sawyer wants rpg to evolve

[Delterius]

RPGs are shit.

 

[Elex]

RPGs are shit.

some people consider shit only traditional shit.

we should try to evolve shit and don’t be limited by the traditional concept of shit.

 

[Delterius]

RPGs are shit.

some people consider shit only traditional shit.

we should try to evolve shit and don’t be limited by the traditional concept of shit.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaa...ax-or-japans-best-new-invention/#3c89598e6d9e

evolved shit

 

[Latro]

sounds like sawyer just doesn't differentiate between interactive fiction and rpgs

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

RPGs are shit.

some people consider shit only traditional shit.

we should try to evolve shit and don’t be limited by the traditional concept of shit.

Don't pretend to produce shit when you wanna piss because that's insulting to shit connoisseurs.

 

[Delterius]

RPGs are shit.

some people consider shit only traditional shit.

we should try to evolve shit and don’t be limited by the traditional concept of shit.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaa...ax-or-japans-best-new-invention/#3c89598e6d9e

evolved shit

the meta joke is that evolved shit is a scam

 

[Master]

Why do RPGs need to "Evolve", again?

Same reason TV and films need to evolve. Doing the same thing over and over again in the same way gets boring.

--> tangent

Consider the "classic" cRPG formula: isometric game with tactical turn-based or RTwP combat, a protagonist and companions whose abilities are constrained by stats, skills, and equipment, and a story that's structured around a main quest and sidequests. This allows for anything from Fallout to Planescape: Torment while the gameplay remains easily recognisable by anyone familiar with the formula. And I certainly believe there's a lot of stuff that could be done with this formula: it doesn't have to be Chosen One Saves The World (again).

But.

The formula does have a quite a lot of unspoken assumptions to it. For example, it's assumed that combat will be the main system, with most things -- stats, gear, etc. -- affecting combat effectiveness. This also assumes that you'll be spending a lot of time in combat. And a power curve is also implied: as you improve your character and gear, you'll get more effective at combat and be able to overcome tougher enemies.

This means that as long as you're sticking to this formula, your game will necessarily involve lots and lots of murdering and it will be a power fantasy: you'll end up stronger than when you started. And this is pretty constraining! If you're trying to do anything else than a "hero's journey" of some kind, you will have to jump through some major hoops. It also really often happens that the end of the game turns into a tedious slog because you "have to" have the opportunity to test all those shiny skills and gear you've so painstakingly acquired. Even PS:T did this, and suffered for it: the slog at the end is clearly the weakest part of the game, and it would have been weak even if they had managed to put in better encounters.

The tabletop gaming world is quite different. While we still have plenty of hardcore combat-heavy games fully in tune with their wargaming heritage, there are plenty of others. There are games that focus on non-combat skills, investigation, and unraveling mysteries (Call of Cthulhu). There are "story games." There's larping which fades into improv theatre. There's stuff like Fria Ligan's offbeat games, Tales from the Loop for example. There is no reason I can see why cRPGs should continue to stay in the really small box that's been built for them.

If cRPGs could evolve to produce variants that are out of this box then that would be awesome (and of course it doesn't mean there couldn't continue to be games inside the box; it's not like monkeys stopped existing when humans evolved).

And yeah, that's why Disco Elysium is so fucking awesome. It absolutely is a RPG. It just goes back to the roots of role-playing and then takes off in a new direction. We need more of that.

Spoiler

Of course, it's more likely that "evolving" just means making a BETTER hiking simulator, with REAL soil erosion and actually properly reactive AI, like Oblivion promised but better.

Sure there is that "formula" to it, lots of combat, power curve etc, but remember that many of those classics allowed for zero or almost zero kill playtroughs. They were also highly open in approach, while there was some vague order of doing things ( "heroes journey" ?) it wasnt strict and you could break all kind of sequences and do things differently (being captured by Supemutants from the getgo? Insane!)
You mention non combat use of skills, investigation, unraveling mysteries? But Fallout had all that to some extent(ask about button anyone?) What you and Sawyer are saying would make sense only if Fallout never happened, and if just Baldurs Gate happened.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Yeah Morrowind and Deus Ex both had shit combat, but it doesn't have to be shit. Just do a skill progression like Gothic where your actual physical skill with the weapon becomes better (in case of a shooter: less weapon sway, faster reloading, quicker transition to aim-by-sights, higher accuracy when hipshooting, etc etc etc) and it's gonna be a great game both as an RPG and as an FPS.

You are ignoring a bunch of things with this line of thinking. First, what players expect from a FPS is a game where their reflexes allow them to stand apart. The gameplay they want has nothing to do with allocation of stats, skills, etc. Second, you could allow the combat to be a matter of reflexes instead of stats, but that concession already tells you why FPS-RT games have nothing to do with cRPGs. The ability in cRPGs is determined by mastering the system, knowing the ins and outs of stats, etc. Third, this kind of game implies that you end up with a single character model, or at best a small party.

I don't see how an FPS would inherently make alternative choices in quests more expensive to implement, unless you specifically mean that the close perspective of first person makes voice acting every dialogue line absolutely necessary (it doesn't - see: Morrowind). Heck, Gothic 2 has a bunch of quests with multiple approaches, and three different factions that are mutually exclusive to join. Deus Ex has plenty of different approaches and some minor story choices, and different endings. And both of these games have full voice acting and animated conversations. Same with VtM: Bloodlines. Here you got not one, not two, but three games that prove a high degree of reactivity is very much possible within 1st or 3rd person action RPGs.

You are talking about the past, I’m talking about the present. These games had real teams with big budgets behind, but nowadays no publisher will touch anything like it. Elex is the only exception and there is a reason for that. You just need to read the illiterate-negative reviews will tell you all you need to know in order to agree with me.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

sounds like sawyer just doesn't differentiate between interactive fiction and rpgs

He dropped a tell, no one noticed it:

Spoiler

dogs in the vinyard

Josh is probably a GNS model "narrativist." Yikes. Explains a lot actually.

 

[Sigourn]

I have no problem with people saying "Dark Souls isn't an RPG". My enjoyment out of a game doesn't come from how people define a game, but how the game plays. I'm tired of thin-skinned fags screaming "GATEKEEPING"; why can't they just enjoy games for what they are?

There are two reasons why Fallout 4 is hated in the Codex:

- It's a lackluster (at best) entry in one of the most important RPG franchises of all time.
- Even if you stop calling it an RPG, it's a fairly awful game.

Is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night a good RPG? I'd argue it's shit, and I personally don't care about platformers to stick around with the game after a handful of hours. But that doesn't stop people from loving the game on its merits as a Metroidvania.

 

[Lhynn]

RPGs have already done this though. Age of Decadence in particular, recently, is about as radical a departure from "traditional" combat focused, Wizardry/D&D style RPG as you could get

Never going to understand this cult following AoD has. Its not as if it didnt make massive sacrifices make its visual novel/chose your own adventure gameplay possible.
Yeah, its impressive, but hopefully it doesnt inspire many people to do the same.

 

[Delterius]

RPGs have already done this though. Age of Decadence in particular, recently, is about as radical a departure from "traditional" combat focused, Wizardry/D&D style RPG as you could get

Never going to understand this cult following AoD has. Its not as if it didnt make massive sacrifices make its visual novel/chose your own adventure gameplay possible.
Yeah, its impressive, but hopefully it doesnt inspire many people to do the same.

you're being decline right now

pls don't be decline

 

[Lhynn]

To me evolving means improving and iterating, something that modern developers rarely do. Case in point, pre buffing in the IE games was a little bit of a chore, but a logical and effective tool in your arsenal, so Obsidian decided that rather than improve a flawed system they'd simply remove it cause its too much work, and everybody cheered and said yay less features.

And then it introduced pre buffing in the form of food.
You got 6 out of every dish that didnt stack, you feed every party member while the screen was in the inventory, then you proceeded to mow down everything in your path. Same chore, more brainless.

Really, sawyer is one of the stupidest developers on the market. I was in awe of the sheer idiocy of every decision this guy made to "fix" things that he thought were broken.


Roguey also ive played the last version of poe to completion, the combat is every bit as shit as it was back in 1.0 (cant remember a single combat where i did anything differently other than against the dragons and against the first ogre i met, when i was underleveled). And the expansions are worse than the main game, so thats also a lie i often hear too. PoE shills have taken advantage of the fact that literally everyone has moved on to peddle this banal game that should have never got made, that clearly nobody wanted to waste their time making but because it put food on the table they had to.

Fake EDIT: And its still more unbalanced than BG2.

 

[Sigourn]

RPGs have already done this though. Age of Decadence in particular, recently, is about as radical a departure from "traditional" combat focused, Wizardry/D&D style RPG as you could get

Never going to understand this cult following AoD has. Its not as if it didnt make massive sacrifices make its visual novel/chose your own adventure gameplay possible.
Yeah, its impressive, but hopefully it doesnt inspire many people to do the same.

Eh. It was a sacrifice, yes. But it showed that it is very much a possibility to make a game that doesn't revolve around the basic premise of "make a character, do almost everything the game has to offer". Most RPGs limit the choices to make in a quest. Age of Decadence outright denies you the possibility to do a lot of its quests altogether.

I think AoD has to be praised as a successful experiment in cRPG circles. A game like it wouldn't sit well in the mainstream: people already dislike the idea of not being able to join all the factions in Skyrim, for instance.

 

[Luckmann]

Why do RPGs need to "Evolve", again?

Same reason diversity is our greatest strength and we need multiculturalism.

What an extremely relevant post to the current discussion.

It is, because despite repeating it like gospel, nobody can explain why or how.

I'm working on an RPG that uses the open source 3.5 ruleset so I am officially compelled to defend it.

(Personally I think we can do far better than D&D when it comes to PC RPG rulesets but hey)

RPG or cRPG? If cRPG, citation needed.

Nigga just click the upmost link in my link-drenched signature:

https://www.realms-beyond.com/

Ooooooh. Fancy.

 

[Lhynn]

Would love to hear how one would solve the "flawed system" of pre-buffing, because that shit is not an strategic aspect of the game, just a thing you cross from a list when you want to fight

In Tyranny, you could only apply a buff from one spell group each, so it didn't get unwieldy like D&D's spells. The joy of preparing for a fight without the tediousness of casting a long list of spells in just the right order.

And then you realize you have to recast the fucking buffs every 30-60 seconds. I wish i was introduced to the imbecile that had the brilliant idea of making cooldown based gameplay, i really wish i did.
The only way the combat was not complete shit was playing a single character, because then it played a lot more smoothly. Also the narrative made more sense as a single character.

Making the actual spells was a fairly enjoyable process tho. Wish you couldnt buff lore so heavily tho, it would actually allow smart players to mess with the system as often as they ran into a challenge, instead of buffing lore ridoncuouls heights once to make super versions of the spells and dont touch it until 15 hours later.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Age of Decadence outright denies you the possibility to do a lot of its quests altogether.

Hardly a revolution. The Fallouts and Arcanum had that way before.
And as a bonus, they're actual games not teleporting script-fests.

 

[Sigourn]

Hardly a revolution. The Fallouts and Arcanum had that way before.
And as a bonus, they're actual games not teleporting script-fests.

We must have played different Fallouts and Arcanum, because I got 90% of quests done in the three games, if not more. The remaining quests were either those that were incompatible with each other (Reno mobs) or something fishy like that. But being unable to do quests altogether in a massive scale? Yeah, I'd call that revolutionary in execution.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

RPGs have already done this though. Age of Decadence in particular, recently, is about as radical a departure from "traditional" combat focused, Wizardry/D&D style RPG as you could get

Never going to understand this cult following AoD has. Its not as if it didnt make massive sacrifices make its visual novel/chose your own adventure gameplay possible.
Yeah, its impressive, but hopefully it doesnt inspire many people to do the same.

you're being decline right now

pls don't be decline

From this thread:

And wanted to give some feedback:

First of all it wasnt exactly a propa playthrough, i actually gave myself like 4 extra attribute points to have stats for future skillchecks and like 200 skillpoints to be good in civics to avoid missing a lot of shit in the game.

It worked fairly well, i could see most content for the factions and quests i did while having a combat character. Also found myself skipping many (many many many) checks just to murder people for their loot and combat exp. This gave me a semblance of control, as playing as a dumb fighter kinda takes away player agency and ability to influence some of the mayor choices, when by all rights you should be able to do so without a retarded check.

Anyway, feedback. Not a single likable fuck in the entire game. Only character i sort of liked was claudia, and only because she actually believed and didnt care a single bit if she died for it (which she did, commie scum). There are many places where choices and developments need to be recongnized but simply arent. Its such a massive game with so much work put into it that its impossible for the game to acknowledge everything, but the game itself sets the standard, so its really noticeable when it that kind of thing happens.

The writing is good, too impersonal tho, theres absolutely no investment in whatever is happening. Like summoning even an iota of a fuck for the events transpiring is very hard, you just do it because its fun and cool. Shit happens all the time in this game, all the time you are experiencing interesting events and there are so many of them and so varied you cant help but have a blast while playing it. Reading about the setting and history of the world is always fun too, very well thought out setting, very interesting.

The character system itself is kinda shit, absolutely no deph to it, character building comes down to metagaming (or would if i hadnt actually cheated). I feel like talking about it is beating a dead horse a year after said dead horse was being beaten 3 years after it died. I also feel that the dev team really wanted to limit what the player could do to control the players development from start to finish, probably to keep a sense of challenge, but it ends up being frustrating. Still just a minor flaw and the game is worth playing even despite it.
Should have gone with one-handed/two-handed-polearms/ranged approach to combat skills, would have allowed for a more interesting gameplay experience as you would swich weapon as needed instead of just picking your poison at the start and sticking with it the entire game.

He used cheat codes in his very first playtrough, but felt entitled to complain about shallow character building. He complained about unlikable characters probably because he is used to Bioware and weaboo shit. That's Lyhnn in a nutshell

 

[Lhynn]

He used cheat codes in his very first playtrough, but felt entitled to complain about shallow character building. He complained about unlikable characters probably because he is used to Bioware and weaboo shit. That's Lyhnn in a nutshell

So your argument is that because i had a character with more possibilities to interact with the story than normal and i still found that those possibilities were lacking and i went down the murdering path i would have gone down had i not had those extra points i what? am not qualified to say that the game made massive sacrifices to accomodate its gameplay?

There is no reasoning behind your post, only butthurt and retardation.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Hardly a revolution. The Fallouts and Arcanum had that way before.
And as a bonus, they're actual games not teleporting script-fests.

We must have played different Fallouts and Arcanum, because I got 90% of quests done in the three games, if not more. The remaining quests were either those that were incompatible with each other (Reno mobs) or something fishy like that. But being unable to do quests altogether in a massive scale? Yeah, I'd call that revolutionary in execution.

AoD has more quests, more complex quests and more C&C than Arcanum and all the FOs combined. That's not an opinion or a matter of personal taste. It's a fact. You can count them and put them side by side. The reactivity of AoD is unparalleled and the game still manage to have decent combat on top of it.

 

[Lhynn]

AoD has more quests

This is patently false.

more complex quests and more C&C than Arcanum and all the FOs combined.

This is true tho.

You can count them and put them side by side. The reactivity of AoD is unparalleled and the game still manage to have decent combat on top of it.

I wouldnt call the combat decent. It had no depth and this was an issue VD knew about but couldnt fix in any easy way. The combat in dungeon rats was much better by virtue of party management.
The reactivity was great, but it literally gave up on every other element to feed it.

 

[agentorange]

AoD has more quests

This is patently false.

AoD certainly has far more quests than Fallout 1. Fallout 2 is debatable, however an important distinction is that almost every quest in AoD is complex, with multiple approaches, solutions, slight variations within those solutions, and they often branch into other subsequent quests. Whereas Fallout 2 is filled with a lot of one and done fetch, delivery style quests.

I wouldnt call the combat decent. It had no depth and this was an issue VD knew about but couldnt fix in any easy way. The combat in dungeon rats was much better by virtue of party management.
The reactivity was great, but it literally gave up on every other element to feed it.

It has greater depth than Fallout's combat, despite lacking some of the detailed animations that made Fallout's otherwise shallow combat enjoyable. As for Arcanum's combat, I don't think there is even any value in saying AoD has better combat because Arcanum's combat is so terrible. One thing AoD has over any other similar game is a complete absence of trash fights, quite literally every single encounter has a unique setup that is taken into account by the story, which is something that Sawyer talked about doing with PoE but completely failed.

Neither of them are "better" than any of the others though, as they all excel in different areas. The important thing is that all of them having done whatever it is that Sawyer is talking about.

 

[Alex]

Let him (do whatever he wants). Let him ignore traditionalists, let's hope that the mainstream and traditionalists both will ignore him after he is done.

Fixed. I mean, why do people keep discussing this if they don't care about his views on RPGs?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Hardly a revolution. The Fallouts and Arcanum had that way before.
And as a bonus, they're actual games not teleporting script-fests.

We must have played different Fallouts and Arcanum, because I got 90% of quests done in the three games, if not more. The remaining quests were either those that were incompatible with each other (Reno mobs) or something fishy like that. But being unable to do quests altogether in a massive scale? Yeah, I'd call that revolutionary in execution.

I guarantee you you didn't do 90% of Fallout 2 or Arcanum in a single playthrough.
It's not only quest incompatible with each other (wasn't that what you were talking about, anyway?) it's also quests or paths limited by your build. Like how, say, the way yo can find Vault 13 if you have a high Outdoorsman skill. Or, fuck, the mastery quests in Arcanum.


So AoD upped the number of these... so what? Bigger number of scripts = revolutionary?
Those games had much more going for them. AoD only has clicking through scripts.

So.. yeah, maybe you played different games... because a smaller number means they didn't do it before, of course.

The reactivity of AoD is unparalleled

This kind of "reactivity" is limited by how much time was put into scripting it. AoD put all into that. If that's the only thing that you're looking for, then great. If not, well...

Here's some actual reactivity, which I keep mentioning: in Arcanum, buying a Charm scroll to cast on a guy and remove his armor to be able to kill him because I couldn't otherwise. This shits on every scripted crap Vault Dweller put into Age of Teleportation.