The numbers are evil: Avencast Q&A
The numbers are evil: Avencast Q&A
Interview - posted by Vault Dweller on Sat 28 July 2007, 21:54:06
Tags: AvencastRPG Vault has posted an interview with Avencast's Minh Tri Do Dinh, who continues ranting about math and numbers, which are, apparently, very uncool.
Having played a fair share of action RPGs ourselves, we couldn't help but notice that oftentimes combat, in such games boils down to one thing - numbers. In a typical RPG, they're everywhere.It's like reading Idiocracy script.
For instance, when you pick up a weapon, it tells you the exact number of ogres you get to whack before it falls apart. Open your character sheet and you'll find out that the life of your archetypal hero can be summed up in an Excel sheet. Head into combat and hitpoint values will be pitted against one another in a dazzling ballet of damage formulas and chance to hit calculations.
All of this creates a rather divided playing experience, certainly providing tremendous fun when tinkering with character stats, distributing skill points and tweaking gear selection to mathematical perfection, but leaving - as we felt - something to be desired when it came to actual fighting.I have a feeling you are about to show us something better.
Long story short, we wanted to create a more dynamic combat system - one that would provide heart-stopping action and throw you right into the thick of each battle... a scheme that would make you truly feel like you "are" the character and in total control of your powerful actions, instead of just reading about it from a sheet of text.
So how could we possibly achieve this? How could we put the "action" into "action RPG?"Because putting more RPG in it would be like totally wrong and uncool. Anyway, tell us your great idea already.
As it turned out, our quest for a better combat system took us to the beat 'em up game genre. ...
...
Nonetheless, no matter how exciting the combat experience can be, fighting can sometimes become monotonous which is an injustice to the RPG genre.I strongly suspect that Minh has no fucking idea what the RPG genre is, but I'm pretty sure that with ideas like that he can become an RPG genius one day. Like Molyneux.
Having played a fair share of action RPGs ourselves, we couldn't help but notice that oftentimes combat, in such games boils down to one thing - numbers. In a typical RPG, they're everywhere.
For instance, when you pick up a weapon, it tells you the exact number of ogres you get to whack before it falls apart. Open your character sheet and you'll find out that the life of your archetypal hero can be summed up in an Excel sheet. Head into combat and hitpoint values will be pitted against one another in a dazzling ballet of damage formulas and chance to hit calculations.
All of this creates a rather divided playing experience, certainly providing tremendous fun when tinkering with character stats, distributing skill points and tweaking gear selection to mathematical perfection, but leaving - as we felt - something to be desired when it came to actual fighting.
Long story short, we wanted to create a more dynamic combat system - one that would provide heart-stopping action and throw you right into the thick of each battle... a scheme that would make you truly feel like you "are" the character and in total control of your powerful actions, instead of just reading about it from a sheet of text.
So how could we possibly achieve this? How could we put the "action" into "action RPG?"
As it turned out, our quest for a better combat system took us to the beat 'em up game genre. ...
...
Nonetheless, no matter how exciting the combat experience can be, fighting can sometimes become monotonous which is an injustice to the RPG genre.
