Dev Log: Style Vs. Functionality

[kranasAngel]

I made a developer log about the contrast between Style(doing things how I feel is cool) and Functionality (What makes the most sense for the player, you can read it here
On my webstie, or right here:

Spoiler

No Shade, it's not that I'm isn't listening, I just can't read your text.Adequate forewarning: since this Development log is a lot more about my inner thoughts, and less about actual design concepts, there won't be many more pictures. Sorry

So a little while ago, I was showing my friends the beta-testers of my game, one of the first scenes in the game. It involved Shade having a conversation with someone else, and after it all happened, I asked them for feedback, this went as follows.

"So yeah, the dialogue was good, I guess, but I couldn't read it."

"You couldn't?"

"Yeah, I mean just for future advice, black text with a blue outline is a stupid idea."

"I DON'T CARE IF YOU CAN'T READ IT, BLACK AND BLUE IS MY FAVORITE COLOR COMBINATION, SO I WON'T CHANGE IT EVEN IF YOU BEG ME TO!"

I don't think any of them denied that black text with a blue outline was a cool idea, just that it didn't work. And that's fair, as I've been changing up this game, I've been questioning my color choices a little more than normal, and trying to get rid of text that I felt was unreadable. Black text with a purple outline, gray text with a white outline. brown text with a slightly different colored brown outline, and yes black text with a blue outline.

Actually, I kept the black text with a blue outline, I still like it, even if no one can read it. This did get me thinking though, to what extent could I put style before functionality. The answer, not much.

The truth is, no matter how "cool" your game looks, it must be playable. To give an example, at one point I was tempted to make it so that after every attack, each individual character would say something unique. This would be a "cool" choice, but eventually, the player would tire of it, especially during random encounters.

Note: Angel Sentai Kranasger is not an actual thing in the game, but on an unrelated side-note, I love Super Sentai, and Kamen rider

Another thing I've been recently debating is the way in which class specific side-quests occur. To give an example of what my original plan was. I'll point to dragonfable. (Fun fact: dragonfable was the first RPG I ever played, and is a game I have come to love, if only through nostalgia, I still play it.)
Guess who has a side quest you can do.

How about here?

In order to get a majority of the quests in Dragonfable, you'll need to talk to a lot of NPCs, this is what I consider a stylish design choice, its functionality is a little limited, but it works in Dragonfable for a couple of reasons.

1. The environments aren't cluttered, there are usually not may NPC's on screen, and the way they are laid out makes it easy to tell who's important to the story, and who isn't
2. There's no main story. Actually there is, but you don't need to do it in order, you can get the fire orb before you get the wind orb, even though the wind orb comes first chronologically, some of the dialogue won't make sense, but that's minimal. You can even skip books 1 and 2 and go straight to book 3, no repercussions
3. Content is released in a steady stream, and not all at once, players won't get overwhelmed as easily. Sure, by now there has been a lot of content, but it's still relatively easy to get into
4. It's a web RPG, and so people will look at guides, perspective players, such as myself will rarely just dive in headfirst without looking up what's going on. The player doesn't have to discover everything themselves, and there are many npcs which tell you exactly what's going on everywhere, along with a travel map. But all of that is besides the point, there is a strong forums section which people look at frequently while playing the game. After all, since this is a web rpg, which updates periodically, you're bound to find yourself mulling over the forums at one point or another. Dragonfable also has a good design notes section which encompasses all of the updates.

In summary dragonfable's style of questing works in dragonfable because of the aforementioned factors. Now let's compare it to 暗国の物語(A tale of a dark land).

How about here? Which NPC do you think offers a side-quest chain that is probably going to be more memorable than the main game?

Admittedly, there aren't many NPCs so it isn't that big of a deal, but let's go through the aforementioned four factors and see if we can match them.

The Environment is cluttered: Admittedly, this is a small map, but when it comes to bigger maps, especially cities, the environments will be chock-full of more and more NPCs meaning that finding relevant NPCs has just become harder
There's a main story: You can't just do side-quests in a random order anymore. Well you can, but the player likely won't, the extension of this is that unless forced to revisit an old area (Which I don't plan to make a thing) any uncompleted side-quests will stay that way. Once Side-quests stop being the main priority, people do them less often
Content is released all at once: The players will be left to parse all of the side-quests in an area at once, and finding out what content is there will be hard for new people, especially before someone makes a dedicated wiki.
People probably won't check out guides: many players will stick to focusing on completing the main story, and out right ignore side-quests as it is not openly a goal of the game.
So as you can see, just randomly adopting mechanics from other games doesn't really work. Now, I've managed to find solutions to all of these problems. (Problem 4 is unsolvable, people don't look at game guides too much. Problem 3 like wise is unchangeable, sure you could try and emphasize the side-quests but it wouldn't help that much, Problem 2 isn't that big of a deal, but adding in quick travel fixes the lack of revisiting problem, and Problem 1 i. e. getting players to notice specific NPCs in a crowded environment is a problem I think I've solved, but it deserves its own dev log.)

Regardless, the style vs function concept is something I'd like to dive further into another time.

Thanks for reading, kranasAngel クラナスエインジェル

If you have any thoughts on the concept of style vs function please post your thoughts bellow, or email me at kranasangel@gmail.com

Regardless of how you read it, I'd like to know your opinion on the concept of Style vs. Function, which should be given more focus, and when? When can you compromise on something. I'd really like to know what you think.

 

[Kes]

Actually, I kept the black text with a blue outline, I still like it, even if no one can read it. 

If no one can read it, then why bother having it?  It will fail to serve any useful function.  If you want it to have a function, then you have to make it readable, otherwise you are defeating your own ends.

You are wrong about guides.  Going by my sales, it looks like about 50% of buyers also buy the guide.  Those that don't, go to the web site and ask "where is secret room #14?", "how do I get past x?"

Function always has to come first.  If your game is not playable, it can be as stylish as you like, no one will take any notice of it.  Where I think you are wrong is to suggest (implicitly, not explicitly) that function and style are mutually exclusive.  The mark of a good developer is to find a stylish way of being functional.  Take, for example, that last map of what looks like it's supposed to be a bar.  It may be highly functional, but it is still an appallingly badly designed map.  Boring as hell, with what looks like irrelevant clutter behind the bar (can't be sure as the image is very blurry).  It would not have taken a lot of imagination to come up with a much better map which was still functional.

 

[kranasAngel]

You bring up many points which I hadn't considered.

First, the text isn't unreadable, just a little harder to read than normal. I mentioned that for comedic effect.

Also though, you make a good point about style and functionality not being mutually exclusive. Admittedly I'm still a new game developer, so that was just my naive thinking.

All in all thanks for responding