RPG Mechanics Made Pointless By Game Features

[MRY]

I think the hardest thing is to figure out how to convey the time limit to the player in a way that neither (1) discourages fun ways of engaging with the game nor (2) encourages save-scumming as a way of minimizing the passage of time. Both of these are real problems. If you tell the player he has X days, and exploring the world takes time, players will either not explore (unlikely) or will save scum until they find an optimally efficient way of exploring. If the time limit is balanced for non-degenerate gameplay, then it will wind up being trivial when players save scum. And if the game is balanced based on the assumption that players will forgo content because of time pressure, then save scumming will also break the game's core balance by overpowering the character.

I am not entirely sure how to fix this beyond rogue-like iron man rules.

Having ways of extending the time limit strikes me as almost always a good idea. Two of the most satisfying things I can remember in RPGs were when I extended the time limit in FO by buying a water supply for the Vault (thus triggering its own set of issues) and when I slowed down the Kohr-Ah by sending aliens to go stand in their path.

 

[Butter]

From a mechanical perspective, it's more satisfying when a game rewards you for going fast than when a game punishes you for going slow. E.g. in Goldeneye you unlock new cheats for finishing missions fast, but you can also spend an hour on each one if you want. However it's harder to provide a narrative excuse for this in an RPG. The entire impetus for leaving Vault 13 in Fallout is that everyone will die of thirst in 5 months. What would that even look like if they had tried to do it the other way around? "We want you to go find a replacement water chip. Nothing bad will happen if you dawdle for a few years, but if you bring it back here quickly, we'll have extra water".

 

[MRY]

I guess you would do, "Until we have more water, we will be forced to take radical rationing steps, including shutting down functions X, Y, Z and putting non-essential personnel into stasis. Once you secure more water, we will be able to start bringing those systems and personnel back on line." (And, of course, functions X, Y, Z would be shops or power-up dispensers or whatever, and the non-essential personnel would be quest givers and so on.)

 

[Karellen]

In comparison, in RPGs, time limits tend to be something that's been haphazardly bolted on top of a conventional RPG, to the effect that the time limit is relevant only inconsistently, and you don't have that much to work with when it comes to dealing with them.

Time limits would probably be a controversial mechanic no matter what in an RPG, but it seems to me that the way to make them work is to involve them in everything you do.

That's precisely what Mask of the Betrayer and Fallout do though. Instead of having some arbitrary system wherein some quests might be on a time limit and others aren't, they have a single, overarching mechanic that governs everything you do in the game.

Well, that's kind of my point - Fallout has a singular time limit, but it doesn't really do much, because time is otherwise largely irrelevant in the game. I'm somewhat fond of the time limit anyway, because it spcies things up the first time around, but the only thing it really limits is grinding on random encounters and going back and forth between settlements, which you have very little reason to do anyway. Very few quests take in-game time to do, so you might as well do them all wherever you go. There are no interesting decisions to be made about what to do with your time, and even if there were, I'm not convinced it would work because the game isn't set up to provide the player with enough information to make sensible strategic decisions.

I think that this is particularly obvious when you compare Fallout to FTL, a game that actually does have a relevant time limit. Everything that you do takes time, and you always have less of it than you want, so the player immediately learns to plan a route that covers as much territory as possible - a plan which, however, one might be compelled to change based on new information, quests, the need to refuel or repair the ship, events that slow down enemy pursuit and so on. The player's situation is in flux and there's a constant risk-reward calculation to be adjusted to determine what to do next, which necessitates that the player is constantly aware of available time and how to manage it. In comparison, even having playing the game, I have no idea how much time it takes to travel between Vault 13 and Junktown, because it doesn't really matter.

Of course, FTL is a rogue-like that's played by default with Ironman rules, and it is not readily apparent to me either how time limits could be improved in a game that isn't. I think making the whole thing more legible and strategic can't hurt, though.

 

[DalekFlay]

Even on this site, where people are probably more likely than average to accept (or even appreciate) time limits, there's a fair bit of about Kingmaker having a time limit.

Kingmaker just overdid it. The whole game is timed, pretty much, both in ways that make you rush and do things in a certain order and also ways that make you sit around waiting for things to happen. Whether you like that concept or not, it was destined to be hated by many. As mentioned, Fallout's time limit was already hated by many and was much less of a thing. There was also much better ways to accomplish the "ogres are attacking would you just sit around?" anal retentiveness goal, such as...

I guess you would do, "Until we have more water, we will be forced to take radical rationing steps, including shutting down functions X, Y, Z and putting non-essential personnel into stasis. Once you secure more water, we will be able to start bringing those systems and personnel back on line." (And, of course, functions X, Y, Z would be shops or power-up dispensers or whatever, and the non-essential personnel would be quest givers and so on.)

This, spot on. Varying the outcome of a quest or reward based on when you did it is something that doesn't get nearly the same level of kvetching. That could just be lumped into choice and consequence. To use Kingmaker as an example again, there's a quest where depending on what you do and when you lose one advisor or the other. That's fine, I would never bitch about something like that. It's the "do these things in this order and rush this quest or else game over" stuff that annoys people.

 

[Lawntoilet]

Kingmaker just overdid it. The whole game is timed, pretty much, both in ways that make you rush and do things in a certain order and also ways that make you sit around waiting for things to happen. Whether you like that concept or not, it was destined to be hated by many. As mentioned, Fallout's time limit was already hated by many and was much less of a thing. There was also much better ways to accomplish the "ogres are attacking would you just sit around?" anal retentiveness goal, such as...

I haven't seen many complaints about FO1's time limit on the Codex though, certainly not as much as I have seen about KM (mostly from just a couple people, admittedly).
I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea although you still have abundant time to 100% complete the game.

I guess you would do, "Until we have more water, we will be forced to take radical rationing steps, including shutting down functions X, Y, Z and putting non-essential personnel into stasis. Once you secure more water, we will be able to start bringing those systems and personnel back on line." (And, of course, functions X, Y, Z would be shops or power-up dispensers or whatever, and the non-essential personnel would be quest givers and so on.)

I agree that this is somewhat underutilized and generally a better way to go about it (although I still think that hard time limits have their place).

 

[MRY]

Of course, FTL is a rogue-like that's played by default with Ironman rules, and it is not readily apparent to me either how time limits could be improved in a game that isn't. I think making the whole thing more legible and strategic can't hurt, though.

Yes, FTL is the game I had in mind when I made that comment.

That said, I think Star Control II is a useful counterpoint. It introduces the time limit late in the game (rather than early) and uses it as a way of focusing the player after much of the exploration / grinding / learning the ropes has taken place. By introducing it late, it helps form the other end of the classic game shape -- narrow at the start, widen at middle, narrow at end -- even though by that point in the game the player has fuel and means to go over much of the map. Further, the time limit has consequences reasonably quickly (you can see the Kohr-Ah sphere of influence moving/expanding, you can see aliens being wiped out), but the early consequences are stuff the player actually doesn't care much about. Rather than having it simply a binary, "In XXXX days, the world ends!" it's like "In 3 days, this relatively unimportant thing happens." It's almost unheard of to run out of time in SC2, but a common experience to have the Kohr-Ah do something interesting/bad before you knock them out, even if it's just knock out some aliens you never much cared for.

The thing with FTL vs. FO is, as you note, the player completely lacks the relevant information to make strategic decisions based on the time limit in FO. In FTL, it's very transparent; the whole game is minmaxing odds in light of the time limit, really. SC2 is set up so that you have a sense of how to play the game by the point the time limit kicks in. It's not as transparent as FTL, but you've got a rough feel for things.

A possible way that this could have been improved in FO would be to start the game not with the waterchip breaking, but with the waterchip breaking down. So the initial scenario is not, "We have 150 days" but "It looks like at some unspecified time in the near future, our waterchip will break." Then (at one of several possible scripted points) after the player gets to understand the setting, movement speed, what steps might be needed to get a waterchip -- that's when the waterchip breaks, triggering the timer.

The introduce more sources of water, and more trade-offs for the water. For instance, brokering a water deal with slavers in exchange for Vault citizens or discovering some water drums in the desert that could be recovered, etc.

Lawntoilet Totally agree. I think FO would be much worse with the set-up I described, I was just trying to field the question of how you could (theoretically) flip the resource constraint.

 

[DalekFlay]

I haven't seen many complaints about FO1's time limit on the Codex though, certainly not as much as I have seen about KM (mostly from just a couple people, admittedly). I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea although you still have abundant time to 100% complete the game.

It's not about completing the game, it's about the structure of doing what they want you to do when they want you to do it. This doesn't seem to get through to the defenders no matter how much I type it (no offense intended), so I think it's just a fundamental disconnect over how we play and enjoy RPGs. Fallout doesn't really have the same problem because other than a couple very generous time limits to do a specific thing you were free to do whatever whenever.

 

[Lawntoilet]

I haven't seen many complaints about FO1's time limit on the Codex though, certainly not as much as I have seen about KM (mostly from just a couple people, admittedly). I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea although you still have abundant time to 100% complete the game.

It's not about completing the game, it's about the structure of doing what they want you to do when they want you to do it. This doesn't seem to get through to the defenders no matter how much I type it (no offense intended), so I think it's just a fundamental disconnect over how we play and enjoy RPGs. Fallout doesn't really have the same problem because other than a couple very generous time limits to do a specific thing you were free to do whatever whenever.

No, I get it, I just don't think it's always the way to go. Like in Kingmaker I don't think you should be able to just ignore the troll invasion, but if they did something like remove the hard time limit for dealing with Irovetti, he is able to annex part of your territory, the quests fighting against him are harder, and you have to spend BP to redevelop the land again after you beat him. That's what I mean by "hard time limits have their place" - I think it's fine if they interrupt you with an urgent quest at times, but even though I like how KM is structured, it could be just as enjoyable if only some chapters had a hard time limit, and others had a softer time limit.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I think the hardest thing is to figure out how to convey the time limit to the player in a way that neither (1) discourages fun ways of engaging with the game nor (2) encourages save-scumming as a way of minimizing the passage of time. Both of these are real problems. If you tell the player he has X days, and exploring the world takes time, players will either not explore (unlikely) or will save scum until they find an optimally efficient way of exploring. If the time limit is balanced for non-degenerate gameplay, then it will wind up being trivial when players save scum. And if the game is balanced based on the assumption that players will forgo content because of time pressure, then save scumming will also break the game's core balance by overpowering the character.

I am not entirely sure how to fix this beyond rogue-like iron man rules.

Having ways of extending the time limit strikes me as almost always a good idea. Two of the most satisfying things I can remember in RPGs were when I extended the time limit in FO by buying a water supply for the Vault (thus triggering its own set of issues) and when I slowed down the Kohr-Ah by sending aliens to go stand in their path.

This is a thing Dragon Quarter (jrpg for the PS2) did really quite well. So, things it did:

Save system was limited, but not to the extent of a roguelike. You had two types of saves- soft saves you could make (and would be made for you) all the time, but you only had one slot for these saves and they were only used as a means to turn the game off without needing a hard save. Making a soft save means turning the game off until you load it and delete that save. Hard saves work pretty much like traditional jrpg saves. You need to make them at a save point, and if you die, you return to that save point with whatever loot you found and your xp. But your 'time' gets reset to what it was when you made the hard save. The last thing about the hard saves is that they were a limited resource. You couldn't make one at every save point you found. Basically the game gave you the ability to save scum and farm if you sucked, but treated that ability like any other, costing you a resource to use.

The 'time' was a counter that ticked up from 0 to 100%. When it reaches 100% you turn into a monster and lose. The rate the counter goes up from time (more accurately, taking steps) is actually incredibly slow. So walking around town talking and such costs you nothing. I think it cost 00.01% every 5-10 steps or so. You might spend 15% of the counter on this by the end of the game. Probably less, I can't recall the details. The next level of consumption was using a special power that lets you dash past enemies without triggering combat. That burned it about ten or twenty times as fast. So you can't use it constantly, but you can avoid pretty much all random encounters if you wanted to burn it that way. And it was certainly good for avoiding especially annoying encounters or getting out of a dungeon alive when you're weakened, or reaching a boss at full health. The next biggest consumption is a drain of 00.1% each round of combat. There's a lot of combat, so that shit adds up quickly. Probably another 10-30% there depending on how much combat you do and how good you are at ending fights quickly. The last thing to consume it was actively using your power. You can partially turn into a dragon during combat, which renders you completely invulnerable, gives you infinite movement for that turn, and grants you some incredibly overpowered attacks. Used competently you can kill pretty much any boss in the game for something like 12% of your counter. I think the transformation itself cost 1% and another 1% each turn, with more for doing actual attacks. So you can use this to win fights you were about to lose, or just skip a fight you can't otherwise handle.

The next thing it did was give you a clear goal and a vague idea of how close you were to it. Around the same time you are given the powers and the counter, you're given the explicit long term goal of reaching the surface (the whole game takes place in an ancient massive underground shelter from fantasy WW3.) The maps are clearly labeled with their depth. So you start out something like 2600m underground and keep heading up, mostly in chunks as you clear a dungeon and find some major elevator that leads upwards. This isn't REALLY accurate since the distance is completely arbitrary; the game outright skips like 800m at once near the very end. But it does it for good reason, because you're expected to need your powers a lot more in the end game. The important thing is it gives the player a sense of how conservative they should be with these powers.

The last thing it did was it was meant to be replayed. You get a score at the end of the game based on a bunch of things, including real world time spent, counter remaining, number of hard saves made, reloads, map completion, and some other stuff. Getting a perfect score is very difficult. When you restart the game, a few extra things are unlocked based on your score- you can see some extra cutscenes that explain plot elements that were a mystery the first time, some extra minor areas open up, etc. Essentially, the game is encouraging you to do a speedrun with some extra restrictions like not saving very much. Getting a score high enough to unlock all the content is fairly easy, scores better than that are just bragging rights.

The game is hugely flawed in many other ways, but it's by far the best implementation of a long term time limit on gameplay I've ever seen. It's a lot more involved than some basic time or turn limit you usually see.

 

[DalekFlay]

Like in Kingmaker I don't think you should be able to just ignore the troll invasion, but if they did something like remove the hard time limit for dealing with Irovetti, he is able to annex part of your territory, the quests fighting against him are harder, and you have to spend BP to redevelop the land again after you beat him.

I like the idea of something like "if you don't stop the troll threat fast enough Ekundayo goes there himself for revenge and dies, so you miss out on a companion." I think that kind of stuff is cool. Having to do the trolls no matter what though, when you're in the mood to explore the Northern woods, is meh.

 

[laclongquan]

Time limit in Fallout 1 is a good story mechanism. Because F1 is too small/compact, so it's a good way to tighten player's wandering.

But time limit in Fallout 2 is a much more interesting mechanism. Because F2 is soo much bigger, it create its own set of choice and consequence.
+ The dream pleas are grating on player's tender nerve so it gentle force them to advance the main quest in a natural way.
+ OTOH, there's a natural tendency to stall the main quest until we have to do it (dream plea 4). Pro is that we do all the things we want to do on the east side of the map and levelup all 5 companions.
+ OTOH, once we figure out a way to get 7 companions (Evil Skynet and K9 force their way into our party), there's a tendency to advance the main quest past Navarro portion much more quickly. Or at least, the solo investigation part of it (we have to leave all behind). We gotta have 7 companions for some quest xp so the two unhuman can level up a bit. Otherwise they are so screwed with endgame Enclave troops. I myself leave most of NR/BH/Redding quest unreported yet.

I argue that the dream sequences are very well done as a method to psych players into doing main quest instead of dawdling around New Reno/Broken HIlls/EPA.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

laclongquan what you describe is disgusting powergaming, requiring meta knowledge. Though I guess when you're on 10+ playthrough, anything goes...

 

[gurugeorge]

On the topic of saves, I think the best save system is a rolling system of like up to a dozen or so Quicksave slots. That way you have something intermediate between the blissful momentum of not having to think about saving at all and the nervous palaver of saving manually.

You just thoughtlessly, reflexively hit Quicksave whenever you have the urge. If the big mistake you made was a ways back, there's a good chance one of the earlier Quicksaves will take you back there.

In fact, I'd go so far as to have an option where you ONLY have autosaves and rolling quicksaves, and no option to manually save, kind of like a "Bronze Man" idea. Again, it's to avoid having mental space taken up with worries about saving, while at the same time having some IRL convenience and safety for if you really screw up because you don't quite understand the game yet, while at the same time having some commitment to the development of your character as it goes.

Of course if you're a reviewer or if you just love manually saving before story branch points so you can try all the choices, that should be an option too, but I think the first time you're playing a game you want that sense of forward motion and you don't want to have to think about saving, you want to be immersed.

(Ofc as a technical point, such a system does need screenshots so you can identify when the save was.)

 

[JarlFrank]

The problem with time limits is that most of the time they're entirely binary.

Either you do the thing within the time limit, or you lose. Especially when it applies to main quests, that really sucks. Mismanaged your time and can't conceivably finish the game before the limit runs out? Tough luck buddy, you have to restart from the beginning.

Time limits that modify the result of your success or failure based on how long you took are much more interesting. Some people above already gave some good examples, like if you don't stop the invasion in time a part of your kingdom gets annexed and you have to deal with the consequences.

If failing the time limit means bad consequences that you have to deal with, you can still soldier on even after the limit expires. If failing the time limit means game over, you have to start over or reload an earlier save that hopefully leaves you enough time to deal with whatever it is you have to deal with.

Knowing that letting the time limit pass means bad consequences you have to deal with instead of a hard game over also makes you feel less pressured when you play. You know the time limit exists and is important, but if you let it pass you can still play on and even get some new content to deal with (while losing out on some other content like a companion dying or something). If you know from the start that time limit running out means you'll FUCKING LOSE, you're gonna feel pressured because wasting time could lead to you having to restart if you don't have a save that's far back enough to make winning still possible.

 

[DalekFlay]

On the topic of saves, I think the best save system is a rolling system of like up to a dozen or so Quicksave slots. That way you have something intermediate between the blissful momentum of not having to think about saving at all and the nervous palaver of saving manually.

Your post made me think of another way to avoid save scumming with quicksave in addition to ones already discussed... the game could automatically overwrite your quicksave with a new one when you do a skill check or make a dialog decision. Alpha Protocol was all about auto-saves for this very reason, but it could have still had quicksave outside of that IMO. Using Pathfinder again as an example... autosave when you enter an area, let the player quicksave outside of battle all he wants, then make a new quicksave whenever he does a skill check or after every dialog. So if you want to save scum, you have to load the autosave from the start of the area, a significant time loss in many cases.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

I did mention this already in the thread about saving, but I'll repeat this again here: let me save whenever I want. Middle of battle, middle of conversation, world map, etc. I have kids, I have responsibilities at home. I give zero fucks about how hardcore of a game it's supposed to be - I want to be able to put it down at any moment and get back to exactly the spot I was. Save on exit is fine, as long as it works everywhere - I don't want to skip through 10 minutes worth of conversation just because your shitty engine can't cope with saving that state.
If I, or any other player, wants to savescum, I'll do it. If you do rolling saves, or overwrite existing saves, I'll just copy over my saves to another dir (most likely write some script to do it). All those shenanigans with making saving hard are pointless - people who don't want to savescum won't, people who do want to will find a way (or stop playing your game). Saving and loading system should be completely orthogonal from gameplay systems (which means that some thinking needs to be done around RNGs (which I largely hate anyway)).
Anyway, let's stop talking about saving and loading, as this is not an RPG mechanic at all.

 

[JarlFrank]

People who don't want to savescum should just... not savescum. Simple as that.

If you cannot do that, the issue isn't with the game's save system but with your own self-discipline.

If other people savescum, that should be none of your business. Everyone can play a game the way he wants.

 

[Karellen]

I did mention this already in the thread about saving, but I'll repeat this again here: let me save whenever I want. Middle of battle, middle of conversation, world map, etc. I have kids, I have responsibilities at home. I give zero fucks about how hardcore of a game it's supposed to be - I want to be able to put it down at any moment and get back to exactly the spot I was. Save on exit is fine, as long as it works everywhere - I don't want to skip through 10 minutes worth of conversation just because your shitty engine can't cope with saving that state.
If I, or any other player, wants to savescum, I'll do it. If you do rolling saves, or overwrite existing saves, I'll just copy over my saves to another dir (most likely write some script to do it). All those shenanigans with making saving hard are pointless - people who don't want to savescum won't, people who do want to will find a way (or stop playing your game). Saving and loading system should be completely orthogonal from gameplay systems (which means that some thinking needs to be done around RNGs (which I largely hate anyway)).
Anyway, let's stop talking about saving and loading, as this is not an RPG mechanic at all.

So, you came to a thread about game mechanics making other game mechanics pointless, and proceed to post about a non-mechanic that is not made pointless by another non-mechanic.

 

[gurugeorge]

On the topic of saves, I think the best save system is a rolling system of like up to a dozen or so Quicksave slots. That way you have something intermediate between the blissful momentum of not having to think about saving at all and the nervous palaver of saving manually.

Your post made me think of another way to avoid save scumming with quicksave in addition to ones already discussed... the game could automatically overwrite your quicksave with a new one when you do a skill check or make a dialog decision. Alpha Protocol was all about auto-saves for this very reason, but it could have still had quicksave outside of that IMO. Using Pathfinder again as an example... autosave when you enter an area, let the player quicksave outside of battle all he wants, then make a new quicksave whenever he does a skill check or after every dialog. So if you want to save scum, you have to load the autosave from the start of the area, a significant time loss in many cases.

There was a "Bronze Man" mod for XCOM2 that did something like that. It was Ironman (autosaving after every change), except it kept a save at the beginning of the mission so that if you really cocked up or if the game bugged out you could restart the mission. Again, that sort of thing is a reasonable compromise. You still have the sense of commitment and momentum, and it's enough of a PITA to restart that you really don't want to and you have the mindset of really trying hard to get it right; but you have a safety net too.

Even that tiny bit of safety net does change your psychology a little bit though. There really is nothing like the true Ironman feel of headlong commitment and future orientation without any past orientation at all.

 

[Butter]

People who don't want to savescum should just... not savescum. Simple as that.

If you cannot do that, the issue isn't with the game's save system but with your own self-discipline.

If other people savescum, that should be none of your business. Everyone can play a game the way he wants.

Have hundreds of health potions. Just don't use any of them if you think it ruins the gameplay.

 

[Storyfag]

A great example of optional automatisation is the space 4X strategy Distant Worlds. You can assign all kinds of gameplay decisions to the AI, but you can always manually interfere or switch off AI actions. You can put the entire colonization and economy sectors under AI control and focus on warfare and diplomacy, or vice versa. Or leave AI off completely and do everything yourself.

That's a valid option for RPGs too. But sadly a lot of RPGs think that you should only control your own character and party members are hands-off AI companions: Fallout 1 and 2, Arcanum, Neverwinter Nights.

Technically, I can see where they are coming from. In PnP RPGs every player usually controls but a single character. If a CRPG aims at mirroring that experience, reducing the player's control to a single character is warranted. However I have yet to see a CRPG which does justice to its PnP roots in that regard. In other words: if it can't be perfect, it's not really worth it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

People who don't want to savescum should just... not savescum. Simple as that.

If you cannot do that, the issue isn't with the game's save system but with your own self-discipline.

If other people savescum, that should be none of your business. Everyone can play a game the way he wants.

Have hundreds of health potions. Just don't use any of them if you think it ruins the gameplay.

Or just infinite gold and health. Just turn the game off and try again after losing whatever amount of hp seems fair to you. Because I have too many responsibilities to not cheat at a game I chose to play.

If you want to cheat at a game thats fine, cheats can be fun. Just don't pretend it's normal and bitch about the game being too easy or defend broken mechanics like a failed pickpocket attempt resulting in certain death and enemies having a 1 in 50 chance to just shoot your brain out every round because you magically put your brains back in whenever it happens.

Technically, I can see where they are coming from. In PnP RPGs every player usually controls but a single character. If a CRPG aims at mirroring that experience, reducing the player's control to a single character is warranted. However I have yet to see a CRPG which does justice to its PnP roots in that regard. In other words: if it can't be perfect, it's not really worth it.

Ultimately control of a character isn't a binary thing anyways. Complaining that you can only determine what your party is composed of, or what AI settings you can use, or not being able to direct specific targets or actions is no diffeerent than complaining that you can't bite your opponent's knees off like you can in dwarf fortress adventure mode. If a game is built around it, just picking who is delivering the beatdowns is good enough. It just means you need more systems on another level to make the combat interesting. Though at some point you've left the genre and entered management/sim territory.

 

[Harthwain]

Technically, I can see where they are coming from. In PnP RPGs every player usually controls but a single character. If a CRPG aims at mirroring that experience, reducing the player's control to a single character is warranted. However I have yet to see a CRPG which does justice to its PnP roots in that regard. In other words: if it can't be perfect, it's not really worth it.

In order for that to work well cRPGs ought to go in the direction of cooperative gameplay. I guess Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 are such games?

 

[JarlFrank]

Technically, I can see where they are coming from. In PnP RPGs every player usually controls but a single character. If a CRPG aims at mirroring that experience, reducing the player's control to a single character is warranted. However I have yet to see a CRPG which does justice to its PnP roots in that regard. In other words: if it can't be perfect, it's not really worth it.

In order for that to work well cRPGs ought to go in the direction of cooperative gameplay. I guess Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 are such games?

And because I don't want to have other people available to play with me whenever I feel like playing a CRPG, this is a bad idea. These are games I want to launch when I have some alone time and my friends have other things to do. Requiring other players to have fun with the game defeats the purpose of a CRPG - I can just play pen and paper then.