Would classic RPGs be viable without the random factor?

[Sigourn]

Fallout, for instance. Playing a dumb character means he should pretty much be unable to win the game

Why?

Low int impairs your learning and a lot of stuff is out of your reach because you just can't, but you can't go as low as to be a complete vegetable.

If I remember correctly you can even learn to speak normally during the game if the PC happen to be just a point (or 2 in Fallout 2) short of the threshold for normal dialog (can't remember if it was 3 or 4).

Even if you knew some tactics, it takes more to get your character to be able enough for that to pay off.

Consider the amount of people with average IQs who find Fallout "too hard". Now imagine what the odds of a mentally retarded person surviving in the wasteland are.

 

[mondblut]

its not what he said. Saying that something is fundamental means that you cant have RPG without RNG.
You are bringing classics to push your agenda.

A computer RPG is a simulation of playing a tabletop D&D-like game. Tabletop D&D-like games have RNG. Case closed, fuck off.

You are basically saying that RNG is the only way because thats how it was done long time ago.

No, he is basically saying that RNG is the only way because THAT'S HOW RPGS ROLL, DUMMY.

If you go along with that approach you will have to be consistent and claim that only 2d pixel games with no sound are true RPGs.

Incidentally, 2d pixel games with no sound tend to be overwhelmingly better RPGs than 3d voxel games with sound. So far overwhelmingly it's not even funny.

RNG for RPGs is abstract representation of real world in made up system. Lazy one.

Monopoly is also a lazy abstract representation of real world stock market, and chess a lazy abstract representation of real world battle. And guess what? People love them that way and have no need in your "improved" garbage. And so do we, with our RPGs.

Fun fact: There are over 2k posts on this forum claiming that Deterministic system > RNG

There are over 20k posts on this forum claiming Hitler did nothing wrong. Your point being?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Combat in a game with no randomness is simply a puzzle with one solution. Its zork-- its an adventure game. There would be no point to having combat or levels or stats. You either do, or you don't. It would be tedious with no replayability, no tension, and no strategy beyond finding a way to make your number be high enough to win. I guess you could make a more complicated deterministic model like chess, but chess is boring and sucks.

Chess is a game that is still being played more than 1'000 years after its inception, and it currently has 100s of millions of fans. So we will have to disagree on that.

Also, what you are describing is not how chess, its variants, and other chess-like games necessarily work. There does not have to be a single solution. It is possible that there is theoretically an optimal solution (as far as proper chess is concerned, we don't know yet), but that optimal solution does not have to be the same one in all playthroughs. There is randomness and choice in chess/chess-like games too, just of a different nature (e.g. initial conditions).

I think some of this desire is stemming from their feelings being hurt when they lose.

Exactly the opposite. When you lose in deterministic games, you have noone to blame but yourself.

You are agreeing with me on the second point. I said my brother and his friends whine about RNG's sometimes in order to explain a failure.

Because of these 'unreserved losses' they have come to believe a game without RNG would be better, because then they would not have lost...... because of course the only reason they lost was due to the RNG cheating or perhaps having a 'bug'.

About chess, yes its popular, so is McDonalds and monopoly. The reason why chess would suck as an RPG combat system (IMO) is because the pieces (characters) are bland and static. I believe a deterministic system would also suffer from a lack of distinction as well as simplistic and generic tactics and abilities .

It really does depend on the game in question and the method of random used. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to whether RNG improves or harms a game's combat and other systems.

I've played strategy games where the RNG is utterly stupid and does indeed ruin the whole point of strategy and, worse than that, ruin the whole concept of varied tactics, not to mention feel like cheating:

Because it's implementation of RNG was absurd. In a strategy game, knowing how many units of what type you require to perform their job is pretty much crucial to the whole point of the game. If the game then fucks you over with absurdity and then says "ah well, that's life, it happened once vaguely in history... if you stretch the idea like a rubber band", then, I'm sorry, but the obvious reaction is "oh, fuck off game".

When RPGs moved towards their modern status of AAA action adventure type jobbies, RNG was no longer needed as much because every other stat-based element was being removed anyway, and the way to substitute the RNG of to-hit is to... bloat HP... so you still have to strike the enemy the same number of times as you would in an RNG system, you just get the 'action' of hitting every time. When people complain of HP bloat in RPGs, they are often unaware it goes hand-in-hand with playing a game that has either a shoddy RNG system or one with no RNG:

Everything now has health bars instead of HP numbers. And your job is to watch these bars slowly dwindle to nothing, not too dissimilar the loading screen bars slowly filling up between said encounters. The most random systems like this can do is to guarantee a hit, but vary the value of that hit between a minimum and a maximum.

This last version of RNG, a compromise where you always hit but have varied values of hit, is probably the best compromise if one was determined to banish to-hit RNG and I've seen it work in some games I've thoroughly enjoyed:

In the above game the numbers are retained by increasing the number of units-in-the-stack rather than one specific character's health bar increasing exponentially through levelling. The game retains the drama of RNG values because depleting an opposition stack is crucial to you not losing too many units, while still giving the pleasure of always hitting*, still providing the intelligence of strategy and tactics, and still being turn-based. *Even this game did have to-hit RNG, it was possible to miss, it was just very rare and relied on very specific scenarios.

Why cRPGs benefit so greatly from RNG systems relating to to-hit stats is primarily because cRPGs are about individual adventurers usually facing individual opponents. And by individuals that can mean lots of individuals on the screen, of course. Now let's imagine 4 player characters vs 4 AI enemies. They all are level 2 and they all have 20 hit points and one hit from a sword does 6-10 damage. In this scenario it doesn't matter what you do, at least one of your team is going to die, unless you can fathom some kind of drastic cheese or the AI has an exploitable flaw. And worse than that, someone's going to die really quickly. More importantly than that, however, it means that all your team members have the same values, and the enemies have the same values as your team... so... how do you implement variety of build?

Do you make wizards cast fireballs that hit for 6-10 instead of make them have swords? Archers that have arrows that hit for 6-10 instead of magic or swords? Do you just have tuns of different things all doing 6-10 guaranteed damage? You could, but what would be the point other than aesthetics? Your game wouldn't change in any significant way from the first moment to the last, no matter what you did.

Ok, so that's tedious, so how about we make the wizard's fireball give 10-15 damage instead, because fireballs are exciting and fun! You could do, but then why not make all your team a team of wizards, why would you ever pick anything else to have in your party? You'd have to invent some kind of downside to the obvious over-powerment. Without the RNG, you'd have to slow down the cooldown, or make it slower to fire than a sword, or in some way limit their use. Oh dear, you'd have to balance this so precisely that the end result would be no different to everyone just hitting at 6-10 every round.

By going down the road of removing to-hit RNG, you are inevitably led to a path of: "levelling a character = substantially more HP (AKA bloat), much greater difficulty/preciseness required to balance the game, to which that balance will automatically deliver mostly boring encounters, shafted character diversity, weaker itemisation, harder to implement original itemisation, etc etc etc.

By having a to-hit RNG before one even considers damage RNG in a cRPG allows for much looser encounter design, and therefore much more fun and varied encounter design, greater variety of character builds who all offer different strengths and weaknesses and a greatly reduced reliance on HP, allowing all the characters in the universe, both ours and theirs, to provide much more abstract realism.

So for strategy games, layers of RNG can kill the whole point of the game, but for cRPGs, the more layers you have, as long as they are not absurd, the more you can breathe life into it.

 

[Elemental_wanamingo]

I think perhaps your issue here is you are taking what you see on the screen too literally--for instance 'missing' while in combat, or imagining that the characters are all just standing still during a turn based encounter.

That's how the code of the game is. The literal interpretation is the accurate description.

These games are abstract- You can miss a guy at point blank range who appears to be 'not moving' because the game and the accompanied dice rolls are actually simulating the targets in motion, i.e. blocking, parrying etc, and not just sitting still waiting their turn. The game system and its rules are attempting to create a dynamic, chaotic, and fluid situation using abstraction and fog of war (randomness) . Believing that the targets are just sitting there is a literal interpretation of an abstract model.

At that point abstraction happens inside your head. You can imagine that there is a lot more going on but imagining it doesn't make it true. Traditional crpg turn based combat is basically just a whackamole clicker where your chance to hit is decided by couple of multipliers and a chance percentage. And none of those multipliers is about movement, chaos or dynamic responses. You can of course assign all kinds of imaginery happenings to a percentage number but in the end the game doesn't simulate or handle any of those things. Because in reality the characters ARE just standing there.

 

[ProphetSword]

Fun fact: There are over 2k posts on this forum claiming that Deterministic system > RNG

And the poll at the top of this page says that 72.5% of people in this thread think differently.

 

[Gulnar]

Since it's quite obvious from the poll results that the common consesus is that you can't make a classical rpg without RNG, i'll ask another question: how do we define a classical rpg? I mean, when a rpg stops being 'classical'? What does it become?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Since it's quite obvious from the poll results that the common consesus is that you can't make a classical rpg without RNG, i'll ask another question: how do we define a classical rpg? I mean, when a rpg stops being 'classical'? What does it become?

Start a new thread and ask!

 

[Gulnar]

Since it's quite obvious from the poll results that the common consesus is that you can't make a classical rpg without RNG, i'll ask another question: how do we define a classical rpg? I mean, when a rpg stops being 'classical'? What does it become?

Start a new thread and ask!

But the question is related to this thread. By knowing the bounds of a 'classical rpg', the answer to the poll could change.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Since this is slowly becoming a topic of "unpopular opinions", may as well get this off my chest:

Armor Class in the Infinity Engine games is FUCKING RETARDED. The idea that armor not only makes you harder to hit (why? because fuck logic), but also doesn't decrease the damage you receive, is nonsensical.

Isn't that just an abstraction as to you physically being hurt while "behind" the armor? I.e. wearing plate and a blow struck you and harmed you rather than the armor absorbing it. I didn't think it meant literally missing in the sense that someone swung on you and whiffed.

I don't see what the issue is here. There is no issue. If you don't like dice rolls then play something else. I can never understand why some people feel the need to either homogenize everything into one thing or complain when there's a wealth of other options to do with your time. Don't like AC in Baldur's Gate? Play a different game. What's the problem?

I also can't understand how gamers and especially RPG gamers can't adapt to different experiences. You guys want to see all games be the same. The market and world is big enough for dice-roll RPGs, action RPGs, deterministic RPGs and much more. I see people who love CRPGs but can't play an action RPG or feel the need to hate on those. Why? Learn to enjoy them all. They all bring different shit to the table and have advantages and things to enjoy. So what if they aren't your 100% ideal RPG? You can learn something from every game, even universally loathed ones.

 

[mondblut]

Since this is slowly becoming a topic of "unpopular opinions", may as well get this off my chest:

Armor Class in the Infinity Engine games is FUCKING RETARDED. The idea that armor not only makes you harder to hit (why? because fuck logic), but also doesn't decrease the damage you receive, is nonsensical.

"armor class" is not "armor", silly. nor is "harder to hit" synonymous with "more difficult to land a single blow right on target".

Lrn2RPG before Fallout 3, then we talk.

 

[mondblut]

i'll ask another question: how do we define a classical rpg?

Something that plays sufficiently similar to Wizardry/Bard's Tale/Goldbox series/old Ultimas/YMMV. You know, the classical RPGs.

I mean, when a rpg stops being 'classical'?

When it plays insufficiently similar to the above.

What does it become?

Shit.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

RPG gamers continue to prove they are inflexible control freaks. They just want "more of the same" instead of unique or interesting experiences. As long as it lets them not lose, not have to reload and never be truly challenged while staying in total control at all times, they're happy.

It won't be long before RPG video games are just Win Simulators where nothing bad can possibly happen in the game. No surprises, no obstacles to overcome, just press a button and everything goes perfectly while patting the player on the back the whole time as to what a good job they did navigating that completely harmless "obstacle".

Shit's depressing. Yes I'm TRIGGERED AF RITE NOW.

 

[mihai]

I wonder how a non-ergodic RNG would be perceived. As already mentioned somewhere in the thread, the chance of rolling, say, 1 on a D20 is 1/20, and doing so repeatedly is a clear possibility - the chances won't change based on the history of rolls. A non-ergodic system could take the history of recent rolls into account, for example by drawing (without replacement) from a finite pool of dice rolls. The effect would resemble a kind of karma - you can fumble only so many times before your bad luck is "depleted", and you are also sure to hit some 20's from your pool soon. Your average of rolls would converge faster towards the expected average while still correctly following probability and being unpredictable (well mostly).

I think the main problem of the RNG being perceived as unfair is that it correctly reflects reality - that events of low probability do still happen (being hit by lightning, winning the lottery, rolling all 1's) . Just detect and cull / compensate these events by the game system, and maybe the players are more satisfied? In a sense that a world in which good and bad events cancel each other out is a fair one for us, while a world following probability might not be.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

No wonder Fargo is retiring and any developer larger than "guy in his bedroom" is not taking any risks whatsoever to try anything different. At least Fargo and co. tried shit, and tried to keep the games old-school in nature (they make the most classic style CRPGs of the Kickstarter Era group.) But that is also proving to be their downfall as a company it seems.

I wish money was not a thing. I'd love to see developers like Fargo or even myself design a CRPG without having to cater to people to try and sell units. My shit would be furiously old-school and challenging. It would be like ELEX with more hardcore features meets BG w/ SCS on Hard difficulty with the Effort system from Torment for skill checks with much more impacting choices and harder to refill Effort. Which is 100% impossible to make in the modern gaming climate.

 

[mondblut]

Isn't that just an abstraction as to you physically being hurt while "behind" the armor? I.e. wearing plate and a blow struck you and harmed you rather than the armor absorbing it. I didn't think it meant literally missing in the sense that someone swung on you and whiffed.

Not even that. You were not "hurt". You were dealt "damage".

ALL of these - hit points, damage, armor class, tohit - are pure abstractions designed to work together as a system, and none of them represents any specific "realistic" attribute - not "health", not "dodging" or "blocking", not "hitting a target" or "missing a target", but all of them combined and about equally spread between abstracted values of the game to achieve satisfactory statistical outcomes. Hit points are armor. Hits are misses. War is peace.

Unit A spends a "turn" to execute an "attack" which, if successfully "hits" against unit B's "armor class", deals "damage" that is subtracted from unit B's "hit points". That's all there is, and trying to glance some deeper meaning from this is, at best, an exercise in futility, and at worst, foolish ignorance of the genre's basics (as demonstrated by the new vegas fanboy).

 

[mondblut]

RPG gamers continue to prove they are inflexible control freaks.

What's wrong with this?

They just want "more of the same"

Or this?

Yes, I fucking want more Wizardry or Pools of Darkness, because I hardly got any in the past 20 years. Should I instead want "unique or interesting experiences" of derpession quest or shower with your dad simulator? Thanks, but no thanks.

 

[VanDerVaals]

It won't be long before RPG video games are just Win Simulators where nothing bad can possibly happen in the game. No surprises, no obstacles to overcome, just press a button and everything goes perfectly while patting the player on the back the whole time as to what a good job they did navigating that completely harmless "obstacle".

Oh, so you say that only RPGs with RNG can be a challenge? That's interesting. I've always thought that challenge depends on things like strategy and tactics. Guess I was wrong.

The difficulty that is partially based on a factor that's beyond player's control seems to be unfair sometimes. Only when you give the player full control of the game it's 100% fair. Then the only one you can blame is yourself.

 

[Sigourn]

"armor class" is not "armor", silly. nor is "harder to hit" synonymous with "more difficult to land a single blow right on target".

Lrn2RPG before Fallout 3, then we talk.

From the Fallout manual:

Armor Class. The first function of armor is to prevent the wearer from being hit by the attack. This is known as Armor Class (or AC).

From the Icewind Dale manual:

Armor Class (AC) is the protective rating of armor. Wearing armor reduces the chance that a character is attacked successfully and suffers damage. Armor does not absorb damage, however, it only prevents it.

It's funny when you don't even know the rules of the RPGs you play. To Fallout's credit, however, it also incorporated DT and DR, which makes it instantly superior to the Infinity Engine games, but AC as a bonus when wearing armor is still stupid.

 

[mondblut]

Armor Class (AC) is the protective rating of armor. Wearing armor reduces the chance that a character is attacked successfully and suffers damage. Armor does not absorb damage, however, it only prevents it.

It's funny when you don't even know the rules of the RPGs you play. To Fallout's credit, however, it also incorporated DT and DR, which makes it instantly superior to the Infinity Engine games, but AC as a bonus when wearing armor is still stupid.

"damage" is abstraction on the same level as "armor class", you idiot. It has nothing to do with pointy things penetrating your chain mail links and causing you boo-boo, it substracts your fucking "hitpoints". Which doesn't mean shit unless your hitpoints reach zero, at which point you are dead.

 

[Sigourn]

"damage" is abstraction on the same level as "armor class", you idiot. It has nothing to do with pointy things penetrating your chain mail links and causing you boo-boo, it substracts your fucking "hitpoints". Which doesn't mean shit unless your hitpoints reach zero, at which point you are dead.

Armor class is an abstraction that doesn't make sense. That's my point, dummy. Hit-points make sense: they determine your health. When it reaches 0, you die. An armor making you harder to hit makes no sense at all.

 

[mondblut]

Armor class is an abstraction that doesn't make sense.

It makes perfect sense. It shows how difficult is for abstract "attack" to succeed in order to "damage" your "hitpoints".

Hit-points make sense: they determine your health.

Kids, don't play new vegas, it makes you stupid.

When you cut out the part of your brain infected with FPSitis, I suggest to use what little is left to ponder over whether a 10th level fighter is 10 times healthier than a 1st level fighter (wow, impressive!), or is he maybe 10 times as capable of DODGING, BLOCKING, FENCING, and just plain SURVIVING FOR 10 TIMES AS LONG IN AVERAGE FIGHT BY WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY?

Which is what "hit points" is. Not fucking "health".

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Armor class is an abstraction that doesn't make sense. That's my point, dummy. Hit-points make sense: they determine your health. When it reaches 0, you die. An armor making you harder to hit makes no sense at all.

Isn't the exact point of wearing armor to "make you harder to hit"? The armor Protects you from being hit. lol

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

OP tries to derail his own thread, get's ninja'd by a completely different derail!

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

It won't be long before RPG video games are just Win Simulators where nothing bad can possibly happen in the game. No surprises, no obstacles to overcome, just press a button and everything goes perfectly while patting the player on the back the whole time as to what a good job they did navigating that completely harmless "obstacle".

Oh, so you say that only RPGs with RNG can be a challenge? That's interesting. I've always thought that challenge depends on things like strategy and tactics. Guess I was wrong.

The difficulty that is partially based on a factor that's beyond player's control seems to be unfair sometimes. Only when you give the player full control of the game it's 100% fair. Then the only one you can blame is yourself.

Challenge depends on a balance of player skill (strategy and tactics) and should have unpredictable luck involved too to keep it interesting. Otherwise there is no unpredictability or surprises. Master the game, win every time because you are in total control. That shit sounds boring to me and just more ego stroking for control freaks.

While I realize I am a control freak in RPGs I am trying to not be one. Unfortunately most RPGs also don't give you good reason NOT to be one. In most classic RPGs you can die so easily and should auto-reload quickly as it's extremely punishing to not do it. If the game presented a balanced system where bad things could happen but it also didn't automatically equal a reload, it would be better. There should still be punishing or challenging consequences, but it shouldn't always equal a "reload, try again" scenario.

It can be done with clever and well thought out game systems that balance risk/reward and don't let you game the system so much. Save systems that are somewhat restricted, penalties for reloading or rewards for soldiering through even when something bad happens can make the game better within these situations. There are games that have done it but it still has a long way to go to become really good.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

RPG gamers continue to prove they are inflexible control freaks.

What's wrong with this?

They just want "more of the same"

Or this?

Yes, I fucking want more Wizardry or Pools of Darkness, because I hardly got any in the past 20 years. Should I instead want "unique or interesting experiences" of derpession quest or shower with your dad simulator? Thanks, but no thanks.

What's wrong with that? Because the majority don't want Wizardry, they want Easy Street: The RPG. The average gamer that RPG developers have to cater to is inflexible. They want easily understandable shit, with minimal challenge and total control. No "trying different things", nothing that is too far out of left field as to upset them. Just look at some ELEX reviews to get a clear example. In short, game looks like action RPG, must play like other action RPGs I am familiar with otherwise, bad. It's the same shit for other RPG subgenres.

Rather than learn the game or try a different experience, they either give up or bash it. God forbid they have to adapt to it, that's blasphemy!

I offered an idea on the Beamdog forums about AI in NWN and got the same inflexible responses. "We want total party control" blah blah. Same shit that's already been done in many other games. Why not try to enjoy a different experience or something new? Encourage devs to try different shit in the realm of classic RPGs. Different does not mean it has to erase or completely change what makes classic RPGs classic. Why not make a classic RPG style that's MORE classic? People assume different = streamlined Easy Street and most gamers expect that now. Because devs have to make money first and foremost that's what they deliver.

It sucks.