I was wondering what everyone felt that most PC RPGs (like Baldur''s Gate or Nox) lack.

role playing

I can understand where you are coming from. I have played with a true roleplayer once. It was a hoot. But unfortunatly you cannot really force a player to roleplay.

Maybe you can''t force a player to roleplay, but you can certainly make it more feasible and more rewarding, and discourage a hack-and-slash mentality. I have yet to play the game I want to play, so I''ve created a list of the attributes I''d like to see in a game. If in ten years or so no game with these attributes is made, I''ll most likely make it myself. The list, by the way, is under constant modification; if anyone knows of a more publicly created and discussed list with my items on it, I''d be happy to submit to its decision instead.

My list as it currently stands is available on my webpage (link in sig) under Essays/The Project. I''ll give excerpts here, to give some idea of my sentiments on the issue.

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Hidden Stats
A player may never see his character’s numerical statistics directly. Statistics may be measured through indirect means: lifting weights, sprinting, reaction tests, IQ tests, or chat proficiency.

Zero-Sum Stats
As a character advances one stat through focused effort, others drop by equal amounts through inactivity. Skill increases are permanent, but scale logarithmically. Skill and ability affect the probability of performing a task in different ways, depending on the task. Generally, high ability makes difficult things possible, while high skill makes success on a task more likely and severe failure less likely, but only to the limits of ability.

Happiness Based Advancement
Characters can become bored, frustrated, and unhappy; the rate of skill learning and stat transfer decreases accordingly. Happy characters learn faster; sad characters learn slower, are less healthy, more likely to become discouraged, and more likely to fail in difficult tasks.

Likes and Dislikes
Characters become happy doing things they like, and unhappy doing things they dislike. Likes and dislikes are chosen on character creation, or acquired in game through habit or aversion. Note that if one likes doing something, one becomes unhappy when one does not do that thing for long periods. Thus liking combat could be problematic, as opportunities for combat do not arise as often in this game as in others.

Consistent Timescale
Time in game will be scaled consistently with real time. Some races will only be able to act effectively during certain times of day. Every race will need to sleep at least eight hours out of twenty four in order to maintain good health.

Scheduling
All characters, player or otherwise, will have routines. NPC routines will be advanced: each NPC will have a home and a place of business; some will also have after-work hangouts. Behavior will change dependent on context: an NPC will not conduct business after hours in most cases. PCs will be able to set up a daily schedule of things to do, including conditional branches, and even coordinate these schedules with other players. When players are offline, the PCs will continue to follow the routines and act much like NPCs. Thus online time need not be spent doing boring things.

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So I''ve blathered on long enough. I not only condone but actively encourage the theft/adoption of these ideas, and am more than happy to debate with anyone on any particular point, hopefully leading to a stronger and more useful idea.

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

That last point about the computer doing things even when you are not playing is something I brought up in another thread. Obviously there are problems that arise when you attempt to implement it, such as issues with having a running program at all times.
If this is an MMORPG, then how easy would it be to implement on the servers? How active are the NPC versions of the player characters? What if they get attacked, or how do their invisible stats react to a lengthy NPC state?
I like all these ideas though.
I remember reading about a game that implemented something like the zero sum stats. Basically if you used a whip you would increase in speed but decrease in strenghth while using a heavy ax would do the opposite to your stats.
As for sleep...would it be necessarily fun to have a game that required you to sleep a set amount in order to operate effeciently? I played a game, Dungeon Magic, for NES, where the less HP you had, the less effective your attacks were. While this added an element of realism, it also made it easier for the enemy to kill you, thus shortening your stay in that world much faster. If I had to factor in sleep, the game would not necessarily be more fun, and if anything I think it would take away from the fun of the game. Luckily it wasn't in real time, so it wouldn't have made sense, but what if I can't play all that often?
Playing Everquest (which I never did...I am an Everquest-free kid) might be a problem if I log in to find out that my character didn't get enough sleep as an NPC and so I have to wait the equivalent of 8 hours or so in order to play efficiently. I don't think I could take it unless I had other things to do then watch the character sleep, such as playing with the inventory or doing something strategic with the weapons. This removes the sense of realism, since obviously no one could do these things when sleeping, but it would at least give people an incentive to sleep other than efficient gaming.

The happiness/unhappiness factor was kinda implemented in Earthbound. Periodically Ness would have to phone home to mother to avoid feeling homesick and basically rendering himself useless in battles. To temporarily alleviate it, you could buy chicken eggs. After a period of time, it would hatch and make him happy (cause baby chickens are so cute, they make anyone smile). Now this is hardcoded to be based on the last time he called home. I like how you say you can create your character to have certain biases personalized the way you want. Make fighting the happiness factor! How about how often he eats food? Meets and talks to members of the opposite sex? Baths? Reading? Working (which might make him choose a specific profession to help that one)?


Edited by - GBGames on January 18, 2002 10:59:29 PM

GBGames,

I remember your mention of offline scheduling and remarked upon it... I don''t think I took it from you, and at any rate all "my" ideas are free for the taking.

Many of these ideas are meant to apply to multiplayer games, especially massively multiplayer. Of course, if you''re creating a single player game, a consistent timescale is no longer so much of an issue. I''d sure not enjoy having to wait for my character to wake up so I could play again! Unless of course, he had interesting dreams...

The purpose of time scheduling was so that PC''s could spend their "work week" doing boring things like training or crafting or minding the shop; then on the "weekend" the player takes the PC off on adventures without any further preparation. I hate, hate, hate leveling up and I want to do stuff NOW.

How characters behave while their players are offline is a tricky issue. I suppose one solution would be to have a "flee condition:" when harmed, run to a certain safe location. Or characters with reasonably good combat skills could use computer AI to fight back, although most likely not as effectively as if they were being controlled. The strongest deterrent would be to make the routine AI good enough that you couldn''t tell by observation who is active and who is AI controlled; you wouldn''t know who you could attack, and who would bite back!

Sleep need not be implemented, because it does raise play issues as you said. However, I think it also opens up play opportunities... Say you''re a merchant selling various things. Most likely you''ll be awake during the day, because that''s when most people are up. But what if the game includes a large population who for some reason are active at night? You''ll have to decide when to open your shop, or hire extra staff to stay open late. Or let''s say you''re a thief. Do you work at night, under cover of darkness, and when most people are probably asleep, or do you work during the day and rely on your brazenness to give you an edge?

The problem with sleep is of course the fact that when you want to play, your character may be catching Z''s. However, with a 1:6 timescale you could get in a good 2 to 3 hours of gameplay before your character starts wanting to take a nap. If that amount of time isn''t sufficient for the player, you could introduce strong stimulants which keep the character going but increase his need for sleep later. Thus you spend your online time doing things, but then more of your offline time is spent catching up on sleep instead of working on whatever was scheduled.

My objective of course is to make games more fun rather than less fun. I think that sleep as implemented above would make the game more complex, more interesting, and therefore more fun. Please do tell me if you still think there are problems.

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

No, it sounds cool.
Of course, some hard core gamers like to play full 24 hour days, and they might be turned off by the fact that the game won''t let them do that without putting penalties on their character''s abilities/stats...or maybe they might see it as a good way to tell that they have been playing too long. B-)
Basically I can see it being implemented badly the first time and then no one will want to do it again. Hopefully that won''t be the case, cause it sounds like it adds not only realism but depth, as you said.

Also, I like the "interesting dreams" part you metioned. I think I once came up with something like that as an idea for an RPG I was designing (years ago...I think I will start it from scratch since I didn''t plan enough...*shudders*), where basically the beginning of the game was you playing as an ancestor of the main character. It serves as a way to introduce the story while letting you get a taste of playing with a fully developed character early on.
Now, dreams can be different. They don''t have to follow the rules of the rest of the world. Imagine that there is a great deal of anxiety and the character has a nightmare about not being able to defeat the enemy, which if you watch carefully, gives you a certain secret as to how to defeat him/her/it. Dreams could be implemented very well. I like it. B-)

Quick thought:

While we''re on the subject of dreams, how about dream magic? This could be very powerful in a multiplayer game with sleep. Dream magic could allow you to attack another character''s mind while he or she sleeps. If you make an enemy of a powerful dream sorceror, you''re going to have to drink a lot of coffee until you hunt him down! On the other hand, a dream sorceror is totally ineffective in an out-and-out fight, especially in a zero-sum system where his focus on willpower and mental might necessarily leads to physical puniness. So it''s a good choice for the stealthy assassin, but not the combat wizard.

Just throwing that out - I have to say these things or my head will explode.

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

Watch out for Freddy Krueger!

Actually something serious:
For the zero-sum stats, do you start off with all your stats and then begin modifying from there, or do the total stats possible increase to some maximum while being modified along the way?


Edited by - falsk on January 18, 2002 12:32:05 AM

Heh. Somewhere in my 20 or 30 something pages of documentation there is something about a dream mage (or something similar). i would have to go look. I like the ideas posted here. I''ll keep an eye on this thread and suggest someof these ideas to the "group" (heh a whole 2 of us).

Thanks for the input!