1eyedking Top 10 things that RPGs don't do anymore

[Wayward Son]

Who is prosper?

You.














Edit: From what I gather, he was an overly ambitious modder/dev who constantly gave up.

 

[Aiff((AimpliesA)ImpliesA)]

Who is prosper?

You.














Edit: From what I gather, he was an overly ambitious modder/dev who constantly gave up.

redacted for posterity.

 

[Arulan]

Information Presentation and Deception

How a game presents information affects many things, from how you ultimately play it, to encouraging suspending your disbelief. If a game only gives you information for the immediately relevant, you begin to set your expectations of what to expect from it, that is that when it presents something to you, it must be important soon, and true.

You're walking through a dungeon, and encounter a journal with the passage: "The monster appeared before me, but something miraculous happened! It fled just as it saw its reflection in the pool beneath me! I wonder..."



Wonder indeed...

On the other hand, if the game presents you a variety of information, of which all isn't immediately relevant, and better yet, some of which can be false, using information becomes a part of gameplay. You have to determine which is valuable, ideally through context or other sources in order to validate it.

Pool of Radiance is a good example of this, but I'm having trouble thinking of other great ones at the moment. Anyone?

EDIT:

Wasteland too in specific examples.

 

[Lostpleb]

Encounters where the enemy is either annoyingly difficult to kill, or requires you to figure something out beyond "swing your sword/cast a fireball until it ded".

If an RPG is not making me want to smash my computer screen or rethink what I'm doing then it is doing something wrong.

 

[Wayward Son]

Pool of Radiance is a good example of this, but I'm having trouble thinking of other great ones at the moment. Anyone?

Ultimas sometimes will tell you something early on (in Brittania for example) that won't be useful until later. Don't know about patently false information though.

 

[anvi]

Encounters where the enemy is either annoyingly difficult to kill, or requires you to figure something out beyond "swing your sword/cast a fireball until it ded".

If an RPG is not making me want to smash my computer screen or rethink what I'm doing then it is doing something wrong.

Good post.

I remember a fight (I think in BG2 or IWD) and you go into a dungeon and start whooping undead evil baddies, and then more come and you are low on health and spells. And then more come again.. and then more.. And then you die. The only way to win is to run through all the undead, and there is a summoner guy at the back creating them, and you have to gank him first. It is only a simple idea but stuff like that is really memorable to me, and all the tank n spank shit in modern games is not.

 

[Siobhan]

Pool of Radiance is a good example of this, but I'm having trouble thinking of other great ones at the moment. Anyone?

Castlevania 2 takes misdirection to an extreme, and I suppose it qualifies as an ARPG (there's levels, even though you wouldn't notice unless you pay close attention to the select screen).

Another example is RoA2, where you can find a recipe for creating a potion that will solve all your money problems. But once you've finally gathered all the ingredients and brew the potion, all that happens is that you lose your greediest party members, who runs off with the potion never to be seen again. A-level trolling by the developers.

Another (borderline) case is in the dwarven mine in RoA3. There's a big metal wedge protruding from some rock that the game describes in great detail and even gives you an interaction option. So clearly it's important, right? No. If you finally figure out to get the very heavy blacksmith hammer from an earlier room and use it to hammer the wedge fully into the rock, absolutely nothing happens.

Finally, one could also count that lovely bug in Daggerfall where you're sometimes given the wrong quest location. Good luck finding the right one among thousands of dungeons in the region.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Less gameish (?) writing or whatever it's calling.
I mean when NPCs talk in a way that no human being talk (except clinical autists). The way devs write NPCs dialogs require containing as much informations as possible for players, ending results is insane because both players and devs are retarderd. It results in straight informations lightly re-formatted into dialogs, it's so fucking bad I skip dialogs in games because that (on the contrary I can read books with pleasure, even when genre is not my favorite).
They might? badly interpreted old school way of games design but for sure they fucked up badly.
Older writing sure contained informations but they were implemented in much suble way, no matter how ham fisted writer was...

 

[vonAchdorf]

Another example is RoA2 ... RoA3.

Another example would be the integration of absolutely useless spells and skills which don't do anything or cannot be used at all.

 

[Wayward Son]

anvi I think that you're talking about the Yxunomei fight in IWD? That was a bitch and I never actually got through it, took a break and then the laptop I was playing it on broke. Oh well, gives me a excuse to make a better party.

 

[pippin]

anvi I think that you're talking about the Yxunomei fight in IWD? That was a bitch and I never actually got through it, took a break and then the laptop I was playing it on broke. Oh well, gives me a excuse to make a better party.

It's not Yxu, although it does make you rethink your strategies since she can only be hurt by +2 weapons and you only have a couple of them at that point. (You can equip the rapidfire bow with +2 arrows and throwing axe +2 and kill her relatively fast). The guy generating the undead is from the Lich found at Dorn's Deep, you have to destroy a gem holding his power, or he will keep respawning.

 

[anvi]

The guy generating the undead is from the Lich found at Dorn's Deep, you have to destroy a gem holding his power, or he will keep respawning.

Yeah that sounds like it. I wanna play though them all again sometime.

 

[smileyninja]

There was one quest in Witcher 3 where you come upon some bandits trying to burn an elf's house down. I was underleveled at the time and decided to come back. Later on, I returned to a burnt out shell of a house.

 

[naossano]

Encounters where the enemy is either annoyingly difficult to kill, or requires you to figure something out beyond "swing your sword/cast a fireball until it ded".

If an RPG is not making me want to smash my computer screen or rethink what I'm doing then it is doing something wrong.

Good post.

I remember a fight (I think in BG2 or IWD) and you go into a dungeon and start whooping undead evil baddies, and then more come and you are low on health and spells. And then more come again.. and then more.. And then you die. The only way to win is to run through all the undead, and there is a summoner guy at the back creating them, and you have to gank him first. It is only a simple idea but stuff like that is really memorable to me, and all the tank n spank shit in modern games is not.

utl

It reminds me of a creature that guarded a mine in Lands of Lore. That creature can be defeated by a magical item, or you can sneak through it to ented the mine without fighting. If you intend to fight it by regular means, there is just no way to defeat it, and i don't think it is related to any quest.

Same game, the ultimate boss cannot be defeated if you don't take a magic item or successfully do a ritual several levels before. I would say it is a bit unfair to screw you so much at that point. Also, considering the game is *mostly* linear, you are unlikely to have earlier saves several levels earlier.

 

[Grumpy Grognard]

Pool of Radiance is a good example of this, but I'm having trouble thinking of other great ones at the moment. Anyone?

Ultimas sometimes will tell you something early on (in Brittania for example) that won't be useful until later. Don't know about patently false information though.

Smith the Horse in the Ultima series gives you clues to the previous game's plot/central mystery which is a variant of this. SPOILERS: http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Smith_the_Horse)

 

[Goral]

Quest journal with different routes leaving different writings, ala Planescape Torment and Arcanum. It created and can reinforced certain point of view without making it blatantly obvious. (...)

Yeah, about the journal, it's the best journal in any RPG I know. Not only because you get different writings if you go a different route (or if you're dumb as a door nail) but also because it has different sections like gossip or local news that contain not so obvious hints to the quests we have or to possible quests or are just interesting. In general Arcanum is an underappreciated gem, a game ahead of its time, e.g. in here companions have a mind of their own and do not follow our orders blindly but have their own agenda and might even go against us at some point. Iron Tower's Colony Ship Game should have this in too so that's a big plus already.

 

[Invictus]

Maybe I am missing the point of this thread but the whole boxes of goodies is something I do miss.
Games like Quest for Glory (the hero correspondent booklet) Might & Magic (starting with the copy protection booklet and awesome box art) or Ultima (with cloth Britannia map and a moonstone) those things started my mind racing from the moment I opened the box... such awesome memories

 

[Severian Silk]

I miss the fact that games are no longer being made by Troika, but instead by other people.

 

[octavius]

I miss that developers no longer have any technical limitations.
Judging by recent interviews by old designers it was the limitations that made their games great.

 

[Severian Silk]

I miss that developers no longer have any technical limitations.
Judging by recent interviews by old designers it was the limitations that made their games great.

I think Star Citizen has always had insurmountable technical limitations, but they started crowdfunding anyway.

 

[Rhuantavan]

I miss that developers no longer have any technical limitations.
Judging by recent interviews by old designers it was the limitations that made their games great.

You just have to make up some limitations then. I'm doing that with my game.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

Secret Characters: Another downside of the BioWarization of RPG companions is that they become a huge selling point and marketing focus. People knew the entire life of Dragon Age: Inquisition's companions even before the game was released.

This had a nasty side-effect - it kills any surprise. Imagine if Chrono Trigger came out today - you would know Magus can be recruited 6 months before release. It kills all the surprise of suddenly meeting a talking deathclaw in Fallout 2 (WUT?) and being able to recruit him (OH YEAH!!).

This is actually one of the saddest results of teh internet and BioWarization.

 

[Carrion]

I miss that developers no longer have any technical limitations.
Judging by recent interviews by old designers it was the limitations that made their games great.

Oh, there definitely are limitations. For example:

- The number of maximum dialogue choices is dictated by the type of the dialogue wheel you're using
- The number of characters to talk to depends on the voice acting budget
- Populating cities with more than a dozen people is murder on the console hardware
- Inventory takes up five separate screens because you can only show three items on the screen at a time
- The game needs to be playable with two analog sticks and up to eight buttons, and everything more complex than that is overkill
- Just go ask Bethesda whether their next game is going to have a levitation spell. Or spears.

It's just that these limitations are mostly self-inflicted and a result of terrible decisions regarding game design.

 

[mondblut]

- Populating cities with more than a dozen people is murder on the console hardware

That always has been the case, regardless of platform. Curiously, immershunfags seem to dig that, just look at Ultima. Go figure...

 

[Somberlain]

You also can't exceed 30 fps without destroying the cinematic look of your game