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Stronghold/Home Base building in RPGs: Good idea or fuck off already?

The_Mask

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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Unironically, I think the best might be Kenshi.

Your base could be literally anything: yourself, the faction you like, a shack in the middle of some town, a little town that makes a few things, a huge sprawling metropolis that runs to make you money and/or even a medium-sized cartel encampment from where your drugs are fueled into the minds of the weak-willed.

Now I wanna go back and play Kenshi. >.<
 

Stormcrowfleet

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JarlFrank I'll be honest I saw Stronghold but never played it. I started playing games in 96 and tbh I rarely play game prior to it. I can't stand UI and such (except for some superb game that are exceptions such as Ultima Underworld, Gold Box, etc.). I'll take a look at Stronghold.
 

fantadomat

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Hmmmm clearly we are all forgetting this masterpiece.


aadas.gif
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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Strongholds should be integrated into dominion rulership for higher-level characters, serving as a seat of power over a larger territory, as a defensive bastion in larger-scale warfare, and as a sink of money and resources accumulated over the course of many adventures.
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Unironically, I think the best might be Kenshi.

Your base could be literally anything: yourself, the faction you like, a shack in the middle of some town, a little town that makes a few things, a huge sprawling metropolis that runs to make you money and/or even a medium-sized cartel encampment from where your drugs are fueled into the minds of the weak-willed.

Now I wanna go back and play Kenshi. >.<
Yes, Kenshi, Mount and Blade, and Akella's buggy pirate RPGs are the only really good exemples I can think of.
Maybe Depth of Peril or Hinterlands for ARPG (Hinterlands had tons of issues, but I liked the blend of city building and RPG)?
 

Morpheus Kitami

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If I wanted to build a base I'd open up a strategy game. Anything more complex than Mount and Blade's system and you might as well make a strategy game.
 

deama

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Only good implementation I can think of was in warcraft 3, but that was light on RPG.
 

Bony Hands

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There needs to be a reason to have a base and upgrade it rather then "Oh, I need to improve it to get better equipment and training for my character" or it's just another way to gate off progression. Maybe have completing the base the goal of the game itself, or you need some feature that that base provides that you can't justify getting anyway else, like research.
 

oldmanpaco

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One of the (very, very) few things DA:O did right was the camp as base concept. As you progress your camp gets bigger as you accumulate followers and npcs. All your people were there, a few npcs, a crafter, and that retard. Been like a decade since I played that game so its a bit fuzzy.

Along the same line of thought the Normandy was OK. Another mobile base. You could upgrade it (for whatever reason) and it felt like a place you lived. Contrast that to the deadfire ship (whose stats actually mattered in combat and travel) which was just an icon on the map.
 
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sser

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I think it was the action-RPG The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing that had a homebase you could build up and defend in a quasi-tower defense game.

Zombie-survival games and sci-fi space games where you commandeer a ship lean into it pretty hard (State of Decay, Stellar Tactics, etc.). Most times it feels slapped on, though. I can't really think of any traditional/medieval RPG where it's done well.
 

purupuru

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I hate strongholds, especially the ones where they want you to roleplay as a feudal lord. I just want to be an adventurer and kill and pillage. Imo the only good thing about the Crossroad Keep is the spider, she's a cutie.
A base in a non-linear game can be nice, but honestly a hotel room with a big chest is more than enough.
 

markec

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Dead State Project: Eternity Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I liked it in BG2 where they did provide a bit of life and atmosphere to the game. You play as a bard, well here is your theater, if you play with warrior, here is your castle. What was also a good thing about them was that they did not take too much time doing pointless micromanagement and backtracking. For each class you get a quest chain that fits the theme and gives you incentive to replay the game with another class.

I also liked it in Morrowind, with each faction you get an estate that you expand and get a nice place that you can call home. In Bloodmoon you get control of a settlement and you can decide how it develops, which I found to be the best part of that expansion.

What I would like to see in a RPG is an option to take control of a small settlement and see it grow into a proper city. Changing it look based on your decisions, while the whole time playing politics with peasants, merchants, priests and nobles.
 

jac8awol

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In general, it can fuck off. Although I quite liked it in Kingmaker. Because you are a king, logically you'd have to be involved in that. Although I didn't actually like the idea of being a king in kingmaker. Adventurer kings are just silly.
 

CappenVarra

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Baldur's gate 2 the stronghold portion in one of several: fighter keep, bard theatre, rogue guild, wizard tower...

Neverwinter Nights 2 Original Campaign, the Crossroad Keep. A very nice portion of the game.
không phải!

you just quoted 2 of the potentially worst implementations ever, why do you do this? is your blackened heart only amused by making baby Vecna cry?

...

a "stonghold" is what you get as the fabled "horizontal character growth" reward for reaching level 9 in D&D (congratulations, you survived this far - inquiring low-lives want to know how you did it, under pretense of serving you), and has hardly ever been implemented properly in cRPGs because idiots who develop them don't get it and just want to romance strong independent Aeries that just need the player's dick to re-grow their wings dontcha know

i know it's strange to consider when games have conditioned you to think of your characters as public servants asking every peasant about their dreams and wishes in hopes of getting a side-quest, but when a character reaches level 9 in D&D they're supposed to manifest what they want in a very in-your-face manner, stop being whoresswords for hire and move on to the noble game of politics / solving the riddle of steel

cRPGs have a very poor track record attempting this, but that is no excuse in the grand scheme of things
 

baud

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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
I think it was the action-RPG The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing that had a homebase you could build up and defend in a quasi-tower defense game.

the issue is that the tower defense take place on a different map, where you go only for the tower defense segment. Though the actual homebase receives NPCs who provide services after you meet them/save them

More recently, there's the strongholds/castles in Queen's Wish, the latest Vogel games, but it's just a mean of gating equipment, even though it ties with the theme/central plot of the game
 

Crichton

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As far as I'm concerned, the only non-shit way to do this is to give up on the minigame and make it a role-playing opportunity like BG2; bards get a theater, druids get a sacred grove etc. But you don't have to set ticket prices at your theater to maximize revenue or manually prune the trees in your sacred grove. All the management minigames (Crossroad Keep, Cad Nua, Stolen Lands, etc) can fuck straight off.

That said, I can imagine a roleplaying game where the central gameplay was something more like a strategy game and a king with a higher Acumen stat had better income but a king with a higher Martial stat could recruit better troops and somesuch. That's not what we're being offered though; "restore the keep" minigames tacked on to dungeon crawlers where everyone ends up with the same shitty keep/city/whatever anyway are pointless.
 

Bohrain

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Tacked on feature on combat heavy murderhobo RPG's. But for some reason you always saw tons of those static player base mods on TES games and such, never found much use for them besides storing your shit somewhere. It would be neat to see an RPG where defending locations was more often the case rather than invading areas. Been reading the Black Company books lately and a fantasy military setting could work where you'd control a small squad yourself while doing bunch of prepping for combat like trap placement, counterintelligence and so on.
 
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Well, joking aside, it really does depend on whether it is either A) Main feature B) Fairly integral or C) Minimal/lite. It is something I would like to see done well, as being integral to an RPG, but not necessarily it's main feature (though I would imagine design/implementation to be difficult). As the Main feature of the game, stronghold building might become a bit tedious (also, why not play strategy games instead?)... If it's lite/superficial why bother?
 

AdolfSatan

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JarlFrank I'll be honest I saw Stronghold but never played it. I started playing games in 96 and tbh I rarely play game prior to it. I can't stand UI and such (except for some superb game that are exceptions such as Ultima Underworld, Gold Box, etc.). I'll take a look at Stronghold.
Dunno how they've held up, but I loved them when I was younger. Stronghold 1 and Crusader are the best.
 

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