Plenty of RPGs over the years have had some concept of a base, even expandable ones. In Skies of Arcadia, after a certain point in the game, you got your own base. Recruiting certain people into your crew caused them to build their own additions to that island, each of which gave the player some advantage. Very neat. Great sense of anticipation too, both waiting to get your new crewmember home for the first time, as well as coming back at some later time to see what they''ve done.

There''s more growth to be sure to the idea. To those who question the relevance of the npc vs the integrity of their mechanics vs their expendability, you''re forgetting that an npc could happily be aesthetically relevant without having to be mechanically relevant. There''s nothing to say a player can''t form an attachment to a young couple that they witness getting married early on in the game, having children during the course of the game, getting on with their own lives. Killing off this entire family wouldn''t interrupt the integrity of the game mechanic, but it certainly could affect the player emotionally.

The only problem I have with this sort of thing, is that players generally think of EVERY failiure in a game as lessening their ''final score'', whether or not there is a final score to lessen. If this happened to most, they''d just restart the game from a previous savegame and prevent it from happening, which ruins the impact really. The real trick here is doing something to the player that makes him choose to give up a potential other advantage or stick with the loss. I.e. every loss is somehow a gain later down the road.

"Sure, but that doesn''t require a home as such. It just requires that NPCs will change their reactions. Ultima 7 did this; revisiting a town after completing certain quests - some totally unrelated to the town - would often yield some totally different conversations with people. Whereas in Final Fantasy 6, NPCs barely had anything to say so everything seemed static."

The question is why would should the player revist previous towns, when not required to by the story? When as you say actions are totally unrelated to that town.

"This would be very hard to do properly. If you''re allowing well-developed NPCs to die, then you have to assume that they would play no important part in the game after that battle. Or have the dying villagers predetermined. Or flesh out a load of characters for no reason other than to see them potentially die in this battle. It''s not exactly a very good use of developer resources."

Like the AP said, and NPC doesn''t have to important in determing the outcome of game in order to be important to player. Also I don''t see it as a waste of developer resouces to emotionally involve the player in the game. Instead it improves the overall quality of the game.

"As with your original post, perhaps you don''t see this sort of gameplay in RPGs because this sort of gameplay is not an RPG by definition."

You make that sound like a bad thing. Why shouldn''t gamse introduce new elements into existing genres?


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quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
The question is why would should the player revist previous towns, when not required to by the story? When as you say actions are totally unrelated to that town.

You''d have to play Ultima 7 to see what I mean. You revisit places because it''s a living and breathing world, unlike many other RPGs where you''re linearly shovelled from one location to the next. You go places because you are looking for clues or want to tie up one of the many sub-plots. Except you never know what is a sub-plot and what is part of the greater scheme.

quote: an NPC doesn''t have to important in determing the outcome of game in order to be important to player. Also I don''t see it as a waste of developer resouces to emotionally involve the player in the game. Instead it improves the overall quality of the game.

All I am saying is that there are much better ways to use your time than fleshing out a complete story for 25 villagers that will have no influence on the outcome of the game except for the fact that some of them might die.

quote: Why shouldn''t gamse introduce new elements into existing genres?

Your suggestion was not so much about introducing new elements, but about essentially playing a totally different type of game. In theory there''s nothing wrong with developing a hybrid if that''s what you want to do, although the thread title specified ''RPGs'' rather than ''RPG/RTS crossovers''.

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Sounds like Animal Crossing...