Major Flaming probably for my reply, but, oh well:
1. I agree with THEUser, with the stupid HP stuff. Hell, i could hit someone in the head with a sword in many games and it takes off as much damage and hitting the creature in the damn ankle! WTF is that all about?
2. Final Fantasy is about as low as you can get with fricken RPGs, I swear, Final Fantasy really sucked from my point of view. Either that, or someone hacked the ROM i used... I hated everything in Final Fantasy 1-7 (That is all i''ve played so far) from the story, to the damn graphics.
3. I don''t care if I get flamed. I just consider Final Fantasy as bad as www.cowdance.com.

quote: Original post by THEUser
Why in the world are people''s healths being represented by the numerals of pi! It should be much different. My life isn''t dictated by a number!

Actually, your life, and even the universe, IS dictated by numbers. Or at least numbers can be used to describe the universe and everything in it. While it may seem silly at first to represent someone''s "life force" numerically, or whether such a thing as "life force" really exists, numbers are an accurate way of describing things. Mass, inertia, volume, time, true and false, the million values between true and false, are all described by numbers. Mathematics is a very broad area, and can be related to anything you can think of. And when it gets down to it, everything that goes on in a computer is numbers; at the lowest level, 1s and 0s.

But here''s some contructive thought: Rather than represent the amount of life an entity has remaining as a number, one could represent the life more organically. Location-based damage is a start, but how about blood loss, physical organ damage, etc.? Numbers would still be necessary to evaluate conditions, but numbers are required in just about everything in games anyways.

Having an HP number is just a simple and effective means of showing the player how close to death his characters are. So until you come up with something better, or even just something at all, don''t bitch and complain about it.

Nothing is difficult, only the mind makes it so.

question: how else are you going to keep track of when your players dies ? Do you want every time he gets hit pick a random number to determine whether he dies or not?......ohh wait, that is using a number....hmmmmm
how about every time your player gets hit you decrease his ability to attack........which also depends on a number......i guess that wont work either...
so what do you suggest to do ?
and anoymous poster: you said "I hated everything in Final Fantasy 1-7 (That is all i''ve played so far) from the story, to the damn graphics. " Well something must have got you hooked if you played all 7 (and yes I do know there is an eight).


"Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time"
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
themGames Productions

It has never been said that numbers are a bad way to calculate things. It''s pretty hard to calculate things without numbers. However, the "immersion factor" of a message in an RPG saying "You hit the Evil Dark Lord for 42 Points of Damage" hovers somewhere around -10E24 in my opinion. This has been discussed at LONG length in the "what''s with stats" thread in this forum.
I''d say, try to find a user-interface representation of health that is NO MORE COMPLEX than a HP stat, but much more immersive.

I''d also say - keep it civilised in here. I''ve already removed one anonymous poster message, and I WILL edit messages that are over the line or flamebait.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

quote: Original post by ahw

FF series ARE RPGs. Just not the way they are played in western culture, that''s all.

ahw- could you elaborate on this? Are you talking about the pen & paper versions, or is there some secret role-playing mode (up,up,down,down,left,right,left,right,A,B,start)? Or am I just a clueless Westerner? 8P

Or are we just talking semantics here? In that case, I''d say that since role-playing originated in the West, the Western definition should probably still apply. After all, if I want to call my hamburger "Lo Mein", they''re not going to *poof* turn into some yummy noodles, right?


If you see the Buddha on the road, Kill Him. -apocryphal

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

Major Flaming probably for my reply, but, oh well:
1. I agree with THEUser, with the stupid HP stuff. Hell, i could hit someone in the head with a sword in many games and it takes off as much damage and hitting the creature in the damn ankle! WTF is that all about?
2. Final Fantasy is about as low as you can get with fricken RPGs, I swear, Final Fantasy really sucked from my point of view. Either that, or someone hacked the ROM i used... I hated everything in Final Fantasy 1-7 (That is all i''ve played so far) from the story, to the damn graphics.
3. I don''t care if I get flamed. I just consider Final Fantasy as bad as www.cowdance.com.

With all due respect guys, you''re hardly the first people to say this stuff. I said it, people before me said it. In fact, I highly doubt you''ll find anyone in GDNet who thinks that Damage measurement could be done in some way far superior to HP.

HP sucks. Now, this Forum said "New Ideas about RPGs". So where are they? Okay, HP sucks. What are we going to replace them with? Okay, the gameplay inhales a donkey''s rear, very nice of you to tell us. We knew this already.

Like I said in my prior post, if you really want to impress people, fix it. Anyone can complain. You''ve recognized a problem, so are you going to just sit there and bitch all day?

Anonymous Poster : well, Final Fantasy, if you know, are from Japan. And in Japan, people don't play RPG as we westerners people play them. And I am talking Pen and Pencil RPG, as much as Computer RPG. I read an article ages ago on different P&P RPG played over there that would be really really far from what anyone around here would consider Roleplay. but hey, that's the way they like it over there. They know about D&D (my God, they ONLY know that one :/ What a bad image they must have got), and it didn't really fit in their culture (AFAIK). There are still some remainings though. Just look at the Lodoss War Chronicles (an excellent anime serie) and tell me if THAT doesnt smell like Good Old D&D (a thief, a knight, a mage, and an elf ? and some more that I forgot, oh ... yeah ... a Dragon ! Wow, where did they get that from ?)

So *YES* the final Fantasy are RPGs in the true sense, for Japan. And I must say again, that I am much more OK with the failures of the few Japanese CRPG I played (those translated), than with the failures of the so called CRPG we came up with in the western game industry.
For the sake of getting ideas, play things like Three Sisters, or Seasons of Sakura, or even Dragon Knights. These are erotic RPGs that got translated (they got translated because of the erotic nature, I am certain) to english. But they have much better plots, in my opinions than a good bunch of so called RPGs I have played on PC. And yes, I like Mangas, so I am biased. But at least I am informed

When I hear people (I wont call them morons here ... ignorance is not something I should blame) calling Diablo a *ROLE* playing game, I wanna puke. It just makes me despair for the future of RPGs. Even Pen and Paper ones, as seeing people like all this mindless hack and slash, the RPG industry might not be able to resist the call of the sirens. Oh wait, it's too late anyway, D&D is already a role playing game.
Today I went to my local RPG shop, and saw minitatures of Diablo characters, with a big TSR logo on the box. Yeah, the makers of D&D.

It's time to worry.

Edited by - ahw on October 21, 2000 4:05:05 PM

I''m a roleplayer (pencil&paper) and a roleplayer (computer-based) and I say, these are different things! If I play a rpg (pencil&paper), I expect to have an evening of fun with my friends. On good evenings with a good adventure, good mood and focus on the game, we need HPs to see how much beating (or traps or stumbles or whatever) our characters can still take.

If I play a rpg (computer-based), I am mostly playing alone, so no complex social interaction may take place beyond pre-defined multiple-choice dialogs. Computer-based rpgs can hardly be called rpgs because some critical elements are missing: ''correct'' npc-reactions to unexpected player behavior, real social interaction and well, roleplaying. As for hit points, another method of presentation might be more able to create the illusion of roleplaying - for example messages that tell you ''you are in good condition'' or ''you are in bad condition and your right leg bleeds profusely''.

THEuser, if you want to see that difference, try out the real way of roleplaying. You will see: it''s fun, spending an evening (and night and...) with friends, contemplating problems and let your character behave in a way you would generally not dare yourself in the real world (ever robbed the purses of all patrons in a bar?). My most important critic to computer-based rpgs is that these things are lost.

have you tried system shock 2 or deus ex?

First off.. let me ask you. Have you played Icewind Dale? If not.. get it, sit down, and play it. For about 5 times now I''ve thought i knew what the hell was going on, and turned out i didn''t know JACK about things.

An RPG should play out like a great story. You should be the character of the story, and things should happen just like in a book.. an awesome book. I''m sure everyone''s read a book in which they could totally feel the character, and even could imagine being in the character''s place. THAT is a good story.

An RPG is basically a story-telling, interactive style. It''s almost always very linear.. which is it''s major drawback. However, it should have strategic points at which YOU play the main character, and your choices mean win or lose. What i dislike is that most RPGs nowadays focus a LOT on the combat.. making some of the fights so near-impossible that they get frustrating. Well.. that''s bad. But this goes back to the good ol'' days thread.. so go check that out.

J