I would ask anyone who sees this topic please to make a reply. My next project is an RPG, and instead of doing what I did with SHMUP: OC - that is, just developing a game, and four months later pumping it out to mixed reviews - I’m trying to see what people like in certain genres. Thus, this topic. Replies are the most helpful thing that can happen, and not only for me.
This is perhaps a simpler design question. I’ve played more RPGs than I have ability to remember, and while they have similar mechanics (mostly XP/Leveling Up), what are the things you’d like to see most in an RPG project?
Mechanics that seem to recur:
XP/Leveling Up
Class Systems
Magic/Skills Usage
Equipment Management
Money Management
Map Puzzles
Storyline
Side-Quests (Secondary Objectives)
Boss Monsters
Random Encounters
World Maps
Please pick any three. If you know of something I haven’t listed, just put it on your three. I’m trying to get a good idea of what people really want to see in an RPG before I go off on a happy tangent and start the heavy lifting of developing this.
Revisiting places you’ve been before, and seeing that they’ve evolved (Basically the whole of Chrono Trigger is a great example of this.)
I’ve played a ton of RPGs, but always thought the gameplay was nothing but work. Underneath the things I mentioned, it’s typically akin to juggling bills. There are surely people who actually enjoy that monotony, but I’ll venture to say that the popularity of the genre has mainly come from the fact that the genre has been a showcase for artwork and storytelling. Now that technology has progressed, I’m much more interested in playing a game that does away with the stuff that is there to extend the gameplay hours, and leaves the goodness I mentioned above. God of War is like that, though I still think it has too much combat. Kingdom Hearts is another title I’d say the same about.
So I surely don’t sound like your number one audience, but I do play them. What I like about them outshines the fact that I don’t really care for the gameplay. I get pleasure out of watching the characters kill monsters, but I wish I didn’t need to, 50 million times, to power up the next spell. There were some Genesis/Sega CD strategy RPGs I played, where you could turn off the battle animations and just watch the numbers; doing so would completely kill my interest in the game.
Here’s the best system I know of, from any RPG. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I’ve seen. The more Action/Adventure and the less traditional RPG, the better.
I have to say Combat is over used. It needs to be a reward instead of a filler IMO.
Take DragonAge for instance loved the story and and options but the combat draged on and on. How miny henchmen do you have to kill just to get to the next interesting part? Most of the places had standing armys instead of a few house guards kindof ruins the fun.
Seems that the combat was punishment for geting to lisen to a little more of the story. Something for a time sink instead of fun (Mostly since the combat was pretty basic too).
Less fodder more boss fights I guess. Rather have a fun 6 hour game instead of a 80 hour drudge.
Nicely said. It’s not exactly the traditional RPG gameplay itself that I don’t like, on the whole; it’s the mindless repetition. For example, I loved Valkyria Chronicles, as, despite the fact that I was doing the same thing over and over, in terms of character’s actions, it was more fun to me because it was spread out over a battlefield. This is different than going to some nonsensical open plain for a random encounter. Those battles really can be the exact same thing over and over again. (Valkyria had a serious flaw, in that, the most powerful characters, the lancers, had the worst accuracy, but you could keep resetting the game after their turn if they missed. So please don’t copy it completely. )
Hook
Remember when you had to do speeches in front of class, the first person who went would get 70% no matter what. Everyone else score would be determined according to the first guy. What this means to you is give your game something unique that no one else is doing (and you got the proverbial 70%). If you look at what games are on steam (especially in terms of indie games you will notice they will have “1 of each”).
Target Audience
In order to sell a product you have to know who it is you are selling it, and what they like and what they do not.
The easiest way to do that is to look at what are the most popular genre.
Sonny
Take the game Sonny 1, and Sonny 2, these are big flash games. Huge hits with the casual crowd (over 13 million plays alone on armorgames).
What did they do to make it viable for the casual gamers, they removed all the stuff causal gamers probably dont like: no wandering around towns, no random encounters no grinding, just battles upgrading skills and buying new equipment.
Random encounters
Get ride of random encounters, no grinding, I would follow the Xenosaga model where you actually have a bunch of discreet enemies walking around.
For me the first two have to be Classes and Magic/Skills.
Classes is actually a sticking point for me because I hate limited classifications. RO for example, I was one of the first people to make a battle sage in iRO when it came about. Every time a game lets me be diverse, I try to explore just how diverse it can be. Can I be a mage knight? Can I be a tank healer? Can I be a psi-thief who shrouds his presence from your mind while he robs you? It’s been a possibility with some games, but there’s often a fine line between “letting people get away with super characters” and “allowing people to make the character they want”. I find, ironically, that old school games (or platforms, like MUDs) allow you to get away with this better than newer games do. RetroMUD for example has an excellent tiered class system that lets you pick a general class (like mage) from a very diverse list (like, 12 base classes) and then gradually specialize in it more and more (pyromancer as a follow up, then further specialization in fire magic) or branch out into other classes (Telemancers are masters of warping space and mass, but they also have tertiary classes for learning to fight with staves).
Magic and Skill wise, I think classic designs like Final Fantasy (excluding Sabin from FF6), Wizardry, and Lufia are done. There needs to be more interaction from the player to keep them interested. The various Mario based RPGs are a start, but I think slightly more involved skill tests could be made. General combat could include a light action element (above Secret of Mana, but below Street Fighter). Magic could include gesture controls (like drawing symbols with your mouse, or DDR on your keyboard) or typing out incantations (for that touch of mysteriousness). Actually I was toying around with this idea based on some anime series for a game idea. The first time (and sometimes later instances) a character casts a big spell they do a long chant, generally invoking some one’s aid to blow thine enemies to tiny bits (in his mercy), and there’s flashy results. Later invocations though use a truncated verse, or even just the name of the spell, and are accordingly less flashy.
Last is kind of a toss up for me, because out of the blue I’d have said World Maps are important (I like exploring great landscapes). But as someone stated above, fighting hordes of monsters does tend to wear on one’s nerves, so more frequent boss monsters would be a welcome change. Make each fight seem epic, and punctuate the course of exploration with these encounters.
Compelling storyline, no artificial classes, just skills, puzzles like in adventure games. That’s about it for me. Nothing bores me more than grinding for experience and/or equipment, skills should go up in the background without a hassle as you play.
action i want some inovative combat i want combos aerial combos vehicle combat pet combat special skills good effects etc. all in real time(turn based is gay accept in a few situations)
realism i dont want a game where a giant meteor strike from the sky decimates enemys but cant bring down a wooden hut what would also be cool is enviromental damage and non regenerating enviroments(you destroy a bridge to where you need to go bridge is destroyed forever while any monsters chasing you or on the bridge die/cant follow) also i dont want it to force you to be the hero i want to be able to choose to be good/evil and i dont like being the chosen one it gives game characters a stupid excuse why they arnt helping(because they cant compare to you)
boring intros play lunia it was the best intro to any game i ever played it was amazing the controls appeared on screen and right away you jumped into the fast paced combo based action if the intro sucks why would anyone think the rest of your game doesnt?
I pick character development, resource management, free choice and a story that doesn’t go on my nerves.
I totally despise random encounters.
What I like most to see in an rpg are meaningful choices. That doesn’t mean that I want to decide between normal(Good) and stupid(Eeeevil) choices, but that I expect the designer to cater different player types and allow them to combine parts in a way that makes them at least think that they’re doing their own thing. This does not only include the path I choose, but also the character development. I’m most happy if I can combine characters/perks/equipment/voodoo to something so awesome that it seems as unique as my signature, so much fun that all I want to do for the next hour is testing it on everything that moves.
A few positive examples are FFV, Morrowind, Diablo and Deus Ex.
About realism: I think realism in a CRPG is like having termites in your log hut, they don’t go that well together. In a rpg you always start as the little incompetent newbie who can barely bind their shoes. Eventually they become the Uber Ulf/Ulfette, who can slice skyscraper high dragons into tasty steaks with their 90ft long sword. Introducing pitiless realism into a world that is doomed to economically collapse because of all the gear the player is going to sell for cheap seems a little odd to me.
One could probably mention Fallout 3 as a positive example for realism.
nother thing i forgot (yes i know this is 4 im sorry)
4)usefull allies allies in games break into 3 catagories
guys who are too lazy to help(looks at teriel the arch angel from diablo)
2)guys who help but arnt any help(95% of games that have helping allies) like a character who is too stupid to do anything right or a character with crap skills that are completely useless or just a plain weak character( looks at artix from dragonfable you use his skill once per battle then hes just filler because of the 15 turn cd and most battles are over before that)
guys that you have to control(dragonfable)
there should be a way to make allies that help are useful and dont have to take up the players time to control them(looks at veradux the greatest ally ever who always knows what to do hes a combat medic does craploads of damage when necesary and heals you massively when nessecary from the sonny series of awesome flash rpgs)
Well as I said my big ones are classes and skills/magic. Technically you can do away with story and everything else and have just a wide open world of PvP interactions, in which case World Maps becomes the important third (arena PvP is boring, especially in that setting. Set the stage for arenas, tight area fighting in alleys, and larger settings like forests and sweeping plains). If the game’s mechanics are enticing enough to hold a person’s attention, the rest doesn’t matter (see UO). But the same can’t be said of an enticing story with horrible mechanics (see Wizardry 8, which as my friend describes it is kind of turn based UO).
One game idea I had was essentially team PvP, where one team is the heroes and the other (possibly just a single person) is in control of an evil army. It then becomes something very close to D&D in that the heroes are made to defeat a great evil (the opposing team) and use their individual heroes to accomplish this. The game takes place on a huge randomly generated world map with a fixed amount of occupied towns that the heroes can liberate. For the hero side, it’s very much an exploration and action RPG; they rescue towns and villages, explore caverns, acquire skills and equipment according to their play style (magic or mundane), and ultimately attempt to defeat the evil player(s).
For the evil side however the game is somewhat more RTS-ish. They have a powerful character, they have control of several towns which they populate with their chosen forces, they just don’t know where the heroes are and need to find them. Their choices could include sending out forces to search for and defeat them, or leading a battle themselves (and likely with some backup) to confront the heroes (risking defeat if the heroes can win). Since the game world is so large, it’s possible that the heroes might never be found, hiding in the wilderness while the evil team runs around chasing after “last seen at” reports from their defeated forces. As is the trouble with being an evil overlord, every force you send to defeat the heroes can make them stronger (gaining experience and possibly equipment). But you can’t just pull out of the towns, that’s not evil, and you’d be losing out on resources (towns could generate gold and other resources to produce more units to chase down the heroes).
Something else I was toying with in the idea is towns the heroes liberate could be used to raise militia, evening the odds slightly and making for a rather climactic battle between the forces of good and evil. It would also stop (or hinder) the evil side from retaking towns after the heroes move on.
I mean knowing how to use a bow shouldn’t stop you from using a sword or magic. You should be able to do anything you want, but you can’t be good at everything. Just like in real life.
Yeah that’s part of my beef with classes. There’s “the warrior” and he’s good with axes, swords, heavy armour… But if you want him to wear light armour and cast spells, game looks at you funny most of the time. I can totally understand heavy penalties for wearing armour and using weapons you’re not familiar with, and I can see needing training from another class to use them properly. But I like games where either there are no classes (Elderscrolls, where your initial “class” is merely a starting template, or UO where there’s really no classes at all) or games where you can branch out to other classes that extend your abilities into what you normally couldn’t do (RetroMUD for instance, where you can pick secondary and tertiary classes to further define your character and give you new abilities, perhaps even spells on a fighter or close combat abilities to a wizard). In short, multi-classing is good.
Please remake daggerfall with Oblivion graphics (and minus the Daggerfall bugs), that’s all!
Okay, seriously though - what did I likea about Daggerfall (and the other TES games)
room to roam
choose your own path
freedom in the skill system, Morrowind/Oblivion added perks of a sort for skill tiers which was great (come to think of it I also love the Fallout perks)
the snow music, still goes thru my head now and again
replayability (always a new skill configuration to try)
I play Soul of Ultimate Nation and they have an adventure log. Basically what it is, is you have random drops from enemies using like relics or orders but when you click on it. You progress through Treasure hunting and every 10% you get a reward. But then there is also hunting like hunting down 250 captains. i liked it because of I didn’t just fight but also found things. But I guess it is similar to the discovery post.
I hate monsters that get stronger as you level, as opposed to when you move to new areas. To many current RPG’s do this and I find it extremely unrewarding.
Agreed
But they need to scale with you or they are just an annoying waste of time if you fight something thats there just to block your way without any gain cause if their level does not raise etc they don’t provide you any gain either (xp or in learning by doing usage experience) and especially their loot will be useless.
So I would say it heavily depends on the world in which it happens.
If it is a fable / morrowind alike where the world does age along you, it makes sense.
If it is a pokemon alike world where the world has a yearly rythm but no aging, it makes no sense they get stronger. (pokemon fights above missbehavior by just lowering the change of random encounters as you get stronger and it makes sense that monsters “avoid you” if they smell death for them ;))
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