Off topic: How are games failing you?

[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

[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.

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

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.

[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.

[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.

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by NKIcan

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?

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.)

[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.