Comments: On , as well as here on the blog, a few questions have arisen, regarding the “Bind item on equip” option displayed in the Item Editor. It is an option that is highly unusual for a single-player game, and some of you are wondering what’s up with that.
“Bind on Equip” has been brought to the table by massively-multiplayer online games in order to prevent players from using and then selling valuable and unique items to other players. It forces the player to consider—if only for a moment—if he’d rather use the item or make money off it.
In retrospect, I find it strange that this feature has never come up in single-player games before, because at its core, the rationale remains the same. Perhaps we have all just been too blindsided to realize its existent potential. After all, they are not uncommon in mythical lore and popular fiction. James Bond has a gun that is attuned to him, and so does Judge Dredd, and even the magic wands in Harry Potter work that way. Excalibur, the mythical sword from the Arthurian saga or Ulysses’ bow are also perfect examples of bound or attuned weapons, so it is only sensible to carry the concept over into games.
When we bind items in Deathfire, it will be mostly for the same purpose. While buying and selling items in the game may not be the driving factor for item binding in our game, other aspects of it are. In Deathfire’s game design I want to use it to force the player to think about certain decisions. In this case, which party member should I give the item to?
If you give it to the wrong character, you’re robbing yourself of another character’s opportunity to make better use of it, perhaps, because the item can no longer be traded among party members. If you give it to an NPC, he or she might run away with it at some point. More importantly, it prevents that you take a truly powerful, unique weapon from an NPC who just joined the party to give it to your favorite character and then boot out the NPC. If you equip it, you’re no longer able to sell it or barter it away. What if the item is unique and part of a quest, and in the end you learn that only a certain character can use it, all the while you already bound it to someone else? On the other hand, the binding weapon you just found might be so powerful that the lure of it is simply so strong that you throw all caution in the wind and equip it anyhow, against your better judgement, because you hope it will help you overcome that mob of Golem Guardians awaiting you.
Decisions, decision, decisions… the lifeblood of a good role-playing game.
These are aspects the player has to consider, and like a cursed item—which is bound, though it does not come with the warning label of a bind-on-equip item—it can have consequences to equip such a weapon or piece of armor. It is that decision-making that I think has an interesting value, because it adds depth to the role-playing aspects of Deathfire. Giving away this additional layer of complexity and player involvement, simply because using bound items in single-player games seems unorthodox, would seem silly to me, now that it’s on my radar. Who knows, this may even turn out to be a feature other games will pick up as well… and why not?
There’s a lot of rationalization here for Bind-On-Equip making it sound like it’s the best thing since sliced bread, but I would urge you to reconsider and look for an alternative (to whatever design issue you think it fixes).
In MMOs, item binding came about directly due to design flaws in world economies. E.g. the devs were like, “Ah crap, we’ve been handing out Swords of Ultimate Destruction like Halloween candy and now we have a bajillion of them in the world and everybody is selling them and getting rich. What are we supposed to do now?!” In other words, item binding was a response after the damage had already been done. (Or other MMO devs realized that their game’s design was similarly weak and copied it.)
But from a player point-of-view (i.e. the people you should be trying to please) item binding is annoying and just not fun. No player has ever been stoked with item binding; players aren’t like “Hey, RPG X has item binding! WOOT! I gotta play that!”.
Finally, I see sentences like “It forces the player to consider. . .” and immediately get a bad vibe. I hope you’re making a game where players can play how they would like to play, not forced to play how you want them to play. I mean, if I want to bogart the uber-weapon from a NPC (that I’m completely not invested in), and give it to a PC (that I am invested in already), why does that matter to you, the game developer? It shouldn’t matter.
All that said, best of luck completing your RPG! It looks nice so far and I’m looking forward to seeing more.