well I can't think of any modern RPGs where I can build a party of 6-8 characters. Most of them you can only build one character and then you have to find the npcs throughout the adventure.

Quote:

Original post by shoyoninja Quote: Original post by Storyyeller I guess the hard part is figuring out how to make your automated note taker record vital info in enough detail to make the quest possible after coming back from a break, but also have it record useless info in the same level of detail so that it isn't obvious. How do you decide what to make the game record or not record? I really think that the solution is letting the player decide what to record or not. At least, thats what I would like.

If I were making a game from scratch, that's probably what I'd do, but what about modding an existing RPG where that kind of thing isn't feasible to implement?

Well I guess I'm kind of stuck in that case. Hopefully I'll figure something out.

Quote:

Original post by shoyoninja I really think that the solution is letting the player decide what to record or not. At least, thats what I would like.

I don't really see how that helps anything. I suppose it maintains the illusion that you're thinking about things, but ultimately you're still having to jump through the same hoops to complete the quest - the only difference is now you can cause yourself an immense amount of annoyance by accidentally forgetting to note down some key piece of information.

The problem is not the automatic logging of the various steps involved in a quest - it's that such finely detailed, specific steps are required in the first place. What I'd really like to see is much more open quests, which allow me to come up with whatever solution works within the rules of the game world.

Quote:

Original post by Sandman Quote: Original post by shoyoninja I really think that the solution is letting the player decide what to record or not. At least, thats what I would like. I don't really see how that helps anything. I suppose it maintains the illusion that you're thinking about things, but ultimately you're still having to jump through the same hoops to complete the quest - the only difference is now you can cause yourself an immense amount of annoyance by accidentally forgetting to note down some key piece of information. The problem is not the automatic logging of the various steps involved in a quest - it's that such finely detailed, specific steps are required in the first place. What I'd really like to see is much more open quests, which allow me to come up with whatever solution works within the rules of the game world.

Indeed. Thats also my point. What I mean is that to allow freedom from specifc steps the auto-journal must go...

There is no difference here:
Auto-journal: Talk to NPC, trigger activates, journal entry and map pointer add : "find the silver necklace".

Player-journal: Talk to NPC, he says: "Humm, I think you should find the silver necklace now, its near a small lake in XXX,YYY coord". Player notes it down.

Notice that no matter how many other steps you add, its still a sequence.

But there is much difference in this situation:
Game starts, the silver necklace is somewhat hidden on the lake from the very start, if you just go there and search you will find it.

As the player explores some places, he hears about the silver necklace, and about the last person who was seen with one, what it does and what it does not. The player decides if he will write down the info or not. Since he is not retarded, even if he doesnt write it down, chances are very good that he will remember at least a small part of it.

Then, a few days and quests later he finds this place that is filled with hardcore monsters and all share the same quality: they are all undead, and you know from all the info you've heard and read so far that the silver necklace will give you protection from those foes (maybe he will have just a faint memory of something that could help, even better).

So far:

1-There is no direct command to the player to go and recover it;
2-There is no definition of time for it to happen, it can even be a part of the main quest;
3-You can give multitudes of other solutions to the same problem, carefully scattered around and presented to the player with similar approachs. There is a good possibility that only one or a few will be known to the player;
4-The player might just level up until he can beat the crap out of the undeads. Still it should be VERY hard to win this using brute force, unless the party is godly. If brute force is an easy solution you will just render everything else useless;
5-Since you never defined how and when to beat the obstacle, there is no need to define specifics solutions to a problem as long as you provide a good amount of tools to the player;
6-From 5: Solutions can be made generic: the silver necklace was designed just to offer protection from the undead, not to beat the undead place. For all I know, if the player has been turned into an undead that place might be a nice one to rest for a day and collect info on the local bar. In this case, using the silver necklace would harm the player;
7-Maybe the player already have it by accident.

Designing an auto-journal to acomodate all of this will require that the design team account for every possibility the player has, and if all quests are made this way, I believe it will become a monster very quickly. And a huge problem arises: how to acoount the possiblity of forgetting part of the info or ignoring it? Remembering that there is a something, somewhere that was good vs undead is different from a note popping up with "find the silver necklace: talk to Osbourne, the last known owner of one".

The problem with this approach is that it gets harder to implement a chronological order to events. And thats because you're not doing everything on a sequence anymore.

What do you think? Is that what you have in mind?

Edit: Sorry for the poor english, just edited some major miss-spellings, I hope its readable.

[Edited by - shoyoninja on June 10, 2010 1:04:17 PM]

Depends how the journal was implemented. Personally I'm fine with systems like:

"John McEvilguy told me that an evil lich lives in the tower, and suggested I could make a name for myself by killing him."

John McEvilguy also told me of a McGuffin buried somewhere in McGuffin Valley which legends say wards away the undead."

It's when they make assumptions of the characters motives.

"I have agreed to kill the lich, THE VILE FIEND MUST DIE FOR THE GRACE OF GOD!" doesn't work if my character is an evil serial killer only out for fame, women, wealth and power.

So long as the system is implemented without fluff-text I think it a simple quest log that just details events is acceptable.

"John McEvilguy told me that an evil lich lives in the menacing tower, and suggested I could make a name for myself by killing him."
"John McEvilguy also told me of a McGuffin buried somewhere in McGuffin Valley which legends say wards away the undead."
"I found the McGuffin buried beneath a skeleton."
"As the Lich lay defeated at my feet, he offered me a great power in exchange for letting him live."
"I have accepted the Lich's offer, and he gave me his scepter of godkilling."
"I have killed the Lich."
"John McEvilguy praised my name for killing the Lich, and swore to tell many of my tale."

These allow for the player to keep track of what is going on, whilst imposing his own roleplay on the situation. And even if you get the McGuffin after killing the Lich, the logging makes no assumptions and needs make no assumptions that you are then going to use it to kill the lich. It simply notes you found it.

Great thread, very useful info to use in the RPG I'm making....

Out of curiosity, I know the gather x quests are horrible. But at what point do they become awesome? Meaning, finding 10 flowers in a field for 20 xp is lame. But travelling the world, meeting strangers who all give you small clues to find the "uber sword of light" to turn in for the safety of the kingdom is a much more interesting quest.

I'm sure there has to be a middle ground, say find a few flowers that only random wanderer a knows where it is might be ok? What do you all think?

Quote:

"As the Lich lay defeated at my feet, he offered me a great power in exchange for letting him live." "I have accepted the Lich's offer, and he gave me his scepter of godkilling." "I have killed the Lich."

A Lich is supposed to be smart, he would make sure you won't kill him before handing you his scepter.

I like when there are many ways of doing something.
A)Kick the tower's door, fight your way up against the minions and have a battle at the tower top against the Lich.
B)Finding the abandoned mines nearby, ignite some barrels of gunpowder the miners left so that it collapses under the tower, and running the hell out of the mines.
C)Pretend to befriend the Lich offering him the purple dragon scale he looked for over 80 year and then backstabbing him.
D)Really become friends with the Lich, he teaches you necromancy but then you lost part of your soul (as if you cared for it anyway).

Lots of great thoughts here.
I think we have to look at the reasons behind RPGs turning into what they are today. And to me, today's RPGs are dumped down and watered versions of what RPGs used to be. All tend to turn into FPS games and to remove more and more aspects of a real RPG.
The main reason behind this, i think, is the market. It has changed. Once games and especially RPGs were aimed at a closed circle of gamers, games were as a whole made by gamers for gamers. Today game industry is more than Hollywood. It's a money making machine. Games are rarely made just by gamers for gamers. Games are made as a pure software product that must gain more money. Companies that make games are now owned by shareholders who don't care about story telling, exploration character development etc. but only care about their shares going up.
And how do you raise your shares? By mass production and mass market.
So you aim for that mass market. To reach as much share of the market as possible game studios needed to "dumb down" their product, so it can please the average Joe who doesn't want to think. Just to press buttons, things to explode and to enjoy shiny GFX. On top of that the industry changed into a very competitive one and cost of development skyrocketed, projects have multimillion budgets and they tend to go to the safe low denominator where they know that X sells to more ppl and they market and push that strategy. The need for reuse of assets became higher, made by hand unique content is very expensive and so on.
It's very complicated indeed but the situation is not so sad for RPG fans. Games like Dragon Age show that the audience is still there, you have to just reach to it and most studios don't have the guts to do it.

On the Contrary; I LOVE stats; I love all the number crunching and all the intricate detailed info on equipment. I love exp bars and grinding and looting. I really just enjoy it, but in addition to this I also love an immersive world with folklore and mythology; Ragnarok Online is a favourite of mine I loved collecting the Monster cards in that game just to see the picture of the Monster; I loved looting to synth weapons/equips, I loved stacking cards/stats just to have that little bit more Attacking speed or dexterity or attacking power. But I really hated PVP; it bored me ot no end but then again competitive battling always has.

one of My favourite RPG of all time is Golden Sun 1/2 I loved how psyenergy applied to both battle and the field; how it could one time be a weapon to use and at others a valuable tool in solving puzzles. I loved finding the Djinn and collecting them to make my characters stronger and summoning badass Gaia/Meteor/Thor/Boreas. I loved finding cookies/power bread/other items and using them to boost my characters stats. I even loved spending hours of my life grinding in venus lighthouse to loot the K-Sword from Fenrirs.

For me it's a combination of stats/evolution/customisation/immersive world/folklore/puzzles and script/dialogue in the case of single player games.

Zelda series have all of these in my opinion as did my favourite Final Fantasy (6)

I think that hand holding depends on the implementation.
I really liked how it's done in Fable2 (in case you didn't play, it's a "bread crumb" trail that leads you to the objective). At first I was put off by the idea but it has nice effect on how you play.
First of all it encourages exploration since you can never get lost.
Second you can turn it off easily if you want to.
One interesting thing I discovered yesterday while doing one of the quest.
At some point you are in a room with mist covering part of the floor.
Mist obscures the trail. And since I was used to having it around, suddenly I felt lost. It took me less then a minute to find the trail in the mist, but still it was a nice touch. I'm not sure if it was intentional, I hope it was.
Another thing the trail does is, it makes the world seem huge. Because you always see the way you need to go, every fork in the road makes you wander what's out there(at least on the first play-through).

Another thing I believe is worth mentioning is the Snow Globe quest.
The entire length of the quest environment is black and white, and only regains color when the quest is done. As far as I remember there is no big reward for the quest. But running around the once again colorful village and enjoying the sights is awesome. I think it's a lot better to give a player a sense of accomplishment instead of just throwing better items at them.

Hope I didn't sound to much like a funboy.