Off topic: How are games failing you?

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by rdonj

RPGs:
Puzzles make me sad.

Rune.

Strategy games:
special abilities!

I also don't like having to manage resources, production, and combat all at the same time.

I want there to be more relevance in maneuvering, terrain, tactics!

enemy AIs do nothing but send experimental units at you and build tons of defenses.

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".

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

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".

Why not just play TA then?

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Why not just play TA then?

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. 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.

[Tifone]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

[...] Spring has big explosions [...] other people come to look at the explosions, then they try it [...]

I may admit this looks pretty funny

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

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

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.

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 ).

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

[analytic_kernel]

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.

[rdonj]

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.