Praetor Andreas : " What is my idea of a GOOD rpg ? "

Apart from the fact that I''m confused as hell to what is the point of this topic, I don''t know. But it looks like you do know, so why asking that question ? *boggles*

Well, since this thread seems to be wallowing purposelessly, I think I''ll co-opt it for my own purposes. Here''s a partial description of a good RPG:

Graphics! Beautiful and varied! And good atmospheric soundtracks to go with.

Emotions! The game must make me feel various powerful emotions. (Catharsis theory) In accomplishing this the story needs the help of the abovementioned visuals and audio. As part of exercising various emotions the game should have a romance of some sort. The characters must speak and act with some degree of realism of I will not be able to care about them.

Worldbuilding - You have to make me understand the world before I can attempt to manipulate it or roleplay a character who lives in it. Give me a world yo be curious about and my curiousity will drive me to keep playing the game.

Gameplay - I can''t get hopelessly stuck, be too frustrated, be bored by repetetious actions or story that has no meaningfulness.


Please, rip this apart or add to it.

Yes this topic is a bit out of line... but I could not agree with you more sunandshadow...
Especially with the story and characters, the world and the PURPOSE of all it... I''m trying to create a history and explain the world, but unfortunately, the game can''t be telling you it all, you need to read the manual... which not so many people do nowadays...

- A.J. Oja. -
Lead Programmer/Project Leader
DiMTEX Software

I disagree with some of your views.

Just because a game is a formulatic rehash doesn''t stop it from being fun. In certain circumstances, predictability can be a major driving aspect of the game. I liked Diablo II. It was fun for a while. Not forever, but what game is? It wasn''t fun because it had a great plot, or a revolutionary concept, but because it was just simply enjoyable to get into a game with a couple friends and beat the eSnot out of some sprites until you found the +17 zabamoowoo fireball sword of destructive pointiness.
My point is, there''s a lot of gameplay value to be found in simple things. I think your idea for a game - what very, very little of it you''ve mentioned - sounds very interesting, and will almost certainly be a lot of fun because of the concepts going into it. But a game can be fun because it works out your twitch reflex, and still be just as great as a game that pioneers a new concept.

And as far as the manual is concerned - no, most players don''t read manuals these days. If your game really requires that people read a manual first, you might want to think of making an electronic manual with a lot of eye candy and some plot excuse for existing, rather than require that they dig through a handbook. Or at least have the option available, for those with short attention spans.

quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Well, since this thread seems to be wallowing purposelessly, I think I''ll co-opt it for my own purposes. Here''s a partial description of a good RPG:

Graphics! Beautiful and varied! And good atmospheric soundtracks to go with.

Emotions! The game must make me feel various powerful emotions. (Catharsis theory) In accomplishing this the story needs the help of the abovementioned visuals and audio. As part of exercising various emotions the game should have a romance of some sort. The characters must speak and act with some degree of realism of I will not be able to care about them.

Worldbuilding - You have to make me understand the world before I can attempt to manipulate it or roleplay a character who lives in it. Give me a world yo be curious about and my curiousity will drive me to keep playing the game.

Gameplay - I can''t get hopelessly stuck, be too frustrated, be bored by repetetious actions or story that has no meaningfulness.


Please, rip this apart or add to it.

I agree 100%
They could make a good first step by getting ride of Nes or Snes style music like FF9. At least FF8 had Eyes on me sung by Faye Wong if nothing else. And Baulders Gate I couldn''t see my self playing that for more than an hour. I though the idea of an RPG was to make the game emersive if i am correct then my question is what happened. I find it hard to become emersed (excuse the spelling) in game like Baulders Gate, and lets face it the music in FF9 ruins the whole game (at least for me).

At some point most rational individuals become tired of hearing the same whining over and over - "The industry''s not doing it right!" "I''m sure I could do better!"

Well hurry the fuck up!

After finally figuring out how video games were made and giving it an attempt on my old Pentium (then new) under MS-DOS because my 1MB video card couldn''t do more than 16 colors under Windows, I realized the truth: games are damn hard to make! Maybe there''s a reason why all these things aren''t in today''s games. It might not be technical limitations or a lack of vision, but rather things like time constraints, financial constraints and the fact that "the industry" is just that - an industry. It''s got to make money.

I think I''ve come to the point where I''m cynical of these discussions. "Indie" developers have been aspiring to create the "greatest game ever" since forever, but no one''s done it. Some go into the industry and churn out the standard bilge we''re presented with. Others go on to more lucrative careers (face it, game development doesn''t pay that well). Still others to less profitable endeavors. Many ideas are bandied about this and other boards, but too few of them ever are completed. Too many projects "revise" their objectives to something more "achieveable" after facing the magnitude of their task. It''s time to stop talking and write some damn code!

I won''t pretend to be some code God; my strength lies in algorithm development, not implementation and optimization. I''m only just finally migrating to Windows game programming from DOS, after testing the waters with commercial software. But I issue this challenge to all who frequent these forums (and tell your friends too). Show me the game. Don''t tell me you have ideas; show me an implementation. Proof of concept, text-based - I don''t care, just show me something . Good RPG, bad RPG, show me what you can do.

Show me the game.

Another voice to agree with all, and yes BG 2 is one of the most
boring games I ever tried to play. I found a cheat that made
fighting unnecessary and realized fighting WAS the game.

Well to add some thing to the discussion. The three most
important things as I see it in a game is: story, story and...
story. Of course graphics, user interface and so on
is important but if the story is not immersive the game wont
be that either, doesn''t matter how nice graphics you''ve got.
Sadly most of the cemmercial game development companies doesn''t
seem to agree with me :-) They keep pumping out clones of
eachothers games all based on outdated gaming ideas.

RTS: Gather resources so that you gan make the Tank Rush
FPS: Shoot as much as possible and enjoy the inventive
ways the NPC:s die
RPG: Find the +50 Strength/+50 Mana/+50 Life sword so you can
behead the Demon and become the second coming.

and so on...

Do I sound cynic? :-)

/Trysil

"A witty and slightly sarcastic quote from an unkown source"
-- the generic SIG

So allright, let''s talk about story. Let us assume that an RPG, because of its genre definition, must have a story. What type of a story makes for the best game? Stories are made up of many elements: tone (satyrical, comedic, philosophic, tragic, fairy-taleish, etc); atmosphere (frontier, gothic, court, madland, inner city, etc.); characters; character dynamic (love triangle, hero and sidekick, mortal enemies, etc.); worldbuilding, both of the physical setting and the society; tropes (a unicorn, a robot, a fountain of youth, etc.); themes (identity, goal fatalle, love conquers all, transformation, accepting the alien, much ado about nothing, etc.); conceits and asides, if they are to be used at all; and finally plot, which is composed of conflict (man vs. man, man vs. nature, etc.), tension level (freytag''s pyramid, fortunately-unfortunately, etc.) and gimmic (a gimmic is a trope that motivates or obstructs the characters in a story).

So, what choices amone these categories will result in good game stories? This will be determined partially by the medium''s necessary interactivity and that much of the stories information must be communicated by graphics rather than words. What guidelines would it be good to give the people who write the stories for these games?

quote:
Emotions! The game must make me feel various powerful emotions. (Catharsis theory) In accomplishing this the story needs the help of the abovementioned visuals and audio. As part of exercising various emotions the game should have a romance of some sort. The characters must speak and act with some degree of realism of I will not be able to care about them.


Gameplay - I can''t get hopelessly stuck, be too frustrated, be bored by repetetious actions or story that has no meaningfulness.

Ok, just to stir things up ... what if you purposely frustrated the player.

What I see as a problem with some games is that the player is afraid to be bad, if they do things which they consider to be morally wrong such as killing "important" characters.

Consider this: you want the player to be in danger and run away scared from the town. You also don''t want to cheat the player by making the town suddenly turn against them for no reason.

So if the player was frustrated, or bored and thought that there was no way through the game... perhaps you gave them a quest to get a key from a character who refuses to give it to them. They will get frustrated as what they expect to happen will not happen.

When people get frustrated, they will do stuff they wouldn''t normally do even if they think it is in vain, the player probably doesn''t think that killing the character who has the key will help their situation, but if they are frustrated, they will want to get back at the person... and killing them seems like the only way. Once they are killed and take the key, things start turning bad and the people in the town chase the player out.

What is the player feeling like now? They did something which they didn''t expect to help, and it helped. They were at a roadblock and they got past. The game is different to other games. Maybe the killing will come back to haunt them.

I haven''t really thought this through, and I''m by no means an expert on game design, but maybe it is worth considering, after all, if the player constantly feels the same positive emotions, then things might get boring.

Think about it

Trying is the first step towards failure.

I have to disagree with the comment that the Story makes the game. Games can have a great story and still not be that good, look at Final Fantasy 8. The key to a good game is gameplay, duh, thats why they are called games. If i want story i will read a book or watch a movie. I see especially in RPG''s nowdays, people want a way to get immersed into a game while keeping it non-linear- meaning no real story! To keep a gamer interested offer a fresh gameplay idea, something that will keep the game fun, while not being repetitive. This is a concept a lot of developers i think seem to leave out, cause a game sold millions of copies before made them a lot of money it must be the best game ever.... SO they change levels put in new characters and change the story a little and think they have a great game. Tell me when Resident Evil showed you something new in the last three games, besides above listed elements, which is why they are boring now.

just my two cents.

"There is humor in everything depending on which prespective you look from."