SirLysander wrote...
SalsaDMA wrote...
DominusVita wrote...
"[Current RPG] is undoubtedly the highest quality RPG that we can create right now. (I won't say the 'best' RPG, but) If you can't accept that, then I'm sorry to say this but I guess your vision and our vision of an RPG have taken totally different paths. But I would like to say, thank you for falling in love with our earlier games so much. Of course, the fans of the original are very important, but what innovation can come about when you're bound to the past? I believe that gameplay should evolve with the hardware."
Take from that what you will.
I disagree.
Utilizing hardware to create better rpgs would incorporate using the memory/storage capabilities and fast realtime calculations to create on the fly plot reactions based on actions done by the player. Much like a gamemaster in a PnP rpg would make on the fly adjustments based on what the player(s) did in the story.
Instead we get fancier ways to kill pixels while still in a tight script with little deviation. That's not evolution of the genre, but abandoning it for the sake of something else.
Alpha Protocol wsa heading the right direction when it took some of the baggage from ME and tried utilizing it like this, albeit it was let down by poor production and maintanance.
While in general, I agree with you, SalsaDMA, I think your comment about on-the-fly adjustments by computers are a tad optimistic. I know I simplify how programming works (series of "if-then-elseif" and "select case" decision systems) when discussing digitized decision-making, but that doesn't set aside that the programmer limits the available decisions by what he can imagine. Any Tabletop Dungeon/Game Master can tell you that the players sitting on the other side of the screen can and will come up with more off-the-wall choices than any amount of preplanning will prepare you for; for a programmer, since they can much more effectively railroad players they don't need to program for the more "out there" player choice (or, even some "moderately-less-distant" player choices). Fast hardware and increased processing/rendering speeds gets you through the decision trees faster, but if the player-desired option isn't programmed into the tree in the first place, updated hardware doesn't increase player options.
Both yes and no, really.
Some of the stuff it won't affect, like the programmers limit of scope in what he can bother with making of different options. After all, they have to code the stuff into the game too, and there's only so much that can be done befor the thing has to be shipped
But some it can affect, like the ability to juggle multiple 'reputations' with NPCs and setting up broad formulas for how different actions will affect reputations based on proximity, chance of awareness of the action, implication of the action, relation to the action, Time dilation, situational modifiers and so on.
To give an example: 3 npcs from "The order of knightly justice" (made up name that hopefully describes somewhat their stance). NPC 'A' is in another region, NPC 'B' is in the vicinity but not immediatly at the event and NPC 'C' is part of the event.
Event unfolds and the player kills NPC 'D' that is also a member of "The order of knightly Justice". The killing was warranted because 'D' was "evil", but only know to those witnessing the event.
Reputation changes from the event:
A: No change, untill after a certain time have passed, and then the change will depend on further events detailing who or what happened reaches NPC A. If the player communicates with A before this time dilation, the event wouldn't have affected the reputaiton yet.
B: Discovers the player kills a member of his order, gets immediate negative reputation and will suffer negative reputation towards NPC C untill an event concluding between the 2 or the player have happened.
C: Positive reputation with the player.
This is a fairly simple example, yet it's already clear that handling just these few members can quickly become quite cumbersome to deal with if you escelate the numbers of participants that are affected by each event. Say the knightly order has a hundred members, each affected by the formula of distance, time dialtion, etc etc etc. Add in several of these events, and things start getting hairy, even if we are still using formulas to maintain the variables, instead of hardcoding them at each event.
Basicly, they more you want to make a believable immersion, the more computational and storage power you need. Todays games skip things like this by making generic reputations with broad factions, rather than assigning individual reputations to each NPC, or make the amount of npcs where reputation have an effect minimal and hardcode actions irregardles of implied beliefs of NPCs. Making a believable world, is making a simulation of a world. And those require raw power the better you want to simulate stuff. Just like it's more belivable if a wall crumbles or gets a big hole in it when shocked by the blast of cannon, than if it just stood there without a scratch afterwards.
I know one of the guys posting in here often liked to cite that as a full paragon Shepard he pushed a helpless mercenary out of a window and killed him in cold blood, yet nobody made any comments about it. This is a point where a less generic/broad reputatino system could have stepped in and made NPCs react more appropriately to what was happening based on previous variables that had happened.
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