Off topic: How are games failing you?

[Omnirizon]

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.

[Aezeal]

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.

[Incabulos]

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

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.

[KissBlade]

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.

[Crandaeolon]

/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.

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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.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by Crandaeolon

/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.

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.

[KissBlade]

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

[Endoperez]

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.

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

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.

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.

Originally Posted by NTJedi

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.)

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.

[trentzero]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

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.

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