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Original post by Ranger Meldon Quote: Original post by MSW Come on folks, you have wizards that can teleport and cast invisablly spells. That makes for near perfect "information brokers" whom secretly spy on the player, or other things of intrest...If anything, developers arn't fully exploreing the possabilities with the systems they have. That idea only works if the player is worth spying on. It's utterly ridiculous to think that someone spied on me while I was out slaying the group of diseased dire rats for the little starving village. Nobody cares but me and the village. But often in such games, you could get back to the small impoverished village and they would already know about the fact that you did the deed, as well as knowing about any other heroic deeds you did along the way. It's stupid. Now, I can see where it could be used as an element of distinctive coolness to find out indirectly that some king must have hired an invisible, teleporting agent to watch your progress.

It's stupid? Hardly, in fact its entirely plauseable. I think its pathetic that some enterpriseing guild of wizards haven't thought of information brokering before.

Players spend much of a CRPG out gathering information, talking to NPCs, exploreing and mapping the landscape...It would be expected that some enterpriseing groups of wizards, spies, and such would be gathering and selling information...from general maps, the real secrets of that spooky cave outside of town, to gossip of whom is sleeping with the prince...and in a game world where the practice of magic is as common as cell phones and the internet: its not like spyware cares if you are a nobody or not...just step outside the box and think about it for 2 seconds and you could come up with all sorts of gameplay possabilities.

Maybe the player is employeed by one of these information brokering guilds. Maybe one of these guilds is attempting to spread misinformation about the player. Maybe there is a hidden war between two or more of these guilds. Maybe one or more members of such a guild are corrupt, useing the info for thier own gains. Maybe such a guild is secretly giveing bad info inorder to start a war between opposeing kingdoms.

You already have a means (use of magic to spy) and a motive (need to explore, discover, gather info) ... and hell publishers are already makeing $$$ on selling game guides in addition to the game itself ... so exactly why is it stupid?

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Original post by MSW You already have a means (use of magic to spy) and a motive (need to explore, discover, gather info) ... and hell publishers are already makeing $$$ on selling game guides in addition to the game itself ... so exactly why is it stupid?

It's not a matter of not thinking outside the box. Magic should be special. If it's not, then it's not really very magical, is it? I can understand having guild wars over magical misinformation, or whatever. But having everyone (every NPC), no matter how poor or remote, be able to have access to that information seems like a very bad, very unrealistic idea. If you want to have a gameworld where everyone in it knows so much about you before you even meet them that they might as well be omniscient, then you go ahead and do that. Think outside that box! And think outside my wallet.

~Ranger Meldon~ M.M. .:

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1. No weapon sheathing. Games that don't show you unsheathing your weapon before using it. Games that don't show you resheathing your weapon when putting it away or switching to a different weapon. Games that don't show a sheath at all. Where do I stow that longsword? Ouch.

Maintenance hell. Say you have 5 armor types and 5 weapons:

1) Model 25 sheaths (or at least straps connecting the armor)
2) Build 25 stow-weapon animations (IK works, but not very good behind the back)
3) Build 25 arm-weapon animations

That's limiting the game to a single character shape, with 5 possible weapon types, and 5 armor shapes. Just changing the length of a sword will force you to use a different animation to stow it correctly. Now every time you add a single new armor shape, that's 5 new sheaths or straps to model and 10 animations to make times each character shape. Want to add a lizard man with a big butt? That's 25 new sheaths, and 50 new animations.

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10. Games that treat armor as one solid unit instead of as a collection of pieces that can degrade individually. I also don't like the concept of generalized damage. If I shoot a monster in the foot, it should limp around unless it's really tough. The same should go for me. I shouldn't be able to take 200 HP of damage in my arm and still be able to use it, when I've only got 250 HP total. I would like to see games keep track of different body regions separately. Implementing stuff like this will make the player feel more effectual and actual. But then again, depending on how it's implemented, the body areas thing could be a pisser and detract from the fun of the game. I'll have to see how it works out when I get there. For now, it seems like a good idea.

Fallout used this, although not graphically. I blasted muties with powerfists in the foot all the time. Slows them down to a crawl so you can target practice. The game also had a doctor skill so you could repair crippled limbs on you or your allies at the end of a fight.

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13. Games that flash red or some other color across the entire screen when I get hurt so that I can't see a damn thing and couldn't defend myself if my life depended on it.

It's an immersion tool. It's really dang hard to stay focused when you get whacked or chopped in real life, too :)

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Origional post by Jiia It's not an assumption. Check out any game world where billions of weapons and armor exist. You'll find the only people not wearing the "clone-gear" are the people who can't afford it.

Gemstone IV has hundreds of different weapons types and rearly does any two people use the same weapon unless they can afford better. The trick with Gemstone is the "clone-gear" weapons and armor are the cheap ones. The cheap weapons are avalable by the millions if you want but the real good expensive weapons are only available at special events and for the 10,000 players, there are only maybe 50 of each real nice type of weapon and 5 of the really spectacular weapons.

I personally don't even swing the best weapon I can get ahold of. I use a weapon that is about mid level as far as strength because it fits my character. Also the difference between the absolute best weapon (worth about 5,000,000 credits which takes me over a year to make that much) and the mid level weapon (worth about 250,000 credits which takes me about a month to make) is about 20 hit points when I'm usually doing 50-150 hit points of damage. The cheapest weapon is only 15 hitpoints weaker than that. This means the difference between the best and weakest weapon is about 5 swings for a kill vs 7 swings for a kill.

I think too much emphasis is put on the uberstrong kill all weapons in games vs the I use this weapon because it looks neat and works about as good as anything else. In my text based RPG I'm working on, it wont really matter which weapon of a specific type you use because the damage difference wont be that significant. Also in text based RPGs you can make significant differences in the appearence of weapons...

You're saying the game limits the number of weapons? That would definitely be a way to stop the clone problem. But you're saying it yourself that mostly the reason is lack of cash. If you could afford to buy the weapon that kills in 5 hits, you would surely do so. A better way to tackle it would be to provide an extreme offset, like having the bad-ass weapon be three times as much weight, so that less can be toted around with it. If you offset it too much, only a few will use it. But if you offset it just right, you may split the gap right down the middle. And if you split the gap down the middle for every weapon, or at least every top-notch weapon, you'll avoid the clone problem. It's just not easy providing perfect balance like that.

I never said I'd buy the weapon that kills in 5 hits. I don't like the description or the material its made out of. I'll stick with my weapon that kills in 7 hits because it looks better. Now if we were talking 2 vs 7 hits I might consider different but as it is, I just don't like the better weapon...

Although I agree with you, providing the proper balance is not easy. The one uber weapon I might use is one that allows you to strike twice in one attack and other additions as well but there is the chance the weapon will attack you instead

This is a great thread =D

I have read most of the gripes and thankfully our game Morning's Wrath, doesnt have too many of them.
However there are a few we can improve on, having read this list, and I will be integrating these fixes =)

All my gripes geared towards the _DESIGN_ (not implementation but design) of a computerized role-playing game tend to trace back to one, underlying problem: The designer confused the symbiology for the actual facts.

The modern conventions of "hit points" and "experience" and such were built to represent something. The biggest mistake any designer will make when computerizing any game concept is that he must make a one-to-one conversion of all the representations instead of following the spirit of the law.

Table-top RPG's were designed for simplicity so that the human players don't need to waste time calculating the centripetal force applied by an arm swinginging a greatsword, how many calories are burned in the process, how much total skin surface was lacerated by the edge, and so forth. They simplified these ideas into "To-hit rolls" and "hit points."

When designing a computerized RPG, the dice conventions can be dropped entirely and the virtues of a computer can take their place.

"Secret of Mana" did an almost sufficient job of abandoning ye olde RPG conventions and capitalizing on the fact that the Nintendo can do stuff that dice simply cannot.

I don't presume to know all the ways this can be done -- this is, of course, the very goal of this game design forum -- but I do know that the very English translations of Victor Hugo's great novels were not converted word-for-word but by overall message. And thus far, I've liked all of the translations I've read.

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Original post by Drethon I never said I'd buy the weapon that kills in 5 hits. I don't like the description or the material its made out of. I'll stick with my weapon that kills in 7 hits because it looks better. Now if we were talking 2 vs 7 hits I might consider different but as it is, I just don't like the better weapon...

Having to whack all of the monsters two extra times can really add up. If you're fighting three monsters at a time, it could be a huge difference between life and death. I wouldn't think that having a cooler looking weapon would be worth the cost of a hundred extra clicks while my head is being bounced from the wall :)

Now if it was something solid, like the weapon swung faster, or it had a higher chance of critical hits, then I might be swayed.

When it takes five seconds to swing an average weapons (sometimes more, sometimes down to 3 seconds) and you have three critters attacking you in Gemstone, you either have the defence to deal with it, find a way to disable two of them or run like hell. Total number of swings (time to kill critter) is usually less importiant than being able to avoid damage while killing said critter.