On the Champions Online forums, I have had a debate with some of the posters about free-form vs. level-based gaming. They keep saying that free-form game design cannot be made workable in an MMORPG, and I of course, think it can be. Here is a post from that thread that I thought I’d save here, because one never knows how long a forum post is going to be kept up.

The objection to a point-based, free-form system is that it is free-form. The basic argument, as I see it, is that with a free-form system it is possible to gimp yourself — to create a toon that can’t do enough damage to an enemy to actually defeat him. We can imagine a character who can only generate 5 damage per second, but his enemy regens at 6 per second, meaning you can’t win the fight.

One answer to this objection is simply, “So what?” Yes, it is an acknowledged weakness of free-form systems that you can severely gimp yourself. People like myself who prefer, and even advocate for, such systems, believe that the benefits (allowing one to have precisely the character that one wishes) outweigh this cost. Such a belief is a matter of opnion. You don’ t have to hold that opinion, but arguing against it based on some sort of supposed “facts” is not viable, precisely because it is an opinion. You object, Mr. O, that a free-form point-based game “cannot work”, but your definition of it NOT working equals my definition of it working! A game that is free-form enough that I can completely gimp myself is just what I want — because it means that, gimped or not, my character is MINE, 100%, and not just someone else’s. Because, in the end, that is what a level-based system like WOW or Vanguard or EQ is. The designers decide what skills a Paladin, say, will get, and at what level, and by leveling and “buying” the level-appropriate skills, what I am doing amounts to little more than checking off the boxes of a pre-generated sheet. That may do it for you, but it doesn’t make it even halfway up the flagpole for me to salute.

Let’s remember after all, that class/level systems are not without weaknesses. It is an acknowledged weakness of those systems that the player is locked into pre-defined design templates and has less freedom to create his own character setup. Some people, like you, consider the easy balance that results from such rigidity to be a benefit that outweighs the cost of the system being rigid. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I do not share it.

Another answer to this objection, however, is that one can easily mitigate against the possible gimpage by providing a wide array of “pre-generated” characters that are set up specifically NOT to be gimped. So, you could easily allow a player to pick a “Ninja” type character, and have all the stats and powers pre-allocated for him, and allow him to just “accept recommended” powers at every single level. But you can also allow a person to say “let me customize” and let him pick EVERY power. Now no one can complain, because people who are (a) unsure of the system, or (b) too lazy to figure it out, or (c) concerned about being gimped, can just take the recommended builds and be completely assured of a character and an advancement scheme that is tailor made to be workable within the system. So, all potential gimpage is curbed by providing pre-made character templates for people to use, and even slightly tweak.

But there is an even better answer to your objection, Mr. O, because you are resting the entire argument on the assumption that spawns and mission generation are going to remain the same in CO as they always have been. This assumption may not be far off the truth, but I hope that it is, because the way missions are generated right now in games like COH is very coarse. You might have a bit of a point if spawns are generated the old way, because they are taking a pre-set NPC based on level, with HP and stats based on level, and just spawning it for you.

But, imagine a more dynamic situation. Imagine, instead, if when you enter a mission, as it loads you into the instance, the computer scans your character and figures out just what stats you have, and dynamically generates a set of enemies who have stats tailor made to give you a challenge. So, if you have chosen to have only 3D6 of attack, that’s no big deal — it can generate enemies with 3 PD/ED to compensate. If you happen to have put all your points into attack and have 20D6, you won’t wipe the floor with enemies… they will have some damage reduction and higher PD/ED to compensate. In fact in Champions, the PnP game, it is actually very easy (I have done it) to create some simple algorithms that can generate very balanced, properly challenging NPCs for any given hero or set of heroes. You can just do things like, “NPCs have 1D6 of normal damage per every 3 PD/ED of the hero entering the zone.” If you do this for attack damage, OCV/DCV/ECV, defenses, special powers (e.g., flash defense) and so on, you can easily balance bunch of enemies for an entire group.

As I say, this is not mere speculation — I have done it. I have created “random NPC generation tables” for Champions (in my youth, when I thought Champions needed such things — I do not, now, at least in PnP). It really didn’t take me very long — a few weeks over the summer one year provided me with just the tables and charts I needed to generate whole groups of agents appropriately challenging for any mix of superheroes you might care to present me with. I did this because the players were changing a lot during the summer and we had no fixed groups. As with an MMORPG, I could not predict ahead of time who would show up. So, people would arrive, and I would use my tables and algorithms to, by hand, generate some agents appropriate to the battles (obviously, mega-villains were made ahead of time). For people who might remember Champions II, the basic idea here was the Turtle Armor agents, but I took it to the next level.

Now, it strikes me that if a high school student on summer vacation can come up with a workable “dynamic power, skill, and stat generation system” for NPCs using pencils, paper, and dice, and some rudimentary math skills, a team of highly paid professional computer programmers ought to be able to create such a system in a computer in the year 2008+.

Your whole argument rests on the basic premise that I can “gimp” myself because the game expects something like 10D6, and makes up villains with PD/ED based on 10D6, so if I have 5D6, I am hosed. But if the game is designed right, then if I only have 5D6, the enemies should have the right PD/ED to compensate, and the battle will still be a challenge, but not impossible. They could (and should!) also make a difficulty slider that lets players play with the generation, giving more XP to people who buff the difficulty level and less to those who lower it.

The key here is dynamically generated content rather than, as we have seen before, statically generated content that was made presuming a set of builds on the part of the player. Let’s see them stop assuming my character will have power A, skill B, and stat C, and start generating a proper challenge for the powers, skills, and stats, that I *do* have.

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