An RPG without leveling

[Jim Kata]

Finally, for a story based mode, the only thing necessary to let a player develop a character the way they like is variable rewards depending on how you do something. Shooting up a lot of giant bugs would get you a bonus to badassery while grabbing the slimy politicians collar and yelling at him until he lets you nuke the hive from orbit would increase your EXTREME collar grabbing skill.

Haw is that different from grind?

You get the same level of reward for the diplomatic option, and the points are awarded for accomplishing the objective (destroy the hive in this case) rather than having to hunt down every single bug, wait for them to respawn and hunt them down again ad infinitum.

They did that in bloodlines and it made the combat (of which there is a lot) unbearable. Every action you take should bring you some kind of reward, ideally.

 

[galsiah]

Every action you take should bring you some kind of reward, ideally.

Getting closer to a quest (or other) objective is such a reward. The problem lies in the abundance of dull quests no-one gives a damn about. If the main motivation in a quest is gaining loot / experience..., that should set alarm bells ringing - the quest is not interesting in itself.

Certainly there are dungeon crawlers where these are the main motivators - and that's fine if you know that you want to make a 100% dungeon crawler. If you don't, then every quest should be interesting/compelling enough to reward the player, with or without throwing loot/xp at him.
This approach allows you to take away loot/xp or similar rewards where they're tending to encourage grinding and similar behaviour, without ruining the quest. The quest then stands or falls on the basis of its essential substance. Loot and xp are simply optional sprinkles.

I'm not saying that having loot/xp... rewards is a bad thing - only that it's bad (in a non-dungeon crawler) when these things are required for the quest to have value to the player. That's both a missed opportunity, and a restriction of design options.

EDIT: and if you have a lot of combat (or any activity) which isn't entertaining, the answer isn't to give the player compensating rewards. That just incentivizes behaviour which is not entertaining - precisely the opposite of good design.
The answer is to make combat entertaining (in however broad a sense), or to scrap it.

 

[Kraszu]

Finally, for a story based mode, the only thing necessary to let a player develop a character the way they like is variable rewards depending on how you do something. Shooting up a lot of giant bugs would get you a bonus to badassery while grabbing the slimy politicians collar and yelling at him until he lets you nuke the hive from orbit would increase your EXTREME collar grabbing skill.

Haw is that different from grind?

You get the same level of reward for the diplomatic option, and the points are awarded for accomplishing the objective (destroy the hive in this case) rather than having to hunt down every single bug, wait for them to respawn and hunt them down again ad infinitum.

They did that in bloodlines and it made the combat (of which there is a lot) unbearable. Every action you take should bring you some kind of reward, ideally.

The problem is whit other characters then somebody sneaky who avoid combat that way can't progress whit traditional system. That is why I propose something in between having most xp gained by quest (thief character can got additional xp for avoiding fight in quest that can be complied also by batching everybody, somebody want something to be done and prefer it done without much "noise"), but also got xp (and gold/skins/other loot) for killing but the difference between character that is maxed and that that have most important skills mostly should not be very big. I give alchemy as example somebody have fighter and use extra points for alchemy he got then better potions, and for example explosive potions that can give him more options in fight, both would be pretty decently balanced the second would be little better but mostly he would just have bigger arsenal of attacks. GW is good example of that concept getting new skills don't make you better (because you can use at once the sam number) but give you more options.

You also forgetting about one problem (that exist in my system but it is much lower) you fight because you have no other option for you warrior character that goes from x to y, but to get maxed you also encourage fight that you don't feel like fighting just to increase stats.

 

[Jim Kata]

Every action you take should bring you some kind of reward, ideally.

Getting closer to a quest (or other) objective is such a reward. The problem lies in the abundance of dull quests no-one gives a damn about. If the main motivation in a quest is gaining loot / experience..., that should set alarm bells ringing - the quest is not interesting in itself.

Certainly there are dungeon crawlers where these are the main motivators - and that's fine if you know that you want to make a 100% dungeon crawler. If you don't, then every quest should be interesting/compelling enough to reward the player, with or without throwing loot/xp at him.
This approach allows you to take away loot/xp or similar rewards where they're tending to encourage grinding and similar behaviour, without ruining the quest. The quest then stands or falls on the basis of its essential substance. Loot and xp are simply optional sprinkles.

I'm not saying that having loot/xp... rewards is a bad thing - only that it's bad (in a non-dungeon crawler) when these things are required for the quest to have value to the player. That's both a missed opportunity, and a restriction of design options.

EDIT: and if you have a lot of combat (or any activity) which isn't entertaining, the answer isn't to give the player compensating rewards. That just incentivizes behaviour which is not entertaining - precisely the opposite of good design.
The answer is to make combat entertaining (in however broad a sense), or to scrap it.

The overarching goal is not the same as the immediate goal. If you have no reward for combat, it becomes just an obstacle. I remember thinking in every bl combat (When the fuck will this be over?) and that was long before the sewers were reached.

In BG you got an experience award for unlocking traps. Which makes finding traps something that was more tolerable. Same for finding spells. I thought it was a very good touch to have these elements. By contract there were a multitude of traps in icewind dale Ii and they were a huge fucking bore. I would simply walk people through them to trigger them, rest, etc. etc. Just a useless pain in the ass.

Especially since they are always in the same place if you reload. A shitty feature of a 'living' world is that it is pretty static, whereas if you had overland map encounters at random (not just combats, necessarily) and fucked something up then reloading means you don't get the encounter at all and would take it more seriously.

So in short, again youa re getting away from rpggoodness and into retardoland arcade badness. And yes, this is a stupid thread, and no there is no good discussion here.

 

[Kraszu]

The overarching goal is not the same as the immediate goal. If you have no reward for combat, it becomes just an obstacle. I remember thinking in every bl combat (When the fuck will this be over?) and that was long before the sewers were reached.

Well I didn't and when you was in fight that is part of the quest you will be reworded for it, so what is the real difference. When you fight just to increse stats you also should think when the fuck will it be over and I gain level.

In BG you got an experience award for unlocking traps. Which makes finding traps something that was more tolerable. Same for finding spells. I thought it was a very good touch to have these elements. By contract there were a multitude of traps in icewind dale Ii and they were a huge fucking bore. I would simply walk people through them to trigger them, rest, etc. etc. Just a useless pain in the ass.

I actually did that in bg anyway reword was close to none compared to fight. And nothing could be done either reward would be nonsense and unbalanced because it would be to big and you could make many levels fast in some places (doesn't make sense to plant trap everywhere) or have trap every 10m and that would be fucking horrible.

So in short, again youa re getting away from rpggoodness and into retardoland arcade badness. And yes, this is a stupid thread, and no there is no good discussion here.

So when you will nswer to discussion that we had?

 

[Kraszu]

My beef with levelling is that it messes with my minmaxing. I want to be done with all my minmaxing once I leave the character creation screen, not have to make important "what do I want my character to be able to do"-decisions in the middle of the actual game. I have enough decisions to make anyway, assuming that I'm not playing some kind of old-school RPG where the only thing I need to know is where they are. (Ok, I'd also want to know which damage type hurts them the most.)

I disagree whit that. I want to make decision when I know game world and combat mechanics on what to use. In creation screen you make decision whit piratically no information (other then assumption that it will be not much different then in other games). I don't why those decisions would be to much at once since they all are connected whit guilds anyway in my system.

 

[Jim Kata]

The overarching goal is not the same as the immediate goal. If you have no reward for combat, it becomes just an obstacle. I remember thinking in every bl combat (When the fuck will this be over?) and that was long before the sewers were reached.

Well I didn't and when you was in fight that is part of the quest you will be reworded for it, so what is the real difference. When you fight just to increse stats you also should think when the fuck will it be over and I gain level.

In BG you got an experience award for unlocking traps. Which makes finding traps something that was more tolerable. Same for finding spells. I thought it was a very good touch to have these elements. By contract there were a multitude of traps in icewind dale Ii and they were a huge fucking bore. I would simply walk people through them to trigger them, rest, etc. etc. Just a useless pain in the ass.

I actually did that in bg anyway reword was close to none compared to fight. And nothing could be done either reward would be nonsense and unbalanced because it would be to big and you could make many levels fast in some places (doesn't make sense to plant trap everywhere) or have trap every 10m and that would be fucking horrible.

So in short, again youa re getting away from rpggoodness and into retardoland arcade badness. And yes, this is a stupid thread, and no there is no good discussion here.

So when you will nswer to discussion that we had?

The difference is that if you make it further between rewards then you have less character development going on. In PnP you can get an exp reward just for coming up with a good in-character line, and you should get more of a reward for doing something in-character. IE if your braniac mage solves some mystery with his intelligence instead of fireballing the whole merchant quarter (though this is dependent on character to an extent). I support MORE frequent rewards, and this makes for a good RPG, and rewards for any (non stupid) action are good, but taking away rewards is bad.

People who want to do so, at heart, just are not RPGers, to be frank. If you have an enjoyable system then you will eagerly await the next level or skillpoint or whatever.

You could as easily say your motivation is to get to the end of the game, but when you have a lot of combat with no reward it becomes very tedious indeed.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

The overarching goal is not the same as the immediate goal. If you have no reward for combat, it becomes just an obstacle. I remember thinking in every bl combat (When the fuck will this be over?) and that was long before the sewers were reached.

In BG you got an experience award for unlocking traps. Which makes finding traps something that was more tolerable. Same for finding spells. I thought it was a very good touch to have these elements. By contract there were a multitude of traps in icewind dale Ii and they were a huge fucking bore. I would simply walk people through them to trigger them, rest, etc. etc. Just a useless pain in the ass.

Especially since they are always in the same place if you reload. A shitty feature of a 'living' world is that it is pretty static, whereas if you had overland map encounters at random (not just combats, necessarily) and fucked something up then reloading means you don't get the encounter at all and would take it more seriously.

So in short, again youa re getting away from rpggoodness and into retardoland arcade badness. And yes, this is a stupid thread, and no there is no good discussion here.

How retarded must one be to write such a gigantic amount of pathetic bull. You basicly sound like a stupid 12 year old ADHD WoW playing kiddie, who can't engage into any gameplay activity without having the prospect of getting an immidiate "reward" in forms of XP or ph4t l00t for it.

So the same, boring and tedious as hell, traps are something good in Baldurs Gate because you get some little amount of XP for disarming them and they are bad in Icewind Dale because you don't?

Combat is Bloodlines was tedious because it mostly sucked (especially ranged combat), not because you didn't get a reward for killing enemies.
Newsflash moron: Combat, quests and other gameplay activites can be designed in a way that they are fun by themselves, without any retarded "reward". Rewards can be a bonus and support character development, but they are never the reason why I play a game.

If for you gameplay is an "obstacle" you have to overcome in order to get some abstract reward in form of l00t, XP, epic item or whatever, go, close yourself into a fucking skinnerbox but stop playing video games.

The only remotly interesting point you make is the last one, which would be actually worth discussing if it was not overshadowed by the gigantic amount of bullshit you write.
What a moron.

 

[Kraszu]

The difference is that if you make it further between rewards then you have less character development going on.

You could as easily say your motivation is to get to the end of the game, but when you have a lot of combat with no reward it becomes very tedious indeed.

That is simply not true since you make more quest then you level up and in my system finishing quest leads to bigger reword then in classic one.

 

[galsiah]

I'm afraid you're being rather idiotic here Bryce.
Incentivizing activities which aren't entertaining is generally bad design, in any game.
Incentivizing activities which are entertaining is generally good design (all else being equal), in any game.

If trap handling/combat, or any activity, are dull without rewards, then they should be improved to the point that they're interesting, scrapped entirely, or made a passive/instant action which doesn't get in the way of more interesting gameplay.

Min-maxing and grinding are not "RPG goodness" - they are symptoms of design flaws (in any game not intended as a spreadsheet sim).

Any min-maxing there is, ought to be based primarily on qualitative, game world concepts (ideas that are interesting, and connect the player to the game world), rather than direct numeric optimization (ideas that are dull, and connect him with his inner autistic spreadsheet tweaker).

 

[elander_]

Some guys here could learn something by reading this:
http://www.theoryoffun.com/theoryoffun.pdf

You are discussing basic principles of gameplay that are not exclusive of rpgs.

Progression trough stats is just one way of role-playing.

 

[SkeleTony]

Bullshit. Role-playing is the main aspect of RPGs. In a quality RPG, developing your personality should be much more important than developing skills and phat lewt. Torment is a good example of that.

Double bullshit. Roleplaying has very little to do with roleplaying GAMES. You might as well be arguing that American football is primarily about using the "foot".

RPGs are tactical simulation games whether you like it or not. They already have the sorts of games you are clamoring for here. Their called "Adventure games". No advancement/leveling.

And comments like this one:

As for who and when - an indie developer who doesn't care about appealing to the brainless masses (which such a game would most likely not).

Are just going to land you in hot water. You are free to be as stupid as you would like but to do so while calling everyone who does not subscribe to your notion of RPG revision "brainless masses" will get you called out kiddo.

 

[kingcomrade]

You might as well be arguing that American football is primarily about using the "foot".

zomg but it is!!1 teh point is u move teh ball forward and u cant run (or stand lol) w/o feet can u??

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Bullshit. Role-playing is the main aspect of RPGs. In a quality RPG, developing your personality should be much more important than developing skills and phat lewt. Torment is a good example of that.

Double bullshit. Roleplaying has very little to do with roleplaying GAMES. You might as well be arguing that American football is primarily about using the "foot".

RPGs are tactical simulation games whether you like it or not. They already have the sorts of games you are clamoring for here. Their called "Adventure games". No advancement/leveling.

Triple bullshit.

They already have a genre for tactical simulation games, it's called tactical simulation games.


EDIT: So how about Bryce and his stupid alts just get the fuck out of here, because it has been already stated numerous times, that the question in which genre this imaginary game would end up is irrelevant. (Even if they were correct with their stupid claims)

 

[Kraszu]

RPGs are tactical simulation games whether you like it or not. They already have the sorts of games you are clamoring for here. Their called "Adventure games". No advancement/leveling..

System that I write about have advancement, so read it and then comment. I wont even brother to point other flaws of your argument.

 

[elander_]

Their called "Adventure games". No advancement/leveling.

You have to realize that pnps and rpgs have evolved. PNPs have evolved from war strategy games when someone decided to create a war game based on a fantasy scenario inspired on The Lord Of The Rings. Until this point you are right when you say that RPGs are tactical combat simulators on some battlefield.

But then things have evolved and these battlefields become more detailed with an history and their own novels and heroes. RPGs become not just battlefields where could play as fighter who uses shields and swords or a fighter who uses magic whose purpose was to defeat the evil enemy and save the lady in distress. You could play as a novel character in a fantastic world with much more interesting objectives to play and characters to interact with.

What makes this different from adventure games is that you can choose who you want be and what objectives you want to archive in the game. In a purely rp perspective advancement is irrelevant. It may even be counter-productive because it imposes your character a way of playing than in many circumstances results in players overlooking roleplaying in favor of powergaming.

 

[The_Pope]

They did that in bloodlines and it made the combat (of which there is a lot) unbearable. Every action you take should bring you some kind of reward, ideally.

That is because bloodlines combat sucked. There is reward whatsoever for killing a shambler in Quake and people still did it. Also, spreadsheet tweaking games often reward out of character actions a lot more than in character ones. Why is the thief backstabbing every guard, thus leaving extra evidence and increasing his sentence if he gets caught? XP LOLZ.

Also, your quibbles about the definition of the genre need to stop. The public definition of RPG means game with swords, wizards and boobies. Thus fallout is not an RPG and Dark Messiah is. Not that it matters, as with the exception of utter uninspired tripe genre is a classification tool rather than reality.

 

[LCJr.]

Bullshit. Role-playing is the main aspect of RPGs. In a quality RPG, developing your personality should be much more important than developing skills and phat lewt. Torment is a good example of that.

Double bullshit. Roleplaying has very little to do with roleplaying GAMES. You might as well be arguing that American football is primarily about using the "foot".

RPGs are tactical simulation games whether you like it or not. They already have the sorts of games you are clamoring for here. Their called "Adventure games". No advancement/leveling.

You, and several others, need to define better if by RPG you mean PnP or CRPG. To say there's no roleplaying in PnP would either be a tremendously idiotic statement or the experience of someone who particpated in some of the worst PnP gaming ever.

The majority of CRPG's are as you put it tactical simulations although most are pretty questionable on the tactics part. There's no way a CRPG can equal the flexibility of a human GM but games like Fallout show it's possible to try and give the player something resembling roleplaying. Granted Fallout is limited to violence, diplomacy and stealth but thats better than only being given violence as a solution to everything.

 

[kris]

The difference is that if you make it further between rewards then you have less character development going on. In PnP you can get an exp reward just for coming up with a good in-character line, and you should get more of a reward for doing something in-character.

When I was young (teen) I found this reward business something of value, becoming better, getting hold of that axe of überness. But for every passing year I found it less and less rewarding and instead the interaction, story an actions of the players took over. succeding or even failing was the reward, creating a great story was awesome.

Ita like how playing a football game is fun for me, I do not need feel I become better out of it to be rewarded, I don't need a candy when I win. Same goes for my RPGs.

 

[Zomg]

RPGs are first person sandbox games with loot and stats, and everyone who disagrees is an unmanly faggot, idiot, rube, philistine, or pompous blowhard.

 

[Jim Kata]

The difference is that if you make it further between rewards then you have less character development going on. In PnP you can get an exp reward just for coming up with a good in-character line, and you should get more of a reward for doing something in-character.

When I was young (teen) I found this reward business something of value, becoming better, getting hold of that axe of überness. But for every passing year I found it less and less rewarding and instead the interaction, story an actions of the players took over. succeding or even failing was the reward, creating a great story was awesome.

Ita like how playing a football game is fun for me, I do not need feel I become better out of it to be rewarded, I don't need a candy when I win. Same goes for my RPGs.

You are not thinking of character development except in the crudest sense. Getting an axe that does an extra point of damage is not character development, but gaining new abilities or new items that bring about more *real* options are.

 

[Jim Kata]

RPGs are first person sandbox games with loot and stats, and everyone who disagrees is an unmanly faggot, idiot, rube, philistine, or pompous blowhard.

You're a stupid faggot.

 

[Zomg]

No u.

 

[Jim Kata]

They did that in bloodlines and it made the combat (of which there is a lot) unbearable. Every action you take should bring you some kind of reward, ideally.

That is because bloodlines combat sucked. There is reward whatsoever for killing a shambler in Quake and people still did it. Also, spreadsheet tweaking games often reward out of character actions a lot more than in character ones. Why is the thief backstabbing every guard, thus leaving extra evidence and increasing his sentence if he gets caught? XP LOLZ.

Also, your quibbles about the definition of the genre need to stop. The public definition of RPG means game with swords, wizards and boobies. Thus fallout is not an RPG and Dark Messiah is. Not that it matters, as with the exception of utter uninspired tripe genre is a classification tool rather than reality.

Yeah, but read what I have been saying all along...it does not suck because they added in some real action. Bloodlines was (sort of) an action rpg, but the action part sucked. The RPG part of combat wasn't there.

 

[galsiah]

In BG you got an experience award for unlocking traps. Which makes finding traps something that was more tolerable. Same for finding spells.

...gaining new abilities or new items that bring about more *real* options...

Indeed - that's what I feel when my xp goes from 100/2000 to 150/2000: showered with *real* options.

Two points you might address:
(1) Frequent, meaningful rewards can be given without necessarily increasing character stats.
(2) Rewarding behaviour which doesn't entertain is no substitute for making it entertaining.

Relying on frequent xp rewards to keep a quest compelling is a crutch that hides the need to make it intrinsically compelling. The player should be actively engaged in making significant decisions throughout a quest. If he's blundering along, hacking down enemies as he goes, and waiting for the quest to complete itself, the quest sucks.

No-one is saying that progression is evil, but it has a downside, and isn't the only means of achieving any goal.

I agree that progression is more interesting where it provides a real change in available options, but again - this shouldn't be frequently necessary. If the only way to keep your game interesting is by giving the player new options every five minutes, then the current options are clearly not that interesting. The way to fix this isn't to throw in more and more options all the time - it's to re-think the basics so that you don't need to.