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IGN on the State of the CRPG
Via the ffwd linklog, IGN has a feature up discussing the current state of the CRPG. From the article: "Most people tend to associate RPGs with sword-swinging maidens in chainmail bikinis and doddering old white-bearded mages in robes spattered with owl poop. While the high fantasy setting is certainly the stock background for most RPGs, an RPG is defined not by its content but by its manner of presentation. To be a true RPG, a game must contain three elements. First, it should offer up an interactive story in which the player takes a vital part. Second, RPGs must allow for character growth that's driven by a player's choices or actions. Finally, RPGs must be built upon a system of rules and statistics that are used to resolve the events that take place in the world."
It would be interesting to see this in action in an MMORPG. Stats and levels are completely hidden, and the only knowledge of a characters ability is indirect. (I.E. - I can kill these rabbits twice as fast as last week, lets try something harder) The same would go for mobs and NPC's. You don't know how tough someone is until you take them on. Throw this into a PvP game, and it would be very interesting. No more "I'm lvl 60 and he's lvl 55. I'm gonna win" mentality.
heck, I'd play it in a heartbeat.
What? Don't you take the role of Mario and define his actions by pressing buttons in Super Mario 64?
RPGs such as D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) came out long before any video games, and when RPGs such as Final Fantasy came out, the name stuck, and games such as Super Mario Brothers came out, the genre RPG just didn't seem to fit.
Super Mario 64 really is and RPG, though we just don't see it that way.
I would argue that without growth, you are little more than an actor in a stage play.
I would argue that without meaningful decisions, you're just an actor. The amazingly linear plots of some CRPGs strike me as a better thing to get rid of than flat characters.
Indeed, but it's not an either/or situation, it's the same thing. If your character never grows or changes then every decision is equally as meaningless as those linear CRPGs.
I disagree.
The most content-ful RPG in recent memory has been GTA:SA. Hundreds of hours of branching storyline. The linear central story doesnt even encompass 1/4 of the game. Progress can be made in a dozen different directions (including the much-debated girlfriends).
Looking back, Morrowind was also an amazing single player RPG. Oblivion is going to blow the mediocre CRPG competition away; I've already set aside a thousand hours of free time (about what I spent on Morrowind) to waste on it.
Look no further then Ultimas 6 and 7. Even 9 had it's moments (Looking over bucanneers den for the first time for example).
The thing that got to me about these games was the immersion factor. That is you didn't have to spend time worrying about the quest, you could just run around and make bread for a little while if you wished. Generally most things you tried because you *wanted* to do (like make a sword) worked.
In my opinion nothing since has gone close to what you could do in these games. (If I'm wrong, please let me know so I can play it!). Morrowwind? Meh, it tried hard, but was still a step backward from what was achieved all those years ago!
Different strokes for different folks though -- I actually prefer the Nippon Ichi-style "spreadsheets with a gui" form of combat but if somebody wants "I deal the imp a mighty blow!" they can have their own little sub-genre without it hurting my enjoyment.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Throw out traditional class restrictions. If you want to be a fighter, fight alot. If you want to be a healer, heal people. Give it an advancement system of diminishing returns, so that the better you are the harder to advance. Also have decay present, so the longer you go without picking up that sword, you lose your skill.
Get the balance between growth and decay right and it's almost a self balancing system. The greatest swordsman in the game will need to put in enough effort to maintain that level that he won't have time to become the greatest mage too. However, hybrid characters with some of everything will be possible. It also allows a person to change their focus if they choose to, simply by practicing at something else.
Make the abilities system similar to Guild Wars, in that skills/spells don't have levels. Their effectiveness is modified by attributes. So anyone can cast a Cure spell, but a veteran healer will have more effect that a novice.
(Upon proofreading, I realize this has little to do with the post I'm replying to, but I hate to waste a (hopefully) good post)
He's mostly working on the combat engine and has very little plot, but the skeleton of the game is downloadable and very playable. It's kind of like Diablo right now, not plot but lots of enemies to slaughter.
This is the first combat engine I've seen that makes effective use of mounted troops - playing a mounted character is a lot of fun.
A review here.
Don't bother to download if you can't live without Half Life 2 quality graphics.
PS - not affiliated with those guys, but this is a cool game
Agreed!
I found it rather mortifying that none of the 3 criteria that these jokers included in their definition of a "true" RPG included actual role-play.
"Interactive stories" are almost always completely linear, or at best contain a few possible forks, in which you are just choosing one of several trains to hop on to.
"Character growth" is just an illusion. At the high levels of any RPG, you are fighting monsters which are exactly as challenging, relative to your character stats, so the only "growth" that has happened is the mass of pixels in front of your avitar, which still takes three minutes to kill, has changed from a silly-looking giant rat to a spooky-looking dragon.
So that leaves "a system of rules and statistics" to determine the outcome, which can often reduce the usefulness of tactical planning in these games. If your mystical ability to perfectly evaluate the challenge rating of the monster in front of you reveals it to be a relatively easy kill (but not too easy to be worth it), you can simply farm it for XP and move on. Yawn.
None of those things are important to me in an RPG. They can be elements of a fun game, but what makes an RPG an RPG is the roleplay and interaction between people. This is how it will always be until somebody comes up with an RPG which can pass a Turing test.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.