Hmm... The one thing that bothers me most is a lack of balance between story and gameplay. I'm mostly thinking FF style RPGs when I say this. For instance, I remembered liking FFIX's ability system, so I started a new game. Wow... so much time spent in unskippable cutscenes, so much time spent running around without a fight in sight, so much time before the first save point. Eventually, I found the stamina to slog through that, but then it was even longer before there was enough equipment to even start playing the abilities game. That is, it took a long time to get to an integral part of the gameplay experience. This works the other way, too. I love Setzer's storyline in FFVI. I love the flashbacks as you wander the tomb, but these battles keep getting in the way.

A quest log is always nice. Tell me what I've already done so that I can refresh my mind with regard to the storyline. Tell me what I've got to do next so that I'm not stuck there lost. Once I was saved near rocket town in FFVII, couldn't figure out what to do next so I restarted. Once I was saved in some random place in FFVIII, but couldn't remember half the story to that point so I restarted.

Hey, how about lack of diversity in abilities. FFVII, all the characters looked the same to me except Vincent because you couldn't control his limit breaks. FFT was great. So much diversity in the classes, and even in which skills you chose for each character.

But take this all with a grain of salt. I'm not the sort who is puzzled as to why they didn't give Aeris a pheonix down. In that style RPG, gameplay and story are, in my mind, separate. I love the story; I love cultivating my characters from "It's a rabbit... RUN!" to "I pick my teeth with a PUSD". That's why I loved Vincent's limits and Gau's rages so much: You couldn't control them so success was completely in the preperation/cultivation aspect. Also, realism doesn't help my immersion at all. For me, it's all about the game being consistent.

I found the idea of mages always being weak frail bookworms abit stupid as well, though more often than not if they weren't people always picked them up because of superior ability. Which raises to mind several other games and balances between the two, the usual trade off for a mage with combat ability is decreased magic/combat power to balance the two (often called a Warlock in some games). Or you could even base magic capacity ON equipment capacity. There would be nothing stopping a mage from picking up a battle axe and running in fullplate like a fighter, but having to hold all that weight might make concentrating on casting a spell alot harder.

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Original post by Ranger Meldon 11) How in almost all FPS RPGs, you can't look down and see your character's lower body and feet. Even in those few games where you can, your feet look like they're running in place when you move your character's body even a little bit forward or backward. Cheesy.

Ah, i know what you mean. But i'm usually happy just to even HAVE feet most of the time. I particularly liked Iron Storm and Project Eden because they gave you very nice bodies both in first and 3rd person view. I really liked Project Eden in particular because although it seemed primarily made for 3rd Person view, your physical body, and even all the animations worked like it would in 1st person, which game me the feel of actually moving around and having to get close enough to reach my hand out to push buttons. Best 1st person body experience i've ever had. ;D

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They took jobs, worked to buy and/or run a ship, did salvage missions or outright crime, in general the usual RPG fare, just without the power-up treadmill. If power-ups did exist it was in the form of better equipment and expanded opportunities but it was always story driven. I should also mention that the rulebook did include the possibility for increasing education and training, assuming you could find an in-game opportunity for such, but that was part of the campaign development, rather than a default mechanic of the game (and was seldom used by players since it tended to interfere with adventuring).

It sounds like they defined their characters more through their actions and possessions rather than through statistics and power-ups. Sortof like in FPS games were a player is defined more by his perferred loadout/playstyle rather than statistics, albet with less emphasis on mindless killing. ;D

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Original post by tolaris ... But isn't your stance to a degree precisely what you call to avoid, just a sentence earlier? You say you want 'quality over quantity' and then immediately go around and demand "this and this and this and that and $50k physics systems all wrapped in one game, and i don't give a damn how long it's going to take you to code all that." You translate the demand for "quality" into demand for "quantity" of features, at the end of the day wanting "all" *and* everything of that 'all' to be "the best".

No, believe it or not, I'm not contradicting myself. I support good gameplay first and foremost. All I was trying to say is that up-and-coming games really should start trying to have these latest of innovations. When I said quantity, I didn't mean quantity of features, I meant quantity of gameworld. As in, who cares how big the world is if it's not any fun to explore around in it? As far as features are concerned, I do also believe that gameplay should come first, especially in an RPG. I can see where the confusion arose -- I was merely responding to Wavinator's question about would I be as likely to buy a game that didn't have all those features, and my answer was "no." As for my own game, yes, I would very much like to incorporate all those elements into it before I release it to the public. But technically, if somebody held a gun to my head or something, I would choose gameplay over all the extras and icing.

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Furthermore, to equal skipping on some features with "it can't be then labour of love and may you burn in hell for churning out such half-made crap" ... it feels rather... thoughtless and shallow.

Insensitive, maybe. But not thoughtless. I know a lot of programmers on here aren't always going to like what I have to say when it comes to stuff like this. But really, I'm speaking to those programmers who will read what I write and think "damn straight!" or something similar. Shallow? This is just how I feel. Perhaps it is shallow, depending on what you're comparing it to. I just can't stand it when programmers didn't put their all into a game and it shows. Or perhaps some of the time, what's actually been happening is that they did put their all into it, but it just wasn't good enough to warrant my admiration. Either way, the end results are the same, as are my sentiments.

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For all we know, the game might be lacking some features *because* the author put their heart into it, into the parts they found most important and contributing to end shape of their creation. (be it AI, story, game system, simulation quality, visual quality, whatever)

It's very possible. Shit does veritably happen. However, when enough of it happens to enough different games of the same type, I start to smell a rat. There's just been too predominant a pattern of partial successes that could have been full successes (in terms of the technologies available at the time).

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Like you said up there, "the art of programming is all about balancing competing desires".

Well, at least you think I got something right. I guess even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while, eh?

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Maybe, contrary to what you seem to think, they loved their game *enough* to give up on some features in order to give extra attention to what they considered far more important..?

I don't give up on things I love. Period. If that's not how you work, then ok. We are all defined by our actions.

~Ranger Meldon~ M.M. .:

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Original post by Ranger Meldon It is my belief that everyone can contribute something if you let them. It is also my belief that there are a limited number of elements of fun to the set of all possible game types. Many of these elements are shared in common. Some are simply related. Either way, we stand to benefit from the comments of everyone about what they dislike about bad games.

The point is that everyone has a different view of what constitutes a bad game. If enough people contributed to your list, it could include every feature that defines a game.

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I have done the best I can do to limit the demographic by specifically stating in the thread topic the phrase "of past CRPGs." If people come in here and talk about games that are not CRPGs, that's not my fault, nor does it invalidate the value of this thread.

Despite the title of this thread, your question was "what things have all of you experienced (role-players and min-maxers alike) in the various RPGs and FPS RPGs that you disagreed with, didn't like, or outright hated?"

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Original post by Ranger Meldon Quote: Original post by Wysardry Action RPGs and "pure" CRPGs have different features and appeal to different players. I should certainly hope so. And yet they also appeal to a large group of the same players. You can't generalize here.

I play FPS games, FPS/CRPG hybrids and pure CRPGs, yet I have different expectations of each. If I purchased a game that described itself as a CRPG, and I found that it only had the features of an FPS, I would be more than a little disappointed.

Treating each type of game as if it were the same is also a form of generalization.

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Original post by Ranger Meldon Quote: Original post by Wysardry Removing or adding the same features in both would not make sense. Perhaps in some cases, but not in most. With two games that are aspects of the same genre, what makes one game not fun can very easily be what's making the other game not fun also. We must be open to the possibilities. Not to mention that our brains give us pattern recognition so that we can do things like ignore what is not related to what we want to find out. ;)

An FPS game is almost the exact opposite of a CRPG. An FPS/CRPG hybrid may have features from both, but it doesn't have every feature from each. If the split is equal, then only 50% of the features are included in both the hybrid and the pure variety.

If people are expected to come to their own conclusions about which items in the list are relevant, it would hardly be much of a reference. They may as well continue to create their own.

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Original post by Ranger Meldon "very different tastes" = diversity = opportunity for perspective expansion = good = !bad. The only players I'm interested in are the ones who are going to give meaningful commentary that contributes to the topic of this thread.

Jack-of-all-trades = master of none.

Pointing out flaws in your approach is meaningful commentary.

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Original post by Ranger Meldon Quote: Original post by Wysardry You also have to stop to consider why each feature has been included in the past, and the possible effect(s) of removing it. Is that really a part of game development?

It should be if you want to have any chance of knowing whether your design "works" before the play-testing stage.

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Original post by Ranger Meldon Quote: Original post by Wysardry For example, allowing magic users to carry as much as fighters may well destroy the balance of the system, as the restriction should be there for a reason. That's exactly the problem, though -- do we really know that it would destroy the balance? How do we know that the only reason this type of stupid thing was done in the first place was not just because somebody thought it would be more realistic, or perhaps because somebody wasn't thinking at all?

The fact that you even asked this question leads me to believe that you have little knowledge of how RPG and CRPG rules systems generally work or how long some of them have been in use. I would also be surprised if you had been playing them for an extended period of time.

Each standard character class has a skill/ability that (s)he is better at than other classes. Each skill/ability is based upon a particular attribute (strength, intelligence etc.).

For these classes to be balanced, each should have an equal number of points to distribute amongst these attributes.

Melee weapon damage is improved by increased strength, magic casting is improved by higher intelligence or wisdom, encumbrance is dependent upon strength etc.

This means that the distribution of points needs to be different for each character type for maximum effectiveness in the skill(s) they specialise in.

A mage could carry as much as a warrior if they both had the same strength, but as strength is not the primary attribute for a mage (s)he would need to sacrifice other attributes which are likely to be more important.

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The only way we can know for sure is to identify and examine the problem. If it will truly upset the game balance, then for the sake of fun, we could scrap it, but we should try to keep it and find some way to restore the balance elsewhere first.

There is no problem other than some players not understanding that each character class has advantages and disadvantages to provide character differentiation and maintain balance.

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I seriously doubt that by doing away with simple things like running stamina or encumerance unfairnesses that we are deciding that the paper should no longer wrap the rock. We are just streamlining the fun of the game. It would be different if you decided that mage characters need to be able to wear more armor and have twice as many HP as fighters.

Encumbrance limits are not unfair if they are based upon the strength of the character. See above.

Mages don't need to carry as much in any case, as they use magical rather than physical attack/defence methods. In other words, they have no need for heavy weapons or armour.

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Original post by Ranger Meldon Quote: Original post by Wysardry EasyRaider, the narrower your definition of your target audience, the easier it is to please your players. And the fewer players you please.

How do you come to that conclusion?

If you try to please too wide an audience, you end up with an unfocused and mediocre game.

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Original post by Ranger Meldon Quote: Original post by Wysardry If your definition is too broad, it would be impractical to add enough customisation options to cater to everyone within that group. You may as well provide a game construction kit instead. Very true, not to mention trying to please everyone ends up pleasing no one as well as they could have been pleased. However, what about just writing a game that you and your friends love to play, making it the best that you can, and using knowledge of what players in general don't like or want as a guideline?

Many likes and dislikes are mutually exclusive, plus people and their tastes are inconsistent.

If you remove something because someone doesn't like it then you will alienate someone else who wanted it left in. Also - as I mentioned before - people say they don't like something, but dislike the effects of its absence even more.

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Losing player-base = !good.

If you cater to a niche audience for which very few games are made, your player base may well be larger than if you catered to a larger audience, purely because of the lack of competition in the former.

Even in class based systems it's possible for a character to have high strength and intelligence, regardless of their class. However, if only one of those was an important attribute for that character, it would adversely affect some other aspect (such as reducing armour class).

As mages tend to use light armour and weapons, their potential carrying weight is effectively greater than a fighter with the same strength using heavy armour and weapons.

According to the AD&D rules, padded armour weighs 10 lbs, full plate weighs 70 lbs, a dagger weighs 1 lb and a two-handed sword weighs 15 lbs. A fighter could therefore be using equipment weighing 85 lbs compared with only 11 lbs for the mage.

Depending upon the setting and spells available, it might be possible for a mage to kill enemies or travel more quickly than a fighter (why walk when you can teleport?). Mages tend to be at a disadvantage at lower levels, but at higher levels they can have several advantages over fighters.

If you're the impatient type, you shouldn't really be playing a mage in the first place.

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Original post by Ranger Meldon I did not think that you asked in order to criticize. I completely understand and share your urge to be more aware.

[cool] Okay, just wanted to make sure you knew I was collecting information.

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The average consumer is getting sick of it, and wants to see something new (what a shocker) or at least something more.

I'd be inclined to agree with you except for the fact that I don't see it. Do you see game sales falling? What are the customers doing instead?

I think I'm starting to understand that the majority of gamers want innovation and good gameplay, but they only want it within a certain VERY narrow realm. For example: How willing are you to stretch yourself into other genres, or different settings for the RPGs you like?

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If that means a reputation system that works

OK, let's take this on: How should that rep system work? You and I both don't like the "omniscient NPC" phenomenon, but what should they do instead?

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Let's face it, as Maddox says, "rag-doll" is basically just a BS hype name for an engine that supports basic Newtonian physics.

With all due respect to the "best site in the universe" [rolleyes] I have to say that this isn't a trivial problem. Think about it. If it were simple to drop in, you'd already see it. It's not that there aren't legions of programmers who don't know physics, its that there are optimization and resource problems which have to be solved for each engine (because they all have their quirks).

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But if you open a physics textbook and start using some imagination, you can write your own.

Be fair here. How long would it take you personally? (And if the problem is easy, you should be able to do it and make a mint selling it to us!!! [lol])

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Reputation might actually be a little tougher, because it's not already based on well-understood laws. However, if you can conceive of it, you can do it, if you'll try.

I definitely don't dispute that it can be done, but let me throw another challenge at you: Let's say that I create a massively detailed reputation system that has all the right feel of information propigation. It takes 10 months, but it's hooked into the AI & quest system, etc. very well.

From a game design standpoint, I now have a problem: Unless the game is all about reputation, it's a waste. You'll now have this well detailed system sitting on top a rather average game. It's like having a Ferrari when all you do is go to the corner market for milk.

But if you answer "just make the rest of the game just as good" then now I'm looking at 10 months to do the combat, 10 months to do the character interaction, etc., etc. (obviously I'm pulling these numbers out of air, but they're not unconnected from reality... creating such a system will not take zero months, nor even 5 months).

So what to do? Create a game that takes hundreds of man months, with a massive budget for lots of programmers? If YOU wanted to risk 5 million on a gamble, would you risk it on a shakey bet? Would you risk it on gameplay that can't be seen when you KNOW without a doubt that no matter the complaints, people will still buy a lush looking game? Instead of games, make it experimental racing boats. I've got an idea that may be awesome, will you give me $5 mil?

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Customization is not that big of a deal. You just break up your models into smaller parts, and allow the player to mix them together, limited only by certain rules, like you can't attach a blade to the tip of another blade, etc.

No, you're not digging down into the details.

How many attachment points does your animation engine support? How long does it take to attach and test each piece (you must test intersections for errors, of course)? How does the animation engine remember where points are when the character moves?

More important than that: If you have infinite attachment points, what are you willing to give up in the process? Less animations? Less texture blending? Less special partical effects? There's no free ride, you are dealing with a limited system of finite processing power and memory.

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When they're all done, you can even simplify your physics a little bit by merging the submodels into one bigger model that looks the same but has a unified skeleton.

Ah, but how many models does that then result in? From your OP, it sounds like you'd want hundreds upon hundreds of unique models.

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Anything's hard if you decide ahead of time that it's going to be hard.

Unfortunately, I can with just as much justification reverse this statement, claiming anything is easy if you say it's going to be easy. But that doesn't make it so.

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"How much less will I feel like I'm churning out yet another cookie-cutter abomination of a game, and feel more like I'm making a labor of love?"

Why are cookie cutter games inherently bad? When I finished playing Fallout, I wanted another. I'd love to see a legion of Morrowind games.

Putting aside artistic issues (starve for your art for awhile, I guarantee it will bleed you of this sentiment), there's nothing wrong with making something that people enjoy playing. You and I happen to be unlucky enough to be a game playing miniority. We want games of a certain genre, with certain features, that apparently the rest of the community at least isn't dying for, even if they do want it.

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you shouldn't be programming games if you don't love what you do, and want to make it better every day. The industry is becoming more flooded all the time with passionless (or worse yet, impassioned but bereft of tenacity or talent) idiots with CS degrees who should be monkey-coding or mopping floors, not making art.

I recall this statement with a bit of nostalgia, because I once felt the same way. Now I understand what Andy Warhol once said: "Sometimes you gotta make soup to make art."

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These desires are completely connected to reality; they originate from the creative urge to implement the laws of reality into a virtual setting.

Yikes. Okay, this I regard as a rabbit hole. Seriously, chasing this is what gives us the games we have today. You don't think that game designers in large game companies aren't trying to create realistic worlds? It is the realism that gives us huge, beautifully detailed worlds where the grass sways but the gameplay is the same as it was in 1990.

I've met a new breed of gamer who now things that gameplay is graphics-- this group will not play a game that doesn't have state of the art graphics, no matter how wonderful the gameplay, because they believe that the only way to enjoy a game is to have it fully realized. I'm not sure if you're in that camp or not, but I guarantee you you will get beautiful worlds before you get worlds filled with choice.

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Perhaps it's time for a little extremeness to shake up the perceptions in programmers' minds that it's ok to make a game that is less than your best. Or perhaps to shake up those perceptions in the minds of the corporate money-mongering beaurocrats who give us unrealistic deadlines and pay substandard wages for the hours we work. All this for an endeavor the heart of which they will never understand.

Actually, they do understand it, probably better than you can know. You're falling into the monodimensional trap of believing that you have "the one true way." If you are interested in making any changes, this is fatal.

Talk with these people, these bureaucrats as you call them. Surrender your need to be right for a moment and ask people who have taken game businesses and products to market why they think the way they do.

You'll find, as I once thought before I got into the industry years ago, manipulative SOBs out for blood to be a rarity. Instead, the bulk of what you'll discover are normal people living within very rigid limits given by the nature of the customer.

If you and a horde of people REFUSED to buy games without all these criteria, all the games would look as you wish, or there would be no games, depending on what you were willing to pay. But you keep buying them, you make the business model work as it does, and that's reality.

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Bottom line: If you conceive of something, and know it's possible to do both in terms of implementation and current hardware limitations, but decide not to because "it would be too hard", or because you're not willing to invest the development time, to me that's just plain lazy and reprehensible.

It is possible to procedurally generate, including with animals and vegetation, thousands upon thousands of worlds such that the player could indefinitely explore the galaxy. I'm doing a science fiction game that has, as a major component, galactic exploration. Yet I am not doing a procedural universe because the level of difficulty and time it would require would force me to remove everything in the game relating to people, culture and all but the most shallow story. Would you consider this lazy or a tradeoff given limited assets?

I think that if you focus too much on precise realization, you will miss many opportunities to be clever within the limits that you do have. You'll also have less of a chance of getting something done.

RPG rules aren't designed to be 100% accurate, as they have to be understood and used by the average player without causing delays in the game, which means generalizing and/or simplifying many aspects.

I'm not sure why you believe that a particular level of strength is less effective for a mage than a fighter, as encumbrance, melee damage etc. are the same for all classes. The only real difference is in the items that each can equip and use.

Even though systems which allow you to create custom characters are more flexible, they still require you to balance advantages and disadvantages. Most still provide preset characters, as many players don't want to expend that much effort before they can start playing. Many class based systems include the option to choose multi-class characters (such as a fighter/mage or fighter/mage/rogue) as a compromise.

There is more than one mechanical reason to choose a fighter over a mage. Fighters gain levels quicker, have more HP, have the widest choice of weapons and armour, don't have to worry about learning/memorising the wrong spells or running out of spell points, are simpler to play...

Whether having access to a teleport spell tips the balance too far in the mage's favour depends on how many times (s)he can cast it without resting. Most systems restrict the number of times a spell can be cast and/or the number that can be memorised at any one time. If there is a finite number of spell points or slots, the use of a teleport spell would reduce the number of times an attack or defence spell could be used.

A spell that carried items for you is unlikely to be practical as like most other spells it would be of limited duration. It would be simpler to hire a porter. Also, if the magic system is already balanced, then adding a new spell is likely to cause an imbalance (standard AD&D rules already include teleport spells).

D&D/AD&D is still being used after 30 years and there have only been two major rules revisions released in that time, so the designers must be doing something right. When someone says a particular aspect is unbalanced, what they usually mean is that they don't like a particular disadvantage that is included to balance an advantage, or they've chosen a class that doesn't suit their personal playing style.

If the system really was that unbalanced, there would be more unofficial modifications around than there are. After all, it's much quicker to playtest modified rules in a PnP game than it is in a computer version, as player feedback can be gathered in realtime, and adjustments made dynamically.

The closest alternative computer game designers have is to include online play and PvP capabilities so different characters can be compared head to head.

I would like to comment on one of the "gripes" mentioned. A few posts brought up dancing not being used in any rpg's as an actual increasable skill, one game did use dancing as a form of healing. Star Wars Galaxies, albeit not the greatest title set in the SW universe, did use dancing to heal one of the three stats used, I don't remember which now. The more you succesfully healed other players in the cantina, the more your skill went up, and the more dances you could learn. The same held true for musicians, allowing different instruments to be used eventually.

::Random Post:: (I may or may not have read through all of the arguments in the previous four pages. So you can call me lazy, but don't expect this to all be original)

1.) The only real reason (economically) to produce a game that's out of the mold is to capitalize on the fact that said game is out of the mold. Consumers are quite happy with what they have. But they'd be alot happier with something better, and chances are they'd buy it too. So, regardless of whether or not consumers are sick of the status quo (It's foolish to wait to get to that point with games in any case) there is money in pushing the limits.

2.) Realism isn't just graphics. Physics adds to realism. The subtle way that things move adds to the realism. However, realism isn't a very good word to use for this quality. Familiarity and some relation to the real world are a prerequisite of humor and enjoyment. Without delving too much into phsychology, we find things humorous (I know game 'fun' isn't neccesarily humor, bear with me) because they break out of an expected pattern. The brain works on patterns. Things are fun because they exceed our expectations, or give us the idea (Illusionary or otherwise) that we've gotten something, or fulfilled a need. Realism is needed in games to suspend disbelief, and to set up a scenario that the player can understand. Without belief first (reality) there can be no suspension of disbelief. Furthermore, in any game (unless previously stated), the player assumes that the game world has some things in common with the real world. If you created a game that had no common paradigms with the real world, it would be useless. Even the most 'abstract' of titles have lots in common. Rez, for instance, featured a humanoid character flying around a world composed of texureless polygons and lines. People called this abstract. But it's not really. Humanoid characters, music, physical surroundings (even if they were composed only of lines). Just to lay the 'Realism' aspect to rest. Realism is neccesary for familiarity which is neccesary for fun. As a final end to that argument, there has been no game ever realeased that attained any level of genuine fun (E.g., you can't build a real argument against this) devoid of familiarity. Even Tetris had gravity! In fact, only the simplest puzzle games don't have abundant familiarity to reality - but for any complex game, it's a requirement.

3.) That said, the rules systems used in RPG's are antiquated, and not very realistic (The realism of D&D could be disputed in another thread, but be assured that the opposition would loose). D&D rules? Great for a boardgame. Why the hell can't developers create something new thrity years later? Those rules aren't realistic. And it's no longer neccesary to simplify reality to that extent with the computing power we have to use. Maybe its useful as a way to simplify data for the player, but there are probably many better ways of handling stats on the computer side of things. I find it incredibly frustrating when my miss rates are determined by a random chance. You don't win in RPG's because you're good at them - you win because of a string of completely random chances. This defeats the illusion that you've worked to accomplish something (at least for me - but I'm quite sure, as I stated above, that while the current system may work, a better system would be both more desireable and make more money. Obviously, publishers don't want to rock the boat. They have their money in the status quo. Someone's gonna make their money beating the crap out of the status quo. Who would you rather be?). The excuse that RPG's aren't supposed to be skill based or that using another system will lead to mundane hack n' slash is not only logically incorrenct (Involving player skill does not cause simplistic hack n' slash gameplay, developing a poor system does. Do not argue that because no one has done it correctly it cannot be done either. That should be obviously foolish.), it's a cop out. I would find it hard to believe that the D&D system is the best system possible to create. Has anyone even tried anything other than D&D? (Obviously yes. Don't take this one literaly.) The system was created for a boardgame. If someone created a more detailed (Strength is one stat...hah..could you get any more oversimplified?), more intuitive, and more realistic system, RPG's would be better. In fact, if each development firm crafted their own unique system, it would be even better. Of course, many firms do this, but they're often (if not always) as simple as D&D. It's a text-based RPG with a 3D rendered cover on it (Add to that the fact that those covers are not very good - World of Warcraft doesn't even have player - player collision detection. [sarcasm] You can jump though! That's a start [/sarcasm]). Give players at least the illusion that they rely on more than how well they can copy a build off of a website or whether or not they rolled a hit or a miss. D&D was created in a setting where combat was not feasible, and tactics were preffered. They were creating a different type of military strategy game. Now, seeing as we are no longer limited by a board - why can't we have all the good and none of the bad? RPG designers stick by the D&D rules like gospel. No one has come up with anything better? That seems to me to be just creatively lazy.

What I hate about RPG's is the limited gameplay and combat focused around a reverence for antiquated board game RPG rules. You've already heard my rants about the economic purposes of MMORPG's outshadowing the gameplay, but it's truly a shame when game developers can't even break out of the mold and still get their title sold (Rhyme unintentional). I'm not going to post my concept of what would make a good/better RPG. That would take too long. But, I can tell you that if someone fixed the problems that I have presented, they'd become filthy, filthy rich very quickly (Assuming they marketed it correctly, etc. On a gameplay to gameplay comparison, there would be a clear winner. If they marketed such a game instead of the next 'blockbuster' - they'd win). Even that aside, the game would be superior. Period.

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The more suspension of disbelief without incumbering irritating limitations (It'd suck if you died from gunfire realistically in Max Payne - that would be going overboard. But if you could fly and were invulnerable to bullets, the game would suck just as much.) the better. Therein, to settle that argument, whether or not realism is needed needs to be decided in a logical fashion on a CASE BY CASE BASIS. When someone speaks of increasing realism in a game, the counter argument should not be, "Realism is bad and makes games boring," just as the argument should not be, "Realism is good and suspends disbelief." It's a case by case thing. However, in most cases, it seems that people oppose realism for a silly reason and people pupport realism for an ill-defined while probably good one.

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Quote: Let's face it, as Maddox says, "rag-doll" is basically just a BS hype name for an engine that supports basic Newtonian physics. With all due respect to the "best site in the universe" I have to say that this isn't a trivial problem. Think about it. If it were simple to drop in, you'd already see it. It's not that there aren't legions of programmers who don't know physics, its that there are optimization and resource problems which have to be solved for each engine (because they all have their quirks).

No offense meant Wav (I mean that in the sincerest of terms. You push the envelope with your ideas, I respect that), but there are many simple things that are left not done :). Think of all of the stupid trivial things throughout human history that people haven't done. I really do think the physics engine example is an example of a lack of expertiese. It's all documented, and it's not a problem to do. The key issues involve time and expertise, not money. Of course, learning physics isn't relegated to the top 2% of the population, but I venture to say many of the programmers don't actively have the knowledge required to produce a physics engine. In any case, more so than that, publishers want to neither spend the time developing physics nor the money to liscence an existing engine for many projects. However, rag doll physics is in just about every modern FPS - liscened in every case. It's a battle between money, time, and lack of expertise. Naturally, this doesn't mean it's easy. It just means that they don't have a good reason not to include physics (from a game design standpoint).

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5.) Seeing as a certain amount and type of realism is good, and pushing the status quo is an oppurtunity to both chase down creativity and sell a blockbuster game, it logically follows that new ideas should be welcomed, not shunned. That said, the item system pisses me off in most RPG's. In Diablo II, the system worked great, however. It's counter intuitive and unrealistic to limit someone's armor based on class. Why is it that these two characters who look physically exactly the same will have such vastly differing strength? In Diablo II, sorceresses wore less armor than Barbarians because sorceresses had to invest more in mana than strength. They *could* use heavy armor, but it would require a large investment that would be outweighed by the losses in mana. Sure, the current system works. But this one was better. I'd like someone to please explain to me how you can randomly find a piece of armor that fits you perfectly (Real armor has to be customized for its wearer. I find it hard to believe that you could find the exact same magical item as someone else and have it fit both people in reality) - but you can't wear a piece of armor because "You're a mage." Am I physically incapable of PUTTING THIS HELM ON MY HEAD? That is such a lazy, half assed design mechanism. Instead of developing a better more complicated system, they cut corners and put in this lazy system instead. Bah.

There will be more.

[Edited by - Nytehauq on July 4, 2005 5:59:31 PM]