The Mechanics: Persona 3

Persona 3 is the latest and possibly last big Japanese RPG (JRPG) for the dying PS2 and has been very well received both in Japan and in the States. It's half about saving the world and half about high school relationships, and it's a hell of a lot better than that makes it sound.

The reasons Persona 3 is a great game, while most other JRPGS are merely medicore games with the occasional disctinction of great storytelling, are numerous - but there is one key gameplay distinction that sets it apart from the pack - its startling lack of grinding.

Almost all other JRPGs are fairly trivial. Their experience based design makes skill no object; the only obstacle that stands between the player and ultimate victory is the player's time. There are no interesting decisions to make outside of combat, and the combat itself is trivial. When the player loses a battle all he has to do is go back to his last save and grind his heart out. It's not hard, it's just time consuming. In fact, there are certain JRPGs where one can breeze through the rest of the game by leaving the console on one night and taping down the X button (and come back in the morning level ninety-nine).

However, Persona 3 has managed to create a system where mindless grinding is not only ineffective, but impossible. To explain this system, one must first understand the details of the game. Persona 3 is broken up into days, and each day is broken up into several periods of time (e.g. late night, afternoon, early morning). Occasionally, you will have choices during the early hours of the day, but most important gameplay choices fall into two periods of time: After School and Evening.

In Japan, they have school on Saturdays. Who knew?

All the non-combat related choices you make during these times fall into three categories: choosing to improve your character's social skills, choosing to strengthen your character's relationship with another character, or choosing to enter the dungeon (the only way to fight). Now, you can go to the dungeon every night and grind on low level floors; however, you won't get very far. First, your characters grow tired quickly in the dungeon, and start to deal less damage and take more of it, rendering your party ineffective. Second, the rate at which your party tires is independent of the strength of the enemies you're fighting - that is, they'll be just as tired after a hundred boss fights as they will be after a hundred regular fights. Since harder enemies give more experience, grinding will leave you with exhausted, low level characters, while progressing in the dungeon will allow you to fight harder enemies and at least you'll end up with exhausted, higher level characters.

However, going to the dungeon every night in and of itself is inefficient. It's much better to hit the town and sing some kareoke when you're tired, as it's less exhausting. Improving your social skills (by singing, apparently) will help you find more social links, and choosing to strengthen those social links will allow you to summon stronger persona of a certain type (persona are a physical extension of one's psyche, the game explains).

Thus, one who goes to the dungeon every night will end up with inefficent, high level characters with weak personas, and one who goes out every night will end up with many weak personas (as they will have many social links) and weak characters. Similarily, one who chooses to have one or two very strong social links will find themselves with a few strong personas but a crippling lack of flexibility. In addition, Persona 3 makes you battle bosses every month or so, regardless of the actions you take, forcing you to weigh long term profitability (social links which will help you throughout the game) against short term profit (dungeon crawling for quick cash before the next boss). The key is to balance these activities, which is no easy task, and it is here that Persona 3 finds a sweet spot of game design - in decisions that most other JRPGS brush off as trvialities.

The Basics: Getting Good Part Two

Part Two
Getting Good.

Before we discuss how to actually get good, it's important to understand that there are many games that are too shallow to support high level play. These are imbalanced or just ill-designed games that fall apart when their mechanics are given any sort of push. That's not to say that you should avoid these games altogether, but recognize when you are playing one and don't be afraid to abuse obvious imbalances.

Getting good is complicated, and there's no way to skirt around the fact that you're going to have to bang your head against the game for awhile before you get any better. However, there are ways to make it easier. The most important thing to do in a game is to overachieve. Constantly.

Overachieving

The concept of overachieving is pretty simple to understand, but when you're actually in the thick of the game it seems counter-intuitive. The most easily illustrated example of overachieving is Guitar Hero. Most people pick up Guitar Hero for the first time and play it on Easy, then Normal, where they have to learn to use their pinky and panic a bit, then Hard, where they have to learn to use the orange button (thus relearning everything they thought they knew about finger placement) and panic a lot, then Expert, where they're in pretty much a perpetual state of panic.

However, if you really want to get good at Guitar Hero, the first time you pick up the guitar, start on Expert. Play the first songs a couple times each, get used to the speed. Then bang your head against the hardest first tier song over and over again until you can play the entire tier. Repeat this with the hardest song on each tier. If you absolutely can't play any songs on Expert (make sure you at least try a few times) go back to Hard.

Starting out on Expert will help in a couple of ways. First of all, you'll already be used to the game being really fast from the word go, which is one of the huge transitions players have trouble with when they go up a difficulty level. Second, you'll immediately be used to moving your hands back and forth on the guitar, the other transition players sruggle with. In an hour or two, you'll be as good as the other player, who's been slowly working his way up the difficulty tree for days, even if you haven't beaten a single song. If you ever go to Normal, it'll seem pitifully slow.

And those are the very important things that overachieving does. It prevents players from learning the bad habits (not being able to move your hand up and down the fretboard, being used to the slower speeds) that they have to unlearn as they get better at the game. It also allows you to get used to the game at its most competetive level, instead of having to relearn all the techniques and strategies that you thought were viable but are really entirely useless at higher levels of play.

It gets easier. Seriously.

This is most obvious in games like Guitar Hero, but is true for any competetive game. Take, for example, Starcraft, our stock RTS. If you have a choice between playing someone your level in Starcraft, and someone above your level in Starcraft, then you will always benefit more from picking the person above your level. Similarily, if you have the choice between playing someone your level, and the best Starcraft player in the entire world, you should always play against the best Starcraft player in the world. It seems counter-intuitive, but overachievement has no boundaries. Always play the best you can.

In playing the best player Starcraft player in the world, you will learn the ins and outs of the best strategies, and understand their counters. You will be immediately flung into a fast paced game, where your opponent is clicking ten times a second. So, after you free yourself from the chokehold of fear, you'll be forced to stay on your toes and always play your very best. Go back into that game with that guy who was better than you a few days ago and it'll feel like you're playing in slow motion. Because you are so used to fast paced games where one mistake will lose it, you'll absolutely crush the man who, in comparison to your previous opponent, seems slow and careless.

And that's overachievement. It's hard - you'll have to lose before you win - but it's incredibly rewarding, and you'll be good sooner than you think.

The Mechanics: Diablo 2 and Its Doppelgangers.

You've heard of Diablo 2. At some point in your life, you've probably played it, or at least something that is exactly like it in almost every superficial respect. Titan Quest, Fate, Dungeon Runners - we've seen countless lookalikes trying to cling on Diablo 2's coattails. Some are recieved well, some not so well, but they're all pretty similar; you're running around, left clicking on monsters a lot and holding alt to pick up little magic objects that are color coordinated according to the amount of unicorn rainbow magic contained within.

But why is it that all these clones are all but ghost towns, while Diablo 2 still has a thriving online community after seven years? It's not the graphics, Titan Quest is prettier. It's not the accessibility, Dungeon Runners is easier. It's most certainly not the interface, as any of these new clones hardly changed that at all. So, it must be the gameplay. Which brings us to the real question: why is Diablo 2's gameplay so damn good?

The reason is the same, suprisingly enough, as the reason many of the great fighting games stick around to be competetive, while all the others die off in crusty arcades: it looks superficial, but it's got depth. It's easy to beat Diablo 2, that is, defeat the last boss in the single player game. However, to make a truly powerful character requires a knowledge of the mechanics that is far more demanding and far more rewarding than anything you will find in Titan Quest or any other Diablo lookalike.

To prove my point, I'm going to show you something beautiful:

Holy Christ.

This is merely a small segment of Diabloii.net's massive mechanics compendium. The mechanics are so deep, there are pages upon pages simply devoted to the manipulation of your chance to get a high level rune, or a great item. Hell, there are about three or four pages devoted to your chance to block an attack with a shield, and not even that many characters use shields.

Of course, only the very hardcorest of the hardcore figure out these numbers by themselves, and make these posts. But, as I mentioned in my last article, gameplay at the expert level trickles down; bad gameplay and good gameplay. Only a handful of people will actually do the tests to understand these mechanics, but most of the serious players will understand the results they come back with and everyone will benefit from the strategies those results produce, as even the most casual player will want to know the best build for their level thirty-three barbarian.

Finishing Diablo 2's story is easy. But not only is Diablo 2 not harmed by this, its deep gameplay almost rests upon it. Without the ability to powerlevel newbie characters from levels 5-80 in about half an hour (literally), the work involved in testing new builds and new numbers would be terrifying, and Diablo 2 would likely lose most of its playerbase. As most of Diablo 2's long term draw comes from the mechanics of building a character and not beating the same story over and over again, the ability to powerlevel is crucial.

Ultimately, its deep mechanics, aided and abetted by powerlevelling, are the reason why Diablo 2 is still afloat; while its prettier, shallower clones are all going under.

The Basics: Getting Good Part One

Part One
Why would I want to be good?

When you're talking about the mechanics of a game, you're talking about those mechanics being pushed to their limits. Gameplay does not refer to the play of the average player, but rather the play of the professional, the game at its top level. This is most obvious in Massively Multiplayer games (even if only a handful of top tier players understand a certain powerful exploit, that exploit will affect the entire server) but is true for any multiplayer game.

Take, for example, a game like starcraft. Even though you may not be trying to be the best player in the world, the moment you enter the game you are trying to win; that is the very definition of a game. Although you may not be aiming to be the best, you are trying to win and therefore are, in order to win, trying to become a better player, even if only in the short term. Everyone playing in your game is trying to become at least a little bit better.

Now, imagine there is some critical race imbalance at the very highest level of play. No one but the highest level players are affected by this imbalance, because it only rears its ugly head when both players are very skilled. This imbalance essentially ruins the game for the high level players, restricting them to playing mirror matches tirelessly, until they turn their interest to a different game.

I can't do this, but there's someone who can.

Now the competition has left the game. The game has been deemed unplayable at a very competitive level, and all that remains are the players in levels below that. As the competition dies out, most players who were nearing competitive levels will lose their drive. If they are going to have to stop playing when they get better, there's no point in getting better at all. If there's no point in getting better, there's no point in trying to win. If there's no point in trying to win, there's hardly any point in playing the game at all, is there?

As these near-competitives start to file out, everyone else will realise that the game cannot be a competetive game, and only those who play occasionally and casually will remain. No serious multiplayer game can survive solely on the interest of a small casual base, and so the game dies.

Thus, the most important kind of gameplay is play amongst high level players, and the most important game mechanics are those which are implemented at high level play.

If you truly want to explore a game's mechanics, or appreciate the gameplay of a game, you'll see the value in getting good. As you get better at a game, you'll see the game's mechanics in a whole new light and, as you discover what mechanics are important and which are superficial, you will rediscover the game entirely.