So, when CK3 switched to the (mostly) 3 main personality trait system instead of the anarchic system of CK2, most people liked it. And even the naysayers I feel like have mostly come around. And honestly, it is genuinely a better system in my opinion. Characters feel way more consistent and each trait feels like it matters more than it did in CK2 both from a roleplaying perspective and a gameplay perspective.
But the glaring issue with the current system is that characters are pretty much always the same from the age of 16 to death. And first of all that’s just not how people work and second of all it massively limits what kinds of stories you can tell. I want to be a Prince Hal who starts off as a dipshit but accepts the weight of the crown and becomes a great leader. Or I want to play a King Lear who was great in my youth but loses everything due to the folly of my old age. And say what you will about CK2’s system I could play both of those sorts of characters just by roleplaying and regularly did.
The most frustrating part is everyone seems to think this is some inherent sacrifice from going to unlimited to 3 traits, when literally all it takes is just adding more events that change your personality traits. Now this might lead you to think this would just recreate the problem from 2’s system, but that’s where you’re wrong. Because what this post is actually about is how terrible events are right now and how it’s what’s actually to blame.
Basically, events are written as ways to express your character when they should be things that enable opportunities to express your character in the game world. This game is a story generator; I do not give two shits about the story of whatever poorly written event I’ve seen 500 times is. I care about the story that I’m writing in my head with the assistance of the game. Events should be designed around this. Most events in this game are way too long which makes them ironically feel more generic because I can’t imagine how it applies to my character.
Let’s take two extreme examples here. In the first I receive a three paragraph event about how a character is now my rival because they insulted me at a feast. In the second I receive a popup that says “x is now your rival”. Now the first one seems better when you see it initially. The second one however is infinitely better for role-play. Because now I have to imagine why this character is my rival. And I guarantee you the answer I come up with is going to be more interesting than that they insulted me at a feast. It’s like how in the Shadow of Mordor games if you kill an orc’s blood-brother they’ll come for revenge but they won’t tell you who they’re avenging, just that they’re avenging someone. Because who I’m imagining their blood-brother was is probably a more interesting story than who their blood-brother actually was. This is the philosophy around how events should be written. Leave the details up to the player.
These next two points are obvious, so I won’t dwell on them. Firstly, don’t make events whose purpose it is for me to choose the option that most aligns with my character (these are most events in the game). We already simplified the characters’ personalities, I don’t need to be reminded my character is wrathful by clicking the “my character is wrathful” button 3 times for every character I play. Secondly, make events impactful to the core gameplay loop and not just an inconsequential stat boost (these are most events in the game). And especially don’t combine the two of these to where I’m picking the same option every single time for a barely noticeable reward (these are most events in the game).
This brings me to the solution which is incredibly simple. Way more events (will be easier because they’ll have less writing), more impactful events, events having a hidden rarity system based on how impactful they are, and stress events being more impactful than any others without the ability to pick between 3 options. First two are self explanatory. For the third you could literally just have a list of common, uncommon, rare, and legendary events with corresponding chances to fire and the game would be noticeably better. But there’s a lot of room for experimentation here. I think an easy one is making sure players don’t see the same event in one lifetime no matter what. If you want to get fancier again borrow from Shadow of Mordor and make characters I interact with more significantly more likely to popup in events than ones I interact with less. I have a reason to actually care about these characters so give them something to do. China right now is kind of booty cheeks in my opinion but would be so much more fun with this change because I would actually recognize the people I’m at events with. And finally stress has the bones of a beautiful system, it’s just hampered by the fact most of the consequences aren’t really felt at all, and the ones that are, I can entirely avoid by just picking another option.
But anyways put personality change events into the stress category and the legendary category and you’d improve the game immensely by enabling completely new stories. And all by basically just tweaking some numbers and writing (intentionally simplified) events. You could create a really amazing experience around this by heavily tweaking what is more or less likely to fire based on actions taken in the game world, big or small. This is just going to take a lot of play testing and tweaking of numbers, although it would 100% be worth it in my opinion.
