Your dream RPG

[Radisshu]

What kind of gameplay your ideal RPG must feature? Also, what setting?

Two types:

A) A single player character, possibly accompanied by joinable NPCs. No dungeon crawling, tons of quests, with multiple solutions. Turn-based combat, isometric, heavy on the consequences. Skill-based classless system. Joinable factions, etc. In the vein of Fallout and Arcanum, but with a better battle system.

B) A party of player characters. Dungeon-based, lots of crawling, tons of possible party builds. Class-based system. Quests etc are important, but the focus wouldn't be on C&C and multiple paths, the challenge would be in building a great functional party. In the vein of IWD, I guess, but with a better battle system. ToEE-like, I suppose, but not as bad of course.

EDIT:

Setting, well... I'd like a relatively realistic setting that could be either post apocalyptic or medieval. Or steampunky. Some kind of samurai-ish setting could be pretty cool as well.

 

[deuxhero]

Make MoTB a ToEE xpack. There, you have made MoTB next to perfect.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

Oblivion with guns.


Seriously though, I imagine some sort of sandbox world where NPCs lead real "lives" farming and working and actually needing to subsist on their earned food and such. A "character" in such a world could become simply a wanderer looking at the world, doing "day jobs" to earn money for food etc. and the story would sort of tell itself. There might be some overarching theme of political intrigue or something that influences all characters in the world, but the main thing would be the exploration using your character. Add in randomization and it's a game BETTER THAN LIFE lol. Admittedly all this is likely to end up too random.

 

[Volourn]

'How many of you guys work for your boss because of his charisma, leadership and motivations? As opposed to, you know, his ability to sign a paycheck? "

Idiot. Youa re assuming that my ideal RPG would include a PC that was neccessarily the leader of the party and attracted party members solely on his attractiveness. Did you read the whole thing? Multiple factors would be involved. Tool.

P.S. While money is partm of myd ecision of where to work it's far from being the only part. I have quit jobs when the boss was a piece of shit. I've never quit a job simply because I wasn't paid a lot, though. Idiot.

 

[ksjav]

Daggerfall 2.

There's a good chance that daggerfall engine remake will be finished and it's going to be pretty much entirely moddable afaik.

 

[ricolikesrice]

1. The gameplay i d really like to see make a return would be that of...

...Realms of Arkania : Blades of Destiny & Star Trail.

Huge overland map, great travel system, non-linear, less emphasis on story and more on actual adventure, especially exploring and travelling in dangerous territory with many skillchecks (that actually matter, not the SOZ shit.... )

Also, creating a full party (though i d prefer 4 over 6 characters: with 6 the problem is that you can pretty much get all important skills covered too easily .... with 4 you d be forced to make some choices -> better replay value imho ).

Combat could be either turn-based or RTWP - as long as it has lots of tactical depth and good encounter design. unfortunately just being TB doesnt guarantee that and i dont think RTWP *must* be as shit as its been till now.

Prefered setting for that kind of game would be a steampunk one with low magic and WW1 influences ... or something "alien" like morrowind.

....otherwise as long as the gameplay is ROA-like, even generic fantasy is okay.

2. a shadowrun/cyberpunk action RPG with gameplay thats a mix of GTA and deus ex.

3. Though more strategy than RPG ... after playing a lot of Bloodbowl i d kill for a proper Mortheim and/or Necromunda PC port. (with better singleplayer part than Bloodbowl mind you..... )

 

[Norfleet]

Honestly? What I want to see is some kind of sandbox RPG-esque akin to Elite 3. There may or may not be an epic plot. You may or may not opt to follow it, or simply do your own thing and make your own way in the world. If you don't opt to follow the plot, you'll hear back from it from time to time. In the end, you do your own thing.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Shadowrun-RPG:

Mission mode in first-person view, with a tactical interface a la SWAT or OF (and pre-mission planning)

Story mode in third-person, campaign set in some of the more fleshed-out cities,
separable party a la JA2, ability to search for information about the next target or
your employer, equipment, upgrading your hideout.

Matrix runs separate from the actual mission in SP (in MP at the same time) with consequences revealed during the actual mission.

Option to play the entire team in MP.

edit
forgot zombies and torture feature

edit
and killable children and romance option

I buy

 

[King Crispy]

High fantasy-based, definitely.

Size. Like an entire continent mapped out, with no fast travel options whatsoever. You want to travel? Plan on being a nomad, camping out and even settling in various places as you do so. Need to get back to town in a hurry? Buy a horse. There are details everywhere.

Realism. Yup, you gotta eat, sleep and shit. Well, skip the bodily functions but make carrying capacity based on something resembling reality, model in actually strapping weapons onto your side or slinging a bow over your torso, etc., and make sure to factor in weight, fatigue, etc. Combat is visceral, exhilarating, and exciting.

Beauty. Take twenty years to develop this but be able to slipstream in the latest graphics engine to give us whores what we truly desire. Accurate rag doll physics, amazing terrain, weather, thousands of woodland sounds. Probably can skip the music. (!!!)

Fun. Balance it all so that I abandon my career, forsake my family and my life, and lock myself in a shack in the middle of nowhere with the latest cutting-edge ultra system that I blew my life savings on. I want to die at my keyboard playing this game because of its crushing addiction.

Then I wake up.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

a rabbit RPG?

they got a boardgame of it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunnies_%26_Burrows lol

OMG I never heard of that shit. Its a a full on GURPS game. Man I cant think of no original ideas :evil: .

 

[jaro]

Arcanum 2, it should have more balanced combat, more diplomacy-related quests, better tech and ofc more phat l00t. And Virgil. Guess that's never gonna happen, huh?

 

[MetalCraze]

What kind of gameplay your ideal RPG must feature? Also, what setting?

Isometric turn-based party combat based around modern warfare. With tactical possibilities on par with JA2.
Great replayability value - dynamically generated global map where you can travel, random encounters and non-linearity.
Well done maps - maps with lots of details, the ability to destruct shit e.g. blow up walls, smash windows, burn trees so you can use it to your advantage and of course having all points of map accessible.
Fun quests - none of that emo modern shit which basically is a cover up for "go there kill that bring these" - quests that involve stealth, unusual combat solutions (indirect combat f.e.), non-combat solutions are a plus and of course the ability to do quests in multiple ways that utilize abilities of your crew to their fullest.
Setting - from third-world shithole to dystopian near future, I just like combat based around ranged weapons, like guns.

Basically JA2 on steroids + cRPG

 

[muffildy]

rpg

Hrm a list of things i think are essential to any new rpg:

1: characters and situations that grab you somehow, for example - vampire the masquerades bloodlines has a lot of characters and situations that are really cool.
2: A real time pausable but tactical combat system that is 2d and party based; ie baldurs gate 2 SoA.
3: Prefer the no grinding experience paradigim ala ME2 and VTM:bloodlines, i think you shouldnt be forced to always fight your way through things to get the most experience - it should be equal experience wise to talk your way out of things or sneak by or whatever.
4: non-linear gameplay, but not taking that idea too far. There should be a definate plot that is of great importance to tie things together. Ie fallout 3 is horrendous in this regard, while fallout 2 is slightly better but still a bit too open ended. Perhaps anachranox might be the best example of the type of nonlinearity but plot driven; either that or planescape torment.
5: on the same subject as non-linearity, i feel the scope of the world is important. As in fallout 3 you travel on foot and in order to see everything you need to see a whole lot of nothing. This is a horrible concept. It is much better if you have smaller high quality detailed areas to explore. fallout 2 does this much better as each area is unique. I also liked nwn2 maps for the OC and MoTB (SoZ was too blah).
6: this ties in with 1, but your squad mates should all have definate personality and should surprise you with their actions and speech at times. the fallout series is terrible in this regard because the squad mate personalities almost dissapear once they join. Mass effect series and KoToR series have this down though, but it could still have a bit more depth and feeling above and beyond what they have done so far.
7: character customization - be it by classes, skillsets, or special powers all characters should be able to get power in their own way. This is of lesser importance than any of the other things, but it does after all add a bit of replayability.

 

[roll-a-die]

Honestly, my idea is extremely ambitious.

I remember once hearing that the goal of the developers of Rogue was creating a game that the developers themselves would enjoy playing. Since playing through static maps you created is a highly boring experience, a randomized game like Rogue means that even the developers themselves can be surprised by the game. The problem is that most of the rogue-likes are simple dungeon crawlers, and the ones that are not tend to have at most only a handful of randomly selected quests (a la Diablo). What I would like to see is a randomly-generated epic game. To keep it simple, it would probably have to be highly non-linear (a la Ultima).

http://lambdarogue.net

 

[Crawfish]

I have two:

1. "Daggerfall 2", mentioned above.

My interest in this title, however, isn't related to the game's backstory or specific mechanics. What got me so excited when Arena and especially Daggerfall first came out was the thought that they heralded a new direction for CRPGs. I loved the concept behind combining a wide array of procedural systems/simulations, and then layering custom content on top of that procedurally-derived simulation.

I envisioned how great the games could be if CRPGs continued down that evolutionary line, being built upon progressively more robust, more realistic, and more interesting systems for procedurally generating geography, climate and weather (with an impact on the game), civilization patterns with varying population densities and trade routes, intercity and international economies and relationships (including wars and truces), various types of dungeons and other man-made or natural enclosures, calendar events with an impact on the game (seasons, full moon, equinoxes, etc.) and quests. This stage would then be used as the setting for custom created content to drive "the main story".

The only games that really derived their approaches under this evolutionary chain (in some respects, at least) were the Roguelikes (which I know preceded Daggerfall, but mostly lacked the custom content and storyline overlay), the Diablos (and I'm not at all a fan of their combat system) and now Dwarf Fortress.

I really would have liked to have seen more commercial games evolve from that basis. Sure, Daggerfall's particular implementation of some of their systems wasn't ideal. The dungeon generation system, in particular, comes to mind. But as an early generation attempt at that technique for developing a CRPG, it was very cool. Imagine how robust dungeon generation systems could be today if they'd gone through as many generations of refining their algorithms and options as they've gone through on graphical engine upgrades.

I also really loved that Daggerfall was one of the few RPGs that offered "push" quests instead of exclusively "pull" ones, and the fact that they were often timed and failable. Most heroic fiction (that CRPGs are in some ways intended to reflect) is better served by that approach. Cardboard NPCs that stand around waiting for the protagonist to arrive and ask them if they need help with anything is just not representative of the underlying fiction, and is dull. It's much more exciting and engaging when someone seeks you out for help, or the antagonist starts taking dangerous action, and you have a limited amount of time to resolve the issue.


2. The other game that I would have liked to have had more spiritual successors was Starflight. In particular for this game, I'd combine my love of the old Elite-style games (Freelancer, Privateer, et al.) where you customize, upgrade and configure a spaceship that is usable for free-roaming open-ended activities such as trade, piracy, anti-piracy, running missions, and mining with my love of traditional turn-based, six-or-so member party RPG mechanics.

I'd start with an Etrian Odyssey styled game (more or less a modernized and refined clone of the early Wizardries that incorporates a great in-game mapping technique...it also has lame anime graphics, which I would not incorporate). Then I'd add some deeper combat mechanics (Wizardry 8 and Wizardry:Tales of the Forsaken Land both offered some interesting ideas for adding additional richness to the traditional six-man blob combat style). I'd use blasters and vibroblades instead of bows and swords, of course.

The party members would be recruitable crew members (medical officer, pilot, gunnery officer, etc), with some banter and personality. The crew members, however, would be there for flavor and not be the focus of the game (think halfway between the original Mechwarrior and Planescape:Torment).

This half of the game would be used when at space stations, planetside, when boarding other ships, etc. The Elite-style element would come into play when in your ship.

Random missions, custom side missions, and main quest missions could take place either fully in space, fully on the ground, or using a combination of both.

The RPG stat system would have dual skill trees, allowing you to decide how you want to balance their predominantly space-based and ground-based skills.

 

[JarlFrank]

I have several of those. One day I will create most of them, too.

1st:
Isometric RPG with turnbased combat. 3D graphics with the ability to manipulate the environments. Set in my own steampunk-fantasy world of Witherheath.
A story that begins as a personal quest that "widens" into a more world-concerning matter, or at least country-concerning matter. A villain that actually has motivations instead of being just a cackling maniac, and he isn't even clearly evil, just the leader of a cult who wants to gain lots of power and found his own little independent magocracy. You can choose if you want to fight him, let him be, or side with him.
There'd be many different skills tp learn, persuasion will be very useful and quests will have multiple solutions and/or outcomes. You can only learn magic if you choose a wizard character at character generation, and even towards the end of the game you won't be half as powerful as the game's strongest mages, because there's a reason why wizards spend time reading old tomes in their towers instead of going around slaying wolves, rats and fleas for experience.
The capital city would be huge, have a Victorian flair and be realistically designed, with one upperclass area, a middle class area, lower class area and industrial area. There will be a park in the city, too, and many recreational buildings. It should overall feel like a real city that serves the purpose of providing everything ordinary people need to live. Not a single place in the whole game should exist just in order to be a quest-location, it shall all make sense in the context of the gameworld.
Combat will be tactical with many different options. Every kind of weapon is useful. When you play a melee character, using swords has as much good and bad sides as using, e. g., a spear, instead of swords being the best and the rest just a crappy afterthought. Magic should also be less focused on offensive spells, but more on curses, charms and also ritual magic that takes time to prepare.
The story should be very branching and non-linear, allowing for many player choices with according consequences. There would be about 4 or 5 main locations, with some other small minor locations strewn around the countryside. Exploration will be like Arcanum/Fallout. The game will focus on a relatively small area of the world, though, instead of leading you over the whole continent, because that usually makes the continent seem very sparsely populated (Arcanum, Oblivion). As stated previously, world consistency and logical design of the world is one of the most important things.

2nd:
Gothic meets Quest for Glory meets Ultima. It would have a female main character, the nameless herione (yay obvious Gothic clone). The combat would be quite similar to Risen and a large focus of the gameplay would be exploration. There'd be about four factions, three of which you can officially join, a third which you can support. Actually it'd be five because there'd also be a dark snake-cult doing human sacrifices. They're the enemy. But you can join them if you so desire. The storyline would be quite different depending on which faction you choose to join. The gameworld would be dynamic, with the factions obviously gaining or losing power depending on your actions.
Exploration would be rewarded a lot, since many remote and dangerous places also have powerful ancient artifacts buried within. It will be hard to get those, though. Similar to Gothic, enemies will always be dangerous to you, no matter what level you are, if you are reckless. Every dungeon will have its backstory.
The world will be very interactive, like Ultima 7. There'll be lots of crafting skills, and you can bake bread. Also use most tools. There'll be a real economy. If you sell a magic sword to a guy who trades antiquities, you might find a noble wearing that sword on his belt a few days later because he bought it. Generally, the world will go about its way without the player being the absolute centerpiece.
There'll also be adventure elements. Some places can only be reached by solving a riddle, or solving a riddle might be a good alternative to using dialogue or doing combat. Some solutions require different stats than others, some are just depending on player's puzzle solving skill. Think Quest of Glory.

That's enough for now. I have some other "ideal" games in my mind, too, one of them being very similar to what Skyway wants, but I'll shut up now. Talked enough about awesome shit that we probably won't see within the next 10 years anyways.

 

[zenbitz]

and killable children and romance option

I draw the line at necropedophilia.

 

[Fat Dragon]

Iso turn-based RPG in 1940's New York. I always liked mob stories and think they would work well for a RPG that was based around opposing factions.

Sandbox RPG set in NA during the 1500's.

Also, give me an action RPG (like the Gothics/Risen) in a Blade Runner-esque city and I'm sold.

 

[Fritz Haber]

and killable children and romance option

I draw the line at necropedophilia.

Why do you hate my freedom?

Off-topic, are there any good threads about what makes a good villain? It seems I'm too stupid for the search...

 

[Freelance Henchman]

Off-topic, are there any good threads about what makes a good villain? It seems I'm too stupid for the search...

This might help:

http://www.giantitp.com/articles/rTKEiv ... 4H1Sn.html

Today we're going to talk about villains. When I say the word "villain," I mean a very specific kind of antagonist. Generally, I'm talking about character that not only serves an adversary, but also does so repeatedly, either in person or through his or her secondary influence. Villains usually have an ongoing agenda beyond, "I want to survive my next fight with the heroes." In other words, the ogre in the cave that you fight is not a villain, but the ogre who swears revenge on the heroes for killing his brother in the cave is.

Creating villains is easy; we've all seen enough movies to be able to whip up a threatening guy in a black cloak who wants to conquer the world. This article is about creating villains that go beyond stereotypes and clichés, and who are fully realized characters with their own internal logic and emotional depth. It also deals with ways to keep every villain you make from accidentally having the same modus operandi; you can only throw your players against so many evil clerics of evil gods who hate everything good and pure before it starts to get stale!

 

[Fritz Haber]

I was thinking more about a sweary Codex thread, going from games to books to movies and back again.

But I have to say, if you block out the whole DnD-angle it's quite useful, thanks.

 

[Imbecile]

Thief but set in a Morrowind sized city. You can only ever become adequate at combat and will be quickly overwhelmed by numbers. Various skills can be improved by using them. Hiding in shadows, moving quietly, pickpocketing, etc.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Off-topic, are there any good threads about what makes a good villain? It seems I'm too stupid for the search...

I try to start with a decent ordinary character like Elaine from Seinfeld then make them do evil things and justify it through their personality.

 

[Droog White Smile]

Iso turn-based RPG in 1940's New York. I always liked mob stories and think they would work well for a RPG that was based around opposing factions.

Hey, looks like somebody has the same dream RPG as me!

Off-topic, are there any good threads about what makes a good villain? It seems I'm too stupid for the search...

http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=25254

 

[Tycn]

Oblivion with guns.


Seriously though, I imagine some sort of sandbox world where NPCs lead real "lives" farming and working and actually needing to subsist on their earned food and such. A "character" in such a world could become simply a wanderer looking at the world, doing "day jobs" to earn money for food etc. and the story would sort of tell itself. There might be some overarching theme of political intrigue or something that influences all characters in the world, but the main thing would be the exploration using your character. Add in randomization and it's a game BETTER THAN LIFE lol. Admittedly all this is likely to end up too random.

Pretty much what Oblivion was hyped up to be.

Where you could assassinate someone by casting Lock on their door and waiting for them to starve. Imagine pillaging a village's farms and food stores, then seeing what happens. The more psychotic/desperate individuals might start killing people for scraps (or meat), others might enter the wilderness and get killed by bad things while trying to forage.

And fuck, I almost believed they could have done it...