Bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs, ...
Right! (That's one off my chest!) Now, you won't find any radical design changes to this game here. They are not needed! Presented below are only what I believe to be minor improvements and cool little touches to make things easier for new players and smoother in the long run. Let us start then...
Freedom. The single biggest problem with a game this vast in scope is the freedom players have. More often than not, it puts them in invariably lethal trouble. I believe that having a huge amount of options available right from the start creates an overwhelming sense of confusion. Most players will probably think "It's all too much for me! What is it that I have to do now?" There isn't a clearly defined initial path to follow, something that will ease newcomers into the complexities of the world. There's simply a request to meet Caius Cosades, who then gives very vague directions as to what to do next, telling players to return some undefined time in the future to receive their first mission from him. Weeeell, now what? It's always possible to have a look around the surrounding fields, and see what comes up. But what's this? Players get killed every single time! The enemies are just too powerful! The only effect this has is to cause everyone to exercise a bit more caution when venturing into the wilderness. But players don't want to be careful - they want to have fun! Artificial features such as character levels, attribute levels, and skill levels, mean that there are areas of the map that are extremely dangerous and that are best kept locked away at first - we're behaving here like watchful parents who don't let their child wander off too soon. Locked doors are a good mechanism to implement some restriction of movement, but only up to a certain level.
One way to prevent too many initial deaths and frustration would be to make the settlement where the game begins completely surrounded by tall battlements and have all the gates to the outside closed, somewhat like a smaller version of the city of Mournhold. It must still be possible to fight beasts, and, in fact, combat is a behaviour that must be encouraged. It is absolutely essential to get a feeling of what wielding a weapon is like as soon as possible, and this must happen in the first minute of play or so, no later! Remember the area with the barrel containing Fargoth's Ring? Let's put a weak rat in there! A walled citadel, with its many lonely towers and dark alleys and sewers, can work as a safe contained environment in which to train fighting. But its main function is to allow familiarization with the mechanics and subtleties of the game, especially with the sequential nature of guild missions and the satisfaction and compensations that the rising in the ranks of a faction brings. Hopefully, this will lead players into joining other factions. A few simple but compulsory errands for the Census and Excise Office would do the trick. Only when these errands were complete and players were of a high enough level would the gates open and more of the map become available for exploration. It is my belief that the map has to be unlocked in stages, and that not all of it should be available right from the start. Mountain ranges and Forts with gates are great ways to prevent further travel. More powerful spells, like Levitation, that give players access to the entire land, should become available only in some of the later areas. Working in layers like this gives players an even greater sense of accomplishment and reward when unlocking whole new areas. What we're doing here is rewarding responsibility with freedom. The enemies and wildlife in a newly unlocked area must be more or less at the right levels to make battles interesting - neither too boring nor too difficult. The battles, the quests, and the rumours heard in Seyda Neen of nearby treasure caves should be enough to encourage self-confidence, exploration, and adventure.
Fixing Mistakes. Complete freedom has another more important disadvantage. I'm talking about inadvertently tampering with areas and items and killing NPCs that you find at a much later date to be essential for some of the guild missions. How many of you stole all four volumes of 'A Brief History of the Empire' from Odral Helvi in Caldera only to have them requested by Gentleman Jim Stacey several dozen days later? Right! And how many of you still remembered who you had sold them to? Precisely! Locked doors that fail to be lockpicked every single time appears to be a good solution - these are good complex locks! If players have no key, they cannot put themselves into trouble.
But what of mischief in the wild? Warning players that that Larienna Macrina person they just killed was someone they were going to need in order to rise in the ranks of the Fighters Guild seems a little artificial: "Look, mate! You've just killed someone important! Now what?" Reload! Is there an acceptable solution to this problem? Well, we can't prevent players from killing NPCs. However, I think we can crack this one with the simple introduction of one spell: Reincarnation. But would it be cast by players? No, it wouldn't, and herein lies the 'trick'! I'd have some obscure god do it, instead. And he'd be standing near the ressuscitated NPC the next time players approached the murder scene (give or take a few days or events 'to prepare things'). He'd give some sort of hint as to what had just happened and then he'd vanish! And what would the life after death of newly reborn NPCs be like? How would they be viewed by their friends and neighboors? And by the followers of Arkay, the god of the Cycle of Life and Death? Finally, how would they behave towards players? Well, the introduction of this spell was motivated by the desire to 'put things back to normal where necessary', and that is what it should do: ressuscitated NPCs should go on with their normal lives as if nothing had happened. If they were somehow amnesiac towards the cause of their death, they wouldn't bear a grudge against players! And if Arkay himself cast the spell, and his priests defended that only he could do it, then nothing else in the game needed to be changed - necromancy would still be a bad thing! And lastly players would be able to complete their guild quests and move up in the ranks, as desired.
But if the other characters can now be brought back to life, what prevents players from going around in a killing spree, taunting and fighting everyone they meet, just for the fun of it? "Oh! Here's my old friend Trebonius! I've killed you only Arkay knowns how many times before, and yet here you are again, ready for one more go!" Or, as Ernand Thierry might say, "Ho friend! How about one more death today?" Well, since this is a feature introduced to help players undo their foolish mistakes, and not to encourage them, and also to allow them to get on with the game, they'd have to complete some (randomly generated and rather difficult?) quest for Arkay every time he needed to bring an NPC back from the dead. Would NPCs only be available for ressuscitation if their presence was required to complete some current quest? Perhaps not... I think it doesn't make much sense for it to be so...
If we look at this mischief problem a bit more closely, we come to the conclusion that quite a few mistakes, even some slight ones, are only undone by reloading a previously saved file: wearing Indoril armour in Vivec, killing important characters, giving the wrong answers to some NPCs, ... Problems should be solved without resorting to the save game trick. Going to jail when caught stealing is a good example. (Most players will probably reload, anyway, but at least the option is there, and I believe it is correct.) It is the designer's responsibility to provide ways in the game for players to correct their own mistakes. Reload should only be used as a last resort: in case the player's character dies!
Communication. Now, one place in this game where total freedom is important is in the interaction with NPCs. The fact that some characters assume players are going to talk about some subject is unacceptable. I'm thinking of Caryarel of Gnaar Mok and the stolen limeware bowl, for example. Or of the Imperial Cult quest givers. They should all wait for the player to choose the appropriate topic. And how many times did you find passage ways blocked by other characters? Or doors that wouldn't open because enemies are on the other side? It would be polite if players could shove NPCs aside if they are in the way! Simply push them by running towards them (even if they are behind doors), with no further protocols or anything! And here's an interesting possibility: what if you could talk NPCs out of a fight? When the only trainer able to teach me the Enchant skill up to level 100 attacks me on sight, I'd like to be able to persuade this trainer to stop and be friends!
And speaking of interaction, can combat in this game be improved? It's just click, click, click, ... In order for this improvement to happen, I think a different control method is needed. What if the Left and Right Triggers were each assigned an item/spell, corresponding to the left and right hands? Thus, players might choose to equip a sword in each hand, or have a fireball spell ready to be cast in one and a shield spell in the other, or anything else they may desire or feel comfortable with. This would most certainly add variety to fights...
Quests. The next big problem with this game lies in the guild quests. In order to encourage self-confidence and exploration (yet again!) these have to be more and more difficult, not of random difficulty. For instance, the fetch-me-an-item sort of quests work best if they are very specific at first, precisely defining the 'what' and the 'where', and then become more and more vague towards the end with the 'where' farther and farther away from the quest giver, in locations more and more dangerous. As another example, I wouldn't make the Balmora Fighters Guild quests so political in nature, since this is, effectively, the most important settlement for beginners, and Eydis' missions will be some of the first that low level players will attempt to perform. More mature players, and hopefully, better informed about the politics going on behind the scenes, are a better target audience for this kind of quests. As it is, newbies will just blindly follow the orders given, killing innocents by the dozen, glad that they are rising in rank, and totally oblivious to the true intentions behind Eydis' requests and to Percius Mercius wise advice (or even existence)! At the very least, these quests should have some non-violent solution to them, and the reasons for this to be so should be made obvious to players. In fact, I'd make sure all the missions involving the killing of innocent NPCs for political reasons had political endings as an option, as is the case with, for example, Ranis Athrys and Tashpi Ashibael. In these situations, lies are often the best route to follow. Blackmailing the quest giver after finding out the truth could also lead to unexpected results!
And as far as guild quests are concerned, I'd reward players with major benefits (powerful artifacts, unique spells, or other features) for completing all the missions of a quest giver. And for reaching the rank of master of a guild as well. For instance, successfully completing all the quests from Ranis Athrys of the Mages Guild in Balmora should be rewarded with the ability to make spells. Becoming the Arch-Mage of the Mages Guild should mean that players could now use a special staff to cast multiple Mark spells (say around 15) and build their own system of transportation. These are just examples but would have a tremendous impact on the gameplay and players would begin to feel more motivated and willing to join more factions.
The Landscape. Vivec is so empty on the outside! The exteriors are way too deserted! We can only see a handful of ordinators about and very very few citizens. Mind you, it's my favourite city, but being the most important settlement on the island should mean its streets ought to be bustling with life. Besides adding more people, I'd also try to make the cantons more varied, each with its own character easily recognizable from the outside. So, I'd place a few merchant tents or cubicles in some of the streets of a canton, I'd add a parking lot or similar place where sellers and visitors could leave their cargo beasts in another, and the richest cantons could have balconies, and vines and lots of other vegetation on the outside. And why not hollow out the waistworks of St. Delyn, for instance, and make it accessible from the streets through half a dozen arches or so (not doors), and have a flea market there every other day?
Also, I think there isn't enough colour! Everything tries to be too realistic, and the interiors are way too dark. The first item I enchanted was an Amulet of Night Vision that gave me a constant effect of 100pts Night Eye. I never take it off, except when I have to use other amulets, and when I'm done with them I always immediately put it back on. So, as wonderful and evocative as they are, I believe the environments would definitely benefit from a little more colour and light. I'd like to see some more variety in the textures of the houses, and some less ashes from Red Mountain in the land.
The Menus. Let's now have a look at the in-game menus. The following discussion covers the X-Box Game of the Year Edition version of the game.
In the Inventory and Magic menus the Right Stick could be used in a way similar to the Page Up/Down and Home/End keys of a word processor - pressing Up/Down would move quickly between groups of items/spells and pressing Left/Right would take you to the first/last item or spell in the list. Also, pressing Left/Right on the Left Stick could be used to move the cursor back and forth in jumps of 10 items/spells, for example. This is useful when you have dozens of items or spells to wade through before reaching the last one on the list. And it also works well in the journal/books screen to move to different pages or chapters at speed. And speaking of journal, in order to make quest entries of the distant past easier to find, it would be quite practical if they could be grouped by guild or quest giver or something.
In the Map menu the Right Stick could be used to scroll the map without moving the cursor, and the harder you pushed the faster the map would scroll. It would be nice if the top speed was really very fast, and if there were no limits on the scroll distance - that is, you could see the whole map if you wanted to. Another neat touch: zoom out to the world map, move the cursor to your desired location and then zoom back in to the local map at the location you pointed to with the cursor. Even nicer: point the cursor at a door and then press the A button to see a map of the area that door leads to. This way you would be able to see the whole map from anywhere in the world - but only the places you had visited previously, of course! One final niggle: the auto-map feature should draw a bigger circle, and that would be more or less everything that can be seen around the player, all the way to the horizon. How nice would all this be?
And since we are talking about menus, before the 'Press Start' screen, either players should be able to press the Start button to skip the company logos and go straight to the Start Menu or these initial moments should be less long winded and boring. Credits are important, but who wants to wait forever watching slow animations with flashing letters and stuff before starting to play every single time? Not me! And if there are any saved games on the disk, the highlighted option should be 'Load', not 'New'. The best japanese developers have been doing this for ages and my best guess is that they're right.
The Massacre Ends. So, summing up the most important changes: restrict the freedom players have in the early stages (only!) of the game and change the order and nature of some of the quests. Both of these measures would immediately imply a better defined difficulty curve and would greatly help to remove any deep sense of being lost and bewildered in an unfriendly and intimidating world.
Copyright © 2004 Rui Cuco. All rights reserved.
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