What's the point of non-party combat?

[DraQ]

But NPCs should have their alignment hidden simply because they're the DM's characters, not yours.

NPCs are, yes. But I treat recruitable party members as my own characters.

Except they aren't your characters. Only those characters that you have created yourself, designated protagonist or characters you put in the party before the game even started are yours.

I'm talking about those that the DM has created for me to choose between.

Did you chose them and put in the party before your playthrough even started (discounting "LOL I've read about them on the intertubes/ have seen them when I played the game last time so I planned my party accordingly")?

If no, they aren't characters DM created for you to chose between. They are characters DM created for you to bump into, join/ignore/slaughter them and have them seek their own goals which may or may not involve stabbing you in the back and absconding with all your gold and an artifact of power when you least expect them to. They are still NPCs except they have temporarily jouned your party. If you play tabletop and don't have access to inventories of DM's or other players' characters that are currently in the party with you, why should it work differently in a cRPG?

Memorise that shitty know alignment spell, cast it, remember it.

And then be all surprised when Jon Irenicus registers as good

Know Alignment is theoretically great, but considering how little thought was given to character sheets in the BG's relying on it is pretty dangerous.

I generally dislike stuff like explicitly defined alignment, so I can't say I'm too happy with spells and other stuff directly targeting alignment.

Besides, PS:T would be a much worse and shallower game if it allowed detect evil. I was delighted with how it messed around with alignments, so we could have Trias, Ravel and pretty much monster evil Practical Incarnation that wasn't that far off typical munchkin good PC behaviour-wise.

Ideally, NPCs should not reveal their entire character sheets, should not give up the best gear suiting their focus or essential supplies*, should not accept orders they'd deem suicidal and should interact with shopkeepers on their own, keeping their personal gold reserves.

I also happen to agree with this. Key word being "ideally". But until developers come up with AI that's good enough for this, I'd rather go for full control.

Well, characters unwilling to give up gear they can equip and don't find restrictive (for example Fighter-Thief would prefer good leather to good plate, despite lower higher worse AC) unless given better gear of that type sounds reasonable and easy to implement.

Same with overrides based on charisma and overall approval of character's actions - even in BG characters reacted to actions based on their compatibility with their alignment (based on reputation score), so locking and unlocking full access to inventory, character sheet and such based on the same triggers wouldn't be exactly rocket science.

Oh, of course! Outside of combat you can inch your characters towards their destination slowly, even if you only want to get to a shop on the other side of the map, but in combat when enemies are within your line of sight you have to make long range movements to a safe haven 5 miles away!

Except outside of combat nothing bad will generally happen if one of my valiant retards travels the first ten meters of his planned 'shortcut' through Maztica and Kara-Tur before I stop him and send him back on the right track, while in combat, even the several seconds my thief spends sightseing before he manages to get behind the back of enemy caster may mean that my strongest fighter gets bad case of charm and uses my fragile mage as a pinata.

Nah. Bullshit.

Word.

RTS style interface? Of course it does. It allows you to select characters individually, while also letting you select your whole party. That means you should play it like an RTS! Good luck!

I find your ignorance dismaying.

IE was first developed to be used for an RTS, it shows. RTS interfaces are geared towards commanding massive amounts of non-essential units with little depth per unit, RPG interfaces are geared towards commanding one to few units that are all essential and have a huge amount of control depth. It also shows.

LARPing is storyfag shit? What are you on about? No one mentioned LARPing.

So you don't consider recruit-stripping NPCs of their valuables if they don't fit your party composition excessive cheese? Good to know.

Is your inability to read still holding you back from making decent conversation?

No, u.

Storyfag shit is storyfag shit. Having evil party members with hidden alignments suddenly turn on you at convenient points in the game instead of having party members with open alignments who you can treat however you want is indeed storyfag shit.

I see your definitions are hopelessly muddled so let me give you hand:

Storyfag shit is when you follow a highly scripted, sometimes branching rail, while exploring well written dialogue about the nature of a man (if you're lucky) or poorly written gay romances (if you're not).

Having untrustworthy NPC party members is a concept that can be applied just as well to an open, procedural world with thousands of generated characters, provided that characters can be given goals and corresponding conditions regarding when and if to defect, for example a thief character may be generated to be motivated by greed and have a chance to defect when player has less than two backstabs worth of health, while also having above certain value of loot on him, as long as they are not in a populated area and there is clear path to the nearest town/dungeon exit, a paladin, OTOH may defect if he sees the PC killing random people for gold/lulz/necromancy resources. The only difference between storyfag and simulationist application is the amount of dramatic and highly individualized dialogue that will occur during the betrayal.

Lastly, I'm deeply and thoroughly amused by your bashing of storyfaggotry while also defending fucking BG, of all games.

Because BG where you join with a psychotic evil necromancer and psychopatic rat of a halfling as a pretty much distressed youngster, then tell them to give up their scrolls, weapons and armour and send the on their way is just so much better.


There are two approaches. Either you treat your combat seriously and try to integrate it with the rest of the mechanics as much as possible, or you treat it as a minigame, not unlike other minigames, with little actual relation to the events it resolves.

If you want to mesh it well, then things like an NPC you've first met 5' ago not trusting you with their stuff, a cowardly rogue deciding to leg it when you expect him to charge into the fray and people's willingness to accept your orders instead of their own (AI driven) judgement being tied to your charisma, their discipline and opinion of you are yet another part of the deal in the same way as your best swordsman chopping you up because you gave him a cursed sword is.

If you want it to be yet another minigame, dissociated from the context keeping the game together, then play some genre where it fits - JPG for instance.

Your argument is so full of shit because you essentially want to sacrifice full party control for "believability" and "immersion", having characters who have their own opinions of you and only follow orders under given conditions.

Of course I do.

The only reasons to have any sort of background fluff, "dwarves tend to have beards" included, and to have ruleset as baroquely convoluted (and, for this reason, inherently exploitable and hard to balance) as even the simplest RPGs is "immersion" and "believability".

If I wanted to play an abstract, mentally stimulating game, I'd piss on your juvenile scorn play something minimalistic and elegant like Go, not some needlessly convoluted, broken turd allowing Pun-Puns and spiked chains. Have you gone mad?

I may not care much for storyfag approach, even though it did result in some exquisite gems, as I'm a simulationist at heart, but as the whole point of storyfaggotry is telling a story, the point of simulationism is simulating a setting. What follows is that mechanics doesn't exist in vacuum, but is tied to the context of simulated universe and in pretty much any universe it makes perfect sense to have distrustful characters even if they are adventuring with you.

Plus, since I'm simulationist, thinking about charisma translating into the game not only as non-combat NPC interaction modifier, but an actual leadership quality gives me an instant hardon.

But my characters are my fucking characters! Why the hell would I want their statistics to be hidden from me? How the hell am I supposed to use them effectively if they aren't who I think they are?

And how the hell are you supposed to compete quests without quest compass and popups?

How the hell are you supposed to do battle if you don't know the results of all rolls in advance?

Maybe you should actually dig for information rather than demand it to be handed to you on a silver platter?
Maybe you should plan for multiple alternatives (like the shady guy trying to stab your kidneys and run away with the treasure, or barbarian guy getting his death and glory rather than listening to your intelligent, but not overly charismatic wizard who seems to be mumbling to himself rather to actually give orders) rather than demand convenient certainty?

So why not apply that to the protagonist?

Because the protagonist actually *IS* your character. Unlike shady guy #34 you picked on the way because he's good at picking lock and enthusiastic about stabbing unsuspecting people in the kidneys.

So, yeah:

Unsuccessful strawman is unsuccessful.

But, hey, since you enjoy strawmen, I can provide a counterstrawman of my own:

If you agree that full control is better, why don't go for even fuller control? Instead of just controlling your party (along with shady guy #34) you'd be able to control the enemy as well! Think about it. Wouldn't it make for much more interesting combat scenarios if you, a living, thinking human, rather than some dumb AI controlled enemy actions? Imagine the thrill of finding your party in the middle of an ambush not planned by a complete retard for a change.

Of course, the downside would be that you'd pretty much be a creepy guy playing make-pretend alone, with pixelated dolls and a ruleset, but aren't strawmen fun?

Doesn't matter. It was an example. All I care about is for the alignments of party members to be displayed on their character sheets, which they are. DraQ wants the stats of party members hidden so you only have partial character sheets, requiring you to use spells like know alignment to figure them out. That would pretty much destroy all that is great about party-based RPGs.

You mean all those games where you actually create all the characters in the party (or at least core party) and where there is no way nor reason to hide anything, rather than picking drama queens/deep and meaningful characters/generated mooks on your way?



Because when I'm thinking of great, party-based cRPGs, I may think of Wizardry, but sure as fuck won't think of BG.

 

[MMXI]

Except they aren't your characters. Only those characters that you have created yourself, designated protagonist or characters you put in the party before the game even started are yours.

No. If I buy an item from a shop it becomes my property, regardless of whether I worked in the shop or not. Ownership can change. The second they are invited into my party they are my characters. If not them I'm merely renting them.

Did you chose them and put in the party before your playthrough even started (discounting "LOL I've read about them on the intertubes/ have seen them when I played the game last time so I planned my party accordingly")?

1) Invite character into party.
2) Check their statistics and equipment.
3) Keep them or (strip them of their gear then) kick them out.

Simple.

If no, they aren't characters DM created for you to chose between. They are characters DM created for you to bump into, join/ignore/slaughter them and have them seek their own goals which may or may not involve stabbing you in the back and absconding with all your gold and an artifact of power when you least expect them to. They are still NPCs except they have temporarily jouned your party. If you play tabletop and don't have access to inventories of DM's or other players' characters that are currently in the party with you, why should it work differently in a cRPG?

That's an incredibly silly argument. Party-based RPGs are inherently anti-table top precisely because you are playing as multiple characters at once, regardless of whether you made all six at the start of the game or recruited them. If you want to head down the "only single character cRPGs are true RPGs" then that's fine. But I'll just call you a Bethesda fanboy and be on my way.

I generally dislike stuff like explicitly defined alignment, so I can't say I'm too happy with spells and other stuff directly targeting alignment.

Besides, PS:T would be a much worse and shallower game if it allowed detect evil. I was delighted with how it messed around with alignments, so we could have Trias, Ravel and pretty much monster evil Practical Incarnation that wasn't that far off typical munchkin good PC behaviour-wise.

Storyfag detected.

Well, characters unwilling to give up gear they can equip and don't find restrictive (for example Fighter-Thief would prefer good leather to good plate, despite lower higher worse AC) unless given better gear of that type sounds reasonable and easy to implement.

Same with overrides based on charisma and overall approval of character's actions - even in BG characters reacted to actions based on their compatibility with their alignment (based on reputation score), so locking and unlocking full access to inventory, character sheet and such based on the same triggers wouldn't be exactly rocket science.

Do you know how painful a game like that would be to play? Inventory management would be painful. You'd even have to worry about giving valuable items to party members in case they disapprove of a future action.

Except outside of combat nothing bad will generally happen if one of my valiant retards travels the first ten meters of his planned 'shortcut' through Maztica and Kara-Tur before I stop him and send him back on the right track, while in combat, even the several seconds my thief spends sightseing before he manages to get behind the back of enemy caster may mean that my strongest fighter gets bad case of charm and uses my fragile mage as a pinata.

Except that never happens. There is a door ahead of you. Enemies are through the door in the following room. Pause the game. Position each character individually. Start the fight. What the hell do you do? Group select your entire party and tell them to move into the room, hoping they take it in turns to enter through the door without fucking up and going the alternative way around the dungeon level? Seriously. I never had any trouble with the path-finding in combat precisely because I never played it like an RTS as you obviously do.

I find your ignorance dismaying.

IE was first developed to be used for an RTS, it shows. RTS interfaces are geared towards commanding massive amounts of non-essential units with little depth per unit, RPG interfaces are geared towards commanding one to few units that are all essential and have a huge amount of control depth. It also shows.

I know the history behind the engine, but this makes absolutely no sense. How is the interface geared towards commanding one of a few units with little depth per unit? This makes no sense at all. You select the character you want to select, you choose a spell, select a target or move the unit into empty space, then you move onto the next unit. What is so RTS about that? And what the hell is limiting the depth per unit?

Having untrustworthy NPC party members is a concept that can be applied just as well to an open, procedural world with thousands of generated characters, provided that characters can be given goals and corresponding conditions regarding when and if to defect, for example a thief character may be generated to be motivated by greed and have a chance to defect when player has less than two backstabs worth of health, while also having above certain value of loot on him, as long as they are not in a populated area and there is clear path to the nearest town/dungeon exit, a paladin, OTOH may defect if he sees the PC killing random people for gold/lulz/necromancy resources. The only difference between storyfag and simulationist application is the amount of dramatic and highly individualized dialogue that will occur during the betrayal.

That's all fine if it's mechanically sound. However, if the developer creates individual party members for the player to recruit, each with a script that determines when they leave and how and they leave, then it is indeed story faggotry. If the developer creates Bob the Paladin and makes him leave upon you killing any good or neutral aligned character, that's story faggotry. If Paladins become Fallen Paladins after obtaining a reputation below a certain level, with the Paladin going into a berserk state and targeted all evil aligned characters in sight, all according to the game rules, then that's fantastic and I support it. If it happens to all paladins then it's both consistent and predictable. I like it.

Lastly, I'm deeply and thoroughly amused by your bashing of storyfaggotry while also defending fucking BG, of all games.

AD&D, bitch.

I may not care much for storyfag approach, even though it did result in some exquisite gems, as I'm a simulationist at heart, but as the whole point of storyfaggotry is telling a story, the point of simulationism is simulating a setting. What follows is that mechanics doesn't exist in vacuum, but is tied to the context of simulated universe and in pretty much any universe it makes perfect sense to have distrustful characters even if they are adventuring with you.

Plus, since I'm simulationist, thinking about charisma translating into the game not only as non-combat NPC interaction modifier, but an actual leadership quality gives me an instant hardon.

And I'm a simulationist at heart too, but one that actually wants the simulation to be consistent with the game rules. I don't want NPC X doing action Y because it's in his very nature to do so. I want NPC X doing action Y because of game rule Z. Why does a character backstab you if you have less than 2 backstabs of health left? Because it follows the rule whereby all evil thieves with the backstab ability have to roll a d6 once a friendly character of good or neutral alignment has less than their backstab multiplier worth of hit dice in HP remaining. If a 6 is rolled the thief will attempt to backstab the character. Not:

if (georgeTheEvilThief.sees(protagonist) && (protagonist.health < 20))
georgeTheEvilThief.attack(protagonist);

Maybe you should actually dig for information rather than demand it to be handed to you on a silver platter?
Maybe you should plan for multiple alternatives (like the shady guy trying to stab your kidneys and run away with the treasure, or barbarian guy getting his death and glory rather than listening to your intelligent, but not overly charismatic wizard who seems to be mumbling to himself rather to actually give orders) rather than demand convenient certainty?

Because they are my characters. They should be treated as characters that I control just as much as the protagonist. Just like my example above, if the protagonist himself happens to be an evil thief with the backstab ability then those exact same rules should apply to him. If I have a good paladin in my party and he has less than the protagonist's backstab multiplier worth of hit dice of HP left, there should be a 1 in 6 chance of my character automatically attempting to backstab him. Anything less is some sort of shitty divide between player and characters within the game world. Rules should be consistent. The only "special" treatment the protagonist should get is that the player should always be forced to follow the protagonist. Therefore if an evil thief backstabs and kills a paladin protagonist then its game over. If your evil thief protagonist backstabs and kills a friendly paladin party member then the game continues with one party member less.

If you agree that full control is better, why don't go for even fuller control? Instead of just controlling your party (along with shady guy #34) you'd be able to control the enemy as well! Think about it. Wouldn't it make for much more interesting combat scenarios if you, a living, thinking human, rather than some dumb AI controlled enemy actions? Imagine the thrill of finding your party in the middle of an ambush not planned by a complete retard for a change.

Of course, the downside would be that you'd pretty much be a creepy guy playing make-pretend alone, with pixelated dolls and a ruleset, but aren't strawmen fun?

Exactly. You answered your own question. If you control the enemies then you would be forced to LARP in order to provide a challenge, because the optimal actions would otherwise be to make them do nothing but dance naked in front of your very own party to get slaughtered with ease.

 

[DraQ]

Except they aren't your characters. Only those characters that you have created yourself, designated protagonist or characters you put in the party before the game even started are yours.

No. If I buy an item from a shop it becomes my property, regardless of whether I worked in the shop or not. Ownership can change. The second they are invited into my party they are my characters.

Do you buy them? If no, they are not your property.

If not them I'm merely renting them.

Not even that. You're merely benefiting from their help.

1) Invite character into party.
2) Check their statistics and equipment.
3) Keep them or (strip them of their gear then) kick them out.

Simple.

As in "befitting a simpleton".

That's an incredibly silly argument. Party-based RPGs are inherently anti-table top precisely because you are playing as multiple characters at once, regardless of whether you made all six at the start of the game or recruited them.

Nope. If NPCs are recruited by single protagonist, then you're treated as the leader by default only because you're the only player in game, so you're the default active party.

You should only have full control over your core party. In BG you have core party of one, in Wizardry 8, a core party of one to six. The rest are followers who have their own agenda, and should be able to leave the party, refuse to part with some items or attack you in certain circumstances.

If you want to head down the "only single character cRPGs are true RPGs" then that's fine.

How about "only cRPGs where you create your core party of more than one in advance are truly party-based, the rest are bastard spawn of single character and party based, not very good at being either"?

Storyfag detected.

Alignments are storyfaggotry by definition, so the choice isn't between storyfaggotry and not, but between prestigious styoryfaggotry and derp one. I choose the former, if pressed, you?

Do you know how painful a game like that would be to play? Inventory management would be painful. You'd even have to worry about giving valuable items to party members in case they disapprove of a future action.

Carry your dear valuables yourself and only use NPCs as packmules for lesser stuff, have a godlike charisma or develop trust by performing approved actions, not performing disapproved ones and investing game time and resources into NPCs (in other words, don't change followers like gloves). Problem?

If you have to build and develop your character right to be a powerful mage or fearsome warrior, why not to be a charismatic leader?
With leadership qualities you don't even have the excuses that could be pulled out against intelligence as a stat.

Except that never happens.

What an odd way to misspell 'always'.

There is a door ahead of you. Enemies are through the door in the following room. Pause the game. Position each character individually.

Except I will have to get some characters into the room roughly simultaneously. They bump into each other, which is to be expected, they get horribly confused and force me to reissue the same command several times over 1-2s per character to finally have it succeed, which is not.

Show me an interface where it takes repeated input to get the game to recognize a single command properly and I will show you a retard designer that wasn't punched in the face in time.
It's not a problem in RTS, because in RTS you're usually commanding fucking legions of units, so a single retard wandering into killzone of enemy defences is just another casualty. In an RPG wasted retard means I have to reload or do without my mage or thief if I'm lucky enough to not get completely wasted.

I know the history behind the engine, but this makes absolutely no sense. How is the interface geared towards commanding one of a few units with little depth per unit? This makes no sense at all. You select the character you want to select, you choose a spell, select a target or move the unit into empty space, then you move onto the next unit. What is so RTS about that? And what the hell is limiting the depth per unit?

Clumsy and tacked-on inventory access, with no pause as desperate attempt at exploit-proofing, for example.

Also, see above.

That's all fine if it's mechanically sound. However, if the developer creates individual party members for the player to recruit, each with a script that determines when they leave and how and they leave, then it is indeed story faggotry.

Excess fluff removed.
NPCs that are individually designed and put in specific areas and circumstances in game are already storyfag element regardless of scripts. Scripts don't make them any more storyfag unless they specifically override system mechanics and character decisions, whether guided by the AI, DM or fellow players are not part of this mechanics.

Such scripts merely make the difference between consistent storyfag element and inconsistent storyfag element.

And I'm a simulationist at heart too, but one that actually wants the simulation to be consistent with the game rules.

Game rules, on system level, shouldn't involve character decisions unless they can also affect the PC and override player input (like magic induced panic). Good rules are consistent and don't differentiate between PCs and NPCs in terms of mechanics.

As long as NPC doesn't, for example asspull a spell he didn't prepare, use an item he doesn't have on him or mysteriously survive gibbing attack, because storyline will need him later on, the rules aren't violated.

I don't want NPC X doing action Y because it's in his very nature to do so. I want NPC X doing action Y because of game rule Z.

But that's just stupid. You wouldn't have such problem with fellow PC backstabbing you out of his own volition in a PnP session (other than possibly being butthurt about it), so why about an NPCs. Character is either a pawn of a player or of DM/AI delegated by the DM to control his characters if the DM happens to be a dev and can't be present directly. A party controlling a character may decide to heed the commands of other character but it doesn't relinquish control unless forced by mechanical means such as charm, fear, berserk or insanity.

Because they are my characters. They should be treated as characters that I control just as much as the protagonist.

Aren't, shouldn't.

Just like my example above, if the protagonist himself happens to be an evil thief with the backstab ability then those exact same rules should apply to him. If I have a good paladin in my party and he has less than the protagonist's backstab multiplier worth of hit dice of HP left, there should be a 1 in 6 chance of my character automatically attempting to backstab him. Anything less is some sort of shitty divide between player and characters within the game world. Rules should be consistent.

Decisions are not rules. If you want decisions to be rule-driven, then any sort of control over game is some sort of shitty divide between player and characters within the game world, because player input is not rule driven. In such case you don't want a game, you want a screensaver.

AI is not part of the system ruleset. It's entirely different layer of the mechanics attempting to make characters that aren't controlled by human behave intelligently. If you want behaviour of other characters to be fully determined by the system ruleset, then there is no room for player input without creating the shitty divide.

Sure, the AI has to be based on some rules but that's only technical consideration. From the perspective of actual system's ruleset there should be no difference between the input from player and from the AI.
Ruleset should decide what characters can do, player and the AI, what they want to do.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Fallout/Arcanum model with one PC and AI NPCs is utter game design failure though. You're supposed to want to keep NPCs alive. But the AI control means they're idiots. So if the encounters start to get tough they're likely to die due to their stupidity, creating extra reloads that were to a significant extent outside of the player's control.

AI control shouldn't be used for anything more valuable than a summoned creature.

Don't mistake the poor AI for the design choice of having AI controlled party members as a flaw. The flawed AI is a fault of the programmers, not a representation of having AI controlled party members as a design.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Fallout/Arcanum model with one PC and AI NPCs is utter game design failure though. You're supposed to want to keep NPCs alive. But the AI control means they're idiots. So if the encounters start to get tough they're likely to die due to their stupidity, creating extra reloads that were to a significant extent outside of the player's control.

AI control shouldn't be used for anything more valuable than a summoned creature.

Don't mistake the poor AI for the design choice of having AI controlled party members as a flaw. The flawed AI is a fault of the programmers, not a representation of having AI controlled party members as a design.

Why don't you just care about the final game you play, rather than your abstractions of design and programming?

Silly PhD in videogaming talk....

 

[DragoFireheart]

Fallout/Arcanum model with one PC and AI NPCs is utter game design failure though. You're supposed to want to keep NPCs alive. But the AI control means they're idiots. So if the encounters start to get tough they're likely to die due to their stupidity, creating extra reloads that were to a significant extent outside of the player's control.

AI control shouldn't be used for anything more valuable than a summoned creature.

Don't mistake the poor AI for the design choice of having AI controlled party members as a flaw. The flawed AI is a fault of the programmers, not a representation of having AI controlled party members as a design.

Why don't you just care about the final game you play, rather than your abstractions of design and programming?

Silly PhD in videogaming talk....

Because the flaw is in the poor AI, not the design choice. If the AI were better implemented, Ians burst firing you in the back wouldn't exist.

 

[thesheeep]

Or it does and it is cool because he is such a mean, ruthless bastard.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Or it does and it is cool because he is such a mean, ruthless bastard.

If that is what the AI was intended to do then that is alright as well. However, I suspect that ALL AI members would burst fire your back similar to Ian, which is clearly not intended. And yes, I know you're likely making a joke.

 

[MMXI]

Do you buy them? If no, they are not your property.

Not even that. You're merely benefiting from their help.

No. They are becoming the constituent characters of my very own party.

As in "befitting a simpleton".

No. That would be having characters with hidden statistics.

Nope. If NPCs are recruited by single protagonist, then you're treated as the leader by default only because you're the only player in game, so you're the default active party.

You should only have full control over your core party. In BG you have core party of one, in Wizardry 8, a core party of one to six. The rest are followers who have their own agenda, and should be able to leave the party, refuse to part with some items or attack you in certain circumstances.

Your worst argument yet. I can easily twist that around and claim that Baldur's Gate has a core party of 1 while the Wizardry games have a core party of 0 because the protagonist is vital to the continuation of the game. It's just a stupid argument either way. In Wizardry you create your core party, and in Baldur's Gate (single player) you recruit your core party. If a party member dies in Baldur's Gate you can find another one. If your party member dies in a Wizardry game you can create a new one.

How about "only cRPGs where you create your core party of more than one in advance are truly party-based, the rest are bastard spawn of single character and party based, not very good at being either"?

Or how about not?

Alignments are storyfaggotry by definition, so the choice isn't between storyfaggotry and not, but between prestigious styoryfaggotry and derp one. I choose the former, if pressed, you?

How is alignment storyfaggotry? Alignment plays straight into the very core of the game rules. Spells that only affect evil creatures, swords that do more damage the further from true neutral the target is, robes that are only usable by characters of certain alignments. That's not storyfaggotry. Storyfaggotry is about how Bob the Unhappy Paladin was raped by his father at a young age, leading to him becoming an often confused individual with frequently poor judgement, even though he means well most of the time.

Carry your dear valuables yourself and only use NPCs as packmules for lesser stuff, have a godlike charisma or develop trust by performing approved actions, not performing disapproved ones and investing game time and resources into NPCs (in other words, don't change followers like gloves). Problem?

If you have to build and develop your character right to be a powerful mage or fearsome warrior, why not to be a charismatic leader?
With leadership qualities you don't even have the excuses that could be pulled out against intelligence as a stat.

Have all that for AI controlled mercenaries, not full on party members. Forget the idea of a protagonist right now. Protagonists are for storyfag games. Treat the player created starting character as the first member of your party. Nothing more.

Except I will have to get some characters into the room roughly simultaneously. They bump into each other, which is to be expected, they get horribly confused and force me to reissue the same command several times over 1-2s per character to finally have it succeed, which is not.

Show me an interface where it takes repeated input to get the game to recognize a single command properly and I will show you a retard designer that wasn't punched in the face in time.
It's not a problem in RTS, because in RTS you're usually commanding fucking legions of units, so a single retard wandering into killzone of enemy defences is just another casualty. In an RPG wasted retard means I have to reload or do without my mage or thief if I'm lucky enough to not get completely wasted.

I never have pathfinding issues in combat. I don't play the game as an RTS because it's an RPG. You always have pathfinding issues in combat. You play the game as an RTS even though it's an RPG. Simple. You are playing it wrong. Just admit it and move on.

Clumsy and tacked-on inventory access, with no pause as desperate attempt at exploit-proofing, for example.

A clumsy and tacked-on inventory proves that it has an RTS interface? What? How is the inventory tacked on? It looks like a standard RPG inventory to me. You have items in your bag and a bunch of equipment slots to put items in. You can move items between characters easily by clicking on the item and then clicking on the character portrait. What's so RTS about this?

NPCs that are individually designed and put in specific areas and circumstances in game are already storyfag element regardless of scripts. Scripts don't make them any more storyfag unless they specifically override system mechanics and character decisions, whether guided by the AI, DM or fellow players are not part of this mechanics.

Such scripts merely make the difference between consistent storyfag element and inconsistent storyfag element.

Recruitable party members is more storyfaggy than forcing the player to create them all themselves. But it's far from just black and white. Baldur's Gate 2 had far more storyfaggy party members than Baldur's Gate 1, purely because in Baldur's Gate 1 they never really spoke. They also weren't tied to the main quest, unlike Yoshimo and Imoen, both of which trigger scripted events in the game. But hey, didn't you say that Baldur's Gate II was better than Baldur's Gate I? Storyfag detected.

Game rules, on system level, shouldn't involve character decisions unless they can also affect the PC and override player input (like magic induced panic). Good rules are consistent and don't differentiate between PCs and NPCs in terms of mechanics.

As long as NPC doesn't, for example asspull a spell he didn't prepare, use an item he doesn't have on him or mysteriously survive gibbing attack, because storyline will need him later on, the rules aren't violated.

What's the point of saying this? It's like you quoted the first sentence of a paragraph, responded to it, then realised that I had covered that in the following sentences. In other words, I'm skipping the above.

But that's just stupid. You wouldn't have such problem with fellow PC backstabbing you out of his own volition in a PnP session (other than possibly being butthurt about it), so why about an NPCs. Character is either a pawn of a player or of DM/AI delegated by the DM to control his characters if the DM happens to be a dev and can't be present directly. A party controlling a character may decide to heed the commands of other character but it doesn't relinquish control unless forced by mechanical means such as charm, fear, berserk or insanity.

You don't seem to get it. Single character with AI controlled companions would be like pen and paper role-playing games. Imagine if everyone but you and DM left the table and went home, and you somehow persuaded the DM to let you role-play as all party members. That's how I treat party-based CRPGs with recruitable characters. They are mine, but I didn't create them. They don't cheat on the rest of the party unless something in the rules triggers it, something that could equally happen to the "main" character if they were built that way.

Decisions are not rules. If you want decisions to be rule-driven, then any sort of control over game is some sort of shitty divide between player and characters within the game world, because player input is not rule driven. In such case you don't want a game, you want a screensaver.

AI is not part of the system ruleset. It's entirely different layer of the mechanics attempting to make characters that aren't controlled by human behave intelligently. If you want behaviour of other characters to be fully determined by the system ruleset, then there is no room for player input without creating the shitty divide.

Sure, the AI has to be based on some rules but that's only technical consideration. From the perspective of actual system's ruleset there should be no difference between the input from player and from the AI.
Ruleset should decide what characters can do, player and the AI, what they want to do.

But then you run into custom AIs and scripts for recruitable party members like that time when Yoshimo decided to betray me in Baldur's Gate II in Spellhold. That's storyfaggotry of the highest calibre. Why should NPC X always backstab me in a given situation while NPC Y with exactly the same statistics avoids doing so? Because the character writers decided it? Fuck right off with that shit! The AI should merely control characters in some uniform way based on a (large) series of statistics. You can even throw in "personality" statistics and variables if you want to differentiate character behaviour even more. I like all that and I'm fine with all that. The AI chooses appropriate actions while the game rules compare statistics. That's how it should be. An NPC should backstab the player if the AI deems it advantageous in terms of statistical/material preservation/advancement. If an NPC is evil, they may get unhappy over time due to game mechanics. This unhappiness may cause a loss of combat effectiveness, due to the game mechanics. When the AI is working out what the appropriate action for the NPC is, it might decide to do away with the party leader because it judges that the outcome would be more beneficial for the character, perhaps increasing his happiness and increasing his combat effectiveness.

The AI merely works out the best course of action for a character, taking into account their statistics, the opponent's (known) statistics and the game rules. If one course of action is, on average, more beneficial than the rest, it should be taken. That can lead to all sorts of fancy things as you describe without anything being scripted, with no storyfaggotry, with a high amount of simulation and an adherence to the game rules.

Still, I don't want AI touching my own party, recruited or created. I should decide what action they performed based on their statistics and my knowledge of the game rules. For AI controlled mercenaries that tag along, fine. The above would work really well. Same for non-recruitable characters that wander the game world. And enemies too.

 

[Johannes]

There's nothing wrong or storyfaggy to have people you recruit in the game show personality in a way that's significant gameplay-wise. Why is recruiting Bob the Paladin, whose behavior follows a set of unique rules, somehow inherently worse than recruiting Paladin #431, who follows the exact same scripts as every other paladin? It's same shit either way, whether Bob has a touching backstory to explain it all or not.
It's up to you to explore how different characters operate, not all gameplay mechanics should be fully disclosed in the manual. Having your bros having some uncertain behaviours is fine, like you don't know every enemy encounter and trap you'll run into beforehand either.
It just adds a new aspect of noncombat gameplay to the game, forces you to think about who to team up with and on what terms. In combat they should be fully controllable, or possibly have some personal limitations (like Fidel in JA for example). But recruitable NPCs can still be NPCs instead of slaves just fine, they have their own agenda and you make deals with them on mutually beneficial terms. You know, how you deal with any NPC in a good game whether they travel with you or not.



And Draq if managing BG is hard for you, you must really suck at real RTS's. Issue your orders sensibly and you won't have to reissue them. Hint - use the number keys to select different guys fast. You hardly need to ever pause besides to select spells.

 

[MMXI]

It's more to do with convergence to a certain ideal. The true simulationist approach to CRPG design and programming would be to define characters purely in terms of data (statistics) while running the exact same AI code/script on all of them. The data will define how they act as individuals as opposed to their custom scripts. Instead of programming the game so that a particular NPC goes to church on Sundays you can probably add some statistics relating to the strength of their beliefs and their religion (to put it simply) which would influence the AI to send them to church on Sundays.

 

[DraQ]

Do you buy them? If no, they are not your property.

Well, yeah, considering independent agents your puppets is pretty retarded and your recruited NPCs are independent agents unless mind controlled.

At best you can hope for some of them being bound by code of honor or such.
Mechanics should reflect this gameworld reality, otherwise it becomes a bad abstraction by yielding results inconsistent with what one would expect in-universe.

It doesn't apply to the core party (of one or more), because it is created by player and has no predefined 'role' in the gameworld. Recruitable characters have their roles and goals and are found in specific context. It doesn't matter if you find Bob, the paladin while he gets ambushed by necromancers whom he has sworn to purge from the land because he was written this way or because program has assembled him by randomly picking valid class-background-situation combo from the pool, what matters is that he will leave or try to bash your face if you engage in behaviour conflicting with his character.

Your worst argument yet. I can easily twist that around and claim that Baldur's Gate has a core party of 1 while the Wizardry games have a core party of 0 because the protagonist is vital to the continuation of the game.

Woe upon all those PnP sessions that don't have anything resembling protagonist, but a band of adventurers. How can they work without a protagonist?


Core party is what you create during chargen. The rest are RPCs/followers with their own place within the gameworld and their own agendas.

Alignments are storyfaggotry by definition, so the choice isn't between storyfaggotry and not, but between prestigious styoryfaggotry and derp one. I choose the former, if pressed, you?

How is alignment storyfaggotry? Alignment plays straight into the very core of the game rules. Spells that only affect evil creatures, swords that do more damage the further from true neutral the target is, robes that are only usable by characters of certain alignments. That's not storyfaggotry. Storyfaggotry is about how Bob the Unhappy Paladin was raped by his father at a young age, leading to him becoming an often confused individual with frequently poor judgement, even though he means well most of the time.

That *is* storyfaggotry. Excessively bad and corny storyfaggotry that blundered its way into the mechanics and got stuck there. It's one of the best arguments ever for keeping high level shit like motivations and decisionmaking out of fucking system mechanics. Alignment refers to morality and morality is a complex and fuzzy subject that has no place in mechanical layer.

D&D is fucking misdesigned.

Forget the idea of a protagonist right now. Protagonists are for storyfag games.

Very well, for the needs of this discussion the term is fully exchangable with "core party of 1" anyway.

Treat the player created starting character as the first member of your party.

And the only member of the core party if rest are some characters picked in the gameworld.

You are playing it wrong.

Because I'm unwilling to put up with AI's antics?

If I can play Wizardry 8 right, and could play FoT in both modes right (before it bored me to tears forcing me to ragequit), but find IE AI issues most infuriating, then the problem isn't me but fucking IE.

How is the inventory tacked on?

Because someone desperately tried to curtail exploits by disabling pause while in inventory?

I can accept people making BG being largely morons, but they had to be at least intelligent enough to breathe by themselves. Disabling pause in inventory in RTWP game puts them well below this threshold unless it was done as hasty, desperate fix.

But hey, didn't you say that Baldur's Gate II was better than Baldur's Gate I? Storyfag detected.

Why? Because I don't pick extremely bland and sloppy storyfag game over its more graceful storyfag sequel? Both are storyfaggotry, but BG2 at least is good for what it is.

You don't seem to get it. Single character with AI controlled companions would be like pen and paper role-playing games. Imagine if everyone but you and DM left the table and went home, and you somehow persuaded the DM to let you role-play as all party members.

No, *you* don't seem to get it. The only thing I would get out of persuading the DM to let me control all characters is conclusive proof that his INT or WIS score is lower than 6.

Especially if no one left as the AI is still here. Command interface is merely an abstraction used to rely your orders to the AI since you're fucking party leader. Nothing forbids it being the same abstraction as the one you use to control your own character as long as it can account for the subtle differences like NPC being able to refuse.

The characters joining your party are still DM's characters. It doesn't matter if the DM controls them directly or is a developer and has to delegate AI to do that.

But then you run into custom AIs and scripts for recruitable party members like that time when Yoshimo decided to betray me in Baldur's Gate II in Spellhold. That's storyfaggotry of the highest calibre.
Why should NPC X always backstab me in a given situation while NPC Y with exactly the same statistics avoids doing so? Because the character writers decided it?

And why does two characters with exact same builds behave differently when played by two different players?

Custom AI scripts are only storyfaggotry if they are made for single specific character, and more of storyfaggotry if they are also made for single specific situation in game.

But you can just as well assemble characters' "minds" from more basic components, parametrize AI scripts or do whatever else. The bottom line is that different characters behave differently and that behaviour is generally not possible to express concisely in human readable form, nor that player should be able to access such information anyway.

If your simulation can't account for people behaving differently and in complex manner, then your simulation is flawed.

The AI merely works out the best course of action for a character, taking into account their statistics, the opponent's (known) statistics and the game rules. If one course of action is, on average, more beneficial than the rest, it should be taken. That can lead to all sorts of fancy things as you describe without anything being scripted, with no storyfaggotry, with a high amount of simulation and an adherence to the game rules.

Indeed. And taking into account possible goals AI has.

Still, I don't want AI touching my own party, recruited or created.

And that's the key problem.

Why?

Why would you prefer to break the simulation by making predefined characters suddenly start behaving out of character? You can't apply this to the core party, as it consists of one or more characters that are pretty much black boxes from the program's PoV, and are generally treated in a very hands-off manner as you can't predict what character(s) player will come up with, but it does apply to recruitables.

A blank slate character defined by the player can get off his armour and get stabbed by goblins multiple times while in his skivvies, because what program does know? Maybe the guy is fucked in the head or something.
A greedy selfish sociopath joining player for lewts and lulz of stabbing people in the kidneys, however isn't blank slate and it is obvious that him suddenly giving all his stuff to a guy he met 10' ago, and leaving is extremely out of character.

Since this kind of stuff can be codified and put into the simulation, why would you stunt it by leaving it out?

No, "THE PARTY IS MIIINEEE!!!!1" doesn't quite cut it.

The true simulationist approach to CRPG design and programming would be to define characters purely in terms of data (statistics) while running the exact same AI code/script on all of them.

No, that would be an example of royally botched simulation AND royally botched programming.

The former because people (and creatures) behave differently and good simulation has to account for that. The latter because identical characters can have different controllers (for example AI or the player) and different AI controlled characters can be given different goals and put in different situations they have to respond to, which means that splitting the AI and the character is the only sensible thing to do.

And Draq if managing BG is hard for you, you must really suck at real RTS's. Issue your orders sensibly and you won't have to reissue them. Hint - use the number keys to select different guys fast. You hardly need to ever pause besides to select spells.

Most RTSes have far better pathfinding, far less obstructions and don't rely solely on small number of absolutely critical units.

The only RTS needing similar amount of micromanagement and pausing as BG was Homeworld, except in Homeworld the micromanagement was justified, the units did what you wanted them to and the whole thing was orgasm in digital form.
BG combat in interiors is pretty much digital equivalent of impotence.

 

[octavius]

It is more realstic to not have full control of NPCs in your party, but is it more fun?
One of the arguments against the RTwP combat of the IE games is lack of control and bad pathfinding. Surely that would be much worse if the NPCs were controlled by the computer, even if Mprilla with mad scripting skillz wrote the scripts for them.
And you'd almost be forced to play some kind of mage to make sure you'd be able to do crowd control and counter enemy spells.

 

[thursdayschild]

It's filler until you get to the next cut scene or dialog.

 

[shihonage]

Y'know, the easiest solution for Ian shooting you in the back is to hardcode it so that whenever a bullet is fired by Ian at anything, it always misses someone who is "Player".

 

[DraQ]

It is more realstic to not have full control of NPCs in your party, but is it more fun?
One of the arguments against the RTwP combat of the IE games is lack of control and bad pathfinding. Surely that would be much worse if the NPCs were controlled by the computer, even if Mprilla with mad scripting skillz wrote the scripts for them.
And you'd almost be forced to play some kind of mage to make sure you'd be able to do crowd control and counter enemy spells.

Well, a game should include some order giving interface, so you could tell your NPC mage to, for example fireball that room, or your rogue to go in, find some shadow to hide and stab the casters while the tanks clash. It might even look and work like traditional iso RPG (though I ideally prefer FPP from the main char or true party based blob), the difference being that you'd be restricted from doing certain stuff with your recruited party members and that they might disobey orders.

 

[MMXI]

Well, yeah, considering independent agents your puppets is pretty retarded and your recruited NPCs are independent agents unless mind controlled.

At best you can hope for some of them being bound by code of honor or such.
Mechanics should reflect this gameworld reality, otherwise it becomes a bad abstraction by yielding results inconsistent with what one would expect in-universe.

It doesn't apply to the core party (of one or more), because it is created by player and has no predefined 'role' in the gameworld. Recruitable characters have their roles and goals and are found in specific context. It doesn't matter if you find Bob, the paladin while he gets ambushed by necromancers whom he has sworn to purge from the land because he was written this way or because program has assembled him by randomly picking valid class-background-situation combo from the pool, what matters is that he will leave or try to bash your face if you engage in behaviour conflicting with his character.

But when I gain control of a character in the game world the AI should pass them on to my control. They become mine. If you complain about the player being able to effectively play them out of character (as playing them in character would be LARPing) then the game rules are broken. Telling a character to do something beneficial should match up with how best to role-play them. If you kill a good aligned NPC with a recruited paladin then the game rules and simulation should take that into account and act on it. Fallen paladins in D&D is a very simple way of doing it, another more advanced way would be to numerically model their mental state through various statistics, with "wrong" actions affecting them negatively (a happiness meter is a simple example of this). Therefore continuously playing a recruited paladin out of character would be detrimental to their effectiveness as a companion. Role-playing enforced by game rules.

Looking back at the paladin when it was controlled by the AI before the player recruited them, why would the AI avoid attacking good NPCs? Because that's the role that the AI is playing for them? Or perhaps the slightly more believable answer of the optimal actions for the character being the ones that keep them in character?

Just pause and think about it for a second. The AI for each character should do their best to maximise their effectiveness. Choosing an action to perform should be an act of picking the best out of a set. That's how it works in combat, after all. You expect the AI for a mage to detect their fragility and therefore keep them away from actions that put them on the front line. Shouldn't the same thing happen outside of combat? How about during conversations?

The fact is that most RPG systems focus so much on combat statistics and derived statistics to decide how best to beat a combat situation. It's all about the AI picking optimal actions, determined by a comparison of statistics and other measures, to produce the most desired result such as a victory with minimal health and mana loss. If you have the same depth of statistics (and derived statistics) for non-combat activities such as conversations and the like, then you can do a similarly deep simulation. The AI can do what needs to be done to preserve some abstract measures such as "confidence" levels or "happiness" levels.

From the player's perspective, an RPG should keep the role-playing in line with their character's optimal actions. If it's beneficial to shoot everyone even though the player made their character crap at shooting but good at talking their way out of trouble then the RPG is pretty much broken. The best way for the character to survive is to not be themselves. What would a perfect RPG be? One that merges the best tactics with the best role-playing. Over time the best course of action for a given character would be one that emphasises what they are good at. On average, the optimal actions for a demolition man should be blowing things up, which also keeps them in character. Anything else means that character creation does not map accurately with the content of the coded game. Useless skills in certain RPGs is an example of this bad design.

Given the above, it makes perfect sense for the AI (an alternative "character controller" to the player) to accurately control a character by getting them to perform optimal actions at all times. Again, optimal actions will depend on statistics, and for RPGs with lots of non-combat gameplay many of those statistics will be of a non-combat variety. If optimal actions are in line with role-playing then it becomes a "simple" (far from it, really, but the concept is) case of processing the game state (including character statistics) in order to role-play a character.

Recruiting a companion would be a form of handing over control of a character. Specifically from AI to player. Kicking a character out would be from the player to the AI. But if the AI itself is merely doing what the player should also be trying to do, that is to optimally play a given character according to their strengths and weaknesses, then what is lost? The character itself should be played "in character" whoever is in control of them. If you don't play them in character then you aren't playing them optimally and are therefore discouraged mechanically. It wouldn't be LARPing either because you are merely doing your best to play them optimally.

At this point I've realised that I've pretty much written my whole reply in one go so there's no need to quote the rest, save for saying that you're again wrong about Baldur's Gate.

 

[Excidium]

Damn. your Azrael the Cat / sea impersonation just ruined the quote battle.

 

[MMXI]

Damn. your Azrael the Cat / sea impersonation just ruined the quote battle.

Be patient. DraQ should be along soon to do his VD impersonation by breaking up a post sentence by sentence to destroy its continuity in order to falsely win the battle.

 

[DraQ]

The first problem is that stat system may be too abstract.

Too abstract to effectively tackle character mindsets - instead of heavy handed D&D crap, think subtler - two identical characters may have different loyalties, for example based on their previous experiences or places where they were raised. While some would accuse me of not recognizing the problem, I'm actually aware that there is certain depth of simulation beyond which trying to simulate stuff would be prohibitive and approximate solution has to be used.

In particular, stat system will be too abstract to exhaustively cover the entire spectrum of characters player might want to play. For this reason, a mindset mechanics fully integrated into mechanical layer would be arbitrarily restrictive and detrimental to the player, while separation of mindset, or at least large part of it (excluding really basic stuff like morale and such, but without most causes underlying the changes) from mechanics and merging it into controller would be called for.

The second problem is that if a character wouldn't, in universe do some stuff when ordered by party leader, forcing them to do it anyway breaks the simulation. A corny D&D paladin would not slaughter an orphanage for shit and giggles and fall in the process, because he would simply stop before the "slaughter" part.

The third problem is that many characters, in universe, behave very suboptimally for pretty much any reasonably implementable definition of optimal behaviour. Simulation has to account for that.

Damn. your Azrael the Cat / sea impersonation just ruined the quote battle.

Be patient. DraQ should be along soon to do his VD impersonation by breaking up a post sentence by sentence to destroy its continuity in order to falsely win the battle.

U MAD?

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Well, a game should include some order giving interface, so you could tell your NPC mage to, for example fireball that room, or your rogue to go in, find some shadow to hide and stab the casters while the tanks clash. It might even look and work like traditional iso RPG (though I ideally prefer FPP from the main char or true party based blob), the difference being that you'd be restricted from doing certain stuff with your recruited party members and that they might disobey orders.

I'm working OT and pooling to fund a game like that.
A charisma rating, skills/perks, and the difference in level influences a leadership meter. At the bottom you receive orders and not only do you not control anyone you take orders. At the top you have almost complete control.

For this to work the AI has to be special. Fallout had some of the worst AI I have ever seen. Example: Wasting bullets on fleeing wolves or bandits only to miss and melt a child. With AI of that sort I want full control.

 

[JarlFrank]

Perfect way of controlling a party made up of recruitable NPCs is to give the player full party control but have certain characters refuse to do certain things (or do certain things on their own) in certain situations.

Send rather careful thief-y chick out of cover and right into the enemy's line of fire, wanting her to do a full frontal charge. Have the character refuse your command because it's too dangerous, maybe have a voice clip of her refusing the command + her reason play.

Or maybe the game might take control over raging barbarian away while he's in melee combat. Not necessarily triggered by berserk state, just because he likes killing people in melee combat and would refuse any command that tells him not to.

What the fuck would be wrong with this system? It would allow the player to play tactically because he generally has full party control, with characters occasionally refusing a command (optimally the frequency of that should be tied to the charisma of the PC). This refusal would be tied to the character's personality and disposition and therefore would be entirely predictable and therefore can be included in tactical planning, heck, even enhances tactical planning.
Predicting MMXI to go all "BUT THEY ARE MY CHARACTERS AND TAKING AWAY CONTROL, EVEN JUST IN A LIMITED WAY, IS SHIT!!" but hey, it actually *does* increase the tactical planning required cause you can't make certain characters do certain things, which means you need to plan their actions better instead of spontaneously deciding that lol, sending your thief into full frontal melee against 10 heavily armed orcs is a good idea.

It's kinda like a morale system in a strategy game like, say, Total War. Some units have high morale, some units have low morale, some units can spontaneously charge without orders, some units can go berserk. When morale is down, units flee. Knights can decide to charge the enemy archers without orders - and it's even explained in their unit card that it's because knights are always looking for personal glory in battle. It's a strategy game with full control over your units - but with some occasions where units act on their own, which adds a great new layer to the game which would be poorer without it. But MMXI would probably disagree because THESE ARE MY UNITS AND I SHOULD BE ABLE TO CONTROL THEM ALL THE TIME NO MATTER THEIR MORALE

 

[JaySn]

^^ INTJ detected ^^

[quote="Surf Solar". . .

^^INFJ detected^^

Unfortunately we'll find ourselves in the minority here.[/quote]

Three little INTJs are we.

I like both systems, though. In X-COM, controlling each party member (but for interrupts) was the most appropriate.

In Fallout 1/2, it was a mild convenience. Though somewhat neat when Vic would launch into conversation with his daughter and stop following you.

 

[MMXI]

What the fuck would be wrong with this system? It would allow the player to play tactically because he generally has full party control, with characters occasionally refusing a command (optimally the frequency of that should be tied to the charisma of the PC). This refusal would be tied to the character's personality and disposition and therefore would be entirely predictable and therefore can be included in tactical planning, heck, even enhances tactical planning.
Predicting MMXI to go all "BUT THEY ARE MY CHARACTERS AND TAKING AWAY CONTROL, EVEN JUST IN A LIMITED WAY, IS SHIT!!" but hey, it actually *does* increase the tactical planning required cause you can't make certain characters do certain things, which means you need to plan their actions better instead of spontaneously deciding that lol, sending your thief into full frontal melee against 10 heavily armed orcs is a good idea.

It's kinda like a morale system in a strategy game like, say, Total War. Some units have high morale, some units have low morale, some units can spontaneously charge without orders, some units can go berserk. When morale is down, units flee. Knights can decide to charge the enemy archers without orders - and it's even explained in their unit card that it's because knights are always looking for personal glory in battle. It's a strategy game with full control over your units - but with some occasions where units act on their own, which adds a great new layer to the game which would be poorer without it. But MMXI would probably disagree because THESE ARE MY UNITS AND I SHOULD BE ABLE TO CONTROL THEM ALL THE TIME NO MATTER THEIR MORALE

Hey, fucktard. Read my post before bitching.

But when I gain control of a character in the game world the AI should pass them on to my control. They become mine. If you complain about the player being able to effectively play them out of character (as playing them in character would be LARPing) then the game rules are broken. Telling a character to do something beneficial should match up with how best to role-play them. If you kill a good aligned NPC with a recruited paladin then the game rules and simulation should take that into account and act on it. Fallen paladins in D&D is a very simple way of doing it, another more advanced way would be to numerically model their mental state through various statistics, with "wrong" actions affecting them negatively (a happiness meter is a simple example of this). Therefore continuously playing a recruited paladin out of character would be detrimental to their effectiveness as a companion. Role-playing enforced by game rules.

Looking back at the paladin when it was controlled by the AI before the player recruited them, why would the AI avoid attacking good NPCs? Because that's the role that the AI is playing for them? Or perhaps the slightly more believable answer of the optimal actions for the character being the ones that keep them in character?

Just pause and think about it for a second. The AI for each character should do their best to maximise their effectiveness. Choosing an action to perform should be an act of picking the best out of a set. That's how it works in combat, after all. You expect the AI for a mage to detect their fragility and therefore keep them away from actions that put them on the front line. Shouldn't the same thing happen outside of combat? How about during conversations?

The fact is that most RPG systems focus so much on combat statistics and derived statistics to decide how best to beat a combat situation. It's all about the AI picking optimal actions, determined by a comparison of statistics and other measures, to produce the most desired result such as a victory with minimal health and mana loss. If you have the same depth of statistics (and derived statistics) for non-combat activities such as conversations and the like, then you can do a similarly deep simulation. The AI can do what needs to be done to preserve some abstract measures such as "confidence" levels or "happiness" levels.

From the player's perspective, an RPG should keep the role-playing in line with their character's optimal actions. If it's beneficial to shoot everyone even though the player made their character crap at shooting but good at talking their way out of trouble then the RPG is pretty much broken. The best way for the character to survive is to not be themselves. What would a perfect RPG be? One that merges the best tactics with the best role-playing. Over time the best course of action for a given character would be one that emphasises what they are good at. On average, the optimal actions for a demolition man should be blowing things up, which also keeps them in character. Anything else means that character creation does not map accurately with the content of the coded game. Useless skills in certain RPGs is an example of this bad design.

Given the above, it makes perfect sense for the AI (an alternative "character controller" to the player) to accurately control a character by getting them to perform optimal actions at all times. Again, optimal actions will depend on statistics, and for RPGs with lots of non-combat gameplay many of those statistics will be of a non-combat variety. If optimal actions are in line with role-playing then it becomes a "simple" (far from it, really, but the concept is) case of processing the game state (including character statistics) in order to role-play a character.

Recruiting a companion would be a form of handing over control of a character. Specifically from AI to player. Kicking a character out would be from the player to the AI. But if the AI itself is merely doing what the player should also be trying to do, that is to optimally play a given character according to their strengths and weaknesses, then what is lost? The character itself should be played "in character" whoever is in control of them. If you don't play them in character then you aren't playing them optimally and are therefore discouraged mechanically. It wouldn't be LARPing either because you are merely doing your best to play them optimally.

 

[MMXI]

The first problem is that stat system may be too abstract.

Too abstract to effectively tackle character mindsets - instead of heavy handed D&D crap, think subtler - two identical characters may have different loyalties, for example based on their previous experiences or places where they were raised. While some would accuse me of not recognizing the problem, I'm actually aware that there is certain depth of simulation beyond which trying to simulate stuff would be prohibitive and approximate solution has to be used.

In particular, stat system will be too abstract to exhaustively cover the entire spectrum of characters player might want to play. For this reason, a mindset mechanics fully integrated into mechanical layer would be arbitrarily restrictive and detrimental to the player, while separation of mindset, or at least large part of it (excluding really basic stuff like morale and such, but without most causes underlying the changes) from mechanics and merging it into controller would be called for.

You only need a limited amount of actual mechanics to do a decent enough simulation to discourage the player from performing out of character actions. This doesn't mean that every character has to be a collection of numbers and nothing more. You can still have developer created dialogue trees for characters. You don't have to generate those from their statistics or anything. This means that you can add enough background information and other things that would be very tricky to add as statistics. As long as there are mechanics to discourage paladins from slaughtering innocents and thieves from doing full frontal assault (to quote JarlFrank's example) then it's all good.

Just think about how many statistics there are for combat in something like D&D. If you mirrored that for their "personality" or whatever you want to call it, I'm sure that's plenty. Think about all of those weapon proficiencies, saving throws, resistances and specific damage type armour classes. Then think about how many actual "personality" measures you can come up with. It'll easily be enough, combined with developer created dialogue, graphics and even voice overs to make a character both play uniquely (while still inside the game rules) and "act" uniquely in a more hand-crafted sense.

The second problem is that if a character wouldn't, in universe do some stuff when ordered by party leader, forcing them to do it anyway breaks the simulation. A corny D&D paladin would not slaughter an orphanage for shit and giggles and fall in the process, because he would simply stop before the "slaughter" part.

But what exactly is the challenge of an RPG? It seems obvious to me that the challenge is to exploit the strengths and weaknesses of your various characters in such a way as to allow you to finish the game. Playing characters (ones you've created or ones you've recruited) optimally throughout the game is ultimately your goal. If you fight with your fighters standing at the back and your mages meleeing in the frontline then you're going to fail repeatedly. This is what RPGs are all about really. The player should be allowed to do stupid things like that, but should be discouraged by the game mechanics. Mages should be able to rush past the fighters to smack a group of ogres around with their staves but having a crap THAC0, a bollocks AC, shit HP and doing low damage are those statistics/mechanics that discourage you from doing it. So you don't do it. Ever, really, unless you've cast some spell that turns you into some fighter equivalent temporarily. So why shouldn't the game give you the option of doing those things with recruited party members? The mechanics will discourage you from doing them, so what's the problem? The game will let you play a character out of character, but you'll be punished for it in the same way that you get punished for doing the same with the protagonist.

The third problem is that many characters, in universe, behave very suboptimally for pretty much any reasonably implementable definition of optimal behaviour. Simulation has to account for that.

That can be solved quite easily. Either give competence measures to the AI controller itself, or add in some counterbalance statistics to divert the AI controller away from "perceived" optimal actions.