What Can Game Designers Learn From Elden Ring’s Progression
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2024
- An Indie Dev and a AAA Dev discuss progression systems through Elden Ring.
Hosts:
Forrest Imel
forrestimel.com/
Gavin Gray Valentine
www.ggvart.com/
Join the Distraction Makers Discord: / discord
0:00-1:33 Intro
1:34-3:50 Mastery Progression
3:51-6:34 Social Progression
6:35-10:15 Variable Progression
10:16-11:52 Toy Progression
11:53-13:51 Challenge Progression
13:52-18:14 Visual Progression
18:15-21:48 Design Vocabulary
21:49-23:41 Why does Progression Matter?
23:42-27:37 The Dark Side of Progression - เกม
![Baldur's Gate 3 Playthrough [Part 1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dRA-AQOGcvs/mqdefault.jpg)
Fantastic channel and content. Very worthwhile and insightful overview of progression systems and mechanics. Must be my new no.1 underrated channel.
With all my heart I hope for the growth of your audience and that you get the chance to educate a lot of up and coming devs
Thank you for the kind words!
what videogaming is in most dire need right now, is AA investment. where you take indie studios/devs and give them enough budget to have the scope rise above "another sidescrolling platformer"/"another tower defense"/etc and let the make the games millions of ppl want to play but the AAA publishers refuse to finance.
Baldur's Gate 3?
What I love about Elden Ring is how it uses many of From's design flairs from its previous titles to express its approach to an open world experience.
For example on Margit being a POS is Margit is a very difficult early challenge to overcome and Margit is also on the direct road. In alot of open world games the direct beaten path is supposed to be the easy path or the one that progresses the plot while the stuff off the beaten path can be where the challenges lie. Margit might instead be so intimidating to some that you will decide to explore off the beaten path, grow your power and develop your knowledge so you can do better in round 2.
Thanks for the video great stuff
Exactly. Margit is the litmus test to see if you’re ready for the rest of the game.
so, i feel the need to dispel something said lightly in this ep. "millions are on the line, they cannot take risks" i beg to differ, pending on context.
so if i am making an indie game and must deprive myself of luxuries or even things needed for a basic comfort life, or even sacrificing health to finish this game, that is worth astronomically more than millions of dollars on a line for a corporation that won't even stop making good profits if that investment is fully lost.
what is actually the issue for those AAA publishers is most of them are under the obligation to the stockholders to make as much profit as possible and risking investment might enrage investors. the private AAA publishers, if there is any, usually actually have company survival on the line and not just profit decrease hits.
to compound to this, AAA games often have ridiculously unnecessary investment in them, like realistic horse balls and shite. millions that are being risked not for any good reason, not for any necessity to make the game fun, just for idiocy.
AAA outlets could very well cut down scope that is fatty and doesn't really provide significant return on investment to then allow more nimble budgets for games that take risks. healthy risks. and diversifying these would see a statistical certainty to have profit overall in enough time.
AAA products are not sold to make *a* profit. they are sold with the objective to make ALL profit available on the market. and to keep raising profits to infinity. it is not just unrealistic and impossible, it is literally self defeating. as is evidence by the current age for gaming we live in, where AAA products are more limited than ever in variety, with IPs and studios dying left and right and bland products. ALL while indie gaming has been innovating like never before and truly at its golden age so far.
FromSoft is now AAA not because it didn't and don't take risks, but because when they were AA they decided to take the right risks. we are still seeing assets reused from decades ago, and "nobody" (gamers) complains. instead of animating picking up items in the most realistic mocap fashion a la horizon zero dawn and then ruining fun play for players cus of the constant time wasting repetition of that animation, that cost how many thousands of dollars?! FS did a very simple and fluid flair for picking up items that doesn't interrupt flow and still provides enough feedback to make the game fun and engaging.
good points. this topic likely warrants a whole video to discuss.
@@distractionmakers would love that vid! your 2 PoV would surely add insight to the topic atop what the usual yt videogame essayist has to say
One of my favourite moments of "oh wow I never realized that was something I internalized" was watching a non-gamer player Breath of the Wild, and seeing them run right past the two treasure chests at the start of the game that contain their clothes. Every gamer I watched (and myself) immediately opened those chests to see what was inside them.
Haha that’s so interesting. Suddenly the highlighted items and yellow paint make a bit more sense. 😆
I thought a lot about this particular subject as I played through God of War 2018. I was trying to beat it on the hardest difficulty and the experience was just miserable. The game presents itself as focusing on mastery progression over systemic progression, but it's just not the case. You have everything there: dodge rolls, invulnerability windows, parry timings, blocks, all that jazz. But at the end of the day your numbers matter way more than any of that.
What really tipped me off as to why I was getting so frustrated is that fundamentally some core systems of the game change as you level up your gear. Some attacks that were "Dodgeable only" become "Dodge/Parriable only", and eventually "Dodge/Parry/Blockeable". It is possible to git gud it out, but the gulf between bad and good gear is so game warping that and as soon as I realized that, the combat just unclicked with me
It is interesting that variable progression is an illusion and if you notice it too much it ruins the game. Same thing happened to me with Hades.
@@distractionmakers The thing with Hades that made me personally ok with it, is that it's overtly about variable progression. There's the expectation from the get go that you're going to be doing roughly the same thing throughout, only with bigger numbers. If you like the core loop, then the System progression is just par for the course (with maaaaybe some skinner box thrown in there lol).
And at least there the enemies' power level grows faster than yours and to piggy back on your definitons, you're expected to increase your "Mastery" in conjunction with your "Systems". You need to know what boons to look for, when to reroll, what legendary duo boons you can get etcetc rather than just stumbling upon whatever and be overpowered enough by the end of it to power through.
In GoW it ended up being legitimately about "Oh this fight is dumb. Let me grab whatever (because yes, to compound on the issue the gear you find is mostly interchangeable, granted the "Gear Level" reaches certain thresholds your power just skyrockets) and _then_ I can get back to having fun". That game just peeved the bejesus out of me because I was really into it until the point I was just.. not anymore.
Ultra tangentially, just because I love talking/writing about this stuff lol, MMO's are also a very interesting case in regards to this. There's no denying that end game content cannot be beat by outgearing or outleveling the encounter. You need a lot of Mastery in order to beat those. However that content is _always_ locked behind a gigantic variable progression gate and only a very small subset of people will be able to enjoy it. You need to be both someone that _reeeeeeally_ loves (and has the time to) grind all the way up to that level while at the same time _reeeeeeeally_ loves growing their Mastery with very very difficult challenges. I wish there were more games (or any games really) that focused on that ultra competitive coop experience where everyone needs to be on top of their game without the huge barrier to entry.
Anyway
This channel is excellent - thank you for your insights!
If you have the time and inclination, I'd love to hear about the intersection between this and player agency/expression. It seems to me that as players build their mastery, their choices for variable or toy progression become more directed. This shows up on things like subsequent playthroughs (or speedruns) of RPGs but also in games where a single session provides a lot of self-contained progression, like deckbuilders or MOBAs. Are there guidelines for building a system like that that can support both old and new players equally? Are there RPGs that have solved the "massive unknowable skill tree" problem without sacrificing depth? Idk if there's enough material in this for a video or if I've just pointed out something obvious, but if there is, I'd be keen to learn more about it.
thought idle games was idol; games (like the J-pop gatcha style)
Shit I’m on the spectrum. Love the video