Fallout's Super Mutant invasion shows why RPGs will never evolve

[Sigourn]

And the reasons are two-fold:

1. Fear of saying no, or as I call it in my book, The Principles of RPG Design, The Theory of Positive Choice Reinforcement, by which the game encourages you to act, to say yes, as opposed to not acting, saying no.
   
2. Fear of wasting time, directly related to reason number 1.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. How many times refusing a quest has led to said quest solving itself (for better or worse), or a new quest/circumstance appearing in the game?
2. How many quests have you encountered that fail if you take too much time solving them? By time, I mean "the passage of time", not "what may happen during the time you spend waiting". For instance, you take on a quest to escort an NPC to a temple. If you wait too much, the NPC leaves ("passage of time"). If you spend too much time on the wilderness, the NPC may die to enemies ("what may happen").

My hypothesis is that, without this type of quest design becoming popular, RPGs will never evolve. Fallout's Super Mutant invasion is brilliant because it tied all these aspects into the main quest, of all quests you can find in Fallout. But it is also memorable in that the time limit for said quest was negatively received by a considerable amount of the playerbase, to the point Tim Cain said he would remove any time-based quest in Fallout if he could.

I'm interested to hear about your replies to these questions and your thoughts on this subject.

 

[Luzur]

Well yeah, if RPG's become safespaces where nothing bad ever happens, you can never fail anything and the whole world waits for you and your decision always it will stagnate.

 

[cruelio]

I don’t understand your point OP but I just wanted to say the free to play Pokémon game RPG Codex is advertising in your post looks cool.

 

[Sloul]

There is one studio in which I have almost blind confidence: Iron Tower.
Actually, I didn't play tAoD for quite some time, but you could certainly ignore some quest lines which could get a conclusion on the next chapters.

 

[octavius]

I think a large number (or of course it may only be the most vocal ones) of CRPG gamers are OCD, autist, control freaks or similar.

They don't like things happening in the game that they can't influence.
Instead of pressing on they will find a nice place to grind even if there's a bazillion random encounters in the game. The threads in GOG's Bard's Tale sub-forum shows this clearly.
Time limits means there's a chance they can't do everything, nor grind up to lvl 255 before having to move into a more dangerous part of the game world.
They are very adverse to taking chances (and thus the grinding) even if they don't play ironman.

So I guess gamers get the games they deserve.

 

[Sigourn]

I think a large number (or of course it may only be the most vocal ones) of CRGP gamers are OCD, autist, control freaks or similar.

They don't like things happening in the game that they can't influence.
Instead of pressing on they will find a nice place to grind even if there's a bazillion random encounters in the game. The threads in GOG's Bard's Tale sub-forum shows this clearly.
Time limits means there's a chance they can't do everything and grind up to lvl 255 before having to move into a more dangerous part of the game world.
They are very adverse to taking chances (and thus grind) even if they don't play ironman.

So I guess gamers get the games they deserve.

One user in a different forum said he doesn't like it when he thinks he is "threading on eggs" because a game may be unforgivable in its quests. It doesn't allow him to "roleplay". I feel control freaks killed RPGs: roleplaying is not calling roleplaying anymore, but "threading on eggs", and play pretend has become "roleplaying", which is why most RPGs aren't RPGs anymore. People want the illusion of freedom, when in reality they are slaves to a game that doesn't let them say "no" beyond a few instances where it is made explicitly clear what will happen if they refuse to do something.

 

[bylam]

Dead Rising had time based "quests" to rescue the survivors. You didn't know if the people who were spotted would be allies in need of rescue or psychopaths you'd have to fight. IIRC it also failed the main storyline if you didn't manage to reach certain locations in time, but you could still survive the timeline in order to get an ending.

Not exactly an RPG though.

 

[ItsChon]

How many times refusing a quest has led to said quest solving itself (for better or worse), or a new quest/circumstance appearing in the game?

Underrail did this in regards to the Free Drone questline. More evidence of it's inherent incline.

I can see the point OP is trying to make, and I think it might have some merit if it could be executed properly and tastefully.

 

[octavius]

Time limits can be annoying if it means Game Over, like one of the missions in the first Call of Duty.
I like the idea that things get more difficult, or you fail side quests, if you waste too much time. Or that you are rewarded for being quick, even if it means you may miss out on other things.

Any thing that makes the game world feel dynamic can only be positive, can't it?

 

[Haba]

Back in the day, developers were trying to recreate the tabletop experience but had to compromise due to technological limitations. But the new generation of developers and players alike have grown with the limitation built in their attitudes and expectations.

But you also have to remember that human DM tries to make the experience interesting for the players. Even if he pushes a sense of urgency, it is done for the sake of the scenario itself. And the DM usually tries to give the players a chance to complete the resources they have available. A main quest that simply fails once X number of days has passed is not the best kind of design that there is.

I think that to make this kind of approach work the best, your should be doing a single quest at a time. If you turn down a quest, then that still continues in the background while you focus on an another quest. This way the player has clarity on what they are doing and there is no need to have the constant nagging fear of failing a timed sidequest while trying to do another quest.

Kinda like playing a police detective in a town that has multiple serial cases going on. Other cases progress while you solve (or fail) your current case. You can end up in a completely different situation, depending on what you chose to focus on.

 

[Jokzore]

Having no time limits is pretty well ingrained in the way RPGs are structured, even F1. I don't really see a way of allowing the NPCs and the world to have their own life and cycle to go through without having it be frustrating to players or completely re-inventing the quest formula.

I suppose the game that came closest to this was Dark Souls, there saying yes/no to one NPC may lead to another becoming hostile or not appearing at all. They also seem to do things (semi) independently of the player. However these quests/npc are so few in each of the games there isn't much of a case study to be done. Fallout 1 example is pretty poor as well seeing as the invasion timer is so generous it might as well not exist.

If memory serves, Final Fantasy Lightning Returns tried to tackle the concept and failed miserably. In that game you had a set amount of time in each day that you can play around with, meaning you couldn't do all of the quests that each day offered, you had to pick and choose carefully. I wouldn't know much past that though, I don't play weaboo trash.

 

[Cool name]

I enjoy timer-activated events/consequences/changes in entirely turn based games, running off the turn counter not the system clock. they can serve all kinds of purposes; creating urgency, giving the sense of a living world, another form of path branching than just dialogue options, etc

not a fan of ones that run off an actual stopwatch in real time, more likely to cause annoyance than an 'o that's cool'. exceptions are multiplayer stuff preventing ppl from wasting time and games/modes where beating a timer is the entire point

god help me for saying good things about a weeb porn game, but Sengoku Rance did turn-timer based events quite well I think. wildly different playthroughs based on what you do before or after certain turns, and most change the nature of the game to varying degrees rather than ending it outright

 

[jungl]

I can't say I really enjoy rpgs/jrpgs anymore. They never get the difficulty JUST RIGHT where the game difficulty is stimulating enough to keep you playing the game. Its either toddler easy shit or nu-xcom shit that advertises itself specifically with difficulty in mind but is lackluster exploitable rng shit. I miss games like xenogears where you get game over every now and then it felt great.

 

[Trashos]

"We had no clue how to make this interesting, so, uh, be quick!".

Time constraints are especially terrible in open(ish)-world games. What is the point of such games? Exploration? Time constraint kills it. Each moment choosing to do exactly the quest you want to be doing? Time constraint kills this as well.

I don't know of any RPG that was made better/more replayable due to time constraints.

 

[BING XI LAO]

''Let's write a world for the player to explore, but if they spend too long exploring some parts we'll destroy other parts of it before they get to see it.''

How is that not shit? Coming to Necropolis and finding just a bunch of dumb mutant thugs was boring, so I installed a timer extension mod for the 2nd playthrough. It wasn't a case of the world changing around me because I never got to see pre-invasion Necropolis in the first place. It is a good idea but I don't think FO1 had a particularly good execution. At least make the timer functional only for places that the player's already visited once.

From what I hear Star Control II did this idea well though.

 

[RNGsus]

Every sandbox is a safebox, because gamers want everything in one playthrough, and developers don't know any other way. Even if gamers know they'll return to a game again and again, and they know in the first hour, they want nothing left to chance, or concealed to them (eg a place not explicitly marked on their map, a nameless npc with a quest who doesn't flag them down). They don't care if they own the damn game, and the content is always there for repeat play. Essentially, the majority of gamers hate discovery, for all their talk of exploration. They have no idea what either are, and again I'm not surprised if their favorite games' developers have no idea either.

 

[Sigourn]

''Let's write a world for the player to explore, but if they spend too long exploring some parts we'll destroy other parts of it before they get to see it.''

How is that not shit? Coming to Necropolis and finding just a bunch of dumb mutant thugs was boring, so I installed a timer extension mod for the 2nd playthrough. It wasn't a case of the world changing around me because I never got to see pre-invasion Necropolis in the first place. It is a good idea but I don't think FO1 had a particularly good execution. At least make the timer functional only for places that the player's already visited once.

From what I hear Star Control II did this idea well though.

But here's the key: when you found the bunch of dumb mutant thugs, did you know it was because you waited for too long and the game "fucked you"?

I feel people are against the idea of "losing" because they are aware they are losing. I do agree in any case that a timer should only exist when the player knows about said events. In Fallout's case it was pretty clear: you are told from the start you are on a time limit.

 

[bataille]

It all comes down to players being mature enough not to be ego-centric special needs heroes playing with their toys or not.

While you played a person that was singled out in F1, it was properly contextualized by the game mechanics such as time limit (you're a part of the world; the world doesn't revolve entirely around you). You were just that: a person chosen to do a thing; you are not a chosen one because you're a super cool gal or guy who bought our game so we let you go through our very fun theme park with greenskins and ghouls strewn about as props. It's this kind of infantile metacontext that kills games: developers do everything in their power to make players feel special on both narrative ('You're the chosen one!') and metanarrative ('Hey, thanks for 50 bucks! Enjoy your stay! We've prepared some cool attractions for you worth that money!') levels. And it's very detrimental to experience, robbing it of authenticity. Notice someone saying that they didn't see necropolis prior to the massacre, and it's a bad thing, like everything is revolving around the entitled vault dweller, who will save everything and everyone, get all quests done and overcome many challenges... at their own pace. I don't really know how this lazy childplay passes as meaningful experience. Some of F1's design choices have shown us that there is nothing esoteric about making a game experience more impactful yet people still want to lazily bumble through games, 100%ing them in 200 hours while drinking soda and gorging on chips. Gross. Long live mutant invasions, living worlds, and consequences for players being fat bums.

 

[Darth Canoli]

How many quests have you encountered that fail if you take too much time solving them?

Fuck that shit ! Let jrpg, action rpg and chrono-trigger like games have it.
Fallout 1 timed quest almost got it wrong, fortunately, there's enough time to deal with it and you can even extend it.

As for the rest, same answer as why don't we have huge worlds like Xeen / Isles of Terra anymore ? Well, budgets, looks like it's getting more and more expensive to develop a RPG or they forgot how to do it or maybe they just focus too much on their shitty engines and forget about the content so adding stuff you will skip isn't an option.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Even if gamers know they'll return to a game again and again,

I did one FO1 replay (with the timelimit extender mod) and don't plan to do others. So definitely not ''again and again''

they want nothing left to chance, or concealed to them (eg a place not explicitly marked on their map, a nameless npc with a quest who doesn't flag them down).

More like ''eg an entire town removed''

In Fallout's case it was pretty clear: you are told from the start you are on a time limit.

You're not told about the Mutant Invasion time limits though. Which is a good thing, because why should you know of their plans? - but the timer was too ungenerous.

Notice someone saying that they didn't see necropolis prior to the massacre, and it's a bad thing, like everything is revolving around the entitled vault dweller, who will save everything and everyone, get all quests done and overcome many challenges... at their own pace. I don't really know how this lazy childplay passes as meaningful experience. Some of F1's design choices have shown us that there is nothing esoteric about making a game experience more impactful yet people still want to lazily bumble through games, 100%ing them in 200 hours while drinking soda and gorging on chips. Gross. Long live mutant invasions, living worlds, and consequences for players being fat bums.

Everything does revolve around the player in a single player game. Not the player character, but certainly the player. It took me too long to get to Necropolis, not because I was playing as an entitled Chosen One, but because I wasn't aware of the time limits other than the main quest, I wasn't powergaming, and it was my first playthrough because I haven't spent 200 hours replaying FO1 while gorging on soda and chips. There was nothing ''impactful'' about turning up to a town that'd had almost everything interesting from it, and calling a town that'd had the interesting stuff removed in favour of me big bad mutie a ''living world'' is just moronic.

P.S. You are all faggots!!!

 

[RNGsus]

More like ''eg an entire town removed''

Ok.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Everything does revolve around the player in a single player game. Not the player character, but certainly the player. It took me too long to get to Necropolis, not because I was playing as an entitled Chosen One, but because I wasn't aware of the time limits other than the main quest, I wasn't powergaming, and it was my first playthrough because I haven't spent 200 hours replaying FO1 while gorging on soda and chips. There was nothing ''impactful'' about turning up to a town that'd had almost everything interesting from it, and calling a town that'd had the interesting stuff removed in favour of me big bad mutie a ''living world'' is just moronic.

Why wouldn't you finish up Necropolis on your first visit?

 

[Neanderthal]

I never minded time limits in Bg2 (for instance) companion quests, it just made me prioritise things to do and where/when to travel.

Fallout 1&2 was more than generous wi time limits.

 

[Bigg Boss]

And the reasons are two-fold:

1. Fear of saying no, or as I call it in my book, The Principles of RPG Design, The Theory of Positive Choice Reinforcement, by which the game encourages you to act, to say yes, as opposed to not acting, saying no.
   
2. Fear of wasting time, directly related to reason number 1.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. How many times refusing a quest has led to said quest solving itself (for better or worse), or a new quest/circumstance appearing in the game?
2. How many quests have you encountered that fail if you take too much time solving them? By time, I mean "the passage of time", not "what may happen during the time you spend waiting". For instance, you take on a quest to escort an NPC to a temple. If you wait too much, the NPC leaves ("passage of time"). If you spend too much time on the wilderness, the NPC may die to enemies ("what may happen").

My hypothesis is that, without this type of quest design becoming popular, RPGs will never evolve. Fallout's Super Mutant invasion is brilliant because it tied all these aspects into the main quest, of all quests you can find in Fallout. But it is also memorable in that the time limit for said quest was negatively received by a considerable amount of the playerbase, to the point Tim Cain said he would remove any time-based quest in Fallout if he could.

I'm interested to hear about your replies to these questions and your thoughts on this subject.

I knew there was something about this guy. Maybe it was the classy Vagrant Story avatar? This just makes sense. I can think of a few quests that NEEDED this actually. It is rather telling that one of the few games to feature a mechanic like this is Majora's Mask. Essentially a cult classic of the franchise. You are right. In emulating the past we stay stuck to it. Wasteland 2 tried to adhere too closely to the past and failed for it. Damn man you are right on the money.

The funny thing is I still attempt to complete quests quickly when they tell me it is time sensitive because I suppose a part of me hopes it is. The roleplaying of the future.

Spoiler

That and STOP MAKING FANTASY RPG'S ASSHOLES!

How can the genre evolve if we keep making Dungeons and Dragons the same exact way with minor variations when the D&D fags release a new update? Why is Morrowind popular? Aside from the DECLINE aspects. Stay focused.

It's partly due to a handful of unique races, killing the Dwarves, giant mushrooms, and steampunk elements. That and you can turn into Werewolves and Vampires. At least it is for me because I haven't liked one of the games since.

That and locking you out of quests for factions you piss off. Shit New Vegas was praised for.

 

[Axe Father]

Dead Rising had time based "quests" to rescue the survivors. You didn't know if the people who were spotted would be allies in need of rescue or psychopaths you'd have to fight. IIRC it also failed the main storyline if you didn't manage to reach certain locations in time, but you could still survive the timeline in order to get an ending.

The first Dead Rising (the only good one imo) is among my favourite games and the time limit was the primary factor in that. The time constraint was arguably the central mechanic of the game. The "point" of the game is essentially to try and plan your route through the mall to get as much done as possible in one pass from the safe room and back. The urgency that arises from trying to wrangle up as many survivors as you can while also knowing that if you miss a story event you are locked out of the rest of the plot makes you greatly invested in what you are doing. Not to mention that the time limit serves the theme and the plot so that you feel immersed in the situation the characters are in. Avoids entirely the problem with many games where doom is supposed to be around the corner but it waits patiently for the player to get to the proper quest or story mission to arrive.

As for RPGs I don't have any experience with time limits outside of FO1 where I felt it served its purpose well enough. I wouldn't mind more RPGs with time restraints though because I think RPGs are a genre that should be about permanence. Choices are the name of the game with RPGs whether they're story or gameplay choices and being forced to face consequences for what you do or don't do is always a good thing.