Saint_Proverbius said:
Binary said:
NWN did bring something new to the genre: the possibility for a human to play the role of the "Dungeon Master", a burden taken by the CPU on the rest of the existant RPGs.
Volourn is correct. It was Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption that was released back in January 2000 that introduced the multiplayer DM mode to the genre - Not NWN.
My bad then. I completely disregarded VtM when it came out
How many times have there been such innovations to the genre in the last years? Since the release of Windows 95, I remember only 3 times this has happened:
Might & Magic 6 (improved on M&M7 and 8 ): a 1st person combat system switchable between real time and turn based.
Which really didn't work well. This isn't an innovation. It's a really bad idea that never, ever should have come about.
Didn't work well?! Tell me a 1st person RPG with a better combat system. Also, please tell me what's wrong with this one, and why it isn't innovative.
Faery Tale Adventure 2: A 3rd person combat system that switched between RT and TB depending on how fast you were controlling your players (know it sounds confusing, has to be played to fully grasp the concept)
Again, piss poor idea, never should have been done.
????? This is the best combat system I have ever seen, and I pretty much think I've seen them all, since Akalabeth or Temple of Apshai. It's basically a turn-based combat system but if you keep LMB pressed it speeds up to real-time.
Diablo 1 (much improved on Diablo 2): random drops made out of a list of suffixes and prefixes
While a nice touch, I'd hardly even say it's remotely in the top three BIG INNOVATIONS OF THE GENRE.
You are completely off the point. Were we naming the top three innovations of the genre? If we were, then I have to vote for Akalabeth, Wizardry 1, and Ultima 4.
Hell, Fallout has three big ones..
Fallout's SPECIAL system introduced Perks, something WotC adopted for D&D.
LOL is this a innovation? It's a very interesting system but already existing in pen&paper RPGs, other than that it's just a character creating system that still fails short of other interesting and original ones like the ones on Darklands, Megatraveller...
Fallout introduced multiple story endings based on how the game was played.
One other thing that had been done before. Remember Wizardry 6 or have you never played it? Has 5 different endings depending on how you have been playing the game. Wizardry 7 also had this and I'm sure I could think a bit more to find others.
Fallout introduced the speech skill to the genre.
As it was pointed out, the use of a skill to influence NPCs or not had already been used before on Darklands (a masterpiece RPG -- try it if you haven't yet). Even so, is it such a "big innovation"? Other games before have based NPC reactions on alignment/karma instead of a skill (nearly the same) and it was not groundbreaking
Even if some people like them and others don't, It's these kinds of innovations that might keep the CRPG genre from stagnating.
Switchable real time with pause never works well, and never will. You end up with a watered down version of both systems because you have make sure things work for both. You have to limit your design.
XCom-Apocalypse (OK, not a RPG) gave the player the option of playing either on RT or TB and it worked well. I too prefer TB combat systems, but they're not easy to pull on 1st person RPGs (older M&M and Wizardry games often became boring, not to mention chess-like based on the Arkania games), hence the brilliant idea of Jon van Caneghem to implement both systems on the same game.
As far as innovations go, there is still room to prevent the genre from stagnating. Want some food for thought? For example, what about a RPG in which the PC is not the hero but a "simple" sidekick instead...? Playing Shamino instead of the Avatar...!
) so some of these long-gone ideas might prove to become fresh air in a market of RPGs filled with poor-kid-farmer-becomes-hero-and-gets-fabled-artifact-to-defeat-bad-foozle-in-the-end games 
