Source
r/litrpg•
tkioz

LitRPGs with Good Game Design

Discussion

I know I'm going to get blasted with "a good story comes before game design" but I've just got to say most of the 'games' described in most LitRPGs just irritate the hell out of me with how poorly the game design is implemented.

Do you seriously think people will put up with 'realistic' travel times or 1990s era single instance raid fights?

It really breaks my Suspension of Disbelief when these systems are brought up in most LitRPGs, and that's important. We're all gamers here, or we wouldn't be into GameLit at all.

So with all that said what the best books with *good* and *realistic* game design, and I mean realistic is in how it would be developed in the real world, not as in a representation of reality.

Posted Jul 31, 2018, 3:25 AM UTC

2355
juncs•

I've seen books with fast travel, or other streamlined game-design, like stripping away everything other than fights. But the stories themselves weren't the greatest.

The part of game design that intrigues me the most is game balance, both across classes and between the player and environment. This is hard to do, even with real games, which is why you constantly get nerfs and patches. As a gamer, I have this platonic ideal in my head that skill, not broken classes or grinding/luck, should determine success in the end.

Player versus environment balance is difficult, too, if you take into account level scaling. Too easy is boring. Too difficult is frustrating. What about replayability? There are two examples of perfect or near perfect level scaling in game design. Fighting a doppelganger will always be a perfectly balanced challenge. As irritating as they are, platform or other puzzle challenges can have level-free scaling, although faster speed or double jump skills at higher levels, etc. can negate that.

It's my belief that writing a good litrpg is more difficult than writing a good fantasy novel, all else being equal. Both books require developing a magic system. Litrpgs require you to design an entire game as well. That takes into account things like balance or other elements of game design, as you mention. You have to tweak the leveling curve, and then decide how the strength of a fireball spell increases with experience. What about the monster strength? How do you balance HP gains and attack gains as you level, especially if there are PvP elements? Does it make sense? It's a deep, deep rabbit hole.

My experience is that most authors skimp on or skip the game design aspect. It's quite difficult, so I don't really fault them.

What I would love to see is authors polishing a single aspect of game design. Then, we would have a variety of books. That is the book with sweet PvP. That is the book with a slick UI. That's the book with gloriously dark dungeons and end bosses. That is the book with a unique skill leveling system.

Basically, like real games, they would have unique selling points. Some of this already exists to an extent, but the books aren't really discussed in this way like we do for video games.

10
Nudvik•

As a gamer, I have this platonic ideal in my head that skill, not broken classes or grinding/luck, should determine success in the end.

This is basically exactly how I feel about it. It's even more absurd because these games are supposed to be almost indistinguishable from reality, but don't remotely read like that.

It's one of the reasons I like The Stork Tower series. Skill and intelligence are constantly emphasised as far more important than class, equipment, etc. Early in the first book the protagonist encounters some PKers who try to kill her and are defeated very easily, since she doesn't use system-assisted attacks as a crutch.

The protagonist is definitely more than a bit of a Mary Sue, which some people will hate, but honestly I far prefer a competent protagonist succeeding to an incompetent one who only does so because of broken game-mechanics and DEM hand-holding.

2
TheColourOfHeartache•

I'd quite like a balance between the two. A competent protagonist who's competence is expressed in using the tools provided by the game intelligently.

For example, scouting out a dungeon in advance, running a few shallow probing attacks, and choosing a strategy and appropriate equipment for the task. Rather than non-gamer skills like martial arts in the Stork Tower.

1
Kinexus•

This makes me wish Neal Stephenson would have gone more into detail about T'Rain in the book Reamde. There is a brief section where he speaks of a really cool leveling system, but then it never really comes into play in the story. The same can be said with many of the explanations of the games design. Things are so thoroughly explained, then never used. Those details would have better fit into a story that focused more on playing the game rather than using it to move the plot forward from time to time.

2
juncs•

I am embarrassed to admit I never finished Reamde. I used to be a diehard Stephenson fan, but as I grew older, I gravitated towards lighter fare. I think Reamde was one of the first books, ever, that I didn't finish. The stress of real life makes it hard for me to settle down and enjoy an immersive tome these days. I couldn't get into N.K. Jemisin recently for the same reason. I have reading A.D.D.

2
Kinexus•

I certainly found the book easier to finish in an audiobook format.

1
juncs•

I could never get into audiobooks because I get distracted too easily. My brain prioritizes visuals wayyy above audio, so I lose track of the mp3 and have to rewind constantly.

2
TrueGlich•

I mean Most LitRPG stories on Full Immersion VR MMOs . There not as much games as reality simulators with game eliments. Some books authors like u/LyrianRastler Assend online take this to an extreme where the town has a fixed coin supply and its a minor plot point that there worries that if too many players leave with coin it could cause issues and the NPC where looking to the MC to mint his own coins to help the town. This whould never work in WoW or EQ. While Shemer Kuznits Life reset series makes its clear that the quest rewards for the quests the MC makes for other players comes from thin air and not his wallet..

7
Kinexus•

I think the plot point you mentioned was great for immersing me into the game world. I think that even though this isn't a typical game design element, the VRMMORPG genre should be expanding on the capabilities of traditional game design. This really helped state how truly isolated their town was while introducing a game element that was completely alien to the MC prior to that moment.

I still think that a modern game like WoW or EQ could implement a similar mechanic. I see this no different than collecting some silver ore, smelting it into a bar and then selling it for some amount of value. You simply are smelting a bar and selling rather than minting a coin.

1
Aerroon•

We're all gamers here, or we wouldn't be into GameLit at all.

I'm not actually into LitRPGs because of video games.

I think something you have to keep in mind is that there are many games and some of them have done things completely differently from what the regular public expects. When people complain about how Sword Art Online was unrealistic I was surprised, because SAO reminded me so much of a Lineage 2-like MMORPG. Some of the points of contention were actually in Lineage 2. For example, there's a unique sword in Lineage 2 Zariche that gave the wielder a lot of power and only one person on the entire server could hold it at a time.

Much criticism levied towards LitRPGs in terms of the game system tends to simply be "The game is different from what I'm used to, so it must be unrealistic."

If I think of the game system then the LitRPG genre reminds me more of pen & paper RPGs and it's what MMOs seemed to aspire to be back in the day. Somewhere along the line MMOs turned into something else though.

6
CynicJester•

I disagree with your generalization of the criticism levelled against LitRPG systems; that it is only due to expectations of something similar to what we have these days. By far the most common complaint is the MC being a unique snowflake in so, so many ways. The number of books I can think of offhand without the MC getting anything unique or so rare to essentially be unique early on in the book is astoundingly small. You know what games have those things? Single player games. Multiplayer brings with it certain expectations of balance. Not perfect balance, but some. If a player starts a multiplayer game, the expectation is that they will have the same opportunities as anyone else, if they make the same choices. The vast majority of LitRPG stories involving actual multiplayer games don't have that.

Also, comparing an end game unique hot potato to the unique stuff characters end up with in LitRPG stories is disingenuous at best.

8
Aerroon•

that it is only due to expectations of something similar to what we have these days.

It's not something common to "these days," but rather that people don't seem to have a wide breadth of games they have played and think that games that don't align with what they've seen are unrealistic.

The number of books I can think of offhand without the MC getting anything unique or so rare to essentially be unique early on in the book is astoundingly small.

Many of these start near the release of a game. As somebody that has been at launch of several different MMOs (and MMO-like games like PoE) a lot of things that people randomly obtain or learn about near launch are quite often close to unique. Somebody's going to usually get something like that.

If a player starts a multiplayer game, the expectation is that they will have the same opportunities as anyone else, if they make the same choices.

But that's my point: we've had multiplayer games that don't work like this.

Akamanah and Zariche in Lineage 2 are unique per server. You can also compete in a tournament to become a "hero" for a limited time getting a fancy visual aura and some special skills that nobody else with your class has on the entire server.

There was the game ArchLord, where you could compete to basically become the "ruler of the game" (the ArchLord).

If you play a game like Path of Exile near the start of the league then some very rare unique items are incredibly rare. Atziri's Mirror prophecy was so rare that over several months of playing there were less than a handful of them in existence. In PoE there are also rare items that are insanely unlikely to roll that can roll insane stats.

If you look at old MUDs then I have this vague memory that they also had unique things in them.

SWG used to have one Jedi Overlord and one Dark Jedi Overlord per server that gave the players that held the title some boosts.

So these things have clearly existed in one form or another in real multiplayer games.

Also, comparing an end game unique hot potato to the unique stuff characters end up with in LitRPG stories is disingenuous at best.

The cursed swords in L2 aren't necessarily end game hot potatoes. That's what they usually end up as since people will just kill a low level with it, but that's still not conceptually far from the ideas many of these authors put into games.

In my mind one of the biggest things that plagues MMOs is that everybody wants to be special and go through everything, so the game must be made easier so that everyone can do it. There's a lack of uniqueness in many modern MMOs in my opinion.

3
CynicJester•

Again, what you(and most authors) seem to want is a single player experience. Or a small party experience. Neither of which are a good fit for MMO gameplay, be it of the themepark variety or not. The amount of change that would be required to the MMO formula to make a world simulation work is absurd, and in most of VR stories, the games they describe are just MMOs with slight differences instead of the massive overhaul you'd need to make it work. It's why I prefer portal and apocalypse stories, because they take the world simulation aspect of it and go all the way.

In regards to the unique complaints, you are bringing up examples of items or perks that can be traded and/or lost. I don't have a big problem with those. My issue is with unique classes and unique content that no one else has access to, that usually offer significant advantages over the generic equivalents. None of the books describe why all the other players are okay with a small subset of players having significant, and permanent, advantages over them, no matter what they do.

5
Aerroon•

Again, what you(and most authors) seem to want is a single player experience. Or a small party experience. Neither of which are a good fit for MMO gameplay, be it of the themepark variety or not. The amount of change that would be required to the MMO formula to make a world simulation work is absurd, and in most of VR stories, the games they describe are just MMOs with slight differences instead of the massive overhaul you'd need to make it work.

Again, that's because you don't see how these could be fun games because you've not played games like that.

The only reason that unique content in games is rare is that creating content is expensive. However, if you're already in a world where VR can absurdly do something like simulate touch (the collision detection calculations must be off the charts) or stimulating discomfort in heat over the body then you're probably in a world where creating content is significantly cheaper already and it could be possible to add these kinds of things at fairly low cost.

None of the books describe why all the other players are okay with a small subset of players having significant, and permanent, advantages over them, no matter what they do.

Because other players can usually gain these perks too or there are other perks they might gain. The other thing is that most players don't play much compared to the small subset of players and they are not pushing the frontier.

Have you never noticed how content in these games is basically endless? Nothing like that happens in real games, but in the litrpgs there's always something more to explore and there's tons of stuff that people know nothing about it. They're already playing a different type of game from a regular MMO.

Honestly, the games described in litrpgs sound great to me, because they create a large world that's more about exploration. It keeps the initial magic that MMOs have at the start, because the world doesn't get quickly figured out. This also means that there are things you could gain that others don't have because you don't know what's possible.

3
TheColourOfHeartache•

Much criticism levied towards LitRPGs in terms of the game system tends to simply be "The game is different from what I'm used to, so it must be unrealistic."

I don't think this is true. I think the issue is more that the game system is written to provide a power fantasy through the lens of the protagonist. Some MMO video games do have unique content for players, but it's usually a reward for a player's skill and success. In LitRPGs the unique connect is usually a lazy shortcut to give the protagonist an easy path to success.

You can certainly do interesting things with the concept, you used Paths of Exile as an example, so here' a pretty cool build I saw a while back which takes a unique item and designs the entire build around it. Something like that could be a cool story, the protagonist succeeds because they unlock their items potential with good playing, rather than coasting on their laurals. And since a Paths of Exile style unique game has hundreds of unqiue items you could do interesting things like having characters who waste the potential of their unique items for contrast; or PVP where half the game is figuring out what the other guys build is and if it hard counters yours.

1
Aerroon•

I agree with you on the writing part but I don't think it's necessarily bad.

Unique items in path of exile actually aren't unique. Super high rolled rare items, especially with Shaper or Elder mods are more unique. You could roll a Shaper/Elder/Temple/Essence unique that would be build enabling and it's entirely possible that nobody else has an item like it. It's just incredibly rare for that to happen. But then again, protagonists are the type of character that gets the rare outcomes where things go in their favor.

1
Klaumbaz•

I agree, i'm reading /litrpg novels for the RPG elements to be included.

Awaken Online, Ascend Online, Life Reset, even Morningwood Everybody Loves Large Chests. Great examples of how the game mechanics enhance the narrative.

Books where the game mechanics dont help. Divine Dungeon (WTF is with meditating/cultivating in a room within the dungeon for again? the dungeon or the adventurers benefit). Edens Gate, the game means almost nothing to the story.

Other books that are more /gamelit like Delvers LLC have very little mechanics explained, but the protagonists sure figure out a hell of a lot on how to use their abilities.

As for travel times. Remember, it's not the destination, it's the journey to get there. Wheel of time is a good example. book 1, the characters are new, and you and the characters are learning the world. the journey through all the towns exposes the reader to the land and the people in it. By the middle books, they're opening portals. You know what Tar Valon, Camelyn, Cairhein look like, and how they're connected to each other physically. Immerse us in your world before you start hitting fast forward.

Within an actual game, I think EQ did it best. You had druid rings, and wizard stones. you could get 80% of the way to your destination, but you still had to run there (even with SoW). In WoW, you take an eagle, you get up, go to the bathroom, grab a drink, sit back down, and just about ready to land, then you get your flying mount out, and bypass the world until you arrive at the dungeon entrance. Hell, you just open a menu now, and click "LFG for this dungeon", and you dont even have to leave town anymore. No fun.

5
fingerboxes•

Do you seriously think people will put up with 'realistic' travel times or 1990s era single instance raid fights?

You are under the misapprehension that 'new' == 'good' and 'old' == 'bad'

Honestly, yes, at least to some extent. When I was reading Ascend Online, the thing that kept me reading was that this was one of the best descriptions of what 'old' MMOs were like at and shortly after release (Specifically - Ascend captured early EverQuest perfectly). These were legitimately the best gaming experiences that I've ever had - modern MMOs are a pale & poor imitation. Part of the reason why they are so bad is because of quick & easy travel, lack of anything resembling real inter-player competition, etc.

5
Nudvik•

I think one of the best aspects of Ascend Online is that it captures what I always thought a FIVR MMO would be like. It's basically just being dumped into a fantasy world with some essential game/RPG mechanics built in to quantify the characters getting stronger. The rest of it is just an organic adventure that develops naturally as players, natives(npcs) and their gods interact with the world.

2
Lysid•

The Gam3.

3
LyrianRastlerPro Author - Ascend Online•

People will put up with what the revolutionary game that's editing their personality and memories makes them put up with.

3
[deleted]•

[deleted]

2
magna-terra•

In the dungeon lord series i feel the system is balanced. Experiance gained is based on how dangerous the monster is - hoq lucky you were when killing it. For example you may gain 1 experiance from stepping on a bug the first time youve ever seen one and its deadly vut from then on you wont gain any from them because its been trivialized

Experiance is spent to gain perks, but no level ups amd stat boosts ca be gained through training

2
Raz0rking•

Dungeon Lord by Hugo Huesca has a interesting game design

2
PotentiallySarcastic•

Are we talking about books that feature actual MMORPGs or games in a virtual reality setting?

Cuz not all LitRPGs are like that.

1
PeterM1970•

I was thinking the same thing. I tend to prefer litrpgs that don’t have explicit games at all, though they’re not exactly thick on the ground. I do agree that many of the game rules shown in settings where people are deliberately playing games are not all that impressive.

The first thing I thought of when I saw the subject line was Threadbare. It doesn’t read like it’s a fully fleshed out ruleset - though it’s apparently being turned into one - but the bits and pieces and rules and classes and abilities we learn about are all interesting and all fit together well and all serve a purpose. For instance, many of the classes characters qualify for are not things an adventurer would have much use for, but it makes sense that they exist because most characters in the setting are not adventurers.

1
Terkala•

Overlord has pretty good game design. Sort of a freeform skill-based-system, where each character can take any mixture or race/class skills. But it never really goes into great detail on how the game is supposed to work.

1
juncs•

Have you read the light novels? I've watched most of season 1 of the anime and don't get the hype on MAL. It's nice light viewing, but it's mostly an untouchable MC walking around demonstrating his overwhelming power. I think Hellsing does this with a lot better flair. Unless you mean another Overlord.

2
Ternial•

The books are better by a large margin; You get to read what the characters think; which is a big part of these characters. because without that, it's just this overgeared level max wallet wizard going around shitting on free to play newbies who didn't get a manual on how to play their game

6
Nudvik•

Lol. What an eloquent summary.

1
ProserpinasEdge•

You know, I've been thinking about this a lot while trying to design my upcoming book. The travel thing is especially tricky. I DO feel like a persistent, fully-immersive virtual sandbox game worlds WOULD evolve towards lengthier travel times (immersion would falter if you could instaport anywhere, anytime) but I also believe some variety of fast travel would NEED to exist alongside that, especially for endgame and group content needs. Trying to find the right balance of the two involves a lot of going back and forth and imagining it one way and then reimagining it another way a few days later.

1
tkiozOPThe Savage :snoo_angry:•

See one of the major issues with fast travel in MMOs is that it needs to slot into the world design. If there are portals all over the place capable of travelling massive distances in a heartbeat why do ships/caravans/etc exist?

Now of course those portals must exist for gameplay reasons, and of course you could say that they are obscenely expensive so it's more economical to use other systems.

However the best way would be to limit them to players, assuming your going for a VRMMO, such as some games like RIFT do. They have instant portals all over the place but according to the lore only the Ascended (the players) can make use of them safely.

That allows for your main characters to move around (and by limiting them to fixed points you control the speed of the narrative) without running into the "why don't they just portal an army into the enemy city?" question.

It's the Star Trek transporter, they were put into the original show for budgetary reasons (cheaper than shots of a shuttle landing each week) but writers ended up *loathing* them because they made it hard to establish tension, which is why you ended up with the ten thousand one things that interfered with them depending on the plot of the week.

So yeah thinking about fast travel is something good authors really need to do, kudos for you for doing so.

5
Klaumbaz•

Everquest begs to differ. There were wizard stones and druid rings. but where your going might be 2 zones away from the closest. So it was a blend of "easy to get to another continent", fast travel will get you 80% of the way there. Compared to WoW, take an eagle, then hop on your flying mount and bypass all the content right up to the dungeon entrance.

2
tkiozOPThe Savage :snoo_angry:•

That's the thing though EQ was released in 1999, WoW in 2004, just like at design changes five years brought, then look at something released post 2015+ and how it changed over WoW. Games of the future would not regress to an earlier style despite what people who want WoW/EQ/Runescape classic say, the majority of players don't want to waste huge amounts of their limited play time on meaningless busywork.

1
ProserpinasEdge•

This is true, and WoW is pretty much the baseline for this - but earning fast travel to a lot of locations in WoW is still gated behind actual progression. Later WoW expansions also don't allow player mounts to fly in new content until the player has seen and experienced so much of the content As Intended that the 'convenience' factor of flight is almost negligible. And although getting around in WoW today is mostly portal-portal-portal and then a long flight by mount (either player mount or NPC mount service), the game breaks up how quickly you can get from point A to point B by requiring you to stop at point C, D, and sometimes E, F, and G in order to get there. The illusion of complicated and involved travel remains, even if the majority of the time has been cut.

That all being said, however, on the cutting edge of progression, travel takes time. You can't fly in newer expansions right off the bat, the quest chains and few flight paths you do have access to at start leave you land-bound, and you have to quest your way slowly across a series of zones. Most fast travel conveniences don't come into play until you've seen more of the content.

One thing I don't think we're taking into account in most of these situations is that most LitRPG series start off at level 1 in a new game. Even if they were playing in WoW, they'd have to slowly grind their way across the continent to level, like, 15 before they got their first quest to fly to a major city, and a lot of first books stop before then. Town Scrolls, Town Portals, Hearthstones -- these are the sorts of things that players in LitRPG stories could find or acquire later on in stories that would make travel less onerous for long-term players who have already seen and done everything.

But another thing that might be worth considering is what other possibilities a cutting edge fully immersive VR MMO of, say, 2030 might have to offer players instead for forcing them to travel back and forth all the time. Like - consider WHY fast travel exists in current MMOs: because a lot of the time, progression content is way up there (A) where there's no major NPC hub or base or city, and the nearest NPC hub or base or city is way over there (B). Or maybe you need to go get quest A from one place far away from quest B and quest C is on another continent all together.

I'm not really sure that spreading out progression's leading edge this way is a necessary or vital component of MMO gaming. Maybe a more immersive, more persistent and procedural universe like we see in LitRPG stories wouldn't have much need for players go all over the game world. Maybe there are other ways of providing late game players with what feels like a 'lot to do' in a much more geographically circumspect area? In that case, your far more infrequent trips back to another major city or quest hub might not be quite so annoying if it takes you a few hours to get there, even with some fast travel conveniences baked in -- you only have to make the trip once every few weeks, so no big deal? Or maybe making the lengthy trek comes with a proportionally larger reward than the standard late game quest, something that feels kind of big and epic and rewarding, worth the time investment.

There's a lot of different possibilities to consider.

3
Klaumbaz•

I disagree. Look at Pantheon. I agree, most people are "i want the marshmallow now", and not willing to put work into their character or game. That's why PUBG and Fortnite are popular. But there's a reason EQ 1 is still running. I know, it surprised me too. it was a memorable, and formative game. Many tropes about modern games come from it.

1
fingerboxes•

Again, you are confusing 'new' with 'good'.

'What is given has no value'. When travel is difficult and the world feels big it makes every action and choice have weight and importance - it makes things meaningful. Same thing with harsh death penalties.

Those game design choices are fundamentally mistakes, and I would argue are driving the death of the market.

1
Aerroon•

I DO feel like a persistent, fully-immersive virtual sandbox game worlds WOULD evolve towards lengthier travel times (immersion would falter if you could instaport anywhere, anytime)

It's not actually just immersion that's the problem, it's also realism/what the game can represent. If you can fast travel everywhere then balancing things like rations, hydration, setting up a safe camp, sleep, tiredness etc become unimportant since you can just always take a break at an inn in a walled city.

Imagine if you had a game where you had to care about carrying around enough food, water, warmth and have to set up camps for safety, use wood for some lighting in the dark, actually have the character sleep etc. Think about all the ambushes it would be possible to have in such a game that just aren't possible in a regular RPG. Think about the paths a character would have to take compared to a regular RPG: they would actually try to go near rivers to get water, but they would also try to stay away from areas with lots of people/animals due to danger. These are things that in a realistic scenario you have to care about, but games simply gloss over this.

The other thing to consider is that fast travel and such often simply break trading, which means that world can't have an economy in the first place. That would realistically create a completely different type of world than what we expect.

3
Serpentsrage•

How about games that are like anime? Or like Final Fantasy, SAO, Overlord? I am doing this with one of my books. Maybe throw in a little Skyrim.

1
tkiozOPThe Savage :snoo_angry:•

Personally anime is somewhere just under Tyler Perry movies on my list of things I despise, but I recognise that's personal taste.

0†
Serpentsrage•

Everyone has their own taste and that is fine. What would you like to see different from Litrpg game designs?

3
tkiozOPThe Savage :snoo_angry:•

I'd like to see more restrictions honestly. It's like my grandfather use to say, rules make the sport. Less gain every skill under the sun and more "well you could have a broom sweeping skill, but you can only have X equipped and levelling at any one time, so chose carefully".

Sort of like a mix between RIFT, WoW, and ESO with a build your own class system that makes you make meaningful choices. Let's face those are few and far between in most LitRPGs, it's always "dump your stat into X" and that's just dull.

1
a348bna34oFaceroll Pseudonym•

It really all depends on how game-like you want your setting or characters to be, and what a story calls for or requires.

If your MC (or elements of the world) becomes too game-like, you'll have some serious powercreep to deal with, or you'll be describing everything in game terms instead of terms of story and action, or it'll come down to DBZ-style fights where everyone is throwing infinity+1 at each other.

I'd write more, but I'm lazy, so I'll be a dick and quote myself.

If you want to use complicated formulas for an advanced game system operating in the background of your story, you should just develop that instead of a fiction. If a system is too balanced, you'll probably have to cheat as a pseudo-gamemaster/author for necessary or dramatic moments.

It may work if you put the effort in, but is it really worth it to go down that path?

People have spent decades designing a single game in r/tabletopgamedesign/ so maybe your time is better spent on a story instead.

1
therealflinchy•

Personally I don't mind the giant world thing, as long as it still has solid game design, like plenty of content in between, or otherwise solid justification

I'm definitely not a fan of the oldschool crap design where there would be literally 1 of 1 ultimate items etc

Or like 5-10 players mysteriously chosen out of 50,000,000 by the gods of the game

I think ascend online has a solid balance. All the characters you follow are doing so much insanely amazing stuff and you think it's so unrealistic, but then they're something like.the 1500th most popular stream, so it's almost directly stated theyre.. interesting, but not all that special in the greater game world.

1
DarkClaymore•

Well, I'm writing a story with a game that I'm sure is pretty realistic... because it's basically just a standard MOBA LUL

1
ehutch79•

Sometimes I wonder why authors arn't just taking actual game systems and just tweaking them a bit.

1
Booley_Shadowsong•

Here’s my thing if I could be dropping in any world. And be forced to live there with the tools the game gave me.

I’d honestly lean towards Everquest out of the novels I’ve read. Ascend online seems to be the one I’d most like to actually play.

1
TheMostHumblest•

I think a simple way to evaluate game design is to ask two questions:

  1. Is it internally consistent?
  2. Does it avoid deus ex machina moments?

It you answer yes and yes, its a good game design. See also Brandon Sanderson first law of magic, "An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic."

1