Kaanyrvhok
Arbiter
- Joined
- May 1, 2008
- Messages
- 1,096
This isn’t a list of what I would like to see it’s a list of what I’m sick of or what needs to evolve. Maybe I’ll make a list of stuff that I want to see later.
1. The Inventory
Here is something that RPGs cant seem to to function without it. Why do we need the Inventory? If a character has arrows why not just put them in a quiver on the models back, if you want to pull a map out of a backpack why not just zoom in Fallout 3 Pip Boy style. This would really add some flare to item damage and using items in real time might become a game within itself. When it comes to game design realism may not be fun but it sure can be the lead recipe. I would love to catch an Archmage rummaging through her purse... maybe not
Sure you probably wouldn’t be able to carry as much without wrapping ammo around your waist but that’s personality. RPG PCs store too much on their bod. I want to see more pack mules, and cars to stuff shit in.
Do away with Inventory
2. Japanese
Why is it that you can put the word Japanese in front of RPG and it not only gives you a license to shun originality and use a bunch of clichés it awards it? Ok we have a villain that used to be good, a Star Wars meets anime Steampunk setting, a premade PC that makes Michael Jackson look masculine, airship battles, inspired by anime artist Kuji XXXXX but its still original cuz it has quick time sequences and its Japanese?
Japan you aren’t that foreign anymore. We know you too well. No longer can you mask your crap under the guise of culture.
3. The Grind
Mermorfigers I look at you. Leveling itself almost made this list. Fighting for XP is cool. That’s called practice. The problem I have is that it offers no real development. You are detached from the experience yet you get points? In MMORPGs you can be so detached that a macro can do it for you. Oblivion was at least halfway to getting it right. Jumping 50 times to level up your athletic skill is no better than killing a goat to level up anything but at least its connected. Oblivion just needed context or limitations but the system was on track.
The great and wise Pool of Radiance had its share of random encounters but the leveling was so slow and the C64 load times were so slow you would have to be sick to go hunting. The game didn’t have level scaling so there was always the chance of getting killed. In PoR I played the game for more than 30 hours and I had characters under level 7. That type of pace is unheard of in games with random encounters.
Do away with Grinding
4. CombatOk you are reading the preview for a newly announced RPG… How many paragraphs does it usually take before they get to the combat? Just once, can I read an RPG preview that features little to no combat at all? It’s not what they are good at. This is especially true with action RPGs. There is a reason Shenmue had great action combat. It used an engine from a damn good fighting game. Deus Ex was nice and Shenmue was great. Beyond that I cant name many action RPGs with good combat. The ironic thing is that Shenmue didn’t even have that much combat. You could fight more people in an hour in Fable mashing one damn button than in Shenmue 1 and 2 combined. Ahhh but action sells or was that sex? Ok but at least give me quality action.
Or give me quality strategy. Really I would rather have both. :twisted:
Strategy RPGs you are not off the hook either. Most TB and RTS have shit for combat and just as much mindless ‘ripe for the grind’ filler combat as Action RPGs and MMOs. The problem with TB RPGs is that they have a low standard. ToEE is on a lot of people’s short list for the best TB combat has to offer because its an accurate representation of D&D rules. Well wooptey doo. I love D&D not for the rules. D&D doesn’t do a good job of representing what real hand to hand combat is like, without a DM its shit for squad based combat, and to be honest I think the Infinity Engine’s variation is a more accurate representation of what fighting in a fantasy world would be like in real life if a fantasy world was real lol. Oh and to find out the main reason why most RTS style combat isn’t good enough to justify it existence see #6.
Beyond the fact that the combat is lacking in quality and obtrusive in quantity it limits the overall depth of a game when killing as suitable an option as a middlefinger.
5. Potion IV
If folks have to hook up an Intravenous potion to their PC then maybe the game has too much combat, or maybe its too hard.
Drinking a rare enchanted elixir of health should be a process of wonder and awe. Maybe that’s a stretch. In most games it’s a routine game mechanic without an animation. In some games they go as far as to do it for you. Auto regen is more of a symptom than an issue so it wont make this list.
Do away with the Potion IV
6. 3 man/woman parties
Unless there is free booze.
I’m not like most codexers in that I’m a big fan of Oblivion. It doesn’t take much to satisfy me. As base as Fallout 3 was I would have loved the game if it just had a decent party system. Two Mexicans debating the existence of the Mysterious Stranger would have sealed the deal.
I remember going to their boards asking for a decent party system, and everytime you would here the same drivel. Its for soloing based on mmmmaaaad maaaacccckkksss.
Wasn’t there a period in both Mad Max movies where he joined up with a large group of people? Didn’t he team up with more people than the total amount of every FO NPC companions in the three games combined?
One of the reasons why Action/RTS RPGs have shit for strategy is they have small parties. If you have more people then theoretically you will have more ways to solve a combat situation. With more options you can increase the difficulty. It also makes more sense to roll deep with all the save the world plots and dangerous settings. My six year old son was watching me play DA yesterday and he asked me if my dog died. I told him no I replaced him with this other girl but she sucks. I showed him how to put the dog back and his reply was, “What this game only lets you use four people at a time? That’s stupid”.
Sega typically breaks the JRPG mold more than most. They had a game on the Saturn called Blazing Heroes. The game was 3D nonlinear and you ended the game with 12 party members. Hardware is not an excuse. If you can have four people with Gears of Wars’s graphics in a game with similar area size and more shit going on you can have 8 in DA.
The lack of party members messes with the story. Blazing Heroes was nonlinear because it was all about seeking the heroes. With KOTOR, DA, JE and all of these 3 and 4 party games after you get 3 or 4 party members the rest come with an asterisk. Damned if any of these games even rationalize the necessity of small parties with an abundance of stealth or a lack of food, or the ability to split into two parties like you could with KOTOR 2 and Blazing Heroes for a bit.
4 player parties go away.
7. Level Scaling
I’m entertained by the justifications for such an inane mechanic. Bethesda didn’t even try to justify it in FO 3. I can paraphrase their reaction as something to the effect of ‘hey we got it but you wont even know its there’. That begs an obvious question… What a waste of time especially in a game where you can high tail it out of most dangerous situations (Dogmeat will follow you). In the Gold box games you couldn’t run or hide from most encounters and there was no lvl scaling. When you think about it those games could have justified some lvl scaling. Reloading the Com 64 because you stumbled into an army wasn’t fun but shooting yourself up with Jet so you can run from a Deathclaw is an experience to tell your grand kids about.
Not only is it unnecessary it stomps out the immersion. It also removes what could be really interesting scenarios. Maybe those low level goblins could become your followers, run in fear, beg for mercy, or join up with others and try to beat you in numbers. It sure beats replacing them with Goblin Lords. Fleeing from a high lvl opponent can have its personality too. Maybe you could lead them into a town and watch the slaughter, or into a hole and piss on them, shoot them in the leg, misdirect them with an illusion. It’s not like the Gold Box days where fleeing was damn near impossible. If a speedy party was necessary it could justify using a smaller party and/or removing certain companions when facing unpredictable encounters.
Do away with level scaling.
8. Voice acting
Ok this kinda breaks the rule. I prefer voiced NPCs. Here is my issssuuueee, almost everyone stops at voice. I always got the feeling that the characters in Bloodlines weren’t voiced acted, they were just acted. That game was the exception. Typical RPG dialog feels like a generic splice of office banter translated into old English or whatever fits the setting glossed with a bachelor’s degree in English. Simply put, people don’t talk like that and they certainly don’t move like that when they talk.
In DA, Morrigan and Alistair exchange like yuppies and they are not atypical. Matter of fact DA’s voice acting isn’t bad. I thought the mother of the possessed kid was convincing. DA stills lacks culture. Voice acting is not enough. What the games need is a real sense of being and its not alone. Developers need to go beyond larping and treat the game like a documentary. If you want Nords go talk to some real Nords. If you want Chinese get some real Chinese small farmers. If you want ghetto go to a club in the ghetto and just record people. Listen to real small talk. I found the criticism of the Mud Crab dialog in Oblivion to be petty because the game handled small talk better than most RPGs but when I look at it from a tough love stand point and I think about how people talk about Mosquitoes in malaria country. When I make that comparison I understand the criticism. Beth had a chance to nail small talk and they failed.
9. 40 hours
From now on RPGs should advertise the real_length of a game. My equation for real_length is Average completion time – unavoidable combat, combat from random encounters, all dungeon combat after 5 battles, boring monologues, and cut scenes.
40 hours of what??? Thats the question
10. Random Encounters
Random encounters should be balanced so grinding doesn’t offset the penalty for waiting for them. For example If there is a dungeon with 7 predetermined encounters and the party basically clears the dungeon unless the party has real security measures any time spent in that dungeon should incur possible encounters from wonders unless it’s a really secret location. So in that sense random encounters are ok but there has to be some penalty to keep people from just resting to spawn an encounter and grinding away. I don’t like harsh time constraints on missions but some C&C for being a lazy/grinder/rest whore is very nice.
11. White People and tokens
I love White People but like anything else in the world they get old after a while. Almost every RPG feels like a Barry Manilow concert. I appreciate the all white politically incorrect settings over the ones with the tokens. Almost all RPGs are like this except JE and those quasi Asians were just the residents in any other RPG. Probably had many of the same voice actors too.
A greater variety of fantasy settings would be nice. I’m interested in some Ethiopian, Inuit, or Indian fantasy but if they don’t deliver the culture whats the point? They have a hard enough time with Euro fantasy. Its like my take on voice acting. Focus on Documentary stories. Talk to real people. Carry a mic everywhere. Go live with the natives. Maybe you wont want to leave the Congo.
Make a white people free RPG.
12. Humanoids
Aww fuck its not just white people. Its people just people. In general RPGs have too many people. I’m a Forgotten Realms freak so If I’m designing one RPG its FR, two and its aWatership Down’s setting. Anything but people. How about Octopi? It’s a fantasy you can just make them speak English and say its Octopi or Marine which is the underwater animal equivalent for common.
Hope a Bioware lurker doesn’t read this as an endorsement of another Sonic game.
Make a people free RPG
13. Receiving missions
YourConscience said it best. ‘Why cant we hire some hire some thugs to kill someone for us’?
Why are we always on the bitch end of missions. Why does everyone want to offer money and XP to deliver and pick up stuff. How about letting us dictate? How about rewarding us for proper delegation?
Can I have my “Heck of a job Brownie” moment?
14. Hostiles
Bandits, Highwaymen, Animals, cute little stuffed animals in JRPGs hell everyone wants to put their dukes up and get pugilistic. Cut it out!!! This is why simple macros can play your fucken MMORPGs. I’m sick of everyone being so brave. Didn’t you just see me slaughter your mates with my eyes closed? Why so quick to die bandito?
Mix in some parlay.
15. High Attack accuracy/high HP count
I used to love low level D&D because one hit mattered.
FO 3 would have been more fun if bullets were feared. I guess everyone got the memo that a pistol shot to the dome wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Enclave for the PC/Xbox really nailed Realistic fantasy shooter combat. That game was hard too. It was a level based game without save points on the Xbox. They added them for the PC version. Some of the levels were long, and you faced one hit kills. Enclave with 6 party members player progression that focused more on skill than damage, and Rainbow Six tactics would sticky piss on every RPG shooter especially Beth’s shit. A nice tube example of Enclave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s_F9Wdy ... re=related
That was a harsh lvl. Took me like 20 chances on the Xbox but the Xbox version was a lot harder.
Let Headshots be headshots
16. Saving the World or even destroying the world
Or saving a city NWN style. Pool of Radiance did it right even though the game didn’t do enough to make it look like there were other heroes out there but at least they didn’t treat you like you were the chosen hero despite being 1st lvl. I’m sick of RPGs that take low level characters and try to take them from paupers to saviors of the world. There should be a greater focus on the development during the early levels.
Its rare for an RPG to savor the low levels for the unique experiences that can be gained. RPGs are about XP instead of experiences. Leveling is almost always mechanical or statistical but rarely social. You come from poverty but you are rarely given the option to lift others out of it. Even if you don’t come from poverty I can’t name many games that has a tangible consequence to philanthropy. Likewise I cant name many games where (outside of stats) 5th lvl feels much different than 1st, 10th, or 20.
How a PC interacts with the world should evolve more than their stats.
17. HP bars
Again interaction over stats. I should know a companion is about to die because they are surrounded by skilled opponents, they are screaming help, they took off running leaving a thick trail of blood, their entrails are exposed, they are lying down bleeding, they have four arrows sticking out of their body. HP bars and mana bars are there to tell you what you should already know. A smell meter would be nice.
The game is to be showed not told.
18. Free Information
This is one of the many reasons Pool of Radiance is still my favorite RPG. Find a Wand. You don’t know what that Wand does. It could summon a demon, bounce a lighting bolt off a wall and through you, fire a green cloud of demonic flatulence etc etc. As a rule lurker devs, not knowing something can lead to experiments which can lead to experiences. I don’t want to know what every root and flower is unless my PC studies that stuff. I don’t want to know every ones name unless I ask or they offer. IDing stuff was a bit too expensive in D&D games. It cost 200 gold to ID a healing potion.
Come on every DM knows that a mysterious vile of golden liquid is more interesting than a potion of fire piss. :wink:
19. Accessibility
Why is RPG the easy genre? I don’t mind easy RPGs as long as they make sense. Fable is an example of an easy RPG that makes some sense because the goal always seemed to be playing without dying, which was why it gave you scars when you died. Of coarse those scars had little bearing so fuck Fable bad example. Well not really. I don’t mind easy with perm death. Why is DA’s difficulty a big deal when it’s no tougher than a lot of kid titles? I’m not kidding when I say Yoshi’s Island was tougher than DA. Mario Galaxy is harder than DA so far. The easiest genre is RPGs. Yet honestly it’s not the difficulty that I care about it’s the depth. Since RPG is the bitch genre when it comes to difficulty I can see them skimping on depth and realism.
20. One and done.
Fallout did one and done right. So right it spawned two sequels. I appreciate a publisher and a developer that’s not trying to sell you a trilogy but I still miss the Pool or Radiance/ Baldur’s Gate model because they did a better job of savoring individual levels. Viva Strongholds…
I want something that sort of mimics the stages of Conan. First its survival, then its arena battle, then its training, then its banditry, then its mercenary work, then adventure, then a kingdom. Cant do that in one game.
21. Books
Lore should be showed or worse told, not read. The irony is that I like to read just not on the PC screen and especially not on the TV. The great Pool of Radiance didn’t even force you to read from a screen. It provided a real journal. The screen just gave you links to where to read. What fucking genius.
22. Balance and Equality
You aren’t strong enough to put on Elvin boots? That’s DA for ya. Are the mages really too powerful in DA or does the AI just not give them the respect they deserve? ToEE’s ‘kill the mage’ AI would have fit well in DA.
Okkk Balance is extremely important but its something that should never feel perfect because we don’t live in a perfect world. The key is to balance the imbalances. That is wisdom.
1. The Inventory
Here is something that RPGs cant seem to to function without it. Why do we need the Inventory? If a character has arrows why not just put them in a quiver on the models back, if you want to pull a map out of a backpack why not just zoom in Fallout 3 Pip Boy style. This would really add some flare to item damage and using items in real time might become a game within itself. When it comes to game design realism may not be fun but it sure can be the lead recipe. I would love to catch an Archmage rummaging through her purse... maybe not
Sure you probably wouldn’t be able to carry as much without wrapping ammo around your waist but that’s personality. RPG PCs store too much on their bod. I want to see more pack mules, and cars to stuff shit in.
Do away with Inventory
2. Japanese
Why is it that you can put the word Japanese in front of RPG and it not only gives you a license to shun originality and use a bunch of clichés it awards it? Ok we have a villain that used to be good, a Star Wars meets anime Steampunk setting, a premade PC that makes Michael Jackson look masculine, airship battles, inspired by anime artist Kuji XXXXX but its still original cuz it has quick time sequences and its Japanese?
Japan you aren’t that foreign anymore. We know you too well. No longer can you mask your crap under the guise of culture.
3. The Grind
Mermorfigers I look at you. Leveling itself almost made this list. Fighting for XP is cool. That’s called practice. The problem I have is that it offers no real development. You are detached from the experience yet you get points? In MMORPGs you can be so detached that a macro can do it for you. Oblivion was at least halfway to getting it right. Jumping 50 times to level up your athletic skill is no better than killing a goat to level up anything but at least its connected. Oblivion just needed context or limitations but the system was on track.
The great and wise Pool of Radiance had its share of random encounters but the leveling was so slow and the C64 load times were so slow you would have to be sick to go hunting. The game didn’t have level scaling so there was always the chance of getting killed. In PoR I played the game for more than 30 hours and I had characters under level 7. That type of pace is unheard of in games with random encounters.
Do away with Grinding
4. CombatOk you are reading the preview for a newly announced RPG… How many paragraphs does it usually take before they get to the combat? Just once, can I read an RPG preview that features little to no combat at all? It’s not what they are good at. This is especially true with action RPGs. There is a reason Shenmue had great action combat. It used an engine from a damn good fighting game. Deus Ex was nice and Shenmue was great. Beyond that I cant name many action RPGs with good combat. The ironic thing is that Shenmue didn’t even have that much combat. You could fight more people in an hour in Fable mashing one damn button than in Shenmue 1 and 2 combined. Ahhh but action sells or was that sex? Ok but at least give me quality action.
Or give me quality strategy. Really I would rather have both. :twisted:
Strategy RPGs you are not off the hook either. Most TB and RTS have shit for combat and just as much mindless ‘ripe for the grind’ filler combat as Action RPGs and MMOs. The problem with TB RPGs is that they have a low standard. ToEE is on a lot of people’s short list for the best TB combat has to offer because its an accurate representation of D&D rules. Well wooptey doo. I love D&D not for the rules. D&D doesn’t do a good job of representing what real hand to hand combat is like, without a DM its shit for squad based combat, and to be honest I think the Infinity Engine’s variation is a more accurate representation of what fighting in a fantasy world would be like in real life if a fantasy world was real lol. Oh and to find out the main reason why most RTS style combat isn’t good enough to justify it existence see #6.
Beyond the fact that the combat is lacking in quality and obtrusive in quantity it limits the overall depth of a game when killing as suitable an option as a middlefinger.
5. Potion IV
If folks have to hook up an Intravenous potion to their PC then maybe the game has too much combat, or maybe its too hard.
Drinking a rare enchanted elixir of health should be a process of wonder and awe. Maybe that’s a stretch. In most games it’s a routine game mechanic without an animation. In some games they go as far as to do it for you. Auto regen is more of a symptom than an issue so it wont make this list.
Do away with the Potion IV
6. 3 man/woman parties
Unless there is free booze.
I’m not like most codexers in that I’m a big fan of Oblivion. It doesn’t take much to satisfy me. As base as Fallout 3 was I would have loved the game if it just had a decent party system. Two Mexicans debating the existence of the Mysterious Stranger would have sealed the deal.
I remember going to their boards asking for a decent party system, and everytime you would here the same drivel. Its for soloing based on mmmmaaaad maaaacccckkksss.
Wasn’t there a period in both Mad Max movies where he joined up with a large group of people? Didn’t he team up with more people than the total amount of every FO NPC companions in the three games combined?
One of the reasons why Action/RTS RPGs have shit for strategy is they have small parties. If you have more people then theoretically you will have more ways to solve a combat situation. With more options you can increase the difficulty. It also makes more sense to roll deep with all the save the world plots and dangerous settings. My six year old son was watching me play DA yesterday and he asked me if my dog died. I told him no I replaced him with this other girl but she sucks. I showed him how to put the dog back and his reply was, “What this game only lets you use four people at a time? That’s stupid”.
Sega typically breaks the JRPG mold more than most. They had a game on the Saturn called Blazing Heroes. The game was 3D nonlinear and you ended the game with 12 party members. Hardware is not an excuse. If you can have four people with Gears of Wars’s graphics in a game with similar area size and more shit going on you can have 8 in DA.
The lack of party members messes with the story. Blazing Heroes was nonlinear because it was all about seeking the heroes. With KOTOR, DA, JE and all of these 3 and 4 party games after you get 3 or 4 party members the rest come with an asterisk. Damned if any of these games even rationalize the necessity of small parties with an abundance of stealth or a lack of food, or the ability to split into two parties like you could with KOTOR 2 and Blazing Heroes for a bit.
4 player parties go away.
7. Level Scaling
I’m entertained by the justifications for such an inane mechanic. Bethesda didn’t even try to justify it in FO 3. I can paraphrase their reaction as something to the effect of ‘hey we got it but you wont even know its there’. That begs an obvious question… What a waste of time especially in a game where you can high tail it out of most dangerous situations (Dogmeat will follow you). In the Gold box games you couldn’t run or hide from most encounters and there was no lvl scaling. When you think about it those games could have justified some lvl scaling. Reloading the Com 64 because you stumbled into an army wasn’t fun but shooting yourself up with Jet so you can run from a Deathclaw is an experience to tell your grand kids about.
Not only is it unnecessary it stomps out the immersion. It also removes what could be really interesting scenarios. Maybe those low level goblins could become your followers, run in fear, beg for mercy, or join up with others and try to beat you in numbers. It sure beats replacing them with Goblin Lords. Fleeing from a high lvl opponent can have its personality too. Maybe you could lead them into a town and watch the slaughter, or into a hole and piss on them, shoot them in the leg, misdirect them with an illusion. It’s not like the Gold Box days where fleeing was damn near impossible. If a speedy party was necessary it could justify using a smaller party and/or removing certain companions when facing unpredictable encounters.
Do away with level scaling.
8. Voice acting
Ok this kinda breaks the rule. I prefer voiced NPCs. Here is my issssuuueee, almost everyone stops at voice. I always got the feeling that the characters in Bloodlines weren’t voiced acted, they were just acted. That game was the exception. Typical RPG dialog feels like a generic splice of office banter translated into old English or whatever fits the setting glossed with a bachelor’s degree in English. Simply put, people don’t talk like that and they certainly don’t move like that when they talk.
In DA, Morrigan and Alistair exchange like yuppies and they are not atypical. Matter of fact DA’s voice acting isn’t bad. I thought the mother of the possessed kid was convincing. DA stills lacks culture. Voice acting is not enough. What the games need is a real sense of being and its not alone. Developers need to go beyond larping and treat the game like a documentary. If you want Nords go talk to some real Nords. If you want Chinese get some real Chinese small farmers. If you want ghetto go to a club in the ghetto and just record people. Listen to real small talk. I found the criticism of the Mud Crab dialog in Oblivion to be petty because the game handled small talk better than most RPGs but when I look at it from a tough love stand point and I think about how people talk about Mosquitoes in malaria country. When I make that comparison I understand the criticism. Beth had a chance to nail small talk and they failed.
9. 40 hours
From now on RPGs should advertise the real_length of a game. My equation for real_length is Average completion time – unavoidable combat, combat from random encounters, all dungeon combat after 5 battles, boring monologues, and cut scenes.
40 hours of what??? Thats the question
10. Random Encounters
Random encounters should be balanced so grinding doesn’t offset the penalty for waiting for them. For example If there is a dungeon with 7 predetermined encounters and the party basically clears the dungeon unless the party has real security measures any time spent in that dungeon should incur possible encounters from wonders unless it’s a really secret location. So in that sense random encounters are ok but there has to be some penalty to keep people from just resting to spawn an encounter and grinding away. I don’t like harsh time constraints on missions but some C&C for being a lazy/grinder/rest whore is very nice.
11. White People and tokens
I love White People but like anything else in the world they get old after a while. Almost every RPG feels like a Barry Manilow concert. I appreciate the all white politically incorrect settings over the ones with the tokens. Almost all RPGs are like this except JE and those quasi Asians were just the residents in any other RPG. Probably had many of the same voice actors too.
A greater variety of fantasy settings would be nice. I’m interested in some Ethiopian, Inuit, or Indian fantasy but if they don’t deliver the culture whats the point? They have a hard enough time with Euro fantasy. Its like my take on voice acting. Focus on Documentary stories. Talk to real people. Carry a mic everywhere. Go live with the natives. Maybe you wont want to leave the Congo.
Make a white people free RPG.
12. Humanoids
Aww fuck its not just white people. Its people just people. In general RPGs have too many people. I’m a Forgotten Realms freak so If I’m designing one RPG its FR, two and its aWatership Down’s setting. Anything but people. How about Octopi? It’s a fantasy you can just make them speak English and say its Octopi or Marine which is the underwater animal equivalent for common.
Hope a Bioware lurker doesn’t read this as an endorsement of another Sonic game.
Make a people free RPG
13. Receiving missions
YourConscience said it best. ‘Why cant we hire some hire some thugs to kill someone for us’?
Why are we always on the bitch end of missions. Why does everyone want to offer money and XP to deliver and pick up stuff. How about letting us dictate? How about rewarding us for proper delegation?
Can I have my “Heck of a job Brownie” moment?
14. Hostiles
Bandits, Highwaymen, Animals, cute little stuffed animals in JRPGs hell everyone wants to put their dukes up and get pugilistic. Cut it out!!! This is why simple macros can play your fucken MMORPGs. I’m sick of everyone being so brave. Didn’t you just see me slaughter your mates with my eyes closed? Why so quick to die bandito?
Mix in some parlay.
15. High Attack accuracy/high HP count
I used to love low level D&D because one hit mattered.
FO 3 would have been more fun if bullets were feared. I guess everyone got the memo that a pistol shot to the dome wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Enclave for the PC/Xbox really nailed Realistic fantasy shooter combat. That game was hard too. It was a level based game without save points on the Xbox. They added them for the PC version. Some of the levels were long, and you faced one hit kills. Enclave with 6 party members player progression that focused more on skill than damage, and Rainbow Six tactics would sticky piss on every RPG shooter especially Beth’s shit. A nice tube example of Enclave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s_F9Wdy ... re=related
That was a harsh lvl. Took me like 20 chances on the Xbox but the Xbox version was a lot harder.
Let Headshots be headshots
16. Saving the World or even destroying the world
Or saving a city NWN style. Pool of Radiance did it right even though the game didn’t do enough to make it look like there were other heroes out there but at least they didn’t treat you like you were the chosen hero despite being 1st lvl. I’m sick of RPGs that take low level characters and try to take them from paupers to saviors of the world. There should be a greater focus on the development during the early levels.
Its rare for an RPG to savor the low levels for the unique experiences that can be gained. RPGs are about XP instead of experiences. Leveling is almost always mechanical or statistical but rarely social. You come from poverty but you are rarely given the option to lift others out of it. Even if you don’t come from poverty I can’t name many games that has a tangible consequence to philanthropy. Likewise I cant name many games where (outside of stats) 5th lvl feels much different than 1st, 10th, or 20.
How a PC interacts with the world should evolve more than their stats.
17. HP bars
Again interaction over stats. I should know a companion is about to die because they are surrounded by skilled opponents, they are screaming help, they took off running leaving a thick trail of blood, their entrails are exposed, they are lying down bleeding, they have four arrows sticking out of their body. HP bars and mana bars are there to tell you what you should already know. A smell meter would be nice.
The game is to be showed not told.
18. Free Information
This is one of the many reasons Pool of Radiance is still my favorite RPG. Find a Wand. You don’t know what that Wand does. It could summon a demon, bounce a lighting bolt off a wall and through you, fire a green cloud of demonic flatulence etc etc. As a rule lurker devs, not knowing something can lead to experiments which can lead to experiences. I don’t want to know what every root and flower is unless my PC studies that stuff. I don’t want to know every ones name unless I ask or they offer. IDing stuff was a bit too expensive in D&D games. It cost 200 gold to ID a healing potion.
Come on every DM knows that a mysterious vile of golden liquid is more interesting than a potion of fire piss. :wink:
19. Accessibility
Why is RPG the easy genre? I don’t mind easy RPGs as long as they make sense. Fable is an example of an easy RPG that makes some sense because the goal always seemed to be playing without dying, which was why it gave you scars when you died. Of coarse those scars had little bearing so fuck Fable bad example. Well not really. I don’t mind easy with perm death. Why is DA’s difficulty a big deal when it’s no tougher than a lot of kid titles? I’m not kidding when I say Yoshi’s Island was tougher than DA. Mario Galaxy is harder than DA so far. The easiest genre is RPGs. Yet honestly it’s not the difficulty that I care about it’s the depth. Since RPG is the bitch genre when it comes to difficulty I can see them skimping on depth and realism.
20. One and done.
Fallout did one and done right. So right it spawned two sequels. I appreciate a publisher and a developer that’s not trying to sell you a trilogy but I still miss the Pool or Radiance/ Baldur’s Gate model because they did a better job of savoring individual levels. Viva Strongholds…
I want something that sort of mimics the stages of Conan. First its survival, then its arena battle, then its training, then its banditry, then its mercenary work, then adventure, then a kingdom. Cant do that in one game.
21. Books
Lore should be showed or worse told, not read. The irony is that I like to read just not on the PC screen and especially not on the TV. The great Pool of Radiance didn’t even force you to read from a screen. It provided a real journal. The screen just gave you links to where to read. What fucking genius.
22. Balance and Equality
You aren’t strong enough to put on Elvin boots? That’s DA for ya. Are the mages really too powerful in DA or does the AI just not give them the respect they deserve? ToEE’s ‘kill the mage’ AI would have fit well in DA.
Okkk Balance is extremely important but its something that should never feel perfect because we don’t live in a perfect world. The key is to balance the imbalances. That is wisdom.
