FFXIV Potency Design Analysis Pt. 1
The following is a long write up I did after getting interested in the potency system from FFXIV. I analyze raw vs. potency values and why I think that FFXIV’s system is well designed.
Today I’d like to talk about RPG (role-playing game) stat systems. These systems come in many shapes and sizes, but their purpose mostly remains the same philosophically. They aim to represent and quantify a player character’s familiarity with different worldly skills and allow the player to gauge the impact of certain actions. Now that I’m sitting at ~500 hours of in-game time with FFXIV, I’ve begun noticing interesting things about it, like the very interesting and well-implemented potency system the game uses.
But before I dive into the nitty-gritty, let’s take five. A lot of people have played D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) or other role-playing tabletop games. A lot of these games, because of their history and intimate connections to designer’s lives serve as sources of inspiration for different games and systems. In fact, I had a professor who once said: “Most systems for video games are an abstraction of other traditional tabletop systems.” The more I thought about this, I actually couldn’t think of a counter-example without it feeling like something to which my professor could rightfully respond, “I did say most, and even then that is such a technicality… you get what I mean to say.”
As a quick brief, since a lot of the readers might be friends or family who aren’t gaming-oriented, D&D is a tabletop game–there are no computer screens involved (think of a board game, but sometimes without the board). You and your friends create characters, sit around a table, and role-playing as your newly-created personalities. You go on adventures and quests together in a world run by a DM (Dungeon Master)– someone who creates, enforces, and manages with the causality of the world.
Now, a lot of the interesting portions of D&D come from its stat system. Each character has their own stats called “Ability Scores” in 6 categories: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
I use the term “abstraction” to describe game systems like this. The system is abstracting a normal, multifaceted personality into 6 broad categories or stats. Abstraction in programming is the idea of hiding and sometimes removing details that face the user to reduce unnecessary complexity and to make life easier. It’s about showing relevant information rather than all the information. I’d like to think that the object-oriented programming principle is just as important to modern game design as it is to engineering.
Anyway, whenever your character wants to accomplish a certain task that isn’t mundane (one that your character might fail at if you aren’t skilled at that task), your DM might ask you to roll a d20 (a 20 sided dice) and add a portion of a specific ability score to see if your attempt fails his/her predetermined pass/fail threshold.
As an example, Dustin (a D&D player) might say, “Hey, Hudson, my character tries to pick up this super heavy obelisk”.
To this Hudson (the DM) might respond, “Alright, make a Strength Check to see if you can lift it.”
In Hudson’s mind, Dustin has to pass a DC 15 (Difficulty Class or the number Dustin has to roll more than or equal to) check to succeed, anything else is a failure, and Dustin can’t lift the stone. Dustin would roll his d20 and add his predetermined Strength Ability Modifier (an attribute of your character) to see what happens. The situation plays out differently, depending on how the dice rolls, and how good Dustin’s character is at the Strength stat (obviously, the higher the stat, the better). As you can glean, statistics plays a great role in D&D and other tabletop RPG systems. At a high level, they directly affect your influence on the world you’re in.
Now with that in the back of your mind, let’s think about today’s video game stat systems. Like my professor once said, a lot of video game systems are just abstracted versions of traditional tabletop systems. When we look at games like League of Legends, Diablo, Dota 2, or other RPGs we can sometimes see our characters attack an enemy and miss. I’d wager, at least in principle, the concept is the same. Instead of the player physically rolling a die, adding an ability score modifier to it, and then telling the computer, “hey I rolled this number, this is my modifier, make the attack hit,” the computer rolls the dice and does all the math for you in real-time. The animation and physics all happen in real-time, nice and smooth, giving way to a nice-feeling bout of fisticuffs with that evil zombie attacking a village. Along the same vein, pickpocketing is a fun little mechanic in many video games. If your character is good at a specific stat, the odds of pickpocketing successfully increase greatly and you can often get special items that you normally wouldn’t otherwise be able to procure.
All that’s happening in either of these situations is that, instead of letting the player deal with all these numbers and dice rolling while a fight is happening, or while the player is in an instance, the computer plays the role of DM in a lot of ways, abstracting the entire role of the DM, for the player. The player doesn’t have to see rolling dice, it just isn’t relevant to the experience the designers are giving to the players. It isn’t any less or more complex than traditional tabletop systems, don’t get me wrong. The experiences just emphasize different things. While D&D places a lot of importance on statistics, video games place more importance on, for example, fast-paced decision making, accurate positioning on a field, or deep team play or strategy.
Now back to FFXIV. I love the stat system in this game. MMOs, on top of their social and mechanical complexity, are often known to be very statistics and number heavy games–there are a lot of numbers to crunch. So much so, that many players parse. They use a special third-party plugin or software to see how much damage their abilities do and appropriately choose and level up their stats to function better for their teams. Players in FFXIV fall into one of three roles: damage dealers, damage takers, and damage healers. All of these roles make use of different stats or ability scores in different ways. Now, as with anything pertaining to any media, this number crunching and “min/maxing” (a game design term for players who optimize their characters) mentality are either loved or hated.
Why? Abstraction. A lot of people might want to jump onto a game, play with friends, and enjoy an experience together while sitting in the comfort of their home after a long day’s work. It is a game after all, not statistics 101. Sometimes, I don’t want to apply a formula just to see if I’m doing a good at a game. These systems can encourage, and a lot of times require so much of a deep and rabbit-hole oriented thought process, that for some people, even if they might enjoy the art, the story, the feel and the community of a game, playing it becomes a chore where you sit and look at menus and numbers more than playing a game with friends on a Friday night. It’s a very fair criticism for most MMOs, but this is why I love FFXIV.
Continued in Pt. 2! -Kshaya