In my last post, I mentioned that my endeavor to beat Dragon Quest V by the end of the month was cut short by burnout. I will now here tell my story and what I learned from that experience.
At some point in the game, your main party can be joined by monsters that you fight- not by all monsters that you fight, but rather by some. If you want to be joined by a certain monster, you A) need to know which monster you want to join you, B) go through the requisite steps to get there (which include being at the right level and fighting that enemy at least a certain number of times) and finally C) luck- you need a great deal of luck.
My dilemma arose where I wanted to be joined by a particular monster, but despite being at the proper level and having fought the enemy a bazillion times, it would not join my party. As a result of this maddening Pokemon-like episode, my party became so experienced that after I decided to give up on the quest for this monster’s affection, I was so leveled up that I went through the following dungeon exercise practically unopposed.
This made me wonder about a few things. For one, I know that the Dragon Quest series is known for its focus on grinding if the player ever wants to make any real progress in the games. But what struck me about this experience is that, A) the bestiary in DQV is quite diverse and B) perhaps either incidentally or purposefully, the monster collecting process acts as a psychological shield for a process that is normally only seen as an excuse to rack up experience or gold (or as seen in modern RPGs, for rare item drops).
On a similar note, I remember when I was younger, collecting Beanie Babies was pretty popular (tiny collectable, bean-stuffed toys that were given cutesy names). When you stop to think about it, the difference between collecting Beanie Babies and stamps is purely psychological…
To drive this point home, I should say that collecting stamps and Beanie Babies, as with collecting monsters in DQV, is optional. You can win at life without collecting things and you can conceivably beat DQV without investing in any monsters. “All things in moderation,” they say. In the case of my most recent gaming experience, I must say that the forces of moderation were not present; the disincentives for over-leveling were not strong enough and those disincentives that were present were easily overpowered by the side quest.
That is a dangerous combination of factors. Side quests ought to be fun and incidentally make the game easier for the player in the short term, but with certain limits. I would have never set out to get that monster to join my team in DQV had I have known I was going to become so powerful that the game would not even be challenging. To move on and say to myself, “Well, if I just keep going through the game without trying to get much stronger, I’m sure it’ll get more reasonably difficult,” the next time I encounter a side quest, I will say, “Hey, if I spend too much time or effort trying to complete this side quest, the game will lose its shine.” This mentality destroys any incentive to attempt to get better, a real serious enthusiasm handicap.
To be fair, I played about 2/3 of the way through DQV when I was in high school and enjoyed it greatly. I enjoyed what I have replayed so far; however, one of the shortcomings that was exposed during my most recent experience was that if my patience withstood the task, I could make the game way too easy way too quickly.
As far as what this has brought to light for the Snitsa-Grezit development process, I have decided to limit experience gained from battles to 1-point-per-enemy (except for significant battles); however, experience will be awarded through complete quests and story line features. Enemies will drop items that are necessary for the completion of these quests and those quests can only be completed once, so at some point in the game grinding will NOT inflate experience. Furthermore, it’ll mean that the player must engage every NPC to the maximum extent so that they can attain the most experience possible.
The economy of the game will have a similar structure: only enemies who could conceivably hold gold will drop gold; those items that they drop that are sellable can be sold for gold. I realize that engaging the player through a bartering system is threateningly realistic for an RPG, but it is this human quality that I feel will prevent A) the exploitation of the system by the player and B) the grinding that the party does will have tangible, limited, but purposeful quality. What I mean here is that if a player sets out to collect deer skins, he or she will have to fight a certain number of deer- this is the player’s choice: if they want to do so, they don’t risk an abundance of strength or money as a result and therefore are doing so strictly for the merits of the quest.
I realize that this could turn off a lot of traditional gamers who are used to having to level up to get anything and everything they want out of a game. At this point, I am willing to risk their disapproval at least in the short term- I am confident that I can design a game that promotes exploration without exploitation, and retooling traditional experience/gold acquisition, I believe, is one of many ways to accomplish that goal. Expect another update by Sunday on the progress of the graphics development!
Filed under: Bloggish, Snitsa-Grezit by Aaron on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 | Social tagging: Dragon Quest > Snitsa-Grezit
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