I've really wanted to play Mass Effect since it came out years ago and all my friends were ranting about it, but it wasn't until the other day that I was able to see it in action. It looked really fun, especially the battles and conversations, and the vast, complicated universe Bioware had created. I couldn't wait to jump in and discover all its secrets, explore the nuanced worlds, and experience the complicated story for myself.
Then my friend spoke to the shopkeeper, and the menu slog began.
You could customize the characters skills, his major statistics, his weapon, his weapon's special properties, his weapon's ammo, his armor, his clothing, his everything. My friend told me that it seems confusing to everyone at first, but eventually you get the hang of it and that's when the real fun of the game starts. But I knew from the instant he started scrolling through those numbers that I would never be able to play Mass Effect.
It's not that I don't like the RPG genre, I love it to death. For a long time they were my bread and butter, I harped upon them endlessly, until the day I was forced to face the horrible and brutal truth: I really suck at role playing games. I just don't have the attention span for them, and it's getting worse every game.
All that customization is really supposed to give you more precise control over the characters in the game, like driving a manual car makes it feel like you are an extension of the engine itself, and the protagonist is a blank slate to project your own personality and gameplay style onto. But really, how do such insignificant details do anything to improve the immersive experience? When there are so many numbers they start to lose their meaning, and besides alienating new players, they're completely useless and artificial as a gameplay element.
When I want to create a character, I'm not worrying about what color his eyes and hair is, the bone structure of his face, what his clothes and his weapons look or act like. I think about how he would react to certain situations, what his relationships would be to other characters, whether or not he'd be able to stand up in the face of peril and conflict. Those other details are nice as icing, and when you're watching your character run around the screen it's kind of neat to say "Hey, I chose that t-shirt!" but it's not very fulfilling.
As far as "customizing your gameplay experience," I have no idea how well the number jumble works in that respect, but I do know that there are much simpler ways to do it. In Zelda: OOT, my brother and I had the exact same statistics and items, yet the way we played was completely different. My brother would run head-on into battle and rely on his fairies and hearts to carry him through, while I would use every item at my disposal to stun the enemy before I would strike. These simple choices only took advantage of the natural elements already in place, and had nothing to do with the conscious decisions of stat allocation. In OOT, not only did these stylistic differences create a unique experience for both of us, but it also separated Link himself into two different heroes: the Link who is brash and courageous, and the Link who is slow and thoughtful. Even though we never got to see these personalities in action, they felt much more like extensions of ourselves than say, inFamous, in which you make conscious decisions to move your numerical "good bar" up and down.
And yet more games are moving in the direction of the algorithm orgy. Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness and Patapon, two incredibly promising games for the PSP, were both ridiculously bogged down with menus. Every single piece of equipment has a slightly different statistic, so when you buy a wristband you really have to make sure you're giving it to the right character! All this is frustrating enough when I'm playing it on a PC or Console RPG, but these are portable games! When I'm on the bus to school and I pull out my PSP, I want to be able to play it in short bursts, turn it on and turn it off quickly. But when so much thought has to go into what should be a simple experience, I quickly lost interest.
To be honest, sometimes I just want to play a game to have fun. I want to play an RPG for the story, and I want to kill things by pressing a button. Complex customization and algorithm memorizing may make a more entertaining game for some, but mostly I think it's missing the point of why we play games. When more thought has to go into how we want to play the game eventually than the actual process of playing the game and having fun, something has gone terribly wrong.
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Excellent work! A good solution is to include pregenerated characters (as part of the original game, not DLC). This vastly simplifies everything and allows you to play as the person you are.
I have had similar experiences with games like Soul Calibur 3 and 4, where character creation was a relatively large part of the game. I went into it thinking that it might be fun, but I soon realized the same sort of thing, that I didn't have the patience to deal with all these very specific settings of hair colors and skin tones. And also, it almost felt like an insult that I took an already made character and gave him or her a different set of clothing. The original outfit is, after all, the way the character was created to look.
Fine tuning, min-maxing, and point distribution are actually things a lot of RPG fans enjoy (self included). I do agree with that point about Disgaea though...that series in particular just kinda bored me because there was way TOO MUCH statistics stuff that really didn't make much difference. When every single weapon or item in the game has it's own dungeon that you can do to level it up...I'm sorry, but I just don't have time for that.
But Mass Effect is an amazing game (despite it's flaws, item selection being one of them). To not play it because you don't want to customize your character's face or shop for weapons is a very sad reason to miss out.
Great blog! More and more games are allowing for a quicker "compare" part of the menu that allows you to more quickly select the "best" item. Other games are allowing for an "autoequip" option which will outfit your character using the best items available (though they may not technically be "best" for the specific enemy type... so sometimes tweaking is necessary).
Personally I've always felt that going through the armour weapons and seeking out the best one for my character build and enemy type was part of the fun of the game - though it's a more strategic type of "fun".
@Electrium: Oh I'll definitely still try it out, but in the past I just haven't had the attention span for all that fine tuning, so I don't know how far I'll make it :(
Thanks for all the comments, they make for a fine welcome into the community :D
I have to agree. Character customization makes sense, but it has been carried nearly to the point of self-parody. It makes sense that they'd think to include more and more physical customization because many RPGs come from pen and paper games where you could include as much detail as you wanted none of it needed to be represented visually. However, this leads to an inordinate amount of time spent with sliders and such, especially in first person games like Oblivion where you don't get to see your characters face much of the time. As for the numbers game, that's almost unavoidable by nature of the game, but eponymous they have been taking steps to make it easier on those of us who don't want to fiddle with that noise. The colored bars in Mass Effect are a good example of this, giving you a quick visual comparison of equipment specs and the more common and detailed numbers on the side.
I like character customisation I would admit though the only two characters I am only interested in making is a pure badass dude, or a smoking hot chick.
you should play borderlands =3
Me repeating various points below is a go-go!
When it comes to something as diverse as gaming or certain genres like RPGs, different things will appeal more to different gamers than others. Just because the eye or hair color of a character isn’t fulfilling to you doesn’t mean it isn’t fulfilling to someone else. I too feel that how your character reacts to the world is pretty important, but I do also like them to look how I want to, even down to some small details.
Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness and Patapon sounds like they appeal to a different type of gamer than you. They may not be what you’re looking for in a game, but it doesn’t mean they done anything wrong, but instead, targets those that like that kind of stuff.
Didn't you counter your own point in the last paragraph? You said what you liked and that those little customization details may be the reason why many play the games that go that deep. Your way isn't better than their way and vice verse. You may prefer simpler means of playing, but it doesn't mean the point of gaming has been missed. On the other hand, I do agree in that Mass Effect example, they could have did more to make a difference than tiny numbers apart that ultimately would make nearly no noticeable difference. However, using examples of how the system is sometimes done poorly isn’t a good argument to say that character customization sucks or at least that aspect of it. It would be like saying games in HD is bad because a select few games misused it and had the text font almost unreadable on SDTVs. Even in Borderlands with its three million something weapons, the difference between one weapon and another can be very minor differences between the three main stats. Even then, both those games have customization that does beyond minor number differences, like weapons and items that add special effects. Adding fire or shock is a lot bigger difference than dealing five more damage.
I do agree that even having only one pre-defined option can lead to various ways of playing it, like in your Zelda example, but it also comes down to the genre of the game. RPGs tend to have a lot more room for character customization while keeping the game balanced than action-adventure games. Playing as pre-defined characters also tends to make much of a different in what options you’re given than custom characters. However, you still can choose to use the options given to you in different ways, depending how much freedom the game allows in that. Both types of games can work and co-exist.
I’m not saying why you play a game is wrong, but it’s not any more “right” than why someone else may play a game. What’s right for one player won’t be for another. Mass Effect sounds like it isn’t very suited to your particular tastes, but it doesn’t mean it did anything wrong, although I’m not clear if you said it did or not aside from the numbers example. Different strokes for different folks (or something).
Thanks for your long comment! It's true that a lot of the points in this article may be colored by my own suckiness at strategy and RPGs in general, and I know many people who do enjoy menus and stats and tweaking. But what I'm upset by is that many modern RPGs are moving further in the direction of endless customization without obvious context, alienating players who just want to sit down and play the game.
There are ways to solve this problem that will make both parties happy, like the auto-equip function Elsa mentioned. Hide the underlying equations from the players that don't want to mess around under the hood, but that are still available for the players who like that kind of thing.
RPGs with statistics that have obvious, natural consequences, wouldn't take away from the experience of hardcore players, and it would open up the genre to people like me, bitter from years of exclusion :P
Hmmm... I can't say I personally seen many RPGs that have a "equip best equipment" option, but those that do also tend to (but not always) have simpler selection of equipment than games like Mass Effect. If that option doesn't exist, one way to tell what is the best equipment overall is by the price and/or whatever has the highest level requirement if the game restricts equipment by level. Another thing is if you have two or more equipment that's almost alike, you can sell the one you won't be using. It's what I do in Borderlands at times. However, different equipment may work better at different times like mention in your original post. There's no real easy way to make a complex set up simple. Not only does the strategy come from how you carry out the battle, but it also comes from how you prepare for battle. The more customization of equipment and abilities is added, the more complex it gets. While newer gamers could learn to play a game like Mass Effect, it's not aimed at them and is targeted more toward those that like to micromanage and metagame. If difficulty settings are an option, selecting a lower one than normal can help since even if the loot is the same, at least the enemies will be weaker so that less strategy and micromanagement is needed to win.
On the other hand, it must feel frustrating to feel like you're being left out so that another type of gamer's tastes can be applied to. Simpler RPGs can and do exist and can prove to be fun as well as the complex ones. I’m not able to deny that core gaming is becoming more and more complex, at least on consoles. I can also say that even as a player used to more complex systems like these, that Borderlands could have possibly been better if it had a lot less weapons that focused on having greater differences between them besides 20 of the almost same shotgun with a slight difference in damage, accuracy, and firing rate. If you haven’t given up on Mass Effect, you might be able to give it another change. Unless you’re playing on a high difficulty, you don’t have to make sure your party is perfectly equipped before each battle.
Awesome blog post!
I whole-heartedly agree with this, drowning in stats is NOT FUN to me at all. I play RPGs for the engrossing story, fast-paced strategic battles and loveable characters... measuring the improvement of losing 10 magical defense and 3% evade in favor of 12 physical defense and 5 attack power is BORING. I threw my calculus notes into a campfire as soon as I was done with university...