Post cool MECHANICS

[Lagole Gon]

Post:
- your super cool original mechanics ideas.
- mechanics you would like to see more often.

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I will start - mood/food/rest mechanics.

I rather dislike how camping and food in Pathfinder games just gives you regular stat bonuses, like some buff spells. Unimaginative popamole solution. What, a hearty omelette is like a blessing from a deity now?

Consider the following - resting conditions/food/etc influence the mood of characters. Bad mood gives a penalty to XP gain, and maybe vice versa. Enough to care about it, not enough to break the game.

This can be a nice "soft" punishment for the lack of camp supplies or survival skills. Your characters waste extra hours foraging for food, bare minimum, just enought to survive. They are hungry, feel like shit, can't really learn effectively from the experience.
It punishes you for the mindless rest spam, but it's not an arbitrary hard limit.

I think Cataclysm DDA has mood related XP gain.

 

[Jvegi]

They would be experiencing hunger and discomfort though. Feels like something that could actually deserve xp.

I could see mood and fatigue influencing stats and skill, like charisma and concentration.

 

[Iucounu]

I love the weather mechanics in The Long Dark. Wind strength (unless reduced by natural cover) affects wind chill and may blow out torches/fires. Wind direction affects walking speed, and makes predators detect scent from a longer or shorter distance.

Consider the following - resting conditions/food/etc influence the mood of characters. Bad mood gives a penalty to XP gain, and maybe vice versa. Enough to care about it, not enough to break the game.

This can be a nice "soft" punishment for the lack of camp supplies or survival skills. Your characters waste extra hours foraging for food, bare minimum, just enought to survive. They are hungry, feel like shit, can't really learn effectively from the experience.
It punishes you for the mindless rest spam, but it's not an arbitrary hard limit.

TLD has similar mechanics: if you're sick or starving you can't read skill books. If you're tired you walk slower, with less inventory weight, wolves are slightly harder to fend off, weapons become harder to aim (or is that only when you're frozen?).

 

[Iucounu]

What if NPCs could track literally everything the player character does? For example:

* walking style (walk unnaturally, and your retard/drunk reputation will increase);
* if you look at a females's booty she may not notice herself (but other NPCs may);
* if you make eye contact with a female she will notice (but maybe nobody else).
* what your character is looking at, and for how long (staring may increase suspicion or hostility);
* looking too much at specific merchandize may affect haggling ability, or make the seller remember you if you later steal it;
* how fast/often your character turns his gaze around (fast head movements make NPCs think you're stressed or impatient, and they'll be less likely to chat);
* how fast your character rushes through dialogs (faster means you're in a hurry or is not interested in talking with the NPC, and their responses may adjust accordingly);

Some of the above might force you to use game controls in very unfamiliar ways, paying attention to unusual aspects of your playing style. Perhaps it might be useful in a stealth game, or to induce social paranoia in a psychological horror game?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I will start - mood/food/rest mechanics.

I rather dislike how camping and food in Pathfinder games just gives you regular stat bonuses, like some buff spells. Unimaginative popamole solution. What, a hearty omelette is like a blessing from a deity now?

Consider the following - resting conditions/food/etc influence the mood of characters. Bad mood gives a penalty to XP gain, and maybe vice versa. Enough to care about it, not enough to break the game.

This can be a nice "soft" punishment for the lack of camp supplies or survival skills. Your characters waste extra hours foraging for food, bare minimum, just enought to survive. They are hungry, feel like shit, can't really learn effectively from the experience.
It punishes you for the mindless rest spam, but it's not an arbitrary hard limit.

Faery Tale Adventure (1986) tracked both hunger and lack of sleep, where the former would eventually cause the player-character to gradually incur damage, while the latter would eventually cause the PC to be unable to walk in a straight line! Neither was an unwinnable situation, since player-character could rest at inns (or various random buildings with rugs or beds for sleeping) and purchase food at inns, but it was an important part of the logistics undergirding the game's exploration aspects, similar to the game's day/night cycle with semi-realistic darkness.

 

[Harthwain]

I love when the wounds are localized (affecting what you can do). A system in which your character isn't a giant HP bar, who can operate at 100% efficiency regardless of how close to death he is, is simply much more interesting than the binary "alive-dead"*. Fallout and Neo Scavenger are good examples of this.

I'd like to see reputation as a form of currency you can use (to get access extra actions or special items). Rogue Trader has a vestige of this, but its shape is not nearly enough to be satisfying.

* Being dead or alive as a status is also a way to introduce more interesting systems. In Arcanum you can ressurect the dead NPCs to question them. In Warcraft 3 you can heal dead and harm the living with death spells (and vice versa). Can you imagine how cool it would be to kill an Orc, and the resurrect it to fight at your side? And it being an Orc would make it much more impressive than resurrecting your average human.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I like the idea of tracking hunger, in principle. However, the problem that I often found in games that implement this mechanic is that, since the time is usually compressed, i.e. a day in the game can last a dozen of minutes irl, you have to feed every few minutes. This completely breaks the pace of the game and hijacks the whole game loop, in particular if the hunger mechanic is only a marginal system among many others, like in RPGs.

 

[Harthwain]

I like the idea of tracking hunger, in principle. However, the problem that I often found in games that implement this mechanic is that, since the time is usually compressed, i.e. a day in the game can last a dozen of minutes irl, you have to feed every few minutes. This completely breaks the pace of the game and hijacks the whole game loop, in particular if the hunger mechanic is only a marginal system among many others, like in RPGs.

Stoneshard handles is pretty well, I think. Time flows relatively slow, except for when you heal up, so food serves as a source of healing when out of combat, while at the same time doubling as the soft limit on how much time you can waste doing nothing, which pushes you to explore in order to get food or money.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I will start - mood/food/rest mechanics.

I rather dislike how camping and food in Pathfinder games just gives you regular stat bonuses, like some buff spells. Unimaginative popamole solution. What, a hearty omelette is like a blessing from a deity now?

Consider the following - resting conditions/food/etc influence the mood of characters. Bad mood gives a penalty to XP gain, and maybe vice versa. Enough to care about it, not enough to break the game.

I don't see how it would be an improvement.

The improvement would be to get rid of it and directly add the resting time to the trip duration while regenerating HP and spells slots gradually and automatically.

Early games which had a food stock which didn't show in the inventory had the right approach, nowadays, the inventory bloat is really painful, particularly in pathfinder "crpg"

This, collecting garbage bins and micro locations offering 0 content are a real plague.

Feature bloat only pleases those who play the game for 2 hours and then drop it, for everyone else, it's just painful.

One cool thing I would like to see way more often in CRPG is good handcrafted battle encounters.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I will start - mood/food/rest mechanics.

I rather dislike how camping and food in Pathfinder games just gives you regular stat bonuses, like some buff spells. Unimaginative popamole solution. What, a hearty omelette is like a blessing from a deity now?

Consider the following - resting conditions/food/etc influence the mood of characters. Bad mood gives a penalty to XP gain, and maybe vice versa. Enough to care about it, not enough to break the game.

I don't see how it would be an improvement.

The improvement would be to get rid of it and directly add the resting time to the trip duration while regenerating HP and spells slots gradually and automatically.

Early games which had a food stock which didn't show in the inventory had the right approach, nowadays, the inventory bloat is really painful, particularly in pathfinder "crpg"

This, collecting garbage bins and micro locations offering 0 content are a real plague.

Feature bloat only pleases those who play the game for 2 hours and then drop it, for everyone else, it's just painful.

One cool thing I would like to see way more often in CRPG is good handcrafted battle encounters.

You can keep it fairly minimalistic if you want to. Just a fairly abstract item/resource called "supplies".
You buy it in shops and get temporary one with survival skill.
And if you want positive bonus, get a fancy room in a tavern. Pass a difficult skill check when resting. Use a potion known as "alcohol".

 

[JarlFrank]

* if you look at a females's booty she may not notice herself (but other NPCs may);

I'm good then, I only stare at their feet

 

[JarlFrank]

Can you imagine how cool it would be to kill an Orc, and the resurrect it to fight at your side? And it being an Orc would make it much more impressive than resurrecting your average human.

Necromancy is usually incredibly underwhelming in RPGs because you get a stupid "summon skeleton" spell that works anywhere at any time regardless of the presence of remains. I'd rather have it revolve around actually raising the corpses you find on the battlefield. Some RPGs do tie the summon skeleton spell to present remains, but whether it's a man, an orc, an ogre, or a deer, it's always the same generic skeleton that rises.

Necromancy should be about raising the actual dead thing you just killed.

 

[Iucounu]

Can you imagine how cool it would be to kill an Orc, and the resurrect it to fight at your side? And it being an Orc would make it much more impressive than resurrecting your average human.

Necromancy is usually incredibly underwhelming in RPGs because you get a stupid "summon skeleton" spell that works anywhere at any time regardless of the presence of remains. I'd rather have it revolve around actually raising the corpses you find on the battlefield. Some RPGs do tie the summon skeleton spell to present remains, but whether it's a man, an orc, an ogre, or a deer, it's always the same generic skeleton that rises.

Necromancy should be about raising the actual dead thing you just killed.

What if the raised corpse can't actually fight, just barely stand up like a "living" shield to protect you? Then as enemies dismember it the corpse becomes gradually less usable. This would benefit from advanced gore physics; but maybe no magic is needed, if you keep the corpse propped up on your left shoulder as a shield, while your right hand is still free to use a weapon.

 

[Iucounu]

I like the idea of tracking hunger, in principle. However, the problem that I often found in games that implement this mechanic is that, since the time is usually compressed, i.e. a day in the game can last a dozen of minutes irl, you have to feed every few minutes. This completely breaks the pace of the game and hijacks the whole game loop, in particular if the hunger mechanic is only a marginal system among many others, like in RPGs.

The Long Dark avoids this in a couple of ways. You don't begin losing health until your Food meter is at zero, and even then the health loss is so gradual that you only have to eat just before sleep in order to regain lost health during the night. So in practice you can starve all day, and only eat once every night. But if you keep your Food meter above zero for three consecutive days the game gives you a "well fed" bonus (+5kg carrying weight).

 

[JarlFrank]

There's a Morrowind mod where you can do necromancy and carry the corpse around on your shoulder, replacing your left pauldron for as long as you carry it:

 

[NecroLord]

- Resurrection spells and magic does not work and will either involve spending a big part of your life energy, weakening you severely in the process, or you will have to sacrifice someone else, which is a evil act.

-Dismemberment mechanics (sort of a Fallout VATS system).
Only works with certain weapon types and with the proper Strength and adequate ability rolls. Taking a hand off might be easy, but a head is harder.
This might also make combat go faster instead of featuring monsters with thousands of hp.

 

[Tackle]

- your super cool original mechanics ideas.

I'd like to see my party turn to cannibalism when they're hungry. It would be interesting to weigh the cost/benefit of eating your own party members and reviving them VS just buying regular food.

- mechanics you would like to see more often.

This is going to be really unpopular but I like combat QTEs in turn based RPGs. Legend of Dragoon not only had that, it also had a mechanic where you could tell when you were about to get a random encounter while traveling around.

 

[octavius]

- mechanics you would like to see more often.

Sweeping of weak enemies, like how you could attack one kobold or goblin for each character level in the Gold Box games.
And weak enemies fleeing incontinently when seeing my party of demigods, like in Might&Magic 2.
It really annoys me when my characters have god like powers, and weak monster either suicide slowly, or even worse, are level scaled.

 

[flabbyjack]

Unlocking UI content and themes as the game progresses.

UI that changes as chapters go on. For example, in the first part of the game you have simple life and mana orbs and a UI border that looks like vines. Then you get your power-up in the second part of the game and it changes to skulls and bones or something.

Kingdom Come 2 did something slightly similar. The set of possible loading screens change when you get to chapter 2.... I think. That way, the loading screens can depict the characters and locations from that portion of the game. The same could be done with the 'tips' on the loading screens. Even dynamic content... like you spend a lot of time lockpicking, show the advanced lockpicking tips.

Sometimes unlocking portions of the GUI is done with skills and perks, such 'You can now see your percent % change of success on persuasion', or even more significant parts of the UI.

 

[octavius]

Can you imagine how cool it would be to kill an Orc, and the resurrect it to fight at your side? And it being an Orc would make it much more impressive than resurrecting your average human.

Necromancy is usually incredibly underwhelming in RPGs because you get a stupid "summon skeleton" spell that works anywhere at any time regardless of the presence of remains. I'd rather have it revolve around actually raising the corpses you find on the battlefield. Some RPGs do tie the summon skeleton spell to present remains, but whether it's a man, an orc, an ogre, or a deer, it's always the same generic skeleton that rises.

Necromancy should be about raising the actual dead thing you just killed.

And skulking about on graveyards and battlefields.

 

[NecroLord]

I'd like to see my party turn to cannibalism when they're hungry.

Fear and Hunger 1 and 2 have a Devour ability which lets you consume corpses.
Useful if you don't have food available to stave off hunger.

 

[Harthwain]

And skulking about on graveyards and battlefields.

Or being a murderhobo.

I'd like to see my party turn to cannibalism when they're hungry. It would be interesting to weigh the cost/benefit of eating your own party members and reviving them VS just buying regular food.

Why eat your own party members when you can eat your enemies? If healing is important, then being able to heal via eating corpses of fallen enemies would be the way to recover health at no cost (other than maybe reputation or the requirement of being evil), making canibalism a really viable way to operate (more than it being tied just to hunger).

You could also make certain creatures require human meat to eat in order to keep them under control (or they attack you or start to degrade or something). Curious Expedition does that with the Abomination.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I'd like to see more nonlethal combat outcomes, so you get the option to decide the fate of you opponents. The way this was handled in Gothic is a good example. It feels much more natural not killing someone over a small quarrel. This could also be extended to more options to handle beasts and the like. Making animals act more realistically would also be a good start. Having the option to scare or to lure them away would often be much more sensible than simply going in swords drawn. Or feeding them poisened bait, etc.
This would open up also more meaningful interactions with npcs and give them a place in the game. Perhaps you need some meat to bait a bear, so you go to the local butcher, while the alchemist provides you a sleeping draught. Smiths/carpenters could provide you with traps, hunters could provide you information how to proceed etc.
Interactions and options like this would add some variety beyond the simple go-there-and-kill-it rote, which has been done to death.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

Unlocking UI content and themes as the game progresses.

UI that changes as chapters go on. For example, in the first part of the game you have simple life and mana orbs and a UI border that looks like vines. Then you get your power-up in the second part of the game and it changes to skulls and bones or something.

Kingdom Come 2 did something slightly similar. The set of possible loading screens change when you get to chapter 2.... I think. That way, the loading screens can depict the characters and locations from that portion of the game. The same could be done with the 'tips' on the loading screens. Even dynamic content... like you spend a lot of time lockpicking, show the advanced lockpicking tips.

Sometimes unlocking portions of the GUI is done with skills and perks, such 'You can now see your percent % change of success on persuasion', or even more significant parts of the UI.

I only know one game with something like this - Might & Magic 7. After some plot events you have to choose, which side to join - Light or Dark. And the UI completely changes based on the fraction you joined.

 

[StaticSpine]

I would like to see more synergy mechanics:

• Among party members, for example, you use the same characters together for a long time, and they get new combo attacks, start defending each other, etc
• Items/characters, like it was in Silent Storm when characters got used to their weapons and weapon stats became better