J.E. Sawyer

ATTN: Nathaniel (djkillingspree) is setting up the server for Special Forces tonight. We should have a pretty good group. To allow for a quick gaming experience, you should probably run Special Forces and play for a few minutes on a server so your shaders will be optimized before 5:30. The process can take 10-15 minutes, even on a relatively quick machine.

Also, character stats increase, which directly affects combat ability. Many people on these forums use statistical increases as a way to define an RPG.

Not all OEI people are using the [OEI] tags, but here are most of the names = people. Major Dillz = Darren Monahan QA Confidential = Patrick Mills djkillingspree = Nathaniel Chapman OneTrueJoe = Joe Bulock MongooseObs = Terry Hendrix baby_goat = me ConstantGaw = ConstantGaw C4 = Brian Fox neblig = Tony Evans DarkTimmy = Tim Donley huggies = Jeff Husges Ferret = Ferret Baudoin billgates666 = Jason Keeney Rear Admiral Tubgirl = Eric Fenstermaker Woebetz = Ben Ma west_sayeed = Mustazar Essa Mr. Creeps = Trent Campbell I know there are a few others.

I think it's an interesting study in how you can destroy a subscriber base that has already paid for something they think will fundamentally stay a certain way. The same does not apply for "stand alone" games. But really, which do you think does more damage: changing some mechanics or deleting everyone's character? Also, if the "new" SWG is supposed to be anything like Ninja Gaiden, it might be history's worst form of imitation.

We had some good games tonight, but I didn't see any recognizable forum members there. ;__;

The only boss I worked on was the "Stone Golem" in the Standing Stones. To be honest, I'm not even sure what other bosses made it into the game. I'm assuming that the "Master of the Cauldron" and "Grand Magistrate" were in, but I have no idea who/what else was.

A friend of mine who was a battle-hardened Halo veteran picked up Halo 2 and was repeatedly annihilated by the opening sequence in Legendary mode. Shields do not help you any more than health if you have no time to regenerate them. The only times shields are useful is when you withdraw from combat or after combat ends. That's not always an option.

Halo 2 on Legendary mode is more than challenging.

Technically speaking, Halo doesn't have regenerating health, if it's the system I'm thinking of. Essentially, half your total "life pool" is health, the other half is/are shields. Shields regenerate, health does not regenerate. Shields also only regenerate if you give them a chance to do so. If you go in, guns blazing, and never back off, your shields won't regenerate. It works the same way in Destroy All Humans. Personally, I like it because a person can back off when they realize they are in too deep and recover for another assault. "Shields" could just as easily be "stamina" or something similar in another setting. Darklands used endurance as the "buffer" health stat and strength as the for realz health. At the end of every battle, most of your endurance would come back, but almost none of your strength did. I think it worked very well.

Oh, I actually had a lot of freedom when I was designing Seven Sorrows and, for the most part, I liked the people. It just didn't work out.

The game I helped design when I was at Midway was significantly more involved in terms of gameplay and story. Some people may have liked that, some may have not. When I realized that Midway's goals were very different than my own, I understood that I wouldn't have been much help, so I left.

Let's forget about "being evil" since that's not really a motivational tool in my opinion. If you disagree, let me know, but I always figured it was sort of a weak way to define characters -- monstrous or otherwise. But what if you decided that Kuldahar sucked and that the yuan-ti should be able to sack it? There's no support for that choice in IWD. Similarly, there's no way to side with the twins in IWD2. Isair and Madae can't bribe you, they can't convince you of their cause, they can't get you to abstain or choose a different alliance. Basically, you're going to kill them one way or another. There's no super mutants overrunning the vault Legion of the Chimera overrunning the Ten Towns ending.

I don't know about that. I think if IWD had been designed with more "robust" diplomacy in mind, it could have been just as credible. Many of the critters with which you spoke were quite intelligent: goblins, orcs, yuan-ti, lizardfolk, salamanders, giants, etc. It just wasn't designed to be that sort of a game.

Would you honestly say that most games labeled as "RPGs" accomplish the goal of giving the player meaningful world choices as well as FPSs accomplish the goal of allowing the player to run around and shoot things? I don't think they do. I think most developers give it lip service. I think what they pay a lot of attention to are inventory systems, dual-wielding, and skill trees. In another thread, I suggested that games like The Sims are distinctly simulators. They are very abstracted and make very little attempt at a coherent story. That may be another way to distinguish CRPGs from other types of games. To be blunt, Fallout and Planescape had really crappy statistical systems. They were really easy to abuse as long as you figured out the very basic patterns to how things worked. If you stage up from tagged Small Guns to tagged Energy Weapons, make called eye shots and always wear the heaviest armor possible, you will probably kill most things in Fallout. By the end of the game, you will probably only die from critical hits or gross negligence of your character's health. Planescape was just easy to min-max if you wanted to. Tactics wasn't really at the heart of its gameplay. Fallout had interesting combat because of the setting, the sounds, and the visual feedback. Would Fallout's combat have been as interesting if a close burst to a raider with a submachine gun didn't make that distinctive sound and show the dance of death? I don't think so, to be honest. On the other hand, Fallout allowed you to be a really horrible monster. It didn't quasi-allow it like Baldur's Gate did, where omniscient Flaming Fist dumbos would constantly stream in to annihilate you. It also didn't force you to be horrible. You could be a great guy (or gal), a hero (or heroine). You could really change things around you. That's what was great about Fallout. It certainly wasn't a tactical brainbuster... not in my opinion, anyway. Similarly, Planescape allowed you to do so many things in so many ways. Yes, it had a lot of text, but it wasn't about reading as much as it was about choosing, about making a choice and seeing that impact. And the reactions to that seemed intimate and important in a way that simulator games don't really capture. Yeah, you definitely could. I think the problem is that most RPGs try to differentiate critters with stats, which are mostly invisible. Or in many cases the stats have such fine granularity that differences are really hard to figure out even with experimentation. Someone earlier wrote (I think) that KotOR really made them feel like a tough Jedi. I had the opposite feeling. When I think of Jedi, I think of people who are fluid and graceful, switching up movements and abilities constantly. They're throwing lightsabres and Force Pushing people around and doing all sorts of nutty stuff. I didn't get that feeling from KotOR because the staging is so stiff and rule-regulated. EDIT: I guess my point here is that I never felt like a Jedi because of the abstracted control system. The lack of visceral quality contributed to a lack of role-playing quality, in my opinion.

What is your issue with what I was writing about? The main thread is about the general topic of turn-based vs. real-time gaming and what it has to do with what CRPGs should have. I'm having difficulty understanding what you're getting at. Sorry. I am concerned with tactics, but I don't think that squad-level tactics are necessarily at the heart of RPGs. What I will say is that I think involving squads in real-time combat but only allowing control over one character is... frustrating. Ninja Gaiden is very tactical, but the tight camera and single character don't dilute the experience because you're only controlling one character. And that one character has a lot of capabilities in a very short period of time. By contrast, a single NWN character doesn't necessarily have all that many options in any six second period. Combined with all of the other characters, there's a lot going on, but the player doesn't have a huge amount of control over the action. No, I don't think that games being time consuming is inherently bad. I think it can turn a lot of people off, but I enjoyed those games. Similarly, I enjoyed Front Mission 4, but those missions and their set-up stages take an extraordinary amount of time. It's uncommon today.

True, but I was talking about both developers and endusers. Something like climbing is a pain to implement, but potentially very awesome if it is supported by design. On the other hand, if you tell endusers that they're going to get climbing but no new prestige classes, the Mystic Theurge fanclub will commit seppuku. EDIT: Hi, Deller.

This is sort of why I like to believe that CRPGs "should be about" giving the player many ways to meaningfully interact with the world and its characters -- outside of combat, that is. Fallout is great. Planescape: Torment is great. But you know, I don't think combat is really want made Fallout great (although it was very satisfying, the system wasn't so hot) and I don't think word count is what made Torment great. The amount of options for what kind of a character you could be -- that's what was important, I think. That's why people remember those games. CRPG developers really want to cling to old tyme conventions about how stats work because CRPG die-hards flip out if they aren't followed, but observation of statistical conventions is not what separates the great CRPGs from the good ones.

Well, it's certainly much simpler than the system found in most CRPGs, but Ninja Gaiden actually does have a character advancement system. I'd like to use it as an example, but I certainly think that NG is much more on the raw action game side of things than the statistical side of things. In NG, Ryu starts out with basic skills in all melee weapons that he finds. These skills give him access to the basic movesets of any weapon. To begin with, he has the Dragon Sword. Yay. A little while later, he finds Lunar, a staff weapon. He can also find the Vigoorian Flail (nunchaku-style weapons) and Dabilahro (a huge sword). Each weapon has its own strengths and weaknesses. The Dragon Sword is a good all-around weapon. It does good damage, is reasonably quick, and has a huge moveset. Lunar is extremely fast, hits a large area, and does low damage. Dabilahro is slow and does not have a large moveset, but it will annihilate enemies in very few hits. As you defeat enemies, they drop "essence", which is the game's single currency. It can be used to power ultimate attacks (charge attacks that "spend" the value of the essence), to buy items, and to increase Ryu's weapon levels. Each weapon level unlocks new moves in the weapon set. However, the player still has to be able to use the moves properly. It's a combination of character ability and player ability, though very weighted toward player ability. I think something less hectic and more forgiving than Ninja Gaiden would be a nice experiment. I've written before that I think it would be great if a game took the lockpicking mechanic from Splinter Cell and added a time factor to it that were linked to character skill. The physical demands are low, but they are more involved than just hitting "pick lock" and watching an animation play. I'd like to see more things like that, more balanced elements of player and character skill. I think genres only lack the legs for perpetuity if they don't evolve. All genres evolve. Well, except for adventure games. I think CRPGs have evolved very slowly and, to be honest, I think we now cling to things that are the least interesting elements of our historical antecedants.

Sorry if I didn't directly address concerns that you had, but I think what I wrote is relevant to the main thread subject. Turn-based (and many real-time) CRPG combat systems are often based in pen-and-paper systems which are, by necessity, turn-based. They're also often very complex. Moving to simultaneous real-time didn't really make the rules more complex or simpler as much as it made combat messier. Those are certainly nice elements of tactical combat games, but I think it gives you a lot of "god's eye" advantages. It's difficult, because ultimately giving you control over all of the characters and a good viewing perspective gives you a lot more to work with, but I think it also feels less intimate and less like you're playing one "guy" and more like you're a general playing with miniatures. I didn't dislike the slow pace of the original Pool of Radiance. Those battles could actually go amazingly quick if you speed up the pace to max and could read the combat feedback that flashed by in a couple of frames.

It's pretty funny, because at the beginning of the last few D&D games I've worked on, I've told everyone that the first things people will ask are if you can: * Fly * Jump * Climb * Swim * Ride a horse Without fail, these things come up very quickly and are drummed on throughout the development cycle. The problem is that they are not easy to support and people usually don't want to address the difficulties their implementation presents.

The Thief and Splinter Cell titles are also terrific examples of games that require very basic motor skills but also often present complex environments for interaction. The Thief games are particularly good about this. I don't think there's any reason why those games couldn't have an underlying statistical advancement system that supports the visceral/environmental gameplay mechanics.

I use my mind more in a single game-day of Pikmin than I did in most ToEE battles. Pikmin isn't a particularly good looking game. In fact, it's very simple and cartoonish. Despite this, it was often very tricky and hard to figure out. It was pretty rare that something in the original Fallout caused me any sort of pause where I had to really figure something out. Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA) completely stumped me multiple times. I just had to stop and try it again after a few hours. Neither game is "twitchy". Neither game has visible statistics. Neither game is particularly good looking. I think both required more intelligence than even older CRPGs demanded. I think games like Front Mission 4 and Advance Wars have far superior sequential turn-based combat than pretty much any turn-based CRPG, and those systems fundamentally are not complex. The situations are the things that have complexity and demand deep thought. On a very fundamental level, chess is not a complex game. It has very few rules and not very many statistics. Despite this, it is situationally so complex that its masters are unapproachable by a novice. What experience are you looking for in a CRPG?

I've been thinking about it a while, and I have some theories about why CRPGs have evolved/devolved to their current state. I think it is accurate to say that CRPGs are a lot easier now than they used to be. They are also a lot less time consuming. I remember trying to defeat the horde at Sokal Keep in the original Pool of Radiance. It took so many tries and the battle took a really long time. Many of the Ultima games were incredibly vast. The battles weren't that difficult. In fact, the game system in most Ultimas was very simple. They can't really compare to the complexity of a game system like D&D (almost any edition). But still, the Ultima games took a really long time to beat. The same with the Phantasie games, Darklands, and the Dark Sun games. I think that CRPGs used to rely on tabletop RPGers and their spawned brothers, CRPGers, to support the entire market. Okay, some of this may be obvious, but I think it's different than it is with other "genres". The CRPG market was really derived from another. That isn't necessarily the case with other game types. Pen and paper RPGs usually require knowledge that is based on accepted conventions. Even if you switch from one system to another, many of the conventions are retained or at least referenced. For people who aren't familiar with the conventions, they are confronted with a barrier of information. They need to understand the information to succeed at the game. Veteran CRPGers can stroll in and essentially wing it because the conventions are so easy to understand. I don't honestly think it's a matter of intelligence. Obviously a certain amount of intelligence is required to understand any game system, but I don't think we're talking about Mensa-levels here. I've met a lot of dummies who have no trouble memorizing RPG rules. They're even capable of registering accounts on message boards. A genius, confronted by the entirety of D&D rules upon the installation of ToEE, would probably have a tough time. Ultimately, D&D games (and a lot of other CRPGs) do not test intelligence as much as they test knowledge. You can blow over any of the IE games with a solid understanding of (A)D&D rules and reasonable intelligence. I don't think you could do the same if you had high intelligence and no experience with RPG/D&D rules -- not without a lot of failure along the way. "Casual" games rely more on visible, visceral environmental challenges than invisible, statistical challenges. This is why a game like Pikmin can be very challenging on a mental level despite having very basic tools and rules. It's also why a game like Ninja Gaiden can be very challenging mentally and physically despite having fairly limited tools and rules. Honestly, it's been a long time since I felt as satisfied at the end of a CRPG battle as I did when I beat the horseman boss in Ninja Gaiden. I had to think, move, and react constantly during the battle. It took me several very frustrating tries to get it right. I'm now going through Ninja Gaiden Black right now and the changes they made to the enemies are significant. They have almost nothing to do with statistics and almost everything to do with behavior. Behavior is what drives and distinguishes most good action game critters. In turn, that behavior drives tactical choices from the player. Now, I'm not saying that CRPGs should become as fast-paced and brutal as Ninja Gaiden. However, I do think that less emphasis on statistics and more of an emphasis on behavior and "visceral" capability would allow casual gamers and seasoned role-players to feel similarly challenged by games.

It's really just a bunch of different ways to describe queued action inputs. "Multilayered"? That makes it sound very innovative. Fighting games and a lot of action games (usually... not good ones) have been using queues for a long time. I actually think action queuing removes a lot of tactical ability and choice from games -- RPGs or otherwise.

These boards exist to further exploration of a range of topics, not mire discussion in mental masturbation. Idea exchange through words is like currency exchange. When everyone involved understands what's being given and received, the exchanges go smoothly. When one person plays loosey goosey or doesn't care to be consistent in what's being given or received, it causes conversation to devolve to clarifying what's going on. If you don't care if people can consistently understand what you're giving to them or how you're interpreting what they're giving to you, that's your choice. It just seems like a waste of time to me.