How Do You Not Have Cookie Cutter Builds?

learis1 · May 2018

How is it possible to ever avoid cookie cutter builds? In a mathematical sense, you have 'x' out of 'y' total options to customize your character. Of those, there will most likely be one or a very small number of builds that are the best, and thus the cookie cutters.

Games like WoW had cookie cutter builds with their original talent trees. Their newer talent system destroyed most of the creativity and still had complete cookie cutterness. At best, there were different builds for different dungeon situations, but basically zero creativity whatsoever.

What are some games that have handled the cookie cutter dilemma well? What are your ideas? What would it even mean for there to be no cookie cutter builds or at least to "mask" the cookie cutter feel?

Octagon7711 · May 2018

Can't be avoided. Too successful builds get rewarded with a nerf. Most Devs end up making constant changes to stats to keep players changing their builds. Only way to stop cookie cutter builds is have every class exactly the same but the skills have different names. Or, just have op classes for easy play (and less rewards) and less op builds in which skill makes a difference.

cochs · May 2018

For any problem there is an optimal solution. It's not really difficult to force variety into that equation. For instance you could procedurally generate tons of content with unique mobs and mechanics. You could create systems so complex that finding the optimal solution takes a long time. You could randomize pretty much any part of the equation to introduce tons of variety.

But creating content that has the right mix of everything, that is still fun, and stays ahead of the ability of players to consume it, takes a lot of manual effort.

The problem is well understood by designers and developers. And some potential solutions are actually known it's a matter of nobody has created the tools yet. And some we just flat don't have good answers for.

Wizardry · May 2018

FFXI was never a cookie cutter design and still to this day barely any developer has come close to matching the character customization.

Renkai system unique,tactical points were unique,multi language servers were and still are unique,many content ideas still unique including my favorite of all time "Besieged".Chain killing bonuses,sub classes,zero hand holding which even still today is very unique and keeps the world looking plausible/realistic instead of seeing arrows and lines and ! ? flashing all over.

If you see cookie cutter it is because these are bad developers with no clue how to be creative or even think for themselves.
Then when the remote opportunity comes along to see a unique idea it is often NOT within the context of the game design and likely just ruins immersion and the integrity of the game,so again bad developers.

Then since FFXI was designed for the paltry PS2,when i see new games that don't come close to the depth and creativity of FFXI i label those games as utter trash because devs should look at good ideas and improve upon them and quit making mmropg's worse.

Triddle · May 2018

One way to avoid cookie cutter builds is to do away with the 'blank slate' character paradigm altogether. In most games any player is able to reproduce the build of any other player by making the right choices throughout the game. This doesn't have to be the case, there could be a random element to character development - for example characters could start the game at a random point in a skill network (think something along the lines of PoE's system but with random starts).

Of course, you lose some of the niceties of the blank slate approach - fairness being a major concern. Nonetheless, consider for example fantasy game with magic. Perhaps when a player creates their character, behind the scenes the character's aptitude for different magics is randomized. You may not know that your character has a knack for pyromancy until you try it out, or you may find that your character is totally inept at magic, and no matter how hard you might try he will never succeed as a mage. Perhaps you have vampirism in the game, requiring a player to be, say, bitten by an NPC or player vampire character. Well, 1% of player characters will under these circumstances become player vampires, while the remaining 99% are just diseased.

There's plenty of room to avoid cookie cutter player builds in this way, and it's far from impossible to achieve, it's just not something developers choose to do, for whatever reasons.

Edit - typo

Eldurian · May 2018

Predictability grants the ability to min-max an ideal build.

Unpredictability destroys that ability.

If you know coming into a dungeon, it's layout, what enemies there will be, what their weaknesses are etc. then you will know the ideal party comp coming into that dungeon. From another thread:

Eldurian said:

The answer to that is counters. For PVE this is a bit more complex (I'll get to that in a second) for PVP this is simple. We'll go back to the example given. Two fireballs. One deals 50 direct damage to every target in it's area. One sets them on fire dealing 75 damage over the following five seconds. Otherwise the same in every single regard.

Now there are two other abilities in the game which can be swapped in and out of builds.

ABILITY 1 (Shield of Faith): Incoming magic damage is reduced by 33% on the target for 10 seconds. This has no effect on DOTs.

ABILITY 2 (Dispel Curse): Ongoing negative magical effects on the target are removed. Including DOTs

Now lets say this a game where you are allowed to pick out a limited number of skills that you can have slotted at once. Lets also say that the first two abilities turn out to not be balanced. DOT pyromancers are found to be stronger than direct damage ones and a lot of people start playing the DOT version.

As a healer, I'm going to slot Dispel Curse the minute a bunch of DOT pyromancers start showing up. Any intelligent healer will do the same. Once cure affliction becomes commonplace enough in enough builds, and people stop running Shield of Faith as much because so many mages are DOT based, the direct damage pyromancer actually becomes a stronger build and the DOT one weaker. Not because it actually is, but because it's what is and anticipated so more counter-builds exist.

_____________________

Now back to the PVE context. This is an issue with predictability. For instance the "Goblin Warlord" dungeon is known to contain 30 goblin warriors, 15 worgs, 10 goblins shamans, and the goblin warlord. They all have static strengths, weaknesses, and predictable abilities. So there is an ideal party for that dungeon and through enough analysis you can find what builds are optimal.

Now suppose instead of the "Goblin Warlord" dungeon you'll be facing the "Mysterious Cave" Before starting the dungeon you aren't really sure what enemies there are inside because the challenges found within are randomly generated each time the dungeon is entered. Could be goblins, could be skeletons, could be corrupted wolves and bears. You don't know.

Now lets take it a step further. Imagine rather than all goblins having cloned stats, they vary a bit based on RNG. Some goblin shamans may have Dispel Curse. Some may have Shield of Faith.

Now lets take it a step even further. Imagine if the goblin abilities were not completely RNG but that they were based on analytics of user data, and builds that are currently very popular will more frequently find their abilities countered by NPCs than builds that are less popular.

_____________________

Unpredictability is the greatest guardian of balance. MMOs are unbalanced simply because they are so predictable. Bringing back unpredictability not only makes things more balanced. It reintroduces a sense of mystery into the game world.

Eldurian · May 2018

To clarify my last post. Just because the environment is unpredictable or perhaps even counters overplayed builds using user data analytics as I suggested does not mean there will be a complete and total death of cookie cutter builds.

People are going to pick out a number of very versatile builds with really good synergies and other people who are not as good at build creation may wisely decide to go with those builds.

I will say this however.

Not in the entirety of my gaming career have I ever copied a build from someone else 100% without customizing it to my own playstyles and preferences. Generally I borrow general ideas and concepts from others (Like building around a very strong synergy I saw someone else use) then do a custom build from scratch. Or just start with a concept I came up with myself and then refine it over time.

That's always done perfectly well for me in PvP and fine in more casual PvE groups. It's not until you get into hardcore groups catered around a specific predictable content you get told you don't get in unless you run their prefab build.

Sephiroso · May 2018

Wizardry said:

FFXI was never a cookie cutter design and still to this day barely any developer has come close to matching the character customization.

Renkai system unique,tactical points were unique,multi language servers were and still are unique,many content ideas still unique including my favorite of all time "Besieged".Chain killing bonuses,sub classes,zero hand holding which even still today is very unique and keeps the world looking plausible/realistic instead of seeing arrows and lines and ! ? flashing all over.

If you see cookie cutter it is because these are bad developers with no clue how to be creative or even think for themselves.
Then when the remote opportunity comes along to see a unique idea it is often NOT within the context of the game design and likely just ruins immersion and the integrity of the game,so again bad developers.

Then since FFXI was designed for the paltry PS2,when i see new games that don't come close to the depth and creativity of FFXI i label those games as utter trash because devs should look at good ideas and improve upon them and quit making mmropg's worse.

Bullfucking shit. FFXI absolutely had cookie cutter builds if you wanted to minmax. If you say otherwise you're just being willfully ignorant. It's a simple fact, given enough time there simply will be a set of skill combos used that will yield higher/optimal results compared to others.

There absolutely were people who would not invite you to their group for instance unless you had skills that they could pull off specific skill chains(i forget what they were called in FFXI) with. That's just one example of "cookie cutter design" that was inside of FFXI. Another was you needing specific skills to make certain class combo's work best.

sunandshadow · May 2018

I don't think variety of builds is inherently valuable. But what is valuable, is the ability of players to have a build that fits their imagination, empowers their roleplaying, and is functional/approximately as good as other builds. So my approach would be to ask a lot of playtesters what their dream build would be, and then see if we can modularize the abilities that make up those builds so every player can freely choose several modular abilities and the resulting builds will all be more or less balanced.

Sephiroso · May 2018

DMKano said:

As long as the game design is centered around ability trees - you will have this problem.

Think about games that have no skill trees whatsoever - like Minecraft for example - you have to completely rethink base gameplay and move beyond "skills and abilities"

This is true, but honestly even in your Minecraft example there's technically still "best" ways to go about gathering certain things. Not as clearcut as a build in mmorpgs of course but yea.

Eldurian · May 2018

sunandshadow said:

I don't think variety of builds is inherently valuable. But what is valuable, is the ability of players to have a build that fits their imagination, empowers their roleplaying, and is functional/approximately as good as other builds. So my approach would be to ask a lot of playtesters what their dream build would be, and then see if we can modularize the abilities that make up those builds so every player can freely choose several modular abilities and the resulting builds will all be more or less balanced.

I can agree that the most important aspect of build customization is being able to take the character idea you want to roleplay in your head and realizing in-game.

But to me a very high degree of character customization is almost essential for my enjoyment of an RPG. I like to have those little quirks and nuances that set my character apart. I don't want to just realize the general idea of a build. I want to realize it down to it's intricacies.

But I also just love doing the unexpected. I love running that custom build in a game full of people who took the cookie cutter route because what I do catches people off guard.

Thats why I flat out refuse to play MMOs like SWTOR and WoW that remove skilltrees without replacing it with some equally detailed option for customization. I don't pay 15$ a month to be treated like a child who can't think for themselves.

Phry · May 2018

Its kind of inevitable, players tend to research the various build options, particularly if you want the 'strongest' possible character for PVP orientated games, in that sense ESO and BDO have a lot in common, but they are not the only games by far that have a min/max kind of option, you can build your 'class' in terms of how you like to play, or you select the options that give the class the strongest combination of skills/abilities for PVP, which is why the players who are heavily into PVP tend to have very similar characters.

Iselin · May 2018

DMKano said:

t0nyd said:

The problem is the oversimplification of abilities. In damn near every game you can take any random player of any class and their spells are nearly identical to any other player of that class.

Yep - and IMO the real problem is the lack of negatives/downsides - at some point online games just abandoned the concept of "with every positive there comes a negative as well"

- like heavy armor provides high AC - but it slows your movement and attack speed.

Or high resistance to cold - but low resistance to fire

etc.. etc...

This way you always have a sense of choice that matters - the higher you boost yourself in one thing - the more you will weaken yourself in another thing.

There should always be a balance of pros and cons.

This idea of just maxing everything out - without any downsides - it's just dumb.

Even with that kind of system players will still figure out which combinations of armor, weapons and skills is better than other combinations. The only thing those negatives would do is add some complexity but not enough to stop it - there would still be a best and players would figure it out. It's all just numbers and people will crunch them and come up with that best. The OP had it right with his first paragraph.

The only way to have no best choice is to have no choice... fun, eh?

Cryomatrix · May 2018

I think min/max is the natural progression of any system with numerous variables and known outcomes.

Also, you can not do cookie cutter builds like I make up my own Poe builds and they like all suck mega balls. But it is what keeps me playing.

Sephiroso · May 2018

Cryomatrix said:

I think min/max is the natural progression of any system with numerous variables and known outcomes.

Also, you can not do cookie cutter builds like I make up my own Poe builds and they like all suck mega balls. But it is what keeps me playing.

Definitely agree with you but i feel like when it comes to mmorpgs you can't always do your own thing. Like if you got a chill group of people to play with, sure. But as an example, if you're playing an Ice Mage in FFXIV, you're just gonna get kicked from any party play.

anemo · May 2018

By rewarding donkey and cheese play spaces.

Fighting games, MTG, and Iron Realms games have enough of a counter and counter-counter system that if you only play optimally... You'll end up with your every action and move going against its counter action, or at least an action that puts your enemy more ahead.

This means that in general for equally skilled players to have playable game space, they need to spend a little bit of time in less playable game space.

____

While it doesn't cause wildly divergent builds and strategies. It does cause small dips into variance.

Thane · May 2018

learis1 said:

How is it possible to ever avoid cookie cutter builds? In a mathematical sense, you have 'x' out of 'y' total options to customize your character. Of those, there will most likely be one or a very small number of builds that are the best, and thus the cookie cutters.

Games like WoW had cookie cutter builds with their original talent trees. Their newer talent system destroyed most of the creativity and still had complete cookie cutterness. At best, there were different builds for different dungeon situations, but basically zero creativity whatsoever.

What are some games that have handled the cookie cutter dilemma well? What are your ideas? What would it even mean for there to be no cookie cutter builds or at least to "mask" the cookie cutter feel?

i am no fan of cookie cutter builds. they won't help if the player sucks or if he/she can't get sued to that particular build.

also, if you run cookie cutters, you are again and again respeccing, some games even everey month so you can fit in to that precious fotm.

i payed my games, i play my games. as simple.

and for the record, in about 12 years mmos, i never regretted my combat build on the rogue, and i think he was fotm for max one time

and i will still be of more use than most cookie cutter builds

TEKK3N · May 2018

Before the Talents Tree were introduced, every Class had one build...the most efficient and effective for your role.
But people wanted more freedom, so they introduced Talent Trees.

Problem is, Talent Trees just give you the impression of having a choice, but in the end people will end up with the best configuration because most options are just fillers...fluff.
If you play an Healer Class you'll end up with the Healer Build picking the best Healer traits.
If you play a Tank Class you'll end up with the Tank build picking the best Defensive traits.
That's if you are serious about your gaming and you don't want just to mock about.

It's call efficiency, people tend to go for the most efficient and effective choices in life, not just in gaming.
Of course you gonna end up with a cookie cutter build, because there is only one build (maybe 2) that is ideal for your chosen role.
The only challenge is how long will it takes for you to figure it out.

Shaigh · May 2018

The solution to step away from cookie cutter builds is to make a game that doesn't center around combat, checks, dice rolls and level progression, meaning a proper sandbox.

Themeparks just like its predecessor diku-mud and the combat driven D&D games will always run into the cookie cutter issues.

btdt · May 2018

Cookie cutter builds only apply to end game. You can pretty much use any build whilst playing that 90% of the game that most people feel is just fodder before that last 10%. You know this because it's not until you reach end game that you actually care about gear, roles, and builds. Up until that point, if you saw yourself as a tank, you still got to play field medic on yourself and play DPS because that is the only way things die... not out of frustration of not getting killed in a timely manner.

You chose talents that were fun or what you thought made the process of questing more enjoyable. These sort of talents were horrible for end game but then the talents for end game were horrible for questing. Different tools for different tasks.

Then came end game. All of a sudden if you weren't operating at peak efficiency, some how you were a moron. There was this guide that told you what the absolute class was, the absolute best build, the absolute best gear, and the absolute best rotation. That if you performed like a spreadsheet, you would attain absolute perfection. In other words, you sought out to be a clone. Hence the term cookie cutter. You literally cloned someone else.

You didn't have this mindset as a level 1 fumbling your way around... in your first MMO. Your second or third time around was different because now you always were thinking about end game and ignored pretty much everything that lead up to it. It's that spreadsheet mentality taking over... what people like to call locust mentality... choosing the fastest efficient way to the end.

The game never forced you to play a certain way. You chose to be a clone. You were impatient. you didn't want to see how many licks it took to get to the center of a tootsie role pop. You wanted to be in the "in" crowd. You wanted to be a spreadsheet and a spreadsheet you became.

Sephiroso · May 2018

btdt said:

Cookie cutter builds only apply to end game. You can pretty much use any build whilst playing that 90% of the game that most people feel is just fodder before that last 10%. You know this because it's not until you reach end game that you actually care about gear, roles, and builds. Up until that point, if you saw yourself as a tank, you still got to play field medic on yourself and play DPS because that is the only way things die... not out of frustration of not getting killed in a timely manner.

You chose talents that were fun or what you thought made the process of questing more enjoyable. These sort of talents were horrible for end game but then the talents for end game were horrible for questing. Different tools for different tasks.

Then came end game. All of a sudden if you weren't operating at peak efficiency, some how you were a moron. There was this guide that told you what the absolute class was, the absolute best build, the absolute best gear, and the absolute best rotation. That if you performed like a spreadsheet, you would attain absolute perfection. In other words, you sought out to be a clone. Hence the term cookie cutter. You literally cloned someone else.

You didn't have this mindset as a level 1 fumbling your way around... in your first MMO. Your second or third time around was different because now you always were thinking about end game and ignored pretty much everything that lead up to it. It's that spreadsheet mentality taking over... what people like to call locust mentality... choosing the fastest efficient way to the end.

The game never forced you to play a certain way. You chose to be a clone. You were impatient. you didn't want to see how many licks it took to get to the center of a tootsie role pop. You wanted to be in the "in" crowd. You wanted to be a spreadsheet and a spreadsheet you became.

This didn't magically happen. People were already like this.

Everyone wants to be the very best, that no one ever was. To beat everyone else is their real test, and to train is their cause. People travel across the lands searching far and wide, teaching noobs to understand the power that's inside.

Every raid along the way, with courage they will face. They will battle every day to claim their rightful place at the top of the charts.

aliven · May 2018

Xodic said:

D&D (I don't know about the MMO) didn't have these problems. Mostly because while building your character you had to consider that there was a whole world out there, not just combat. Every stat had an impact for every class, both in and out of combat. You could make a fighter that's strong like bull, and dumb like rock - he would fill your damage meter up so you could brag about your deeps, but he would be slaughtered in save vs rolls. That fighter also wouldn't be able to interact with anything in the world due to being too damn dumb to talk, spot a secret door, gather clues, or even breathe without drooling.

Too much 'innovation' I guess. MMORPGs have gone so far out in left field they're not even in the damn stadium anymore.

As a long time pen and paper RPG player, especially DnD since 2nd edition

BUAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Iselin · May 2018

DMKano said:

Iselin said:

DMKano said:

t0nyd said:

The problem is the oversimplification of abilities. In damn near every game you can take any random player of any class and their spells are nearly identical to any other player of that class.

Yep - and IMO the real problem is the lack of negatives/downsides - at some point online games just abandoned the concept of "with every positive there comes a negative as well"

- like heavy armor provides high AC - but it slows your movement and attack speed.

Or high resistance to cold - but low resistance to fire

etc.. etc...

This way you always have a sense of choice that matters - the higher you boost yourself in one thing - the more you will weaken yourself in another thing.

There should always be a balance of pros and cons.

This idea of just maxing everything out - without any downsides - it's just dumb.

Even with that kind of system players will still figure out which combinations of armor, weapons and skills is better than other combinations. The only thing those negatives would do is add some complexity but not enough to stop it - there would still be a best and players would figure it out. It's all just numbers and people will crunch them and come up with that best. The OP had it right with his first paragraph.

The only way to have no best choice is to have no choice... fun, eh?

Oh yes there would be more desirable combinations - but no matter what you chose - youd have to accout for the negatives.

Right now the games have no negative consequences for any choice - thus making progression brainded, as you just keep replacing gear with higher bonuses.

There should always be pros and cons for every choice.

Oh I don't disagree with the concept of negative consequences but that's a topic separate from the existence of what what most players call derisively "cookie cutter builds." You're really talking about build depth and that's always a good thing.

All that "cookie cutter" means to me is that someone has figured out a combination of things for a game that works better than other combinations and that it was publicized and many followers adopted it.

And I'm not so sure that there currently are no negative consequences. The term "glass cannon" that applies to ultra potent DPS cookie cutter builds has the downside right in the name

Sephiroso · May 2018

Iselin said:

DMKano said:

Iselin said:

DMKano said:

t0nyd said:

The problem is the oversimplification of abilities. In damn near every game you can take any random player of any class and their spells are nearly identical to any other player of that class.

Yep - and IMO the real problem is the lack of negatives/downsides - at some point online games just abandoned the concept of "with every positive there comes a negative as well"

- like heavy armor provides high AC - but it slows your movement and attack speed.

Or high resistance to cold - but low resistance to fire

etc.. etc...

This way you always have a sense of choice that matters - the higher you boost yourself in one thing - the more you will weaken yourself in another thing.

There should always be a balance of pros and cons.

This idea of just maxing everything out - without any downsides - it's just dumb.

Even with that kind of system players will still figure out which combinations of armor, weapons and skills is better than other combinations. The only thing those negatives would do is add some complexity but not enough to stop it - there would still be a best and players would figure it out. It's all just numbers and people will crunch them and come up with that best. The OP had it right with his first paragraph.

The only way to have no best choice is to have no choice... fun, eh?

Oh yes there would be more desirable combinations - but no matter what you chose - youd have to accout for the negatives.

Right now the games have no negative consequences for any choice - thus making progression brainded, as you just keep replacing gear with higher bonuses.

There should always be pros and cons for every choice.

Oh I don't disagree with the concept of negative consequences but that's a topic separate from the existence of what what most players call derisively "cookie cutter builds." You're really talking about build depth and that's always a good thing.

All that "cookie cutter" means to me is that someone has figured out a combination of things for a game that works better than other combinations and that it was publicized and many followers adopted it.

And I'm not so sure that there currently are no negative consequences. The term "glass cannon" that applies to ultra potent DPS cookie cutter builds has the downside right in the name

Yea this is a good point. Even in wow with their talent trees. You give up certain things to take certain talents. One talent row might between a survivability cd, a cc immunity cd, and a movement skill for instance. Another might be between burst dps, sustained st, and aoe.

Choice still matters and by choosing one, you're losing something else.

Kajidourden · May 2018

Mars_Orbital said:

don't play cookie cutter games ?

So don't play any game?

MadFrenchie · May 2018

Cookie cutter builds are unavoidable, but that's okay. Devs don't need to eliminate them, they just need to keep alternative builds viably competitive for that role.

One build will likely always be the best on paper. But if other builds are competing and close to the same level of effectiveness, players don't have to feel forced into the cookie cutter builds.

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How Do You Not Have Cookie Cutter Builds?

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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey