What makes an RPG good to you?

[Vacuus]

Alrighty, I'm an indie developer, who has spent the past 6 months writing a story/desigining some parts of a game I'm soon to be working on.

Now, what I want to know from you people, is what exactly makes a good RPG. Is it the story? Character creation/development? NPC interaction? The setting? Hell, even the graphics?

The reason I'm asking, is that while I know what I think makes a good RPG, I would like people to actualy want to play the game, and thus would like some opinions...

I can post the story later should you wish, but for now I'm off to work. Thanks for your time.

 

[Cthulhugoat]

story?

Yes. Examples: Fallout, Planescape: Torment.

Character creation/development?

Not quite, but I like some balance. See Arcanum if you want some disbalancing examples.

NPC interaction?

That would be nice. Still, it's a walk towards adventure games. I believe games with good combat and good NPC interaction as well are pretty impossible. Planescape: Torment is the best game I ever seen with good NPC interaction.

The setting?

Yes. Examples: Planescape: Torment (hard to explain), Fallout (retro post-apocalyptic, pretty iconic), Arcanum (fantasy steampunk).

Hell, even the graphics?

No.

 

[Wired_Irony]

I think the three main things are:

Character Creation/Development- When done well. And by being done well, I mean every option is a good option. I don't want a Spechcraft skill and find out later on how useless it is. If you have, it has to be just as useful as everything else or it is useless.

Choice and Consequence- Every choice you make has to have a bad effect and a good effect. It closes one door and opens another. Not this crap when you have a good choice, and a bad choice. It's always obvious the bad choice will lead to combat or them not talking to you again. That is not roleplaying, BIOWARE!

Immersion- In the story, In the theme, in the characters, in the gameplay. I want to soak in it. When I go to bed, I want to think about it. When I wake up, I want to be excited to play it. And when I'm playing it, I want to be fully immersed in it.

 

[Gambler]

The ability to come up with some role and express it trough in-game actions. That can be achieved in several ways, but I would place emphasis on story, characters and setting.

 

[Zomg]

A. Development of the protagonist(s) as characters in a literary sense, through the player's actions.
B. Gameplay. By that I mean the ineffable thing that makes Tetris, Chess, Doom, and Table Tennis fun.

Good luck.

 

[Ladonna]

I would ask the developer: What makes an RPG good for you? And why?

Its easier to make something that your heart is set on. We have enough cash suckers making 'RPG's' Out there in the world, but if you truly like them yourself....

 

[RK47]

just read the 'What's your favourite flavor of RPG' thread
its shd give u a rough idea.

I dont mind tits.
ass.
and ...ummm elves.(no big ears plz)
Redheads too.

 

[Higher Game]

If the story is good as Planescape: Torment's story, then gameplay even as bad as, well, Planescape: Torment's won't get in the way. Combat should never be the focus of a role playing game. Combat is what action games, strategy games, roguelikes, and Japanese "RPGs" should be about. RPGs should be about a story, interesting characters, and a believable world and setting. All of these elements should develop in different ways.

As for graphics, stick to 2D tiles. It makes the game easier to make and play, and it allows for more imagination. 3D is too distracting for its own good. All the greatest RPGs ever used 2D graphics.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

They need at least passable soil erosion to get my vote.

 

[Romanian_Dude2005]

Definately Character Creation/Development, try to make both a ballanced and complex system (very hard to do) which I can spend xyz hours trying to make more and more diverse characters with weaknesses and strenghts, add to that chooices to which I can use those statistics on (not just the choocie of using my axe skill instead of my mace skill, diplomatic options are allwais wellcome!) and conscequences that are triggered by the way I solved the puzzle/quest/thing-a-majig

Remember quality>quantaty. I don't care if you're indie game is about 10 hours long or FPS length, if you can make those 10 hours worth while, then I'm a happy camper!

Has for NPC Interaction, I dont know... it's too hard for even a company game to get it right, much less for an indie game, I would prever you'ld spend time on chooices/conscequences and character development since the rest of the games on the market treat this aspect like shit.


Also, inspired by PS:T, try to make as many ocassions to reward the player as possible. If can convince an old religious fanatic that there is no god without it being scripted by a quest, then give him +5000 XP. If he has found a unique artifact by exploring a insignificant corner of the map, give him +2500 XP. Heck! If he is even roleplayin' his character the way he is aught' to be then reward him with XP.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

I would ask the developer: What makes an RPG good for you? And why?

Its easier to make something that your heart is set on.

This is a very good point. I don't know how much (game) development experience you have, but if you don't enjoy what you're going to be working on, then its...work. You'll quickly find your motivation declining, and the project willl likely sit on your hard drive, unfinished. If you create something you'd genuinely like to play yourself, that will almost always be evident in the final product.

If you are working on this by yourself or a very small team (probably less than 5 or so), I strongly suggest avoiding a complex rendering engine. You can easily spend a year just working on that, when most of that time could have been working on the actual game. If you already have an engine, I would still suggest holding back some on the graphics. High end media represents a significant investment.

Everything you mentioned is important, with the exception of graphics. Just to let you know now - you won't please everyone, no matter what you do. Trying to will likely only get you a subpar game. Besides what you mentioned, here's a (short) list of things I like to see:

- Challenge: too many games coddle the player, but games without the risk of failure are boring
- Replay Value: lots of character options can provide this, as well as multiple solutions to problems, and mutually exclusive choices in-game
- Creative and Original Content: I probably don't want another quest to kill the foozle, or to spend 99 of the 100 hours the game is supposed to take in mindless combat.
- Turn-Based Combat: good, strategic combat, when necessary
- Well-Balanced: not much needs to be said here
- Low-Power Range: I'm tired of characters who are walking gods by the end of the game

 

[denizsi]

Please consult the "Project: Monkey" thread in this forum first. Come back if that won't help.

 

[Hazelnut]

Please consult the "Project: Monkey" thread in this forum first. Come back if that won't help.

You're more likely to find a better explanation of the basics there - partly because the Codex has had these discussions many times and partly because some of the older posters no longer frequent these smelly hallowed halls.

By all means come back and ask questions / discuss with the members. Do remember that although there is a common attitude here to some extent, the 'hive mind' is a myth and we all have slightly different opinions.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Well, I could go on and tell you to listen to your own ideas, to your heart and about the importance of your vision, etc, yaddayadda, since this is basically how all the games that people still adore so much even in places like these came to be in the first place. And this is the way how great games get made, after all.

But this being Teh Codex after all, a place where, amongst countless other things, people usually post some kind of formulas for games they think they'd like to play whenever questions like these pop up (or whenever somebody asks them about teh true definition of *beep*), here are two words: Chicks. Chainmail. No game is complete without them.

(Seriously, good luck and have fun working on your project.)

 

[JarlFrank]

Alrighty, I'm an indie developer, who has spent the past 6 months writing a story/desigining some parts of a game I'm soon to be working on.

Now, what I want to know from you people, is what exactly makes a good RPG. Is it the story? Character creation/development? NPC interaction? The setting? Hell, even the graphics?

The reason I'm asking, is that while I know what I think makes a good RPG, I would like people to actualy want to play the game, and thus would like some opinions...

I can post the story later should you wish, but for now I'm off to work. Thanks for your time.

What makes an RPG good for me?
Well, that's a good question which usually requires quite a complex answer. But nevermind that.

First, let's take charcter creation and development. In the beginning, I want to be free to choose the gender of my character. Mostly because I like playing female characters. But I don't want to have to select a class. I want freedom in character development. Give me some skill points to distribute between skills, atrributes and maybe some perks or feats and I'm happy. Look at Fallout and Arcanum for example, they did that well.

Then the story. Story is important. A lot. It should give you multiple paths to finish the mainquest, and maybe even multiple endings. You should have lots of choices in the quests, be it mainquests or sidequests. And the story should have lots of turning points, and surprises. Don't choose anything too generic, like a demon invasion or something else blah. Make it interesting and mysterious, so we keep sticking to the mainquest because of the amazing story.

Then let's see the graphics. I don't really care, there, but it should be better than ASCII. I prefer a nice 2D graphics over 3D though. Looks a lot better and is much more fitting to an RPG, well, unless it is first person. You should use an isometric view though. 2D is easier to make than 3D, too, and you'll have more time to focus on gameplay.

 

[MountainWest]

What others have said, and quests with DEPTH and BACKGROUND! I was just playing BL, completing the quest with Overlook hot... hrm... the haunted hotel. And while the atmosphere is okay (at first) the gameplay and story sucks. A series of jumps and some cliché newspaper headlines that tell you a story of a dad gone mad.

Instead of having "Find the pendant" as goal, they could have had "Find out what happened at the oceanview hotel". Instead of the hotel being deserted, they could have had you staying there for a week with other guests and personel.

So you explore the hotel, question the personel, listen to other guests stories of strange sounds and sightings at night, put clues togheter, find the murdered familys room, find their blooded belongings hidden in the attic, find their graves, listen to faint ghost-rambling. And as the days goes by more and more crazy shit start to happen. People start to disappear, panic spreads, people start to attack eachother, hostages, the personel tells you more of what happened, you yourself start to loose your sanity - hallucinating, nightmares all that fun stuff. Blah blah blah.

And the finale, I imagine, is this crazy guy breaking through a door with a blunt axe, screaming "Heeeres Todd Howard!"

Something I can describe not using a sentence like “Do you remember that cave in ShockDragonEffect – the next-gen epic – with fifty goblins and a hundred treasure chests with random über-loot? Ah, those where the times!”

Oh, and übergraphics. If my hardware runs the game without hicups every five seconds I won’t play it. And the draw distance should be one meter – the best fucking looking one meter ever!

 

[kingcomrade]

I can more easily tell you what I don't like about RPGs that make them not fun. After all, fun isn't a magical state of mind that ambushes you when you unwittingly load up a game. When you load up a game you're looking for entertainment. Shitty games can ruin your mood.

Poor interface can be one of them. It's the reason I haven't gotten far in System Shock. I don't like playing it, even if it is a great game.
Generic and uninspired gameplay can be another. If I find myself doing monotonous or pointless tasks to satisfy the sadistic pleasures of some control freak game designer I'm going to get bored and go play Wario Ware.
Uninteresting setting or characters are the same way. I mean, why should I be interesting exploring Generic Fantasy Kingdom #2? Do I want Extreme Best of the Best Protagonist to die, or succeed?

 

[no]

-Give me an option to evoke a wide range of characters in a gameworld that reacts to my choices differently(I don't mind an "illusion" as long as it's a well crafted one).

-Don't bore me to death with easy and only cosmetically different challenges/encounters (i.e. the points where you evoke a character).

-Don't be afraid of originality.

 

[Jim Kata]

Tasteful rape.

 

[SkeleTony]

Character creation: Logically consistent as well as elegant game mechanics that allow for versatility and fun. Not dumbed down console styled crap.
Examples would be Fallout and(for the most part) the Avernum games as far as computer RPGS go and RuneQuest(3rd ed.), HERO system as far as pen and paper RPGS go.

Character classes work fine in many if not most settings/RPGs. In a fantasy game world for example, i do not want my generic character to just have skills that I imagine a necromancer might have. I want him to BE a necromancer! I want other NPCs to react to him as though he were one of those creepy mages who raises the dead. It is fully possible to have a class-based system that also allows for non-classes/custom/generic characters.

Tactical challenges: Not "Ah you defeated me the last six times but this being the almost-next-to-final-battle you are going to have to defeat me AGAIN! And this time I got DEMONS!! And 1,000 DRAGONS!".

I mean stuff like having choices/ options that actually matter. Dual wielding vs. single weapon + shield, aiming at specific locations, archery/ranged vs. melee? etc. See Tom Proudfoot's Natuk and POWS and Nahlakh games as well as Jagged Alliance 2 and(to a lesser extent) Fallout.

Non-linearity: I do not want to artificially be barred from wandering over to area 'X' by stupidly placed mountain ranges or an "invisible barrier". If area X to to tough for my newbie characters then I want to find out the hard way and still try and figure out a way to beat the area using my own ingenuity(not bug exploits though).

Party based: I am no fan of re-playing the same game over and over just to see what it would be like to try other character builds or getting 75% done with a game only to find out that it is not really beatable using characters that have no stealth skills or spell casting ability.
Part composition also plays into the overall strategy and tactics of the game.


Things I could care less about?

Story. I read...a LOT. I have a pretty good handle on what is and is not good writing. I read both bad(Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance etc.) and good(Book of the New Sun, Elric, etc.)books. But I do NOT want to read a book disguised as a game(ala Planescape), regardless of whether someone else thinks it was a comparitively well-written game.

The typical roguelike "kill the foozle" usually ends up being not any less satisfactory than the "amazing epic!" that most try to do.


Things that would be nice(but are not a requirement):

Setting: <i>Skyrealms of Jorune</i> was a pen and paper RPG that had one of the two best settings ever developed for RPGaming(the other being <i>Glorantha</i>). Such an imaginative setting can only be pulled off by ACTUAL storytellers(as opposed to 99.9% of those who try their hand at writing RPGs). Greg Stafford(creator of Glorantha and co-creator of RuneQuest) majored in mythology/folklore ro soem such and is a solid writer all around. His work shows this. If you are one of the few who can match Jorune or Glorantha in terms of visionary creative genius then you can disregard my comments above about "story" being unimportant and come out with guns blazing!