Hey all, I've been thinking about an action RPG for a bit and was looking to get your input on expectation versus frustration. Imagine your character is carrying a rifle and a handgun. His rifle skill is 100%; his handgun skill is 20%. You aim with the mouse, and fire off all 30 rounds of your rifle with perfect accuracy. In desperation, you pull out your handgun and unload the clip. Although your mouse is pointed directly at the target, your shot misses because your handgun skill pervents the shot from going straight. In the above situation, you could rectify the problem by stepping in closer to your target before taking your less accurate shots. This has the negative affect of putting you at greater risk as well. Is this kind of "reflex AND statistical skill" frustrating? Or is it just part of the game? In the end, you have more control than your typical RPG, but you don't have total control.

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Original post by GroZZleR ...and fire off all 30 rounds of your rifle with perfect accuracy. In desperation, you pull out your handgun and unload the clip....

That must be one tough mother you're fighting. 30 "perfectly accurate" rifle shots can't take it down? :)

But seriously, what you describe sounds fine to me. Weapons in pretty much all first-person shooters are less than perfectly accurate, requiring the player to select the best weapon for the current target type and distance. It would be reasonable for the player to assume that a low skill with a handgun will cause his handgun performance to be sub-par.

- Mike

Trying to control an action RPG with a mouse is inherently frustrating.

Have you ever played Diablo or Diablo II? I bet their fanbase would beg to differ ;)

Anyway, I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. Players understand the rules of the universe, and thus have no reason to be frustrated by this.

However, I feel like if you can shoot a rifle well, you could probably shoot a handgun as well. Perhaps not with extreme talent, but you aren't going to unload an entire clip and miss, unless you are extremely far away. Just a thought.

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Original post by doctorsixstring That must be one tough mother you're fighting. 30 "perfectly accurate" rifle shots can't take it down? :)

heh - a shot leaving the barrel aimed at it's intended target doesn't neccessarily mean the target didn't move =P. You're obviously correct though.

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Original post by sunandshadow Trying to control an action RPG with a mouse is inherently frustrating.

Can you clarify what you mean by this? You'll be walking / running around with the keyboard, but rotating and aiming with the mouse.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster This is the same setup as Fallout 1 & 2. The amount of skill you have in a weapon, which is represented by a percentage, determines your accuracy. The closer you are, the better chance you have to hit, if your 50 hexes away, you might only have 10% chance, where as if your 5 hexes away, it can boost your chance all the way up to 95%, depending on your skill.

Not quite the same system. You'll be running and gunning in real-time. A shot that leaves the chamber at a 1 degree angle from where the mouse cursor is aimed will inheritantly be less accurate over a longer distance. When I say accuracy, I mean the amount of difference between the path lined up with the mouse cursor compared to the actual path of the bullet.

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Original post by visage I feel like if you can shoot a rifle well, you could probably shoot a handgun as well.

Not really. It's possible to be great with long guns and crap with handguns. The sights are closer together, the weapon has far les rotational inertia, poor trigger control is devastating, etc. etc. Do not link handgun and rifle skills in your game. Also, try not to make a handgun the "beginner's weapon". A handgun is one of the clumsiest weapons to use, and requires considerable skill to be even somewhat effective with, especially under pressure. Every beginner firearms class starts with low-caliber rifles.

Rant aside, I didn't really like the twitch RPG combo in Deus Ex, and I think it would be tough to combine the two in such a way that they complimented one another, rather than taking turns irritating the player. When the player is better than the character, then it's frustrating. When the character is better than the player, it's just like playing Quake.

An FPS has perfect (even super-human) character skills and faithfully regards player skills. An RPG relegates the player to an advisory role, and offers a perfect representation of character skills. Blending the two will only ever show you the weaker of the two influences. I'll always think either, "Dang, I could have made that shot," or "For crying out loud, a level 87 Pistolero should be able to shoot these freaking bats!"

What makes games frustraiting, isn't the fact that your character sucks when he has rotten skills in something, since that is to be expected...

What makes games frustrating is:

Inconsistency. This is the BIGGEST no-no in any comuputer game. If i normally hit an enemy most of the time, then all of a sudden start missing a lot, just because 'the game thinks I should' - then it's really frustrating. A large amount of randomness can also not help here either.

Darren Tomlyn
Tune-writer and Fiddle-player,
http://www.ic-musicmedia.com/DarrenTomlyn

I think representation is important for this sort of thing how you show the player the difference in ability will go along way in determining how frustrating it is. For instance what if the weapons inherent accurancy combined with the users skill determines the size of the accuracy circle. When using a gun the coure changes to an accuracy circle when you fire the gun your shot will land somewhere in that circle. So with your sniper rifle and 100% skill in firearms the circle might only be a few pixels in diameter while when using the rusty old handgun with your 20% skill the circle might take up half the screen.

Hmm, something that I also find somewhat frustrating in situations like this is the issue of blind-fire. Or rather, you shoot at an enemy, miss, and the bullet goes right through a different enemy without hurting it. Inconsistancy was mentioned as a bad thing, this is an example of it.

Now, if you design the game so you don't have to "aim" at an enemy to hit it, this can make tactical decisions more interesting... You have to worry about friendly-fire, you can empty a clip more or less at random around a corridor even if you can't technically see anything around it...

I think such games are OK, but really I'd prefer it be one or the other. Maybe it could have typical RPG targeting, so it autoaims to the target nearest your current line of fire, or nearest your mouse cursor or something like that.