I recently bought Diablo 2, and took a crack at it. Since I had tried thing out with a demo before buying it I just hopped to Battle.net and went for some multiplayer fun. I had spent considerable time hacking trough the original Diablo, and was looking forward to it. And I wasn’t disappointed: addictive, easy to approach, no guts no glory –attitude and all the rest of it were still there, with plenty of improvements.
Then I started thinking about it from a RPG’s viewpoint. This thing was something that just about anyone could pick up and start playing in a few minutes after installation. The tutorial wasn’t much to look at, but the online aids and other stuff was very condensed and easy to approach. Now, wasn’t that what they were aiming at when 3.0 was published? Easy, quick, access to an addictive and in-depth game of endless adventure and fun.
I considered the random dungeon / countryside generator in Diablo, in comparison, and found it okay. It wasn’t very surprising, but it seemed to have enough variation, so I went trough the same dungeon twice, just to see what the computer could magic up for me. It was kind of like entering a new village inside the borders of the same kingdom. The faces looked pretty much the same, but there were some nice changes and variations that hadn’t been there the first time around.
Then I got down to killing things. Now this is something that seems to be the main point of Diablo, and also D&D. The RPG population has been hollering for a change in this trend since time immemorial, but it has yet to come in any comprehensive and significant way. Certainly you can find some ways of handling Social Encounters from various 3rd party publishers these days, but the Core Books still don’t offer much in the way of guidance and innovation. And giving out experience for such an Encounter still gives me a slight headache.
I entered a dungeon and started slaughtering away. It began with some easy sword-fodder (I play with a Barbarian) and continued to become progressively more intense the deeper I went. After completing the dungeon, and claiming some well-earned loot, I returned to the Rogue Encampment for some upkeep. Now, the role player in me started asking questions like: how did all those goblin looking creatures get along with all those undead critters? What did they eat down there? Why were they there in the first place? Then I realized that I had had fun slaughtering some 60 – 80 creatures without breaking a sweat. What did it really matter? I had enjoyed myself.
I had also taken a few cuts and bruises, and drank some health potions to compensate, but that was about the extent of my injuries. No need for clerics (although there is one in the above mentioned camp) or anyone else to look after me. Also with better equipment the smaller critters around suddenly had a very difficult time hitting me, and the strikes they did land weren’t much to worry about. Again I stopped for a moment and thought about it. Had I taken on a dozen goblins in D&D with the same character I probably would have ended no worse for the wear. The hoards of Evil felt pretty much the same, and didn’t even present anything that I would call a real challenge. It was just sword-fodder and I didn’t have to think about it. Just click, click, and click away…
I went trough the various quests that made up the first “act”, or what I would have called 1st Chapter of the game. Find place X, kill creature Y and come back to camp for upkeep. This became the routine. The NPC’s around always had something nice to say to me after a successfully completed quest, and I also received a reward in addition to all that loot I had just hoarded.
There is a magic shop, a weapon shop and a smithy in the camp, and that’s all I really needed. Gathering gold and equipment got me plenty of magical gear very quickly, which in turn boosted my stats. There was no need to go around begging, stealing or just plain old role-playing for stuff. It was there for the taking, and didn’t even cost all that much after a few dungeons of creatures had died for the Greater Good: me.
At first I actually listened to all the talking, but then I just started hitting Escape when the lengthy descriptions started. I didn’t want to listen / read about some old histories that didn’t really enhance the game all that much. I wanted to get on with the game, level up, get better equipment and kill some more interesting critters! This was the first time that I really stepped back and considered what I had just done. NPC interaction, plot, storyline, and an in-depth game world: those are the holy words that I use to draw the attention of most of my players, whether new or old. And I had just thrown the lot of them away.
Now, to me this wasn’t such a terrible thing to correct. Just put the game in its box and don’t play it for a while. It really was starting to take up too much of my free time anyway. But this got me thinking: the RPG industry seems to be going towards this sort of gaming, and most likely your average future role-player will get his first contact with RPG trough computer games. Well, certainly not all of them, but I would imagine that a growing percentage find this rather small community trough movies, other games and books. And what sort of an image does Diablo 2 give for D&D? From a new players viewpoint it has just about all the same elements that the computer game had. You can do all the same stuff, although it takes a whole lot longer to go trough a dungeon (I noticed how many fellow-players just use Run, when there are no critters around) and not having a scroll of Town Portal (or 10) in your pocket offers a bit more challenge. But aside from that…how does a beginner recognize a “good” game from a “cliché”?
Then it hit me. XP: the lifeblood of every adventurer and player. Personally I don’t think a player has much more than wet his toes before he has finished playing one year of RPG. After that they start going trough some miraculous metamorphosis, which either results in a good player or a washout. Well, that’s my opinion anyway.
I don’t know if this thread has a point, but I have a tendency to think things trough by writing. Hence I write a lot, although it’s not like a keep a diary or something icky like that.
And lastly: I no longer wonder why the RPG population is so small. This is one hard hobby to pick up and stick with for more than a while.
Then I started thinking about it from a RPG’s viewpoint. This thing was something that just about anyone could pick up and start playing in a few minutes after installation. The tutorial wasn’t much to look at, but the online aids and other stuff was very condensed and easy to approach. Now, wasn’t that what they were aiming at when 3.0 was published? Easy, quick, access to an addictive and in-depth game of endless adventure and fun.
I considered the random dungeon / countryside generator in Diablo, in comparison, and found it okay. It wasn’t very surprising, but it seemed to have enough variation, so I went trough the same dungeon twice, just to see what the computer could magic up for me. It was kind of like entering a new village inside the borders of the same kingdom. The faces looked pretty much the same, but there were some nice changes and variations that hadn’t been there the first time around.
Then I got down to killing things. Now this is something that seems to be the main point of Diablo, and also D&D. The RPG population has been hollering for a change in this trend since time immemorial, but it has yet to come in any comprehensive and significant way. Certainly you can find some ways of handling Social Encounters from various 3rd party publishers these days, but the Core Books still don’t offer much in the way of guidance and innovation. And giving out experience for such an Encounter still gives me a slight headache.
I entered a dungeon and started slaughtering away. It began with some easy sword-fodder (I play with a Barbarian) and continued to become progressively more intense the deeper I went. After completing the dungeon, and claiming some well-earned loot, I returned to the Rogue Encampment for some upkeep. Now, the role player in me started asking questions like: how did all those goblin looking creatures get along with all those undead critters? What did they eat down there? Why were they there in the first place? Then I realized that I had had fun slaughtering some 60 – 80 creatures without breaking a sweat. What did it really matter? I had enjoyed myself.
I had also taken a few cuts and bruises, and drank some health potions to compensate, but that was about the extent of my injuries. No need for clerics (although there is one in the above mentioned camp) or anyone else to look after me. Also with better equipment the smaller critters around suddenly had a very difficult time hitting me, and the strikes they did land weren’t much to worry about. Again I stopped for a moment and thought about it. Had I taken on a dozen goblins in D&D with the same character I probably would have ended no worse for the wear. The hoards of Evil felt pretty much the same, and didn’t even present anything that I would call a real challenge. It was just sword-fodder and I didn’t have to think about it. Just click, click, and click away…
I went trough the various quests that made up the first “act”, or what I would have called 1st Chapter of the game. Find place X, kill creature Y and come back to camp for upkeep. This became the routine. The NPC’s around always had something nice to say to me after a successfully completed quest, and I also received a reward in addition to all that loot I had just hoarded.
There is a magic shop, a weapon shop and a smithy in the camp, and that’s all I really needed. Gathering gold and equipment got me plenty of magical gear very quickly, which in turn boosted my stats. There was no need to go around begging, stealing or just plain old role-playing for stuff. It was there for the taking, and didn’t even cost all that much after a few dungeons of creatures had died for the Greater Good: me.
At first I actually listened to all the talking, but then I just started hitting Escape when the lengthy descriptions started. I didn’t want to listen / read about some old histories that didn’t really enhance the game all that much. I wanted to get on with the game, level up, get better equipment and kill some more interesting critters! This was the first time that I really stepped back and considered what I had just done. NPC interaction, plot, storyline, and an in-depth game world: those are the holy words that I use to draw the attention of most of my players, whether new or old. And I had just thrown the lot of them away.
Now, to me this wasn’t such a terrible thing to correct. Just put the game in its box and don’t play it for a while. It really was starting to take up too much of my free time anyway. But this got me thinking: the RPG industry seems to be going towards this sort of gaming, and most likely your average future role-player will get his first contact with RPG trough computer games. Well, certainly not all of them, but I would imagine that a growing percentage find this rather small community trough movies, other games and books. And what sort of an image does Diablo 2 give for D&D? From a new players viewpoint it has just about all the same elements that the computer game had. You can do all the same stuff, although it takes a whole lot longer to go trough a dungeon (I noticed how many fellow-players just use Run, when there are no critters around) and not having a scroll of Town Portal (or 10) in your pocket offers a bit more challenge. But aside from that…how does a beginner recognize a “good” game from a “cliché”?
Then it hit me. XP: the lifeblood of every adventurer and player. Personally I don’t think a player has much more than wet his toes before he has finished playing one year of RPG. After that they start going trough some miraculous metamorphosis, which either results in a good player or a washout. Well, that’s my opinion anyway.
I don’t know if this thread has a point, but I have a tendency to think things trough by writing. Hence I write a lot, although it’s not like a keep a diary or something icky like that.
And lastly: I no longer wonder why the RPG population is so small. This is one hard hobby to pick up and stick with for more than a while.
