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.
How would you go about that? The characters
are programming objects. It's not really possible for video games to be less computery. That would be like, I don't know, the laws of physics becoming less important in the real world. Matter just
doing its own thing instead of interacting with other matter in a complex but orderly manner.
I guess it's at least
conceivable that a game could successfully hide the programming, though. Instead of showing you an arbitrary Power Level, a game could just say that "Yup, this guy's a pretty decent swordsman, all right." Or make the Power Levels more detailed and less
levely, for instance having you learn specific sword techniques instead of just incrementing the "sword" skill. That's just so much HARDER to do than just giving the player a spreadsheet. Especially if you also want the procedurally generated descriptive sentences not read like they were written by a computer that was interpreting a spreadsheet of arbitrary power levels.
I suppose I'll even begrudgingly agree that having skills represented as numbers that increase is not inherently fun or interesting. It's a fast and easy way of showing the main character becoming stronger, but if you can pull that off without displaying numbers, that'd be just great. None of the Elder Scrolls games I've played have actually interesting leveling systems. Skyrim comes the closest with its pretty perk trees, that I hate for other reasons, but in Morrowind it's just necessary accounting. Getting levels is fun because FUCK YEAH LEVELS, but from that perspective, it doesn't matter at all
how the levels work. It's just necessary accounting.
While the subjects of stats and numbers is here.
Skyrim didn't hide them, it got rid of them altogether. Rather it simply took all those variables and consoladated them into one-size fits all properties. Not even race specific variations! No inherent weakness.
I prefer Skyrim's system to morrowind's. At least when I see an arrow hit a guy, it really does hit rather than 'miss' because some roll said so. My skill as a player influences the game a bit.
Sure, if you like
first-person shooters. >:]
Maybe a better approach would have been to apply some deviation to the arrow's direction. Instead of not doing any damage despite hitting the target, you can't hit the target because you're a rubbish archer. Speaking of first-person shooters, the first Deus Ex did exactly that.