Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

[Jedouard]

Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

All too often I hear someone say "Such and such is not realistic", and someone else return with "This is D3. It is not realistic." I have had this happen to me and I see it regularly on the forum, particularly when talking about restrictions or improvements to skills.

Remember game developers are creating an alternate reality, and in that reality, there are new limitations and possibilities. Going beyond those limitations is not "realistic" within that universe. On the flip side, if you fail to approach those limitations, you end up with a character that is not epic.

Pretend you are in a different, invented gaming universe, where it is common for characters to magically manipulate inanimate objects, but are restricted from, say, directly effecting living organisms. (This could be because of a "soul" or what not - essentially, however the developer wants the lore to be.) So someone gets on a forum and says "I want a spell to rip out the hearts of all the enemies on the map." In addition to being overpowered, it is not realistic within the game universe: the limitations have already been set. From the opposite side of the argument, if the developer makes a one character who can use his mind to split open a mountain, pushing the limits of the realism, and a second character who only levitates spit balls, forum people are perfectly right to call the latter inadequate in terms of epic-ness.

Although D3 limitations are not as clear-cut, this is something to keep in mind when reading, writing or responding to critiques on character and game design.

 

[Dgvs]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

Hello Jedouard,

i completly agree with your post. I think the thing i don´t like about the health orbs, is just the ideia you defended there. Diablo has a lot of stuff that aren´t possible in the real world, but a potion that gives health isn´t that much dificult to imagine. But monsters droping health orbs? what is the logic of that?
what about waypoints? i think it was logical that somewhere in the diablo world, there were special structures which allowed you to teleport to other identical structures, not teleport anywhere. Now, the system blizzard is implementing, the checkpoint stuff, i think has no logic at all, seems like a car game. I don´t know if i don´t like these new ideias just because i am not used to them, but i think i would like diablo 3 to make sense. If you die, there has to be a good reason for you to keep playing, like being revived in home town and you have to get your body back, not just pop up of a checkpoint because its a pc game.
I don´t know if it was clear what i wanted to say, it was my first post, and i am not english, so sorry about the grammar mystakes.
Let me know what you think

 

[PahaLukki]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

I totally agree on this. That's a difficult thing to explain for people who say "realism was already thrown out of the window, this is a game etc." and as such, to them, no logic in game should prevail... Also pots rather than orbs make more sense to me as well.

 

[hubb]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

Change it to glowing white misty soul juice hanging in the air instead of plasticky looking reg globes that makes the most horribly arcade sound ever --> Problem solved

 

[Krugar]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

The answer is often not so much Realism per se or lack of Realism. I've always been a strong advocate of the concept of Suspension of Disbelief in its initial form; i.e. the ability of the author to create an atmosphere that draws the public away from judging the plausibility of a certain scene.

Similar to Jedouard example, let us imagine for a moment Blizzard announces the Barbarian will be able to use a skill that allows him to jump all the way to the far side of the screen. When this skill is announced, everyone jaw will drop in disbelief. But once it's actually used in a playing environment, it turns out the barbarian Leap and Leap Attack are readily assimilated and any judgment on its plausibility is forgotten. The whole game environment ends up contributing to this. And the process is very fast. I don't think I ever questioned Leap and Leap Attack plausibility in D2. Even though, it won't take me more than a second to agree the concept is very farfetched. That is the sweet irony.

So in the end, when we argue against a certain feature inclusion based on its realism, we are really missing the mark completely. What we should instead be asking is how well will the game authors suspend our disbelief with the inclusion of said feature. And as the Leap and Leap attack example above tries to illustrate, often any a priori judgment is a bad judgment.

 

[Nimbostratus]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

Thank you. There are so many people with no concept of this. "It's fantasy" does not mean "absolutely anything goes."

 

[Wirt]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

@Krugar:

That's a way I did not think of it before, a feature that doesn't make sense even in a game universe with its own settings is still accepted by the player, as long as the feature is part of a game that gets the player involved enough to not make him judge the plausibility of every feature. Your example says it all and I agree with you fully.

Wirt

 

[Jedouard]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

Krugar (or Wirt): believing something is real or not believing something is unreal is the same thing. A successful author does not necessarily suspend our disbelief; he/she pushes us to awe. In so doing, the author still has to recognise limitations of his/her created universe, redefining the border between the believable and unbelievable and placing our awe and our understanding of "epic" just a hair's width from that border.

If that same D2 barbarian of yours were to transform into a spaceship and shoot lasers at his enemies, your disbelief would not be suspended and your belief would be shattered - same difference. In this case, the D2 author has established a universe and a lore to go with it, then completely disrespected both. This is why people are arguing against guns so much in Diablo's gothic universe and yet why they worked so well in Hellgate's modern one.

On the flip side, imagine that same D2 leap attack skill, only more "down to earth": you jump three feet forward and, as a penalty to that jump, swing your weapon at 1/2 speed and damage with a chance to fall flat on your face. Sure, everyone will believe this is possible in the universe - though they may not believe the developer was so stupid as to waste a skill this way - but it is pretty rotten all the same. The D2 universe has an Amazon that can shoot a screen's worth of arrows all at once, a necro that can raise and army of undead, a sorceress that can... and so on and so on, and all your barbarian can do is trip and stumble on his enemy. Of course, my disbelief is suspended here and my belief is entertained well within the limitations of the game's universe, but I am underwhelmed (to put it politely) because I in no way approach that epic border.

The author must establish the "natural" before the "supernatural" can be believed or not disbelieved and strike us as epic.

 

[Krugar]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

I'm not questioning any boundaries. I, for instance, agree with Nimbostratus post, just three posts above. My post was not meant to contradict your original opinion. But to complement it.

What I'm stating is that the idea of what is acceptable or not is primarily defined by the author (and you seem to agree with this too). In this context, it's the task of the author to create enough material (lore, mechanics, whatever) that allows for a certain feature to take place without bringing disbelief into the equation.

What happens is that often we, those on the sidelines, aren't the best judges until we actually have the game on our hands. The Leap and Leap Attack is an example of this. Imagine you are back at D2 alpha stages and you read about the leap attack and see a small video footage of it taking place... I mean, it's not hard to imagine the ruckus this would cause today.

I don't want to bring the guns example into this because I feel that's just too obvious. But in all honesty we would have to consider the fact that indeed an author imagination could lead to a gun friendly and sustainable Diablo environment if they so wished. The question would then be not how plausible that would be on the Diablo universe, but how fans would react to the new environment.

A "successful author" as you put it, does suspend our disbelief in every way imaginable. That's how they can tell a story that didn't happen. Naturally this is more of a natural process than I made apparent on my previous post. After all, the author is himself bound to the same rules as us, the readers/gamers. They will too have some sort of inner agreement with which they feel may be stretching reality too much. Even their own created reality. But much of this flows naturally. It's only those borderline situations that need to be pondered. Anything that rings an alarm bell on the author and they feel may damage the suspension of disbelief. Should they recreate some parts of the game lore to allow for the inclusion? Should they add to the lore? Should they just prefer to not include it? Do they feel the stretch is meaningless and will go largely unnoticed or will have little effect? These and other questions is what anyone writting a book, a game or scripting a movie asks themselves on occasion.

 

[Xilentkiller]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

Ialso agree :thumbup:

 

[Jedouard]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

Krugar-
I agree with you. I believe we are essentially arguing (for) the same point. I also agree that we, the inexperienced audience, insomuch as we have not played the game at all, cannot pass judgement. The difference in our argument, though, is that I am arguing limitations in the author's universe determine what is believable and what is not (a top-down perspective) and you are arguing how something (a skill) is made believable within that universe (a bottom-up perspective), both of which are important to game development.

But, I think there is another side to it that you are leaving untouched: the author has to push us to the limits of this now-natural universe. Being believable, yet nearly unbelievable is what is most important. These characters have to be epic, they have to approach disbelief; if not, the are disappointing. One of the problems with the Necro after they nerfed him early on (but before they made him godly in 1.10) was that all of his undead quickly returned to being dead; the only summons that were useful post-nerf, pre-aura runewords were his revives and a maxed out fire golem, and even then it was extraordinarily difficult to handle Act 4, let alone Act 5, in comparison to the barbarian, amazon, sorceress and paladin. He no longer lived up to the awe of the other characters.

These are similar to some of the complaints I read about the witch doctor's skills. I think it is too early for people to make these complaints, especially as not only are they comparing his low-end skills to the barbarian and wizard's mid- and high-end skills, but they are also often comparing them to the 1.10 aura-mancers army of undead. (The latter, with the right gear, might as well be an army of super-healing level 98 barbarian hirelings in your service.) However, those who, first, compare the concept of low-tier exploding toads to that of low-tier magic missile or low-tier ground stomp or who, second, are disappointed with a wall of undead or an undead dog appearing without a regent (corpses), might have reason. Such dissatisfaction stems, respectively, from a lack of awe and from disbelief. I think those who are disappointed would do well, however, to be less choosy about comparing skills: each class has plenty of skills that are worthy of the same critique (e.g., visually speaking, the wizard's tornado)

On that note, hardware limitations and the limitations in the developers imagination that we see often lead the in-game graphics to being a watered-down representation of what we are actually imagining, such that even skills that are either unbelievable or do not inspire awe often become believable or epic in our mind. The whirlwind, for example, is far cooler in my mind than on screen, and the same goes for an army of undead. In terms of Diablo 3, those toads - if the spell is powerful enough - might become a plague called forth on biblical proportions, and the druid-looking tornadoes might become pillars of magic shot down from the heavens - the imagination is useful in this way.

I will say, though, that the developer might do well, however, to think of epic visuals for all spells, so as to avoid the possibility for audience disappointment on the part of those whose imaginations are less active.

In short, both belief (respect of what is now the natural limitations) and awe (advancing the natural to the supernatural in respect for those limitations) are conceptually important to a game. Our imagination, as stated above, or simple addiction to the game or even a class's play style may, however, make us overlook some failures in this light. (I for one unfortunately never gave up on the necromancer, even in his most nerfed state.)

 

[Jedouard]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

I wanted to add that I feel one constraint to making a skill hit that epic border of believable and unbelievable, where awe is found, is in the way the skills are represented. In Diablo 2, early skills are usually not epic, but later skills are, such that players try to save skill points for later use. This make the game not so fun early on. The Diablo 3 developers tried to combat this in three ways: one, more passive skills in which you can place points early on should you not like the active skills; two, more synergistic skills later on to improve earlier skills making them become epic; and, three, skill runes to change/improve the function and visualisation of skills to epic proportions late game.

I think there would be an easier fix, though, and the Diablo 3 developers have touched on this with the skill runes system: make the skills become epic along with your character. To use the tornado example from above: sure, the wizard can only set off a few whirlwinds of mage at you with a level 1 skill, but, with his skill maxed a 15, the spell ought to look like shafts of magic shot down from the heavens as mentioned above. There could even be some some sort of way of including the number of times the skill has been used or successfully killed an enemy into its performance and visualisation, adding an experience bar to the skill itself. Either one of these mechanics or some combination of both would allow all skills to become epic, but also prevent there being either immediate access to an epic skill in a low tier or an a wasted skill in the low tier. (By "wasted", I do not mean wasted skill points, as we can now buy our way out of that, but wasted in that they could have designed a better, more useful skill.)

Skill runes will perform this function, causing skill function and visualisation to become more epic as you find better runes later on, and I congratulate the Diablo 3 developers for coming up with this concept. But, given the rarity we have been told the high level runes will have, it would also be nice to have some sort of mechanic to perform the same function based on character experience and/or skill usage as a guaranteed bonus for those who cannot play often enough to go rune hunting.

 

[Krugar]

Re: Game Design, Lore and Limitations: A Critique of the D3 Gaming Forum

The difference in our argument, though, is that I am arguing limitations in the author's universe determine what is believable and what is not (a top-down perspective) and you are arguing how something (a skill) is made believable within that universe (a bottom-up perspective), both of which are important to game development.

A very interesting point. Because it strikes at the core of a known philosophical debate among some literary critics

It's what separates those who advocate Coleridge's Suspension of Disbelief postulate that I have been addressing, and those who advocate Inner Consistency of Reality (http://www.tolkien-online.com/on-fairy-stories.html, search that page for "inner consistency of reality" if you don't feel like reading it all. Although I do suggest you do read it. This gentleman deserves no less, as you surely know).

Personally, I find the two terms interchangeable... or better, they are two facets of the same diamond, operating together to give literature it's eternal glow. In many cases -- particularly on those borderline situations, which include your well-thought term "epic" and that immediately reminds me of classical mithology works -- both work together, each giving the other its strength.

So, absolutely! The sub-creation (the imaginary world with its laws) determines precisely what is believable or not.

But men and women far smarter than me tend to stop here and postulate. Unfortunately, on this particular case, I cannot seem to agree with them (and neither with those who solely defend Coleridge).

There is very clear evidence of Suspension of Disbelief at play in numerous works where there's no or little sub-creation. I'm talking of real-life adaptations, disaster movies, love stories, et cetera. Similarly, there is also evidence of clear Suspension of Disbelief in works where sub-creation is at the core. Here exactly to support the sub-creation. Speaking of Sir Tolkien, the epic battle between Gandalf (the still Grey) and the Balrog of Moria, The Nameless One, the mighty Demon of the Deep which defeated the whole of Moria Dwarves' army and even at a time the Elves of Lorien.

Anyways, ironically Tolkien intention, as I see it, was never to dismiss Suspension of Disbelief. But the notion of willing suspension of disbelief. Essentially he understands that the burden is on the author side, to create a credible world. What he called the sub-creation.

It's quite extraordinary that some contemporary literary critics still insist he shattered the notion of Suspension of Disbelief, and completely fail to see he used those exact two words in his essay to define the final objective of Inner Consistency of Reality.

I think I know why they do it. They aren't ignorant people, by any accounts. And being literary critics they do know how to read. I need to give them the benefit of the doubt. I think they do it because the notion we have today of Suspension of Disbelief is nothing like what Coleridge described. In this day and age of pop culture where there's a reward in every corner for the lazy, unimaginative and the poorly artistic, Suspension of Disbelief came to mean the task of the audience to explicitly agree to suspend their judgment of the work plausibility. This is all that is needed for the dumbing down high profitable culture we have been witnessing for many years now (of which there was a rather incredible example just recently in the movie industry).

Coleridge and Tolkien properly defended the author as the real agent. The one who will have to put their effort, as they should. The audience should only have a tacit, implicit, and unconscious agreement with the author's work. They should be lead by it. And not lead the author work to where he wanted.

Long post. I'll shut up now.