Merced256 wrote...
I also don't get how gear/stats/inventory are anything resembling the illusion of choice. All of those things dictate how YOUR character plays the game. Gear defines how you kill stuff, tactics, etc. Stats dictate how good you are with particular gear and other things like cunning checks. Inventory is directly related to gear and is a part of that system. Theres no illusion behind the choices you make concerning these things. They all have a tangible impact on how you spend a majority of your time playing the game, which is in combat (OMG THE BARBARISM).
The "illusion of choice" thing Shootist is getting at doesn't have to do with removing the game elements to advance role-playing. The point is that the granularity of the statistics in an RPG design give the impression that there are more distinct options than actually exist.
From a design standpoint, combat challenges (and other conflict resolution mechanics) boil down to a mathematical relationship. In a fantasy game, there are only so many things that define a character in combat. Defense, Accuracy, Single-Target Damage, Multiple-Target Damage, Status Effects, Battlefield Control, etc. etc. A good designer balances these characteristics, and party roles (in a party-based game--note that this is a conceit of D&D and its progeny, and doesn't apply everywhere) emerge.
The design already has the numbers buried in it. A rogue-type will typically be high-mobility, lightly armored, very accurate, and capable of high situational single-target damage, right? Thing is, the idea of constantly upgrading gear is completely optional, because challenges tend to scale with the characters. The rogue's ability can just as easily be made attributable directly to the character instead of his gear. If the design, for example, calls for a rogue to do 20 percent of a target's damage per round, it doesn't matter whether he gets all the credit for it, or his awesome gear combines with his awesome abilities. In fact, a game could just as easily be designed to make gear itself be the only relevant factor. In every case, the game can play exactly the same way, but the tone or theme of the game may change.
Same thing can be said about character attributes themselves. If you decide that accuracy and situational damage is dependent on an "Alacrity" stat, that's where a certain kind of character's development resources will be placed. For another kind of character, the "Schwarzenegger" stat might be key. The point is, the kind of viable character types available are already hard-coded into the game. You wanna run a two-handed wrecking ball with high scores in "Cute" and "Slippery" in a game that only supports the "Schwarzenegger" build? You can pretend the option exists, but the game won't recognize your character and he will die an ignominious death.
Character progression? Same damned thing. Challenges in an RPG are tailored or timed so that the character(s) can get through them, but with a solid challenge and enough apparent risk to make them interesting. The degree of difficulty, however, will seem more or less the same. Once again, D&D gave us the bildungsroman approach, so we assume that's how RPG's work.
The only real differences in character development are new approaches a character gets. If your character reaches a certain level and purchases an area-of-effect attack he didn't have before, now his interaction with the game world has changed. But he could just as easily have had all of his abilities (at a lesser effectiveness, perhaps) right from the beginning.
The point is that none of these design elements is essential to a role-playing game, and the definition of the RPG doesn't require any of them. In fact, there's nothing that says that a wargame miniatures sort of combat system defines an RPG, either. When we started playing these games on kitchen tables in the 70's, our options were limited. Computers allow for lots of different approaches to representing combat.
It all comes down to preference. I happen to like the idea that my character is the guy doing the fighting, not so much his gear. I don't particularly like the idea of rifling through the blood-sopped clothing of fallen enemies for a few pennies, either. I prefer to have most of the elements of my character in place from the beginning, rather than having my full character concept develop slowly from the beginning and not be realized for 15 levels or so. Some folks love the old "kill 'em and take their stuff" formula (lots, in fact), and love levelling and putting points in scores. It doesn't necessarily make a difference in the mathematics of conflict resolution, though. It's all tone and theme.
I always chuckle when people talk about ME2 pandering to the childish FPS crowd while it guts all of the "true roleplaying" from its game system. The ME2 changes reflect a lot of changes in tabletop gaming. I've been designing tabletop games for 26 years or so, and ME2 moved in exactly the direction I'm designing currently. It's interesting that some see this direction as dumbing down, while a tabletop designer sees it as CRPG's breaking free of the old and the arbitrary and furthering the evolution of the medium.
Modifié par Tantum Dic Verbo, 15 août 2010 - 05:24 .
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