Best way to kick-off in an RPG

[mondblut]

The PC's village gets raided and he gets sold into slavery in the beginning.

Please save this shit for an intro and start the game with the slavery part.

 

[soggie]

The PC's village gets raided and he gets sold into slavery in the beginning.

Please save this shit for an intro and start the game with the slavery part.

It's a flashback meant to teach consoletards how turn-based combat works and how to pick locks, pockets, hack computers, fix vehicles and do all the things you can do in an RPG. Or used to be able to until games like Mass Effect and Fallout 3 decided to call themselves RPGs.

It's completely skipable.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

As long as its done well, I don't care much. There are 10 million ways to do it wrong and 10 thousand ways to do it right. Pick one of the right ones. Asking whether there is a best way to start a game is like asking whether there is a best book plot. There may be some general guidelines, but the idea that there is a best way to do art is moronic.

I specifically dislike extended tutorials though, since they generally move at the pace of my 93 year old grandmother, and teach you about as much as you would learn from turning on tooltips. Keep those out, do whatever you want.

 

[soggie]

Alright, I guess the opinions here are pretty clear. (1) try not to start with a cliche; (2) a little combat and everything else for the player to sample in the beginning; (3) skippable intro and tutorials; (4) don't make the player wait too long before being able to venture into the worldmap; and (5) it's all about execution.

Thanks guys.

 

[shihonage]

You should start the game as a space marine with amnesia.

As you try to make your way out of the crashed ship, you should meet NPCs which provide you with important exposure. We want to make sure the player doesn't zoom past it and gets stuck later, so this exposure shall be, therefore, unskippable.

We don't want to traumatize the player with combat too early on, so the first quest will be about putting things into his inventory. In fact, let's be very explicit about it and have the actual in-game character reference the game's controls for maximum clarity. For instance:

Griswold: "Aye there, space marine! Pick up this axe by clicking left button of your great mouse and drag it into your glorious inventory slot!"

Now we don't want to repeat the cliche of "saving the world", because, hey, who saves the world in their everyday life? We have to be realistic here!

Therefore let's give the Player some pretty realistic, mundane tasks. Beat down his expectations a bit, put some humility in him, you know?

Assassin's Creed is a prime example of how to do this. Not only you start the game with the prolonged exposure, but you learn that nothing you do is actually important because you're playing a videogame inside a videogame, and you're just trying to imitate the actions of someone who already did all of this centuries ago, and he was better than you.

Humility is key! It is immersive! With this mind, let's think of the first quest. Chances are, the game will have hundreds of different creatures, and we want the player to progress and feel more awesome as he does!

Therefore we should scale down the creatures he encounters in the very beginning. Can't as well start by killing something cool - like robots - because then we run out of cool stuff to kill later!

Now, something smaller, more realistic for the Player to kill at level 1 should be preferred. Something like spiders. Spiders are everyone's favorite. Players have been killing spiders for decades now, so this should instantly make them feel at home with the game.

Now, tack on some explanation about how these spiders have been hounding the nearby settlement, or whatever. It doesn't matter. Every player knows that they have to start off by killing spiders.

No, wait, the spider quest may have come too fast. Combat already? After all, we may not have enough interesting things to draw this out for 40 hours, if we go at this pace! Maybe we can buffer that area with something else.

How about, before you get to kill spiders, you have to obtain a scroll of permission from the local magistrate? That sounds logical and reasonable! Let's do it!

Now... oh, this is going to be a stroke of genius. Prepare for your mind to be blown. How about, when you meet the magistrate, he tells you that before he can give you permission to kill spiders, you have to prove yourself to him?

In order to do this, you have to go into the secret dungeon he has behind the throne and beat up 5 of his guards.

This is like a gentle tutorial! We're so crafty and amazing! This game will be a blast!

 

[spectre]

Assassin's Creed is a prime example of how to do this. Not only you start the game with the prolonged exposure, but you learn that nothing you do is actually important because you're playing a videogame inside a videogame, and you're just trying to imitate the actions of someone who already did all of this centuries ago, and he was better than you.

Prolonged exposure sucks cock for relayability (or not only replayability, shit happens, hard drives go poof, sisters uninstall your games by accident...), if it's not skippable I just go fuuu, not all this shit again?
I also don't get all the rage about 'seamless' integration of the tutorial it justs looks dumb when characters speak to me about mouse buttons.

Players have been killing spiders for decades now, so this should instantly make them feel at home with the game.

It's rats, silly (-:
And don't forget, you have to be outoging and accomodating these days. Lots of poor folk out there with arachnophobia. Can't lose market, says I. It would be like throwing money away.

 

[shihonage]

spectre, I can't tell if you got it or not, but 100% of my post was sarcasm.

 

[spectre]

Yep. You should have gotten it that I've gotten it by quote nr 2.

Just wanted to reiterate that this 'prolonged exposure' is fukken shit.

 

[soggie]

You should start the game as a space marine with amnesia.

As you try to make your way out of the crashed ship, you should meet NPCs which provide you with important exposure. We want to make sure the player doesn't zoom past it and gets stuck later, so this exposure shall be, therefore, unskippable...

Fuck yeah, that's friggin' awesome! But no, I'd put in rats instead of spiders. I should just use your idea as my unskippable starting intro.

You're a genius shihonage!

PS: Where're the dancing banana smilies when you need 'em?

 

[Opry99er]

So, what you're saying is,

*"Definitely use a prolongued unskippable intro"
*"Have the PC fight rats for the first 3 hours"
*"Make sure the magistrate asks you to do a task"
*"Have a pikachu tell you how to use a mouse"
*"Give your PC NO knowledge of why he is "here""

Can we add the following to the "RPG Rules" list?

*"one button for "attack"
*"one button for "run"
*"one button for "negotiate"

Oh, and make sure your character goes under the King's palace to defeat the initial outbreak of rats and spiders... As a matter of fact, make sure the user has to clear half a million spiders before exiting to the "exploration" mode. Sick....

 

[soggie]

So, what you're saying is,

*"Definitely use a prolongued unskippable intro"
*"Have the PC fight rats for the first 3 hours"
*"Make sure the magistrate asks you to do a task"
*"Have a pikachu tell you how to use a mouse"
*"Give your PC NO knowledge of why he is "here""

Can we add the following to the "RPG Rules" list?

*"one button for "attack"
*"one button for "run"
*"one button for "negotiate"

Oh, and make sure your character goes under the King's palace to defeat the initial outbreak of rats and spiders... As a matter of fact, make sure the user has to clear half a million spiders before exiting to the "exploration" mode. Sick....

Yes and while we're at it, auto-level the player as well. For the sake of immersion, nobody wants to waste time figuring out what points to raise on every level up. Just determine it for them. It'll be great because every player would have ended up with the most optimized build, which happens to be a jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-all-too, attaining godhood by the end of the game.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Yes and while we're at it, auto-level the player as well. For the sake of immersion, nobody wants to waste time figuring out what points to raise on every level up. Just determine it for them. It'll be great because every player would have ended up with the most optimized build, which happens to be a jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-all-too, attaining godhood by the end of the game.

Give the player different classes, though. These classes aren't supposed to actually play differently, they will all still be jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-all-too with at most 1 level of difference in where they gain powers. The difference will be in character features and clothing choices. This improves replayability, since you can roleplay a spase marien one game and a faggot the next game.

 

[visions]

This improves replayability, since you can roleplay a spase marien one game and a faggot the next game.

And then a faggot space marine. The possibilities would be endless.

 

[madbringer]

Wait. If Space Marines can be faggots... does that mean faggots are as awesome as Space Marines? :shock:

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Rape and Pillage Games should start with a tastefully done rape.

 

[soggie]

This thread is heading towards OT land. -__-

 

[Monocause]

Soggie, why don't you contact the head honchos here so that they set you up with a subforum? That way it'd be easier to discuss your ideas in a better environment than a single thread or in your blog comments section.

A bit off topic, but isn't your skill system too extensive? Looks great and all but it might be overambitious. The list of skills look like a prime candidate for half of them being useless in-game and the other half unbalanced.
Once can imagine that, for example, coercion will find much more use than blackmail which is more situational and requires something the PC could, well, blackmail the NPC with.

 

[MetalCraze]

Tutorials in RPGs are unneeded because it will never teach you how to play and use game mechanics because there are too many of them - and thus tutorial will look stupid and detract from the gaming experience.

Just give me the well-written manual to which I can just refer if I don't understand something and it will be perfect.

So more Fallout1/JA2 style plz.

 

[visions]

On a more serious note, I like the idea of incorporating the manual into the game like in KOTC. This is probably the best solution for a game that does not come with a paper manual, having to exit the game in order to look something up in the pdf manual is highly annoying.

 

[soggie]

Soggie, why don't you contact the head honchos here so that they set you up with a subforum? That way it'd be easier to discuss your ideas in a better environment than a single thread or in your blog comments section.

I'm in contact with JF actually, but I think it's not yet time for me to dedicate fully to this project. I can't start development until end of this year, so I don't see a point getting a sub-forum until then. It'll be emptier than innovation in Bethesda games.

A bit off topic, but isn't your skill system too extensive? Looks great and all but it might be overambitious. The list of skills look like a prime candidate for half of them being useless in-game and the other half unbalanced.
Once can imagine that, for example, coercion will find much more use than blackmail which is more situational and requires something the PC could, well, blackmail the NPC with.

Yeah, you're right that certain skills seem to be too situational to be useful in the stat system. I'm still refining them actually. Stuff like blackmail/corercion; manipulation/conversion; and some of them needs to be merged. I'm still testing out the mechanics on paper though, trying to figure out how to calculate the probabilities for it.

 

[soggie]

On a more serious note, I like the idea of incorporating the manual into the game like in KOTC. This is probably the best solution for a game that does not come with a paper manual, having to exit the game in order to look something up in the pdf manual is highly annoying.

This.

I liked KOTC's pervasive help a lot. What I plan to do is to have the right click function as an information button when clicking on any UI elements or game objects. In the game world, right click switches between actions and left click commits the said action.

 

[Elzair]

Ah, it is the old sold into slavery opening, eh? Honestly, the only opening that hasn't been done to death in crpgs is the sitting around in a tavern and being approached by a hooded figure.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Just for once, I'd like to be the guy attacking the village.

Oh wait, that's been done before, too (a couple of the Final Fantasys, I believe).

 

[soggie]

Just for once, I'd like to be the guy attacking the village.

Oh wait, that's been done before, too (a couple of the Final Fantasys, I believe).

Before I had the epiphany for my current setting I was toying with the idea of remaking Darksun with the exact Arena opening and sewer escape, except that this time you play as a templar/defiler, where you are one of the spectator/guards of the arena and need to go after the escaped slaves once the escape commences.

Pipe dreams... sigh.

 

[Monocause]

About the persuasion stat: consider it making a bit like ME (God forbid!).

You have a Persuasion stat that you can spend skill points on. The stat branches out into "positive persuasion" (convincing, negotiating etc.) and "negative" one - intimidation, blackmail. These two branches would increase without player input and work in synergy with the player skill.

It makes sense and is sorta realistic. You can educate yourself how to generally deal with people - but intimidation and negotiation are two completely different experiences. If you get by a lot with intimidating people, all these psychology books you've read are going to help but you'll be better at intimidating than negotiating because you have practiced it extensively.

An example - encounter has a difficulty level of 58. A character has 40 points in Persuasion skill and has both intimidated and negotiated so far, giving him 21 points in "positive persuasion" and 13 points in "negative" one. You sum it up and the player will succeed if he tries to negotiate but fail if he tries to indimidate.
This would be a nice system to keep the player role-playing a bit, you could also apply it to other skills. Kinda like the skill system in Morrowind, but for weapons you could spend points manually in "fencing techniques" which would increasy your proficiency with weapons regardless of the 'practice points' you acquire by hitting the mudcrabs.