What the Current RPG Can Learn From the Original Diablo

In a new blog entry on Gamasutra, author Joshua McDonald outlines some of the lessons that (action) RPG developers could learn by paying closer attention to Blizzard’s original Diablo. I actually agree with most of these (in particular the first two), and it never ceases to amaze me that so many games get the formula wrong:

You fight an enemy type. Not an enemy level:
In my opinion, one of the worst trends in RPGs is representing power by a little number next to the enemy’s health bar. A skeleton that looks and acts just like one from earlier in the game will literally be 100 times as powerful. And it will be the same power as the giant you just fought that happened to be the same level. Sure, Diablo did some reskinning, but it carefully limited how powerful each model could get.

The automatic argument most people make against this is that you need too much art to keep changing enemy types, but this isn’t true. In fact, it’s one place where the limitation actually leads to better game design.

Instead of a level 20 character fighting two level 20 goblins and a level 40 character fighting two level 40 ogres, maybe the level 40 character will fight an ogre surrounded by a horde of goblins. Or maybe the ogre will be a mage that summons goblins. Since these goblins are the exact same power as those the player has fought previously, their character’s progress is highly visible (“I remember when one of these guys used to be hard”), yet they are still challenged. Instead of changing the stats on each enemy, change the context under which they are fought. This will actually add more variety than making a bunch of new models that are functionally the same as the old ones.

Anything had a realistic chance of an awesome loot drop:
The key word in this sentence is “realistic”. A .00001% chance doesn’t count. Further, don’t confine specific loot to specific enemies or areas (other than loosely connecting power of loot with power of enemies). Setting which items drop from which enemies encourages grindy behavior as players seek specific equipment, while loosening this up encourages players to just play the game and enjoy the occasional great drop. If players know that they have a reasonable chance at getting a great drop from any playing session, it greatly increases the excitement they feel when going through the regular game tasks.

If you want to make some items that the player can choose to obtain (rather than relying on randomness), make those items reliable drops (ex: dragon boss always drops sword X) or purchasable so that they player doesn’t feel like effort to gain that item is simply wasted until they get a lucky session in.