The problem with RPGs

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Bakustra
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Bakustra »

Thanas wrote:Eh...no. No way do the characters look real. Unless you think chainmail bikinis are realistic.
What he means is that they aren't cartoony or highly stylized. I don't think that aesthetics are necessarily the problem here, though.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Rabid »

TronPaul wrote: What I mean by realism is the visual realism. The characters and setting need to look "real" (even though the characters have dead, soulless eyes). I think that current development practice puts too much effort into this area, detracting from gameplay and world building needed for an RPG.
Thing is, as far as I know (I may be wrong), you need some talent(ed artists) to pull of a "stylization" (is that even a real word ?) that works - to inject character into your game, and demarcate it from the rest of the concurrence, to give it an unique visual personality. That's not exactly an easy thing to pull off successfully, and when done wrong it can sabotage the whole edifice. And given the kind of money involved in videogames nowadays, it's no wonder developers prefers to take a lower risk approach.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by TronPaul »

Thanas wrote:Eh...no. No way do the characters look real. Unless you think chainmail bikinis are realistic.
Look real as in the visual elements resemble real life.
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Games are trying to get closer and closer to perfectly mimicking how reality looks, through lighting, textures, and character models. This isn't a bad thing per se, but the fact that development seems to be primarily focused on this area has a negative effect to other aspects of immersion: character design, plot, interactions, etc.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by weemadando »

To be honest, my problem is with the people who say shit like: "RPGs are defined by character stats and equipment". BULLSHIT. If that was the case then Advanced Squad Leader would be the greatest RPG ever. RPGs are about characters and the role that they play in the story. Choice, consequence and to a degree, uncertainty (regarding the "rightness" of your decision, motivations of yourself and others and of the outcomes to which you are headed) , are defining trademarks of the genre for me.

It's why, despite their other flaws I rate The Witcher, Arcanum and Alpha Protocol so highly. Because the characters, story and decisions in them were never clear cut and easy to game.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Stark »

In gamer parlance, 'RPG elements' basically means 'has stats and or skills'. Th meaning is now massively distorted due to people just talking about their gaming experience rather than thinking about what it means. This is why cat fights about 'what is an RPG' come from.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

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Re: The problem with RPGs

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Thanas wrote:Eh...no. No way do the characters look real. Unless you think chainmail bikinis are realistic.
You've mentioned this more than once, who in Dragon age does this? I remember Morrigan not wearing a lot, but she didn't wear armor period, just used her magic to shield herself.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Thanas »

Block wrote:
Thanas wrote:Eh...no. No way do the characters look real. Unless you think chainmail bikinis are realistic.
You've mentioned this more than once, who in Dragon age does this? I remember Morrigan not wearing a lot, but she didn't wear armor period, just used her magic to shield herself.
Neverwinter Nights is the most egregious example I can find of that. Then there was KOTOR which had slave outfits for its redhead.

As for Morrigan, I really doubt the excuse of "used her magic, which is why she dresses up impractically" holds water. Next you are going to tell me that she uses her magic against the cold as well, nevermind the questionable fashion choice.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Block »

Thanas wrote:
Block wrote:
Thanas wrote:Eh...no. No way do the characters look real. Unless you think chainmail bikinis are realistic.
You've mentioned this more than once, who in Dragon age does this? I remember Morrigan not wearing a lot, but she didn't wear armor period, just used her magic to shield herself.
Neverwinter Nights is the most egregious example I can find of that. Then there was KOTOR which had slave outfits for its redhead.

As for Morrigan, I really doubt the excuse of "used her magic, which is why she dresses up impractically" holds water. Next you are going to tell me that she uses her magic against the cold as well, nevermind the questionable fashion choice.
No, I'd assume she covers up at some point. Ferelden is a pretty temperate country though, swamps and coastland mostly. I will say mages actually have whole spell lines built around shielding and defense that are always active as opposed to most D&D clones, so it's at least internally consistent for mages to be wearing light robes and the like. NWN I don't really remember, but it wouldn't surprise me.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

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Found what I was referring to: NWN cover art, plus also how she appears ingame.Oooh Bioware, why?
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Darmalus »

Thanas wrote:Found what I was referring to: NWN cover art, plus also how she appears ingame.Oooh Bioware, why?
That's pretty conservative for female fantasy armor. I was expecting something more like this.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Block »

Also, I just remembered that Morrigan's entire reason for accompanying the Warden in DA is to get him to put a baby in her belly as part of Flemeth's plan, so her costume makes sense in that context. Aveline also wears a full suit of armor, from neck to steel booted toe in DA2.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Vendetta »

I think there are two main problems.

The first, which is widespread in videogames beyond RPGs, is insufficient time spent in preproduction. It's very rare for a developer to go into production on a videogame with the narrative and content locked down, meaning that many things have to end up cut (and these days reinserted via DLC). You can see the effect of this in Dragon Age, where what is essentially the motivation for the villain is cut out and only offhandedly reinserted into Return to Ostagar. And without having that information in the story (that he fears Cailan is about to chuck his daughter in favour of the Empress of Orlais, bringing Ferelden back under Orlesian rule after he fought to free it, and he's actually right.), Loghain is reduced to a saturday morning cartoon villain making a transparent grab for power and twirling his moustache as he plots ineffectual trap after ineffectual trap for the player.

Spending more time before actually starting to put the game together figuring out what needs to go into it and what doesn't would mean that the overall product wouldn't need to suffer from last minute changes and rewrites that weaken the narrative.

The other is that all the plots end with "And then Billy saved the world". Saving the world is fun, but it's rendered stale when it's the only thing you ever do.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

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Vendetta wrote:I think there are two main problems.

The first, which is widespread in videogames beyond RPGs, is insufficient time spent in preproduction. It's very rare for a developer to go into production on a videogame with the narrative and content locked down, meaning that many things have to end up cut (and these days reinserted via DLC). You can see the effect of this in Dragon Age, where what is essentially the motivation for the villain is cut out and only offhandedly reinserted into Return to Ostagar. And without having that information in the story (that he fears Cailan is about to chuck his daughter in favour of the Empress of Orlais, bringing Ferelden back under Orlesian rule after he fought to free it, and he's actually right.), Loghain is reduced to a saturday morning cartoon villain making a transparent grab for power and twirling his moustache as he plots ineffectual trap after ineffectual trap for the player.

Spending more time before actually starting to put the game together figuring out what needs to go into it and what doesn't would mean that the overall product wouldn't need to suffer from last minute changes and rewrites that weaken the narrative.
Good point. The need for DLCs might also have a hand in this, considering that if you don't make players feel that they miss something you won't sell DLCs.

The other is that all the plots end with "And then Billy saved the world". Saving the world is fun, but it's rendered stale when it's the only thing you ever do.

You might be on to something. One of my favorite things in BG1 and The witcher was that the mere fact that you survived was a win.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by HeadCreeps »

I'm an outsider who doesn't like the wRPG genre anyway.
Thanas wrote:- Old RPGs are closer to an interactive book, modern books are closer to a movie. For example, you had to read a lot in BG about the worldbuilding. You read masses of text, which on the one hand gave you a wow effect like "wow, the guys have really put some thought into this". Likewise, the pace was slower and you knew that you had to invest a lot of time in this kind of game beforehand, but your fantasy was not constrained. Likewise, new RPGs are often closer to movies than to books - dialogue is now spoken, the characters are presented to you. Oftentimes, new RPGs do not start out slow anymore. This is positive as there are no more "kill 10 rats", but on the other hand it does not present ever increasing challenges until the finale, often leading to rather disappointing things like the Witcher 2 finale. So the older 2D medium's limitations might actually turn out to be benefits.
One of my biggest complaints about western RPGs when I actively played them in the BG/NWN1 era was how text-heavy the games were. It isn't that I have a problem with reading a large amount of text as long as it's entertaining, but I chafed at the idea that a game which was presented visually would even go so far as to make the character just have a block of text saying "x laughed heartily" rather than simply showing it visually on the character. This extends to much of the storytelling as well; it isn't a book and should not be treated as such. If something can be shown rather than read, it should be.

When a story is comprised of masses of text with little to no visual to it in a video game, I tend to think "wow, these guys really didn't put in any effort" at first. It took me a while to realize this was done out of a stylistic preference rather than pure laziness. Of course, graphical limitations played a part.

With that said, I am not impressed with anything Bethesda does with the current western RPG market and hate it when people ask me to play those games. The storytelling is weak and too much of it is inferential - the main character is just trolling dungeons guessing at what happened rather than actually participating in almost any of the storytelling. It frustrated me in Oblivion and in Fallout:NV to find that if I wanted storyline, I had to read a block of text telling the backstory of a person or place or I had to guess that dead body here with blood over there means he must have done x before y.

I have not played a Bioware game since NWN2, so I have no idea.

I mostly agree with the entire rest of your original post. I don't even care if the RPG I'm playing is cliche or if it breaks new ground or even if the gameplay is just a rehash of a previous game. I care most about plodding through an enjoyable storyline with reasonably well-written characters.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

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Stark wrote: Those numbers are interesting - I woudl have thought DA would massively outsell the older games. I guess its distorted a bit because people bought BG2 in combo packs for years, but I'm surprised DA only sold 50% more. Mass Effect has the advantage that the core gameplay is more accessible and (from what I understand) DA is a whole lot fo worldbuilding to set up their series.
According to Plunkett's, the entire series sold five million copies as of 2006. I'm not sure how bundles counted, though certainly BGII had the lion's share as it was in fact a better game.

There was also the strategic aspect of the top-down system, which helps reflect the teamwork of the tabletop RPG (though, like many, I've been in groups where the word teamwork belongs in quotes).
Honestly, many of the story-based 'mandatory' unmissable achievements seem like actual jokes to me. Big climatic drama even... plink... 'achievement unlocked - pithy injoke or pop culture reference'.
I actually kind of like them, not for the achievement itself but it tells me how many people have never finished the game or gotten to a certain point, at least on Steam.

Let's see. Portal 2

Wake Up Call: 86%. 14% of the purchasers never played through the first scene.

You Monster: Oh look, another 3% couldn't play 15 minutes.

Lunacy: 39% of the people who spend $50 on the game could not spend eight hours to beat it.

"High Five" and "Team Building" is another funny one.

And Portal is just as much of a CRPG as half of the stuff claiming to be.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

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TronPaul wrote:Look real as in the visual elements resemble real life.

(snip image)
I have to agree here. I'm currently playing Mass Effect 1 now, with all the textures and stuff turned up to ultra high, etc; and the visual quality is at the point where going beyond would be nice, but would require extra development time, for not much payback (in my opinion).

To add to this point, I'm also playing Napoleon Total War right now, and I am not exactly enthused at the quality level of the effects. I'm running things on 'Highish'; and....where the hell is all the 20 GB shiny going? I'm not seeing it as I have to play at high altitude in battles in order to micromanage my troops so they don't do stupid things.

Maybe if Total War had a cinematic camera, similar to Fallout 3/ New Vegas' VATS cinematic mode in gunfights, for when a particularly brutal event occurs, I would be feeling like I got my 20 GB worth...but as it is; it just feels like a slightly higher resolution reskin of Rome.

I'd like to see more games hold at 2009/2010 graphical levels -- Honestly, do we need to see ultradetailed nosehair closeups of every NPC? -- and focus on expanding the gameplay elsewhere, like making the 'asshole' route actually useful in RPGs. If you take the effort of going out your way to kick children, beat pregnant women, and name your German Shepherd Blondi, you should get a significant reward for that route; rather than a couple of random quests which aren't really tied into the storyline.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

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I have to chime in on the 'asshole route' since this is something of a pet peeve of mine. RPG writers seem constitutionally incapable of doing an evil route properly. While even the good routes tend towards being cliche and shallow, that tends not to compare to the evil route. At least with the good options when you do something nonsensical there are examples of people that actually could be that saintly or charitable, but with the evil routes they tend to be needlessly dickish and insane to the point where it should not work, which again is possible but the impact is so much less. If you are known for violently killing people at the drop of a hat and dick people over just to get a few extra gold, you should have a reputation for that. People should scream and run away, people be wary of trading with you, or willing to give you all their valuables just to make you go away and let them live. The occasional bounty hunter reflects some of that, but generally NPCs tend to treat you just the same as if you are a saint incarnate and if the devil is your understudy, which is annoying.

But I digress a bit because evil is not just the psychopath. No, they need more mafia style evil. They need not the charity/standard pay/extortion style reward options, but a "I'll need a favour later" style ideas. They need people doing evil in the shadows and charity in the light, building up a power base of contacts, favours, henchmen, and toadies. They need the choice not between saving the town or destroying it but the choice between saving the town because it is the right thing to do and saving the town because you want a controlling stake.

Of course, that would be hard to write for the current generation who can't seem to get over the idea that morality goes Lawful Good-Neutral-Chaotic Evil.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

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Academia Nut wrote:but with the evil routes they tend to be needlessly dickish and insane to the point where it should not work, which again is possible but the impact is so much less.
I'm not quite sure how to phrase things without spoilers for some of the games I've played, but I agree with you.

Evil needs to be more balanced, and less over the top-ish. Most people are not total psychopaths, and playing the kind of over the top evil that you encounter in games is a bit difficult (at least for me) to do.

Writers seem to think that if someone or a faction is EVIL, they must show it by them having an entire town put to the torch, with the survivors sold into slavery for having five guys plot against the Evil Overlord rather than having the secret police simply arrest just the plotters and their families and sending them to Fantasy!Siberia.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

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Why should you reward players for "evil" actions? In fact, why do you need an "evil" path at all? Nobody with a functioning brain complains that you aren't really rewarded by refusing to go through with the main plot and just doing whatever crafting the game offers, so why are "evil" paths so desired?
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I mean, how often am I to enter a game of riddles with the author, where they challenge me with some strange and confusing and distracting device, and I'm supposed to unravel it and go "I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE" and take great personal satisfaction and pride in our mutual cleverness?
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Re: The problem with RPGs

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There are several reasons for including evil paths in games:

1.) The evil path provides more rewards, thus making the good path harder and thus more satisfying. You got shit done while still being a good guy

2.) The universe has it as a fundamental component like with any Star Wars game involving the Light Side and Dark Side

3.) Providing a wide open sand box allows people to be dicks, so there should be some sort of acknowledgement of their actual behaviour

4.) Well done evil can be interesting. The actions of classical kings and emperors, especially those that clawed their way up the ranks, are filled with assassinations, political intrigue, backstabbing, and all sorts of behaviours that would be considered evil nowadays but were what got them to the top and also they might not seem so terribly evil from the inside, allowing for the drama of a slow descent into dirty business

The problem with modern evil paths is that they are so laughably implemented that there is often no actual reason to go down the evil path other than pure, unmitigated dickery. Here is how all the above points often go down:

1.) Because of the concept of game balance designers often make both paths equally viable mechanically, so the rewards of evil are not actually worth it. Instead of having the evil characters accumulating power faster than good characters but alienating the rest of society and all the problems that entails, both are basically treated identically which removes the actual real world motivation for the sets of behaviour called 'evil'

2.) Good and evil often turn into a slider and thus if you actually want to gain any of the benefits of being good or evil your options are 'make Jesus look like a bitter miser' or 'baby eating monster who pisses pure malevolence'.

3.) There is little to no actual acknowledgement of behaviour outside of a few things tacked on here or there. Most RPGs with a moral/ethical system rarely seem to have a properly implemented system of reputation. Actually, most RPGs with dialogue and more than a single, straight-line story from start to finish have no acknowledgement of what you did at all. If I am walking around in power armour with an energy weapon capable of blowing up a tank in a single shot over my shoulder and I used both to flatten a hardened military compound and this is not normal, people should recognize this fact!

4.) This is hardly ever done, and if it is, it is probably part of an organized, linear story rather than any sort of broad based story that can emerge through intelligent play.

So yeah, the reason I want 'mafia-style' evil is that making evil paths better means that you have to make the rest of the story better because evil is tricky. If you have a viable temptation to do wicked deeds that makes choosing the good path actually mean something rather than "Well this time I'm going Light Side so I will just pick those options all the time". Make the good path hard, make it not expedient, make it even hurt at times while the dark side is whispering and viable and won't make you feel like a complete monster until you look back at the end and see all the little steps you made down the path of hell.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Bakustra »

Academia Nut wrote:There are several reasons for including evil paths in games:

1.) The evil path provides more rewards, thus making the good path harder and thus more satisfying. You got shit done while still being a good guy

2.) The universe has it as a fundamental component like with any Star Wars game involving the Light Side and Dark Side

3.) Providing a wide open sand box allows people to be dicks, so there should be some sort of acknowledgement of their actual behaviour

4.) Well done evil can be interesting. The actions of classical kings and emperors, especially those that clawed their way up the ranks, are filled with assassinations, political intrigue, backstabbing, and all sorts of behaviours that would be considered evil nowadays but were what got them to the top and also they might not seem so terribly evil from the inside, allowing for the drama of a slow descent into dirty business
Okay. 1) That doesn't follow. If you're more rewarded for the "evil" path, it is by definition more satisfying because you get more out of it, unless you're using a very different definition of "reward".

2) That is only the case in a handful of properties, and many of those have no real need to incorporate it either- there is no reason why you must reward players for taking the evil path.

3) Wide-open sandboxes are a bad idea, but even if we accept them, there's no compelling reason to prefer rewarding antisocial actions in preference to rewarding anything else, even refusing to progress with the storyline as the most extreme example.

4) But that would essentially preclude a "good" path if you wanted to make that a thematic element. But that at least is a serviceable reason for doing it.
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I mean, how often am I to enter a game of riddles with the author, where they challenge me with some strange and confusing and distracting device, and I'm supposed to unravel it and go "I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE" and take great personal satisfaction and pride in our mutual cleverness?
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by Stark »

The description of 'well done evil' doesn't sound like evil at all. Multiple approaches are good, consequences are good, childish black/white choices are bad.

Witcher is good becuase you make decisions that have unintended consequences, not becuase it gives y for good a for evil options. Just play Alpha Protocol.
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Re: The problem with RPGs

Post by AniThyng »

Bakustra wrote: Okay. 1) That doesn't follow. If you're more rewarded for the "evil" path, it is by definition more satisfying because you get more out of it, unless you're using a very different definition of "reward".
The idea would be the evil path would be easier or give you more loot, so you can pat yourself on the back for resisting and taking the "good" path instead?
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