I can see that if the stats are all there is, then the zero sum would be kind of hard and boring to play.
If the skills make all the difference in the world, then it sounds good.
Basically every player has the same stats. Imagine if you attack the end boss with a newly made character with full strength. The boss, even with more balanced stats and so only half the strength, can still kick your character''s butt because that strength is applied to the different attacks he knows. You only know currently how to punch, kick, and stab, while he knows those and roundhouse, sidekick, drum punch, thrust, swing, etc.
What makes it interesting is that you have a chance. If you land a blow, which might be the case if the boss has a low agility, your strength will help inflict some damage. Of course, if you haven''t developed your attacking skills, such as punch, then they will be inefficient attacks at best.
The point is, yeah, 5 guys with sticks can be an issue, just like in real life, where individually they might just be wimps.
Or the guy with all the muscles is not a fighter at all because he just doesn''t know how.

Very intricate. Imagine a game where a few gamers decide to be a roving band of misfits. Robbing NPCs and other characters at night, beating down on authorities.
Imagine now that some other gamers decide to be a police force against them.
This is interaction. B-)
I wanna play this game now.

quote: Original post by Alex2
Why do people constantly put down rpgs?

Most people say that role-playing games "lack role-playing", but do you think it is honestly possible to create a true "role-playing" experience for a single player when you take into account todays AI technology?

MMORPGs are different cause the online community is what makes those types of games, but before you criticize, I think you should a good look at what the game does, and what limitations were set on the creators of the game!

RPGs are great games, and if your looking for a "true roleplaying experience", join a chat room!

It''s a debate that has been going on for a long time. Check the FAQ. A lot of people find that RPGs lack RPing. Of course, the limitations of the NES and Dragon Warrior don''t apply to the limitations of a 2Ghz PC, but then again, are you working on supporting the latest and greatest (and so a smaller audience), or are you working on supporting as many machines as possible?
Compromises are made today that don''t have to be made. Or some people have just gotten into the video game RPG mindset and can''t break out of it with something innovative.
Anyway, people complain about RPGs being called RPGs because the name is kind of deceptive to those who have played "true" role playing games. Having grown up with Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, I never knew about this kind of gaming, so now I like to look for it in current games, since so many people would like that. Imagine instead of being told you were the hero of the world that you could choose instead to be the villain.
On that note, I think you can''t really implement an RPG in this way unless it was MMORPG or you had really great advances in AI and the game engine can take into account many many situations, even if they aren''t likely.
For instance, two games. The actual game Dragon Warrior, and the imagined game Dragon Warrior Clone But Not Quite.
Dragon Warrior:
You go see the king. He asks you to save his daughter. You can''t do anything but go save his daughter. You save her, and then you can find out about your next quest.

Dragon Warrior Clone But Not Quite:
You go see the king. He asks you to save his daughter. You choose to save his daughter (or not), and when you do, you can either bring her back or kidnap her yourself and demand a ransom. This could work out if no one can defeat you. Or it could be your quick downfall.

The point is, in current RPGs you don''t have much of a choice as to how you play. Chrono Trigger had a courtroom scene where your choices affected the outcome of the trial, but in the end you could still do the same thing, whether you went to jail or not.
It had multiple endings, but you were still expected to do something specific.

I agree the player should be able to make choices in a game, maybe not quite as drastic as the choice bring back or kidnap the princess, but choices whether to accept quests or what order to do necessary things in.

I think Chrono Trigger was well done since it allowed you to pick what you wanted to do and didn''t want to do. You were still required to do something specific, but without the base structure of a final goal, the player may find it easy to get lost in the game world and not really know what to do. I think that a certain base amount of guidance and direction is necessary for a game to start off right, otherwise you can end up getting the feeling there is no point to do anything in the game''s world!

I guess it''s just a matter of preference, though. Those who would rather "role-play" would probably enjoy a more social game like an MMORPG, and those who would rather a game that is a bit more structured would rather a normal RPG (I couldn''t think of a better name for it ).

For those concerned with role-playing in MMORPG''s though, I geuss I do have to agree that fighting is emphasized a lot more than role-playing (based on my experience at least; I havn''t played a whole lot of MMORPGs). But in many cases, I think it is more emphasized because it usually has more immediate benefits to the player: they get stronger, get money, get treasure, etc. And unless you completely remove all of these things, role-playing is kind of hard to emphasize, unless you made a game that more resembled "The Sims".

I do like the option to make decisions in games, but I also like a driving story behind the game to give me reason to make the decisions I do.

Kylotan - I understand where you are coming from. But his system isn''t jsut one with a cap. say you start will sum of 25 skill points. this number never changes. Just there area in which they are allocated. However, it is very much like UO if you have your stats maxed. In order to raise any other skill you must first lose some.

Chrono Trigger did have different ending depending on when you beat the final boss in New Game +. However it really wasnt anything drastic. The only ending I wanted to see other than the one I got was if I defeated Magus instead of bringing him along. (I wanted to know what Frog looked like)

I don''t know how much this conversation has progressed, but about the dream magic idea. I DM''d a DnD campaign in which one of the players could travel through dreams, and pretty much warp them how he liked (once he got the hang of things). He could gain insights into how people will act, or discover secrets from the hapless dreamer''s less-than-conscious mind. Also, how intimidating would it be to scare somebody in their dream before they know about you, and then go visit them the next day. I know I would be freaked out.

Alex2,

Your point is well made. I favor MMORPG exactly because I want social interaction, spontaneous events, and plotlines arising entirely from interaction between players. If I wanted to tell a story in a game, I''d probably go with a single player, "railroad style" RPG. My argument here is that there are already plenty of these, and it''s time to try something different. Furthermore, the railroad model is being exported to MMORPGs with obvious problems: demigods and punies existing side by side, etcetera.

The first step in creating a true multiplayer RPG world would be in my opinion to decrease the amount of combat. Even in times of terrible strife, when the world was dangerous and everybody went armed, there were relatively few actual armed conflicts and not everybody needed to be a master fighter. If your entire economic model is built around killing things, which for some reason are carrying around valuable things, then of course your society is going to be pretty weird and stunted.

Combat should be for the most part avoidable if your character wishes to avoid it. Even if wolves are prowling the streets, it''s always possible to stay inside, or just to run away from everything. On the other hand, combat when it does occur should in my opinion not be "strategic" but swift and terrifying. I don''t mind turn-based combat, but it gives a rather inaccurate picture of battle. Anyone here played Star Ocean? It was a traditional Japanese railroad RPG, but it had a real-time battle system: all four party members were tearing across the screen, jumping toward monsters if they were fighters or hanging back and casting spells if not. The AI on your party members was good enough that you could indicate general action profiles for the party members you weren''t in direct control of, such as "stay back, heal most wounded character" or "jump the strongest enemy with sword swinging" and they would pretty much do what you expected them to. It was certainly more exciting than a turn-based menu-driven system, and has become my favorite combat system so far.

For MMORPG, I think a realtime combat system would be best, but due to lag and other delay problems, a "phased realtime" system would work, in which the game waits for a "tick" of about half a second for everyone to get their command in, then resolves the commands according to the timing of the attacks. As for control scheme,

{from page}
Fight Game Style Combat
When out of combat, a player may decide which attacks or abilities they wish to use in combat, and map them to keys or key combos. In combat, only those attacks or abilities will be available.
{/from page}

Thus for instance, we have a moderately accomplished fencer who can Slash, Jab and Parry. He has these three attacks mapped to his action keys, so he can use any one in a given phase of combat. The Slash is relatively slow, so it can be preempted by a Jab or Parry. The Jab is quick, but it can be Parried. The Parry is a quick defensive action which accomplishes nothing if his opponent doesn''t attack; but if he Parries an attack his opponent is off balance and his Slash then preemts their next attack. Of course his light fencing sword is quicker than most heavy weapons such as maces and axes, so he''ll most likely beat them in timing. However, these weapons have great momentum, so even if he Jabs someone who Slashes with an axe, the Slash may still get through partially; and if he attempts to Parry the axe his sword might break! This is just an example and obviously needs refinement, but I think the general idea is visible. It is somewhat "strategic" but since each command must be entered a half-second after the next, it''s also quite fast.

And yes, my page now desperately needs updating...

---------------------------------------------------
-SpittingTrashcan

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

Spitting TrashCan,

I like your ideas on the mmorpg system!

One of the mmorpgs I''ve enjoyed the most out of the ones I have tried is "Ragnarok Online". It''s in it''s beta testing phase, so it''s completely free. You might enjoy trying it. I don''t know how it compares with some of the bigger commercial products, but there is a good player base, and combat is real-time and fast paced.

There is a game that doesn''t involve fighting at all. It is based in ancient Egypt and is currently being developed. I don''t remember the name of the game though, but I think it was like, "A Tale in the Desert" or something like that.
From what I heard, it sounds good, but I couldn''t email them to add me to their mailiing list since my email just bounced back. B-(
Still, it had an interesting game engine in that since there was no fighting, it depended a lot more on the economic, political, and social aspects of the game.

quote: Original post by Alex2
I think Chrono Trigger was well done since it allowed you to pick what you wanted to do and didn''t want to do. You were still required to do something specific, but without the base structure of a final goal, the player may find it easy to get lost in the game world and not really know what to do. I think that a certain base amount of guidance and direction is necessary for a game to start off right, otherwise you can end up getting the feeling there is no point to do anything in the game''s world!

This is true. It is why I feel that it would be hard to implement a game that isn''t an MMORPG that takes into account your different choices on everything like quests. Imagine how much you would have to program and design to get a game to work bug-free while keeping it open enough for someone to feel like he/she is role playing while still keeping some main goal. Sounds like a challenge to me. B-)

Alex2,

Chuckle: I''ve been playing Ragnarok Online since Alpha. It has an innovative graphical style and is overall a lovely game, BUT it still conforms to the single-player combat-based RPG model... At least with so many people, there''s no way to implement a trainlike plot, and their choice to make PK a toggle avoids some of the problems of demigods living with punies.

Ragnarok Online does have a number of cool features which promote player interaction rather than just wandering around and killing. The feature of "sitting" is perhaps one of the best things to come out of that game. For those unfamiliar with Ragnarok Online, a lot of time is spent killing things. During this activity you become hurt. In order to heal faster, you can sit down and double your healing rate. Since you can''t do anything else while sitting, people sit together in groups and chat. This leads to far more talking than in an average hack ''n slash.

Also, stores buy items at half the price they''ll sell them for. Merchant class characters, who are not the best fighters, are very popular because they can get a discount from NPC shops. So instead of paying full price for a new sword, you buy one from a Merchant who pockets the difference between the discount he offers to you and the discount he can actually get. Furthermore, people will try to sell their old weapons to up-and-coming characters for a price between that offered by the NPC and the price that they would get selling to the NPC. Much negotiation takes place in equipment shops as a result.

So Ragnarok Online is not without merit, and if a nice little fantasy game with multiplayer chat is your thing, then go check it out. But its emphasis on combat as the very basis of the economy is one of the things I am trying to get away from.

Thanks for bringing up this game for discussion!

---------------------------------------------------
-SpittingTrashcan

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