Quote:Original post by Pxtl
Yes, but other kinds of games are capable of creating a good context for combat without relying upon designer-generated scenarios. X-Com for example. The combat was extremely repetaive and the combat was dynamicly generated, but it was still exciting because you were involved in the context of the combat. In most games, you're itching to fight - but in X-Com, you were scared to death of a large enemy ship coming along.
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I totally agree with you that other games can do this. What I am not so certain of is whether or not a pure RPG can support this sort of thing because of the requirements for story.
When I'm talking about context (probably a horrible word) what I'm talking about is how your actions fit into the big picture. If you look at X-Com, you have to look at what the big picture is, why the actions are meaningful, why it is important. In X-Com it is the tactical victories which yeild prizes and territory, all of which leads to greater and greater strategic advancement.
It is important to most gamers who invest more than a passing amount of time in playing that the game be going somewhere, be leading somewhere surprising. A strategy game whose outcome is already known probaby isn't all that interesting. So when you play X-Com the context which gives meaning to repetitive combat is the larger struggle. You don't mind the repetition, especially if the outcome is uncertain, because it's all leading somewhere. And should you realize you've achieved inevitable victory, the game is no longer fun.
Okay, so how does this apply to RPGs? Well, in place of the grand scale strategic context, you have to have a sense that the story is going somewhere: Quests have to give the player a sense that things are moving forward, there has to be buildup, and there's got to be a sense that the player is engaged in some sort of great endeavor, either in a personal, mythical, moral or global dimension.
Storylines and quests are not supposed to behave like strategic encounters. See-saw back and forth gains and losses are common in a strategy game, but would kill a story. The pacing and timing of strategic actions are haphazard and asymetrical, whereas such elements separate a good story from a bad one. There's a certain level of OVERALL repetition (not just individual fights, don't look only at the microcosm) that's just fine in a strategy game that I don't think the standard RPG can bear.
Now, I do believe that you can achieve a sort of RPG-strategy game fusion (in fact that's what I'm working on). But my experience is when you approach dyed-in-the-wool RPG players and present such an idea to them, their concern, as Estok pointed out, is that the story lines, character interactions, rewards and overall meaning of the game not be repetitive. A strategy gamer never asks this question, because capturing yet another town or founding yet another base are all actions that feed the big picture context they're playing for.
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Think of it like this for an RPG. Pirates have set up an extensive city on a small island off the coast. Their ships come by frequently, dropping landing boats of raiders. Small quests involve defending from raiders, picking off landing boats, protecting things. Larger quests involve visiting the offshore ships and barges to rescue hostages, negotiate deals, kill villains, and possibly even destroy the whole ship. If you destroy a ship, its wreckage and survivors float ashore, creating new possibilities and quests. Bigger quests could even take you to the island source of the piracy. The massive, ultimate quest would be all-out warfare, an attempt to attack the island and burn it to the ground. |
I would play this because I'd like to see a blend of RPG and strategy game. But consider the dozens and dozens of quests RPGs often have. You're basically an exterminate and FedEx Knight in most of these games. But if it's done right, you're pulled along by all the little quirks, exceptions and twists to the story, and you find yourself wondering where it will lead next.
Now taking your example, let's assume the player is totally ignorant of the total strategic scope of things and is locked to only their own perspective. Let's also assume that the game successfully translates strategic happenings into dialog and quests (a VERY big assumption, btw)
Alright, so you take a "fight the raiders" mission a few times, get some injuries, crack some heads and ultimately earn a bit of treasure and level up. Presummably the game has told you why the raids are happening, and what's in it for you if you do something about it. But as you're leveling up through the raids and deliveries and protect missions, you may start to notice a certain lack of something. You don't have the strategic scope, all you have is the same missions again and again with no guarantee that they're going anywhere. If this phase lasts long enough you'll feel that, as an RPG, the story is haplessly meandering. (Try Escape Velocity and stay away from the prescripted story missions, I think you'll get this sense, it becomes tedious.)
The later stages are going to have similar problems unless you can come up with a very wide variety of randomizers, or unless (as I'm trying to do) there's so much gameplay elsewhere that the strategy / story component takes a back seat and becomes icing on the cake. X-Com achieved this, I think, with all the item creation, bartering, base building, money management and politics. You didn't care that the plot points consisted of "yet another alien attack on town X" because you weren't playing it for the story. The story offered new surprises and unlocked new challenges, but except for the endgame I think X-Com would have survived just fine without it.
