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1eyedking Interesting ideas in bad RPGs

Cyberarmy

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Divinity: Original Sin 2
[snip]Age of Conan's combo based combat.
:negative:
I still fail to see how that was a good idea.

It was an interesting idea but not really a good one :) Good for bringing some fresh air to MMO combat but it had really terrible execution. They could have achived a lot with it but it become a huge dissapointment due to huge bugs, one combo kills, and combo cancellation.
 
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[snip]Age of Conan's combo based combat.
:negative:
I still fail to see how that was a good idea.

It was an interesting idea but not really a good one :) Good for bringing some fresh air to MMO combat but it had really terrible execution. They could have achived a lot with it but it become a huge dissapointment due to huge bugs, one combo kills, and combo cancellation.
Well, yeah, it's just playing AoC left such a distaste for its combo system, that I really can't think what game could benefit even from improved version of this idea. Also if hypothetical developer would've liked to implement combos fighting games-style (and not just timed attacks a-la Gothic 2), I think it would be even harder to balance than more traditional RPG skills, spells and abilities.
 

poetic codex

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Two worlds 2 has a really fascinating magic system where you can create new spells via experiment (just like how in some games you can create new alchemy recipes through experiment). For example you can take a fire card, shape into a missile via using a missile carrier card, then add a damage effect to make a firebolt. That's the simplest example, but with so many different card types, different ways to shape it, and different modifiers (damage, protection etc), you can go crazy and make some cool spell combinations such as anvils floating around your character as a shield.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C4xMc7O3Jho#t=142
 
Joined
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Divinity: Original Sin's elemental/environmental effects system, surfaces, statuses, etc.
The title says "bad RPGs".
You got the implication, congrats.
:excellent:
j3uJvFv.png
 
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SCO

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
mindreading in Divinity 2
exchanging xp for content
:troll:
 
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7th Saga had the characters you didn't pick act as rivals in your quest for the seven whatchamacallits, helping or opposing you depending on what's currently more convenient for them. They weren't as dynamic as the game would like you to think (someone will always become outright evil, someone will always get to one of the artifacts before you do), but the feeling of not being the only person actually trying to get something done is nice. Shame the rest of the game is mediocre, to the point of the western release massively boosting the difficulty (in an era where the opposite was the rule) with the hopes of making the game more interesting.
 

laclongquan

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By the definition of "being too niche for its own good", Reccetear is a bad RPG.

"Reccetear open a shop selling loots from dungeon, either by harvesting them yourself, or buy from adventurers to resale, in order to find enough profit to pay before the deadline."

it's fast paced, reward optimization, with clear choice and consequences. I can praise it all day, but from the viewpoint above, the game is not a very good RPG, with storyline is not very complex or deep.
Another bad/mediocre strategy jrpg game from the ps2 era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Red

Imagine FF Tactics, in an alternative history where Japan conquered the world after the defeat of Germany and Italy (my bad) after WW2, Commie vs Allies, each side pitching huge 2-4 legged mechs (walkers) against each other.
You could customize the special ammo of each mech on your team and further specialize it with infantry squads, wich where effectively part of the unit and undetatchable during battle.
Lot of different options, smokescreens, AP anti-mech rounds, rocket infantry, grenadiers, medics...

The gimmick is that during the attack phase of your turn you have to "Aim". Basically you grab your unit like in FFT, select a tile where to move and then, if elegible, you can attack at range or in melee. The action shifts from the tactical map to a 3rd person view of your mech, you start from a specific distance from your foe dependant on the range from wich you initiated the attack on the tactical map. A percentile counter rises as you get in the optimal range of your main weapon, decreasing as you or your foe move away from the sweet spot (wich is different from walker to walker). You could lose real time to wait for the counter to rise (your pilot's aim) and to move in optimal range, balancing the amount of shots you think you could fit in the 2 minutes real time combat round.
As to say: Do I take 4 shots at 65%? If I wait for the counter to reach 85% trough positioning and passive aim I'll be able to sqeeze just 2...

Lots and lots of interesting ideas... But no one thought how much time you had to waste to finish every fucking mission. Hours, literally...

TL;DR do not mix real time in a turn based game.

Edit: How could I forget. The walkers were Diesel-powered :lol: or at least that's the noise their oversized shaking engines would emit while operating

Watch a few youtube videos. It looks interesting. i shall see if I can scrounge up one copy of it to try.
 

Wyrmlord

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Shadowrun Returns in that every party member expected to be paid per mission.

So it seemed like people had an actual good reason to risk their life helping you out, and not because they were just friends you made on your journey.

After all, think of every dragon battle in BG2 - whether I am some chivalrous knight such as Keldorn or a lunatic such as Korgan, the fuck am I risking my life on a 10% odds to defeat Firkraag. Pay me good money up front, then we talk.

Also, the influence system is a step towards that direction, but not completely. Yeah, a lot of these games required party members to like you, otherwise they wouldn't stay with you. But then again, merely liking someone is not enough incentive to go one on one against dragons, sith lords, or Enclave troopers.
 

Emily

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Mar 21, 2012
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Breath of Fire V had an interesting "survival" mechanic... The game was quite hard, you had to rely on consumables and your main character's "superpower" breathweapon. Basically you had a raising percentile counter wich gave you a time limit to finish the game, it was quite generous but each time you used your dragon power that same counter would rise quite a bit, and some encounters were brutal if takled without...

Each time you earn xp a perchentage (I think 10%) goes to a banked pool of experience, in any moment you could restart the game keeping the banked experience. That allowed you to restart the game and immediately level up your characters.
Even with a couple of level ups you were much more efficient at lower level, that snowballed as you went on, and you could reach the same almost impossible areas with more resources, rendering them easily beatable without using up your "timer".

Hard to explain if you haven't tried it but those who did understand what I mean. That game was wonderfully balanced around this mechanic, allowing much bolder exploration on subsequent playtrough...

Obviously it is a bad RPG since it's a JRPG :troll:
i actually finished that game in one playtrough. I think it should have been a bit harder to really capitalize on the mechanic
 

Immortal

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Two worlds 2 has a really fascinating magic system where you can create new spells via experiment (just like how in some games you can create new alchemy recipes through experiment). For example you can take a fire card, shape into a missile via using a missile carrier card, then add a damage effect to make a firebolt. That's the simplest example, but with so many different card types, different ways to shape it, and different modifiers (damage, protection etc), you can go crazy and make some cool spell combinations such as anvils floating around your character as a shield.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C4xMc7O3Jho#t=142

I seriously don't get why more games don't implement this.

Neverwinter / Neverwinter 2 could have done this easily had they designed the engine to be more dynamic after loading the existing resource files. It was such a cool idea and doesn't seem that hard to implement if you have an engine that supports retexturing / recoloring particle effects and a modular spell system.
 

Menckenstein

Lunacy of Caen: Todd Reaver
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I liked being able to summon the spirits of the dead for conversations / quest help in Arcanum, in a more focused game you could do some cool shit with that.
 

Immortal

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I liked being able to summon the spirits of the dead for conversations / quest help in Arcanum, in a more focused game you could do some cool shit with that.

Yup also agree this was a great mechanic.. too bad 90% of the time the ghost just says "Noooooo" or "whats happening?".. There was no clear way to tell when it would matter or not. Definitely huge potential if it was fleshed out more.
 

harhar!

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May 15, 2014
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Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood
This is perhaps one of the most innovative games that nobody has played, because, ultimately, it's not very good. But it's full of good ideas.
It's an RPG/Adventure Hybrid, with day/night cycles and NPC schedules. That alone is pretty unique already.
Then it has a split party mechanic, which actually makes sense. You can assign tasks to the "inactive" party, which are then performed automatically, while you can do stuff that needs your attention. E.g. you can search a location in order to find things (searching a location can take several hours), or observe a location in order to intercept an NPC that tries to evade you. Or sleep, as Arcatera has requirement for sleeping, eating and drinking, all managed manually. Of course, depending on location you can get robbed or attacked during sleep.
Then it has a crime system that has the guards punish you depending on how many offenses you have committed already, including increasing gold fees and banishment from the city. The conversation system has two variables, irritation and patience, that can in turn influence the alignment of the NPC.

The World of Arcatera has a nice backstory as well, it is based on the PNP game the developers had worked on since their youth.
Man this game should have been great. If only the execution hadn't been so shoddy.

A lot of this sounds like Gothic 2, which is of corse a great game.
 

V_K

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A lot of this sounds like Gothic 2, which is of corse a great game.
Not really. Gothic's NPC schedules a basically just decorations, used to create an illusion of living world. Arcatera devs tried to make them into actual gameplay mechanic, but unfortunately were unsuccesfull.
 

TheGreatOne

Arcane
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Feb 15, 2014
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Arcanum :troll:

I wouldn't call Anachronox a good game (gameplay wise) but the world skills in it seem to be inspired by Superhero League of Hoboken, which isn't terrible though.

The most stupid design idea that I've seen in a bad CRPG is having to pay for talking to people in Keef the Thief

There are a lot of bad/forgettable JRPGs with unusual mechanics (sports/fighting game RPGs, Sting's experimental SRPGs with some C&C etc) but that should be its own thread in the jrpg forum.
Then there is Bloodnet, also unique in setting: gothic-vampire-cyberpunk. Again, very atmospheric but this game tried to do too much. Cyberspace was a joke, maybe added at the last moment. You basically wander around in a featureless blob. Also a *little* more direction would have been good. Most of the time it was totally unclear what to do. This isnt bad perse but in a situation were you have limited time it kind of is.
The combat system is also horrible. It looks like they're literally trying to emulate a table top game. I would kill for a grid based, party based TB cyberpunk CRPG with the style and tone of BloodNet (jury rigging etc) and Deus Ex/Shadowrun Returns style augmentation for your whole party, with party creation and management hat's deeper than Wizardry.
Sims 3, Sims 3:World Adventures and Sims Medieval have lot of stuff that could make it a good RPG, if they were better balanced and structured.
Some wrestling games have storyline branching that would be great for C&C in RPGs. Feuds, rivalries, people getting jumped, people interfering on your matches etc, all based on your wins, losses, how you choose to react to different people/situations and so on.
Shin megami tensei: demon negotiation, fusion and summoning.
Shin Megami Tensei isn't a bad JRPG you mong, the series in general is the best JRPG series around. And many of the games do include multiple endings, some C&C and stat distribution, so they're not very different from "RPGs" like Deus Ex and SS2.

Individual games within the series can be bad, but the combat system based on elemental weaknesses and demon fusing is great and the series includes games like Nocturne and Devil Survivor 2: The best TB combat, dungeons and highest difficulty in post 2003 mainstream RPGs. As much as I enjoyed the first half of Original Sin (a CRPG that is praised for its combat), Devil Survivor 2 simply had more challenging and interesting boss encounters, even though it's a handheld title. Having a skill limit on your characters actually made battles more strategic where as in D:OS you could teach teleport and telekinesis to your warriors and there weren't hard choices to make between choosing skills.
 
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Khor1255

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I loved the graphics and general storyline in Nocturne but the gameplay was so shitty I could never play it for more than a few minutes.
 

TheGreatOne

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Games with level progression start off slowly? Who would've thought? I played Wizardry 7 once but all you did was click attack and dodge and one shot crows and beetles so I quit playing. Don't get me started on IE games or WoW. Nocturne doesn't become interesting before you leave the starting areas and start facing harder bosses and more interesting enemies in random battles.
Your grasp for the obvious is truly something else.
Was mostly talking about the mmo, like most of my other examples.
No, you said Shin Megami Tensei, not "Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine" or "the SMT MMO". Shin Megami Tensei either refers to the Super Famicom/PC Engine CD game or the Megaten series in general.
 

Lhynn

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Messages
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Your grasp for the obvious is truly something else.
Was mostly talking about the mmo, like most of my other examples.
No, you said Shin Megami Tensei, not "Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine" or "the SMT MMO". Shin Megami Tensei either refers to the Super Famicom/PC Engine CD game or the Megaten series in general.
:mrfussy:
 

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