Aaron and I were playing some co-op Crackdown yesterday and discussing how certain aspects of the game could, and possibly should, make their way into RPGs, even of the MMO variety.
Crackdown has five abilities, or skills if you prefer: Agility, Strength, Firearms, Explosives, Driving. For the latter three, using the appropriate weapons or doing races and stunts in cars will “skill up” those abilities where you can use bigger and better weapons, do more damage, or have more control over the cars while driving. The first two, however, are interesting because they would fall under the category of being a character attribute in an RPG.
Each ability in Crackdown can be “leveled” up to four stars, but with Agility and Strength — especially Strength — your character undergoes a physical change. Each new star for Agility sees your character running faster, jumping higher and further, able to withstand falls from higher locations, and so forth. Strength is even more impressive. In addition to being able to hit or kick things harder, picking up heavier objects and being able to throw objects further, your character physically grows in size with each “level.”
In pretty much every RPG out there, your attributes are just numbers on a character sheet that effect the die rolls under the hood but we never get to actually see those attributes make a difference on-screen.
Character customization is obviously important to players. I’ve lost count how many blog posts and forum threads I’ve read on the subject in the past several years. MMOs keep trying to add more and more customization features to their games. Just look how many people still love to create characters in City of Heroes & Villains, not to mention the new Champions Online.
Assuming we had a game that was based on attribute skills rather than the Diku-esque model of handing out attributes on gear, why can’t we further customize our character through attributes as we level them up and decide how we want a given character to play?
Maybe I’d like an agile and acrobatic rogue-like character, for example. As I gradually assign points to Agility (or Dexterity, etc. whatever) he reaches a point where his on-screen animations become more graceful or flashy. Instead of the normal jump, his jumps become a little more fluid, or perhaps a little mid-air flip (yes, having Night Elf flashbacks right there). Rather than swinging his sword plainly, now he’s able to make graceful swings and parries. His balance also improves so he has an increasing chance to land on his feet and continue fighting after an enemy performs a knockback.
Or if I want more of a brutish character, I can pump up his Strength attribute and he gets physically larger and more muscular, but at the expense of flashier moves. An enemy who wildly swings his weapons might get a funny look from my character who just walks up and smashes him in the face, reminiscent of Indiana Jones, minus the bullwhip. He might get knocked back by an enemy and land on his back for a second, or then again perhaps a certain level of Strength might let him withstand a knockback altogether, whereas the above acrobatic character was knocked back but landed in a somersault then resumed combat.
It’s also not out of the question to tie certain abilities or skills to attribute levels, rather than generically assigning new skills per experience levels, though care would have to be taken (or not?) since as soon as numbers are attached to anything it’s just a matter of time before the min/max crowd figure out the scheme and begin tirelessly removing the fun from the game.
Yes, this would require a lot more work from artists and animators than we are accustomed to seeing but here’s my take on that: if the artists at Mythic are bored and have nothing better to do than redesign all the armor in Warhammer Online while the programmers are busy still trying to fix the game, then I don’t think my proposal here is totally out of the question. So there.
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