Great ideas in RPGs that never got used again

[oscar]

- Morrowind's levitation (was also useful in discovering secrets and reaching high/floating areas)

- Quests like Arcanum's gnome conspiracy one. Not every quest should leave the player saving the day and solving the problem.​

​

- Arcanum's backgrounds. Beyond their allowance of extreme builds from the get-go, they offered the player great ideas ideas for how to roleplay and what sort of personality the character likely has. I don't really enjoy RPGs where I feel little attachment to my character (DA:O, Skyrim, BG) or very little motivation due to the generic or poorly-written plot.​

​

- Reasonably sized pool of recruitable NPCs. I never really liked how in most RPGs with permadeath, losing a party member equates to "lol reload" unless you want to continue the game gimped. But I also dislike the more modern system of party NPCs being unable to die. Jagged Alliance solves this with a large selection of mercenaries to hire, meaning that losing one isn't the end of the world (though it's certainly something you don't want to occur often, due to both the expense and the morale loss). All these mercenaries being interesting BROs and having strong opinions of the other mercenaries (with in-game repercussions) was just the icing on the cake.​

​

- Firearms not sucking. Thank you Fallout 1 and 2. Though melee catches up again in the late-game with things like power fists and super sledgehammers, by-and-large bringing a knife to a gun fight in early-to-mid level Fallout (which is when the combat is at its most fun, before things turn >95% accuracy eye attack<) gets your head (literally) blown off. Sadly, if an RPG includes firearms chances are that they completely suck. It's even worse if the setting is modern or futuristic yet guns are peashooters that have 1/5 of the damage potential of a katana. Darklands also receives an honourable mention for guns acting reasonably historically for the time; they inflict strong damage but their horrendous reloading rate means they are pretty much only useful for an opening volley followed by closing to melee.​

​

- Fallout's power armour. It's not easy to acquire but boy when you do you are a walking god that can kick the ass of anyone without serious firepower. It's a great feeling seeing those gangsters trying to cut you up or punch you with brass knuckles while you laugh it off without taking a scratch. It was also a nice touch having NPCs recognise that you're wearing it and addicts thinking they're hallucinating while others cower in fear. Power armour felt a lot more underwhelming in FO3/NV due to it just being an incremental improvement over the previous best armour. Obviously this isn't applicable to every setting but more games should include game-changing items like this (instead of incremental upgrades of Steel Longsword -> Steel Longsword +1 -> Steel Longsword + 1 of Fire -> Steel Longsword + 2 of Fire). Acquiring a set of plate armour in a early medieval setting is comparable and should make the combat feel fundamentally different.​

 

[SearchEngine]

Daggerfall's and Storm of Zehir's dialogue system
Wizardry's different intros depending on ending from the last game for the imported party
Ultima 4's quest of enlightenment plot

 

[subotaiy]

"Morrowind's levitation"
A similar spell is present in Risen, i think its the only way to reach some treasure chests.

 

[octavius]

Ultima Underworld also had levitation.

 

[Black]

Overworld map as implemented in SoZ.
Dialogue battles from DE: Human Constipation.

 

[visions]

Ultima Underworld also had levitation.

Later Might&Magics too. And Daggerfall at least. Don't remember whether Arena had it.

 

[octavius]

Ultima Underworld also had levitation.

Later Might&Magics too. And Daggerfall at least. Don't remember whether Arena had it.

Texcnically, even early M&M and Bard's Tale had levitation, but it was only an abstraction to help avoiding traps. I think UU was the first CRPG with "real" levitation, but I guess that comes with the territory of being the first true 3D CRPG.

 

[laclongquan]

Stuf

You said that because Final Fantasy dont have dragons. If they have, or if Omega/Ultima/... Weapons had looked more dragon-like, you would have sung a different tune.

lamentable result of no way to mod new graphics in. 2000 limitation and all that.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Not really seen as an RPG, but the Silent Storm games would have to count.

I do think that fully destructible environments, or environments that are malleable/dynamic with significant gameplay relevance is a facet of RPGs that has been particularly lacking over the years, especially now that we have physics middleware and stuff that can simulate such things on the fly.

Agreed!
Computing power has, what, grown by x50 or more since I started playing games in the late nineties? Yet, what was the last game that REALLY pushed the "Cool gameplay use of available technology" bar? Red Faction?
Why we have x50 faster computers, and the only thing we getting is prettier graphix?!!! JESUS talk about killing ants with a gatling! We're getting 90s rehash rpgs that lack everything that made the originals good, and don't even take it further.

Look at how X-COM Apocalypse features a MARVELOUS scenario destruction engine and NeoXCOM has shitty scenario destruction that is barely better than the old original from 1994. I love it when I acidentaly wreck half of a factory with a single rocket in XCOMAPOC, yet I get angry everytime I use some ultra-powerful spell or weapon and the only thing it does is KILL some meatlings! AAAAAAARGH!!

quote="DraQ, post: 2505048, member: 8690"]

I want to be able to magically scry for ambush in some building and just set the whole thing ablaze instead, with followers/party just waiting in front of the door with readied crossbows.


.[/quote]

I want to be able to SUFFER one of those ambushes!!

- Morrowind's levitation (was also useful in discovering secrets and reaching high/floating areas)

- Quests like Arcanum's gnome conspiracy one. Not every quest should leave the player saving the day and solving the problem.​

​

- Arcanum's backgrounds. Beyond their allowance of extreme builds from the get-go, they offered the player great ideas ideas for how to roleplay and what sort of personality the character likely has. I don't really enjoy RPGs where I feel little attachment to my character (DA:O, Skyrim, BG) or very little motivation due to the generic or poorly-written plot.​

​

- Reasonably sized pool of recruitable NPCs. I never really liked how in most RPGs with permadeath, losing a party member equates to "lol reload" unless you want to continue the game gimped. But I also dislike the more modern system of party NPCs being unable to die. Jagged Alliance solves this with a large selection of mercenaries to hire, meaning that losing one isn't the end of the world (though it's certainly something you don't want to occur often, due to both the expense and the morale loss). All these mercenaries being interesting BROs and having strong opinions of the other mercenaries (with in-game repercussions) was just the icing on the cake.​

​

- Firearms not sucking. Thank you Fallout 1 and 2. Though melee catches up again in the late-game with things like power fists and super sledgehammers, by-and-large bringing a knife to a gun fight in early-to-mid level Fallout (which is when the combat is at its most fun, before things turn >95% accuracy eye attack<) gets your head (literally) blown off. Sadly, if an RPG includes firearms chances are that they completely suck. It's even worse if the setting is modern or futuristic yet guns are peashooters that have 1/5 of the damage potential of a katana. Darklands also receives an honourable mention for guns acting reasonably historically for the time; they inflict strong damage but their horrendous reloading rate means they are pretty much only useful for an opening volley followed by closing to melee.​

​

- Fallout's power armour. It's not easy to acquire but boy when you do you are a walking god that can kick the ass of anyone without serious firepower. It's a great feeling seeing those gangsters trying to cut you up or punch you with brass knuckles while you laugh it off without taking a scratch. It was also a nice touch having NPCs recognise that you're wearing it and addicts thinking they're hallucinating while others cower in fear. Power armour felt a lot more underwhelming in FO3/NV due to it just being an incremental improvement over the previous best armour. Obviously this isn't applicable to every setting but more games should include game-changing items like this (instead of incremental upgrades of Steel Longsword -> Steel Longsword +1 -> Steel Longsword + 1 of Fire -> Steel Longsword + 2 of Fire). Acquiring a set of plate armour in a early medieval setting is comparable and should make the combat feel fundamentally different.​

PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING HERE!!

About the power armor: PA is a memorable item because you first see those infinitely BOS guards using it (hohohoohoh look at that puny wastelander wearing a clunky metal piece as armor! Let's all mock him.), and THEN, when you get it... whoa. There's something infinitely satisfying in simply toughing out all the shots from those scabs that scared you before.

Oh, FN is better than FO3 (you don't say lol!) at that aspect, because the gunshots make *clank* *plink* sounds when you have power armor instead of the default *thup* it makes when bullets pierce your skin.

 

[Lady_Error]

And if you saved while stuck, you were fucked.

Hey, that almost rhymes.

 

[roll-a-die]

Darklands everything.

 

[oscar]

On the firearms point it's odd that Troika got the gun/melee balance right in Fallout, but in their later games (Arcanum, V:TMB) guns completely sucked (with it requiring modders to rebalance guns to be slightly less wimpy).

It was especially jarring in Arcanum as the game makes a big point in everything from the intro cinematic to the story an old knight tells you about Tarantian conscripts with guns utterly annihilating his knights, who'd spent their whole lives dedicated to training in swordsmanship. Yet you're ten times more efficient using a sword in-game (higher damage, far quicker, far more accurate. You pretty much have to invest a ton of points into the firearms skill and the gunsmithing tree to be the equal in combat of a character who invested one or two points in melee and is using a cheap sword purchasable from the starting vendor.

 

[Irenaeus]

On the firearms point it's odd that Troika got the gun/melee balance right in Fallout, but in their later games (Arcanum, V:TMB) guns completely sucked (with it requiring modders to rebalance guns to be slightly less wimpy).

Yeah, in V:TMB, it made sense that firearms were less effective when fighting other vampires, because that's explaining by Lore, but the problem was that firearms were ineffective against humans also, which made no sense. You had to fire 10-12 shots to kill a single guard, while melee attacks caused double or triple damage. Jarring.

 

[DraQ]

- Firearms not sucking. Thank you Fallout 1 and 2.

I only disagree with this - we're speaking of games where you could still reasonably expect to survive a headshot with a firearm.

Of course compared to Arcanum...

but the problem was that firearms were ineffective against humans also, which made no sense. You had to fire 10-12 shots to kill a single guard, while melee attacks caused double or triple damage. Jarring.

Not an RPG, but it reminded me of Soul Reaver 1. Vampires could take arbitrary amounts punishment in this game while only getting temporarily stunned, and required water, fire, or sunlight (fledglings only) to be killed permanently (even impalement was only temporary as they would still get back up, if you unstaked them, unless you nom'd their souls).

Humans, OTOH, could be incredibly dangerous, but merely blast them into a stone wall with TK once and they just keeled over and died.

They botched it in later games where you could launch even some frail caster gal through several headstones head first (which was awesome) and she just got up again and continued fighting (which was not).

 

[Lilura]

Try going Auspex+Celerity pumped Toreador and you will see how good guns can be in Bloodlines.

 

[Irenaeus]

Also, guns do more damage in the unofficial patches.

 

[Jasede]

Moredhel word lock puzzle chest

 

[Johannes]

Having campaign for both Romans and Celts in Nethergate, same story very much but you change which predetermined side you're on (also they have different stats from one another).

 

[Sacred_Path]

just QFT, Arcomage.

Inviting a dragon character into your party to gain the ability of flight (MM8)

Daggerfall's overland travel

Mindreading via psionics (Wizardry)

Making allies for the final battle (Dark Sun: SL)

 

[Renevent]

The forge in Arx Fatalis. Other RPG's had crafting of course, but the way you forged weapons in Arx Fatalis was simply awesome. They actually had a forge where you had to melt down ingots (with other ingredients to make them magical), stoke the fire, place blanks for the weapon type you wanted, and of course poor the molten metal into the molds. That opposed to sitting at some work bench and clicking recipes in a journal and just getting an item stuck in your inventory.

I never understood why nobody really expanded on that idea. Even in Arx it was a bit simple since the number of weapon types and ingot combinations was limited. Would be totally awesome if some RPG had a working forge similar, but with dozens of blanks/mold types, ingots and other materials, and more enchanting options.

 

[Rostere]

- Quests like Arcanum's gnome conspiracy one. Not every quest should leave the player saving the day and solving the problem.​

​

- Arcanum's backgrounds. Beyond their allowance of extreme builds from the get-go, they offered the player great ideas ideas for how to roleplay and what sort of personality the character likely has. I don't really enjoy RPGs where I feel little attachment to my character (DA:O, Skyrim, BG) or very little motivation due to the generic or poorly-written plot.​

This.

 

[Xavier0889]

Baking bread with rat poison to kill the king.