What makes an RPG good?

[kyoryu]

I think here the difference between "complexity" and "depth" might be useful. At least, the way that game design distinguishes between the two. I'm oversimplifying greatly, but complexity is basically the amount of rules there are, and depth is something like the diversity of the options given to the player.

So, as an example, compare Rock Paper Scissors

Here's how I relate the two.

In game theory, there's a concept called a "dominated strategy". That's a choice you can make where, no matter what your opponent does, a single other choice is better. I stretch that slightly to "as good, or better".

So, let's look at RPS. In RPS, there's a Nash Equilibrium (which is NOT the same as an optimal strategy, but for our purposes is close enough) of "play r, p, and s randomly and equally". That's because rock beats scissors but loses to paper, etc. etc. We know RPS.

There is no dominant strategy in RPS. We could lock at rock vs scissors and say "a-ha! Rock is dominant becuase it does better than paper or scissors!" but that's not true because it needs to do better no matter what the opponent does. If the opponent picked paper instead, rock would lose. RPS has no dominant strategies.

Let's add The Bomb. The bomb is just a fist with your thumb sticking out. The bomb blows up paper and rocks, gets its wick cut by scissors, and ties against itself.

So... what does this do to RPS?

Well, we can do a lot of math and diagrams and stuff, but the answer is pretty simple - it replaces paper. In every case where you might play paper, the bomb will do at least as well, and does better in some cases. So once we know that paper is dominated, we can basically just forget about it..... and once we do, we have RBS.

Once you remove paper, RBS is exactly the same as RBPS. And RBS is exactly the same as RPS.

So, here's the thing, RBPS has more complexity - there's more options to consider. But once you do the math and figure it out, the actual choices have the same count as RPS, so it doesn't have any more depth.

Some people like navigating that and determining the optimal choices, and good for them! Some don't care, and would rather have the final available strategies be obvious so you can play the game on that level, and that's great too.

TLDR: the general audience likes depth, and complexity is an easy, reliable way to get depth. There are other options though. There are also people who like complexity in and of itself.

The interesting thing is that complexity can actually reduce depth. It's fairly common, actually Let's say a game has ten classes, and then they change the game to some kind of point buy system.... if the resulting point buy system has less than ten actually viable builds, then you've reduced depth (the number of valid choices) while increasing complexity (the knowledge needed to figure out the valid choices). (By "valid" here I mean "a choice that is, in some way, better than another choice in some ways"). As combinatorial complexity increases, this becomes more and more likely.