suikoden
Your the leader, you start of escaping from some trouble
you find a base, establish your the leader, then find more poeple to fill in postions for shops and advisors, get the 108 starts of destiny(characters).

I like games of these types for building up your place, doing assorted minigames to get new people, and your base expanding for particular people or when you get enough people.

Only thing I dont like it, is you that you dont have any control over your troops/policys, most of the time you can't even change the order of how you do events/characters.

More control could be given overall in a game like that, bigger tax rates for more trained troops, spy funding to sabotage enemy units, or just doing events in diffrent orders for variety.

So no I dont agree with your statment, I think it just hasn't been done good enough yet.
It's either to complex (more like a stategy game) or not enough (An adventure\rpg game where your labeled leader).

Now before you read whatever else I say, I've got to tell you thatr I've had very limited game design experiance, and am speaking from my instinct and experiance as a gamer. That being said...

I think that leadership in an RPG/FPS is a very good idea, but it has to be mixed in with the rest of the game in a good way. If it was just talking to people, that would be boring, and it would again be being told instead of seeing. If it had an RTS style type control system, that would slightly break the feeling of being the charicter. A cross between them, however, would work pretty well. The realisim would be destroyed if it was set in a period before radio, but a computer display minimap type thing with all of your stuff represented by dots or icons would work. It could actually be a minimap displayed somewhere on the screen, and you could push a button to maximise it and use it for tactical control. Again, the whole leadership thing would have to be blended in with the rest of the game, so that the "hero" part and the "leader" part are not clearly defined and blend together. What I mean is that at one point you are just you and at another you lead a huge fleet of, lets say, frigates in the napoleonic wars, but it would not take different types of players to like the game at the different stages because the leadership is a part of the main gameplay and not a clearly defined minigame. Also, after you gained a signifigant amount of power you would still have the oppertunity to, and be rewarded for, going up against the enemy in person. Think king Arthur riding out with his knights, general Patton barking commands over radio while barraging the enemy from his own tank, or Morpheus the captian of the Nebucudnezzer (most likely SP) going in with Neo and Trinity to retrieve the keymaker.

I noticed I talk about the stuff applied to Straylight too much in Wavinator's posts (some other dev could be thinking the same thing), but in this case it works too well to not say it. In that game, the plot provides a very good reason for the player to go up against the enemy in person: the immortality thing. If you are indeed imortal it makes sense that there are some things that you can do better yourself. Do the immortal people have special powers besides just not being able to die? If so, than this goes doubley so. I can imagine giving the orders to raid a warehouse just before going out to find and confront the one who calls himself Ra. That would be really cool. :)

I believe a game like this would be torture for someone like me. I've noticed over the years that in games where your allied characters are able to die and be lost forever in battle have always caused me to smash the reset button the moment I lose a single one of them (I'm thinking along the lines of FFT and Tactics Ogre when I explain that.)

I find the Master Thief idea to be great, and I'll add to it. I think the idea right now seems to be that you sit around all day in a castle giving orders and waiting for results. If I were designing it, I would think that there would still be small time jobs to gain control of less important things or recruit less important people in which you merely order and later see the result, but I believe there should also be the more important quests that you may need to see through to the end. Maybe you could send off a pack of new recruits as decoys to distract castle guards while you and ten of your best infiltrate the local castle. While inside you may have to improvise on the spot in order to get past remaining guards, maybe get a few of your men to distract the right wing guards, pulling them to the left wing while you and your remaining allies walk into the right wing and take the coffer/kill the king/save the princess. I think the main idea is that every decision you make doesn't so much guard against the Game Over screen, but it is your tool in losing as few allies as possible. It's not that you, as the Master Thief, need to actually be there instead of just ordering it and waiting for the result, but the fact is you are the MASTER THIEF for a reason, and some quests would have horrible outcomes without your masterful assistance.

There's also the question of experience as "Master" Thief before becoming one, giving orders all of a sudden and whatnot. I've never liked it in games where you suddenly gain some unbelievable skill at level 50, while at level 49.9999 you could not attempt to emulate this skill at all. I think the Mastership could be a gradual process, it may start with you being the ordered and working your way up, ordering lesser people along the way, the same way you had been previously ordered. But I don't like that as much as the idea of starting out as a solo hero (what kind of to-be master thief wants to take orders?), gaining a few allies, and always having leadership qualities. Your leadership qualities wouldn't really change, you would just be in control of more people when you are considered a "Master." You would always have thief abilities, but with leadership qualities you can just make someone else use them. I think Mastership would be earned given you have a certain amount of thief "abilities" (all of them), a certain amount of allies, and maybe even a certain level of leadership quality.

edit: I think any take on this that could make it similar to say.. Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha, would instantly change the genre from RPG (or maybe even Strat/RPG) to flat out Strategy. I do not approve of an RPG becoming a Strategy game, though I'm sure something can solve this genre overhaul.

[Edited by - ferr on July 17, 2005 3:30:41 PM]

Quote:

But the problem is where do you get the experience doing this from Level 1?

Where did all the young boys, through out history, who became rulers while still children get the experience?

You are king Tut...erm Pharaoh Tutankhamun...you are 8 years old and at the very start of the game have been named Pharaoh of Egypt.

At first due to your age, you are more of a figure head, your advisors really run the show. But with time and experience you may increase your athority (heck this could even fuel some of the games plot)...Hmm egyption mythology is full of interesting beasts, characters, and situations that have largly been ignored in games...Even if such a game plays fast and loose with the life of king tut, it could still make for a very interesting RPG.

I think one of the reasons that this style of game hasn't really been done is that most gamers are "common folk". I mean this from a world perspective, there are probably a few dozen people that know me. I'm definitely not famous (or rich) enough to gain a position of power. I think because of this, most RPGs use a template of a common person to start the game, causing the common player to say "This could have been me".

Also, most RPGs don't last long enough in the time scope for the common person to then become recognized. In the RPG the player does great things, saves the kingdom/world and would probably be "knighted" or the equivalent. Most of these types of RPGs would end at the point the player begins to become importiant.


That being said, I still like the idea of starting out as the chieftian of a small clan and building a kingdom. One thought towards the argument of larger kingdoms being too hard to handle is the following. As the kingdom grows larger, the tasks begin growing in proportion, meaning one peasant can no longer complete the task but perhaps five knights to protect fifteen peasents completing the task. Whereas a small kingdom you send out one person, a large kingdom you will send out one group.

A possibility is to take something similar to Warcraft's interface but spend far more time on one map and give the player far more options for building and a more diverse population as well as interacting with the people. I'm kind of thinking a mix of Warcraft, Stronghold and Sim City but with more RPG elements... dunno, maybe I'm shooting for the stars here, heh.

I think that most of the gameplay for a warrior king is very similar to a tribe or group leader, and that it's possible to make it so it scales nicely from one to the other.

Combat:

You would have the ability to fight yourself, using better and better equipment as you rise up the ranks, and later as your kingdom gains notoriety. The legendary sword of the human king in LOTR springs to mind (I can't remember the name of the guy, Aragorn is his descendant). It wouldn't be available to a regular adventurer, it would have to be a diplomatic gift from the elves or forged for the king in the finest armouries (made finer by the king for this special purpose ;) ). This would provide lots of gameplay for the players who enjoy being uber-characters in an RPG.

Also, your band of thugs would have the same basic controls as your army of crusaders. However, the specific commands would be different, so as your personal army grows, you would get more and more commands, kinda like special moves. Each command has a limited sphere of influence, so you can only tell your closest soldiers to guard your back, and tell a battallion of considerable size to use a specific formation - once your army classifies as a battallion you would get all the extra commands, maybe dependant also on equipment, training and other variables.


Court intrigue:

Some of the higher ranks in command of your army would try to overthrow you and that sort of things, and this wouldn't be much different than someone who tries to take your place as the leader of a group of thugs.


Bases and terrain control:

You could start with your home and expand from there. You could leave some followers guarding your rebel base while others go with you as the main strike force. It would be the same with distributing your army amongst different keeps, and then rounding up an army to lead in an attack. Tipically you would always walk around with your army, and do whatever you want with it. The only thing that varies is scale. I don't know about the possibility of ordering an attack without you being actually there, maybe you could strip that as it wouldn't be much fun (as stated before, the player is used to seeing everything through the character's eyes).


There's probably more but I'm tired. The emphasis is on Warrior King gameplay, as it relates a lot to small fighting groups. Economics for example could be left alone (or I could be wrong). It would make a kick-ass game IMHO :)