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Incline Things in RPGs that make you happy

Quigs

Magister
Joined
Sep 16, 2003
Messages
1,392
Location
Jersey
Strongholds usually turn into a sim game though. Housing is a good idea but at the end of the day it's either used to store extra loot or it's a time consuming pain in the ass that requires you to do a lot of things for it without many results.

Bad game design won't be turned around by a minor setting change, no. I think it's easier making you feel compelled to help yourself than it is to write locations and people compelling enough to want to help them however. It's been easily years since an RPG made me give a fuck about anyone. It's hard to erode apathy and self-interest.
 
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Self-Ejected

vivec

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 20, 2014
Messages
1,149
!) Actual faction entry quests, a la Risen
2) Tactical combat like in Blackguards/ AoD
3) Out of combat gameplay and abilities like mind reading
4) Well written, multilayered story, Witcher 3, MoTB, TSW
5) Characters with..character, Witcher 3
6) Villains with meaningful motivations.
7) A broad array of abilities/tactics in the game so multiple playthroughs with wildly different builds feel different (AoD)
8) Balanced economy; can't buy armour off the corner shop; Gothic
9) Powerful abilities costing finite resources; Risen? Done badly.
 

Brancaleone

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
1,004
Location
Norcia
- quality combat encounters (not to many of them)
- hand-crafted items, limited in number, but well differentiated
- crafting only if it creates something very different (not stronger, different) from what you can acquire by any other means
- huge hubs
- as many opportunities for lateral thinking as possible
- font which is easier on the eyes than Darklands'
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,760
For CRPGs, mechanics that take advantage of the fact that a computer can easily emulate rules that are too computationally ponderous to find general use in pen-and-paper RPGs. Particularly for logistics, where the computer can easily track encumbrance and its effects, inventory limitations in terms of weight/volume/spaces, food/hunger, water/thirst, sleep/fatigue/stamina, equipment deterioration & repair, a day/night cycle, lighting and the impact of darkness. Similarly, turn-based combat can return to the RPG genre's roots in miniatures wargaming, with tactical content and complexity far in excess of what normally appears in pen-and-paper RPGs.
 

Abhay

Augur
Joined
Aug 12, 2013
Messages
204
Location
India
The most obvious aspect of RPGs that makes me very happy are the opportunities to immerse myself in an unusual, and kind of various different environments that can never be explored in real life with in depth atmosphere to role-play and experience maximum amount of freedom and host of other options/skills/abilities as how to develop the character you want. This is extremely important for me in EVERY RPG! Additionally, I also consider amazing and challenging combat with an interesting and exciting magic system as another important factor. It can easily overcome a lot of shortcomings like the uninteresting stories, characters, or poor dialogues, while still keeping the player immersed into the game world.
 

undecaf

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 4, 2010
Messages
3,517
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
One thing that used to (and still does, when the design is passable enough) make me happy was learning the rules and figuring out the trappings of the game, learning to play it on my own.

I didn't have manuals for Fallout or Baldur's Gate or M&M6 and many others, back in the day, nor internet for that matter. It was great fun to figure the games out myself, that's too often not possible anymore (for what ever reason; usually too streamlined and guided gameplay).
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
1.jpg
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
- Post-apoc, dystopian and/or Sci-fi setting/story/themes
- No fantasy-oriented stuff in any shape or form (Pillars Of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin, Tyranny, Shadowrun, Pathfinder, Arcanum, Torment, are all examples of fantasy stuff I don't want)
- Turn-based combat and encounters with a very complex combat system, yet easy to learn, but hard to master
- Great top-down isometric 2d and/or 3d visuals
- Good unique and captivating sound design and music
- Interesting and intertwined big and engrossing story with good writing and C&C

No such game has been found yet encompassing all of the above. I will knight the man or woman who finds it.

The only game that comes close to the above, is of course, The New World. We shall see how Wasteland 3 will fare.
 
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Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
- Post-apoc, dystopian and/or Sci-fi setting/story/themes
- No fantasy-oriented stuff in any shape or form (Pillars Of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin, Tyranny, Shadowrun, Pathfinder, Arcanum, Torment, are all examples of fantasy stuff I don't want)
- Turn-based combat and encounters with a very complex combat system, yet easy to learn, but hard to master
- Great top-down isometric 2d and/or 3d visuals
- Good unique and captivating sound design and music
- Interesting and intertwined big and engrossing story with good writing and C&C

No such game has been found yet encompassing all of the above. I will knight the man or woman who finds it.

The only game that comes close to the above, is of course, The New World. We shall see how Wasteland 3 will fare.

Jagged Alliance 2 has all that except the big engrossing story which no one wants for a tactical game except you. Fallout and Fallout 2 have all that except a complex combat system.

I also think that anyone who has strict criteria for theme is an idiot.
 

Dawkinsfan69

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Bethestard
Joined
Jun 3, 2016
Messages
2,815
Location
inside ur mom ᕦ( ▀̿ Ĺ̯ ▀̿ )ᕤ
  • Cheat Codes so I can skip the BS character development crap
  • No fucking voice acting.
  • Preferably concise LPs available so I can just skim the shit GoT/LoTR rip off story instead of wasting time and $$ on the piece of crap
  • Actually not even going to bother reading a LP because I know the game's shit anyway
  • Video games are for distracting virgin incels from the existential dread that comes as a result of acknowledging their failures
  • Fuck this site
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
Location stories that are told through props alone, without journals or logs. Example: In the first dungeon of Morrowind you can find a set of armor with matching bones scattered throughout it in the part of the cave with animals, showing someone had a bad run in with the smugglers, left his corpse for the rats and slaughterfish and they dragged parts of his corpse through their caves.

Z-axis use.

Fast travel that makes sense in the game world. Examples include Arcanum's trains (fast travel around hub areas is a must), STALKER 3's guides, Morrowind's massive transportation network.

Guns that at least attempt to work like real ones. While almost nothing includes chambered rounds (Only a few shooters have it. No RPGs do it that I know of.), I appreciate that in New Vegas, for the most part (unique weapons and stuff like 5.56 pistol were the primary exception. A few oddballs like the DLC Police Pistol being massively better than the generic 357 revolver as well) a better gun also required more powerful ammo, so the Varmint Rifle and Service Rifle do the same damage. A system like 7.62 where mid-game guns were better than early game guns because early ones were in poor condition (a negative modifier permanently attached to the gun that without exploiting vendor stuff wasn't easily removed) and only had cheap crap for ammo (Chinese made ball that's often in bad condition itself, locally made low power corrosive crap), while end-game ones were better because they had good accessories is loads better than newer guns doing more damage because they are newer.

On that note, actual reasons to use older weapons alongside or instead of newer ones. Going back to New Vegas, the varmint rifle's ability to be scoped (makes sense, the service rifle has no mounting points) and suppressed (the service rifle's flash hider appears to be integral and not threaded so it's possible, though it would still be relatively easy to replace the barrel with a threaded/integrally supressed one) makes it worth using over the service rifle for sneak builds. In 7.62 the gun laws (in Hard Life), ammo availability varying by region and travel balanced around having a vehicle made it pretty practical to swap out multiple guns. Giving me a reason to use an SKS (only needs hunting license and has quicker reload than 10 round detachables and it takes the most common ammo in the game) or semi-only AR (the accurized one is really neat once you get police approval for standard capacity mags and find a good scope) over fancy high-end stuff is really neat. There's some fantasy examples, largely stuff with debilitating secondary effects, but none as nice as the previous two.

Actually 7.62's ammo system is something I'd like to see more games do. Early on a lot of the ammo you found was ancient crap in poor condition. This meant it was inaccurate, often lacked the power to cycle the action, was corrosive (makes your crappy rusting AK wear out even faster!) though you could sort and cannibalize it (though this should require a NV style loading bench). By early mid-game it's actually reasonably practical to keep a decent sized stash of quality Russian hunting ammo in case you are thrown into a desperate situation (surrounded, large number of well armed opponents) while using cheap stuff for fights you have the advantage in (good terrain, stupid opponents). Giving all of them a brand name (Hard Life makes them into real world ones, but I doubt you'd ever see that outside of a mod aside from maybe getting the top-tier ammo to be an actual product placement) really made it easy to keep track of them. New Vegas's ammo system had issues (HP is worthless because everyone you'd actually want to use special ammo on has enough DT to make it worse than ball), but being able to hand load quality ammo (with the right perk) did give a reason to use a gun with common ammo you could use for components (like 5.56) over one with more powerful but less common ammo and it could easily be expanded on (quality of your loads would vary by equipment, components and skill beyond just skill too low/normal/have hand-loader perk).
 
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Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
- Post-apoc, dystopian and/or Sci-fi setting/story/themes
- No fantasy-oriented stuff in any shape or form (Pillars Of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin, Tyranny, Shadowrun, Pathfinder, Arcanum, Torment, are all examples of fantasy stuff I don't want)
- Turn-based combat and encounters with a very complex combat system, yet easy to learn, but hard to master
- Great top-down isometric 2d and/or 3d visuals
- Good unique and captivating sound design and music
- Interesting and intertwined big and engrossing story with good writing and C&C

No such game has been found yet encompassing all of the above. I will knight the man or woman who finds it.

The only game that comes close to the above, is of course, The New World. We shall see how Wasteland 3 will fare.

Jagged Alliance 2 has all that except the big engrossing story which no one wants for a tactical game except you. Fallout and Fallout 2 have all that except a complex combat system.

I also think that anyone who has strict criteria for theme is an idiot.

So what you're saying is, you don't believe that RPGs should strive to excel at both combat AND story?

For the record, I love alot of other rpgs than aren't in my preferred theme, the thread asked me what made me HAPPY, so. Doesn't mean I don't play fantasy shit, I do.
 
Joined
Dec 9, 2013
Messages
226
Location
Calgary
Since I really prefer D&D based games, I loved discovering places that I have read about in Novels. Beyond that I just love dungeons, and exploring.
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
Crimes beyond assault/murder*, theft and, rarely, aiding an enemy faction and the ability to not get caught. I liked that 7.62 and New Vegas let me break local gun laws and get away with it if I wasn't an idiot and especially liked how you could engage in smuggling to make shit loads of money.

*And that's another thing: Non-lethal damage so enemies that will flea and surrender so not every fight is to the death.
 

pippin

Guest
Watching my characters grow in power. Like I compare old screenshots when they were puny fucks to later screenshots when they are just fucks.
Getting to kill enemies I couldn't before.
Mostly things related to overcoming challenges and finding hidden stuff.
 

Carrion

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
Messages
3,648
Location
Lost in Necropolis
I like it when you can kill every character in the game world and still be able to finish the game. I also like it when you can finish a game without killing anyone, especially when playing a pacifist leads to new kinds of gameplay challenges and requires some creativity.

I like a good dungeon as much as anyone, but it's always nice to see a big quest take place inside a city, a manor, or a castle that is not infested by monsters, allowing you to put your non-combat skills and utility spells to good use. Bonus points if it includes some cloak-and-dagger stuff.
 
Joined
Oct 5, 2014
Messages
4,748
Location
New Zealand - Pronouns: HE/HIM
shit that happens that is totally surprising; whether its unscripted shenanigans or interesting mechanics

2 examples i will submit:

two worlds 2 - mage class card shuffling, the oculus (cant think of any other game thats done this), those wolf dudes pissing up against rocks for insta-stealth kills, crafting

stalker: soc - ive mentioned this before but the first time i picked a fight with the checkpoint dudes and they followed me to the starting base camp and killed everyone while i hid in a cellar and heard it all was ball-blistering amazing.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
So what you're saying is, you don't believe that RPGs should strive to excel at both combat AND story?

I'm saying they don't need a big engrossing story. Jagged Alliance 2 doesn't have a big engrossing story because it doesn't need it. The player carves out their own as they play. Also, vorpal all storyfags, they are the worst.

For the record, I love alot of other rpgs than aren't in my preferred theme, the thread asked me what made me HAPPY, so. Doesn't mean I don't play fantasy shit, I do.

So a post-apoc RPG that met your lame criteria would make you happy, but a steampunk one that did wouldn't. Like I said, an idiot.
 

Daemongar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 21, 2010
Messages
4,706
Location
Wisconsin
Codex Year of the Donut
* I kind of like hitting areas and not being able to progress, forgetting about them, and then having an a-ha moment later in the game, going back to that area, and kicking the shit out of everything. Totally one-sided. Don't care about the treasure, but I still take it. MM6 has a lot of these.
* Stupid riddle games, like BaK or Darklands, or whatever. Yes, you can look them up, and whatever, but it's a fun diversion, and I always feel bad when I look up the answers
* No mages can fight this king! No warriors can hit this Boss! Stupid stuff like that that mixes up combat. NOT taking away the fucking players weapons and armor for the 99,000th time.
* Player images that change to beat up pictures when they are hit by spells or beat up: MM6, Lands of Lore, games where insanity makes you look nuts. It's a nice touch
* Multifaceted approaches to good and evil, TW1/FO:NV, others.
* Awesome random drops early in the game - not save-scumming, but just neat things that make the early game a little easier. Arcanum was either feast or famine with that first chest, but I have found some crazy good items early on, and sometimes it was empty.
* Dialog options that change the course of the game later on, not just "Will you help the king's army?" Yes;No but shit that has an impact without the players knowledge. Easter eggs like that.
* Abilities that help the player in novel ways, not everything combat and spellcasting. Strength helps carry weight and intimidate, Wisdom adds to will saves and lore and dialog, Intelligence adds to who knows. Games where charisma actually does something useful, like Arcanum (but I think they could have done without Beauty AND Charisma)
* Players forced to pick perks AND negative attributes. I really liked Shadows over Riva and their penalties. Still waiting on some kind of GURPS rpg.
* I really like creating characters. The more options, the better. I think I spent more time creating characters for MotB than actually playing that game. To this day, it's still fun creating a 17th level character in that game.
 

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