Saints Row driving and series change

The last post also made me consider the changes in Saints Row across the series, because the fact the driving was the least fun part to me made me feel like it was only there because of previous games. Not that it was only included for tradition or something like that, but because that's where the series started and while it was going new places and doing new things, it hadn't quite moved beyond that yet. It was like an increasingly vestigial organ, that had some purpose for now, but was mostly there because the organism it was part of is still in transition from what it was into something else.

Something else that I haven't played, but considering I thought Prototype 2
and Crackdown were fun but too serious, something that looks pretty sweet.

Which can lead to those uncomfortable issues that pop up as a series or creator grows and develops into something different from what they started as. Allot of times this works fine: In the Harry Potter series say, it started as light fantasy, but then became darker and more moody and serious towards the end. This made sense in so many ways, as the fans and characters were growing up and dealing with harder issues. The changing tone seemed to serve the story: the contrast with how it started really gave a sense of the stakes and how the villains affected the world. At the other end of the spectrum we might put the farcical edition wars of D&D, the poster child IP for having fans that are not on board for the new iteration.



And discussing the many and varied ways
those are hilarious and terrible would take a while.

Some would say those are silly comparisons;  Harry Potter fans wanted to see how the story went, while D&D fans had a functional game (arguably) and didn't see the need for a new one. But those are the extremes with plenty of things in the middle of a spectrum linking them by degrees of success. Theres plenty of webcomics that changed massively as the author(s) developed a style or tried new things, to varying degrees of success. Theres tv shows that got more or less interesting across seasons. Theres tabletop games that avoided editions wars and gained new audiences and ones that fractioned their audience repeatedly.

Then there's movies series that introduced aliens
so people like to pretend the last film never happened.

Among the various forms of media, video games are kind of in between the difficulty of "complete" tabletop games and the narrative commitment of less interactive stories. I mean, you can have that hook in the audience that they want to find out what happened next (that was the blessing and curse of Mass Effect 3 after all; the audience was really invested in that story). At the same time, you can have a full game that you enjoy and can keep playing regardless of new releases, particularly multi-player games. Theres also the technical angle, where newer games can have better graphics or more complex...whatever, but any critic can tell you that doesn't mean a better or more successful game in any way.

Man, wasn't this great? 

So, reflecting on the various successes and failures (in terms of audience size, finance, and quality), what can we take away? Narratively, changes need to come naturally for the story and characters. Big news, I know, and even then you can get some fan backlash, but it shouldn't be on Mass Effect 3 levels (if this analysis is accurate).

For a game though, if you want to make sure previous fans get on board you need to make sure they can do the things that they already liked doing in the current version, while adding new things to make it worth getting the new version. To oversimplify, this was one of the (many) issues that split fans of 3rd and 4th edition DnD; there were things you could do in 3e or 3.5 that you could not do in 4e, so fans that wanted to do those things didn't update. Being more accurate and general, if fans want to keep the things that were only in the old iteration more than they want things introduced in the new iteration, they won't update. Which of course brings me back to driving in Saints Row.

Hey, remember me?

I'm fairly certain they haven't removed driving from Saints Row 4. I haven't played it, but I think it would've been mentioned as weird somewhere online. However, if there's another way to get around the city (like being a freerunning superhuman) and driving is still an option, my experience will still be improved so I won't have the same complaints as I did about SR3.

After all of this, its interesting to think about the impact if they did take out driving, though. The question would be how central driving is to why people were playing Saints Row 3 and if the new stuff makes up for cutting it? Or if the new stuff will attract enough new audience that the company can afford losing the fans that are that invested in the driving?
And if driving isn't that central to the series anymore, then what is?

Not the zombie voice option, apparently.

photo credit: media.pcgamer.com, looneydm.blogspot.com, saintsrow.wikia.com

Best Game Company?

So, most every major TTRPG that companies have come out with has serious balance issues:

• DnD 3.x: does mages vs. fighters really need a link?
• Pathfinder: the lowdown
• DnD 4e: a "good character" (the responses, not neccesarily the first post)
• nWoD: I can't speak to this as much, but for reasons below (and new mage's "lol atlantis" fluff) I don't have much faith in WW
• Exalted: Anatomy of failure
• Aberrant: various views (this is by no means a major system, but I like fiddling with it occasionally. Also both the bits where 1) claws power vs. str enhancement, where one option is both cheaper and better in every way and 2) the default character creation that allows for characters that would be 306-1198xp if bought with that, makes me giggle)
• Scion: anything past Hero level. Dex is already the god stat, so how do you even fight without maxing out epic Dex? and why are the aesir dex-screwed? What does 10 successes even look like and why doesn't that do half the things dex knacks do?

Yeah, this is entirely about the mechanics, but thats what the systems are for. Obligatory proabably repetitive disclaimer; yes, you can run a good game in any system. But that means your GM is great, not the system is. The measure of the system how much less work it is for the GM and players to get what they want than the alternatives. And for most parties, balance is a concern, which is a sizable part of why you use a system rather than freeform.

In some games these are starting characters,

in some they are balanced with each other,

in some they are both

Basically it seems game companies just suck at playtesting. Like really suck. And economics and demand say they aren't gonna fix it, cause theres enough other stuff in their products that unbalanced mechanics don't nix the deal...mostly. The bigger issue is that they have limited time even when they do playtest, so they won't find everything the rabid masses of obsessed fans will. Charop boards thrive on this fact.

So if the only way to truly stress test a system is to give it to hoards of powergaming fans; in a perfect world (or at least one where 1) companies didn't care about giving away product for free or 2) people would still buy the finished product after having the drafts of the system) we'd just do that. I mean homebrews start as small things or houserules to something established, but if a group put its mind to it theres no reason the people that brought you Crystal Keep and all the "The 3.5 X class handbook" threads that reviewed every option from every splatbook couldn't turn their efforts to actually balancing things, instead of noting the problems and moving on. And this does occur sometimes, but what i'm saying is this writ large accross a whole game, including its fundamentals.

Wikis and boards and such allow input from all sides, and the real issue is everyone having the same goal; a clear statement of purpose outlining direction and philosophy is essential here. So many design calls come down to preference and style, so having a cohesive idea of what the game is for and whats most valued (cinematic vs. gritty, ease of use, flexibililty, etc.) saves allot of repetitive arguments later.

I guess I'm saying gamers, properly motivated and organized, would form their best group of suppliers. If theres any group that would voluntarily put in the time both figuring out fair dice mechanics and fluffing out new setting to go with them it'd be the people in this hobby.

(Those drawn to the mechanics, anyway; I know allot of people play socially or only care about story and often handwave mechanics, which is great for them and their groups. The arcane (not in the magic sense) structure of say dnd 3.5e can attracts a type of person who is great for this, though.)

Classes and Races...again

(tl;dr: fluff and mechanics should support each other & vice versa)

So recently I started lurking over at The Gaming Den. Normally I peruse RPG.net, but the other night I was actually reading /tg/ rather than just saving pictures and they linked to the Sins of 4e thread. I hadn't kept up with 4e after it was released, so hearing its "ending" was news, but the list of its flaws was more interesting.

Especially the "Racial Determinism". This one stuck not because its any more valid or problematic than the others, like the narrow classes say, but because its some friends have been dealing with in their derivative of dnd 3.x. Its almost too extensive to be called a rewrite, with rebalancing everything core, to the point fighters are competitive with casters (madness, I know). But having settled on the core classes and leveled out the +0 LA races, they too were looking at what races were best as what classes.

For background, this is power gamers trying to balance a system; one tenet of their design philosophy is "if option X is mechanically weaker than Y, then players don't really have a choice", which is their way of saying a choice between "playing my concept" and "being effective" means your design has failed since concepts should be equally valid, i.e. one isn't mechanically penalized over another.

With this view, the analysis had results ranging from:

• Everyone with +(X stat) is good for this class; do we want to narrow this?
• Only (Y race) is good for this class; do they need a nerf so other options are competitive?
• (Z race) is only good at one class, but on par with others for it right now; how do we make them decent for others while not making them so good to be the only choice for this one?

If the system favors this, is it design failure or design aweseomeness?

 

And this may smack of obviousness, but the common point to me is that racial determinism isn't a bad thing, but inherent to these kinds of rules; Frank Trollman, these friends, and anyone who can do math are in total agreement here. The issue is if the optimized builds support the setting and genre tropes. you don't even have to make it so everyone is good at everything, just so the people who should be are (and labeling who's good at what clearly and correctly goes along way to not trapping newbies).

My friends' goal was to have a few core races for each class, and a few classes for each race, so there were options. But ones that made sense, as there were comments like "dwarves are good fighters, but they should be decent paladins and clerics...ok even with this buff they're not wizards, but I don't think anyone cares" or "elf barbarians are good now; is this a problems or ok?"

Restrictions can help define the setting; in allot of specific games like DnD, the issue is not being able to do things that you can in the source material, but in general games like HERO system, not regulating things can destroy the feel of the world too. In summary, as always, fluff and crunch need to match or things get wonky.

In the grim darkness of the far future there is only ...Rainbows!
(Though if thats the feel you're going for, go for it ;)