174 réponses à ce sujet

[the_one_54321]

A redirection from here. So that the conversation may continue unabated.

[the_one_54321]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I don't think the characters in FF ever make a decision that is out of character. My point is that the player doesn't get to make that decision, so he's no engaging in roleplay.

If roleplaying is in-character decision-making, then in order to roleplay the player needs to be making decisions in-character. If those decisions are made without the player's input, then the player isn't roleplaying.

That's more or less what I thought you'd reply with. There is "less" roleplaying, I agree. But that does not mean that there is no roleplaying. The gameplay requires that roleplaying take place, even if only mechanically. Two sides of the same coin. Neither need be absolutely perfect.

[the_one_54321]

Luc0s wrote...
Thanks for the link. However instead of picking up where we left off in the previous thread, I suggest lets start a fresh start. Some discussions were only going around in circles. This is the chance to start anew and hopefully this time we'll actually get somewhere.

If you'd like to take the discussion in a different direction, feel free to.

[the_one_54321]

Luc0s wrote...
What does everyone think that makes an RPG actually good?

That's a many-pronged question. I've liked different things in different games. And I've liked different things in different RPGs. There's a host of different elements that can make a game good in different ways. Maybe the better question is "what did you not like."

[Sylvius the Mad]

Luc0s wrote...

In fact, lets take a different RPG as an example. Lets take a western example shall we? Lets use The Witcher as an example.

Now in The Witcher you play a pre-made character who's name is Gerald. His personality and looks are already decided on at the beginning of the game, because he's based on the Gerald von Riva from the books (yes, The Witcher game is based on a series of books).

I happen to have two of the books handy.

I find them almost painful to read, because I think the setting is a terrific one in which to set and RPG.  If only I liked the game.

Now everyone who played The Witcher and/or The Witcher 2 knows that this game is 100% RPG to the core. Even though the character Gerald is 100% pre-made and his character is also 100% pre-defined, you still get to make a lot of choices, all of them in-character and none of the choices contradict his personality.

If you get to make the choices, then the character isn't 100% pre-defined.  In The Witcher, you can choose which side to support in a conflict.  If Geralt's personality were 100% pre-defined, that choice couldn't be left to you.

I think Torment is a terrific RPG, even though you always have to play as The Nameless One.  You can't customise your appearance, name, or even background.  But you get to customise your personality, which is what I think matters.

That you choose dialogue options, and you make plot-relevant decisions, means that you're in control of at least part of Geralt's personality.  The only roleplaying downside is that Geralt is voiced, but I don't find the VO in The Witcher particularly character-breaking.  He tends to deliver everything pretty straight, which is how I like it (contrast that with Male Shepard, who shouts everything like a lunatic).  But that's personal preference, so I can't give the game credit for that.

Now, Mr. Sylvius,

I don't know if you have played The Witcher, but would you dare say that The Witcher isn't a RPG just because you play a pre-made character with a pre-made personality?

If he had a pre-made personality, then yes, I would say that it wasn't an RPG.  But I disagree that The Witcher actually forces you into a pre-made personality.

Edit: Click here if you have never played The Witcher to see what the game is like. 

That was a helpful video.  I had to check to see whether the game let you choose full dialogue options, and it does.  That is what makes The Witcher an adequate RPG while ME fails to reach that minimum standard.

I did player The Witcher briefly, but I found the combat system so appallingly awful that I couldn't play the game for even 30 minutes before giving up forever.

[the_one_54321]

If you actually play through The Witcher, it becomes clear that you actually have no ability to decide what his personality or outlook on life is. He is Geralt. No matter how much you'd intend for him to be something different. Every single dialog choice or character choice will having him still acting like Geralt.

Also, I really didn't like the combat either.

[Sylvius the Mad]

What I like in RPGs is setting a character loose in the world to see what he does.  I establish a framework for his personality and then have all of his decisions fit into that framework.

RPGs are a grand thought experiment.  If I take a person with this personality and have his experience these events, what does he do?

Now, that alone doesn't make for a fun game.  I prefer stat-driven combat (with symmetrical mechanics - none of this enemies have 20 times as many hitpoints but do 5% as much damage foolishness) for roleplaying reasons, but within that I do have specific preferences.

For games where I control a single character, I would prefer combat gameplay that feels something like NWN.  NWN had fun combat, and I really enjoyed that dance of death the characters did as they attacked and defended.  Moreover, NWN's combat could be played both as a free-flowing real-time combat, or with lots of pausing to make tactical decisions.  So regardless of which sort of approach the game favours, NWN is an excellent model

For party-based games, either the game expects me to pause a lot and control everyone tactically, or the game expects a free-flowing real-time experience.  I can't think of any combat system that handled both well, so I'll break this one up.  For free-flowing party-based combat, I have yet to see a game that did this better than the first Dungeon Siege game.  Dungeon Siege's combat allowed direct control of every character, but it wasn't usually possible to control all of them at once.  DS combat rarely required frantic action from the player (I strongly dislike frantic action - this is why I don't play modern shooters).

For a more tactical game that requires pausing to control my full party, I would suggest using DAO's combat as a starting point.  However, I would prefer a more free-roaming camera to give me a better view of the environment - something like a Total War camera would work well.

Another option would be turn-based combat.  Turn-based combat has basically been perfected at this point, so a game could either use the Wizardry approach (I recommend Wizardry 8 - terrific game released 2001), or the Fallout/ToEE approach with tactical movement on a grid.  Both can work very weill.

Luc0s wrote...

However, I don't like Goddamned Bats. Goddamned Bats can ****** me off and it can ruin a good game.

I love goddamned bats, because they add to the verisimilitude of the setting.  I hated that mudcrabs vanished from the earth when I gained levels in Morrowind.  How does that make any sense at all?

If there are lowly bandits wandering the woods, then they should keep wandering the woods even if I could defeat them easily.  But they should also try to run away when it's clear that I'm more powerful than they are.

That's something newer games never seem to have.  Enemies never flee.  They fight to the death even when death is guaranteed.  I want to see enemies run away.

I also want to be able to run away myself.  Too often in modern games, doors lock behind you when you enter a room to engage in combat, only to magically unlock again as soon as the fight is over.  This is really dumb.

I want a game world that feels like a real world, and that means fewer mechanics stopping me from doing things that should work.  Particularly if the mechanics change based on metagame conditions, like being "in combat".  Why do I regenerate health faster out of combat than in combat?  Why can't one character then run away to regenerate health "out of combat" while the rest of the party keeps fighting?

The goal is game design should be to give us a world that follows its own rules consistently, and have those rules make sense.  I would love to see a game where I could have a running battle through tunnels rather than having to face an enemy is some pre-determined location.

That's why I liked Final Fantasy 12 so much. You had this sense of progression and no Goddamned Bats. At the near end of the game you where killing gigantic god-like monsters. It wasn't easy, but it was possible. And when you finally killed such a god-like monster that seemed impossible to kill before, you feel like the man. I love it.

I also think RPGs should sometimes have a shallower power curve.  If I start the game as a peasant, I don't always need to finish the game as a god-killing abomination.  Why not just a competent adventurer who has done something great?

DA2 is exactly the sort of plot that would work with a shallower power curve.

I play RPGs primarily to create a character I enjoy playing, and then enjoy playing him.  Having to get to know the character, or the game's mechanics, isn't a fun part of gameplay.  Those things should happen before gameplay begins - having to do those during gameplay is a waste of gameplay.

You know an RPG is good when it is able to suck you into the game and make you forget about the real-world for a moment.

I would agree, but more and more modern games go out of their way to prevent that from happening.  Having my character ever do something that I don't think he'll do breaks the game.  Having the UI come and go draws my attention to the UI.  Having the UI take time to use and navigate draws my attention to the UI.

This is why I dislike list inventories.  To find anything in a list inventory, you need to navigate that inventory.  Nothing is ever exactly where you left it because the list doesn't fit on the screen all at once, so you have to scroll a lot, and the list resorts itself whenever items are added or removed, so I literally need to find the thing I want every time I want it.

Compare that with NWN's grid inventory, where everything stays exactly where I put it, so if I want a Potion of Owl's Wisdom, I know exactly where that is without ever having to look for it.  And if some players don't want to bother sorting their inventory, then they can go searching through it to find things just like with a list.

A well-done grid inventory has literally no downside.  I don't see why any game with an inventory system ever uses a list.  Grids are unequivocally better.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Luc0s wrote...

I disagree. Geralt's personality is pretty much set in stone.

"Pretty much" is not 100%.  I can work with pretty much.  I cannot work with 100%.

You said 100%.  Now you're saying "pretty much".  Which is it?

He's a neutral bad-ass who loves the ladies and who's morally grey. Yes, you get to make plot-decisions in the game, but every decision is carefully orchestrated by the writers and none of the decisions contradict Geralt's pre-made personality.

Why doews he choose one option over the other?  If you are the one making the decision, you need to know this.

Geralt's personality isn't set in stone.  It cannot be without the game being demonstrably absurd.

So no, you don't get to decide who Geralt is. Just because you can make decisions doesn't mean you can make his personality. It doesn't work that way in real-life either.

In real life, your decisions are driven by your personality.  If you had a different outlook - if you had different values or goals - you would make different decisions.  With the personality you do have, you make the decisions you make.  The two are inseparable.

The only way your position makes sense is if Geralt literally does not care which option he picks every single time the game asks you for input, and that aggressive indifference is made explicit through Geralt's behaviour.

I somehow doubt those conditions are met.  Therefore, there exists ambiguity in which the roleplayer can work.

It's not like you can base someone's personality on a few decisions. Unless the decisions are morally-loaded (like in Mass Effect). However, the decisions in The Witcher are all morally gray. There are no "good" or "evil" decisions in The Witcher. Only "neutral" decisions. Obviously this is done so because "good" or "evil" decisions would contradict Geralt's personality.

Look at it another way.  If Geralt were good or evil, what would he do in those situations?  You see, the situations are such that there is no good answer.  A good character would just be endlessly frustrated by the situation, but he'd still choose one of the grey options.  He'd just agonise over it more.

That agony is part of the emergent narrative.

Also, I don't find moral decisions very interesting, so they're rarely an important part of my character designs.

Anyway, I get the strong feeling that you base whatever is - or isn't an RPG not on reasonable elements or defenitions, but just on elements and definitions that you prefer. You prefer choosing fully-written dialogue options to Mass Effects partly-written dialogue options, so you say that when a game has fully-written dialogue, it's an RPG and when it doesn't, it's not an RPG.

Not at all.  As I explained above, I hae many specific preferences that have nothing to do with the RPG definition.  I think DA2's combat is too fast, and generally unfun, but nothing about DA2's combat speed affects its place within or without the genre.

Selecting paraphrases prevents you from knowing what your character is going to say.  Therefore, you're not choosing what he will say.  If you're not the one making the decisions, then you're not roleplaying.

I think you're beeing to much biased. Sure, I also prefer the Witcher's dialogue system to Mass Effect's dialogue system, but that doesn't mean Mass Effect is less an RPG just because it doesn't have fully-written dialogue.

That's not why, but it's still true that ME's dialogue system prevents roleplaying within conversations

Edit: You should really give The Witcher a second chance. As soon as you learn your first few spells, the game and gameplay becomes a lot more interesting.

I didn't think the combat in The Witcher was dull.  I found it irritating because I had to engage in that interminable timing-based clicking.  I would much rather have just selected a target and have Geralt auto-attack.

But this again goes to refute your claim earlier.  I dislike The Witcher's combat so much that it makes me hate the game, but I don't think The Witcher's combat makes The Witcher any less of an RPG.  It's just one I don't want to play.

[blothulfur]

Christ Sylvius I thought it was only me who ideally wanted all that, certainly no developers seem to want it anymore. Personally i've given up asking but if you've still got the gumption keep up the good fight sir.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Luc0s wrote...

It might not make sense lore-wise, but it sure makes the gameplay less anoying. Now I have no problem with Goddamned Bats in real-time combat RPGs, but in turn-based RPGs were these Goddamned Bats just pop-up out of nowhere to ****** you off? That's really f*cking frustrating!

I'd rather enemies never just "pop-up out of nowhere".  If there are enemies about, they should be visible to my scouts.

The Fable series does this. You might not like Fable (1, 2 or 3), but give credit where credit's due.
All the Fable games had fleeing bandits as soon as you brutually slaughted the first half of the bandits and I really really enjoyed that! Seeing those bandits run away while screaming in fear was really satisfying.

That's a good point.  I don't often think of Fable (partly because they didn't release Fable 2 on PC), but Fable did offer many opportunities for tactical retreat.

This is a hard choice for game-developers, as I have learned as a game-design student myself. It's all about balancing gameplay and realism. Of course we all want to make a realistic game, but it should still be playable and it should still be fun gameplay-wise.

"Fun" isn't a universal standard, though.  We don't all enjoy the same things.

That's the difference between gameplay and narrative. You don't get to know characters through gameplay, al least I have never seen a game were you learn to know a character through killing enemies or something.

A character's personality is all part of the narrative within a game. And I disagree that the entire personality of a character should be given away at the start of the game. If a movie or a book would do this, it would most likely be an incredible boring movie or book.

I think the goal of a movie or book is entirely dissimilar from an RPG.  A movie or book is trying to tell a story.  An RPG should give me the tools to create my own.

Let's look at game mechanics for a moment.  I would rather use my abilities to achieve in-game goals than spend time within the game learning those mechanics.  I would much rather the mechanics of the game be fully documented in a way that I can read before I've even launched the game the first time.

I in fact like it when my player character is a bit mysterious at the beginning and I get to learn to know him/her better during the progression of the story within the game. That's awesome and that's what makes a character interesting.

If you don't know your character at the beginning of the game, how do you make gameplay choises for him?  How do you decide which weapon he uses?  Or to whom he speaks?  Or what he says?

All of these decisions could potentially be influenced by his personality.  Which you don't know.

I'd be paralysed with indecision.

I disagree. I think the modern games are able to capture the player and drag the player into the game more so than ever before! With the modern technology, developers are able to create amazing cutscenes and really believable characters. All that makes a game so much more impressive to me.

That said, my favorite game ever made is still The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, followed by The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

I have never played an RPG on a console.  My one attempt was FF7.

Cutscenes are a problem, I think, because they're non-interactive.  Only cutscenes in which my characters don't appear have any place within a game, and even then I'd rather they didn't because the interface changes.  I would rather the game leave the camera wherever I put it (ideally leave it under my control, even), and have the scene play out like that.  NWN did this - it worked really well.

So the fact that my favorite games ever are older games does say something... maybe.... or doesn't it?

But what does it say?

I think the best game ever made is Ultima IV.

But isn't this what made classic RPGs famous? Almost all the older RPGs I can think of have HUGE inventories and menu's and GUI's. It has pretty much become part of the characteristics of a typical RPG game.

But lists are an inefficient way to display that information.

Well I fully agree 100% with this though. That's what makes Zelda so awesome (though Zelda is not really an RPG). I love Zelda for the fact that the menu's and item-slots are always so well-done. The new remake of Zelda Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 3DS handheld does an even better job, because you can acces the grid-menu right away on the bottom screen. Every item in the game is always 1 click away. That's f*cking amazing! It's sooooo simple yet sooo amazing.

Agreed.  All games with inventory should do this.

[Clover Rider]

Luc0s wrote...

KaidanWilliamsShepard wrote...

But you are the king of long comments! Don't fail us sir!
It makes thing interesting, only if your in a reading mood of course.

I take that as a compliment. 

The irony is that I'm fully aware that I'm at least 50% responsible for the long comments, yet I really hate long comments.

Maybe I'm a hypocrite... maybe... I don't care.

Oh you are a hypocrite.

And most of the time you don't have any real facts in your debates.

Also don't take it the wrong way it was just a joke (for the most part).:innocent:

[Sylvius the Mad]

Okay, don't worry about what I said above.  This is the important one.

Luc0s wrote...

Of course we don't know every single detail of his personality so it's impossible to say I know what Geralt is like for 100%, but I do know the writers of The Witcher have already decided what kind of person Geralt is and it's not up to the player to change that.

The writers and directors from The Witcher decide who Geralt is and you as the player only get to make decisions that fit within the persoanlity of Geralt that has been set in stone by the writers.

What the writers decided doesn't matter.  All that matters is what's actually in the game.  If there's any detail left unexplained in the game, then we can work with that.

That way, I could play The Witcher once with one Geralt, and then I could play it again with a different Geralt.  Whether either of my designs matches the Geralt in Andrzej Sapkowski's books makes no material difference.

I literally do not care what the writers have decided if those decisions don't make their way into the game's explicit content.

Well, Geralt has his own personal goals and those goals is the only thing he cares about. He's not heartless, but he does have his priorities. When an important decision has to be made, it's always a morally grey decision and both options fit Geralt's morally grey personality. Most of the time, Geralt himself really doesn't care and he's fine with either option. So ultimately it comes down to the player, what YOU prefer. It's almost as if the game says: "Hey, Geralt doesn't care, so why don't you choose for him Mr. Player?"

You could say that this is meta-gaming and maybe it indeed is so, but you can't deny that Geralt's personality is set in stone by the writers and not by you.

I can and do deny that.  If that set-in-stone personality isn't established as set-in-stone by the in-game content, then it's not set-in-stone.

In ME, I can safely imagine that Ambassaor Udina in ME is gay, because the game never establishes his sexuality.  Regardless of whether the writers decided it themselves, if it doesn't appear in the game then it doesn't matter.

This is true, but in a game you are always limited in your decisions, because you're limited in your options. In real-life you can do what you want, in a video-game, you can only do what the games wants you to do.

A game can decide your character is morally good and give you only morally-good options.
A game can decide your character is morally evil and give you only morally-evil options.

In The Witcher, Geralt is morally grey and the game gives you only morally-grey options.

A good game would offer scenarios such that, if the writers wanted you to choose morally-grey options that only morally-grey options were available.

I need to play The Witcher now just to find examples to bring back to show that I'm right.

One example (spoiler ahead) is when you get to choose between 2 romance options. You get to romance 25 different women in The Witcher (no joke) but only 2 of those women are really in love with Geralt. Near the end, you have to make a choice between these 2 women. Whoever you as the player choose, Geralt will always act exactly the same. His personality doesn't change when you pick Triss over Shani or the other way around. So ultimately the choice comes down to who you as the player prefer. But the choice does not influence Geralt's behavior or personality.

He picked either Triss or Shani.  How is that selection not behaviour?

And another question - do you have to choose one or the other?  Or can you choose neither?

You are the one making the decisions, but not in such a detailed way as in Dragon Age or The Witcher.

But again, I think dialogue-decisions are really superficial either way and don't really define "roleplaying".

I think dialogue decisions are the more roleplaying-intensive aspect of the whole game.  They're the only decisions that feature detailed and specific information.

Do I trust this person I'm talking to?  If not, perhaps I won't divulge this important fact I just learned.  ME doesn't let you do this - Shepard will ask questions or claim ignorance or reveal secrets regardless of what you want him to do.

I think there are literally hundreds of roleplaying decisions to be made in the course of playing an RPG, and them ME's dialogue wheel came along and removed the vast majority of them.  How many substantive decisions are left in ME?  Maybe 12?

[sp0ck 06]

Sylvius, what exactly to you characterize as a "substantive decisions"? Choosing a written dialog option while conversing with a tavern patron?

ME has more "substantive decisions" that radically alter the story and characters then any other game I can think of, with the possible exception of Deus Ex. Every loyalty mission in ME2 can end in at least different ways, usually drastically different, and this affects that character for the rest of the game.

I understand your criticism of the dialogue wheel, although I disagree with you, but you can't sit there and say (about The Witcher) how "we can work with less then 100%," ect, then tell me ME has removed decision making.