worldsmith
Savant
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2015
- Messages
- 107
I can't speak for anyone else, but roguelikes are in absolutely the wrong direction from where I want my RPG gaming to be going. I want an RPG that isn't so narcissistic and tactical combat focused - that isn't pretty much just about me powering up my avatar, with the whole (shallow) game world there just to justify that (and to support/justify all the murdering). I would prefer a game where I am on a more even basis with the game world's other characters (at least some of them), where we all have the ability to influence the game world, where the PC, NPCs and game world all interact with and influence each other. Current RPGs provide only the most shallow facade of such a world. Roguelikes (that I've seen anyways) throw out even that facade (as do some pure dungeon crawler RPGs). I want more than a facade, not less - I want the "real thing" - or at least I would like to see some significant progress in each generation of RPGs towards that end, with more believable and more playable emulation of such interaction as the real-world years go by. (I was happy playing Daggerfall back in the day, not because it was an objectively great game or anything, but because it at least had been a movement in the right direction.) Instead it's like nobody's even trying any more, not for about the past couple of decades. It's mostly the same "scripted adventure game + combat" formula game after game after game.
So let's look at the value of RPGs that are "scripted adventure game + combat". (Note that I'm lumping character progression in with "combat" here, as that's about all it's good for in most RPGs.) I really can't stand (scripted) adventure games. They are not about anything other than jumping through whatever inane hoops some game dev (who likely has an IQ 20+ points lower than me) has come up with. No thanks. Tactical combat as a game play mechanic (if done well) is OK, but if I am going combat-focused I would rather play something with additional gameplay mechanics (e.g., strategy games such as AoW:Shadow Magic) or at least something that mostly drops the lame-ass adventure game crap (e.g., tactical combat games - from what I've heard the Jagged Alliance games might be good examples of this, but I haven't gotten around to playing them yet so I can't say for sure -- my preference for complexity has kind of kept me spending my "combat time" on strategy/4x games rather than non-RPG tactical combat games).
As I said earlier in the thread, it's a matter of entertainment-per-unit-time. Some people in this thread have been arguing against a strawman - acting as if it's just a time thing. It's not. I can (and still do) spend days playing AoW or Warlords 3 or Warlords Battlecry or Imperialism, among others. I can also spend days (and have) playing things like Eschalon. But there's a significant difference in entertainment provided. Playing Imperialism (especially if I haven't played it in a while) is fun. Eschalon is not - I was not entertained - the story did not interest me - the combat was almost entirely nothing but "buff if needed, then repeatedly click on enemy until it dies", with even the allegedly hardest parts being so easy there is no other way to describe it except as "broken" - and the game mechanics were kind of dumb. (I played books 1 and 2. I own 3 but I really don't think I'm ever going to play it when I know it's going to be just more of the same non-fun and that time could be spent playing some other more entertaining game, or working on my own game, or reading a book, or watching a movie, or venting on the codex, or any number of other things I might consider a better use of my time.)
Is it just Eschalon? Would a more widely beloved and renowned game fair better? Maybe some would, but I've tried some of them and they've failed. I quit Fallout 1 when the adventure game aspect went braindead stupid. I quit Wizardry 8 when I noticed that the "character progression" wasn't really progression at all because the enemies were inexplicably getting stronger every time I leveled up. Planescape Torment? Well, at least I didn't invest too much time into that game before I dropped it. If there are RPGs that are actually worth my attention, I would like to know what they are so I can play them. But I'm not going to throw numerous hours into each of hundreds of different RPGs in the hopes that one of them might actually be good. Sure, every few months or so I might once again build up enough of a desire to play a good RPG to give one more apparently-promising game a try, but I'm not really hopeful. (Though, I did enjoy Divine Divinity for a while despite it not exactly matching my RPG ideals - I think it was a combination of quick/fun combat, lots of free-roaming exploration, that the game didn't take itself seriously and that the adventure game parts didn't get in the way of having fun. Unfortunately I eventually ran into a game-breaking bug which meant my character was perma-stuck in some underground area. I didn't like its sequel, but perhaps some of the other Larian games might be worth a shot - I already own a copy of Divinity 2 and D:OS.)
Another strawman that has been brought up is that people like me just don't like the RPG genre. That's not true at all. In fact, it is by far my favorite genre: My dream game, the one I want to play most (and will make if I must) is an RPG. (And I like role playing aspects mixed into my strategy games - but not the stupid adventure game stuff.) The problem isn't the genre - it's the games that are being made. (That is, unless you artificially limit the definition of RPG to being "scripted adventure game + tactical combat". But I think a far more living/reactive game world where the story can be infinitely more emergent than it is in today's RPGs would still be an RPG, and would in fact deserve to be called an "RPG" much more than what we have now.)
A living/reactive game world requires some really good AI, and that is why I named good AI in my first post as the key to making RPGs more entertaining (and why I explicitly stated that such AI was not just for tactical combat). The AI needs to be used to make NPCs "play the whole game of life" within the RPG's game world. (Game world mechanics also have to be greatly expanded to allow for this, but that's the easy part. The AI is the hard part.)
Silva, if you haven't played it already, you might want to try Divine Divinity. I would go back to it again myself except the adventure game part of RPGs (as well as fixed enemy locations and fixed other things and the typical limited "explore everything" size) means they can be somewhat annoying to replay as it's constant deja vu. (Those people who replay RPGs and adventure games again and again to try all of the different choices - they are freaks to me. I don't understand them at all.)
