Fun RPG Combat

see also: fun rpg combat part 2

I'm working on a retro, 2D RPG, so RPG mechanics are on my mind. I'll go into my plan and the game a bit more at some other time, but today I wanted to explore combat mechanics, and what makes for a fun RPG. But first, I want to talk about fun in general.

Fun

What makes for a fun game? What is fun? This is a big issue that game designers love talking about, but I'm not really sure why -- I think the issues are fairly straightforward. I'll lay out my thoughts and you can be the judge. :)

Let's look at boring first. Boring is when you've got nothing to do, nothing to think about. Mindless repetition is fun; the 'repetition' means you've figured out how to do a task and you're just mindlessly repeating it. Boring is mowing the grass, stuffing envelopes, fighting the same random creature encounter for the hundredth time. There's nothing about the task that's challenging. Maybe the first time, but now that you've figured it out you're just going through the motions. There's no mental or emotional commitment to the process.

Fun is the opposite of boring. But first let's ask: are there activities that aren't boring, but aren't fun? Some activities aren't boring because they require some problem-solving and/or careful attention, but aren't fun. Fun implies a positive emotional response; busy-work activities don't have that. You don't have time to let your mind wander and get bored, but there's something missing. Busy-work activities include writing uninteresting code, building uninteresting 3D models, doing your taxes. Not boring (you're too engaged to get bored), but definitely not fun.

This is pushing us towards fun, obviously. We know what sort of activities aren't fun, and in describing them it's obvious what they're missing. Intellectual interest, or emotional drive. Curiosity, achievement, happiness, social connection, fear, horror, thrill, suspense.... Horror movies and games push the fear and horror buttons; adventures like Indiana Jones go for thrill; mysteries and dramas often push suspense and curiosity. These movies and games like them are fun.

Interactivity

Games are different from other media in that they're interactive. Movies can't give viewers a sense of achievement, and (except for the camaraderie felt around the water cooler when you're talking about how much you love [insert favorite cult movie here]) can't give a sense of social connection either. Movies can pique curiosity, but they don't give you the tools to resolve it yourself. Games can try to hit the big emotional buttons that movies go after (like fear and thrill) or pique intellectual curiosity, but they can do more: they can provide challenges and reward achievement, let players build social bonds to achieve common goals, and let players explore play spaces and puzzles in their own time and way.

Games are also different because they're typically much longer than movies, and usually longer than books. RPGs, especially. There are short RPGs out there and very long books, but in general games provide far more hours of entertainment. This is a bit of a pickle, because games have to figure out how to be fun for longer than 90 minutes. It's hard enough to make a good movie, how do you make 15 hours of fun on a budget a tenth the size?

There are ways of filling time, of course. Grinding is a bad way. But what's the difference between grinding (boring!) and fun? Yeah, well, asking the question makes the answer obvious. We want games that have fun ways of filling time -- or at least, not boring ways.

Games often fluff themselves out with skill challenges. Some games are primarily skill challenges, like shooters and racing games. Others, such as platformers, focus on exploration or figuring out how to get somewhere or kill a boss mob but also contain (possibly extensive) skill challenges. Starcraft is an RTS that's packed with skill challenges on the multiplayer competetive level.

I've mentioned exploration, too, and this is a great way to extend a game. Even in territory you've already covered, you might explore a different aspect of the world -- in Left 4 Dead, you check nooks and crannies for hiding zombies. Once you've played through the campaigns a few times you know the rooms and the architecture, but you don't know where the enemy is. Some games provide rich mechanics that the player is constantly exploring, such as RTS games where players learn how different units behave and interact.

Puzzles and sims both fill gameplay time with puzzles. In obvious ways in puzzle games, but I lump sims in here because, to me, most sims are long series of specific puzzles. Where do I put the next building, what troops should I train, where do I put my resource fields? I view Transport Tycoon, one of my favorite sims, as a series of four puzzles: where do I put the station? How should I build the line around these terrain features? What consist should I run between these two towns? and finally how do I optimize traffic? The player is constantly shuttling between one puzzle and the next.

High Points and Engagement

I think there's two things that makes a game fun: emotional high points, and near-constant engagement. Basically: add big, cool moments, and avoid breaking the player out of play.

If the game gets boring, tedious, or punishing, it can break suspension of disbelief or add enough of a punishment that the player disengages from concern for his on-screen avatar. Failure itself isn't necessarily a bad thing; some games are built around constant failure, such as roguelikes and shooters. Counter Strike doesn't suck even though you 'fail' (get killed) once every few minutes. That 'failure' frames the game and defines the challenge. The player isn't concerned about totally avoiding that failure as much as he's interested in maximizing the experience between those moments. (It helps that Counter Strike provides a social experience for dead players.)

Games without disengaging moments can keep a player at the controls, but an interesting game without emotional high points is equally unfulfilling. It can serve as a distraction but isn't at the same level of "fun" as a game that provides those high points.

High points are the peaks of emotional engagement. Gaining a level in an RPG is a single moment that collects all of the emotional buildup of previous play and hands it to the player at one, big, emotionally-charged moment. In level-based games (ie map levels, like Doom or Starcraft or Mario), finishing a level is that big moment. In adventures, there's often a big puzzle that's solved in each step of the game. Game designers know all about these emotional high points; they make the effort to provide rewards to players at them. Because of that emotional weight, these are also often the moments that players remember most.

Fun games keep players engaged and provide periodic emotional high points. Players enjoy play, and fondly recall the "peak experiences" of games past.

Recommendations

Those, then, are my two recommendations to game designers: provide engagement without boredom, and put more oomph into your game's high points.

In fun rpg combat part 2, I talk about applying this problem specifically to RPGs.