An RPG Without Combat

[Black Cat]

@ MetalCraze

"Especially knowing that the adventure games in their first state on gaming platforms were all about exploring mazes, and not rarely - underground ones."

You are right, yes. I'm sorry, i guess, but today most people, even on adventure game forums, uses the name adventure game to define the ones that follow the Sierra or, like, Lucasthingie pattern of heavily scripted plotlines with inventory puzzles thrown around, and the ones about exploration and puzzles get funny names like Myst-Clones and stuff and thingies, nya.

@ FeelTheRads

"Then do you believe you are cute, pleasant, or even agreeable?"

I wouldn't write and speak like this if i didn't found it to be cute and funny and cool, right? Hai hai. And my friends and my BF and, like, stuff do so too, or at least they do most of the time and the rest they hate me but live with it. My language teacher and some of the old boring ones totally hate it, though.

I'm asuming you do not and, like, i'm sorry if it really bothers you but then you will have to, like, either live with it, look past it, or just learn to ignore my posts, nya. I'm sorry, and stuff. And thingies, too.

@ Haba

"Hell, here is one idea already; make a game where you are an apprentice of a craftsman. All your stats and skills relate to different crafts, and instead of combat you compete in the crafts against other apprentices."

I asume you think that's a good idea because you never, like, tried to create a pure crafter in an MMO, nya.

Hint: It is as boring as it sounds even when there is no grind involved. The only thing keeping them going is the interaction with other people and being of use in a clan or guild thingie, and that would be absent in a single player gamey game.

 

[JarlFrank]

Congrats, Black Cat, your choice of language is even more annoying than Annie's. That's quite, like, a sozzy achievement, r00fles :twisted:

 

[Grifthin]

I think a warhammer 40K RPG set with you as a inquisitor could be fun. Especially in deep under cover situations where you literally can't pull out guns and start slaughtering your way about. findin clues, tracking people by trailing them, purchases, seeing who they associate with - sorta dropping in around the fringe of their social group so you can work your way into their confidence gradually over the game untill the glorius moment at the end of the game where you can just go balls to the wall and rip the entire investigation out into the open, exposing the corruption you uncovered for all to see.

Think the inquisition wars, Ravenor and Eisenhorn novels minus most of the combat.

 

[Longshanks]

Now that you've mentioned NWN2 I actually understand why people here cry that RPGs must be all about LARP'ing and combat is unimportant - as we know these Codexers haven't played anything with an actual good combat and RPGs started for them with KotOR in which combat sucked as well as in all RPGs after KotOR. Which is the reason so many hamsters proclaimed a primitive MMO-like combat of DA to be something special.

Despite your constant spamming of the term, you still have no idea what LARPing, as it refers to computer RPGs, is, do you?

Hint: not all non-combat is LARPing. LARPing in combat is just as possible as LARPing in dialogue.

 

[Zomg]

I have shit this out a million times and it's never become a codex meme, but you could fill an RPG structure out around basically any core gameplay that's ever been. Ex. make a tycoon game where you have a parametrized PC and a characterizing narrative structure and what the fuck it's an RPG. Squad tactics is just the traditional house nigger of the RPG genre like shit fantasy is the traditional shitty fucking fuck genre it fucks to fuck.

 

[bhlaab]

It appears that Codex is now full with people who believe that RPGs are all about running around shouting "thunderbolt!" and not actually being a game. Certain people just want RPGs to be a dating simulator.

But... running around and shouting thunderbolt in LARPing is combat.

 

[Wyrmlord]

I have shit this out a million times and it's never become a codex meme, but you could fill an RPG structure out around basically any core gameplay that's ever been. Ex. make a tycoon game where you have a parametrized PC and a characterizing narrative structure and what the fuck it's an RPG. Squad tactics is just the traditional house nigger of the RPG genre like shit fantasy is the traditional shitty fucking fuck genre it fucks to fuck.

Can platformers be RPGs?

 

[AzraelCC]

The First-Person Shooter genre has been about combat since Wolfenstein. But Looking Glass had the balls to actually create Thief, which is a game that has combat, but is focused primarily on stealth. The mechanics are present to sustain the focus of the gameplay, and it was fun.

Why can't this happen in an RPG?

I like a good dungeon crawler with old-school number crunching, turn-based combat as much as any Codex traditionalist. But for all the complaints about cliche-ridden fantasy plots and hack-and-slash RPGs, why can't the centrality of combat be questioned?

 

[Imbecile]

Congrats, Black Cat, your choice of language is even more annoying than Annie's. That's quite, like, a sozzy achievement, r00fles :twisted:

For a while I actually wondered if Black Cat was Annies alt. There are, like, definite similarities in style and thingies, but the lack of swearing gave the game away, nya?

Edit: and yes, platformers can be RPGs. Any other game type or perspective can essentially become an RPG. I can imagine "with RPG elements" is going to become an increasingly over used phrase.

 

[Joe Krow]

Combat is the only aspect of rpgs ever successfully translated to a computer. Twenty years later they experimented with simulating the interaction with the gamemaster. They failed.

Crpgs focus on combat because rpgs focus on combat. Rpgs use miniatures. Rpgs use dice. Story can enhance the combat by making it about more then survival. If the combat is done right though, the story is filler.

Just because you played D&D while laying in sleeping bag at a pajama party when you were eight years old doesn't mean the whole genre should conform to your "play style." You weren't playing it wrong back then. You were playing it gay.

 

[Grifthin]

I disagree. Combat while enjoyable if done right plays second fiddle to story. If I think back on my years of playing dnd, I don't think of all the combats. I think of great story moments, the betrayels, the alliances, the party trying to win against the odds. and even when we saw our arses it's the cool stories that I remember.

A ideal game provides the following means to solve any given encounter:

Talk, either intimidation or persausion, or even bribes or blackmail.
Combat - be it ranged/cc/magic whatever
Stealth
Not doing the encounter at all, either bypassing it, or allowing you to solve a problem by alternate means.

Now add in a good story, solid interface and you have the basis for a good game.

 

[larpingdude18]

 

[LazyD]

^ /thread

 

[ghostdog]

live a live ?

 

[Wyrmlord]

Talk, either intimidation or persausion, or even bribes or blackmail.

All language related content translates most poorly into a videogame. Human language is too dynamic for that.

On the other hand, it is very difficult to go wrong with numbers.

 

[Norfleet]

There are plenty of "RPGs" without combat but we normally refer to them as being part of the "adventure" genre rather than "RPGs". They have all the relevant trappings of an RPG, in that you make decisions, solve puzzles, play a character, etc...but without combat, the need for STATS sort of vanishes. Without combat and stats, you are now so disconnect from the "Tactical Wargame" origin of RPGs like D&D that the game is now sold as an "Adventure" rather than an "RPG". RPGs without combat are things like King's Quest. And even those games occasionally have "combat", although it's no longer really combat as a contest of stats, but really just a puzzle with overtones of violence. Therefore, RPGs without combat exist and continue to be made. They are just not marketed as RPGs because the term "RPG" implies tactical wargame lite.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

There are plenty of "RPGs" without combat but we normally refer to them as being part of the "adventure" genre rather than "RPGs". They have all the relevant trappings of an RPG, in that you make decisions, solve puzzles, play a character, etc...but without combat, the need for STATS sort of vanishes.

 

[baronjohn]

i guess since monkey islqand 3 had combat its an rpg

 

[janjetina]

All language related content translates most poorly into a videogame. Human language is too dynamic for that.

Another statement containing nothing but absolute bullshit. Would you describe the whole adventure game genre as 'poor'?

 

[Wyrmlord]

All language related content translates most poorly into a videogame. Human language is too dynamic for that.

Another statement containing nothing but absolute bullshit. Would you describe the whole adventure game genre as 'poor'?

No, but adventure games also involve working with some specific tangible objects like the clues and items for solving mysteries.

I am saying, things like intimidating, persuading, bribing, and tricking really just come down to mathematical things like skill checks, or listed and pre-defined dialogue options that you peruse through from a list.

In the case of Wizardry, the game tried to allow natural human conversation by letting you type "Where is this Captain Matey that you just spoke of?" or "What do you want in return, then?" but it's a system based strictly on recognizing specific keywords like 'Captain Matey' and 'want' alongside some computerized analysis of the sentence structure to see if it is a question, a statement, a compromise, or a refusal, and it still produces very mixed and limited results.

 

[janjetina]

In the case of Wizardry, the game tried to allow natural human conversation by letting you type "Where is this Captain Matey that you just spoke of?" or "What do you want in return, then?" but it's a system based strictly on recognizing specific keywords like 'Captain Matey' and 'want' alongside some computerized analysis of the sentence structure to see if it is a question, a statement, a compromise, or a refusal, and it still produces very mixed and limited results.

Natural language processing, even in the limited context of a computer game, is hard to implement. It can be separated in four tasks:

1. Morphological analysis and Part of Speech tagging
Morphological analyzer can be implemented as a finite state transducer compiled from a dictionary, a set of rules for applying affixes to words and spelling alterations. This is easy.
For Part of Speech tagging, a higher order Hidden Markov model can be built and Viterbi algorithm can be used to find the most likely path that has produced the analyzed sentence.

2. Syntactic parsing of each sentence
Bottom-up chart parsing can be used. In addition, ambiguity needs to be resolved, so an ontology that describes objects and their properties needs to be built, or a rule based system can be used.

3. Semantic interpretation of an individual sentence

and

4. Interpretation of sentences in the larger context

3 and 4 are hard problems, but since they are to be solved for a limited world, building a model of the task domain and implementing the ability to reason about objects is possible.

It is a shame that game developers are unable to devote resources for these tasks instead of EXXXTREME GRAPHIXXX and bloom.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Shit man, you are a programmer AND a doctor?

I am scared. :D

 

[Norfleet]

It is a shame that game developers are unable to devote resources for these tasks instead of EXXXTREME GRAPHIXXX and bloom.

Let us consider who the game will be trying to understand input from. Now, how do you think a computer is going to cope with some smacktard screaming in AOLspeak at it? Even normal HUMANS can't understand that. On the other hand, fun times can be had with hooking an Eliza and speech-to-text engine to a telemarketer.

 

[SCO]

Shit man, you are a programmer AND a doctor?

I am scared. :D

That is computer scientist lingo.

A programmer, yes, but something more.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I'm asuming you do not

I'm assuming no one here does.

You can be cute without pretending to be a fucking Japanese cat.

Also, eat shit and die.