I prefer the highly customizable characters where you can actually role play. The Fallout series are some of my favorite games (up there with Civ II and Deus Ex). There''s so much character customization you can do. You can play a warrior, a smooth talker, a theif, an idiot, a slut, etc. and still get through the game. The quests that''ll be open to you differ among these options, and between whether you''re good or evil. Your actions affect the game world and the ending, and there''s still an over all plot. It puts the RP back in CRPG. I''ve replayed these games many times trying new things and variations on a theme.

I don''t think replay value is irrelevant, either. If a company has a reputation for having games with a high replay value, I''ll go back to them. Why? Because I''m getting more bang for my buck. If you look at it in dollars spent per hour of game play, a game with a high replay value will almost always win. This doesn''t mean story is unimportant (I loved FF4 and FF6 (FF7 wasn''t so impressive) Chrono Trigger, Deus Ex (which also has great replay value)) just that I don''t have the money for a lot of games so I pick the ones that''ll give me the most for my dollar.

I agree that replay value is very overrated and not so important, but freedom of choice, or at least the illusion of choice is important IMHO. While I don''t mind games that have you on a rail if the underlying gameplay is good, and certain games work better as linear challenges, in a RPG exploration is a big part of the gameplay and I prefer freedom over a "good" storyline.

I don''t care that much about the story line. I''d rather customize the character.

What kills replay for me is when advancement requires hours of mindless hack and slash. You are only willing to put up with that out of curiousity of the ending.


-solo (my site)

I''ve come to a few conclusions about this subject myself.

One way to go is by impossing the role of a character. This is the route I will be taking in Mouxhim for those who are interested

Basicly, the player knows who the character is, how they ''work'', and what their main goals are. This is what I call Immersion Value

Next, you include replayability by allowing them to role-play outside the main goals of the given character, side quests, missions, or other extra gameplay elements which give the player room to explore the world on their own. These extra elements, to add gameplay, should have relations with either the game world or story in some way in order to provide an exceptional value to their persuit. This way, the player is still within context of their objectives and have the opportunity to use their own judgement (and just for the fun of it as well ).

Another way to go, that focuses more on replayability, is taking team effort based gameplay into account, weither it be through story-based AI or from other players. Any game that allows a person to be ''a part of the team'' and does it well automatically enduces both immersion and replayability. I''m using this within my project 13 Cemetery Dr.

Yet another direction to head in is using static gameplay objectives. The player is in complete control of what they want to do but the world still goes on around them. Randomly generated quests come and go and story based questing is always available, but it allows the player to decide when and if they want to persue anything. Information on the story should be easily attainable in relative ways so that a player seeking to focus on them can get involved without ruining the quest itself. In-game, the world can either revolve indefinitely, evolve through time lineraly, or even staticly. This is what my MMORPG, Infinity, will focus on in terms of replayability within the gameplay. In this situation, customized character generation is more acceptable but not limited to predefined either.

Of course, these all depend on what the game itself should focus on as well, and by that, what the lead designer(s) have set out to accomplish in their persuits. These are just the basic ideas of these gameplay types, but they will be in use sometime this summer in my projects and I will keep the community up to date on their effectiveness. They are intended to focus on a more creative gameplay experience and are all simple yet complex in their most basic forms, so enjoy

- Christopher Dapo ~ Ronixus

"Go DEEPER!"

Wow, it seems pretty much 50/50 on this. Del Snd of Thndr, what kind of character customization are you talking about? Why can''t you still totally immerse the player''s custom character into the story line?

quote: Original post by ah_bk88
Wow, it seems pretty much 50/50 on this. Del Snd of Thndr, what kind of character customization are you talking about? Why can''t you still totally immerse the player''s custom character into the story line?

The difference seems to be between telling a story to the player and creating the framework for the player to tell his own story. The Final Fantasy series does the former, the Fallout series the latter. I suppose Deus Ex would be an example of a customizable character in an immersive storyline, but many (I doubt most) complained that their choices didn''t have any real effect on the world. Giving the player two choices that don''t make a difference is very much the same as giving the player only one choice. (Take FF6, Terra can say yes or no to Banon, but the only real difference is whether or not you get a gauntlet or a genji glove) Fallout has a lot of difficulty telling its main story line because the player has so much control. For a good portion of the game you keep asking people where the GECK is, and they say "What''s a GECK?". Then, for the next portion, people keep saying "Check Vault City or NCR". It gets very repetitive. However, the game is still entertaining because you have so many choices elsewhere, which do have an effect on the ending. You''re basically telling your own story about what you did in the world you''re given.

Personally, I''m biased toward the Fallout style rather than the Final Fantasy style. I don''t really know how much games go for these days, but they tend to cost more than books or DVDs and have much poorer stories.

Again, I would like to thank each and every poster for his/her insight. However, I wanted to post again specifically to answer ah_bk88''s question.


Here''s my quandry in a nutshell:

I sat down a few days ago and starting writing out an idea that randomly popped into my head. I ended up writing an introduction for the game. In addition to setting up the obstacles to be overcome in the game, the introduction introduces four main characters (you guessed it...your party). I have some pretty nifty ideas for character development throughout the game that I would love to implement. However, to do this, I''m afraid that I would corner the player into leading a party that he might have created in a different way.

When I speak of complete customization, I mean that the player gets to choose all of the qualities and types of characters that he would like to have in his party. For example, I have an old NES game, Ultima: Exodus. Before beginning the game, you get to create your party by hand. I like having two knights, a cleric, and a wizard. I like my knights to be strong, my cleric to be agile (to avoid traps), and my wizard to have high magic points. However, another player may like to play a different way, and he is allowed to do so. For example, he may have four barbarians so he can just crush his opponents to death. Unfortunately, the story told seems somewhat flat to me (uhhh...there''s an evil guy and you have to go kill him...or else...uhhh...our kingdom will fall...yeah...!), and I''m left craving a somewhat more entertaining yarn, especially when I''ve spent so much time battling my way toward a (hopefully) satisfying conclusion.

I''m just afraid that if I want to follow my story, I''ll have to create a party for the player, and that he won''t really enjoy my setup. I just thought of an idea of how to counter this, so I guess I''ll present here and see what everybody thinks: What if you start out with a party made by me, but during the course of the game, you are introduced with other playable characters that can join your party? In order to accept the new character, you have to dismiss one of your old characters. Of course, if you don''t like the new guy, you can go get the old guy back from his point of origin.

Let me also include this point: I''m not trying to take the "RP" out of "RPG." I would, naturally, still give the player options, such as what armor to wear, what weapons to bear, what magic to wield, how to distribute attribute points, what side quests to take, what NPC''s to befriend, and those to declare as enemy, et cetera. I want to give the player as much choice as I can, but also get my story (a cool one!) across to the player.

So, lost and confused, I found myself spiralling down an endless rabbit hole. That''s why I started this thread: I just wanted to know whether I could go ahead and make the game, or if I should go write a book instead. :-Þ

(I hope this answered the question...If not, just slap me!)


~del

Erm...give me a good story with characters that have real personalities and are more then thier idiotic collection of states and iteams...And as long as a RPG isn''t set in the same overdone tired cliched middleages D&D copycat "fantasy" setting; then I''m game for playing

In Baldur''s Gate single player you would be allowed to create only your main character. The story evolved around this character not matter what you had created. BG2 even offers the choice to go the "good" or "bad" way... Anyway, you had to find the rest of the party, who were all pregenerated characters. One of the benefits of this was that every NPC you encountered (and invited to join you) has an own personality. They told stories, liked or disliked each other, supported certain decisions or did not. I was really amazing how real they felt...

That is probably the main strength of pregenerated characters, and its main weakness as well. Some like it to tune their character and cannot develop a connection to them unless the created them from scratch(might call them 1st person RPers). Others like to follow a story and watch the characters and challenges they encounter(or 3rd person RPers). People have different visions of good RPGs, and you will not be able to reach them all with a certain concept. On the other hand, BG1&2 was very successful, so I guess it''s a matter of telling the players what they actually want...

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There are only 10 kinds of people: those that understand binary and those that don''t.

I suppose theres nothing wrong with a open-ended player creation, but you do have the issue with no being able to give the player an adequate story. Replayability then becomes a feature reserved for power gamers.

Here, lets look at the whole "Role Playing" thing. Obviously, the term means to play a role. But if you allow player customization to occur at the expense of the story, the role of the player is entirely at his control, and so hes going to pick the role he wants. Limited to the context of the game, his role is going to save small child, beat up goblins, bang hot elf chick, kill kevin spacey, and so on. Unless you don''t allow him to do every miniquest the game has to offer, he probably want replay specifically because theres nothing new to do, he finished the role.

In a more complicated, story-immersion narrative game, the bounds of the role are very specific, but the role as the player understands it might be complicated enough to warrant a replay. Its like watching the Sixth Sense again to see all of the clues that Bruce Willis was actually a robot from the future sent back to protect Haley Joe Osmond.

Or you can wing it. A game where the characters'' actual backstory and plot-arc have nothing to do with their character development has been done before and has been moderately successful, and I''m talking about final fantasies 1, 3, and 5 (japanese numbering). You could go the route of starting each character at 10 in each stat and have their class experience alter their stats, plus or minus.

The important thing to note is what ... somebody else said, gamedev''s forums don''t show that many prior posts. He said that the game has to be good enough on first play through to warrant a replay.