Innovation in RPG genre

[Marat]

Reading through my thread about speech skills I've come to realize: RPG genre is horribly stale. The same designs are iterated upon with only ever-so-slight alterations, for at least two decades now. There are no adventurously designed games making extensive use of innovative mechanics. Almost no natural growth to various ideas that lay at the core of the genre.

We've come to a point where even small things like Underrail's Oddity XP system or the wounds thing from upcoming Mechajammer are relatively bold innovations and when developers direct their efforts to something, one would think, fundamental to RPGs as player's influence on unfolding story, the results are a singular sensation without compare (AoD). Often when an RPG does something different it's looked upon as a mere curiousity (Undertale) or ends up a complete commercial failure (Alpha Protocol).

What do you think about the state of the genre? What's the role of innovation? Do we need more of it?

 

[AdolfSatan]

Delivering high quality games based on the rules and structures we already have is more important than innovation, and we haven't had enough of those yet.

Not like Innovation isn't welcome, if Exanima ever gets finished and delivers what it promises I would even put it on pair with Ultima Underworld, but it shouldn't be paramount to good design, which is what the genre seems to be lacking most. I certainly wouldn't mind getting two more games like kotc1, for example, and that would require zero innovation.

 

[NewGuy]

Delivering high quality games based on the rules and structures we already have is more important than innovation, and we haven't had enough of those yet.

Agreed. Small innovations like enhancing speech skills are welcome. However, there are still many "old school" mechanics that haven't reached their full potential.

For example, I'd pay good money to play a new JA-like game with more or less the same mechanics, but with improved interrupt elements, so that close quarter combat won't be based 80% on luck, depending on who won the interrupt.

 

[JarlFrank]

Almost no natural growth to various ideas that lay at the core of the genre.

That's the problem here. There is barely any evolution. We don't need a radical revolution, but simply a proper evolution of the core concepts of the genre. We reached the peak in the early 00s and never progressed beyond that (actually regressed since then).

Arcanum is, to me, one of the best applications of core RPG ideas to date. It is incredibly flawed, but it knew what it wanted to go for and did so excellently. It has top notch quest design with proper choice & consequence, an interesting character system that may be horribly unbalanced but offers different play experiences depending on how you skill your char, etc. I also have a soft spot for Morrowind with its large list of skills, its huge amount of equipment slots (being able to wear a shirt under your armor, and then a robe over it is just awesome), and its powerful custom spell maker. Daggerfall with its advantages and disadvantages in character creation was also awesome, and I wonder if that system was inspired by GURPS.

"Inspired by GURPS" is a good point here: RPGs during the late 90s-early 00s era sometimes dared to take inspiration from pen and paper systems that aren't D&D. There's plenty of really cool stuff in pen and paper, most of which has never been attempted in a CRPG, but modern CRPG devs often just copy D&D. I'm pretty sure a lot of them (especially at the bigger studios like Obsidian and inXile) aren't even aware of the less popular pen and paper systems, all they know is D&D and maybe World of Darkness or Shadowrun. A lot of those devs just try to copy what's been done before: either by copying D&D or by copying earlier CRPGs (Baldur's Gate clones, Fallout clones, Mass Effect clones, etc etc).

Instead of just copying what's there, devs should ask the question: what is the essence of an RPG?

Spoiler

And then, going with whatever their personal answer to that question is, they should strive to make a game that captures this essence. Instead of merely trying to make "another Baldur's Gate" or "another Fallout", you should take inspiration from what those games did right and what they did wrong, and then push it to the next level.

 

[fork]

I think they're only good because almost all others are utter shit.

 

[lukaszek]

dice are holding rpgs back

 

[Marat]

I'd pay good money to play a new JA-like game

Joined: Aug 7, 2015 Messages:5
You have five posts and you mentioned JA twice already. Are you Lilura's alt?

 

[V_K]

Keep in mind that we're on a nostalgia forum.

That said, older RPGs were often more experimental than the streamlined ones we get today, even from indies. Come to think of it, the older you go, the more experimental it gets, like all those early 80s oddities, especially British and French, that CRPGAddict has covered.

 

[Butter]

The problem is that the studios big enough to make an ambitious and revolutionary RPG don't want to do it. They wouldn't make a profit. They'd rather make Ubisoft checklist simulator garbage or Bioware pick a color garbage. Indie developers can probably afford the riskier project, but they're all obsessed with making their own Fallout game.

 

[JarlFrank]

Keep in mind that we're on a nostalgia forum.

That said, older RPGs were often more experimental than the streamlined ones we get today, even from indies. Come to think of it, the older you go, the more experimental it gets, like all those early 80s oddities, especially British and French, that CRPGAddict has covered.

Yes. I have nostalgia not just for the actual RPGs of my childhood, but for the more daring game design approaches of the time. Modern devs are usually so bogged down in inside-the-box thinking that they rarely stay outside of the well-defined genre borders.

 

[V_K]

That said, the big problem is that innovation doesn't sell. See for example Titan Outpost - a hard sci-fi RPG with no combat but with base-building and survival. It currently stands at meager 45 reviews on steam 1,5 years after release. Or Unexplored - a roguelite which got a lot of critical acclaim for its revolutionary level generation algorithms that produce levels on par with the best human level designers. 485 steam reviews over 3 years.

 

[Ol' Willy]

so that close quarter combat won't be based 80% on luck, depending on who won the interrupt.

Interrupts in JA2 are 100% deterministic

 

[c2007]

kingcomrade

I mean, wtf?

Edit: to explain my objection -

You gave extreme choices, neither of which are particularly appealing imo. kingcomrade was my vote god damnit.

 

[Vlajdermen]

That's the problem here. There is barely any evolution. We don't need a radical revolution, but simply a proper evolution of the core concepts of the genre.

Underrail's a good example, visibly inspired by Fallout (among others) but it puts in the effort to tweak what it's borrowing, like the devs understood the ins and outs of RPG mechanics instead of just monkey-see-monkey-doing. I've heard Pf:Km and ATOM do the same but I haven't played them yet.

Instead of just copying what's there, devs should ask the question: what is the essence of an RPG?

They should ask the question: what can change the nature of an RPG?

 

[luj1]

First of all, don't fix what ain't broken. Some things don't need to evolve because they were already perfected.

QoL is always good, albeit I find it a non-issue.

Furthermore, innovation doesn't mean adding a trillion minigames. Stick with proven core mechanics and just cycle rulesets and settings; there is room to innovate, but within subsystems, not core gameplay. This is what Soyer and Owlcat don't understand.

 

[Takamori]

kingcomrade

Anyway, there is chaotic progress where you disfigure whatever you are trying to improve and there is organized progress where you observe and respect the history of whatver you want to improve upon, keep whatever you can't improve and improve whatever you are trying to tackle with your next level idea.
Stagnation and Chaos are both the death of something if you want to think about a future.

 

[luj1]

hard sci-fi RPG with no combat

 

[King Crispy]

Look at the early RPGs that you consider(ed) good then look at the ones that came after that you consider(ed) great. What made the originals what they were and what was improved upon in years later?

For example, Gold Box games took our experiences of playing D&D on a tabletop and brought them to the home computer essentially for the first time. We were treated to a pre-conceived world complete with maps and interesting locales and enemies to battle and NPCs to interact with. We even got little miniature characters to customize and watch cast their little spells and wave their little swords. It was almost everything we wanted.

Then came along ToEE. Now, did it out-do Gold Box games like PoR? In some ways, yes, in some ways, no. Its presentation was insanely better, so much so that I think it's unsurpassed for an isometric true RPG to this day. Its combat was incredibly better, again, probably being the pinnacle even to this day. Unfortunately, in this case, it did quite a few things worse, but that's a testament both to its original sourcework being the way it is/was and the brilliance of PoR / Gold Box games.

Add in more options. Make everything simultaneously more complex, but not more complicated. Give us more depth, in not only combat but in how we interact with NPCs and how the party interacts together. Make the world more believable, make it larger, make it demand to be explored and conquered.

In short, the closer and closer you get to recreating what we were capable of imagining in our minds with the help of the various gameplay aids when enjoying AD&D and other tabletop systems, the better.

 

[NewGuy]

Interrupts in JA2 are 100% deterministic

Interesting. I did not know that.
Regardless, when you open a door, and the goon behind it has an "interrupt score" or whatever it's called higher than you - you're dead meat...

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Innovation for the sake of innovation isn't necessarily a good thing. Forcing a development team who's breadth of innovation is three dialog choices that all lead to the same thing to do something new is going to end badly. Take Twilight 2000, a game made in the early '90s. It has limb damage, dozens of skills, vehicular combat, language skills, tactical combat and its set in the aftermath of a nuclear war. The problem? Just because you put in skills like meteorology, fixed wing aircraft or Welsh doesn't mean squat if they don't do anything. Further, it doesn't matter how well-made combat is if you can quickly figure out how to crush any opposition. Innovation has to exist in a game for a reason, because it makes it fun or compelling. This is also the reason why games written by failed writers don't have an interesting story. If you're just plopping a novella into a video game that doesn't make it good.
For another hand, take the original Mass Effect trilogy, it actually did take into account a lot of your actions. If you were mean to someone, if you were nice to someone. This goes all the way into the final game, Your actions actually do matter...until the last 15 minutes when you then get to choose a color of light to shoot out into space, with some colors removed depending on some actions. The problem here, is that when they thought up this whole choices matter thing, they didn't think about what they would lead to. Bioware also did something similar with the Dragon Age series, but I'm not sure what the deal with those are.
Innovation is useless without a reason to innovate.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Regardless, when you open a door, and the goon behind it has an "interrupt score" or whatever it's called higher than you - you're dead meat...

True. That's why I don't like tacticools of that kind too much - Interrupt mechanic changes combat a lot, making viable mostly stealthy and snipery characters

 

[gurugeorge]

Reading through my thread about speech skills I've come to realize: RPG genre is horribly stale. The same designs are iterated upon with only ever-so-slight alterations, for at least two decades now. There are no adventurously designed games making extensive use of innovative mechanics. Almost no natural growth to various ideas that lay at the core of the genre.

We've come to a point where even small things like Underrail's Oddity XP system or the wounds thing from upcoming Mechajammer are relatively bold innovations and when developers direct their efforts to something, one would think, fundamental to RPGs as player's influence on unfolding story, the results are a singular sensation without compare (AoD). Often when an RPG does something different it's looked upon as a mere curiousity (Undertale) or ends up a complete commercial failure (Alpha Protocol).

What do you think about the state of the genre? What's the role of innovation? Do we need more of it?

"If it ain't broken don't fix it" should be the general rule. That said, I think the Solasta developers have gone the right way about it - to try and implement as much of the full simulationist aspect of the RPG as possible in computer format. And that just might mean subtle adjustments to the formulae here and there. But really, the genre is a thing, and it could go on forever, like chess.

I think there's still a lot of headroom for better "fairy dust" - for graphical improvements, animations, better blending of animations with stat-based results, artistic and graphical detail, etc., but fundamentally the general idea is sound as it is: a good deal of simulation, a good deal of abstraction, easily digestible numbers and percentages (+1/-1 this and that, not like +/- 564.54), a well-written story with cool characters and meaningful choices whose consequences haunt you further down the line in amusing or interesting ways. Can be isometric or spinney-rotatey-zoomey, first or third person, I don't care about that sort of thing; and while I prefer turn-based for combat, because it allows for more intricacy and more simulation, I'm not dead set against RTwP or slow-down. But those (to me) primary aspects have to be there.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

That said, the big problem is that innovation doesn't sell. See for example Titan Outpost - a hard sci-fi RPG with no combat but with base-building and survival. It currently stands at meager 45 reviews on steam 1,5 years after release. Or Unexplored - a roguelite which got a lot of critical acclaim for its revolutionary level generation algorithms that produce levels on par with the best human level designers. 485 steam reviews over 3 years.

Gotta admit, I never heard of this game. This picture didn't look impressive but a review.... hmmmm

 

[J1M]

Innovation decreased because development costs and durations increased.

 

[laclongquan]

Because the cost to innovate, aka take risk with developers' money and time, has risen so much from the past.

In the past where you make games over all with 2D art assets, the cost of making a game is low comparatively because everyone make the same kind of 2d art.

But now with most big studios utilize 3D assets, you cant just make do with 2D art any more, or gamers would not look at you.

So any professional developers gotta invest a big part of their time and money into making 3D assets. Which raise the cost

With that kind of money, noone dare risking with innovation, aka burning money for no gain.