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[dreiche2]

One could argue you'd never get the same depth of narrative you'd see in a carefully scripted game, but I've yet come across a game that really delivers on this point. These are game-developers, not authors.

As far as scripted-story games go, the best story I ever found was in Planescape: Torment. If I remember correctly, your actions did have some impact on the world as well, but it still felt mostly linear. And while as a game it was sometimes tedious and took some while to get into, the story was really top notch and thus P:T remains one of my personal favourite games.

So I think there is room for both great scripted-games and sandbox/emergent-stories games, but I also agree that most games on either end of the spectrum fall short of what they could be.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

On Zwei's comment that players would strip the world of everything and sell it.

Merchants do not have infinite money. They can't buy all your goodies all at once. They have to wait for people to come buy the goodies you sell them so they get more money to buy new goodies from you.

So you walk into someone's house and they see you, they freak out and ask what you're doing walking into their house. You run off into a side room and they call for the guards. Or you kill the homeowner and hide the body, but a guard magician comes by later to speak with the corpse. You are now wanted.

Say instead you sneak into the house, steal everything, and sell it off later to the merchants. The theft victim comes to the marketplace to replace his dishware, finds it all there, and calls the guards. The guards ask the merchants who sold them the goods. the merchants give a description. You are now wanted.

Say you fence your stolen goods to a merchant in the underground. He ends up shipping the goods to a merchant in another town. This reduces your profit considerably and it's no longer worthwhile to steal plates and cups.

I found this in Morrowind. Beyond Seyda Neen, the starting village, there is no reason to steal plates and cups and brooms. It strips the world empty and you get very little out of it. You're better off diving for pearls and stealing just people's fine silver.

Anyway, once you steal everyone blind and fence their goods, and they are buying up someone else's stolen goods form another city to replace it, eventually they have no more money left. They have to just sit around at home with no dishware, gnawing on mushrooms in the darkness. They still have a job, and so they can buy food and pay their rent. But if you keep stealing from the person, perpetually keeping them poor, they may begin to hide their money. Let's say you steal that. They eventually can't afford to live in their house or else get tired of the crime, and move away or become homeless.

Zwei's complaints come into play when you have a very poor depiction of a town where nobody is connected and people just stand around all day spitting out the same lines of dialogue. I agree that SO MANY GAMES feature this. Morrowind certainly does. But a good game would feature a living town where the player could just constantly steal all the food if he wanted to, but he wouldn't ever get anything else done.

The simplest control on player OCD is making it obvious that you cannot - and I want to emphasize the impossibility - you cannot take every item, speak through every dialogue option on every person, kill every monster, cut down every tree, mine every vein of ore, or pry open every oyster.

Once you realize that, you're wasting your time stealing brooms. Maybe you might at first. But you're better off just taking the higher-value loot, talking with the people who might know something pertinent, killing the important monsters.

The failures of RPGs Zwei points out are not impossible to overcome. Toady is in the process of overcoming them. And I agree that there is no reason why a team of 200 with a $5M budget can't overcome them.

[QuantumSawdust]

* Loot ... look, mobs have to look impressive, so of course they will have neat weapons/armor. No, you can not get it. There is this thing: Balance. Loot has to match challenge, not what mobs would really carry.

Besides, typical rpg-player instinct would be to strip everything naked and to regurarly return to npc merchant to sell it as their inventory fills. That is hardly positive thing, it breaks immersion, hard.

The NPC's armour got wrecked in the battle, right? If you killed the guy, chances are you shredded his shiny breastplate... Well, why don't they have it so that Scrap Metal is dropped, or, something? That can then be smelted down into a reusable bar.

Also, you speak of inbalance... DF has all its creatures drop what they are wearing, do you see the player then able to take over the world?  No. You still have other pressing issues.

It's not the fact that it causes a disbalance, it's that the RPG is focussed only as money being a factor. RPG Players save up this money to buy armour, weapons and magical trinkets.
What game developers aren't doing, is making it so that players need to regularly spend their money. Food. Water. Beer. Whores. Repaired/replaced armour, sharpened swords, Medical Supplies, and so forth.

Whilst i'm on the subject; all of the above listed needs will be included in a 2d mmorpg me and my team are working on ^_^.

I don't think it's an issue of making players spend their money. I mean, that's not even something I want to think about when I play a story-based RPG (interactive book).
I think the issue is that money plays too large a role in RPGs. In DA:O, the fact that if you had an excess of money you could easily double your character's power illustrates this. Making players spend their money constantly won't fix this, you'll still have an incentive to hoard every bit of gold you find, and I can see it making the problem worse.

What I think games need to do is make money far less... well, valuable. I mean, money is not at the top of my worries in real life, and I would certainly hope if I was a hero fighting against an evil hoard (alone or in a small party) it would be close to the bottom. As illustrations, did Frodo take all the armor and weapons from monsters killed along the way to destroy the ring? Of course not, he has far bigger worries. Namely, he was fighting against time, not his character level and equipped item power. The enemy was far stronger than him and getting stronger by the week, and nothing he bought from a town would change that. Yet LOTR is an incredibly engaging story, which would be ruined by having 50% of the book be focused on carrying loot to towns, buying gear, repairing equipment, etc. It would be close to impossible to become engaged in the story world.

Every RPG I have ever really enjoyed has drifted away from "money is powerful and very important get as much as you can and you will be stronger than your enemies" mindset. Such as System Shock 2. Money helps, but the amount of time I spent looking for money was dwarfed (heh) by the amount of time I spent cowering in fear of the sounds of monsters somewhere nearby.



Thank you Toady for making such an innovative exception! And for picking your priorities awesomely. You know you have to be going in the right direction since your game has begun to be able to actually write the plotline for stories.

[Alexhans]

Spoiler: "LeoLeonardoIII's post" (click to show/hide)

On Zwei's comment that players would strip the world of everything and sell it.

Merchants do not have infinite money. They can't buy all your goodies all at once. They have to wait for people to come buy the goodies you sell them so they get more money to buy new goodies from you.

So you walk into someone's house and they see you, they freak out and ask what you're doing walking into their house. You run off into a side room and they call for the guards. Or you kill the homeowner and hide the body, but a guard magician comes by later to speak with the corpse. You are now wanted.

Say instead you sneak into the house, steal everything, and sell it off later to the merchants. The theft victim comes to the marketplace to replace his dishware, finds it all there, and calls the guards. The guards ask the merchants who sold them the goods. the merchants give a description. You are now wanted.

Say you fence your stolen goods to a merchant in the underground. He ends up shipping the goods to a merchant in another town. This reduces your profit considerably and it's no longer worthwhile to steal plates and cups.

I found this in Morrowind. Beyond Seyda Neen, the starting village, there is no reason to steal plates and cups and brooms. It strips the world empty and you get very little out of it. You're better off diving for pearls and stealing just people's fine silver.

Anyway, once you steal everyone blind and fence their goods, and they are buying up someone else's stolen goods form another city to replace it, eventually they have no more money left. They have to just sit around at home with no dishware, gnawing on mushrooms in the darkness. They still have a job, and so they can buy food and pay their rent. But if you keep stealing from the person, perpetually keeping them poor, they may begin to hide their money. Let's say you steal that. They eventually can't afford to live in their house or else get tired of the crime, and move away or become homeless.

Zwei's complaints come into play when you have a very poor depiction of a town where nobody is connected and people just stand around all day spitting out the same lines of dialogue. I agree that SO MANY GAMES feature this. Morrowind certainly does. But a good game would feature a living town where the player could just constantly steal all the food if he wanted to, but he wouldn't ever get anything else done.

The simplest control on player OCD is making it obvious that you cannot - and I want to emphasize the impossibility - you cannot take every item, speak through every dialogue option on every person, kill every monster, cut down every tree, mine every vein of ore, or pry open every oyster.

Once you realize that, you're wasting your time stealing brooms. Maybe you might at first. But you're better off just taking the higher-value loot, talking with the people who might know something pertinent, killing the important monsters.

The failures of RPGs Zwei points out are not impossible to overcome. Toady is in the process of overcoming them. And I agree that there is no reason why a team of 200 with a $5M budget can't overcome them.

Don't you want to be game designer?   
Pleeeeease!  We need that kind of thinking!  Great post.

[Azkanan]

I've noticed this happened twice now...

Anybody played Knights of the Old Republic II? Remember how you had to run around to all these planets, basically running through a dungeon/environment doing menial thing, killing mobs for XP, to reach the end and do something? Basically the same thing as Dragon Age: Origins.
Dragon Age: Origins is supposed to be a more "Mature" themed game... All they did was add a couple of hints twice that somebody had been raped, added pretty red spots to characters after battles, and a dwarf that uses "Sodding" in every sentence.
I was expecting able to do whores. Sure, you can do it in DA:O, but, it basically empties you of cash for a black screen with no actual gain from it.
I was expecting swearing, instead, I got "Sodding"...

Mature theme my ass. :|

[CobaltKobold]

Modern RPGs have complicated stories often with audio dialogue, which would be very hard to generate. To be honest it's hard to generate anything more complex than fetch/kill/find style quests.

Shenmue, at least, was nice because nobody and I mean NOBODY did not have two or three lines of (voice-acted!) dialogue.

Yes, even the people on the street.

I remember playing The Elder Scrolls: Arena avidly

This and TES2:Daggerfall now free from Bethesda. I loved daggerfall because, while it was not terribly well-programmed, it tried to get an in-depth world where yes, you could ask around town for work, be directed to a merchant who wants something done, and actually happen to be a setup. There was a whole event system where rulers could die, provinces could war, plagues could occur, and the like, though it seemed the most that would come of this would be a notice on a sign- and you rarely would see them. To me, Morrowind (played some) was a step up on linearity and maybe a step up on depth, but sacrificing a lot of the good points. (Also a step down from M to T.) I'd rather see a more fleshed out DF- er, daggerfall- than Oblivion (have not played)

LeoLeonardoIII: Why are we walking like this?
Yeah, the main reason that you will pick up everything is because you can- the real reason your character is not going to loot everything is that you basically cannot carry another suit of armor really and be fully battle-capable, let alone ten and an arsenal. Ammunition, perhaps. Upgrading from your present gear-you might go for that dead man's boots. They're better than yours. (See: All Quiet on the Western Front). But carrying/selling everything? Not at all, unless it's small and easily carried (jewelry, etc). Ammunition or weaponry makes sense, if you can use it.

And you need to in many games stock up on your ammo if you're using bullets, because there's no quartermaster or supply train for you to get more from. (One thing I sort of liked about Tribes 1/2)

edit: Thank you Tarn!

[Shima]

(Wall of text about the terrible DAO)

- Mr. Platypus

I agree completely.  Gaming is trash these days, and has been for most of the decade.  I actively HOPE that PC gaming DOES die like doomsayers have been saying.  Because then, the garbage companies and get their shovelware, overhyped crap off of my system and independent developers can rise up to fill the gap, either releasing for free or KNOWING that if they charge for their game, they HAVE to make it right the first time, or they'll be pushed into bankruptcy.

And while the burning and purging happening, I'll be laughing and building a newer, better Elftrap in my forts.  Then, once it's all over, I can come out from underground to a new golden age of PC gaming.  Then vomit because I haven't seen the sun for so long.

[Azkanan]

On Zwei's comment that players would strip the world of everything and sell it.

Merchants do not have infinite money. They can't buy all your goodies all at once. They have to wait for people to come buy the goodies you sell them so they get more money to buy new goodies from you.

So you walk into someone's house and they see you, they freak out and ask what you're doing walking into their house. You run off into a side room and they call for the guards. Or you kill the homeowner and hide the body, but a guard magician comes by later to speak with the corpse. You are now wanted.

Say instead you sneak into the house, steal everything, and sell it off later to the merchants. The theft victim comes to the marketplace to replace his dishware, finds it all there, and calls the guards. The guards ask the merchants who sold them the goods. the merchants give a description. You are now wanted.

Say you fence your stolen goods to a merchant in the underground. He ends up shipping the goods to a merchant in another town. This reduces your profit considerably and it's no longer worthwhile to steal plates and cups.

I found this in Morrowind. Beyond Seyda Neen, the starting village, there is no reason to steal plates and cups and brooms. It strips the world empty and you get very little out of it. You're better off diving for pearls and stealing just people's fine silver.

Anyway, once you steal everyone blind and fence their goods, and they are buying up someone else's stolen goods form another city to replace it, eventually they have no more money left. They have to just sit around at home with no dishware, gnawing on mushrooms in the darkness. They still have a job, and so they can buy food and pay their rent. But if you keep stealing from the person, perpetually keeping them poor, they may begin to hide their money. Let's say you steal that. They eventually can't afford to live in their house or else get tired of the crime, and move away or become homeless.

Zwei's complaints come into play when you have a very poor depiction of a town where nobody is connected and people just stand around all day spitting out the same lines of dialogue. I agree that SO MANY GAMES feature this. Morrowind certainly does. But a good game would feature a living town where the player could just constantly steal all the food if he wanted to, but he wouldn't ever get anything else done.

The simplest control on player OCD is making it obvious that you cannot - and I want to emphasize the impossibility - you cannot take every item, speak through every dialogue option on every person, kill every monster, cut down every tree, mine every vein of ore, or pry open every oyster.

Once you realize that, you're wasting your time stealing brooms. Maybe you might at first. But you're better off just taking the higher-value loot, talking with the people who might know something pertinent, killing the important monsters.

The failures of RPGs Zwei points out are not impossible to overcome. Toady is in the process of overcoming them. And I agree that there is no reason why a team of 200 with a $5M budget can't overcome them.

Easy fix: Player Villages/cities.

In an MMO environment where a player founded the first village with a friend or two, and it grew from there. Players would flock to the city for it's mining operations, fertile ground, interesting players, historical past, interesting location, strong military/economy.
This is what me and my team are working, aiming and accomplishing for. We've been planning this game since January, so alot of this sort of debate has gone on, how to avoid such linear and empty gameplay.

[Supermikhail]

An amazing thread. Shima and QuantumSawdust just made my day.
Although I'm suddenly pressed to remind everyone and especially LeoLeonardoIII that games and real life are two different things and if you make your game just like the real world, albeit in a different era, you are bound to have Neo knocking on the door of your creations one day... Humanity is obese enough without perfect reality recreations... Let us all solemnly open our book on psychology and read on the topic of games...

[dragnar]

The only problem with player towns is that people are not online 24/7. Any town inhabited by only players will become something of a ghost town after it has grown large enough, simply because most of the players are not there. Even when they are online, most players have better things to do than just sit around town, unlike NPCs.

The problem is, NPCs cannot yet provide story, their AI simply isn't good enough yet. Players cannot provide immersion, partially because many are more preoccupied with metagaming than playing, and partially because they just aren't there most of the time.

[Shima]

The only problem with player towns is that people are not online 24/7. Any town inhabited by only players will become something of a ghost town after it has grown large enough, simply because most of the players are not there. Even when they are online, most players have better things to do than just sit around town, unlike NPCs.

The problem is, NPCs cannot yet provide story, their AI simply isn't good enough yet. Players cannot provide immersion, partially because many are more preoccupied with metagaming than playing, and partially because they just aren't there most of the time.

Later in the life of Star Wars Galaxies (After the ...."upgrades".... if you know the game or have played it, you know what I mean.  RIP SWG), player cities literally were ghost towns, with only a few NPCs placed by the mayor or in shops.  Other than that, they were literally dead.  Noone there.  Mining operations running themselves or stalled from noone being around. Earlier in the game's life, they DID bustle, and so forth.  It was a paradise in the early days; almost the entire game was player based, so towns did grow reputations.  Mining towns, cities of crafters, etc.

[Azkanan]

NPCs will have a basic memory, such as, recording who they have spoken with and their relationship standing with them from their conversations and how often they speak over time.
Players can "hire" NPCs to work in their shops and whatnot, aswell as hire local NPCs into their armies... thats if, they own the town, and they can draft them. Otherwise, you can pick up stragglers in the tavern and hire them into a mercenaric group... You get the idea.
Tis still early days, anywho. I hope we can make a game that avoids all these stupid problems that alot of developers overlook; and i've come to realise that Bay12 is an excellent place to find out people's views on gaming issues.
In fact, there's a thread somewhere with 2 or 3 pages of people's thoughts, and I responded to each, which gave even more ideas/fixes.

[dragnar]

Later in the life of Star Wars Galaxies (After the ...."upgrades".... if you know the game or have played it, you know what I mean.  RIP SWG), player cities literally were ghost towns, with only a few NPCs placed by the mayor or in shops.  Other than that, they were literally dead.  Noone there.  Mining operations running themselves or stalled from noone being around. Earlier in the game's life, they DID bustle, and so forth.  It was a paradise in the early days; almost the entire game was player based, so towns did grow reputations.  Mining towns, cities of crafters, etc.

I never played that game, but I have heard many good things about what it used to be. From what I have heard it was an MMO done right, the only one I have ever seen. MMOs have incredible potential, but very few even come close to using it.

[BurnedToast]

It sounds to me like the original poster just does not like RPGs. That's fine - I don't like racing games, that's why they make all different types of games.

Also I noticed you quite specifically said you downloaded it and not purchased it. If I'm not misunderstanding and you pirated it - go to hell, people like you are the number one reason PC gaming is dying and what games we do get are watered down console garbage ports. (if I did misunderstand and you payed for it, ignore that).

[G-Flex]

It sounds to me like the original poster just does not like RPGs.

... Did you read the same post that I did? He clearly wanted things that, when one wants them, one looks in an RPG to find.