DUNGEON SIEGE
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About the Game
Dungeon Siege is a third-person squad-based real-time RPG published by Microsoft Game Studios in 2002. The player must lead a band of heroes through mountains, swamps, deserts, dungeons, and castles on a quest to save the kingdom from the evil Seck warriors. After the single player campaign is completed, characters can be transferred to multiplayer for a new campaign in a new world. As of January 2017, Dungeon Siege has Mostly Positive reviews from 900 Steam reviewers.
Busted: Hard Solo Run
Dungeon Siege begins with the player controlling a single character. In a typical campaign, party members are gradually added to the roster, up to a maximum of eight. While individual characters can mix and match among the four available skills (Melee, Ranged, Nature Magic, Combat Magic), the party is most effective when each character is assigned a specific role. Melee characters act as tanks to absorb damage; Ranged characters deal high damage to single targets; Nature Mages act as healers; Combat Mages deal area-of-effect damage. Both classes of magic can also summon creatures to join the fray.
The natural constraint for a game like Dungeon Siege is to try to complete the entire campaign using only the starting character, greatly diminishing the player's ability to deal and absorb damage. I completed such a campaign on "Hard", the highest difficulty level. For this run, a pure Melee character is not viable, as the damage dealt by enemies scales up much faster than the ability to absorb damage with armor. With Ranged characters and most magic spells, it is usually possible to isolate individual enemies and use hit-and-run tactics to avoid taking damage. However, there are some areas in which the world geometry denies this possibility -- for example, when a mob of enemies are lying in wait at the top of an elevator shaft.
Despite these obstacles, there are four mechanics that make the solo run possible:
Once the necessary tools are assembled, and the very basic tactical concepts are mastered, the hard solo run becomes a straightforward mechanical exercise.
Design Analysis: Meaningful Choice
Throughout the Dungeon Siege campaign, the player accumulates gold from fallen enemies, ubiquitous crates, and selling old gear. Gold can be spent to purchase new gear from shopkeepers, or to hire mercenaries to join the party. (There are 16 companions available in the game, 6 of whom can be recruited for free, while the other 10 must be hired.) Because the ratio of purchase price and sale price for gear is very unfavorable to the player, hiring a mercenary often means skipping a merchant, or vice versa.
Some squad-based games place the player in highly imbalanced scenarios -- the enemies are more numerous, have better damage output, and have unique abilities -- that can only be overcome by developing superior tactics and exploiting synergies within the party composition. In such a system, the choice between hiring a mercenary and buying gear is a meaningful one. The player must weigh the tactical advantages of an additional party member against the numerical advantages of better equipment.
The hard solo run shows that Dungeon Siege does not offer this meaningful choice. If the same limited set of tactics can work in every scenario, against every enemy, with any number of party members, and if the player's party can grow in size for free, there does not appear to be any motivation to hire mercenaries, even if they have better starting stats than the free companions.
Consider two simple changes to rebalance this system:
Dungeon Siege is a third-person squad-based real-time RPG published by Microsoft Game Studios in 2002. The player must lead a band of heroes through mountains, swamps, deserts, dungeons, and castles on a quest to save the kingdom from the evil Seck warriors. After the single player campaign is completed, characters can be transferred to multiplayer for a new campaign in a new world. As of January 2017, Dungeon Siege has Mostly Positive reviews from 900 Steam reviewers.
Busted: Hard Solo Run
Dungeon Siege begins with the player controlling a single character. In a typical campaign, party members are gradually added to the roster, up to a maximum of eight. While individual characters can mix and match among the four available skills (Melee, Ranged, Nature Magic, Combat Magic), the party is most effective when each character is assigned a specific role. Melee characters act as tanks to absorb damage; Ranged characters deal high damage to single targets; Nature Mages act as healers; Combat Mages deal area-of-effect damage. Both classes of magic can also summon creatures to join the fray.
The natural constraint for a game like Dungeon Siege is to try to complete the entire campaign using only the starting character, greatly diminishing the player's ability to deal and absorb damage. I completed such a campaign on "Hard", the highest difficulty level. For this run, a pure Melee character is not viable, as the damage dealt by enemies scales up much faster than the ability to absorb damage with armor. With Ranged characters and most magic spells, it is usually possible to isolate individual enemies and use hit-and-run tactics to avoid taking damage. However, there are some areas in which the world geometry denies this possibility -- for example, when a mob of enemies are lying in wait at the top of an elevator shaft.
Despite these obstacles, there are four mechanics that make the solo run possible:
- Combat Magic features a spell called "Explosive Powder" which launches a small bouncing projectile at any spot within a fixed range. The bomb will keep bouncing until either it hits an enemy, or its generous fuse timer runs out. This allows the player to send bombs down long corridors, around corners, and off cliffs to hit enemies that would be out of range of any other attack.
- Damage dealt by summoned creatures contributes to the experience level (XP) of the caster, as do healing spells used on summoned creatures. This means that the efficiency of summoned creatures, whether used to deal or absorb damage, will scale up over time with no penalty for overuse.
- An enemy unit will always attempt to engage the first party member (or summoned creature) which establishes line of sight on that unit. The enemy will not switch targets until either the first target is dead, or the first target is able to evade the enemy for some fixed amount of time (somewhere around 15 seconds). This enables two useful tactics: first, summon a creature into an enemy mob to attract their attention, then hang back and support the summon. Second, run into the mob to get them to focus on the main character, then summon a creature to deal damage while the main character dodges attacks.
- Health and mana regenerate over time. So while it is not always possible to employ hit-and-run tactics, it is always possible to fully retreat, regenerate, and re-engage.
Once the necessary tools are assembled, and the very basic tactical concepts are mastered, the hard solo run becomes a straightforward mechanical exercise.
Design Analysis: Meaningful Choice
Throughout the Dungeon Siege campaign, the player accumulates gold from fallen enemies, ubiquitous crates, and selling old gear. Gold can be spent to purchase new gear from shopkeepers, or to hire mercenaries to join the party. (There are 16 companions available in the game, 6 of whom can be recruited for free, while the other 10 must be hired.) Because the ratio of purchase price and sale price for gear is very unfavorable to the player, hiring a mercenary often means skipping a merchant, or vice versa.
Some squad-based games place the player in highly imbalanced scenarios -- the enemies are more numerous, have better damage output, and have unique abilities -- that can only be overcome by developing superior tactics and exploiting synergies within the party composition. In such a system, the choice between hiring a mercenary and buying gear is a meaningful one. The player must weigh the tactical advantages of an additional party member against the numerical advantages of better equipment.
The hard solo run shows that Dungeon Siege does not offer this meaningful choice. If the same limited set of tactics can work in every scenario, against every enemy, with any number of party members, and if the player's party can grow in size for free, there does not appear to be any motivation to hire mercenaries, even if they have better starting stats than the free companions.
Consider two simple changes to rebalance this system:
- Damage dealt by summoned creatures should not contribute to the caster's XP growth. If the player uses summoning spells continuously, their character level will not grow fast enough to keep up with enemies. Eventually this would reach a point where the player's attacks wouldn't do enough damage to penetrate enemy armor. This ensures that summons are used sparingly for difficult encounters, rather than being exclusively relied upon as a risk-free method of dealing and absorbing damage.
- The enemy AI should be more variable, particularly in response to target acquisition. Upon engaging, enemies should randomly choose between attacking the first visible character, moving past that character to target weaker party members, or simply retreating. The probabilities of these options being chosen could be modified for different enemy types to add flavor and depth. For example, trolls and giants might blindly pursue the first character that draws their attention, while packs of wolves would be more inclined to use hit-and-run tactics.