Post cool MECHANICS

[behold_a_man]

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.

Expeditions: Viking did exactly that - non-lethal combat meant forgoing critical hits. This oftentimes added some options later on, or at least minor dialogues.

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.

It would be nice if the change in UI (or the ability to change the UI) would be determined by the item one can carry. In Ultimas, you could know your exact location only if you carried a sextant or the time if you carried a clock. This wasn't integrated with visible UI, though, only with key commands.

I like it when items help with the inventory management in a non-obvious way (unlike, say, bags of holding); for example, both Star Trail and Shadows over Riva allowed me to carry ledgers, where I could copy miscellaneous notes or recipes, simplifying management of the inventory (also useful since both limited the amount of items a character can carry). They even gave me joyous text boxes when I tried to copy a deposit receipt or the like. The same goes for keyrings, both in Ultimas (Pagan and Serpent Isle) and two late Arkania games.

I love it when a game limits the ability to save in a way that is consistent with other mechanics of a game.
-> Kingdom Come allowed me to conquer the world, buying resting (and saving) places in every inn and allowing me to create potions to save the game (hard to come by at the beginning).
-> Secret of the Inner Sanctum allowed me to save only at the inn, making early game gruelling, but later I could get one-way teleportation spells (unlike Lloyd's Beacon, starting from 2), giving me a logistic problem - should I carry on through the dungeon and possibly perish losing newfound loot (that is randomized), or should I come back and replay those encounters later?
-> Blade of Destiny allowed me to save for free at temples and for 50 experience points anywhere. Since I gained ~50 experience points for random encounters, it can be thought of as a reward for winning one of those skirmishes.

 

[JarlFrank]

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.

The best thing about the way Gothic handles it is that you can have stuff like fistfights, bar brawls, etc both as something that happens organically (because you just decided to punch a sailor in the face in the dockside pub) and as part of quests, which can lead to rivalries with people you beat up before. Or cool moments like someone beating you up, then later when you're stronger you return to beat him up and take all your stuff back.

A system like that would also make arena fights a lot more realistic. Historically, gladiators had a pretty high survival rate... because if you host gladiatorial games every week, you'd soon run out of fighters if every fight ended in death, and re-stocking your roster by buying new slaves would be too expensive in the long run. Popular gladiators tended to develop fan clubs and became audience magnets, attracting lots and lots of viewers to the arena. Would be a shame if a single lost fight led to such a superstar's death. In 99.9% of RPGs, arenas treat even the most famous gladiators as disposable, because every fight ends with death.

Beating people up non-lethally is such a cool game mechanic, it's a crime it hasn't really been used outside of Gothic.

 

[StaticSpine]

Non-game over outcomes after failing. It might be a nightmare for a branching game, but I saw this in Expeditions Conquistador. You can lose an important encounter and continue playing with consequences.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

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.

Chrono Cross did something similar, altough the different UIs were collectable objects to find in-game.

 

[Dark Souls II]

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.

I loved that in CK2. Was very pleasantly surprised the first time I converted from Catholicism to Islam and my entire UI changed. Very based. I wish IE games had something like that, would work perfectly together with with the D&D alignment system - just make the UI more evil when I make more evil choices.

Now, back to the thread topic.

For me it's the gym.

I want my PC get visibly stronger and bigger if I train or do feats of strength. If I play a strong barbarian, I want my dude to be WAY MUCH stronger and bigger than if I'm playing a rogue or a wizard. I don't want the same models for my STR 10 DEX 18 rogue and for my DEX 18 STR 10 rogue.

Also, if the game has a food / hunger system, I want to be able to get fat if I overeat, or emaciated if I undereat.

And the only game that ever did that?

 

[ds]

I'd like to see more spellcasting systems where spells aren't something your character magically learns or just finds in the world but something that the player himself can explore. Arx Fatalis does have this to some extend with spells being made up of runes that form a sentence describing the spell and the game tells you about some but no all spells, leaving you to deduce the rune sequences for the hidden spells. But this could be expanded much further with less intuitive but still logical rune combinations. Essentially, finding cool spells could be like an adventure game puzzle.

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It's always disappointing when the carnage you leave either stays around forever or magically disappears after a time / when leaving the area. It would be nice to have a more interesting simulation of corpses decaying, structures being rebuilt, animals/monsters slowly repopulating the area, etc.

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Automatic quest logs and maps are boring but their absence can also often be annoying. I'd like to see games give players more options for manually curating their list of things to do and knowledge about the world in a way that is actually more usable than a literal piece of paper. Some examples of what I'd like to see:

- The ability to organize and re-organize notes - both notes you find and things you write down for yourself. For example if I need to do something in a town that I won't get to for a while I want to be able to write a note for that and somehow associate it with that town. This could be some function integrated into the map or it could be note items that you then organize into folders in your inventory or it could be something more abstract.

- I want to be able to have my character sketch whatever he sees in the world for future reference, subject to character abilities and acquired tools of course. Don't make me, the player, remember some code or diagram that is the later needed to solve some puzzle but also don't automatically scream THIS IS RELEVANT FOR A LATER PUZZLE by automatically adding a note of it to my journal/inventory. This mechanic could even be further used by letting you show your sketches to NPCs to ask them about what you have seen - so what if my characters can't read some ancient writing on the wall of a dungeon, have him copy it down and then go ask the local librarian/whatever.

- I'd like to be able to buy/find maps that are sometimes vague perhaps not always entirely correct and then add my own details and corrections as I explore the world. Can be combined with the previous mechanic to have your character draw his own map from scratch if you're at a vantage point.

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I'd like to see games mess with your perception of the world. Shapeshifters whose shadows reveal their true nature (if exposed to a sufficiently focused light source). Ghosts that you can only see in your peripheral vision. Environments that change when you look the other way. Monsters that are only visible trough movement using a persistence of vision effect like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdTMeNXCnTs
This can also be combined with debuffs like tiredness or inebriation, e.g. if you are sleep deprived the game might actually not render some things until you look a couple of times.

 

[SilentSeeker]

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.

I disagree- but only because you don't take it far enough. If necromancy is just "animating dead things to fight for you", how is it any different from building a robot? And why would you use humans, which are pathetically weak for our size? The primary advantage we have over the other apes is our incredible intelligence, which isn't a factor with skeletons and zombies. The only reason I can think of is that you can find a great many human corpses in one place (a graveyard), which you don't have for other animals- but that, in turn, begs the question "why only use animals?".

Animated skeletons don't move through muscle mass, because they don't have muscles; there's some other magical force controlling their movements. That means plants and fungi could work just as well (microbes, too, but it'd be very difficult to work that into a game without focusing all of it on that level). Everyone expects to find the necromancer in some deep tomb far in the necropolis- but he'd eventually be driven out, or run out of resources as people stopping burying the dead there. So he moves to the deep forest, and when you encounter him, the reanimated trees- you didn't stop to closely examine them, and why would you? A standing but dead tree looks little different from a living one- lash out at you, vines coiling around your limbs and neck to try and pull you apart as dead but still very solid branches rain down blows. Thorns slash your skin open and reanimated pollinators zoom into your wounds to tear you apart from inside, while also stealing pieces of you for future experiments. And when you finish one off, it collapses, dropping literal tons of weight atop you- and to any passerby, it just looks like you were crushed by a falling tree.

And then there's the fact that it's formerly living tissue that gets reanimated. The obvious use of that is having someone's dinner rise up to devour THEM, but that's only the beginning- the mayor's bum leg, crushed in wagon accident in his youth, the great warrior's dead eye, damaged beyond repair in a desperate battle, even the young woman's dead-in-the-womb fetus: these are ALL tools of the necromancer. Watching the stroked-out graybeard struggle helplessly against the magically-controlled parts of his own brain to be able to govern his basic movements is a scary thought, but what about when, from seemingly the brink of death, he makes a full recovery, and goes to ride that fame to a sign of the approval of the gods, only turning on the townspeople and revealing his duplicity AFTER they've sacrificed their children to the Unholy Wizard's dark research?

Necromancy has SO MUCH POTENTIAL for evil; it's a terrible shame to just turn them into another summoner.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

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.

Dungeon Master (1987) had injuries occur to particular body parts represented in the inventory screen: head, chest, right hand, left hand, legs, and feet, with the last being quite likely to occur from falls. A red outline over the body part indicates the injury.

 

[markec]

One of my favorite feature in gaming was found in Battlespire where you could talk to every enemy in the game. You could intimidate or trick them, do favors for rewards, persuade them to help you or just listen as they mock you.

 

[tritosine2k]

Critical hit should result in rarity of loot vs . atomized /burnt to ash stuff

One of my favorite feature in gaming was found in Battlespire where you could talk to every enemy in the game. You could intimidate or trick them, do favors for rewards, persuade them to help you or just listen as they mock you.

Underrated aspect of star control as well.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

I think if the player can defeat a freaking God, there should be no "unbreakable doors" in the game for him. So, the player should be able to open absolutely every door, without all this "this door cannot be lockpicked, find a key"

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

I like it when your character's lack of skill in combat is reflected mechanically, eg. not being able to chain combos together or swing your weapon correctly. KCD and ofc Gothic do this. This is tricky to implement because normies will cry about "unsatisfying" and "clunky" combat and give up on the game before they develop their character enough to be able to fight fluidly. What a sad, sad world.

 

[Tavernking]

Tim Cain had an cool idea for a CRPG where, upon death, you take control of the NPC that killed you.

 

[Technomancer]

I want my PC get visibly stronger and bigger if I train or do feats of strength. And the only game that ever did that? GTA SA

My favorite feature. Ain't unique to GTA tho. In fact, Fable did it first, way before it.

Best and latest implementation of it was in Kenshi.

 

[ds]

Critical hit should result in rarity of loot vs . atomized /burnt to ash stuff

That just rewards players for choosing the boring slog strategy over fun kills. If anything, it should be the other way around - less damaged or more loot if you get a quick kill vs. chopped up armor after a drawn out battle.

 

[JarlFrank]

Critical hit should result in rarity of loot vs . atomized /burnt to ash stuff

That just rewards players for choosing the boring slog strategy over fun kills. If anything, it should be the other way around - less damaged or more loot if you get a quick kill vs. chopped up armor after a drawn out battle.

There are some games where you can hunt animals where the quality of the animal skin and/or meat depends on how quick the kill was, so a one-shot kill gives you much higher quality than slashing the beast with a hundred cuts.

IIRC Far Cry 6 does this, where driving over animals or gunning them down will give you "damaged meat" or "damaged pelt" but if you take them down with a well-aimed shot it gives you regular quality loot.
The recent Soulmask has a quality rating for animal kills based on the damage you did to the body, with lower amount being better obviously.

It makes absolutely zero sense to make a lot of low damage hits improve the quality of loot, because that causes a lot more damage than a single well-aimed critical killshot.

 

[luj1]

Critical heal, critical lifesteal, critical spell lifesteal

 

[tritosine2k]

well-aimed critical killshot

Instead of well aimed you can also open the pandora box of luck stat, as in
https://whatwouldconando.blogspot.com/2016/07/fighting-fantasy-luck.html?m=1
where luck is decreasing.
So instead of using luck to loot it becomes indirect.

Kinda makes sense also because why wouldn't a worthy foe dispose of powerful item instead of letting you loot.

 

[Ol' Willy]

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.

If you introduce the need to eat and sleep, you should also introduce the need to take shit and piss

And these things should be on timer, so if you don't empty your bowels in the time you just soil yerself and get "shitstained" debuff

While being "shitstained" NPCs will refuse to interact with you, citing the foul smell

So you have to was yer ass and change yer pants to get rid of it

 

[anvi]

I think Magic the Gathering is like a holy grail of ideas that could be used in RPGs. There's a fun new game called Noita where you craft wands with incredible spell effects. That is itself a kind of simplified version of MTG. Games should be doing this a lot more. Give the player a huge number of spells but also wild effects like, "summon a creature for each spell you have cast this battle". And "double the effects of the next spell cast", like Noita/MTG. Let the players figure out crazy shit. Infinite loops of damage and stuff.

If it destroys all the enemies too easily, then so be it. Or you nerf it and move on. But it would be fun to play with magic like that. MTG can be amazing but it's also just 2d playing cards. It could be translated into an RPG.

Also have you guys heard about EverQuest? =) It's more important than people think because it's a single character completely realtime RPG. So it feels more like Skyrim but it has the depth of Baldurs Gate 1/2. Yet the whole game works in realtime. It's exciting, skill based, and C&C based. Fast paced yet tactical too. It deserves further study at least.

Critical heal, critical lifesteal, critical spell lifesteal

Everquest has all of that and more There are also new ways to play without the grind and whatnot! Kinda complicated though.

 

[NecroLord]

Critical heal, critical lifesteal, critical spell lifesteal

How would that work?

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

anvi I'd like to see spectacular magic too, but I want backlash mechanics. Imagine BG2 calibur spells that you can cast at will, with a chance that something horrible will happen that scales with how powerful the spell is. It's the perfect solution to magic. The player gets awesome spells but will self regulate. The setting gets a nifty reason for why magic isn't used everywhere for everything Harry Potter style. It keeps it wonderous while providing legitimate use for mundane skills.

 

[Brickfrog]

I've said this before but no fishing mechanic ever made a game worse

 

[anvi]

Stuff RPGs really should have from EQ:

Trains - Enemies should be placed in the world in higher density. And if an enemy sees you fighting one of its buddies, it should join in the fight. In EQ this made amazing moments. Someone is fighting a couple of Orcs or something. Then another one is wandering past and joins in the fight. Now they have 3. Then when one is injured it runs away towards a big group of its buddies and several of them join in. Now the person is being attacked by 10 things so they run away. As they run all the nearby Orcs that see the fight will join in. So the guy is running with 20 or 30 Orcs chasing him. This was called a train in EQ.

Also if that person escaped to the next zone, or died, or teleported or something. Then all those 20-30 creatures would stop and then just start wandering back to where they usually live. So at any point a huge army of enemies might come wandering through an area they aren't usually in when you aren't expecting it. Just because they were heading back to their home.

Also in a dungeon with 3 levels, you work your way down all the ramps to the bottom. But there's a gap where you can leap off and hopefully survive the fall and save time. But if an enemy attacks you just as you are jumping off... then that enemy will run through all of those ramps to reach you and all the enemies along the way will join the fight. So it could be 100 goblins or whatever that come at you.

Magic heals which act like a rune blocking 1000 damage or whatever. Then when the rune is broken it triggers a heal over time. I also like when you cast a spell on the enemy and team mates who hit the enemy get healed. It allows healers to join in fighting and not keep casting heals all day.

Root spells to hold enemies in place so they can't chase you. But then direct damage breaks the root spell. Damage over time spells then become useful instead. Poisons, diseases, magic curses, etc. Also if you root a Wizard enemy in place it just nukes you to hell.

Necromancers / Mages should get to summon a pet which you can then give commands to. It at least needs to stop attacking whatever it is attacking, back off, and then attack this instead. EQ lets you quickly do that with hotkeys. You can also tell it to sit and rest, wait somewhere, follow, attack if you are attacked or don't until you tell it to. Taunt enemies yes or no, etc. Most games with pets seem like shit compared to EQ. Also EQ lets you give the pet weapons and armor which it then uses. And you can target the pet and heal it or give it buffs.

Bard run speed - EQ takes forever to travel across but a Bard can run at star trek speeds. It is amazing. Like 20x faster than everyone else. I don't like fast travel because it's a dumb solution and ruins the feel of a solid legit world. But I don't like long slow boring runs either. So Bard speed was perfect. Travelling still mattered but it was fun and faster. They could also go invisible while running, and levitate over obstacles.

I also like in Lands of Lore how you can cast spells with a strength. Just a weak one if that's all you need or full strength if you want and anything in between. It lets you be economical with mana.

 

[JarlFrank]

While being "shitstained" NPCs will refuse to interact with you, citing the foul smell

There is, however, a realm called Indya where this status effect will give you a charisma buff instead.