Most important part of an RPG

[JarlFrank]

Now, this isn't going to be a discussion on LOL WAT IS AN RPG???, we've had more than enough of those already. And in my opinion, RPGs have dozens of subgenres, so there is no definite answer to that. The question in this thread is: which feature that is commonly seen within RPGs is the most important feature to you? The one feature that, when done perfectly, can make you enjoy the game even if all other features suck?

Combat: Well, the thing that you always do when you meet enemies. The thing that oldschool dungeon crawlers do really well. Fighting monsters or evil guys with your character or your party.

Character Development: Leveling up, equipping new gear, putting points into your stats and skills... this option includes everything that is about the character system, be it the sheer amount of skills and stats, or their usefulness, or just an interesting unique system of leveling up.

C&C: We all know what that means. Fallout, Arcanum, Witcher, they did this right: giving you several meaningful choices that lead to different outcomes. Do I join the good faction or the evil faction? Each path leads to a different result.

Story and Dialogue: This option includes a well-written story and good use of dialogue. PST is the best example here. Also includes "gameplay by dialogue" like PST did it, where you can do other things than just talk within the dialogue window, like breaking someone's neck.

Lore, World, Exploration: This option is about the stuff you can discover. Morrowind and Daggerfall are the perfect examples here. Crawling into the deepest dungeon and finding rare artifacts, reading about the rich gameworld in ingame books, finding interesting places which all have their own history... basically a really interesting and well-thought-out gameworld that is fun to explore.

Sandboxyness, "Freedom": The modern form of "nonlinearity". Being able to explore the world freely and do whatever you want whenever you want. Basically, something like Oblivion, but with more options. Maybe also roguelikes. Not being forced to follow a questline but being able to freely do whatever you want to do, be it fighting monsters, doing sidequests or forging your own equipment.

 

[Andhaira]

Great thread.

I will have to say combat, though I am torn between combat and char development ( I like tons of options when levelling up). However combat really is the meat and potatoes of an rpg.

You could have everything done really well but crappy combat, and the game will suck. The reason and goldox games are legends is their tactical combat. Same with realms of arkania. ToEE had fantastic combat too that made the gamea hit with rpg fans despite horrendus bugs and crappy story and dialogue.

 

[Major_Boobage]

This is hard. I mean on the one hand a game needs a story because the story is the backbone.
But if the combat is boring it will get tedious.
And there also has to be a challenge in finding new items like in Morrowind.

Still i would say that Story and Dialogue is probably the most important aspect of an RPG. If you want combat, you can play other genre's that give you a challenge in combat like FPS or RTS. But still the best RTS ever created (Starcraft) has a fanstastic story, so even here the story is important.

I think in the genre RPG the story should be the predominate factor but Character development is always so very important and so is a rich world and combat and all the other things. So its a very hard choice to say the least.

I'd rather prefere a great story and lesser combat for example then decent combat and a decent story.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Lore, World, Exploration: This option is about the stuff you can discover. Morrowind and Daggerfall are the perfect examples here. Crawling into the deepest dungeon and finding rare artifacts, reading about the rich gameworld in ingame books, finding interesting places which all have their own history... basically a really interesting and well-thought-out gameworld that is fun to explore.

This. This is the reason why I love Morrowind and Gothic 2 so much. They have excellent exploration with all kinds of cool hidden stuff to discover in nearly every corner. And not just new powerful items, but books and texts with lore and history.

 

[Hory]

The most important property is that which differentiates it from other art forms and genres. Mortal Kombat has combat. The Young and the Restless has character development. Lord of the Rings has lore and exploration. The Matrix has story and dialogue. Transport Tycoon has sandboxynes. Without C&C, a RPG just becomes one of the things above.

 

[Durwyn]

I voted Character development cos' this is exclusive RPG feature. Nowadays many genres borrow it from RPGs, even driving games.

Combat: It depends on game's pace and focus. For ex. Torment. Combat isn't the main focus of the game, so it's not as fleshed out as in other RPGs. It's not necessary, Torment is all about story and this makes it a great game.

C&C: It adds depth to every cRPG if done right. However, if character development,story,lore and combat are good enough to interest me in game, I don't mind railroading.

Story and dialogue, Lore,World,Exploration: same as C&C. Very important, but if other parts are done good, I can live without great story and dialogues or original world.

You could have everything done really well but crappy combat, and the game will suck..

Arcanum proves you're wrong

 

[Andhaira]

The most important property is that which differentiates it from other art forms and genres. Mortal Kombat has combat. The Young and the Restless has character development. Lord of the Rings has lore and exploration. The Matrix has story and dialogue. Transport Tycoon has sandboxynes. Without C&C, a RPG just becomes one of the things above.

For crying out loud, an rpg's combat is not the same as combat in any other genre and you know it. Rpg's have unique combat. True rpg's have turn based combat, or at the very least RTwP, where the twitch factor is not invovled and everything is stat driven. The Witcher is an action rpg because it has twitch based combat.

 

[Wyrmlord]

C&C: We all know what that means. Fallout, Arcanum, Witcher, they did this right: giving you several meaningful choices that lead to different outcomes. Do I join the good faction or the evil faction? Each path leads to a different result.

Meaningful? It's totally meaningless.

This choice-and-consequence hackneyed bullshit is just a bunch of scripted triggers. It is nothing more than if-then-either-or switch that you throw into the game. It is a set of binary variables sorted together, and they amount to just to "NPC LIKES VALUE:0, NPC HATES VALUE:1, CHARACTER GETS +500 GOLD, THIEVES GUILD OPENED".

That has nothing to do with building your character and planning your approach to solving the game; it is just a perusal of listed options for doing one thing or the other. It's like pressing buttons on a machine to do one task.

If we are talking about meaningful decisions for the player, how about being a given a limited amount of gold, and then deciding how you are going to spend it on equipment and supplies based on their use? How about seeing how much food it will take to explore different parts of the map in different possible journeys? How about seeing that your ninja has a limited chance of instantly killing a high level character, and taking that gamble to turn the odds in your favour, and having a backup for it, just in case? How about the choice of specializing further in one skill at the expense of spreading it among various skills?

Has anybody ever written a walkthrough for the above things?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Gonna vote for exploration and world, I suppose, since in almost every possible RPG I leave the main (and often side too) quests for the last while I proceed to run around the whole location in search of new stuff, and I'll be damned if I find a locked door/chest/anything that I cannot open

Without C&C, a RPG just becomes one of the things above.

 

[Wyrmlord]

I'll be damned if I find a locked door/chest/anything that I cannot open

And that's why, my friends, Bloodlines was a genuinely shitty game.

 

[JarlFrank]

C&C: We all know what that means. Fallout, Arcanum, Witcher, they did this right: giving you several meaningful choices that lead to different outcomes. Do I join the good faction or the evil faction? Each path leads to a different result.

Meaningful? It's totally meaningless.

This choice-and-consequence hackneyed bullshit is just a bunch of scripted triggers. It is nothing more than if-then-either-or switch that you throw into the game. It is a set of binary variables sorted together, and they amount to just to "NPC LIKES VALUE:0, NPC HATES VALUE:1, CHARACTER GETS +500 GOLD, THIEVES GUILD OPENED".

That has nothing to do with building your character and planning your approach to solving the game; it is just a perusal of listed options for doing one thing or the other. It's like pressing buttons on a machine to do one task.

If we are talking about meaningful decisions for the player, how about being a given a limited amount of gold, and then deciding how you are going to spend it on equipment and supplies based on their use? How about seeing how much food it will take to explore different parts of the map in different possible journeys? How about seeing that your ninja has a limited chance of instantly killing a high level character, and taking that gamble to turn the odds in your favour, and having a backup for it, just in case? How about the choice of specializing further in one skill at the expense of spreading it among various skills?

Has anybody ever written a walkthrough for the above things?

Wrong. It does have to do a lot with building your character and planning your approach to solving the game. Take Arcanum, for example. Depending on your stats, you can persuade a certain thief to let you through, you can fight him if your charisma is too low or you can bribe him if you don't wanna fight. That's meaningful C&C, actually, since it depends heavily on your stats. It's not just based on random chance as you assume. Making characters like you more is something you achieve by being nice to them in dialogue, and succeeding in persuasion checks is something you do when you have high charisma and persuasion skill. Your character development plays a HUGE role in the choice and consequence of games like Fallout and Arcanum. If you don't believe me, try building a pure fighter and then try using your persuasion skill. Won't work.

 

[sheek]

The problem is this poll only caters to the story-fags, C&C-fags and "squad tactics"-fags. Yes, these people do make up most the Codex but none of them define RPGs.

How come there isn't an option for dungeoneering which is what RPGs are fundamentally about? Completing quests which test you on a mixture of using different party skills (traps, lock picking, stealth), solving puzzles, exploration/clue hunting and combat is what I like about RPGs. RPG = balanced variety of different types of gameplay, in an interesting environment, usually with a fantasy or sci-fi theme to it.

Combat on it's own isn't an RPG, it a strategy/action game
Solving puzzles on it's own isn't an RPG, it's an adventure game
Exploration on it's own isn't an RPG, it's Morrowind
Story on it's own isn't an RPG, it's a visual novel
Studying 'Lore' on it's own isn't an RPG, it's nerdy, derivative fan-fiction
Character optimization on it's own isn't an RPG, it's spreadsheet masturbation
Different/conflicting paths on it's own doesn't make an RPG, it's an interactive fiction game
'Sandboxiness' on it's own isn't an RPG, it makes a boring simulator, not even a game

Once separate them then you don't have a proper RPG.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Look out people, sheek's gonna bore us all to death.

 

[Hory]

Different/conflicting paths on it's own doesn't make an RPG, it's an interactive fiction game

Wrong, IF is mostly linear and about puzzle solving. You could say it's a CYOA book, tho.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Sheek, you just mentioned clue-hunting. I just realized that there hasn't been an instance of clue-hunting in a game for years, except for a few select situations in Mask Of The Betrayer.

If by clue-hunting, you mean collecting pieces of information throughout and then personally assessing where they may lead by your own analysis and investigation, that seems to have largely disappeared from RPGs altogether.

It used to work very well with connecting all the spynotes in Betrayal At Krondor, where you would find the connections between the priests of Kahooli, Count Corvallis, the Nighthawks, the Guarda Revanche, the murders in Romney, the Pranker's Stone, the war between guilds, the war between thieves, and the supplying of wine from a particular brewer. My god everything was connected in that game, and one line of evidence would lead you to several places.

And in Mask Of The Betrayer, you found torn pages of books which dealt in how you could make contact with a particular diety, and if you searched hard enough, you could find artifacts that would help you in it. Judging by what all those journals told you, you could figure out how to work those artifacts, and you would receive a boon from the Beastlord. That was brilliant.

They need to do this stuff more. It's the only good way of working with story in a game.

 

[sheek]

Sheek, you just mentioned clue-hunting. I just realized that there hasn't been an instance of clue-hunting in a game for years, except for a few select situations in Mask Of The Betrayer.

If by clue-hunting, you mean collecting pieces of information throughout and then personally assessing where they may lead by your own analysis and investigation, that seems to have largely disappeared from RPGs altogether.

That's what I mean, and you're right. Some older-school NWN mods rely on them, but generally I agree the C&C fag story development model seems to have taken over. You are led to the clues, and your choices/attitude to how to deal with them is the focus.

And Grimoire seems to be into them in a big way.

 

[Marquis de Retardot]

Look out people, sheek's gonna bore us all to death.

Nah, that would be Wyrmlord innit!

 

[DriacKin]

I voted Character development cos' this is exclusive RPG feature. Nowadays many genres borrow it from RPGs, even driving games.

It would be more accurate to say that character development used to be exclusive to adventure games, and computer RPGs borrowed it from them.

 

[MetalCraze]

Sheek is master of the obvious. Of course games should be a mix of something to avoid the feeling of a railroaded, plain and boring gameplay. I don't think JarlFrank was saying otherwise.

But as to answer his question - it's a mixture of most of those elements (as you can't have them all) done right is what is important for me.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Sheek, you just mentioned clue-hunting. I just realized that there hasn't been an instance of clue-hunting in a game for years, except for a few select situations in Mask Of The Betrayer.

If by clue-hunting, you mean collecting pieces of information throughout and then personally assessing where they may lead by your own analysis and investigation, that seems to have largely disappeared from RPGs altogether.

That's what I mean, and you're right. Some older-school NWN mods rely on them, but generally I agree the C&C fag story development model seems to have taken over. You are led to the clues, and your choices/attitude to how to deal with them is the focus.

And Grimoire seems to be into them in a big way.

There is hardly as much fun in a game where all quests and information are automatically listed in a journal and whatever actions you can take are simply listed in a dialogue menu.

The real fun is in taking out an A5 notepad, taking note of all rumours, tips, witnessed incidents, anecdotes, letters, journals, and all in-game sources of information, sitting with your notepad and seeing what the hell is happening here, getting a 'AHA!' moment, travelling to some place, finding an object, showing it to any person who can help you with it, exploring around and collecting more information, summing up all your available information, and then realizing the location of the person or thing you were trying to find.

Instead of just clicking through a bunch of dialogue options that lead you through all those clues anyway.

 

[sheek]

Sheek is master of the obvious. Of course games should be a mix of something to avoid the feeling of a railroaded, plain and boring gameplay. I don't think JarlFrank was saying otherwise.

But as to answer his question - it's a mixture of most of those elements (as you can't have them all) done right is what is important for me.

So you agree with me. There's no "balanced" option which is what we would both vote for.

 

[JarlFrank]

The problem is this poll only caters to the story-fags, C&C-fags and "squad tactics"-fags. Yes, these people do make up most the Codex but none of them define RPGs.

Now, this isn't going to be a discussion on LOL WAT IS AN RPG???, we've had more than enough of those already. And in my opinion, RPGs have dozens of subgenres, so there is no definite answer to that. The question in this thread is: which feature that is commonly seen within RPGs is the most important feature to you?

As you see, this thread is not about defining what an RPG is. It's about which of those RPG features is, in your opinion, the most important. Yes, a good RPG is a combination of all of those features. But in most RPGs, one of the features is usually better than the others. In Arcanum, combat is bad but the gameworld and C&C are great. In ToEE, the story and world are boring but the combat is great. Of course the best of all cases is a game that does EVERYTHING right. Yet that's difficult to achieve, so this poll is about which of the individual features you like the most.

 

[sheek]

And as I said, none is more important than the other. Keeping a balance and making each part good makes the whole good.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Of course the best of all cases is a game that does EVERYTHING right. Yet that's difficult to achieve, so this poll is about which of the individual features you like the most.

So, what game do you think does achieve everything in this list? I think Wiz8 would be the closest to such perfection.

 

[Durwyn]

Of course the best of all cases is a game that does EVERYTHING right. Yet that's difficult to achieve, so this poll is about which of the individual features you like the most.

So, what game do you think does achieve everything in this list? I think Wiz8 would be the closest to such perfection.

Arcanum ? Almost everything is done right minus the combat.