Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Before I begin: can we have a prefix Off Topic tag?

The topic says it all. What are PC games and video games in general NOT doing that you wish they would do. How is the video game market not fulfilling your needs?

I ask this for two reasons: Curiosity and Im doing a bit of research as to what strategy game enthusiasts would like to see in video games.

Any type of game failing will be helpful of course, but I would like a focus on RPG's and Strategy Games. Stories not up to snuff? Combat system just isn't doing it for you? Suggestions on how to succeed where current games fail is also helpful, as is specifics as to WHY you find that they fail.

For me:

I think that one thing no video game has ever struck me as successfully doing is making a Character/Unit creation system that is balanced, creates REAL diversity, and fun. Whether it be class or classless, really most character creation systems have maybe 6-10 REAL choices (crappy choices arent really choices people...as no one who has any interest in being competitive would choose them).

As an example, look up almost every MMORPG out there, ever...as well as the Diablo series. Want to be a rogue? better put your points into 1 or 2 stats and pick the same 10 talents/skills if you want to be effective.

Maybe I can sum it up better this way: I want REAL diversity. I want choice! I want to be able to customize a character or choose from more than the same 3 units in a strategy game without being nearly crippled in viability.

/rant off.

Lets hear your opinions :)

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Well you certainly have a lot of choices in Dom3 at least.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Interesting point. Well I think Dom3 offers real diversity, expecially with CBM :) (EDIT: llama ninjaed me this :D)

Also there is a world of indie RPGs (like Avernum) to discover. They will not have the best graphics but often their devs put the souls in those so they often offer much more than the usual Oblivion-kind's choice between big armoured guy or slim magic guy (but hey, with shiny graphics ;) )

If I would love to see something in the PC gaming world, would be more team tactical games. While I enjoy many kinds of games, to me the *real* computer gaming is in games like Jagged Alliance 2, Silent Storm (which had a lot of potential but such poor design choices), and the UFO series (now Sombre will skin me alive :D but at least they offer something this way). Little teams with specialized members, and turns to organize better ("the guy with the shotgun in the front; the sniper on top of the building; ok now the guy with the explosives blow that wall with dynamite and throw a mustard gas grenade in; you with the machinegun keep ready!" etc.).
But unfortunately really there isn't much of games like these :(

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

CBM (Conceptual Balance Mod) does a lot to introduce variety through balance. In basegame the early and late games particularly in vanilla dom3 tend to dominated by certain strategies.

For example 90% of the pretenders in the basegame are simply worse than the standout 10% so if you pick them for the sake of variety, it's a handicap. But in CBM I don't think this is true.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

I agree Dom 3 offers more than the usual diversity, hence why I like the game very much! But even with CBM...your choices are expanded but only by a bit.

Also, your choices are VERY much constricted based on the nation you play. If you pick Mictlan, for example, you are almost forced to play a Bless Strategy if you want to be competitive. Yes you may suprise someone with an Awake SC pick but once the shock wears off you quickly find out why it was a sub-optimal pick.

Again, Dom 3 does diversity the BEST but I still feel there is vast room for improvement. Thanks for the comments so far :)

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

hmmm personally I think Oblivion has better character creation system than most games certainly including Avernum. Fall-out 3 is good too.. but the effect of your choices is somewhat limited pretty soon in the game.
Baldurs gate and neverwinter night.. basicly everything based on DnD certainly has a good character building system.

Personally I'm mostly missing MORE RPG's (I dislike MMORPG where I have to pay everymonth and where I need to invest more time than I have to be competative.. in SP games I'm always the most important person and THA MASTA in the end as it should be. And more good strategy games too though I admit I've not looked very much into them for when I want to play a game I can always do dominions which is just very good.

I'd like to see starcraft 2 though.

back on choices.. I think you shouldn't want for much more options than in dominions.. you have a lot of races.. and between the races you can use a lot of strategies.. sure not each fits each race but that wouldn't be good..

example: if you have an unlimited range of GOOD choices that means that every choice is good.. which means whatever you choose is good.. which means there is basicly no real strategy anymore. (I'm exaggerating of course but it core of it is true.) While most games could use more diversity in the end it's more important that between the best choices for each character there is a good balance than having more choices. (I'm not playing the game but I imagine that going to the highest level in WoW for exmaple, will take quite an effort for most pplz so just having made a decent choice you'll be busy for a while anyway, no need for more choices then.)

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

There will always be an "optimal" strategy, in every kind of game you play. Devs are humans, and even through all the balancing, there will always be in every game the most cost-efficient way of spending points, even by a 1%. If you always go for the optimal strategy only, of course you'll have problems finding variety :)
Often a big part of the fun will be finding ways of playing a game which aren't the most efficient or perfect ones, but make you enjoy and still are somewhat competitive. ;)

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Roguelikes!

Roguelikes are ALL about learning to survive, and the more ways there are to survive, the more people like to play it. I think most roguelikes have pretty free class system. Here are my two favourites:

ADOM: 8 races, several classes. Perhaps 15 or so, varying from barbarian to archer to fighter to monk; from wizard to priest to paladin to elementalist, thief, merchant, farmer, bard etc etc.
It also has a good manual that explains the mechanics. It's worth checking out just for that.


Dungeon Crawl: lots. There are too many to count, but I attached an image.

Crawl is ingenious.
Races are different: different food consumption rates (with unique cases: ghouls eat rotten meat, vampires drink blood), different speeds (spriggans are fast, centaurs run fast, nagas slither slowly), different item slots (human vs minotaur vs naga), some have special abilities (spriggan see invisible, demonspawn mutate, draconians will get more and more powers as they level up) and, most importantly, different skill aptitudes make mountain dwarves and hill dwarves different (melee and casting, or just melee?).

Classes are another layer of skill aptitudes. At first, this seems like it's too little, but it's actually a major choice. Some classes also pre-define the god you worship and starting equipment matters a lot: wizard's first spellbook, good weapon for warrior-types, blood god for a barbarian, etc.

Then you start the game. Skills only increase if you use them and have unused experience. The pool of unused experience increases when you do stuff, mostly kill monsters. To become better at what you do, just keep doing it and it will go up. Learning something new is more difficult. You can learn a low-level spell if you find a book and are lucky and/or high aptitudes, even if you have no skills. Failing to cast a spell will also increase the skill (if you had exp in pool), but can cause magical overload, which makes you glow, which mutates you and isn't good. Similarly, you can go to melee to learn Fighting and to use Axes, but that means you're in melee and you're not good at it.

If you move around in armor, you'll learn Armor skill. If you fight without armor, you'll learn dodging. If you walk around without armor, you'll learn Stealth.
Once you have at least level 1 in a skill, you can turn it "off", so that it will only increase very slowly and as a consequence will leave more experience for your other skills, so your mage won't be good at stealth just because he doesn't wear armor.


In crawl, your skills define you, not race/class. Spellcasting gives more mana and and fighting gives more hp, but you also need spesific skills that concern casting fire spells or fighting with spears. A spell can require more than one magical skill, like Fire and Transmutation for a spell that makes a potion explode, or Necromancy and Transmutation for a spell that turns a corpse into potion of poison.

Transmuters are fun, because they can hurl clouds of steam and poison and confusion everywhere, but hard, because that means their experience is going to be drawn between Spellcasting, Transmutation, Fire and Necromancy they won't have much free experience, and they won't have enough mana to survive without Fighting, Dodging and perhaps some poisoned darts and stealth as well. However, it also means that a transmuter who finds an artifact trident might be able to confuse a group of opponents and then quickly kill several of them before they recover; or a transmuter who finds a Book of Greater Burnination might change gears and focus more on direct damage. Even without such luck, though, the starting Book of Transmutations also lets you change into fast and poisonous Spider form, tougher Ice Beast form, or change your hands into blades that boost your unarmed combat off the scales - but then you'll have to learn Ice or Poison or be good at melee! :D Devilish!

P.S.
Of course, ANYONE could find a Book of Transmutations.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Of course, Endo, you don't have such an informative and passionate post even for my desire of more tactical team games, yeah? :D

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

RPGs and strategy games however have always been minority interests to the big beast of action/arcade gaming. When we think of big RPG and strategy games, what has often made them successful is that they have had more and more to do with action gaming. For instance, Starcraft and other RTSs are often not so much about tactics, as just knowing the optimum build queue at the beginning and then clicking your mouse like crazy when the action heats up. At the RPG end it's Diablo, which trades more on its relation to 80s arcade hit Gauntlet than it does on the RPG element from Nethack/Rogue etc.

In major industry terms, with the exception of Bethesda Studios, no-one is making decent RPGs for PC. In terms of strategy, I might have given Creative Associates a nod for Total War, except that as their games get better in graphics and AI, they get worse in design, heart and soul. Possibly the Civ series and related games are still going okay and fairly strategy purist.

Both RPGs and strategy really exist and thrive in the realm of independent publishers and internet retail. There you can really find the sorts of things you are looking for, where teams with more limited means craft what are often unpolished diamonds rather than the polished turds available from major development studios. However, I find it is often much harder to gauge whether the game is actually good, bug-free, and much more, as they attract much less in the way of good critical reviews.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Have you tried Soldiers of Anarchy? It was halfway decent in places and since you like the faintly rubbish UFO: After_____ series that should be good enough for you.

I haven't got tired of JA with the unofficial patch and heavily tweaked settings (to create a constant war with lots of challenge and make acquiring weapons a lot harder and therefore more interesting - having to make do with what you have, even if it's a winchester rifle with glaser ammo).

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

This is where the current market fails me the most. The more an interface demands real-time actions, the less I enjoy the game. My reflexes weren't all that good even back when I was a teenager, and now I don't have nearly the stamina that I did then, either. I need to be able to take as much time as I want making decisions, and to save the game and exit as necessary.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Oh, there are so many ways games fail. Take MMOs. The way they're designed tends to make your character powerful in the very beginning, struggle for 10s of levels, and then in the end become a kind of godly character that destroys everything. And has to keep destroying everything in ridiculous number, because you have to kill literally thousands of enemies to level. The balance of the game continually changes which, though it keeps things from becoming stale, can have drastic effects on the way a class is played and in some cases really screw you over if, say, your spec is nerfed into oblivion and your gear set is made completely invalid. You can probably tell, I play World of Warcraft and am bitter about it. The way you fight in MMOs also bothers me. For the most part, melee combat tends to not be very interesting. It's just not interactive enough. You spam buttons, and there's really not that much thinking or skill involved. There's strategic use of abilities, sure, but there should be more than that.

I haven't really found an MMO I like pvp in yet. It's all bunches of people running around constantly, running through groups of people, frequently in some silly mini game like capture the flag. Where's the sense of realism? I admit to liking a fantasy background, but I prefer my fantasy worlds to involve things like realistic objectives, sound military tactics, collision detection, and archers not being able to hit you with instant-shot attacks with perfect accuracy while jumping and doing 360 degree spins. Abilities that make no sense for non-magical classes to have also bug me.

Large amounts of the game tend to be un-fun. When you're leveling you will run into all sorts of fun with questing, or running instances. In WoW, there's this dungeon where I kid you not, I have died more times after defeating the final boss due to enemies respawning on me on the way out than I have at every other point in the instance combined. Respawn rates are a horrible thing. If you need to kill a bunch of a certain type of enemy, it's usually too slow and you'll be hard-pressed to find enough of them. You have to go through a cave, kill some slightly more powerful boss enemy and get back out, the bosses respawn veeery slowly and you may have to wait several minutes for a chance to kill it... and then some other player may come up and attack it right when it respawns, and then you don't get the credit. Then, when you finally do kill it, you have to leave the giant cave full of enemies you don't have to kill who respawned while you were waiting for the boss. And you have to kill them, just to waste your time. Speaking of bosses, why is it that the only powerful bosses are in instances? Again, may just be a WoW thing, I've been playing it for entirely too long, but a "boss" enemy that you find out in the world at large is usually just one level higher than a normal version of that kind of enemy. When a quest tells me about this fearsome enemy that's butchered many people, and I go to kill it and find out that it's just very slightly stronger than it's minions, that's pretty anticlimactic. Enemies that are supposed to be powerful should be a challenge, not just your average encounter but with a name to go with it. And why, when I kill someone I don't have a quest for, can I not just go and turn in the quest for killing them that I'm going to get eventually instead of having to go kill them again in order to prove I killed them? It doesn't make sense, it breaks all sense of continuity. So does seeing them alive again 5 minutes later, for that matter. Of course, if you instance all bosses like some games do it removes that problem. Thanks some games!

MMOs also tend to be far too item-centric. I don't think your gear should be nearly as important as it usually is. It makes the game too focused on acquiring better items... so that you can acquire better items. When you're playing a game to get better items so that you can get better items, it loses a bit of its appeal. I would like to have games be slightly more creative than that.

I have also yet to see a magic system I really like for an MMO, but lets not go there.

RPGs: Well, RPGs are similar to MMOs in their way, except with more coherent storylines, goals, and endless puzzles :( Puzzles make me sad. Especially jump puzzles. Why oh why do there have to be so many jump puzzles. Combat in RPGs tends to be better than in your average MMO, but they could still use some work. I wonder if anyone here has played Rune. Completely ignoring everything else for the moment, Rune had one of my favorite combat systems for an RPG so far. A reasonable selection of strikes, mostly making sense. Shields that you can actually block with, unlike most games where they just sit there and look pretty. It had some things I didn't like (instant kill attacks in pvp are kind of stupid), but all in all, it mostly worked. Still could have been a lot better though. Of course, I've not really seen magic pulled off right yet in an RPG either. D&D systems have a lot of good ideas, but they're too restrictive. We need a dominions RPG, you could get a pretty decent magic system out of that ;) I still won't be completely happy though until I'm playing in virtual reality, with complete control over every action my character makes.



Strategy games: There are several things modern strategy games do that annoy me. One of the main ones being too much focus on special abilities! In some games, practically every unit has a special ability of some sort. And 90% of the time you're better off manually triggering that ability than letting the computer do it for you. Now, sometimes you can pause a game to do multiple things at once, but this doesn't work in multiplayer and ultimately isn't the best solution. Furthermore, it's too much work. If you want to have a few things with special abilities, well, okay. I can live with that. But you shouldn't spend all your time dealing with special abilities.

I also don't like having to manage resources, production, and combat all at the same time. I can't watch everything at once, and I like to watch the combats and try to organize them. But if you stop paying attention to one thing in favor of another, you're going to suffer for it. You'll run out of resources, or your opponent will pull some trick against your army, or you'll stop producing units... and you can't watch everything all the time. It's just frustrating. And then combine that with special abilities on all your units, oy.

And then there's the fighting itself. There's too much emphasis on pulling silly tricks that take advantage of the mechanics of the game, and using special units with powerful abilities to ruin your opponent without letting him fight back. I want there to be more relevance in maneuvering, terrain, tactics! Like the Total War series (though I think I actually prefer medieval total war to medieval 2. Haven't played the rome or shogun series). If only they didn't rely so much on powerful generals artificially increasing the strength of your armies, it would be perfect.

Anyway this is getting pretty long so I think I'll stop now :)

Edit: AI design tends to hamper strategy games a lot more than most other game types. Probably because they have to do so much more. In some games it more or less works, but in some games it completely fails. Like in supreme commander, where basically your enemy AIs do nothing but send experimental units at you and build tons of defenses.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

I've actually read that from the big game company's point of view, developing a game system, as basic as that seems, is more costly than developing state of the art graphics.

they already have the gfx staff, but developing and tuning a game system is a risk. unlike rogues which can innovate because the game is never 'finished', proprietary games must release a more or less finished product. they can't be gambling with experimental game systems. for this reason they just take something off the shelf and roll with it. it's kinda funny how they sell "used the D20 system!", like its a good thing to be using a highly simplified system that can be used with pen&paper. as long as they add lens flare people don't care. or at least they use to not care, gamers today are getting fed up with the same old drivel.

i think DIY and hobbyist games are going to become more popular. dynamic languages like Python facilitate rapid prototyping and allow relatively quick testing. it isn't even infeasible to do quick buildups for testing and then rewrite computationally intensive portions in a faster running language.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

What kind of puzzles are bad? I love wordlock-puzzles of Betrayal at Krondor. I still swear I will finish it, one day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzHcdb2P4Ck

I've heard about Rune. Have you heard about Lugaru? It's creator was inspired by the former.


For strategy games: try Spring. It's open-source Total Annihilation. You can download TA units into it, but that's only legal if you own the original TA. It has everything you mentioned, and big explosions. By big, I mean "never let you commander be killed in the center of your base". Also known as "this water-filled hole is so big it stops my counterattack".

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Why not just play TA then?

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Heeeey, betrayal at krondor. I have that laying around somewhere. And several of the series relating to the setting. Actually we got the game long after we got the books.

Hmm... well, like I said, jump puzzles tend to annoy me quite a bit, I've always had issues with those. Mostly it's the kind of puzzle that requires you to have some random item or collection of random items to complete, coupled with not having any idea what sort of items you'll need to do it. I also hate a certain kind of puzzle that pops up in final fantasy 7... the "where in the heck do I go now" puzzle. Maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention, but it seems like in that game after a certain point you basically have to just wander around until you stumble upon where you need to be.

I'd not heard about Lugaru. Thanks for the mention... I'll check it out. I don't suppose in Spring they fixed the minor issue of, well, the pathing AI? That was one of the most frustrating things about total annihilation for me, especially since back then I used to like playing on the metal maps, and they tended to have horrible chokepoints.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

I still enjoy roguelikes and muds over todays offerings.

I like turn based strategy. Very few of those ever come out. Those that do fail me because of the failure to implement a decent multiplayer component.

Although I do play the odd FPS to get out some of the "gamer" in me :) Playing Biochock at the moment and greatly enjoying that.

But for the most part games today fail me because of lack of options, lack of depth and lack of immersion. Maybe that is why I like games like roguelikes, muds etc.. The less graphics there are the more I am sucked into the game by my own imagination. It is rare that a graphically rich game like Bioshock comes along that actually grips me. (but I can only play that late at night as I have two young sons).

Some games I would probably love if instead of RTS they were TBS.

As a fan of play by mail games back in the day, and recently PBEM I know I am a not the target demographic, so it is up to me to find indy devs that enjoy the same kind of things in games that I do.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Just for good measure.. most of what endo says about roguelikes is in oblivion too... and nice graphs.. and an editor

PS Why not just play TA then? 10 points for Sombre there..

Some pplz in here have just talked them selves to much into indie, roguelikes etc that the just can't seem to get the fact that mainstream games do have some very nice titles there.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Oblivion had some good features, the alchemy/spell making were decent but the design focuse was clearly on the graphics. Though I think I played Daggerfall longer than Oblivion.

Neverwinter Nights had some great stuff too, and Dragon Age holds some promise.

The early games like wizardy etc.. really engaged me. So for me it is mostly a preference of turn based over real time, and most modern RPGS like oblivion are real time. Many of them make me motion sick so that's a non starter right there :D

I like isometric/topdown over first person but that probably comes from starting as a PnP player long ago. So for me it is a matter of presentation. Minimal presentation usually means the focus has been on the gameplay. There are always exceptions.

Opportunity to play plays a great part of it too. When I can play and what I have available to play on.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Perhaps I should!

However, Spring has big explosions, so I might be able to play it in school. It just takes a few people to start the first game, then other people come to look at the explosions, then they try it, and we have a huge war.
That's what happened with Aliens versus Predator, any way. :D Studying for "game development" is fun.

Also, when I tried TA, I didn't know what to do, never built tier 2 construction unit, and gave up when the campaign didn't work right.


How does Oblivion compare to Morrowind? I tried Morrowind, but 1) the world felt empty 2) everything encouraged minmaxing and grinding 3) the character growth was too heavily based on character creation.

I think mods could fix 1 and 2 might have been a flashback to Daggerfall, but 3 is a real failure. In fact, it fits this thread perfectly.



How am I supposed to create a character that works for the whole game, BEFORE I start the game? Dominions circumvents this the same way as some roguelikes: learning to create a character is a big part of the game itself and part of what makes a good player. This doesn't work for plot-based games that try to tell a story.

Worst are the games where you press "roll random stats" until you get high everything. You don't know what's good enough, so you never feel comfortable stopping...
Then comes Morrowind, in which you choose which skills you will have to increase to level up, and how easy it is to increase those skills. If you choose the wrong skills, you level up without getting better at fighting; or you don't level up without grinding; or you don't like how the skills work (stealth, stealing) and have to start over.

Then come games where you have a set of classes to choose from, before you know how they work and with no chance of changing the choice later.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

I may admit this looks pretty funny :D

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=6udIo5SmwWA

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

this is why i hate random stat stuff. yet at the same time hate 'choose your own' because they encourage min-maxing. i think that the randomizers should be given a number of 'points' that they spend the same way a player does. i think the player (or some factor the player can choose) should influence how stats are randomly selected. thus, the 'class' influences stat selection, or the player can assign weights to stats and those will be favored by the randomizer.

this is just how FA stats selecter works.

also, stat usage shouldn't be so unidimensional, that will help alleviate that problem of min-maxing. if a mental stat like 'memory' or 'psyche' influences the ease with which skill is gained, while a stat like strength is a factor in how effective a skill is; then there suddenly become dynamics in how characters should be designed. no longer is a 'strong' character better than a smart one with a melee weapon, because the brainy character may outrun strength in the sort of mid-run by being more skilled. however, if _all_ your character will ever do is swing a sword, then high str at the expense of other stats may pay off because they won't learn to do anything but swing a sword, and poor attributes that factor into skilling up won't be so important. but then you lose out on gaining other skills.

i also hate how strength is considered an absolute measure of 'strength'. this means that giants have huge strengths but typical other stats. all stats have a sort of 'norm' except for strength. that just isn't very aesthetically pleasing (when it comes to how 'beautiful' a system is :D).

rather, strength should represent intrinsic ability to perform acts of strength. the absolute 'how much can i lift' should be an interaction of body size and strength. a smaller character with a higher strength may not actually be as 'strong' as a larger character with a lower strength. however the smaller character may be able better to handle the weight and usage of a weapon that is large relative to their size, while the larger character will have trouble handling a weapon with the same 'weapon to body size' ratio. this allows the size of things relative to body size to be given a constant effect, rather then just the size of a thing having a constant effect. this is more pleasing to real world modeling too.

again, this is how the FA strength stat works

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

There's nothing in Morrowind that says you have to Min Max, if you choose to just play it on it's own, it's very rewarding experience.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

/de-lurk

Some good suggestions here, thanks. Got to check out that 'Crawl.

To the people talking about balance nerfs, item-based gameplay and level grinding... ever tried Guild Wars? As far as action RPGs go, it's pretty lenient on grinding or finding items, and even though skill rebalancing happens once in a while, re-speccing is free. Only the primary profession of the character is set in stone at character creation, otherwise you can freely change the "build" of the character after you've picked up the skills from quests or trainers. (There are 1300+ individual skills that result in literally hundreds of "viable" character builds, and many times that if you accept less viable ones.)

The "higher" forms of GW PvP are very strategic and demanding. There are no char level or gear differences, and lots of communication and coordination is required. However, it does take quite a commitment to build the skills and social networks required to break into PvP. Also, it certainly doesn't represent even remotely realistic fantasy army action - it's just small-teams tactics in a fantasy setting.

-----------------------

I'd like to see a very casual action RPG enter the market, something that could be played with friends a couple hours per week. Focusing on the "action" part would be nice too - complex character systems probably wouldn't fit the bill with my buddies. The multiplayer expansion for Mount & Blade sounds nice, we'll see how that turns out.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

I've played Guild Wars for a long time but as you said, it's incredibly hard to break into a good group.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

There's a roguelike that did the "choose from random stats" pretty well. I don't remember it's name, but it was D&D derivative. It gave you a set of 6 stat-blocks at once, which included base stats and few special things. These special things varied from spells to items to extra skills to strange powers. There's so much stuff you can get that you won't get even similar bonuses again, so if you see something that looks like it'd work, you'll take it, and that ring of invisibility or whatever will be your defining characteristic for quite a while. You might be a conanesque barbarian instead of the typical hobbit rogue, but who cares?

Nice to see you reading this thread and talking about Fourth Age, Omnirizon. Now you just hurry up create the perfect Dominions rpg. :D

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Some of the 'bands (Angband family of the roguelikes) provide alternatives for stat selection: rolling (with target values pinned to certain stats) or points assignment.

I'm going to have to try out Dungeon Crawl. I've tried ToME (another 'band) before, but thought it was a hodge-podge of too many different themes hacked together - quite unbalanced and quite exploitable.

In addition to overhead view, single-character RPGs, I also like turn-based ones with a first person POV and entire parties under player control. The old classic, Interplay's Tales of the Unknown: The Bard's Tale, comes readily to mind.

To answer the original poster's question, I would like to see more turn-based RPGs that allowed for switching between first person POV (with beautiful, 3D-rendered dungeon-scapes and opponents) and overhead view (2D map with either sprites or 3D models for units/characters). Such games would ideally allow multiple players to control certain characters in the same party, or for one player to control the entire party. (There was once an attempt to make a 'band like this; I believe that is was called mangband.) Also would be good to be skill-based (much like the concept of Dungeon Crawl) rather than class-based, and simply have classes be predefined (hopefully balanced and useful) bundles of skills.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

These are the biggest flaws I see being done with games:
1) No map editor or very complex map editor (Titans_Quest was a mess)
2) Maximum map size is too small (Devs not using the 64-bit OS)
3) Fixed worlds with limited randomness (Why can't RPGs have everything completely random such as towns, quests, NPCs, main bosses, items found etc., etc.,)
4) No Realistic World (Currently every RPG claims the world is in danger and needs to be saved yet the truth is all the evil bosses are couch potatoes waiting for you to arrive and kill them. I'd like to play an RPG where the forces of evil have a chance of destroying some or most of the world if I choose to do nothing and be lazy.)

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Thanks for the encouragement :) with school back in session I don't do much work on it now. If I were to get into tinkering with it I would not get any school work done.

However, I do occasionally take time to scope out random map generators (currently looking at how FreeCiv's works) and hope to have a map generator to use with it finished by the summer.


complete randomness is difficult... I think the only game I've seen that does complete randomness well is Dwarf Fortress. I recall even reading that Tarn Adams (the creator) considers the random world generator _THE_ biggest part of Dwarf Fortress. Consequently, its 'bosses' do roam the world and tear stuff up. The world generation and processing of that game is absolutely amazing! Adams is a genius. However, he sucks at designing an interface. :) He should make the program so that user-made interfaces can be wrapped around it.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

The thing that really lets me down about RPGs, these days is the move towards single character games. Mostly now you can play only one character instead of a party. While this is good for some games, I really miss the old days where you could construct your party to cover a lot of roles and didnt have to rely on idiotic AI npcs.

The other thing I cant stand in RPGs is Dynamic Leveling!! Good god, whoever thought that up should be killed. Oblivion was the most prominently bad example. Every battle throughout the entire game was resolved in almost exactly the same manner, regardless if you are a lvl-1 rookie fighting a rat or a level-50 insanely powerful hero fighting a demigod. So stupid! Why put all your effort into your character to not get any reward?

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

I think that for me, the greatest dissapointment in the gaming industry so far has been the lack of support many companies give to their previous titles. Company of Heroes is possibly my favorite game of all time, and Relic does a better job than many companies at patching and such, but the latest balance patch has been ongoing for EIGHT MONTHS!!! In the meantime the community is bleeding players and lacking in competitiveness at the top because of the balance issues.

As for RPGs, I haven't played one in a while, but Oblivion is my favorite fantasy one by far. Even if Bethesda doesn't do much in the way of support, the flexible editor means that there will always be user-created content if I get bored.

One RPG I would encourage everyone to try though is Freelancer. It looks pretty decent, has one of the most convincing "living" worlds I have ever seen, and you don't have to worry about character stats or creation.

+1 to Guild Wars shout out, I can stop playing for months without feeling bad ;)

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

I believe you're referring to Incursion? Based on the D20 system? Loved it but I'm still waiting for the next update.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

On Guild Wars: The concept is good, the execution is very poor. IMHO of course.

The game play just isn't very fun. PvP is nice, but PvE just leaves a lot to be desired.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Agreed. Also, party design adds another dimension to the entertainment. Just like one might always wish for another 40 design points when designing a pretender, one often tends to want one more character slot in a party. IMO, trying to find the best complements and synergies between party members, while covering a variety of roles and being limited to the allowed number of slots, is part of the fun of those types of games.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

That was a good mention about guild wars, I wasn't really thinking about it when I wrote my massive wall of text post. It does have the benefit of avoiding completely destroying builds for the most part, and the item based level grind. As another poster said however, the gameplay wasn't completely appealing to me. I never got involved in pvp in guild wars though so I missed out on the main point of the game. It did have some good ideas.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

The nice thing about GW is that you're not required to have a guild to get involved in PvP. You can just find 3 friends and play arena battles. Hell, you can just put together a team on the spot and do reasonably well. Its even better in Factions, more options.
I've mostly done PVE though, I think its pretty fun. :)

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Bethesda changed the random encounter spawn for Fallout 3. They split the map into "areas" and each area spawns creatures relevant to the level you first visited, so newbie areas stay with newbie random encounters.

For the most part, however, I'm not sure how "new" it can get. Aren't nearly all games, from 1980s scrolling shooters to FPS to RPG basically all about flinging larger weapons at larger opponents at later points in the game?

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

New gameplay can always be discovered.

Populous (of course Molyneux had several other innovative titles)
Midwinter
Stunt Island
Sim X (city,theme park, zoo etc)

more recently

Crayon physics
Darwinia
Portal

I think there are a plethora of games that don't involve killing the next big thing and most of those are the ones with innovation in them.

Most 'innovation' in the FPS genre is really new gimmicks (bullet time, terrain adjustment etc...)

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Yeah I played fallout and the system there was *slightly* better but still lame. Where is the fun in a game when every battle, from start to finish, requires exactly 3 shots? There is no strategy, no feelings of accomplishment. Just level grinding and new equipment. Its fantastically boring!

As for how the gameplay can be different - of course it can! It doesnt take a genius to think of ideas how. I mean all you have to do is make combat specialized. So you have to use a particular tactic against an enemy rather than the 1-2-3 main attack. Or you have to use a specific weapon. Or have a particular skill to outwit/disarm your enemy. The list goes on, all it takes is a little creativity instead of just plugging another NPC mob into a leveling formula.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Funnily enough fallout has both disarming and particular vulnerabilities. Your standing and skills also reflect what kinds of encounters appear so it does have some nice touches to it.

Although the vulnerabilities could have been implemented better (I think Bioshock does a much better job at the same thing).

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Yeah, some of the most fun I had in Fallout 3 was shooting the antennae off all those stupid fire ants so they went ballistic on each other. :D

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

The fire ants was a one-off mission. The grand majority of the game was resolved by the 1-2-3 attack. No finesse or strategy required.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

well you did state using particular tactics against particular enemies and it has that across multiple enemy types being vulnerable to particular weapons. You can conserve plenty of ammo and kill faster if you use the right weapon against the right mutant/robot/human. It might not have been particularly well implemented but it was in there.


Part of the issue with corporate games today is that too many decision makers are involved, so even something that starts with a groundbreaking vision and great concept will be watered down and homogenized. Usually the scope broadens and the vision is compromised.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

My main problem with Fallout 3 was that you couldn't go ANYWHERE without a significant danger. I liked Oblivion's "system" because it was possible to get places without a constant battle, but if you wanted to get some loot or whatever it was easy to just go to the nearest ruin/cave/abandoned fort/whatever. That and I felt like there was much more openness in Oblivion, more factions, more incentives to explore.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Fallout was also not my genre of choice. An interesting game, but it played much too much like...Oblivion, morrowind, etc but the loot system and skill system wasnt as fun in my opinion. The V.A.T.S was a great idea though, I did like that.

As to innovation in gaming....Agreed with the FPS comments about gimmicky stuff (Oh look you can DEFY GRAVITY! im lookin at you, prey). But I'd also extend that to other game genres as well. They think they can trick us (and maybe they can, the majority of us) by making a formulaic game and throwing in one or two gimmicks and then call it Ground Breaking!

Formula isnt ALWAYS bad. If a system works for what you have in mind, no need to reinvent the wheel. Problem is, most of the formulas today are subpar and they can do much better. They just choose not to because they are risk adverse and want the product out ASAP.

Combat systems in MMORPGs and RPGs in general are the main offenders here.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Well being into Fall-out 3 and Oblivion both (and rating them both just below Baldurs Gate) I must say either leveling system has its benefits.

Unlike most I really LIKED that in Oblivion you always had a challange and it was never too much.
Then again I also like feeling like a god and killing critters in Fall-out 3 :D. Unlike Trumanator I must say I found Fall out 3 on the easy side the whole game through. Unless you roamed FAR outside the way the initial quests point you (I'm talking FAR out of the way) and just do stuff you encounter and kill whatever critter you encouter you should be leveling pretty fast and I was/am level 20 half way through the game. By the time I encountered my first death claws and enclave soldiers I could easily beat them. Sure some encounters with large groups of supermutants where though and sure I died from time to time but still pretty easy.
Another complaint I hear often is that in the end of both games you will have most stats maxed and however you started won't matter much. This is true, especially for fall out but I think it's intentional (so much stat books etc etc) and it doesn't bother me.
All in all I like the leveling in both games.

I must say I think both games have a lot of content though and I've not seen more in less graphical games (except BG) as has been said.

V.A.T.S. in Fallout made the game very very very very very easy. I Vats everything in sight and it dies :D

I like the very thought through DnD system more, baldurs gate turn based stuff I liked more too.. but you can hardly expect a comp game developed in a few years max to be equal to a system that has been around much longer.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

I thought Prey was an excellent game - especially from the perspective of "if you're going to make an FPS, make it story driven" - as the story was quite engaging.

I had to abandon my game of Oblivion. After painstakingly pushing my Sneak(Stealth?)/Herbalism/Alchemy all to level 10, while my combat skills were all much lower, I suddenly found that I couldn't kill anything, at least not without guzzling nearly irreplaceable potions.

Fallout 3 was far better in that regard I thought, but so much of what made Fallout 1+2 awesome was diluted so badly..... I've nothing against consoles, per se, but I do blame the console for what was "left out" of Fallout 3.....

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

I think fall out 3 was better than the other 2.. the feel of being in a wasteland was much better. What did you miss?

If you pushed your Sneak/Herbalism/Alchemy high and not the rest (combas skills) you didn't play Oblivion very normally. It's even good I think.. if you RP to be a non combattant then you are not a combattant.. and you should remain in the city and fade into obscurity :D.

Re: Off topic: How are games failing you?
 

Yeah, it's fine that you don't get any better at combat without practising, but what's really annoying is that you get _much worse_ because everything else in the world has got far tougher.

I also find that very annoying. With Oblivion it's all about the mods I think. There are some very thorough overhauls, like Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, that pretty much fix most of the major irritations.

I also have to play that I played many, many hours of Oblivion very cheerfully before I really realised what was going on with the levelling, so it didn't bother me.