fallout SPECIAL, I ended up taking a lot of computer science principles to making sure the attributes I ended up with had enough significance in the functional parts of the game. How many references to the attribute were made by skills, traits, hp, etc... I even charted up an ER diagram, along with system components, to visualize it all and see if there were weak relationships or just practical islands.
I think I got it decently evened out, especially with having a branching skill system where the 10 base skills used the values from 3 attributes to get your initial starting proficiency. Grab the values for 3, double two of them, and add them up. And since skill use took priority over an attribute check, you'd had to really dedicate to having the maxed out attributes to get the best starting proficiency. (And since attribute scores for a base skill determined how many points you'd get to spend on skill in that branch when you progressed, it was sometimes a sacrifice you'd be willing make to really ramp up in that area.)
In another simpler game I made, attributes served as the basis for all rolls. Skills, so to speak, gave you small bonuses. Attributes were also your "health", and you could decide how to take damage and reduce your current attribute level. And you'd have so many rolls you could make for each check: Always had a roll, but if you didn't like you could press your luck if you had more rolls. The fun part of that game was either increasing a stat or exchanging a stat from somewhere else to add another roll in another. You'd take drop one place to get another chance somewhere else.
My first real RPG experience was Fallout, so I always seem to gravitate towards in my designs. They was just something about the core of things in background that felt good.
About setting your attributes. I do remember, vaguely, that in your one Arcanum videos you mentioned idea of having multiple background (race -> young background -> adult background) when creating a character. Each one of them could give stats up and down for your basic set by races attributes. Tyranny had a VERY GOOD idea with it Conquest that gave you control of what you did before the game, it could be interesting to make Biography/life when you make various decisions and gives you bonuses to attributes and skills. Such thing would be an interesting way to create your character.
I like attributes set in stone btw, with option to modify various things that multiply various action you do. With flaws lowering them and maybe changing how they are calculated.
A tabletop game did that in the 80s and 90s. Well, several. I'm trying to remember which was the first, and I can't. There was an old French one all about roguish characters and thievery which I think did it early... maybe Dark Earth did that too? Can't check, it's deep in boxes at the moment.
Basically, expanding the single line background "you're a farmer", or "you're a scribe", with various moments of your life. Maybe who were you born from, and your childhood, and your teenage years and apprenticeship.
Would love to see that video on brainstorming sessions. A crucial process that can and should be very fun.
Thanks as always for these vids! Extremely insightful.
I'd be interested in hearing about the tone of various games. Fallout, violent dark humor. Arcanum, serious, reflective.
I love it when you look furious in your thumbnails
Tim, you are a really good talker. You should consider doing more speeches and teaching game design / programming to people.
I think your approach to make games easier to grasp comes from tabletop background, making it easier for everyone to grasp to fill in quicker and talk about(!), while most people enjoy that, some of players are mad scientists that like to solve complex systems and to those at least 1 optional system in the game that will make whole experience better. Make reward for digging into advanced stuff and something like attribute chemistry(it can be choice of companions(counting in disposition towards them) add speciefic random rewards and reward you for playing your character and adding stats in a speciefic order ( you added some strenght then willpower you get the trait called "persistent gym freak"(adds callus making grip with firearms better for example) which on its own spices up your whole leveling process(you can do cool stuff with it like modifying it later"ex gym freak"(making your gain weight and lose muscle tone visually adding some blunt resistance) or tieing it to compaign/town whatever location you got the trait from that could support you in that), you are not playing game to powerlevel and figure out how to break the game at that point, you are more interested what progression system is going to throw at you if you keep leveling your way.
What i dont like about fallout 3-4 is that attributes system is more of a legacy thing of rpg games than actual practical implementation. Those games' gameplay loop has more common with borderlands and diablo likes than with any rpg ever. I bet 80% of playerbase didnt even play original game. Would be better off with attribute system(perk) that supports combat or sandbox survival gameplay without all those. Objectively those are not a fallout games, its an action game spinoff made in same universe(why not make your own? i guess starfield?but it kinda copies outer worlds???).
I think games should be more creative with how they portray difficulty, if its done right even the most casual infant journalist and not technically impaired normal player will both get satisfaction from playing game. I understand for example systems that are made to make game harder by their own exist(like monster-player linked level progression or wacky controls made to make you lose your mind) and those are gross, but whats more gross to me is ditching cool systems that increase difficulty as a side effect. Those are the best things that could spice up the gaming as whole not just one game, best examples are improved monster ai behaviours and complex level designs(not just bland arenas).
Jus throwing an idea out there - have attributes be tied to the god you worship (chosen during creation), but changing gods wipes out all bonuses/drawbacks, and they slowly ramp up again. This makes it a long term decision instead of choosing whatever is good at the moment.
A video on brainstorming would be awesome. I'm sure Mr. Cain has a lot of great advices and juicy anecdotes.
Thank you Tim for the videos, they motivate and inspire me to keep going with my indie game every morning :D
Hey Tim I’ve been loving your videos! It’s made me replay the original Fallout!
With the new Fallout show on the horizon, I’d be curious to hear what it’s like to see something you created be taken in so many directions and be expanded on by so many different people? I know there are large contingencies of the fallout community who gatekeep what is “true fallout” do you have a feeling similar? Not necessarily the aspect on the quality of newer content, but to see it become so great. Is it comforting seeing a creation worked on by so many different people or does it become something feel completely different than what you were proud of you?
Love the vids keep it up
Oh dang, I LOVED Everquest back when it came out. On the Attribute side of things, I was a clueless kid who's main experience with fantasy was the R.A. Salvatore books, so when I made my first EQ character I wanted to be a Wizard, but I liked being a human so I chose a Human Wizard (Some of you may be cringing right now). During character creation, I of course put some points into INT, but I also wanted to be able to carry more stuff and hit people with my stick while I was in between spells so I also put points into Strength (I think everyone is cringing now).
Needless to say, after I told my build to a few people I had become friends with around level 15 they basically told me to re-roll my character haha. While my Dark Elf Enchanter quickly became my favorite MMO character of all time, I still look back fondly on that Human Wizard. He could barely handle a Gnoll, but damn did the world feel so real.
The level of adventure and exploration in that game was second to none (beyond maybe early Star Wars Galaxies). I feel like Wikis basically killed the adventure in MMOs, where everyone wants to min/max their way to end game instead of trek through a world and explore and get really engaged with it. Maybe I should try out an RP server or something.
I think a good example of an attribute system was Star Wars: Galaxies. You just got proficient at things, blasters, blaster carbines, etc. and then you picked a profession and hopefully all of that lined up. Picking bounty hunter was a good option for gun skills, but maybe farmer wasn't, but you were still handy with a gun. It offered a lot of flexibility, even if the end result was obvious.
The attribute system you came up with is really SPECIAL
Very interesting video.
One thing that I always hate about attribute design (and by extension skill design) in RPGs is when the game uses them to pretend it's deeper than it actually is. For instance the game might have all sorts of interesting stats/skills like charisma, social skills, stealth, stealing, hacking... But then you play it and it turns out that 80-90% of the time all you need is the biggest gun or the heaviest sword.
All those cool attributes/skills are only useful like 3 times in the campaign. You can never actually be a hacker or a speech focused character. It's all just a small addition to killing things. I don't mind a game that's combat focused... but I feel cheated when the game is combat focused yet it still pretends that you have all those options - even though they're just a bonus at best.
That's why Deus Ex is still a better RPG than many "true" RPGs because you can totally skip all the combat if that's what you want. As opposed to many "orthodox" RPGs where you can't ever get away from fighting.
And on that note, here's a question to hardcore RPG fans: is there a cRPG where you can go in guns blazing but you can also stealth / talk your way through the entire campaign and you don't ever need to fire a bullet? I'd love some examples because every time I think I've found one it always turns out that being able to efficiently kill stuff is still infinitely more important than anything else. Maybe I keep choosing the wrong games.
That's more of a tabletop thing, because the GM can rule over anything, it doesn't need to be designed and programmed in advance.
But yes, I've played in rpg campaigns with little to no violence for long stretch of time. I've played in campaign where the strongest character at the table, who could bully anyone, is not the best with a gun or a sword but the best sweet talker (age of sail piracy setting, where talking to the crew and shaping opinions can be critical).
I would love to hear Tim's thoughts on how The Darkest Dungeon does quirks (traits). It's sometime so brutal but such a fun system.
I would love to see a game where the randomness and ultimate strength and characteristics of your character was revealed over time.
You would be able to influence the process to some degree, but you would still need to largely improvise. It would in large part hinder min-maxing, make level-ups more exiting, create very unique and memorable characters, and feel more realistic as well.
the 2nd edition of ad&d also used exceptional strength for fighters, paladins and rangers. both baldur's gate games use it too since they're based on the 2nd edition.
Thanks for this video, attributes are a tricky one so it’s nice to hear the discussion. There’s clearly a trend of moving away from them and I think there are a lot of good reasons. Personally, I’m not super excited to be greeted with a math problem upon launching a game for the first time. I don’t think attributes are wrong, but they’re simply a way to represent a theme for your character, right? Strong, smart, charismatic. I think if it were immediately clear to the player exactly how attributes will affect your build, they wouldn’t be such a problem. But most of the time, you’re assigning numbers to stats without that confidence. Personally I favor being more direct in how my character will be themed, which is why I like traits or perks. I want to be strong, so I pick the strong trait, and it’s a binary choice of being able to lift a large object or not. I picked Thief, so yes I can pick locks whereas other classes can’t. Probably not ideal for everyone out there, though.
I think a nice way to manage attributes would be that every few levels you can unlearn a skill or take just one attribute out, as if you don't want to use it anymore and forget about it, then you use the points somewhere else. Only if you want of course 👌
Picking attributes as a beginner: I like the general approach in Bethesda games to have a tutorial section that lets you reconfigure your character at the end. So new players have some more idea what attributes they want to focus on.
Really insightful, thank you!
To translate some of the bidding idea to a single player game- if you were able to track what every player was putting points into, the cost or maybe even effect of every attribute could adjust over time, either automatically or at the dev's discretion.
I think reducing or outright removing more diverse ways of character control, choice and consequence, and character development might reflect not only gaming trends (of placing immediacy of play over learning or digesting game rules) but also designers' own inability to fully flesh out these systems. Modern day Bethesda will never create something with Daggerfall's depth again (the TES series has undergone similar simplifications as well), let alone understand how these structures aid in character role-playing, diversity and ultimately player experience. As such, any Fallout that they develop is always cause for concern.
My favorite implementation of perks was Fallout New Vegas. It's trade-off perks system makes really unique characters. I almost wish flaws had trade-offs, maybe they make you a little better at one thing but much worse at another thing. (ie. Scared of heights, 20% accuracy penalty above land, 1% accuracy buff on land) I think even a small benefit would have made me use more flaws, because unique characterization is so important in rpgs.
What if you bid against a rival character in the game? So you end up designing your rival by designing your character?
I'm not sure I really "Got" negative attributes in video games until I went back and reloaded an old Outer Worlds save and realized that I didn't want to go through the effort of loading up another companion's equipment, so I threw the robot in the party-- only to realize my hacking skill took a hit due to my robophobia and I needed other drugs to balance out how freaked out the giant killer cleaning robot was making me. I laughed really hard at myself.
I had to kick him of the team because of that phobia. The permanent debuff when you're on the ship was bugging me out.
Regarding starting attributes you've talked about ~3:10 onwards, my biggest thing when making a character is not knowing whether it's possible to increase attributes during the game or not - and which ones (e.g. in Fallout you can increase all of them in Fallout 2 you can't (excluding perks)).
I would love to see you do a video where you talk to Josh Sawyer about this topic. I remember he did a GDC talk on the attribute system in Pillars where he revealed that he actually didn't want the game to have one, but that the team decided to make the game with one anyway because the game was for fans of Infinity Engine games, which all had attribute systems.
oh interesting, you bring up EQ, I was about to start typing about balance in the tri-realm MMO
Dark Age of Camelot
and how there while there weren't any copy-paste characters and skills, there were overlapping similarities that made sense
mostly a great system - skill+class selection/variance and balance (once it got to a certain point)
chanters can do 100x damage but also die 100x quicker - that sort of balance ( :
Hi Tim, what is your thoughts on "non-conventional" attributes like the Disco Elysium ones? Too confusing for a player to make a conscious decision? Or Even more "broad" attrbitues like those in Pillars of Eternity, where Might is about being strong, be it physical or spiritual. Thanks!
Yes, please make a brainstorming video. Great content!
1. Deciding on attributes on character creation, before you understand what they do, is a problem in paper RPGs as well. The most common approach is to show the core conflict resolution mechanic (typically fighting) so one can get an idea of how attributes factor into that part of the game. Some even give you probability tables to chew on. I've seen some (very few) TTRPGs where you can leave certain things blank and you fill them in during the first or maybe second session, as you go. This is typically done for things other than atts but I'm pretty sure you could do that for attributes as well. Respeccing character is also not uncommon in (video) games. Ultimately people who complain about attributes from the "hard to balance" angle tend to forget that for any given system depth, complexity won't just evaporate once you remove attributes. Your problems simply move elsewhere.
2. I feel like characters often become meaningfully different primarily through means different than attributes. Atts are great in terms of transparency if you're heavily into min-maxing and math is heavily in favor of attributes instead of anything else (skills, talents, perks, relationships, feats, you name it). In that case, yeah, attributes are meaningful to your style of play (and by no means is this style wrong). But at the same time it seems pretty uncommon for the attributes to have this much of a sway (unless the range is pretty small like you've mentioned) and I'm not sure what percentage of gamers min-max like that. In other words: I'm guessing that a larger percentage of gamers cares about meaningful narrative differences (which can be affected by attributes but it very rarely is the primary source of narrative variety).
3. Bonuses from stats are very D&D-y. A lot of games (that aren't D&D-derived) use attributes directly (attr+skill+mods vs. diff for instance). One could say it's just a nit and I'm sure Tim knows this very well but I've seen so many people who have experience with just one ecosystem (typically D20) who try designing something but lack any experience outside of that sphere of influence. Try different things, people. It's great for the flow of creative juices. Even if you loop back to D&D, at least you'll have pockets full of inspirations. :)
4. Weighting DEX effect on skills against contributions from other attributes is a nice idea. One of the common ways games attack this issue is by splitting reflexes out of DEX into, say, agility and reflex/reaction or something. Ultimately whether DEX (or any other skill) is over-represented depends on the type of actions game lets people take. If game defaults to physical violence, dexterity (and maybe strength and/or constitution equivalents) will tend to be OP. But if you allow for a social "combat" and deescalation through that, suddenly there are other viable paths to victory.
5. Amber is great. :) Bidding is indeed a pretty rare TTRPG mechanic (I only know Amber and Mortal Coil off the top of my head; and I think Epiphany did that too?) but it is represented in board games in many clever ways. Outside of chargen, In Spaaace! and James Bond 007 use bidding mechanics during play.
Ultimately I agree with something Josh Sawyer said in one of his talks - what matters is character viability. If you can finish the game with most (and by most I mean as close to 100% as possible) different character builds, the game is probably fairly well balanced. The only exception to this rule would be, IMO, if you're deliberately building a game where stat exploration and failure are part of the fun. But you can only build rule-breaking things if you understand rules first. ;)
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It would be interesting if it was an RPG where you begin the game in a group, but you only make one character and the AI creates the other characters. The AI could use templates such as "This is a strong & brave fighter-type" or "This is the clever rogue" but not communicate that information to the player beforehand. The AI & player then bid as the different AI characters try to achieve their desired attribute standings. While it would have the same problem as re-rolling like Baldur's Gate has, I believe any PC game that has an element of chance in character creation will be subject to re-rolling.
On the subject of balancing attributes, I think Disco Elysium did a really great job at this. Each attribute and group of skills felt like an expression of the character you wanted to play rather then "if you don't take a high physique you are making a bad character".
2:20-2:25 I've heard people be euphemistic about bad ideas instead of chewing on them like you said. "Let's not try your bad idea, let's try something else!" but said "nicely". California.
Oh my god. EverQuest, my first true videogame love. I played nothing else from 1999-2002. Looking forward to that one!
I'm increasingly of the opinion that stats and skills shouldn't just add to each other, but should function in different ways. In particular, I like the idea of stats raising the *ceiling* for a roll, while skills raise both the *ceiling* and *floor.* E.g., your Dex might give you a 30% hit chance, but your Gun skill adds a flat +50 to your roll, so any Gun check is guaranteed to land between 51-80 (excluding botch/crit mechanics). High stats increase your _potential_ in many things, but skills increase your _reliability_ for specific things. Voila, a high dex is still valuable, but skill selection is now much more valuable. You could even give players a pool of points which can be assigned to either stats _or_ skills, allowing them to choose between happy-go-lucky generalists or amazingly competent specialists.
This could also encourage players to "break type" a little: e.g., a fighter who sinks a decent chunk of skill points into Speech can feel like they're getting a good return on that investment without wringing their hands over their Charisma stat. It could also allow for greater customization within stats: maybe instead of Strength and Endurance, you just have a Body stat (for overall physical fitness), but can invest in skills like Lift/Carry, Speed, Endurance, Toughness (additional HP/soak), etc.
I've been waiting for this topic. Very inspiring
There is a great RPG out there called Darklands. At the beginning, you don't just pick attributes and skills- you decide your character's story - I loved that. Even age matters - you can make an inexperienced teenager character, or a 50 year old one with a lot of experience. Perhaps there is even a tradeoff in terms of health - younger character is healthier, older character is less healthy.
In my hobby RPG system I've been working on, I've been playing with making attributes more abstract (instead of "Strength" the closest I have is "Force") and then instead of governing skills or physical attributes they govern specific gameplay mechanics. Like Force is tied to "Clash Rolls" (i.e. opposed rolls) and that could be in the context of clashing swords or perhaps in resisting a telepath's invasion of their mind.
Other factors like Training, Equipment, and Traits then define all the concrete details and give varying bonuses to specifc kinds of situations. Like say if the character is trained in Spears, they get a bonus to their Clash Roll in Melee or their Poise based "Skill Check" when throwing one.
We'll see how it holds up when I playtest 😅
Gotta say, the shape based attribute spread is a really neat idea that I wanna play with now
I really like systems that have softer formulaic attribute mechanics.
For example, instead of a 'minimum strength', tie attack speed to weapon weight. Don't tell the player they're being penalized; let them decide where a good place is for the weapons they want to use
In some games you play a little bit of the game before you get to the attribute selection, so that you have a bit of a feel for it before selecting.
You obviously can’t get too far into the game without attributes but it’s a possible approach to be played with.
Hey Tim! Good to hear from you today as per usual!
In general i agree with what you said in the video. Traits would have been nice to have in both f3 and f4. But skills being lost in fallout 4 is a little semantics as they are simply called perks now but they are still there (i would have liked them still seperate and called skills for tradition, but the perk tree is beutiful and fun in fallout 4). If they remove SPECIAL for Fallout 5 that would be horrible (then again after seeing f76 and starfield my hope for fallout 5 is low). I think you are spot on with attributes not getting any bonuses to make them meaningful. I also think if you make a legendary game like Fallout or Arcanum the replay value is testing different builds and if you get a little messed up character sometimes that is fine.
When tim talks about the early days of fallout and the team he sounds exactly the same as what the 2000ad team when they talk about it. A shame the two groups never met
Bethesda isn't going to get rid of SPECIAL, I think. Their current leveling model seems to be streamlining the old 2 stat system (i.e. "Attributes" + "Skills"=effectiveness) to a single stat for players to maintain. With Skyrim, they only had skills which perks were used for improving those skills. Fallout has both skills AND the SPECIAL stats, but which of those is both a cornerstone of the series and a marketable brand that's unique only to Fallout? I believe if SPECIAL was just a normal attribute stat, Bethesda would've gone with a skill perk system just like Skyrim did. They won't get rid of either perks or SPECIAL for Fallout 5. And with Starfield out now, we may see a resurgence of traits.
I'm currently designing my own system just for fun and maybe to play with friends, and one of the things I've done is make it so that every skill is associated with two attributes rather than just one. By then carefully controlling which skills are associated with which attributes I'm hoping I can avoid one attribute being overpowered compared to another. The main downside with it (though personally I quite like it) is that there are 12 attributes in total, 6 physical and 6 mental, as opposed to only 6 like in DnD. That said, based on my very limited testing so far, it does seem to allow for a lot of unique character builds.
Very insightful video! - Thank you! 😊
Hey Tim. Could you do a video on the different methods of handling Leveling Up. E.g. Traditional level up, point buy, and level by doing. I think there is a lot of space for an interesting decision.
Have you seen Monsters and Memories? It's an indie MMO by a few old EQ guys, they did a few interviews with old EQ devs that are really similar to your videos.
I really hope they keep SPECIAL for Fallout 5
If its just perks, then its going to be too much like Skyrim, and that game has so many ways to build what ends up feeling like the same character every time.
I also wanted to add in the suggestion for an attribute system that starts with everything at 1, and you build it as you level up. It has the advantage of removing the issue of "oh idk what to put points in i havejt played the game yet"
But it runs the risk of homogenizing characters in the early game
Fallout 76 does it that way and its not bad
Hey Tim! You should take a look at Starfield, Bethesda's new IP. They've created a different form of character creation than their previous games. Would love to hear your thoughts on the game's showcase, but also about the challenging and exciting design choices associated with creating a new IP in general.
Many games do not make "perception" as an attribute. It is often derived from another attribute, or skills. We have 5 senses that allows us to percieve the world around us. Its an inherent attribute for living creatures to survive.
I find that the easiest way to ensure that the player doesn't feel like they're missing out when they pick a certain attribute is by adding enough unique content (unique dialogue, items, companions, quests, etc.) for each attribute. This won't balance the attributes gameplay-wise, but it's a solid enough band-aid solution that will help avoid the worst shortcomings of poorly balanced attribute systems and offer more replayability.
As a side note, one big mistake I see game designer make all the time but no one ever talks about is that most CRPGs throw you into the character creation screen without giving you any context about the world you're about to play in or, even more importantly, your character's role in that world. Oftentimes this context may be crucial to deciding what kind of build you want to play. Some modern CRPGs (e.g. Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny) avoid this by feeding you lore through text blobs during character creation, but generally the best solution to this is to have the player create a character AFTER they see the intro cutscene (this is what New Vegas did) or, better yet, complete an intro level (Fallout 3).
It might not be balanced but it sure as hell is fun playing fallout with 10 dex, a million action points and a turbo plasma rifle.
Yeah both Fallout and Arcanum have fun attribute systems for sure. Dex and agility are the best attributes in both but the attribute system works very well in both and are very fun!
I think you could actually make a really engaging character building system without Attributes or Skills, just by using Traits and Perks.
Whereas Attributes and Skills are numerical, Traits and Perks are evocative. They have catchy names and descriptions, and often give a variety package together of bonuses which exist primary to convey a specific character concept. They put the focus on expressing your character, in a way that Attributes and Skills don't. And we relate to their narrative context in a way we can't relate to numbers.
So with just those two players could still make interesting and unique characters. Traits would offer playthrough immutable advantages and disadvantages that define a build. And Perks would offer pre-packaged bonuses & mechanics that evoke specific fantasies.
Check out FATE Core, or variations. They do both.
They have a single Skill List (which includes attributes), which is numerical. But each character also has Aspects (which are freeform wide ranging aspect of your character), and Stunts which aren't freeform (but much easier to create than whole new skills) but are rule exceptions and special cases to cover special abilities or weirdness of a character, or give big bonuses to a limited action. Things like Sea Legs (Your Athletics skill works unimpeded by conditions like storms, water, or high seas while on board a ship), or Dazing Counter (When you succeed with style on a defend action against an opponent’s Fight roll, you automatically counter with some sort of nerve punch or stunning blow. You get to attach the Dazed situation aspect to your opponent with a free invoke, instead of just a boost) or Mountaineer (+2 to overcome with Athletics when faced with mountainous terrain).
FATE and Stunts do also this thing that I personally find admirable, they allow for limited Skill substitution: you can buy a stunt to substitute a Skill for another Skill under specifics circumstances. For example Well-Travelled (You may use Lore instead of Rapport when you have visited the homeland or home state of the person you are speaking to).
It's a reasonably well ruled mechanic, falling under several guard rails and examples. But it's freeform enough that it allow to create exceptions or to simulate edge cases that rpg players are so fan of, without breaking the game. It also allow to create the character you want, that is logical for you in your head, without having to arbitrarily spend point in things you don't want just because of a quirk of the rules, which is huge.
Of course anything freeform works well on tabletop, would not for a computer game.
@@LiraeNoir oh yeah I love Fate. And aspects work so well. You can actually play Fate without skills, just using aspects and Stunts.
My biggest problem with attributes was always the fact some of them were necessary and game never said it but playing without maxing them was just not viable. Yes, it is Agility in Fallout and fact that only 10 Agility gave you 10 Action Points per turn which translated to 2 shots per turn (5 Action Points per turn). That's double damage from the start of the game. It's similar with Intelligence in D&D for a mage. Highest Intelligence gave you more spells in the book, playing mage without it was just counterproductive.
Another thing is dialogue - you play RPGs for the story, characters and getting to know the world. Low intelligence dialogue is not something you want for your first run. But usually only getting Charisma and Intelligence really high allows you to really get deep into the lore, unlock many dialogue options, read scrolls/books, hack computers etc. Without high Intelligence it's like going around your life without being able to read. Well, I guess you can get by, but you won't really learn anything. If the game 'punishes' the character but not making him able to fix weapons it's fine; if it strips me of possibility of immersing myself in it then I will always max intelligence.
I like when I have to compromise for something, and I have always thought that the more a character is specialized in something the more should suck in something else. At the beginning of a game my ideal character should be well all-rounded, I don't know the game I don't know the mechanics...but once I'm experienced I can specialize my character while buying perks and traits and can decide the price I'm ok to pay for being the best sniper: I started as an average joe, turned out a great sniper with decent knife ability but really suck at mid range fights
Yeah the trend is less choice, less complexity, less player agency, I'm hoping that the success of Baldur's Gate 3 brings some of those things back, because I'm hoping that the standard of RPG you guys setted back in the day makes a comeback to be the standard for RPGs of this decade. And I call it a standard, because at least for me it is, I can't play a single RPG nowdays without going "I cant believe this feature doesn't exist, this a 20+ year game mechanic", and it really makes me mad that some studios/devs are publicly saying "don't expect us raise our standard to a BG3 experience", I mean what are you talking about???... Anyways I'm just ranting at this point so I'm going to leave it there 😂. Always a joy to hear Tim's point of view.
A good solution for DEX is dividing it into body movement AND hand movement.
A professional typer isnt a professional runner.
Or you could move all finesse actions done by hands to a PERCEPTION attribute too.
I'm concerned about Fallout 5 as well. I hope they bring back skills, traits AND sill have base building. Also silent protagonists would be nice.
I think the best attribute system recently was how Wasteland 3 did it. The core problem with attributes is that RPGs are fundamentally about player growth. So you have a game where you go from minor speech maker to god of tongues who can convince the big bad to stand down...but you never benched once along the way?
At a wider level, from a game design perspective, far too much is pulled from DnD in single player games. DnD's limitations make sense under the consideration that it's designed around a party of people who need clear cut roles. But this doesn't work for single player character RPGs because it often makes people overly limited. And it also means far fewer tools in the toolbox. A DnD party can access a wide variety of content because it has a person for each role. A single player character RPG, by contrast, will have much more of its content gated off.
The argument is off course: replayability. But there's a very narrow slice of games which are legitimately replayable. Most games, if played every year or two, can be played with the same character and feel fairly new. I've got a Fallout template character that can pretty much access all of the game's content. But games where the point is to do another run immediately after need to be short. Most importantly, it needs to have as little meaningless combat as possible. Clicking button to see numbers appear isn't engaging and combat is mostly a time and skill points tax. This clashes with modern RPG game design (outside of games like Tyranny) which trend towards being big and expansive.
IMO: the longer a game is, the freer character design should be and the less content should be gated off from any one playthrough.
It's really makes me sad how bethesda seens be to be removing all rpg from Fallout. I know you not in the lead of the franchise anymore, but i really wish someday see another Fallout game with the name "Tim Cain" in the credits
I know Tim does not make reviews but I still wonder what he thinks about newer crpgs like pathfinder handled his questions about such design approaches
Seems like your fears for Fallout 5 are pretty warranted because from what we seen of Starfield all it has is perks. If that’s popular I would expect Bethesda to probably use that same system for Fallout 5.
Bethesda Fallouts are just reflavored Elder's Scrolls. They've been stripping down anything resembling roleplaying more and more, and aiming towards something of a looter shooter. That's why everyone hopes that maybe with the Microsoft acquisition Obsidian might do another real Fallout game.
Have you tried the Pathfinder games from Owlcat? Now these are some proper RPGs! The roleplaying and replayability especially in Wrath is mind boggling.