Kaucukovnik
Cipher
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2009
- Messages
- 488
Another keyboard diarrhea monologue of mine:
Basically all CRPGs share one thing. By far the most advanced aspect is combat. You know, usually the real gameplay consists of bloodshed (spiced up with some sight of boobs).* Nothing against bloodshed (or boobs), but it gets old when there is nothing else to do (and watch).
Yes, there is, but not much of it is actually played. When fighting, you get to equip your armor and weapons, pick your skills and then use that all in a turn-based or realtime manner to destroy your enemies, hit by hit.
Compare this to, say, lockpicking: click, skill check -> success/failure. Similar for all other skills.
A little better in case of magic. If you choose combat magic, that is.
Dialogue is awesome in those well-writen and talkative games like PS:T, but charisma, diplomacy and such are not that well implemented either.
Overall the complexity of non-combat gameplay is as if you'd decide a whole combat in one skill check comparing your character and the enemy. Doing that to combat would be an outrage, yet screwing other aspects in the same way is perfectly fine, we even don't know it any other way.
Is there a game that lets you actually play a mage? Not a "fireball thrower" - a mage. Who studies mystical powers and learns to use them in his favor. Drawing symbols like in Arx Fatalis doesn't count as "simulated understanding of magic" in my book, but it is a step in the right direction.
Bethesdian minigames are as well, in a way. The difficulty is totally wrong (along with the awful philosopy "never let the player screw up"), but they are trying to let us actually lockpick, hack or negotiate. Adding some interesting skill influences on the course of the action could do wonders.
I'm not talking about realtime or twitch gameplay, immersion etc. Neither about dialogue trees vs abstraction. Just giving the player actually something to do, not only click a button and imagine the character having all the fun.
I think a good beginning would be designing the whole mechanics not from the combat end (because most RPG systems indeed feel like combat rules with the rest hastily sticked on top).
The best starting points seem to be either politics and society or ecology. From there you get a wide variety of connecting points with possible character development system.
tl;dr version:
-Start designing RPG systems from the game world structure, deriving the needed skills and stats from what needs to be interacted with and how.
-Make sure that any gameplay option implemented is actually to be played, not just triggered.
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* Yes, I'm bluntly referring to the primitive nature of our player needs
Basically all CRPGs share one thing. By far the most advanced aspect is combat. You know, usually the real gameplay consists of bloodshed (spiced up with some sight of boobs).* Nothing against bloodshed (or boobs), but it gets old when there is nothing else to do (and watch).
Yes, there is, but not much of it is actually played. When fighting, you get to equip your armor and weapons, pick your skills and then use that all in a turn-based or realtime manner to destroy your enemies, hit by hit.
Compare this to, say, lockpicking: click, skill check -> success/failure. Similar for all other skills.
A little better in case of magic. If you choose combat magic, that is.
Dialogue is awesome in those well-writen and talkative games like PS:T, but charisma, diplomacy and such are not that well implemented either.
Overall the complexity of non-combat gameplay is as if you'd decide a whole combat in one skill check comparing your character and the enemy. Doing that to combat would be an outrage, yet screwing other aspects in the same way is perfectly fine, we even don't know it any other way.
Is there a game that lets you actually play a mage? Not a "fireball thrower" - a mage. Who studies mystical powers and learns to use them in his favor. Drawing symbols like in Arx Fatalis doesn't count as "simulated understanding of magic" in my book, but it is a step in the right direction.
Bethesdian minigames are as well, in a way. The difficulty is totally wrong (along with the awful philosopy "never let the player screw up"), but they are trying to let us actually lockpick, hack or negotiate. Adding some interesting skill influences on the course of the action could do wonders.
I'm not talking about realtime or twitch gameplay, immersion etc. Neither about dialogue trees vs abstraction. Just giving the player actually something to do, not only click a button and imagine the character having all the fun.
I think a good beginning would be designing the whole mechanics not from the combat end (because most RPG systems indeed feel like combat rules with the rest hastily sticked on top).
The best starting points seem to be either politics and society or ecology. From there you get a wide variety of connecting points with possible character development system.
tl;dr version:
-Start designing RPG systems from the game world structure, deriving the needed skills and stats from what needs to be interacted with and how.
-Make sure that any gameplay option implemented is actually to be played, not just triggered.
------
* Yes, I'm bluntly referring to the primitive nature of our player needs