Injecting tactics into RPGs?

[PainRack]

How many games have you played where this kinda scenario occurs?Annoymous character hero overpowers entire armies, destroys an entire base of monsters and kill the high level boss, one that can singlehandly wipe out entire armies and militia..... Oblivion scroll has to be one of the worst offenders of this type due to the levelling system. The monsters are keyed to your level, guards are always higher, yet, you can singlehandedly take on and kill an entire realm of daedra, but the Kvatch milita and so on can't.

So, my question is, what game concepts will you change or introduce to RPGs to make it more "realistic",as in the sense that tactics actually count?

For me, I'm thinking of removing levelling and introducing damage mitigation into the genre. As you lose health, your damage dealt to other monsters will steadily decrease until you're dead. This reflects reality in the sense that a badly wounded warrior won't be able to lift and do a massive attack. It also forces tactics into the genre, where a person has to balance the need between killing an opponent, or using other tactics like stealth or diplomacy to win the game.

It also doesn't make sense to me why a high level character should be so much more obscenely powerful than a low level character. The increase in health,mana and damage is usually sufficient to compensate for PVE combat, making grinding for experience one of the constants in a game. So, why not simply remove levels from the game whatsoever? Any boosts to the player stats will derive entirely from equipment/buffs and the difficulty of an area is set only by how many enemy mobs are in the area. No more grinding in Tristram before you head out to kill Diablo. The enemy will still be as difficult as it was, killable only by good tactics and combat management.


Ideas? Opinions?

[Darth Mordius]

Take a look at Mount and Blade. Excellent combat system (gasp! parries! gasp again! horses and lances!), it includes leveling, but the effect is very small so high level characters aren't obscenely powerful (the hp ranges from ~40 to ~60). It is in fact completely kick ass.

addendum: Stark likes it so it must be good.

[RogueIce]

How many games have you played where this kinda scenario occurs?Annoymous character hero overpowers entire armies, destroys an entire base of monsters and kill the high level boss, one that can singlehandly wipe out entire armies and militia.....

And yet just one of those scrubs will keep you out of a room you really want to go into due to Act of Plot. Or, because the Plot dictates, four of them manage to capture your whole party, despite going through an entire legion of them five minutes before.

Anyway, yeah, I like that idea. It's pretty silly to have these friendly armies and stuff that, in the end, don't actually do shit while you're out fighting for your life. At the very least, have it as some kind of group battle where you're fighting, but so are they, so you can at least pretend like they're good for something, even if your characters are going to take on the boss dude anyway like in an action movie (hey I'm a cop but I'm not going to use my radio to call for backup, or my gun for that matter...one-on-one kung fu fight ftw!)

[Bugsby]

I've been able to ignore most of the things you talk about, while some other things have always really annoyed me. Like guns in RPGs dealing damage equal to maybe a tenth of your HP. Gun's are a lot more powerful than that. If a soldier gets a crit hit with a military rifle on your white mage with cloth armor, your mage is dead. And RogueIce's point about the same baddies you just dispatched easily becoming invincible in a cutscene... yeah, that pisses me off, too.

As to power increasing as you level up, that doesn't really annoy me until I look at the full scope of the game. After a week or so of adventuring (thats usually how long an epic adventure takes in in-game time), you go from barely able to defeat "a weak slime mold" to throwing epic magiks at gods of destruction. That reeks of bullshit.

There are, of course, tactical RPGs, but that's another genre entirely. As to introducing combat tactics into a real first-person RPG, that's a bit more difficult. To be entirely "realistic", you need some way for your character to avoid taking damage. And since jumping around and doing crazy acrobatics to avoid damage never really comes out working like it should in first-person games, "real tactical combat" would probably just be a huge shield that you crouch behind, then find the enemy attack pattern and get in little cuts when he's open. It is possible to do more realistic combat, and that has been done before, but the mechanics for it are often clunky and always complicated, so these games rarely get traction.

I still think some sort of leveling system is necessary, but I'm a fan of any attempt to make the levels scale up a bit differently. Like increasing skills in attack and defense. If this is done right, you can conceivably have a character with a static HP number through the entire game. He'll get hit by increasingly lethal blows, but his defensive skills will scale up at the same time to keep damage per hit at relatively constant levels throughout the game. Most games do this anyway, but HPs and MPs improve as well so that you feel that much more badass at the end of the game.

My personal favorite damage system is in LOTRO. In that game, you don't have health, you have morale. And instead of being killed, you "retreat back to town". While the actual gameplay mechanics are unaltered, this makes things a lot more interesting in terms of "realism." You don't die constantly and are always mystically resurrected. Instead, you get the hell beat out of you by bad guys and have to run away. HP increases in this level scheme make more sense - you get more confident with each battle you win. And as for actual damage - cuts, bruises, falling damage, etc. - those register as debuffs. So if you get a deep wound in your arm, that doesn't mean "lose X health". It means you become slightly demoralized, and your attack speed is reduced for a time. Falling off a cliff won't do damage, but it messes up your legs so you run at 1/4 speed for a time (that time depending on how far you fell). My favorite side effect of this system is that lifestealing abilities are no longer reserved for evil necromancer types. Warriors can lifesteal by launching a "confident attack" or something like that. "Battle cry" can be an AOE lifesteal ability, and that's pretty cool.

[Julhelm]

Cannon Fodder and Syndicate are probably the closest we've ever come to "tactical" rpgs. They both have levels of a kind in them, but any pros you get from the levels only serve to make some tactics more feasible than others.

[PainRack]

I've been able to ignore most of the things you talk about, while some other things have always really annoyed me. Like guns in RPGs dealing damage equal to maybe a tenth of your HP. Gun's are a lot more powerful than that. If a soldier gets a crit hit with a military rifle on your white mage with cloth armor, your mage is dead. And RogueIce's point about the same baddies you just dispatched easily becoming invincible in a cutscene... yeah, that pisses me off, too.

The problem with guns is that well....... it simply becomes too powerful a weapon to be used in an RPG. Its one of the reason why my friend prefers fantasy settings where guns are unseen.

There are, of course, tactical RPGs, but that's another genre entirely. As to introducing combat tactics into a real first-person RPG, that's a bit more difficult. To be entirely "realistic", you need some way for your character to avoid taking damage. And since jumping around and doing crazy acrobatics to avoid damage never really comes out working like it should in first-person games, "real tactical combat" would probably just be a huge shield that you crouch behind, then find the enemy attack pattern and get in little cuts when he's open. It is possible to do more realistic combat, and that has been done before, but the mechanics for it are often clunky and always complicated, so these games rarely get traction.

Well..... my intention isn't so much to get tactics into RPGs. Its just to fix some of the itsy bitsy irritations, such as immensely overpowered adventurers that can take on entire armies but is somehow captured or some other problem. That takes away story immersion, believing that I'm actually am the character hero, which is something I like from RPGs.
So, I was wondering whether making it more tactical so as to speak, limiting your ability to mow through entire armies at one go might make it better. You lose a sense of progression and satisfaction, but would that give you better story immersion?

I still think some sort of leveling system is necessary, but I'm a fan of any attempt to make the levels scale up a bit differently. Like increasing skills in attack and defense. If this is done right, you can conceivably have a character with a static HP number through the entire game. He'll get hit by increasingly lethal blows, but his defensive skills will scale up at the same time to keep damage per hit at relatively constant levels throughout the game. Most games do this anyway, but HPs and MPs improve as well so that you feel that much more badass at the end of the game.

Add the problem of elite/epic equipment too.... Furthermore, such equipment are often so difficult to get that you need to grind out levels so as to acquire them. Unless there's a level cap or something like WOW instances/BGs, getting equipment sometimes feel entirely too much like grinding.
Which irritates me the most I guess. I loved Fallout for the fact that it didn't seriously involve grinding.

My personal favorite damage system is in LOTRO. In that game, you don't have health, you have morale. And instead of being killed, you "retreat back to town". While the actual gameplay mechanics are unaltered, this makes things a lot more interesting in terms of "realism." You don't die constantly and are always mystically resurrected. Instead, you get the hell beat out of you by bad guys and have to run away. HP increases in this level scheme make more sense - you get more confident with each battle you win. And as for actual damage - cuts, bruises, falling damage, etc. - those register as debuffs. So if you get a deep wound in your arm, that doesn't mean "lose X health". It means you become slightly demoralized, and your attack speed is reduced for a time. Falling off a cliff won't do damage, but it messes up your legs so you run at 1/4 speed for a time (that time depending on how far you fell). My favorite side effect of this system is that lifestealing abilities are no longer reserved for evil necromancer types. Warriors can lifesteal by launching a "confident attack" or something like that. "Battle cry" can be an AOE lifesteal ability, and that's pretty cool.

I can see why they say LOTRO is so radical then:D

I just a tad dissapointed at how RPGs, which are supposed to be about story immersion or fun sometimes devolve into either grinding or wuppage. If I wanted a game like that, I play counterstrike. Hell, Halo gave me a good sense of how an RPG is like. There's a tight storyline, a story is evolving even amidst the action and story immersion is possible.... even while you're wiping out entire armies on the go.There must be some way to balance how powerful and deadly you are with story immersion, Halo, an action game can do it, so, why can't games like Diablo or Baldur Gate or Oblivion?Titanquest........ pure grinding, and since you become obscenely powerful within hours of playing, virtually unstoppable for the rest of the game.

[PainRack]

Take a look at Mount and Blade. Excellent combat system (gasp! parries! gasp again! horses and lances!), it includes leveling, but the effect is very small so high level characters aren't obscenely powerful (the hp ranges from ~40 to ~60). It is in fact completely kick ass.

addendum: Stark likes it so it must be good.

I think I like what I see:D

[rhoenix]

The Shin Megami Tensei RPG series of games, specifically Nocturne, and Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2, all use a combat system that requires tactical thought.

You typically get one action per character. Hitting an enemy weakness, or scoring a critical hit grants you an extra action for that turn. Missing an attack, or using an attack an enemy is immune to costs you that turn and an extra turn. Having an attack repelled loses you all remaining actions that turn.

The one I've played personally was Nocturne, which I loved for the above reason - even random battles can kill you if you don't take them seriously.

[Lord Pounder]

I was quite fond of Fallout Tactics myself. I love setting up ambushes and seeing the bloody consequences.

[Darth Raptor]

I'm intrigued by the idea of discarding hit points altogether. It shouldn't matter how experienced you are: If you take a broadaxe to the sternum or a magical fireball to the face, the game should be over. Being more experienced should instead make you block/dodge/parry/deflect incoming attacks. Same goes for guns. Instead of healers giving their comrades a constant, sparkly blood transfusion *during battle* to keep them alive, they could instead focus on reviving fallen allies or maintaining defensive wards. Furthermore, stealth-oriented classes like thieves and such should be all about avoiding confrontations and making stealthy kills and be rewarded for doing so.

[White Haven]

Energy shields, whether of technological or magical origin, would make so many games so much easier to deal with on a suspension-of-disbelief level. Massive attack that should tear a human in half survivable? No problem, there's a graphic and a story explanation in place for why it doesn't. Guns aren't hella-effective? Same reason. As for capturing players...for the love of Gourd, use something that the player hasn't been Ginsuing repeatedly for a while. When freakin Shinra soldiers cornered me in FF7, it annoyed me. If the Shinra soldiers had backed off, and a dozen guys in powersuits, or the entire Turks organization, or some other crazy shit had showed up, it would have made sense.

As for scale...Romancing Saga addressed that, actually. You had your party combat, which had some interesting aspects that are beside the point, and then you also had army combat, where you used different tactics abilities and formations and such depending on what you'd earned and the situation and forces at hand. It worked quite well.

[Vendetta]

I'm intrigued by the idea of discarding hit points altogether. It shouldn't matter how experienced you are: If you take a broadaxe to the sternum or a magical fireball to the face, the game should be over.

The problem with this is that unless you're playing a roguelike, the game is only ever as "over" as your last savepoint, and making people repeat sections endlessly until they luck out and don't take the fireball to the face just makes for an annoying experience.

Hell, Halo gave me a good sense of how an RPG is like. There's a tight storyline, a story is evolving even amidst the action and story immersion is possible.... even while you're wiping out entire armies on the go.There must be some way to balance how powerful and deadly you are with story immersion, Halo, an action game can do it, so, why can't games like Diablo or Baldur Gate or Oblivion?

Because they have to be stat driven. Master Chief doesn't get any stronger as Halo goes on. He doesn't even get access to any significantly new weapons (the SPNKr appears on level 4, and that's the last gun to show), but the player controlling him gets better, and more able to handle large groups of enemies. Traditional RPGs are stat driven with a Random Number Goblin squatting in the middle of them, your progression system is based entirely on increasing one or two numbers until they're high enought to deal with what the goblin throws at you. If that progression comes only through some kind of grinding, then grinding is what will happen.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

RPG combat could be more deterministic than random, and with different stances and actions that you could take. For instance, you can see that your guy is losing a swordfight against a superior opponent, so you can have him give ground while you figure out how to get another party member to save his bacon. Or you're pressed for time, so you pick an aggressive stance to take down a weaker opponent quicker, knowing that it opens you up to getting hit in return. Not click-driven, yet not entirely roll-based.

[Darth Raptor]

The problem with this is that unless you're playing a roguelike, the game is only ever as "over" as your last savepoint, and making people repeat sections endlessly until they luck out and don't take the fireball to the face just makes for an annoying experience.

I'm thinking mostly about multiplayer games or games wherein you control a party of characters as opposed to "lone badass" games like The Elder Scrolls. When a party member falls (which will happen often), a character with healing abilities revives them. While they're up, healers focus on buffs and defensive barrier-type abilities.

I'd also like to see the impact of luck greatly minimized. The physical attacks of a character with 12 accuracy just won't hit a character with 50 evasion. Whether it's a parry, block or a clean miss. In order to land a blow, debuffs are in order. I'd also envision stats like evasion and defense to be mitigated by splitting the target's attention up between multiple assailants. Eighteen noobs after one blade master is so distracting that *someone* is going to land a blow. Regardless of level.

[Coalition]

One game I rnjoyed for a while was Robotrek, a RPG for the SNES.

The main character in this game never got in a fight. However, the robots he designs do. The robots can be customized, and each level allows them to have better capabilities, or even change abilities as you choose.

For tactical combat, you can move the robots around on the field. So if you are fighting an opponent that only fires forward, and your robot has enough move, you can park behind them, avoiding their attack.

Yes it was cheesy, simplistic, etc. It was fun too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotrek

[PainRack]

Because they have to be stat driven. Master Chief doesn't get any stronger as Halo goes on. He doesn't even get access to any significantly new weapons (the SPNKr appears on level 4, and that's the last gun to show), but the player controlling him gets better, and more able to handle large groups of enemies. Traditional RPGs are stat driven with a Random Number Goblin squatting in the middle of them, your progression system is based entirely on increasing one or two numbers until they're high enought to deal with what the goblin throws at you. If that progression comes only through some kind of grinding, then grinding is what will happen.

Which is why I wonder whether its possible to remove levels from an RPG. Once you rolled your stats in the begining, that's it, the only way you can boost it is from buffs and equip. Not levels.

[Larz]

snip

Which is why I wonder whether its possible to remove levels from an RPG. Once you rolled your stats in the begining, that's it, the only way you can boost it is from buffs and equip. Not levels.

If the whole point of this exercise is to gain more immersion from the game wouldn't it be kinda silly to think that after a while of sword swinging and armor wearing or what have you your initially rolled abilities wouldn't increase some? Swing sword around enough and your strength goes up, carry lots of crap around long enough your stamina/endurance goes up.

I think I better solution would perhaps be having a stat growth system where if you continuously do something stat related then it will raise that stat and vice versa lower if you neglect to doing stuff to maintain/raise the stat (something akin to the GTA:SA growth system.) To avoid the uber war of god thing though there should be a cap to how far you can grow/decline.

I do agree though that the whole level system for stats and sorts should go the way of the dodo bird. Leveling for learning new skills, techniques, what have you still seems practical to me at least.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Yes, GTA:SA / Elder Scrolls stat growth systems are just grand. I think I'll climb up that wall 50 times to improve my climb skill. Time to go to work, guess I'll leave a rock on the run button so I can come back to a maxed skill. Give me levels over that crap any day.

But luckily, those are not the only two choices. You can have a system where you earn XP, but spend it directly on upgrades instead of leveling. If you start with 500 XP and end with 1,000 or 1,500, you're definitely better than when you started, but not 20 times better.

[DesertFly]

There are several games like that, they're just action games. I'm currently in the middle of both God of War and Devil May Cry, and those sound more like what you're talking about. Instead of gaining "levels", you directly gain experience from enemies, which you then use to upgrade certain skills. Now, they are only new techniques or weapon skills, but I could see something like that happening for other things as well. In fact, Deus Ex has almost exactly what you are talking about. You don't gain levels in that; you receive points as you play that you can spend on various upgrades. Also, it's been awhile, but I believe you get better as you use a certain kind of weapon. But it's still somewhat based on skill. And, since your character is a genetically-engineered, implant studded supersoldier, it even makes it semi plausible that you can survive some of the ridiculous attacks that are sent your way.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Yes, but it hasn't been done in an RPG that doesn't have heavy action leanings, and it could be very workable in one. In fact, it's how the Tensided system works.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Damnit, someone else hit it before I could:

Deus Ex.

Easily the best system I've seen so far. No levels, no upgrades to your hit-points. You get experience throughout the game, and choose to apply it however you wish to the skills you want to upgrade. Weapons skills, as an example, accuracy and damage go up, recoil and reload-time go down.

Stances also play a role. Crouching increases accuracy, walking and running decreases it. Damage to individual body parts decreases accuracy and running speed.

Hit points are fixed, you have a healing skill which allows you to make more effective use of medical supplies to healer more damage per kit used, you can wear flak-jackets to absorb a percentage of all incoming damage, rebreather or hasmat suit to mitigate atmospheric/environmental damage. Other than that, what you start with is what you get.

I'm sure there exists reasonable ways to translate this to more fantasy oriented games.

[Gunhead]

Isn't the System Shock 2 system pretty similar to Deus Ex. I haven't played Deus Ex all that much so I'm not really sure.

How bout a career system similar to Warhammer Fantasy RPG?
The career you're on limits how much you can advance before you upgrade to a different career. You also could implement a system where each new career a character enters becomes more expensive which would make people think twice before doing the maxing out dance by constantly changing the career they're on.

-Gunhead

[CDiehl]

Yes, GTA:SA / Elder Scrolls stat growth systems are just grand. I think I'll climb up that wall 50 times to improve my climb skill. Time to go to work, guess I'll leave a rock on the run button so I can come back to a maxed skill. Give me levels over that crap any day.

The basic idea is a good one, since it makes sense to allow a player to improve his character by making him do the things you want to improve. However, you're describing grinding, which ought not to be tolerated. The way I'd prevent grinding would be to put caps on how much a character can improve by raw grinding. For example, if you spend 8 hours running around one area slaying goblins, your character becomes world-class at killing goblins. However, this only translates partially to killing some similar creatures, but doesn't help him kill a dragon. Also, when your "kill goblins" stat hits its maximum, you stop earning XP, cash or items for killing them, because they stopped being a challenge and nothing they have is interesting anymore. The same rules can be applied to skills like climbing, swimming, running, or operating a vehicle.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

An idea is only as good as its implementations, and while it's not bad in action games like GTA, it's always dragged the Elder Scrolls games down. Especially when you make it worse by tying primary skills to your level, giving incentive to tag skills you'll never use and stay at low level. This wasn't just an Oblivion thing, either, although it was the worst in that game due to the lack of limits on level scaling.

My preferred method would be the direct XP spend system and no XP for killing stuff, or at least just as much or more for sneaking / talking one's way out of a fight. The direct XP spend system has to be balanced very carefully so that there's no incentive to just keep pumping one stat or skill into the stratosphere and cakewalking to victory, though. A recursive formula helps, ie. raising a skill to 1 costs 1 point, then 2 for 2, 3 for 3, etc.

[Coyote]

I think there is a lack of good tactics in RPGs for two reasons:

1: The typical program nerd doesn't know tactics from lawnmowing.

2: If, by chance, you did get a game designer who could actually apply real tactics, your lone warrior or small party would get fucking owned so fast the only sound you'd hear would be your sphincter tearing in psychosomatic response.

Enemies have to be somewhat nerfed in ability & smarts to allow a single PC or small group to make any advancements at all, really.