Can RPGs Be Easy to Learn Without Being “Dumbed Down?”

The movies sucks if you need to spend 90+ minutes to watch it, movie makers need to make movies that you can watch for 15m, and then go back to it a week later because people don't have more time. Also if nothing exciting happens in the movie for the first 5 minutes, then it should be redone.

 

Again, as you say, there's nothing wrong with fast and fun games good for just jumping in and playing. I enjoy them plenty, and I certainly don't think it makes you a knuckle-dragging moron if you like action games. It's the lack of options, though, the fact that the industry wants the biggest piece of the pie all the time and is willing to trample the subtlety, uniqueness and, frankly, quality of gameplay in pretty much every genre in order to reach it, that bothers me.

The odd part is that sports games are actually the exception. Most of them have more depth than ten RPGs combined, yet they haven't been called out as "too complex" and requiring streamlining. I know sports games are kind of the golden goose and nobody wants to mess with their guaranteed $100+ million/year revenue, but to see that lack of trust in developers in most other genres is really pretty frustrating. Are we really supposed to believe that the MBAs in the marketing department are better game designers than actual designers?

 

sea

I don't blame the industry. Industry is exactly that street vendor selling bananas. If there is no demand for Bananas he would not sell bananas. He has to live also. Its you (not you Sea) that is to blame. Its the user-base (customers) that neither knows nor understands that what makes good games. We obviously neglect time as a factor when we talk of good games like PS:T.

 

No, no, no. "Art" is not a market matters. Art is a matter of self-definition of its authors (so to speak shortly). Proust wrote "Du cote de chez Swann" because he want to, not because "market matters" or "people demand" or "something that existing beyond him". Therefore, first must be an idea, an undeniable desire, a story needed to tell - something inside a working human mind - something inside an authors entity, which must be spoken to outside world - and after that, maybe "material" success or something. So, I don't blame "bad sales because buyers are worse then... then" I blame situation (constituted by many factors) there's not enough people with creative cochones, with stories to tell, with intelligence to share, in the right places at the right time. People that don't afraid to "loose", like Proust "loose" in his time. He loose, he's immortal.

 

This is about right.

Makes me think of video reviews where the reviewer says something like "So you are supposed to talk to these people, and figure some puzzle out.. but you know, I just want to get to the killing!" .. that always gets my wick.

 

Then again, they might be talking about Hommlet and be totally spot on.

 

They have interfaces that are pretty good for people who know how to play RPGs already.

Wheras stuff like Fallout 3 have interfaces that are good for people who are new to RPGs, but not very good for people who know how it all works already.

There has to be some sort of comfortable middle point.

That implies that the audience for slow, thoughtful games has all but vanished. I don't agree, I think the greater mainstream audience can play a very deep and challenging RPG if it's made with that audience in mind. Nowadays devs don't trust their audience to do anything.

But you look at World of Warcraft. I know I know, it's garbage, but stay with me for a second-- you have housewives who have literally never played any other video game ever and they can pick up on things like DPS and DOT and AOE and speccing for tank and preparing for hours to tackle high level raids while their baby sleeps in the microwave two rooms over. Again, nothing that will blow anyone here's minds but considering that this is all coming from what is generally assumed to be a "lost cause" demographic it's impressive. I don't think there's such thing as a mechanic that is "too hardcore" for anybody as long as it is fair and explained well enough.

 

Got to disagree. I think Fallout 3's interface is clunky, makes poor use of screen space, has too many sub-menus nested within each other (even worse with New Vegas), finding the things you want can be a bit difficult as the game does a poor job of using its aesthetics to create a sense of UI space, and overall it just places visuals over actual functionality and intuitiveness. I'd say Skyrim's UI, as awful as it is, is actually a better "my first RPG" UI because of the radial menu and the easy-to-understand and clearly laid out tab functionality.

 

Maybe it's just the truth that journalists, fiction writers, graphical artists, software developers etc share the same rock bottom: gaming. And thus the worst hacks in these fields converge into a masterful deliverance of both the writing and creation of shit for the lowest wages and longest unpaid overtimes. Except for self-funded independent enterpreneurs.

Under such thought, expecting anything good from AAA and anything intelligent from the average games "journalist" is like demanding high quality customer service from an Indian call center or high quality from counterfeit tennis shoes manufactured by a Nigerian sweatshop.

That they can get away hiring the lowest bidders for almost all but marketing and voice acting and still selling millions because of the legions of dumbfucks getting that new DLC is also to blame, of course.

 

My comment on rampantgames:

I think one of the main problems cRPGs needlessly inherited from PnP is that their rules are very abstract. You have stuff like damage and HPs, and armour class, nad to hit rolls and all kind of stuff that isn't actually very complex but piles up and takes some time and attention to learn.

The solution I'd like to see is to actually make cRPGs more complex, but also more intuitive, by mimicking the way real world works.
You'd still have stats to parametrize characters' abilities, but in real life you don't ask what armour class a helm has - you look at its shape, openings it has, its thickness and materials it's made of. Openings affect both user's perception and vulnerability, but the thing is you don't need to calculate how exactly and put calculated results in tables. Current physical engines allow for calculating collision between complex shaped objects (especially rigid bodies), can use parametrized materials to determine if something breaks when its struck by something else, even momentum transfer depending on angle of attack. Yet, they are mostly used for simulating corpses falling.

Why not make character out of "flesh" material, put hitboxes inside representing critical hit volumes, develop some partially random damage system for living beings, soften it up with magic/heroism/whatever to not make it Robinson's Requiem Redeux, then simply put armour pieces with their own material over character and rely on physical engine's own physics simulation and collision detection?
Yes it's actually far more complex and a lot of work, but the benefit will be that instead of saying that the character in plate armour shot by an expert archer died because the archer had so and so modifier for to hit rolls and critical chance, while the defender's AC was so and and he got critted for so and so damage bypassing his damage reduction which killed him, we will say that the expert archer (firing arrows with spread that can be assessed visually as really small) hit the guy in plate straight in the visor, sending an arrow through his brain and (understandably) killing him.

You don't need to be an RPG nerd to understand that.

 

Depends on who's asking.

If you're dumb yourself, yes, for a game to be easy to learn for you, it has to be quite literally dumbed down. Me, I have yet to find an RPG which is hard to learn.

 

G.A.M.E.

 

Yes, yes, yes, more fucking yes. Fuck Hommlet.

 

Hommlet, more like... Nothinghappensbutyouhavetodoitanywayoryouwilldieinthefirstdungeonbecauseyouareleveloneletandalsoittakesforeveranddidimentionthatitsboringbecauseitis.

 

^That was surprisingly easy to decipher. I thought I'd have to reread it five times.

Rmdnies me of taht ereimxpnet wrehe popele culod raed adn ustadenrd a stnencee if teh frsit adn lsat lterets werhe in teh rghit pelcas. Teh hamun brian is vrey iteretsing.

 

When I was a kid and played my 1st couple of rpgs I couldn't even read english, it was actually the apparent complexity which was alluring and got me hooked.