What elements of R.P.G.s do you like? / post a wish list of R.P.G. features
What I like about vanilla World of Warcraft:
- Large interconnected / near-seamless world that feels larger than the player to explore and the world feels bursting with content and adventures to journey upon.
- Deep progression of player character via item tiers and different difficulty levels where a player can choose to skip content in areas to progress other areas deeply.
- Player choice of gameplay and (general) support of player made specialization builds (to a point); like taking a niche build all the way to the very end of end game.
- Multiplayer epic scale battles / raids (good luck since Flare is single player XD).
- Good enough sound design; cool trailer music.
- Colour coded item and creature rarities are cool.
- Children, Women and Old People play these games, yet it does not feel too childish nor pandering to a wider audience, yet contrived lack of mature themes.
What I like about the original Baldur's Gate (+ pieces of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons):
- A more realistic art style and approach of storytelling, a grounded world initially based upon real life and mythology; less is more story telling and world building.
- Multi-character player party (perhaps something like this could done in spirit like having Flare use better mercenaries like Diablo II?)
- A huge world with most all areas of the world functioning like historical medieval areas with bits of magic and adventure added in; a mostly non-contrived world.
- An whole ecosystem of player choice and outcomes on the world and game play; some elements are interactive story telling tools but still choices can be impactful.
- The item descriptions and small details and grounded nature of the content and nuance of world building really benefits the medieval fantasy experience.
- Cool sound effects and voice acting, battle music is cool and the small audio 'juice' is very cool and not seen in most games; also the atmospheric sounds are cool.
What I like about the original Old School RuneScape:
- The big expansive world
- The deep progression system
- The wide array of player progression skills and adventure grinds
- How every skill can be progressed by every player for there are no strict classes; open character builds
- Interlinked relevant skill progression content tied to wide fields of world adventuring content; every item is relevant to help usually help progress somewhere.
- Standardized item material quality tiers, Bronze, Iron, Steel etc. to make a world feel connected to player progression to world history / resource availability.
- Less is more to content; wide arrays of relevant context spread all around the world; almost everywhere in the world is useful for something for progression.
- 1,000 and 1 ways to play the game; no strictly 'wrong way' to play. Thousands of combinations of relevant world content for a player to choose to progress.
- Relaxed gameplay as default and high skill opportunities for voracious players demanding more depth in player progression / ability. Opportunity for skill wins.
- Nice quirky music.
- Children, Women and Old People play these games, yet it does not feel too childish nor pandering to a wider audience, yet contrived lack of mature themes.
What I like about Classic Everquest (Project 1999):
- The world fights against the player, yet the player is made stronger and is rewarded with a path for major player power and fulfillment if they survive the grind.
- Want a map? Get wrecked go make one, want a dungeon that does not actively try to kill you with traps? Go play a different game, the world is alive.
- The wide array of cultures, fantasy races, warring factions, bands / groups of entities with plots and intrigues that populate a world more mature than most.
- The game is hard, slow and makes the thin butter spread of content go A lonnnng way, you get some player power you really feel like you earned it.
- Multiplayer epic scale battles / raids (good luck since Flare is single player XD).
- Realistic-ish art style and grounded nature of the content and world building; more close to most medieval fantasy expectations and stays on theme usually.
- The music is kind of cool.
What I like about Diablo I and Diablo II:
- The action combat is great, you fight a bunch of monsters and can feel like a beast
- Wide array of player choice in build, all player choices can be at least end game viable with no 'wrong choices'; this makes the game more free to tinker with.
- The theme of the demons, undead and monsters in very cool, the dark gothic themes are very good at giving a sense of danger and mystery; fear of the dark.
- The mature / dark and gritty / 'cursed' world makes it feel like hell thematically as well. Nothing is quite 'right' and it feels like the player is needed in world.
- The cathedral, catacombs, crypt, moors, desert, tombs, caves, jungle, hell, snow and temples are just really cool; they give a real sense of horror and mystery.
- Gore, blood and guts, full tilt horror and liberty to tell a really dark and twisted story in a grim dark part of the world in need of sword and sorcery.
- Colour coded item and creature rarities are cool.
- Cool 12 string guitar and haunting atmospheric music and sound effects, cool voice acting and effect taken to give small elements audio 'juice'.
What I like about the classic Legend of Zelda games (1980's - 1990's):
- The music and sound design are really cool if a bit 'exotic' at times, very polished sound work went into these games, original and iconic sounds
- Puzzles and some minor mysteries to solve, a darker world underneath or quite literally a 'dark world' just out of sight verses the 'light world' is kind of cool.
- Most all the items are relevant or very useful somewhere, albeit only like 5-7 are really used frequently; still the focus to make items open up the world is cool.
- The boss fights can be pretty cool; especially with the cool music blaring and battle to properly manage limited resources.
- Cool area themed dungeons and most all areas have many layers of content like caves, hidden puzzles, options content, backtracking content and area polish.
- The combat can be pretty banging in some games with real time button press attacks and action combat system blaring away for the player to make skill win.
- Mostly optional ways to progress and the player can pick and choose where they explore and usually has more than one path to take in most parts of the game.
- The world theme is constant and unique, an original and charming feeling is made when playing these games.
- Children, Women and Old People play these games, yet it does not feel too childish nor pandering to a wider audience, yet contrived lack of mature themes.
What I like about the original Path of Exile:
- It is a bigger scaled Diablo II.
- All items can be converted into trading items that can be recycled / remade into new potentially useful items.
- Colour coded item and creature rarities are cool. Maybe a bit much and or contrived in some parts of the game but over all it is cool too see deep progression.
- Wide array of player choice in building characters for the early and mid game and still most builds can beat end game. Yet max health > anything is dumb.
- Tons of items and lots of ways to play the game; almost like RuneScape in terms how many different ways a player can progress yet near end game it is linear.
- Cool monsters.
- A huge array of world biomes and themes of zones to explore and play in; a bit contrived in parts but still big and expansive in some parts. A bit samey kinda.
- Cool sound design and some voice acting, effort can be seen in sound design which is cool.
- You get a ~house to customize. Yet it is in a ~bubble so it feels a bit weird but still cool.
What I like about Mount and Blade Warband and Bannerlord:
- The combat is the best I have ever played in an R.P.G.
- The world is actively contested and the player can fight in medieval themed wars in a low fantasy setting that is almost like a medieval war simulator.
- Sieges are cool, take over a castle, make your own faction, take over other peoples stuff, raise an actual army, use real life battle tactics, mongol war wins.
- The art style is great, real life practical designs, not perfect but 9.5/10 for myself. It looks the way a medieval war should probably look minus the ~'boring bits'.
- Lots of items to upgrade and fuel player progression. Most all of the typical medieval weapons are supported and they operate pretty close to real life; great.
- The sound design is pretty good, I like the battle shouts and the barbarian primal roars; I find them funny and realistic XD.
What I like about Minecraft + Terraria:
- You get to shape the world with voxels. A true sandbox, you can change the world you are in, every block (all of them if you are a nerd). Voxels are king.
- Chill cool music, theme, game play and it is just relaxing to wander around and do what ever you think is cool, there are almost no wrong ways to play.
- The Minecraft world is ~7 times larger than earth, you can make your own realm and think you are king / queen but the AI is too stupid but still fun.
- The caves and Underworld and super cool. The game is basically never ending but once you have seen all of the major gameplay progression loop; its samey.
- Technically all items are relevant and very few pieces of game play are almost irrelevant. Almost infinite ways to play the game minus the main progression.
- Action combat is cool.
- Day / night cycle is kinda cool.
- Farming and and non-combat and just living life are main pillars of gameplay and thus a person can play without even fighting, just like real life; lots of choice.
- Multiplayer epic scale battles / raids (good luck since Flare is single player XD).
- Children, Women and Old People play these games, yet it does not feel too childish nor pandering to a wider audience, yet contrived lack of mature themes.
What I like about Oblivion:
- A big world that kinda makes some sense in story telling themes. Lots of exploration is offered to the player; it may feel a bit thin at times but still cool.
- Lots of items.
- Action combat.
- Lots of player progression skills
- Different area ~biomes can be pretty cool; like the oblivion gates, the town are pretty neat as well.
- Good sound design, 7/10 voice acting
- The Player makes there own 'class' and is very much a sandbox with even the main quest feeling like it is optional.
- Mysterious little Easter eggs and small fine details and funny Easter eggs dotted around the world.
- The world tries to make sense with it self.
- Pretty close to the typical realistic art style of classic medieval fantasy but with some oddities and fails sprinkled in for the memes.
- You get to buy and customize player housing.
What I like about Age of Empires I and II:
- You get to take control of a sizable region of the world and build up an army in hopes to counter and conquer your foes on the other side.
- Player decisions and time management are huge, it captures the idea in real war history of a good enough solution now is better than a perfect one late.
- Many different cultures and interesting differences of a variety of different strengths and weaknesses and seeing how that plays out is very cool.
- Geo-strategic resources being extremely important and faction territory control are taught to the player naturally and it reflects real life history and politics.
- Player planned, built and captured infrastructure is relevant.
- Cool sound track and some neat sound effects.
Harvest Moon + Stardew Valley (and other ~Farm R.P.G.s)
- Vast array of player progression, farm, mine, fish, trade, develop land, make friends, gossip, explore, plan, make mistakes, learn, build a farming empire.
- Seasons matter, the world has cycles of content and reflects aspects of real life world realities like winter is hard to live in / make money in.
- The player develops the land around them to advance further in the game.
- The player gets a house they can customize and upgrade.
- Get to nurture cute things and doing so makes the world go round.
- Farming is hard wired into the human brain and it is not a slaughterfest like most R.P.G.s (Women player base is quite substantial; that is rare in most R.P.G.s)
- Play at your own pace, make friends, have a family, chill, do what you want and make your own fun. Very close to a typical real life play through but less boring.
- Children, Women and Old People play these games, yet it does not feel too childish nor pandering to a wider audience, yet contrived lack of mature themes.
- Pretty good sound tracks and good sound effects.
What I like about the Civilization series:
- You run an empire and see how large scale world building takes place
- If you run on slow speeds it you can see large scale non-modern wars and practicalities take place with geopolitics.
- It is really fun fighting over a map and using strategy to win wars.
- Tech tree for ages and having resources and upgrade opportunities be tied to the world map makes different factions prioritize different technologies over others.
- Different cultures fighting and using different asymmetric fighting to win or lose make the world feel more large and diverse.
- Geo-strategic resources being extremely important and faction territory control are taught to the player naturally and it reflects real life history and politics.
- Player planned, built and captured infrastructure is relevant.
- Cool sound track, voice acting and audio 'juice'.
What I like about J.R.R. Tolkien's and G.R.R. Martin's works:
- A written dream of grand worlds that run by themselves with each creature a small piece of a larger picture.
- Lots of depth and world building that takes many aspect of real life and show some examples what a creative mind can turn from real life into medieval fantasy.
- An exploration of abstract ideas and large colossal world building themes being played out in a mundane and reasonable way that brings magic to history.
What elements of R.P.G.s do you like and why?
I don't have as much RPG experience as you.
What I like is to specialize. So I don't like Runescape where you have to raise practically every skill to do the quests. And I don't like Bard's Tale where you have a whole group.
I like to produce something (crafting). That's good about Runescape.
I like MMO.
I don't like permadeath like in rogue-likes.
I hated the controls in one game from the Elder Scrolls series. Was it Morrowind? Or Oblivion? There was the same key responsible for talking and attacking...very bad!
Currently I don't play proprietary RPGs anymore. The money is one reason but not the main reason. It's just that I like the open source principle so much.
I don't like RPGs where the players insist on always being in-character that means always playing the role. I like to not take the role-playing too serious.
I like graphics. Don't need to be super-duper graphics, but I don't enjoy textonly-RPGs.
[Edit: I don't like too much action in relation to quests etc. Like jumping or too much fighting.]
Uhmm.. that was it. Sure there's more but i don't remember more.
What are your favourite games and why did they end up as your favourite games?
Sorted in the order of my liking:
1.) My overall favorite RPG was Runescape because it has exciting quests, challenging monsters and interesting crafting. I also liked the 3D graphics (They are not the world's best graphics, but I don't mind.) The runecrafting was fun. too. The community is good, too. The landscape is interesting, too.
I stopped playing it because there was to much long-distance-running involved. And the mentioned need to be a jack-of-all-trades to do the quests. Unfortunately they deleted my high-level character (after several years, so I think it's fair).
I occasionally payed for Runescape premium. Because of the premium quests. It's worth the money imho.
2.) I played a rather unknown MMORPG with the name "Nowhere else and beyond". The game's maker decided to completely delete his game (server, source code, everything), so it's gone. It was a browser game with 2D graphics and a cool community. You could create your own map and quests and items. And many more features...
3.)
a) I liked the graphics of Guild Wars 1 or 2 (I think it was 1, but not sure).
b) I liked the Elder Scrolls world, quests and graphics (both Morrowind and Oblivion).
c) I like the default campaign of Flare for its fighting and quest.
d) I like Stendhal, but the sheep feeding quest was boring so I lost interest. Maybe I should give it a try again.
e) I played Gothic 1. It didn't catch my enthusiasm. But it was not bad.
f) I played Dofus, but I got stuck after some not very long time.
4.) Despite being probably the most popular RPG I did NOT play World of Warcraft. NEVER.
What got you into Flare and what would you like to see in the future?
Well, Flare starts looking good (graphics). Then you get into fights which aren't hard to win. That lets you keep on playing. Then the new contents like the quest and the maps lets you continue playing further. And soon you are in the middle of the game and have played a lot.
Only drawback for me is that in higher levels there's much fighting and not much questing. But hey, it's called "Free libre action RPG engine" so it's an Action RPG and other players like it exactly for that reason :)
I like RPG when you actually can play role so that game does not force you to do things in certain way. There should be multiple ways/methods to solve quests. For example Fallout 2 is good example in this. I think this is the most imporant thing in RPG. I hate quest like Skyrim and Oblivions where you have one single way to do the quest and it is usually killing somebody and getting item from them. Only option is to not to do the quest at all. But more interesting quest would be that item to get would be in safe. Player could of course kill the NPC who has it and then get item. But player should be able to persuade, buy it or steal it without killing the NPC. Or maybe even do another quest for the NPC and then gain that item as a reward. I understand these kind of quest require a lot of work from developping team and are there for much harder to do than simple kill and fetch quests.
I prefer single player game over multiplayer game. If game only has single character and no party then first person view is okay. Otherwise I would like to player from 3rd person or isometric view and turn base game.
RPG should have quite much dialog with choices and things to read, no need for voice acting, specially if it is bad voice acting. Crafting and grinding is one thing I don't usually like in RPG. If these are done well, crafting is okay. There should many different items and make your character unique with some special perks or traits to pick while gaining level or experience.
Party or single character is a bit tough choice. They both have their pros and cons. Single character from first person view can be very immersive. But characters in these games can get overpowerful compared to other characters in the game. Games with party you can usually have more complex builds and try out different things which is good thing. Also turn base combat can be more interesting with party.
I don't really like turn based RPG mechanics in a computer game. It works well in a a tabletop setting with other people, but I never thought it translated well to video games.
When I was a kid I hated turn based RPGs like the old Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior/Quest games. When I got older and I played Dungeons and Dragons, I realized the concept is fine but without other people it falls flat IMO.
I actually like the simple fetch or kill quests in Skyrim type action rpgs.
When it comes to setting, I would like to see RPGs that have fantasy worlds that are inspired by non-European mythologies. So many RPGs take Tolkien's world as their model, which was heavily influenced by Germanic mythology. I would love to see a fantasy setting inspired by Meso-American mythology and artwork. Or a fantasy setting inspired by Australian Aborigine mythology and artwork. Or a fantasy setting inspired by West African mythology and artwork. Or a fantasy setting inspried by Mesopotamian mythology and artwork. Or spin a globe and pick a random spot on the map, research the indigenous culture and art style of the people who lived there historically, and use that as inspiration for your setting. I love Hobbits, Trolls, and Odin-esque Wizards. But I have had my fill of them.
If you are interested about Meso-American RPG, there is Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire, Altough it is turn based and quite old. So UX is not up to modern standards. While playing I find it easier to play full on keyboard and not using the mouse, but learning that it takes time. Game actually has nice feature that each of tribes have their own currency, which is kind of cool. Some of them require blue feathers, some diamons and so on.
I agree with the desire for a more wide mythology for giving life to the ~'divine workings' of the game setting. I went to look far and wide for all over the globe to ~'listen' / to better understand the myths and legends of people groups across the world and across human history. I tried / I am trying to sort of codify / make a system / make a structured pantheon / use 'soft power' / try not to have a bunch of dudes and ladies in togas with wishy washy powers as the 'gods' / 'goddesses' of the medieval fantasy setting. I ended up with a rough idea of the main gods / goddesses which look up / care take / have soft power influence over mostly mortal affairs: https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Black-Book-Pantheon-845732650 + https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Balance-of-the-Powers-the-D... + https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/The-Jewelled-Eye-Of-AGABAL-... This only happened over more than a decade of iteration and trial and error. I feel that I am still not fully 'done' / 'finished' yet either. Iterate, iterate, iterate.
@WithinAmnesia: Oh, nice. Yes I agree with most of these points you've made.
Interesting. I haven't played WoW myself, but I've looked into it some. How do item teirs facilitate a player's ability to skip content and/or progress to other areas?
I don't disagree, but I'm not clear on how this stacks up to other games. What are some games that do pander or feel childish? What are contrived lack of mature themes? All fictional worlds are "contrived", but that's clearly not what is meant here. What are some examples of "contrived worlds" as a counterpoint?
What is "audio 'juice'" is that a specific type of music compilation?
Eh, I felt like the way OSRS did skill leveling was the worst part of the game. Don't get me wrong, I love OSRS, but I feel like skills that level up based on the usage of that skill promote very degenerate gameplay. Same for most of the Elder Scrolls games. I mean, baking a lot to improve baking skill is realistic, it just isn't very fun to me. I end up fishing for tons of shrimp that I never use, because the amount of shrimp I need to fish in order to level up vastly outstrips the amount of shrimp I would ever consume for the purpose of healing or nourishment... which is arguably the purpose of shrimp in OSRS. You always see rows upon rows of campfires as players grind to level up firestarting. They don't use all those fires, it's just metagaming to level up. I far prefer the games that give experience points for a variety of activities, but which skills you apply that XP to is up to the player, it's not determined by how they aquired the XP.
Haha! There is something to be said for a gameplay experience that expects you to keep IRL notes. The old Dragon Quest games were like that, too; you'd get critical clues to the location of hidden treasure, but unless you have infallable recall, you need to write them down in order to put them all together later. It really enhances the feeling of discovery when the game refuses to do the discovering for you. On the other hand, it is easy to take that too far, which feels like the game is just missing features. What's wrong with an in-game journal? If I have to go hunt for a game wiki (entirely separate from- and not endorsed by- the game itself) just to find out the bare minimum info about an in-game item like "what is this" or "how do I use it", I'm going to be more annoyed that delighted. The game Don't Starve is guilty of this; the in-game item descriptions are punny, but useless. Googling the item just to discover it's basic function will inevitably lead you to spoilers as well. Ugh!
...Or you feel like the game is wasting your time to artificially inflate its playtime. I like games with lots of content, but EverQuest (and basically any pay-to-win game) is guilty of making some things unecessarily time-consuming without any real improvement to enjoyment, IMHO. Again, I love EverQuest and I agree with these points for the most part. I'm just pointing out the parts I think could use some enhancement.
Why? I mean, I'm sure it is, but what makes it better than others? What is it about the combat that makes it great?
Is it rare? Hmm... RPGs as a genre in general have more women players than any other, it seems. Except may be puzzle games(?). Perhaps that's just my own bias talking; I love RPGs. A lot. Though I am also an engineer, so maybe I'm an outlier. The gender disparity among engineers is huge. That being said, I adore Stardew Valley. The relationships in Stardew Valley are fairly simple, but also plenty to explore with them. That's something I haven't seen done as well in any other game.
@Reemax:
Weird... I always felt like Skyrim and Oblivion actually fixed this exact problem with traditional RPG quests. Admittedly, there are plenty of quests in those games with only one solution (I frigging hate the House Of Horrors quest for this!), but a huge number of them have multiple routes to a solution. In fact, the example you listed is used several times in both games: Instead of killing the target (the obvious solution) you can instead pick his pocket, or persuade him to just give you the McGuffin. I didn't realize these options were available (they're not listed or hinted at in most of the quest descriptions, so perhaps that is the bigger issue) and only discovered them on subsequent playthroughs when my other skills were sufficient; if you don't have enough skill in speechcraft, pickpocket, or telekinesis, the failure of those attempts seem like there just isn't an alternative solution.
I was especially delighted with one particular quest involving a vampire; Instead of killing him openly, I reverse-picked his pocket and left garlic in it. He immediately got sick and suspicious and ran off yelling.
@Minus Dungeon Games:
Interesting. I feel the opposite about this; other players make turnbased rpgs incredibly slow. When it's just me deciding what my fellas are going to do, I take my action, then the computer acts for the monsters nigh-instantly. With other people, you have to wait for that rules-lawyer at the table to look up the AoE on Fireball for the 4th time this encounter before he decides what he wants to do. I do love me some D&D, though. :P
--Medicine StormHopefully tomorrow I will be more awake to give this a proper answer. I am just about to call it a night when I found this XD. Lots of points and I feel that I should use my ~'full' brain power to give a proper set of replies / answers. Perhaps I will have a dream about it or something perhaps. Although until I can better focus (hopefully tomorrow / later today after so sleep); I can give this a proper shot at giving a proper set of answers / thoughts. It is good to see an active / intrigued mind though :-).
ooh i like the jeweled eye. gives me kaballah-esque tree of life vibes, but looks totally different. seems like it could be used to differentiate schools of magic or worldy powers derived from divine concepts.
have you ever read roger zelazny's amber books? the pattern and the logrus and all that jive. zelazny is god.
@MedicineStorm:
Weird... I always felt like Skyrim and Oblivion actually fixed this exact problem with traditional RPG quests. Admittedly, there are plenty of quests in those games with only one solution (I frigging hate the House Of Horrors quest for this!), but a huge number of them have multiple routes to a solution. In fact, the example you listed is used several times in both games: Instead of killing the target (the obvious solution) you can instead pick his pocket, or persuade him to just give you the McGuffin. I didn't realize these options were available (they're not listed or hinted at in most of the quest descriptions, so perhaps that is the bigger issue) and only discovered them on subsequent playthroughs when my other skills were sufficient; if you don't have enough skill in speechcraft, pickpocket, or telekinesis, the failure of those attempts seem like there just isn't an alternative solution.
I usually don't play as rogue or thief so that pick pocket I would not have spotted. Instead I play usually character with high speech or persuade so I should have been able to spot that. One thing I found funny in Skyrim was that most of the dungeons were loops. There was hidden door at the end of the dungeon so player did not need to walk over whole dungeon when quest was done. This is mixed thing for me. It probably makes the game more player friendly but it shoots realism into knee. Oblivion dungeons player needed to walk back whole dungeon.
I totally agree with the end-of-dungeon loop conflict you have. They say it's "good game design" to not force the player to retraverse territory they've already gone over. I get it, but at the same time, it... destroys someting about the dungeon. It feels less forboding, less dangerous, when you can just hop down from the vault room and pop out to safety. Was that treasure vault really that secure all these centuries if any smuck with a ladder could have come in through the exit and avoided all the restless undead hellbent on keeping their sacred treasure safe?
--Medicine StormThat only works since there are no portable ladders, climbing skill or levitate/fly spell in Skyrim. :D It feels pretty stupid if you have played previous Elder scroll with both climbing skill and levitate spells, but mentioning the ladder makes it even worse.
The Nords have still not invented the ladder. And the Dwemer created vast underground cities with steampunk tech but never invented the ladder either.
@MedicineStorm
"Interesting. I haven't played WoW myself, but I've looked into it some. How do item teirs facilitate a player's ability to skip content and/or progress to other areas?"
- The attached vanilla World of Warcraft Map with level ranges, main cities, dungeons and raids marked upon each respective area ( source link: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/am6owg/labeled_classic_wow_... ) highlights / emphasizes the wide diversity of choice (dungeons 5 players) are green, yellow and orange mountain icons, main cities are faction icons, raids (20 or 40 players, UBRS is the only 10 man raid) red mountain icons) end game world (raid) bosses use dragon icons) the player has in what areas of the world the player may pursue to advance their character's level and potentially short-term, mid-term and long-term power by pursing deeper levels of challenges scattered across the world. As in the (non exhaustive) forms of quest chains, dungeons, battle grounds, end-game raids, and potentially player trade / auction house ~'farming'.
Power brokers of WoW:
-Player levels = player power
(Acquired by just adventuring in any level range area (efficient leveling or not) ~+/- 5 player character levels (e.g. 27 can go to 32 areas with random low power questing items ~5-10 levels lower that character level) and the player can keep doing this all the way to max character level (of level 60). Pretty much anyone interested can level up any character to max level. Yet leveling takes around ~2 months of relaxed / mediocre / average play skill / intensity to go from 1 to 60 for most classes / play-styles (for vanilla WoW).
-Equippable / Usable / Consumable Items = Player power (So far just like any R.P.G. yet vanilla WoW has low / medium and deep content.)
Short-term / ~shallow / low-power / questing / bad PvP items: A player can 'bare bones' / ghetto / questing gear trash / random low power item ~filter feed / semi-passively / semi actively / 'just playing the game' obtain a wide collection of items to equip that are obtained without great difficulty that trickle to a player character in all leveling scenarios; even if the player is being very inefficient they will get 'enough' random low power easy to obtain items to 'get the job done' for all questing level brackets from 1 to 60 / max level. It might be slower or painful in some spots. As in like going 'dry' / unlucky / not getting a weapon upgrade for say ~10 levels and also using less optimal specializations for questing / doing damage to average questing creatures.
Mid-term / ~average / medium power / ~'power' questing / kind of PvP items: A player who wants a bit more impact / power in their level bracket / general areas of applicable / suitable content / wants to kill / dominate things kinda fast / be decent can choose to stop taking random path willy nilly and make a plan and willing take on ~'islands' (only in select locations / not everywhere) of challenging content with average to high chances of frustration / character death / difficulty and they have to make a choice to risk their easy play style for a more structured / somewhat more disciplined playstyle where they must understand some level of incoming threats and proactively solve these problems to win; or else they lose / suck / constantly wipe the group and get black listed for you just don't get 'it' / are bad for other people's progression. If a player is not an inept troglodyte and can spent stress and use risk to over come extra challenges (and don't just face plant from the extra challenge) they can generally get rewarded with items that are around twice as powerful if not effectively (3 or 4 times) more so than the low power trickle fed 'questing trash' items that are only good for questing and struggling to do anything else; but act as a starting point for mid-term ~average challenges (like low to mid 10-50 level dungeons, long tedious / challenging quest chains that require either lots of skill or help from without / a group / a carry; also PvP battlegrounds / world PvP can get players 'honour points' for not sucking and these can be farmed to get good items that can last at least 10 to even 20-30+ levels of questing).
Long-term / hard / high power / wreck and shred through questing / Good PvP items: A player who just wants to kick ass and take names has to sacrifice the conveniences and excuses of low and average difficulty to 'full send it' / push their character to the very edges of performance in order to risk a lot of frustration for potentially huge pay off; separate the children from adults effectively. This means getting as much out of the world and opportunities presented / farming the meta / making no excuses and pushing yourself to the very edge and usually willingly undertaking lots of frustration, pain and sacrifice in order to squeeze out these chances to get these game changing items. These items can at least last 20 to 40-50+ levels of questing and they are fear inducing for players of the same level bracket to play against. These require a lot of sacrifice and off the highest player power that is still sane / reasonable to obtain.
End Game items: A player who wants to see what is just beyond leveling, a bit more into the world, a bit more content to much on, play with friends, large scale battles, see the sights, feel the experience of raiding or large scale PvP, this is the end of the game, a time of high reward, high risk and where the end and the beginning meet. You get to be a 'hero' / 'heroine' / live the class fantasy, be a force to be reckoned with, master of almost all of the game's content. You have little reason to push forward besides maybe that one extra shiny item that gives a lot of power but is just outside of reach; yet if not you still are a master of the game; not the best but you definitely had your fun.
Deep End Game items: A player who aspires to be the best they can be goes after these items, you suffer and win or you give up and make an alt or play something else. No rest for the wicked. You don't have friends for fun, you have people who are just as nuts as you who you struggle with in good times and bad. You are in the trenches and it is getting dark and the night is very long and cold. Can you win?
Best In Slot / God-tier / Second Job items:
https://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=53953
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFors1WXgTM (A day in the life)
Transcendency / You are on top with only the void left; everything and nothing. Time to make a new adventure? You create items:
https://www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/art/Game-Master-Veldryn-858651305
"I don't disagree, but I'm not clear on how this stacks up to other games. What are some games that do pander or feel childish? What are contrived lack of mature themes? All fictional worlds are "contrived", but that's clearly not what is meant here. What are some examples of "contrived worlds" as a counterpoint?"
- Plate bikinis with women with breasts bigger than their head depicted to win medieval wars, skinny little spaghetti noodle armed pretty boys swinging slabs of metal with the weight of a truck; yet their wrists couldn't even threaten a pop can if they tried to squeeze it. Look at these poor bastards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_by_casualties I don't see any concubines and prepubescent degenerates in the winners' column. All the of the anime B.S. and painfully obvious and stupid yet insanely profitable 'lowest common denominator' logic that goes into most super hero / heroine movie / game plots where magic person lives in regular world (that conveniently anyways changes to the current-day of audience) but the movie / game ignores these magic power potential in it would realistically be used to make money, win wars, be corrupt and not stupid stuff like save plot armour nobodies that panders to convenient audience whims decade by decade of popular culture. The world is a messed up place just behind the thin veneer of civility; listen to this guy; Stephan Westmann a German WW1 combat veteran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XruYsAmKLyU , look at the Battle of Stalingrad or what Leopold II did in the Congo, the history under Men Behind the Sun, or the realities of communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity_under_communist_re... or nature and people like the Black Plague, Or when potentially modern homo sapiens / humans almost went extinct over a super eruption with a decade of volcanic winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck... . If not that then the evidence that we all descend from monsters who committed genocide that drove whole human cultures, subraces and races like the Neanderthal and Denisovian and entire animal species and whole genetic orders of species extinct. Or how our blood of our blood ancestors raped so many women that almost 1 in 200 males can find a common ancestor; and there are like 9 or 10 of these super progenitors in modern human genealogy. Murder to the scale where ten of millions of innocent bastards get wiped out for the sake of the ideal of a handful of people; that ultimately fails anyway in under 100 years. 1,000 years of war over lines on a map and still we have pretty much the same damn map so what was the point; look at it! https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1000_CE,_Europe.svg ? Torture so extremely evil that nothing across all the billions of years of all known history of nature's wickedest instances of the animal kingdom can compare; where death is a high charity to its victims. All of this across all of our shared human history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UL4rmBLOnw . Our world is built on evil; yet it is resurrected from hell with true love.
"What is "audio 'juice'" is that a specific type of music compilation?"
- Very high / superb quality sound effects that happen frequently and with intelligent placement and high saturation that bring a level of richness beyond even regular full blown 1st person existence as a human being. Or like really cool sound effects for buttons, icons, sound details that can be easily underappreciated. Yet if implemented with high quality they can bring to life a rich spirit to a perhaps otherwise bland mediocre setting / scene / ho-hum / experience. The little audio details that makes a ~7/10 'B' into a ~8/10 'A'.
"Why? I mean, I'm sure it is, but what makes it better than others? What is it about the combat that makes it great?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjiiiQVDw5U If a picture is worth a thousand words than a video is worth at least a million words.
"Is it rare?"
Incredibly so. I must have raided vanilla WoW (a very much female consciously designed; albeit very masculinely biased game from the get go) with 750 people at least over a 5 year span and maybe 1 in 20 were women. Of a guild or group of guilds (some 'rented players' thrown in) of 300 or so people with about ~100 active people I can count on one hand women who cleared all of the hardcore raid content as a core raider who ~ran / carried / lead the raid and I still have at least a spare finger (to be fair about 10-20 women were ~'carried' / did not last a month). One of these Core Raider / Guild Officer women was a transplant from another guild as well. At one point in world history my old guild Unite And Vanquish was the undisputed best raiding guild in the biggest vanilla WoW server in the world and a server open to the entire world hosting arguably the greatest M.M.O.R.P.G. in human history. It took 40 hardened veterans in the non-world buffed uptuned Naxxramas over 4 hours to get one clear of all bosses (well 35 great players in under / around ~3 hours to set records but some very rare people are high powered mutants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrd-sfoAv9A or a down right aberration of en mass ever-prevalent synchronized human nature; like myself X.X)
I might need a ~'part 2' for my observations / personal reflections on the non-question bits / parts of your reply. For this, my brain power is feeling quite low after that trip around space, time and my own ~'chromatic' sets of memory XD.
Thank you for providing the detailed content. I am very much enjoying this discussion. :)
--Medicine Storm2 and 5 plus 4 (well all of the answers really but mostly 2 and 5 and a bit of 4). I ran out of brain power a fraction the way through. I am still not 100% confident in how I feel about my answers in how close they reflect how I feel (there is not enough ~'emotional bandwidth' here to give proper answes and it sucks) in my heart of hearts but this is what we get today I suppose. Also to the length of answer kind of has to be readable so if I ramble on too long I kind of win the battle but lose the war.
5. I have lots of points yet if I had to touch upon them briefly I would say that lots of women do play video games, millions of women play R.P.G.s yet there is a noticeable 'gap' in the content in R.P.G.s where the end game is bias towards challenges more typically populated by men. Which I feel is a shortcoming not in women but a lack of content / reflection of humanity within the game world. I want to not make a big list of complaints for it would be long and taxing to read and feel quite negative probably and I would like to bring about more positive outcomes for the effort towards the community; optimize existence not pessimize existence.
5. Again, I feel there is a lot of untapped potential with women and video games. It seems odd to myself that history is made of women and men yet in most R.P.G.s the most critical and deepest parts of progression are usually all vastly populated my men by natural interest. Yet empires and wars were run and managed and lost and won and vast throngs of human history is founded upon women being responsible successfully in very challenging circumstances; that laid the foundation of macro and micro life in their times and long after (Queen Victoria comes to mind).
5. Extra, I feel the current state of most R.P.G.s kind of fails to manifest this balance / area of intrigue and purpose / challenge that is naturally populated by the interests of men and women alike. I find this most unnatural and it really bugs myself. I find it sad / kind of dead on the inside to find games where all of the easy challenges and roles and 'base game' are populated by women and men yet there is a distinct failing of the world to naturally allow human interest / ~'bring out the human spirit' (something like that) in women and to also go beyond just killing things over and over; death and life are two sides of the same coin. I think Minecraft and Stardew Valley even Pokemon do these things where its not just death death death.
5. (Edit: Oh god what I have done / here we go again with the bible wall of text: Basically I wish that in popular culture that men and women could be viewed differently yet capable of achieving same potential to conquer extremely difficult challenges if they both undergo the same sacrifices. Adversity is the only thing that grows character; and adversity is not sexist it hits everything equally) Men and women are different yet are the same; although the potential to succeed in high difficulty is possible with both men and women (soviet women on the Eastern Front can attest to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II ). Also it is kind of really boring / lop sided with only bits of the games where men naturally invested ungodly amounts of time in an R.P.G. yet lots of other areas / type of progression (e.g. not constantly killing things over and over in a slaughterfest) are neglected and I think tentatively that most women around the world alive and dead would rather not be in a fight to the death as a profession yet many men have done these things (like roughly around ~1 in 100 men verse ~1 in 10,000 women), perhaps because of the biological bias that men cannot become pregnant and thus can be less expensive to a civilization as a whole to ~'sacrifice' men to war / chaos than women (lose 90% of the women, get ~10% of the kids, lose 90% of the men you still get 100% of the kids with polygamy and yet with ~10% of the genetic diversity; because incest is bad X.X). This is an ugly, ugly part of humanity / human history and I wish this was not taboo to talk about. Yet there is a great inequality in biological opportunity for women verses men (meaning mostly physically); like some one has to have the babies, people keep dying and people need to be born and young to middle age people pay all the taxes / run the show effectively (a person gets 40 ~'good' years 20-60 to work before being ~'bad' at working / costly to exist on society). Being pregnant is very expensive biologically and globally around the world all women on average start having more and more issues having children past 35 and just naturally cannot have kids past their 50's. Which is really bad today because basically everyone (90+% of people above the poverty line globally) are in debt up to thier 40's or 50's+ and can't afford kids responsibly within their financial means (but that is a tangent so it gets truncated here). Most people in humanity's ~300,000 year history only lived on average to 20-30? It is almost like our bodies don't expect us to live past 30 and front end load the most productive parts in that 20-30 year window and after ~30-35 your body starts a slow and arduous process of dying while alive / aging (unlike hydras which are effectively immortal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality almost lobsters too). Life without civility is unequivocally brutal. Our ancestors had one hell of a journey to get to where everyone one alive today is an unbroken biological chain stretching back from the dawn of time immemorial, hailing from people who lived, struggled just enough to have kids strong enough to keep having kids and then not quite know why we are here and then die. Life back in the day was hard and messy and the struggle of the ancestors should be highly respected given that at times it is a miracle that we even exist. It is hard to live and easy to die. Biology is a hell of a thing and the differences of men and women are not random but serve a purpose (if not an antiquated purpose in some cases in modern life, thank god for birth control). Yet say you have some kids (a biologically successful human being has kids, and is not a biological DNA dead end) Dad dies of one of 10,000 things, kids are starving now what do you do? Let the kids die or adapt, or rise to the occasion? Same thing with Mom, if she dies same things apply to Dad. Maybe this is why men and women can do the same things yet also why kids raised in broken families suffer from single parentage in mental development (also less resources and kids are expensive no matter what era of human history). Also having no real Dad and or Mom kind of sucks it turns out for the kids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_figure + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_deprivation God help the poor bastard who has no mother and is loved by no one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans#Conditions_in_orphanages . I am getting a bit off track. Men and women are different because history and life is hard and we inherited stone age biology in a modern reality world. Yet I feel this difference is not being treated properly / applied to its full potential and I feel there is a lack in ~'having the entire picture' of humanity with both masculine and feminine elements that comprise the medieval fantasy worlds and or interactive hero's / heroine's journey. I am aware of this 'heroine's journey' of taming the uncivilized man and all that with the Vampires, Pirates, Billionaire etc, but I refuse to believe that is the same thing as what is found in deep progression in R.P.G.s for it is so basic and misses a lot of fun and emotional development and ~'human depth' and it just seems like its missing some kind of point I am struggling to properly articulate; like underselling the emotional depth of potential in women like putting a square peg through a round hole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ePDKlF6T0 + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w5x04l9S-o . If I am wrong on this then life has one wicked sense of humour for my god that would be insanely tragic. As in to a significant degree my most valued of my life's works would feel like a sad joke in where I am wrong to believe that women are able in having the same challenge conquering ability as men; yet I think that I am right in believing in the latent potential of all women. As in I strongly (if not outright palpably) believe that women do have equal amounts of potential on average as men. That is what I base my whole video game foundation on that women can be just as good as men in high difficulty situations. Yet I can't be stupid and wash away 300,000 years of human history just because I want to chase an ideal that actively wars with myself. This is not easy to find ways that make peace with the masculine and feminist components of the hero's / heroine's journey and be confident in my execution of these things for I don't have a women's brain nor body. Thus I am effectively at least half blind and this irks myself to no avail that over half of the human world is female yet I am probably blind to many critical feminine psychological things / aspects of life / human existence. It feels as if all that I can do is listen and try to see what works and keep failing until, 'something' works; if nothing works. Yet I think that I can pull this off and make a game (hopefully eventually if I win enough battles with implementing game mechanics, wish myself luck) so both of these parts of humanity can flourish together. So that hopefully there is no latent ~'haunt' upon world with a huge schism / void / a large realistic distance between the interests of men and of the interests of women; hopefully they can ~'live together in harmony'. As it currently seems like in most R.P.G.s today where there is this divide of masculine and feminine in deep progression (intentional or not by the developers) where all too often in an R.P.G. you either kill everything to rule the world or effectively you raise everything to rule the world. I wish you could do both like in world history; perhaps as it should be living in a sort of effective balance / harmony.
I have more thoughts but damn I am running out of room here and I wish that I could say more with less for I feel like a potato that is not even half peeled and I am shown as ready to consume. I feel half baked in my replies and it bugs myself (not as in high, but like the potato analogy; I don't do drugs for there is not enough time to waste today / everyday).
I kind of butchered the rest of the points but yeah I can't just telepathy my understanding into you guys with this so I am sorry but yeah this is very much a half peeled potato on a dinner plate XD.
2. Is kind of like being like: My human experience on everything history + ~video games / medieval fantasy and dev tools = R.P.G. I want to make before I die (hopefully). As a result I am feeling kind of trapped in a huge problem of where I just feel like I suck at communicating my understanding of the world and how things tend to work out in small bite sized pieces that hopefully do something to communicate a fraction of how I feel / think; given this low 'emotional bandwidth' communication medium.
I disagree to what people say about Skyrim, I played it a lot and modded it too, it's one of the most primitive and cheap games in the history of game industry. I can remake Skyrim clone in Unity in few days, if we don't take into account voice acting and visuals. This game is a perfect example of what happened to game industry after businessmen completely replaced game designers and artists. This game is just one huge pile of fake and illusion that looks cool and feels epic, while in reality it's more primitive than very first computer RPGs ever made.
It's basically just a courier boy simulator, the whole game has only 3 quests:
1) Go there, kill that thing.
2) Go there, grab that thing and return it.
3) Go there, talk to that guy, he'll either give quest #1, #2, #3 or end the chain.
That's it. Even main quest simply consists of these simple unrelated "quests". Faction quests are also just a chain of primitive errand tasks. This game is so generic, that you simply can't make it even more generic.
In order to create Skyrim clone on any free game engine you simply need:
1) Generate few hundreds or thousands quests like I mentioned above.
2) Now let those quests generate NPCs and targets, including dungeons.
3) Now generate some cities and shuffle ~80% of those NPCs across those cities, the rest will be in wilderness or dungeons. Most targets will be in dungeons, some in cities.
4) Generate the most idiotic and primitive loot system where most numbers are taken randomly from the sky and make no sense (because if you do everything balanced, then it won't be a Skyrim clone).
5) Intentionally make terrain geometry very non-flat, designed for player character and not for NPCs to ensure that AI will constantly stuck, so it looks more like Skyrim. Also make sure you make pathfinding very unoptimized, so players will have low FPS when crowded areas, when all NPCs decide to move somewhere.
6) Every few N random minutes roll random number between 1 and 100, if rolls 1 - simulate crash to desktop.
7) Every time you load a cell, roll random number between 1 and 500, if rolls 1 - simulate freeze during loading screen. Oh yes, make everything use different textures and unoptimized models, and make open world really an open world (instead of simply using the same small area where you simply change terrain meshes and move everything, including distant land) like you're not a game dev and have absolutely no idea what you're doing to ensure that you ACTUALLY HAVE loading screens, because if you make your game normally - you won't have them and thus will be unable to simulate freezes.
8) Now spend 99.999% of your budget on advertisments, streamers' donations, attend some TV shows and bribe game critics. And buy some random game of the year award (there're a lot of them), basically all famous games are games of the year, even if they were released in the same year.
9) Now you just need to somehow do voice acting, models, animations, textures and put some generic boring dialogues. Although dialogues can be generated. For example every time you meed NPC-in-need they always start with words "Please, you must help me!". Seriously, I've heard it like 1000 times in many games. Generic peasants in villages will just randomly wander village, because all NPCs in RPGs suffer from alzheimer. They will wait until you talk to them, so they can send you on holy quest to retrieve their possession from random cave, which is inhabited by bandits who never leave and never actually rob anyone, they just live there and quest item was simply spawned there, so now you're forced to murderer those poor innocent generic NPCs, so you can return useless quest item to alzheimer-suffering-NPC who will give you useless generic reward and then continue wander village, because that's what he's doing whole his life. And if you don't complete this quest, then... er... nothing will change. Really. Now apply this to every quest in the game. As I said - it's easy! Just create some dialogue generator like "Oh noes! Evil <insert hostile NPC name in plural> stole my <insert random useless item>! It belonged to my <insert random relative>! Please, you must help me! Here I mark it on your GPS tracker, go there, murder them for no reason and give it back to me!" or "I'm <insert some random generic activity> whole day, can you please deliver <insert random useless item> to <insert name of generic NPC> in <insert name of the city (if other city)/buildings (if the same city)?>" It's doable and not hard, really. You only need to pay a lot of money to voice actors...
@Minus Dungeon Games I put a lot of work into that ~'work'(?) / comprehensive ~'divine structure' and I pretty much read through all of Wikipedia on religion and most mythology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pantheons + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C5%ABma_Eli%C5%A1 + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_by_type Lots more off of Wikipedia like listening to Native Americans and their legends and stuff just that is esoteric and off the beaten path as well. I also did a sort of meditation / used dreams but being awake to think more abstract / creative in parts as well so there is some funky originality from the aether / void / where ever dreams come from. Perhaps one could say I used a sort of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93%C3%B0r and a lot of trial and error and iterations over the years / decades; iterate, iterate, iterate.
Also: have you ever read roger zelazny's amber books? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Amber these? If so then I have not. Yet I probably have seen some fan art or something and not noticed where it was from. I wonder how many things I could be inspired from and it is refreshing to find potentially new things to learn from or at least reflect upon.
@buttons I tried to pay like 5,000 dollars (to start) for a ~'skyrim clone' (more like mount and blade but still) engine prototype on Unity (hell skyrim on Unity that I don't get sued if I make a commercial release from out be all that want / wanted and then more) but after like trying to get 'the wonder team' together and after herding the cats for ~half a year I could not get past broken versions of https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/game-toolkits/third-person-c... and https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/game-toolkits/third-person-m... before just saying to hell with forums and then heading to https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-c-sharp and then fighting myself to stop suck at coding XD. I still suck at coding; iterate, iterate, iterate.
What? People ask money for THIS? You don't need to know how to code to make it yourself, it's the most primitive and simple features of any game. Plus, assets like that are usually (or may be always?) for general use. In other words aren't optimized, because their creator made it for non-specific project. And that's one of the reasons why games have loading screens/low FPS :D
Seriously, to move character using either physics or grid or I don't know - nodes (which is essentially a grid) - is a trivial task. Especially in Unity, with its documentation. Although I advise to not rely on tutorials or forums for the same exact reason - they're not optimized. For example if you google how to make square grid tile pathfinding on Unity, you may find a video, where some IT guy creates tons of classes and tons of functions and then yeah, it works! Except that it'll destroy your FPS, because using OOP in pathfinding or even in game development in general is a suicide. Ideally your game must be within single class using only locals and ptivate-statics. Try not to use "new" keyword to achieve what you need, unless it's in the very beginning (Awake). Try to create everything right after player launched the game. Then simply reuse that memory, this way you will never trigger GC and thus player will never experience lag spike. If you're using Unity's physics, then you must have no more than 1 FixedUpdate in the whole project. And no matter what you're using, you must have no more than 1 Update in the whole project.
But all of is possible only if you 100% know what you're doing from the very start till the end. Also it's mostly for one-man-projects, or 2nd+ person must have no relation to coding at all. In other words it's for 1-programmer team. Because 2 coders will have hard time working with 1 huge script, which is whole game. Unless they're twins who think the same and never code at the same time (or else there will be problems with syncing, as they will edit the same file).
yes those are the books i was referring to. you should read them.
@Reemax: "It feels pretty stupid if you have played previous Elder scroll with both climbing skill and levitate spells." Agreed, though I suppose there's always going to be breaks in verisimilitude in any game. For some reason I feel like this is something more than that, though. I can't quite put my finger on it. I guess if I trudged through dangerous and circuitous terrain over 40 miles to get to a restaurant that I liked, only to find that my route home was only 2 miles because of some one-way street... I would feel more cheated by the journey there than happy about the convenience of the return trip.
@Minus Dungon Games: "The Nords have still not invented the ladder. And the Dwemer created vast underground cities with steampunk tech but never invented the ladder either." I LOL'd!
@WithinAmnesia: I do agree there still is femenine-excluding tendency in game design, though it is certainly trending in the right direction. It is far less so than it used to be back when I first got into games (1980's). Even then, there was never a lack of female representation among the protagonists. Samus Aran of Metroid, Rydia of FF4. Celes, Terra, and Relm of FF6. Princess Peach Toadstool made a poor rolemodel, but so does Kratos now-a-days.
@Buttons: That is still an oversimplification of the core gameplay of Skyrim, but I do see your point. However, if you were to follow those instructions to create a skyrim clone with all those quests, all those interactive skills, and the (for the most part) moderately interesting dialogue, I would still love playing such a game (even with the hilarious built-in crash randomizer). Even if it were a text-based adventure in it's new form. Why is that? As much as I may agree with your assessment of Skyrim's primitive construction, why is it still fun to play? I guess you couldn't answer why I enjoy it if you do not. If you know of some games you think are like skyrim but less well marketed, let me know and I'll give them a try. I'm willing to bet I could either tell you why they fall short of the good things skyrim did, or I would enjoy those games at least as much. :)
EDIT: note that I am not a Skyrim Fangirl. I do think it has some major problems, both in design and construction. It is far from the best RPG I've played, I'm just saying I still enjoy playing it despite that.
--Medicine Stormthere is this craptastic skyrim clone https://store.steampowered.com/app/253410/Ravensword_Shadowlands/ which was made in unity, and their design document probably looks like buttons' instructions for how to make crappy skyrim clone. and in my opinion it totally takes the punch out of buttons' argument.
yes you can clone skyrim's "primitive" systems. but it's not fun. skyrim is fun, for some of us anyways. is it a "real rpg"? i dunno. there are some who argue that anything except the 0e dnd from 1974 is not a true rpg.
so what makes an rpg an rpg? by strictest definition a role playing game would be a structured form of play wherein one or more players take on the role of characters. but that is the way i played super mario bros in 1987 when i was barely out of diapers. i was mario in my head.
so is it skills and leveling up? equipment and hit points? is it an interactive story with impactful choices? is it elves and hobbits and odin-esque wizards?
in my opinion it's like obscenity. i'll know it when i see it.
and please dont waste your hard earned $7 on ravensword shadowlands. it is really bad.
oh and edit: i was thankful every time i finished a dungeon in skyrim and didn't have to trek back ghrough. immersion breaking and unrealistic as it is, i totally get why they did it. they did it specifically for ryan rodgers.
You enjoy playing Skyrim for the same reason I enjoyed it and, probably, everyone else - it's a medieval fantasy simulator in open world where you can freely choose your character's name, race, gender and appearance. Then you can freely move anywhere you want. What alternatives you have? There're like... no such games? And if person doesn't know (yet) how cheaply made this game is and that every mechanic is faked and doesn't really do/change anything, because the whole game is just a show (literally ALL players actions have literally ZERO consequences), then such person will even have a lot of fun playing it. Then there're mods that can completely change they way you're playing the game allowing you to prolong the time you spend on this game. Unfortunately there're zero mods that change the fact that your actions have zero consequences. Not even a single overhaul does it, but it's normal, because it'll be easier to create your own game, than to make such mod, lol.
By consequences I mean:
Imagine the village A, which is under attack by local bandits, who rob their food and women from time to time. Then you come into that village and they ask you to help. Then there's another village B, which is in good relations with those bandits (may be they're even relatives or same gang), and they want to control something from village A, so they don't need to rely on their "friends", because they want domination, and yet they can't do that openly, because it'll ruin their reputation with the rest of the world. You can either kill the bandits and make village A your friends and make village B somewhat mad at you and receive good global reputation, village A will now have better shops and may be even offer other services. Or you can persuade village A into cooperation with village B and have protection from bandits, making you "Bandit friend" which will make all local bandits neutral to you, you'll also have better services in village B, but you'll have bad global reputation. Or you can kill main guy of bandits in some challenge, if you meet the requirements (may be charisma or some background or even race), become their leader and then set your own rules - you can stop raiding village A or not, you can even start raiding village B or not, or use your own gang for other quests somewhere else. In other words you'll have strategic advantage now. Or you can simply say "screw you all" and ignore it and then after some in-game time a random thing will happen: village A may find good party of adventurers who killed the bandits or village B tired of pretending to be good guys and occupied village A and then other villages declared war on them to liberate it. Or bandits became very bold and independent, may be a new leader appeared, who is smarter and stronger, and now they raid both villages and even beyond, because nothing can stop them. And this is just examples I made up while typing this post, now put 100 things like that in a single world and you'll have RPG + strategy at the same time. Players will see that their actions (or lack of actions) actually have consequences. And, ironically, it's shouldn't be hard to do: simply make a slow paced real time 4X strategy for AI. Then make RPG for the player inside that 4X strategy. I mean, yes, of couse it's hard... but from "design" or "idea" point of view, it shouldn't be something impossible. People think it's very hard to make RPG where you live in truly dynamic world, but it's not - game devs already did it all, it's simply scattered among different game genres. RTS or 4X strategy will provide you with dynamic world, especially if you implement somewhat realistic economy, like in Settlers2, where lumberjacks cut down trees, then trees are made into planks, then masons cut stones and then builders use them to build structures, then hunters/fishers/farmers generate food for miners (but better for everyone), who in return gather metals/coal, which is used for tools/weapons/armors, etc. Now add player diplomacy like in Civilization, add player character like in Skyrim and here you go - perfect medieval fantasy simulator where literally every player's action actually has consequences, because the world is a sandbox.
this thread made me want to go play skyrim. at which point i found out that they updated it in november and even though i had it set in steam to NOT update steam had updated and downloaded in the background without me paying attention. so now all my skse mods are busted.
i guess i'll see how they updated vanilla.
and as an aside, another generic-ish skyrim clone that i do think is enjoyable is gedonia, also on steam. it looks like zelda windwaker aesthetically. it's a one-person dev made in unity. it is buggy as all get out, but enjoyable nonetheless. just like skyrim :p
@buttons:
There're like...no such games?
There are but I think they are all Elderscrolls. Each Elderscroll has their pros and cons. Skyrim is probably best looking and music is excellent there. It also has those epic dragon fights. Well they are epic until you get your hero superhero that can handle those easily. I think that's also another issue with Skyrim, that for example you join to Mage Guild with character who hasn't never cast a spell before doing the initial test. If I rememeber correctly those can be pass with starting magic spells. After one day doing quests for the Guild you find yourself as a Archmage, which feels so wrong.
For Oblivion it is pretty much same as Skyrim expect it does not look that good as vanilla. But it has pretty much same issues as Skyrim.
Morrowind main map is same big area, which allows spellcasters cast flying or leviate spells and fly over city walls and so on. I think Morrowind had some restrictions that not all characters could join all the guilds and some guilds had probably restrictions that if you are member of another you are not allowed to join. Morrowind as an area is very unique and some might not like the look of envinroment.
Then there is the Daggerfall. I think with this Bethesda really tried to make fantasy simulator. It has features that other Elderscrolls lack: For instance gold pieces are heavy in your pocket, you go to bank and change that for letter of credit. You can take loan for bank. You can even travel to far away land and take big loan there and run back to your home territory and never pay back your loan. You can buy a ship or house if you want to. Map is huge and travelling there really requires fast travel(How ever you can still walk or ride horse or cart to next town if you want to. It just takes a lot of time). It has skills like climbing. I really miss that this hasn't been in newer Elderscrolls. Daggerfall also has swimming skill and swimming in plate armor is almost certain for drowing and only way to get up is drop the something heavy. This Elderscroll is challenging. Surviving even from the first dungeon in really challence(Maybe even too much). But there are still some problems: Dungeons this is were Daggerfall went to so wrong. Developpers thought that players do like exploring maze like dungeons, but it gets very tiring to doing this like over and over just to get quests done. Quests are pretty much fetch something, kill something and so one there are couple of variants and some of them have few choices to make. Some quest are bad specially like fetch some mummy wrapping from Harpies nest and mummy wrapping from Alchemist Store is not suitable for doing the quest.
Since world is almost complete procedurally generated, quests are also random(not including the main quest) people in those towns are just random NPCs. But going for example City of Daggerfall where there are multiple shops, inns and thousands of people is still awesome and amazing. There is also Daggerfall Unity which is Daggerfall remake to Unity engine which fixes quite much of problems, like it allows to have smaller dungeons. Daggerfall Unity for example upgrades climbing and player can move sideways while climbing and swinging over the ledges.
Those dungeons have two sides. For example there can be a pit in dungeon. Player could find lever somewhere in dungeon(Finding this would probably require lots of fighting) which would lover the bridge over cap. Good character might be able jump or climp over the pit or use levitate or featherfall. I kind like that it really allows you play your character. But when you do this multiple times it gets tiresome.
I like the creative world of bastion but hate how you basicallly fight the same three enemies throughout the entire game. I have no idea how they managed to create that entire game and only put the same three enemies to fight in the whole game but there it is.
I liked the open world of oblivion and skyrim but hate how every dungeon is basically a cave and has no viariety or identity to it. I remember in one game I played the dungeon floor was all blue dragonscales. The walls shimmered and it was awespiring. You really felt you were some place dfifferent and new. This was not the case in oblivion or skyrim. The only variation in dungeons in those games is the path. I just dont understand why every dungeon has to be a textbook example of a "cave". diablo 3 created a whole game without a single generic cave in it.
dont just change the color of enemies and call them new enemies. this was done in the 80s to save resources and not fun to see in newer games where resources are not a problem.
seeing the same 4 textures used in 8 different dungeons is not immersive
lots of repetative empty space + trees and bushes is not interesting to look at..
I wonder how many different biomes / unique features of the land / world / structures and settlements, varied dungeon layouts and unique enemy types and how many options of consequences for how many (hopefully) memorable encounters are ~'needed' / desired; to reach a point where the world / game feels ~'alive' / close to an expected / believable representation of how an ~'ideal' / proper medieval fantasy world should / ought to be represented within a digital media such as video games, films, books etc.? What is the critical mass / tipping point to take a 7/10 R.P.G. into a 8/10 or 9/10 R.P.G. for I really struggle to properly in full / in an entirely understand all elements with great clarity in how an R.P.G. can be worth playing for the community at large, stand the test of time and become an irrefutable masterpiece? What are the sources of high quality player experience?
my favorite rpg of all time is the original everquest. I played it for over 10 years and played it on day 1 release basically. While this game is pretty repetative I really liked the classes in it. I played a enchanter and I had a specific role in crowd control. When enemies were pulled to a location they had a tendency to multiply to huge numbers and it was the enchanters job to "sleep" the mobs so they could be killed one by one. It actually involved quit a bit of skill and every pull situation is different depending who is pulling the mobs to you and where you were. I loved that people in this game had jobs like healer and tankl and crowd control. I actually built a reputation of my character among other players as being good at my job. This made me strive to be my best and I loved the challenge of dealing with players who were err bad at thier job like tanks that couold not keep mobs off the damage dealers. since each player had a role and a living reputation of how well they played that role it really became fun and made you want to stay. The main improvement to this game I would have added is the weapon abiliitys that I believe it was Dark Age of Chamelot had. Your weapon attack had a postion such as front or side or back. if it was back and you hit from the back you had a chance to roll a attack bonus. It also had chained attacks. attacks that each had to succeed to get the bonus of the next attack. this pretty much prevented players from hitting attack key then going to sleep while the mobs slowly dies. they had to participate and choose which attack was next based on the effect they wanted and wether the previous attack succeeded.. some attacks from the side would cause the mobs to bleed. each weapon type was different and each effect bonus was different. some attacks required previous attacks like a previous attack from the side to succeed to do the next chain of the attack.
@MedicineStorm
"RE: pandering & contrived - ah, pandering to sexualized content. Yes, ok... however, you lost me about halfway through the paragraph here. What does the historical rape and torture have to do with pandering or "contrived worlds"?"
Contrived is a powerful world; it can be used to show where a deep fundamental lie is hiding; yet only if one knows what a deeper and more powerful truth is. Or at least try to understand a deeper understanding than what constructs many superficial structures of convenience. Of which that ultimately when pressed to serve in the trenches of hell, crumble like egg shells to an iron fist. Yet truth like a diamond is made more clear under pressure. It becomes crystal clear under absolute pressure and or perhaps even sheer adversity. So many people crumble when put in the vice of adversity; even people who may look strong on the outside. Yet a only a few out of dozens are turned into diamond on the inside and break the vice of adversity. Even those who look weak on the outside may become the most capable of people when transformed under the absolute pressure of the vice of adversity. This is the potential of character.
So, it is important to understand history to understand fiction, it is also important to understand fiction to understand history to see who is probably full of B.S.. You can't detect a lie if you can't tell a ~'good' / believable lie. Sometimes people would rather believe a perfect lie than to believe an ugly truth; because HUMANITY. Truth is stranger than fiction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWmhRSAcWkI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeling your baby did not die, a changeling took it and you don't have to bare the soul crushing reality of being a failed parent in a brutal world because 'actually' the baby is living but away from people in a secret fairly land... Verses, yeah your baby died at 3 months in and we don't know why and that is in fact your dead baby you have to bury and not a transformed log to look like a dead baby. You can see the abject brutal emotional trauma that our world is based upon if a person takes on responsibility for their actions and of everyone else around them; it is not 'fair' but if you want unreasonable results you must become an unreasonable person in at least terms of willpower. So in fiction if it is used as an escape / coping mechanism than its' world is a lie to hide an ugly truth and or sets of ugly truths and is fundamentally at its core morally bankrupt and unable to strike at the heart of hearts of people. For at the very foundation of the typical contrived fictional world is the forfeit of the headwaters of 'the ability of humanity to conquer pure evil' and or being within a state of nigh perpetual existence of moral defeat of the self in being not 'worthy to bear the existential weight of the fire of god' / a deliberate moral refusal to stop participating in the 'lie' and stop being a loser and in real life become something apart of something greater than yourself (something like that). You can't put the deep / moving experiences of your ~'soul' / life into something if you have no deep / moving experiences within your ~'soul' / life. Losers can't win because they are unable to sacrifice properly. Also and or they do not take the necessary, significant and non-trivial steps to willingly overcome adversity. Instead losers are found waiting for adversity to bite them in the ass at 3 AM drunk off their over self-pitty and uselessness in the arena of life; and then the losers blame anyone and anything but themselves. So because of this I find it necessary to tell of the abject horrors of real life to better understand the beast of reality without a coping mechanism; like a spiritual 'changeling' / belief in a perfect / convenient lie to throw off the sacrifices necessary to properly become responsible in my own life. That is so that when I go to craft a hopefully transformative challenge (so hard that one is never the same again when they are 'victorious') I know what the hell I am doing; and not wasting everyone's time and hope. How can one describe a rainbow if one is blind? How can one describe what pizza tastes like without having taste? How can I give a fictional world that is ultimately an illusion based upon real life with real people participating, the ability to host real intrigue and real challenge? How can I 'play god' without being a massive failure or at least make something worth people's time and hope and is worth playing if I am without being knowledgeable of real life intrigue and moreover real life difficulty / adversity? That is why historical rape and torture have *everything* to do with pandering or "contrived worlds". This is because they are some of the ugliest truths in life and some of the worst horrors of known existence within our shared human experience hosted via reality; and if I cannot stand up to the objective realities of life nor can my life's work of my shared dreams.
@Malifer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5NpF41fGiY&list=PLoOHsn__MBA8XmkjHS0NSa...
I liked watching through this classic everquest playthrough by Flatts with his Iksar Monk on Project1999. Although I had a limited stint on P99 I did get my own personal classic EQ server to explore the world in. I think classic Everquest is a bit clunky but it has some really cool aspects in the world; like how the Qeynos is built out together with distinct and memorable parts and how the sewers and underground aspects and hidden areas / little secrets really added some spicy content with lots of mystery and things and places to wonder about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAyxdS1SSoo (Also these get honourable mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqhvTlR1WSc + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fCvU5Jbipw ) I love this kind of world depth / mystery / attention to detail and general 'depth' of the content / lots of unique / quirky thought invested into trying to improve the quality of the whole work / video game / medieval fantasy world.
The nostalgia is strong with this one. Its sad to see all trhe old zones so dead in favor of all the new places to explore. Maybe one day if I ever get a gaming laptop I will try and play again. I think I Lost the magic for gaming.Its more fun for me to collect games than to actually play them. usually I fire them up and play fopr 5 minutes before quitting again. Its just as fun for me to watch someone else play on youtube than for me to play myself.
Well, eveything changes. You change. The game market does. (Similar experience with adventure games and with pen & paper RPGs.)
Some say Ultima Online was the best. That was before I got into MMORPGs so I don't know if that's true.
Some of my favorite RPGs would be:
Diablo 1+2
Fallout 1+2
Grim Dawn
Path of Exile
Titan Quest
Sacred Gold
NOX
I like dark hack 'n slash / actionRPGs, gore, blood, etc.
An Isometric view.
Procedural dungeons.
Large open worlds.
Lot's of varied items, unique and set items. (with adequate storage available)
The ability to improve one's items through sockets, ie. runes and gems.
Character skill and stat customization.
Unlocking higher difficulty settings on story completion.
Map progression that is exceedingly difficult, and thus requires a bit of a grind.
Random events / quests. Unpredictable barrels that may explode / spawn a skeleton.
Variety is the spice of life, the more unique a biome is the better.
I'm not big on pixelated or unnecessarily low resolution graphics, I really wish the Flare HD version will be completed one day!
@Paul Wortmann What elements of your favourite RPGs do you like and what elements of them do you not like / wish were done better and in what specific way(s)? Do you have a wish list of gameplay expectations / desires / a wish list for a game made in the Flare Engine? If so could you tell how all of that could look like for a player's experience potentially?
This is a tough question to answer, as one has to consider the limitations of the Flare engine. To me, the Flare engine is an engine designed for artists to make games with, specifically old school low resolution RPG games. Don't get me wrong, the Flare engine is an amazing project and much respect to those who have brought it to life, but it is designed for a limited purpose. So with that in mind, I would say that a game such as the Empyrean campaign, but with a greater diversity in biomes and monsters, more variety in skills and items, dual wielding, higher resolution graphics, and definitely a lot more difficult!
My perfect Flare game would be something very similar to Diablo 2, but with higher resolution graphics.
has anyone tried Hades. It looks like an interesting isometric dungeon game but maybe a little too zoomed out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2b7GGWNz54
I think Hades looks okay, nothing to crazy but not horrible. For myself it comes off a bit bland / run of the mill with some wacky colours and anime / 'bad modern western themes' / tones where it pulls out of reality / makes bad logic in a few spots. 5-6/10 +1 for gameplay; so without thinking 7/10 but with big brain mode 5/10 so 6/10 or 3/5 stars. Not bad but far from great.
"The Empyrean campaign, but with a greater diversity in biomes and monsters, more variety in skills and items, dual wielding, higher resolution graphics, and definitely a lot more difficult!"
Could be done, but the quantity of work needed is way too much for anyone to do without getting any money out of it. While i check some of your points in my mod, the higher resolution upgrade would be humongeus work no sane person would want to tackle for free. It would also ruin the Diablo 1/2 charm (not denying a new style could be great).
The engine is also very poorly documented for any new modder setting the difficulty to very hard from the very start. From inserting a new model to setting up a new map is a hell of it´s own with little written info. So it´s not as friendly as you think for artists, it´s the opposite, a coder will get everything faster to work.
That said, it´s a good platform to get a "Diablesque" game started, stable, mature, with a helpful developer and FOSS.
This is my mod, you might want to have a look:
https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/heresy-a-flare-mod-first-act-released
Regarding Hades. Looks interesting. The visuals are gorgeous. Voice acting is decent too. I can't tell everything about it from the video, but it seems like more of an "action platformer with 3/4ths perspective" than what you'd call a traditional RPG. Not sure there is such a thing as "tradtional RPG", but my point is it seems to have some critical differences from the kind of RPGs discussed here so far (Diablo, Baldur's Gate, FLARE, etc.). Namely:
The attack visuals are over-the-top. Not a bad thing, necessarily. The focus seems to be on the power-fantasy; flashy sword strikes and taking on giant ripped flame-beef-creatures weilding cudgels that are bigger than the PC. I like games like that sometimes, but I find myself gravitating more toward the RPGs where that kind of power isn't earned until later in the game. PC seems over powered from level 1 and doesn't seem like he's actually in danger. It does make sense in this context, though; he's a demi-god of some sort.
Has anyone here played Hades? I'm wondering if it's worth a try.
--Medicine Stormthey make hades for switch console I was thinking of trying.They have both hard copy and digital. I watched the video for over an hour and the difficulty definitely ramps up to almost bullet hell like levels where there is all sorts of things coming at you. there was a few sections that I thought it looked like they really were trying to kill you to make you start over. When you die you respawn at your hell home base. The dungeons are random to some degree every time if I understand correctly. It would be an interesting challenge to try and make a similar level in tiled though.
I cant decide if I want to try Hades or Battle Chasers Nightware. I like that battle chasers is turned based but at least for the switch version there seems to be some unpleasant loading times every battle compared to almost no loading times of hades.
@Danimal I am trying to find out if the Flare engine could support higher resolution item icons / 128 x 128 pixel icons to better keep up with the march of time and make Flare look better: https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/issues/879 (although I am currently good at crashing the menus but perhaps I can get there with enough gusto XD)
Has anyone fought for high resolution in Flare yet? I know Clint Bellanger did Wandercall / ~'FlareHD'. Do we have any experience ~'in house' or am I flying into this blind and hoping that Dorkster can tell myself how to ~'not suck so bad'(XD) at using the Flare engine to try and increase the pixel density / minimum resolution by 4. From 640 x 480 into (hopefully) 2,560 x 1,920 with 128 x 128 icons (splitting the pixels by 4 to make the old assets still work / look the same but be able to bit by bit add in new higher resolution art assets / icons).
Also spoilers / here is a speed run of Hades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMb05zKj_3w
I dont think there is any resolution restrictions in Flare other than someone to actually make the high resolution images. It would be a seriously large project to make all those high resolution assets. Perhaps too much for anyone to do for free. I have heard of Clnts wandercall project but myself havent seen any running version example of it if I google it or search youtube.
https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/issues/880 128 x 128 icons work now.
Although I am wondering if 'Flare x 4' can work where the Flare engine could run all the original art assets of Flare yet with x 4 the pixel density. As in like how 32 x 32 icons turned into 128 x 128 icons success as seen in screen shots. 32 x 4 = 128, or split one pixel into 4 to make the same image but with 4 times the pixel density.
If 'Flare x 4' can work that could pave the way for 2020's graphics for Flare and it could make any game running on Flare still use the original assets but have the option to bit by bit add in high detail art assets. With the new high resolution art assets being able to be side by side of the original low resolution art assets. This can eventually lead to games made with the Flare engine to be as in high of detail as that of Diablo 2 Resurrected or other high resolution isometric games. This can take the 2000's graphics of Flare and bring them into the 2020's and add decades of life to the visuals of the game and hopefully graphically stand the test of time.
@Danimal What are the main goals for your work work with Flare? What inspired you here and there and what are you aiming towards making? What are some of the most important novel / new things you have added / wish to add to Flare? You did a lot of cool work with adding in new armour weapons and enemies and making tilesets work. I wonder though what other things might not have made it and what are the possible future goals moving forwards for your work with Flare?
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