Creating an "Affinity" System (Friendship/Area Building)

[Hero_Claive]

Seeing as my last thread ended in fervent discussion, to say in the least, I figured it's time for Round 2 - this time, with a more open-ended topic.

Once again I'm going to stan Xenoblade Chronicles as it has possibly one of my favorite worldbuilding gameplay components: The Affinity Grid. The functions of this are twofold: One grid shows the "affinity," or level of friendship, between each pair of party members. Affinity between two members goes up when you complete battles together, complete quests together, and execute various actions during battle (healing them, helping them up, etc. etc). The higher the friendship level between characters, the better they become when paired in battle - they can also exchange skills between their own skill trees based on the level of their friendship.

The other grid shows each "major NPC" (NPCs that have names essentially) that you've met within their respective areas. This community grid also displays the relationships/sentiments that some NPCs feel between each other which can change based on how you complete quests. Each area is ranked on a 5-star basis: This rating is based on how many quests you've completed and the relationships you've created between the NPCs via talking/quests - the happier they are, the more stars you get. Higher stars = better quests = better rewards, so there is clear incentive to pay attention to these characters.

Personally, I find both grids to be extremely effective in their endeavors. The friendship grid gives you a slight rewarding feeling about choosing a favorite party and sticking with it, and rewards putting time/effort into your favorite characters. Friendship also unlocks special scenes called "Heart-to-Hearts" which develop many subtle traits of each party member that you wouldn't get through the main story. Overall, it's a genius way to make the player feel engaged with gameplay while also learning about the characters they're using. The community grid meanwhile is similar, where "character building" is replaced with "world building." It's another interesting system that provides a visual, palpable way to see the fruits of your time spent in each community.

Onto the main topic, what are your thoughts on implementing something similar in an RPGM game? It's a very low-demand system that would probably be time-consuming to make (the scenes, not the eventing/variable keeping) but easy to integrate. Branches could be called at the end of each battle to record which skills were used and by which characters, which could then be visually represented in a custom scene. Players, as we know, love ease of access to information, and would benefit from seeing a visual of their characters' growth. It may over-incentivise using the same party, but honestly most of us do that anyways - might as well let them reap the rewards of doing so. But it may also get players involved in your quests who would normally not be drawn to such a system - that certainly is how it worked for me in XC.

Obviously I'm trying to differentiate my system from a direct knock off. I'm leaning towards a holistic "score" for each area which is impacted by NPCs, but also how many locations you've found within the area, monsters slain, and collectables found. The idea is to make the player experience each area to the fullest rather than jaunt through it like any other linear locale. I'm probably not going to do an affinity system between characters, but I'd like to create a currency of "personality points" which can be distributed in certain skill trees. That may be a headache to implement though, so these are really just ideas off the top of my head.

So I'm not really looking for feedback on any specific system, but rather the overall concept of "building affinity" and visualizing/rewarding it for the player. Could it be a chore for the player? Does it detract from anything else in the game? Honestly, I haven't really considered the downsides. But no doubt someone here will find some, so I'm all ears to every opinion.

 

[kirbwarrior]

but rather the overall concept of "building affinity" and visualizing/rewarding it for the player

Aside from everything else, actually being able to visual and know that it is happening is incredibly important. I understand why, especially in older games, that this doesn't happen, but more often than not, letting your players realizing that this stuff is happening gives them power to actually play with it. I think the dating system of FF7 is great, but the game really doesn't seem to want you to know it's even happening and to fully see it, I had to go online to unlock a certain date (Ironically, it wasn't the one that's hardest to get).
It actually ties into a different discussion I've had often with people; Moral systems in games, no matter how deep, are often very rigid, and especially often binary (good/bad, light/dark, etc). But, you can incorporate a more breathing, life-like moral system into games by instead showing it through allies and npcs. Doing certain actions doesn't make you good or evil on some cosmic scale, but it does make people like you more or less and might be because of their personal morals. It works out especially nicely when affinity can go bad or negative and you can make people, including allies, become enemies by breaking what is to them core ethics. Imagine; There's a quest in the game that involves you helping out the less fortunate. In the end, you get an option to donate money and help a charity make the world better. However, the mercenary in the group clearly shows disdain at the idea of this throughout the mission. Even taking it in the first place decreases affinity. In the end, you (say) choose to donate all your money. Not only is this an affront to the "money rules the world" mentality of the merc, but it's also your way of wordlessly saying "I'm not paying you to work with me anymore". Merc now sees you as this powerful, naive idiot who is now the enemy (Note this is simplistic. There could be set ups to also change allies' moralities, you could slowly show the merc that money isn't how the world runs and then doing this act is then acceptance of that new viewpoint, but that's rough on development for allies to have multiple ways morality can shift).

As for direct mechanical effects, I like it. I've seen some games do things like have healing between high affinity units be stronger (in one, max affinity is 100% better healing), I've seen it "determine" luck, and of course dual tech/combined skills are a great reward. Plus, Romancing Walker has a beautiful way that rewards you for playing along with affinity, especially with increasing it with all members (it's a bit of a spoiler, but it does basically give you more choices in how the final dungeon happens).

I definitely love the idea of affinity systems. Even the extremely simple "Happiness Crystals" in Skyward Sword made the game significantly better in my mind, which basically is a way for the game to reward you for helping people out without needing those people to necessarily gift you the rewards directly.

but honestly most of us do that anyways

As a player, I generally try to switch up my party and who I use just to get to know the game better, at least on the first few playthroughs. Later on I might intentionally focus on certain parties (for instance, in Chrono Trigger I generally switch around to who I want to use in a specific dungeon, but one playthrough I really liked and wanted to learn more about Lucca so I used her at every possible point). If there was an affinity system built for making me want to use any two characters together, I'd likely try to get that up with everyone on my first playthrough, but then that's because I shoot for 100% in first playthroughs to see as much of the game as I can.

 

[Eschaton]

I will invoke two games for this discussion. First, is Dragon Age Origins.

In that game, NPC affinity will unlock stat bonuses and sex scenes. And if you know how to game the dialogue trees, you can have these stat bonuses and sex scenes very early in the game. You don't even have to fight anything. Just talk to your NPCs.

The next game I will invoke is Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee. In that game, you gain affinity from both in-battle mechanics and rubbing your Eevee's head every other battle. Affinity will increase the power of your already-broken Eevee, but at least doing the core gameplay is generally the best way to increase affinity.

The point I'm trying to make is that basing efficacy in battle on interacting with NPCs outside of battle could be problematic from a design standpoint.

I'd suggest that affinity just affect content rather than battle capability. Content such as extra missions. At least in extra missions you still have to go through core gameplay mechanics to earn things like EXP and loot.

 

[Hero_Claive]

I will invoke two games for this discussion. First, is Dragon Age Origins.

In that game, NPC affinity will unlock stat bonuses and sex scenes. And if you know how to game the dialogue trees, you can have these stat bonuses and sex scenes very early in the game. You don't even have to fight anything. Just talk to your NPCs.

The next game I will invoke is Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee. In that game, you gain affinity from both in-battle mechanics and rubbing your Eevee's head every other battle. Affinity will increase the power of your already-broken Eevee, but at least doing the core gameplay is generally the best way to increase affinity.

The point I'm trying to make is that basing efficacy in battle on interacting with NPCs outside of battle could be problematic from a design standpoint.

I'd suggest that affinity just affect content rather than battle capability. Content such as extra missions. At least in extra missions you still have to go through core gameplay mechanics to earn things like EXP and loot.

Your last point is a good one (though I don't think Pokemon LGPE's Friendship is a great example of what I'm talking about), but I think you'd be betting that your stories and areas are engaging enough that players will want to develop it simply by merit of unlocking "content" - more scenes, NPC interactions, stuff like that. The players who play RPGs for the battle gameplay and stats/class/equipment tinkering likely won't give a damn about area development which has no impact on their characters' development. To water it down even more - I would never waste time completing quests that only gave out gold and a few NPC interactions, no matter how intriguing the area is.

I don't think area affinity should be a chore that forces players to participate in quests to make their party viable, but rather offer an incentive to players who normally wouldn't be swayed towards quests/extracurricular NPC development. If the quests and NPCs are well-written, then they may be mildly surprised and convinced to do more quests; if not, they get rewards for the quests, "personality points" (which, to clarify, are mostly received from battles), and a bit better lay of the land from the dialogue.

I'd suggest that affinity just affect content rather than battle capability. Content such as extra missions. At least in extra missions you still have to go through core gameplay mechanics to earn things like EXP and loot.

Quests leading to more quests is a good core function to have, but I've found it to be a little tedious at times. I'd rather it be a communal thing. Maybe someone noticed you helped out someone else and has their own questline for you? Or now that you know someone better, another NPC wants you to deliver them something? Basic examples, but you get the point. The recent Xenoblade 2 DLC did exactly this (since most quests took place in one large city) where all of your interactions with the NPCs there were based on your current clout with the community. It meshed well with the story since the protagonist was a budding knight doing her communal "due diligence." Just food for thought on how other games have done quests/areas well, I guess.