Jay Barnson on Forgettable Fights and Victory Conditions

Two recent blog posts from Jay “Rampant Coyote” Barnson, currently busy working on his Frayed Knights sequel, focus on RPG’s combat systems, and how to improve them.

On “the forgettable fight”, or why good combat isn’t necessary for an enjoyable game:

Is Ultima 7 such an awesome RPG in spite of the fact that the combat system sucks, or because the combat sucks?

Maybe some people might argue the combat system doesn’t suck, but I’ve never heard anyone really defend it. I remember getting to the point where it was somewhat manageable, but for the most part it was a hideous real-time brawl with little control over what was going on. I have faint recollections of a couple of fights, but none of them were memorable. The best that could be said is that due to the real-time nature, they were over with pretty quickly.

That’s actually pretty core to the question. Because combat sucked and over so quickly, it wasn’t central to the game. It wasn’t part of the (main gameplay loop) as it is in most games. It didn’t dominate the gameplay. It was more often an obstacle (and sometimes one to be avoided) one of many. In effect, the game played much more like an adventure game with stats. It was more about exploration and problem-solving than fighting.

So of course, Origin gave us this gigantic world full of stuff to explore and solve. It was an interesting counterpart to its contemporary competitor Wizardry 7, which also seemed to have a pretty huge world and lots of fighting.

The modern trend in RPGs especially mainstream seems to be on focusing on combat as the primary gameplay activity. Hey, I’m just as guilty with my own designs. The assumption is that if the combat sucks, nothing else matters. Yet we have a pretty compelling counter-argument in Ultima 7 that this isn’t necessarily true.

And “declaring victory”, a discussion on victory conditions:

In the real world, combat is often more of a means to an end. Two or more sides have a goals that they wish to achieve (or deny to their opponents). In fact, there are generally multiple goals of varying priorities being weighed throughout the battle, as (survival) (or (minimal casualties)) is usually pretty high on the list.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if there were multiple paths to (victory) in combat. even a case where it would be possible for both sides to declare victory and disengage? By interesting, I mean, (more interesting combat choices.) While utter and complete defeat of the enemy forces in the traditional manner as fast as possible might be a handy brute-force approach to full victory, that may not always be an optimal, necessary, or even possible approach. It gets even more interesting when victory isn’t an all-or-nothing thing, but sides could gain partial victories and losses.

Suddenly, things like battlefield mobility, distractions, prediction, counter-magic, and so forth might become far more useful than massive spell-nukes. At this point, even things like negotiation might be key combat abilities, when you can conserve resources and guarantee key goals by conceding some victory conditions to the enemy. Or vice-versa. If goals aren’t completely mutually exclusive, there may be some real strategy involved (even in an RPG) in losing a battle in order to win the war.

This isn’t completely unprecedented on the RPG front. In modern RPGs, we’ve been confronted with escort or protection missions. While very simple (but sadly, often frustrating), they are perhaps a first step into really creating much more interesting conflicts. The upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera promises something even more interesting with their Crisis System, which makes combat just one part of a larger challenge.