Well, the first thing that pops to my mind when I hear "RPG" is Baldur's Gate, which was based on pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons, and obviously had you rolling virtual dice all the fucking time. If you threw a 20-sided die, you could only miss a huge pile of 20-sided dice on a natural 1. From this background, it's kind of odd to think that RPGs should make the numbers less of a thing because, well, I literally equate "RPG" with the numbers. Character skill is independent in some ways of player skill, and that character skill is internally represented as a number.
I suppose you could keep the numbers as parts of the game logic, but hide them from the player, but I don't really see what that would accomplish, besides keeping information from the player. You need to know how good your character is at hitting things with swords, and how good a sword he owns, to make informed decisions about what you should be doing. Should you be fighting this troll, or running away screaming?
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I could understand why someone would equate RPG's with numbers given the origins of RPG's, and thats completely fine. But for me, it gives no suspension of disbelief since I cannot equate these arbitary numbers with my character. I understand that Character skill will be indepentant of player skill to an extent, and I am not arguing for action-RPG's per se, but by knowing the exact values of my "character", I see an instanced object with a few properties translating its position around in 3d space. Or a walking, talking spreadsheet with a 3d model attached. I do not see a character.
I would not expect them to remove numbers as part of internal game logic - its a computer and at some point it will all translate to precise values. However, if I am given a more descriptive, "qualitative" view of my character (much like I have of myself) my character will become more believable and I will be more able to seperate it from the implementation and technical stuff of the game, making the world more believable.
You do need to know how good your character is at something, but you do not need to know the precise measurement of this (the same measurement that goes through the simple game logic to compute damage). Considering you did not know the statistics for that troll even in a P&P game, than you would still have to run up to it and see if you can kill it. You would do the same in my make-believe game, however instead of being able to record exact statistics, you would "get a feel" for your characters strength and it would allow me to continue to seperate my character from the cold, robotic logic of the computer.
I want an RPG with charaters that are more than programming objects. I suppose I do not want realism per se, I would want games to be less "computery" about things.
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Topic: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Read 1624923 times)