What ARE outdated mechanics?

[Serious_Business]

Fuck OP is stupid. Any mechanic that doesn't deliver fast, pouding, throbbing exciting action is outdated. I'm here for the excitement you faggot, I have no time for your boring shit. I like to be excited. I want shit to excite me, this is important. If I'm not excited, then your mechanics fail. If I wanted to play chess, I'd play chess you fucking assholes.

 

[JohnTheRevelator]

If I wanted to play chess, I'd play chess you fucking assholes.

Chess without turns is where it's at.

 

[Captain Shrek]

If I wanted to play chess, I'd play chess you fucking assholes.

Chess without turns is where it's at.

"Thunk like a general, Flllrrb like a spartan"

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

-Non-stat based dialogues.
-Dialogues without low/high int options.
-No day and night cycle
-Reused location graphics.
-"Non-living" world
-"Non-living" NPCs
-Lack of written descriptions.
-Houses that can't be entered because there's no interior.

 

[Yeesh]

I googled gay mechanics to find a picture to post, because get it? OUT + DATED + MECHANICS.

But now christ I wish I hadn't done that. Ewwww.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Pure "increase by use" skill development is an outdated mechanic.

That shit was ok back in the 90s when we didn't know any better.

But nowadays everyone should just copy DC:SS's "earn EXP, which goes in EXP pool, spend EXP pool by using skills" system, as it solves the serious problems inherent in increase by use, while keeping the good parts of it.

see this thread for more info: http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=53992

 

[Excidium]

But nowadays everyone should just copy DC:SS's "earn EXP, which goes in EXP pool, spend EXP pool by using skills" system, as it solves the serious problems inherent in increase by use, while keeping the good parts of it.

see this thread for more info: http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=53992

I just loathe "Increase by use" skill development in any form. Correct me if i'm wrong but that DC:SS system sounds even worse since I'd have to grind monsters to get the XP to be able to level up my skills by spamming them.

 

[villain of the story]

No, some things do get outdated within certain contexts, thoughusually limited to interface. Eg. If you are making an RPG with lots of items to loot and you can only see 5 items at once, that's just pure outdated bullshit. If you have have to wrestle through multiple menus to get to a piece of information or issue commands, instead of a more intuitive one with direct access options, that's outdated bullshit.

 

[Pegultagol]

RPG is an 'outdated' genre.

I think a lot of console mechanics trying to implement genres well represented by PC titles had to abstract certain aspects of interface. By wringing them on the limited configurations involving gamepad and whatnot, I think a lot of abstraction lead to outdated systems, which in turn adversely affected games development on PCs.

 

[PorkaMorka]

But nowadays everyone should just copy DC:SS's "earn EXP, which goes in EXP pool, spend EXP pool by using skills" system, as it solves the serious problems inherent in increase by use, while keeping the good parts of it.

see this thread for more info: http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=53992

I just loathe "Increase by use" skill development in any form. Correct me if i'm wrong but that DC:SS system sounds even worse since I'd have to grind monsters to get the XP to be able to level up my skills by spamming them.

Sort of, except...

a) Grinding is heavily discouraged by DC:SS mechanics, so you'd probably earn the XP through normal play (which does involve killing stuff in DC:SS)

b) Including an XP requirement to raise your skill means that skills can rise through use a lot faster than in a pure use based system, without the potential for people to max out their skills just by spamming them. So if you choose to spam your skills, your sessions of skill spamming will generally be brief and highly productive, rather than long and tedious.

And most skills will rise just find through normal play, without the need for training.

 

[Excidium]

But nowadays everyone should just copy DC:SS's "earn EXP, which goes in EXP pool, spend EXP pool by using skills" system, as it solves the serious problems inherent in increase by use, while keeping the good parts of it.

see this thread for more info: http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=53992

I just loathe "Increase by use" skill development in any form. Correct me if i'm wrong but that DC:SS system sounds even worse since I'd have to grind monsters to get the XP to be able to level up my skills by spamming them.

Sort of, except...

a) Grinding is heavily discouraged by DC:SS mechanics, so you'd probably earn the XP through normal play (which does involve killing stuff in DC:SS)

b) Including an XP requirement to raise your skill means that skills can rise through use a lot faster than in a pure use based system, without the potential for people to max out their skills just by spamming them. So if you choose to spam your skills, your sessions of skill spamming will generally be brief and highly productive, rather than long and tedious.

And most skills will rise just find through normal play, without the need for training.

I see, that really sounds much better than the standard system.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

Hit point attrition battles have to go, I mean why not make a game where you stab an ogre into balls for one hundred times?

Nah, let's have a system with hit locations with an injury system. It doesn't need to be a simulation but it should allow a shot to the legs to reduce mobility, for example. JA2 did this well enough.

Messy, ambiguous RTWP is bad, I need to see ETA's, distances, hexes or squares or something and I want it to be easily understood without looking too much at the graphics, so a bush square should be signified with something like light cover, height 2, flammable etc.

Forced grinding and everything that artificially lengthens the game.

Anyway, look at JA2, and think "Why isn't this feature in more games?". There's our progress.

 

[Black Bart Charley]

There are no outdated mechanics.
There are misplaced mechanics.

 

[Harold]

Outdated mechanics: That's when you press a button and nothing awesome happens

 

[7hm]

You have to look at the game's focus. If I'm designing a tactical dungeon crawl then leaving NPCs as fairly static encounters isn't so much outdated as a good use of my resources - no need to spend a ton of effort on schedules and such when that's not what the game is about. If I'm designing an "open world" game, then it is ridiculous that I wouldn't spend resources on that aspect of the game, and having those static encounters (or encounters where the NPC doesn't remember a conversation or event from 2 minutes ago) is very bad. Might as well just go fully M&M and remove any attempt at dialogue choice.

+ for the dcss xp system. It works for dcss, but it has problems there too. No system is perfect.

 

[Lunac]

I thought it was just marketing-speak. At least when you listen/watch/read interviews of those publishers and/or dev douches. You know:

Dev LaDouche: Our game doesn't feature out-dated mechanics like >insert whatever their game lacks<

It could be anything. Something is missing and it needs to be justified god damn it. Usually done to justify major eff-ups once enough money has been spent and is too late or costly to make changes.


...
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[Jaesun]

Hit point attrition battles have to go, I mean why not make a game where you stab an ogre into balls for one hundred times?

Nah, let's have a system with hit locations with an injury system. It doesn't need to be a simulation but it should allow a shot to the legs to reduce mobility, for example. JA2 did this well enough.

Messy, ambiguous RTWP is bad, I need to see ETA's, distances, hexes or squares or something and I want it to be easily understood without looking too much at the graphics, so a bush square should be signified with something like light cover, height 2, flammable etc.

Forced grinding and everything that artificially lengthens the game.

Anyway, look at JA2, and think "Why isn't this feature in more games?". There's our progress.

 

[SkeleTony]

"Outdated mechanics" is one of those terms that usually does not mean much really. Like "spiritual enlightenment" or some such. The only RPG mechanics I could definitely say were "outdated"(and here by "outdated" I mean inferior/broken/not well designed, yet somewhat forgivable due to being created at the dawn of pencil and paper role playing gaming.) are systems like AD&D/OD&D and such. A shit ton of computer RPGs still use these mechanics(lots of roguelikes especially) because the kids designing them do not know any better.

Outdated game mechanics usually lack logical consistency, elegance and balance.

Of course non-indie, big budget game developers usually mean by "outdated mechanics" 2D, isometric, top-down, turn-based and/or does not allow for gay sex romance options.

 

[Ivory Samoan]

Selling less than 3 or 4 million copies is a prime example of outdated game mechanic.

 

[SkeleTony]

RuneQuest was the first 'Improve skill by using them' system. The problem with RQ's system was that the way it worked was that if you had say a weapon skill that was like %90 and you were facing an ogre or something that could not dodge shit, your chance to score a "special success" was like %30, like 1/3rd of your chance to hit and your chance to score a "critical success" was 1/5th(so less than 20% if you had less than 100% modified skill). So if your attack roll was not only below the %90 you needed to hit but happened to fall in that less than %20 range, you would score a critical success roll and the opponent could only dodge by getting a critical success dodge roll(or parry ). If you scored a critical success(that was not countered by an opposing critical success roll) then you got an "experience check" which required you to roll percentile dice for a score OVER your current skill in order to increase that particular skill(i.e. one handed sword attack).

Some RQ players complained that what this lead to was players going after low level opponents so they would get specials/criticals more often and thereby gain skill faster.

My take on this when I GMed was different. Critical success chances only ranged from 1%(extremely unskilled persons) to %20(guys with %100+ skill) so there was not a great difference for the most part and beyond that one still had to roll OVER his current skill in order to increase it with d% so some guy with 99% skill trying to get to %100 would still be lucky if he ever saw that increase(even given the skill modifiers for high attributes which would be applied to the experience check roll).

But if one was Hell-bent on creating a more perfect 'experience by use' system I don't think it would take too much tinkering.