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[Innsmouth Dweller]

does that mean that if a game has a fixed protagonist it's no longer an RPG but a novel? huh. i thought the quality which makes RPGs stand out is the ability to make choices and progress your toon. neither game (DAO, DA2) give players enough freedom tho. but then again, if player is free to do whatever she/he wishes, it's no longer captivating story but a boring sandbox with caves and bandits (unless its wasteland, maaan... i could explore wasteland for months!). somehow sandbox's NPC names always elude me; i rember only one guy - the yarl of whiterun, because of the way he was sprawled in his throne (i always gigle when i see him, they all should do that).

 

either way, it seems i'd like a novel more.

[Hiemoth]

Oh, I agree with this.  I was just commenting on the history of the mechanics.

 

I think breaking things out of the mage is a good idea.  I replayed BG and BG2 with the new EE releases, and it has reminded me how much party structure has changed.  Controller spells like horror, charm, and time stop absolutely rule that game.  It is suicide to spend anything but low-level spell slots on damage spells (thankfully, magic missile is OP). The mage needs controller spells, buffs to protect against controller spells, and debuffs to break through enemy mage protections.  As a result, all strategy is arranged around the mage and cleric; the non-magic based characters are very much second string.

 

Compare that to modern tactics where the party is much more balanced.  Which is a good thing.  But unfortunately, we stopped evolving the mechanic and thus seem to have solidified with some pretty rigid roles, when the right solution is to figure out how to give all classes the role flexibility that the mage used to have.

 

This has gone on so long that players are starting to think this is the way things should be. I have been looking at some forums discussion Bungie's Destiny, and I am seeing a generation of players that now think those roles are the only way you can structure a party.  Sigh.  I have never, ever played a game with a tank.  It is completely unnecessary with a good controller (like an ME Adept or a DA2 force mage).

 

I think the game that did the worst to solidify these roles outside of MMOs is not DA2, but 4th edition D&D.  The need to put everyone in a specific box resulted in the removal of infiltration spells and most of the controller spells.  Play-styles that I had used for decades were no longer supported by the game. And when we complained about this to Wizards, we were told this was no longer "the role" of the mage.

 

I partially disagree with the assertion about the removal of flexibility from the other classes, even if overall I thought that was an excellent insight in the evolution of party roles. The evolution of the D&D system has been really weird in that sense, as in non-magic classes started to lose effectiveness after the 10th level while magic classes gained more and better variability. Then they managed to find a new approach to the in 3rd edition and especially 3.5 allowed very different approaches for all classes, which they ended removing in the 4th edition. Just weird.

 

However, in a Dragon Age related discussion, I actually felt that the class system and skill trees moving from DAO to DA2 allowed much better variation of different builds and approaches with all the classes. Mages, which already had better variation in DAO than the other classes, could be build to effective support, damage or control units. But especially rogues and warriors, I felt they were allowed much more different and varied approaches within the class than DAO did and especially made the classes feel distinctive in action, while still remaining effective overall. As I am doing another playthrough of both DAO and DA2, I find myself thinking much more on effective builds for warrior than I ever really needed to in DAO. And while rogue is technically the damager while warrior is the tank, I've managed to use the rogue as a controller unit who ties up lots of units and the warrior as a massive individual damage dealer.

 

Ultimately, I kind of think it is always kind of a balancing thing. If they place some limits on the class, for example the available weapons, they are able to build more effective supporting skills and think on different ways to have the role function. While on the other hand, if the roles are allowed to be loosely defined, it allows for more basic choices, but there are very little additional support for that class, as it might very easily clash with the multiple basic choices the player can take.

[Walker White]

However, in a Dragon Age related discussion, I actually felt that the class system and skill trees moving from DAO to DA2 allowed much better variation of different builds and approaches with all the classes.

I agree that if we are comparing DAO to DA2, there is more flexibility in DA2. Moving combos to cross class instead of keeping them mostly with the mage went a long way here. And you can mix roles, such as rogue controllers; item-based abilities have done this for quite a while, but you go through consumables pretty heavily (and you need something like a Heward's Handy Haversack to get to the consumables quickly). But I think the build trees are still fairly narrow compared to what you could do in say a 3x D&D.

[Iakus]

 

does that mean that if a game has a fixed protagonist it's no longer an RPG but a novel? huh. i thought the quality which makes RPGs stand out is the ability to make choices and progress your toon. neither game (DAO, DA2) give players enough freedom tho. but then again, if player is free to do whatever she/he wishes, it's no longer captivating story but a boring sandbox with caves and bandits (unless its wasteland, maaan... i could explore wasteland for months!). somehow sandbox's NPC names always elude me; i rember only one guy - the yarl of whiterun, because of the way he was sprawled in his throne (i always gigle when i see him, they all should do that).

 

either way, it seems i'd like a novel more.

 

 

I wouldn't say a fixed protagonist is the problem, but a fixed outcome.  If the character's fate is set in stone from the very start, then there is little point in "role playing" as nothing you do really matters (a recent game which gave birth to a multitude of cupcakes being a particularly egregious example)  it's a novel where all you are allowed to do is fill in a few blanks.

 

Now such a limitation can be overcome, like Planescape: Torment, where the focus is less about defining the story as it is defining the character in teh story.  But it takes a truly exceptional piece of writing to do that.  And since we're being told "you are the Iinquisitor, and this is your story" that is not how this game is being presented.

[Walker White]

does that mean that if a game has a fixed protagonist it's no longer an RPG but a novel?

Crossing over into this other discussion...

The issue here is a debate that is actually raging all across game design: designer voice vs. player voice. When we talk about an art form, we often talk about the "voice" of the artist or designer. This is a fancy way of saying what the designer wants to convey through this medium. But games are an interactive medium, so players can do things with it that the designer never thought of. Sometimes this can completely derail the designer's goals. The problem is not unlike what happens when you create an elaborate D&D adventure only to have your players completely derail it in the first 5 minutes.

 

Stories in games break down into parts that are designer voice and parts that are player voice.  Narrative is the part of the story that the designer completely controls. It can be cut-scenes, the limitations on dialog choices, NPCs reactions, and the like.  Some games have a story that is all narrative.  The Assassin's Creed series is an excellent example of this.  While the game mechanics are becoming more and more RPG-like every release, the player has no meaningful control over the story outcomes.  

 

A game like Minecraft is the other extreme.  It is a sandbox with no real narrative; the stories are just journals of what the player did and how the world reacted to it.  Whether this "player story" even counts as a story is a major debate among game designers.

 

RPGs are story-heavy games that attempt to balance the designer voice with the player voice, avoiding both extremes.  Exactly how to balance this is an open question and a matter of taste.  Open world RPGs like the Elder Scrolls series have a loose narrative structure that allow for a very strong player voice.  The downside is that it is hard to make this type of story compelling.  BioWare has always believed in a strong designer voice for its story, even back the BG2 days.  The result are stories that are more compelling (most of the time), but with heavy limitations on what the player can do.  

 

Which one is better is often a matter of what you are looking for in a game.

[In Exile]

While I dislike MMO mechanics in general, the agression mechanic isn't even the part I loathe the most - it's the super restrictive class system. DAO gave you a bit of wiggle room (DEX-based archer or dual-wield warriors, STR-based rogues, Arcane Warrior mages), but DA2 pretty firmly clamps you into those Tank, DPS, and Healer roles and doesn't let you go.

 

I disagree. Or rather, I agree that the roles are restrictive, but that is more because of the premium that the game puts on direct damage. Tanks are pretty - to largely - useless in Bioware games, with the exception of a boss fight because of the absurd HP bloat of the boss (and even then, you could totally run a party of four ranged players if it wasn't for the very, very tiny arena that DA2 loved to force you in for boss fights; in DA:O a tank was completely irrelevant; I don't think I even used the taunt ability that game). 

 

If doing pure damage (especially AOE damage) wasn't so overwhelmingly broken we might have a more fluid class build, but even building a "dex-based archer" just means you're still creating pure DPS and tanks, a strength-based rogue is still build around DPS, and arcane warriors are still tanks. 

 

DA:O didn't let you escape the roles, it just let you build different types of characters to fill them.

[In Exile]

Crossing over into this other discussion...

The issue here is a debate that is actually raging all across game design: designer voice vs. player voice. When we talk about an art form, we often talk about the "voice" of the artist or designer. This is a fancy way of saying what the designer wants to convey through this medium. But games are an interactive medium, so players can do things with it that the designer never thought of. Sometimes this can completely derail the designer's goals. The problem is not unlike what happens when you create an elaborate D&D adventure only to have your players completely derail it in the first 5 minutes.

 

...

 

RPGs are story-heavy games that attempt to balance the designer voice with the player voice, avoiding both extremes.  Exactly how to balance this is an open question and a matter of taste.  Open world RPGs like the Elder Scrolls series have a loose narrative structure that allow for a very strong player voice.  The downside is that it is hard to make this type of story compelling.  BioWare has always believed in a strong designer voice for its story, even back the BG2 days.  The result are stories that are more compelling (most of the time), but with heavy limitations on what the player can do.  

 

Which one is better is often a matter of what you are looking for in a game.

 

I really disagree with you here. It's not necessarily about a "voice" vs. another type of "voice",  but about reactivity to the choices, personalities and character that you have. The mere fact that I can invent some elaborate fantasy in my head doesn't mean I have any input into the story if - like IWD - my character just amounts to an empty space that the game never recognizes or reacts to except as a murder machine. 

 

Let's take Fallout:NV as an example, because it illustrates the reactivity point quite well. Everything about the faction system in that game is designed to respond to who you choose to make your character be in the grand scheme of the world. There is nothing personal that the game reacts to, so to say that your character can have a personality in that game is IMO quite wrong; but there are radical differences between different types of builds and goals, and so that matters in differentiating characters and actually making the player feel as if they have a voice in the world.

Let's take DA:O as another example. Here, your actual class-based, gameplay-based reactivity is very low. But compared to NV you have far more reactivity personality wise, and background wise. The origins integrate your character into the world. Your frequent interactions with companions, allowing you (rarely) to express personal thought, feelings and views, allows you to define your personality vis-a-vis the game world. 

 

It's reactivity. That's what matters. 

[AlanC9]

But I think the build trees are still fairly narrow compared to what you could do in say a 3x D&D.

The viable build trees, anyway. I think there are more ways to build a DA2 character, but most of them would be bad.

Edit: I'm only considering superficially plausible builds, though. You could certainly screw up a 3.0 character by taking random feats.

[Hiemoth]

I agree that if we are comparing DAO to DA2, there is more flexibility in DA2. Moving combos to cross class instead of keeping them mostly with the mage went a long way here. And you can mix roles, such as rogue controllers; item-based abilities have done this for quite a while, but you go through consumables pretty heavily (and you need something like a Heward's Handy Haversack to get to the consumables quickly). But I think the build trees are still fairly narrow compared to what you could do in say a 3x D&D.

 

I agree and disagree. I think the system in third edition D&D:s was excellent for pen and player purposes, especially if you had a creative group as it allowed a lot of flexibility. However, I always felt it was a really difficult system to effectively transfer to cRPGs and while it did allow for some really crazy builds, it was also surprisingly easy to simply make broken builds and thus, it was actually a lot more safer to stay within the simple, straight-forward builds, which in turn were relatively simple. Thus, I do think that there is a lot of promise in the current direction of Dragon Age system, as they seem to try to allow that clarity to the classes while really giving a lot of ways to have that class evolve. For example, I feel I have a lot more choices playing a warrior in DA2 than I did playing one in NWN or NWN2.

[metatheurgist]

I think the game that did the worst to solidify these roles outside of MMOs is not DA2, but 4th edition D&D.  The need to put everyone in a specific box resulted in the removal of infiltration spells and most of the controller spells.  Play-styles that I had used for decades were no longer supported by the game. And when we complained about this to Wizards, we were told this was no longer "the role" of the mage.

And we got our own back by not buying their game, and now D&D is no longer the best selling system. So it's cool. Having seen some of D&D Next, I won't be buying that either.