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Lephys

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Everything posted by Lephys

  1. I am SO with you on this one. I don't like artificial quest markers. They are something that is purely a game mechanic and in no way a part of the game world. Damage, on the other hand, is something that is a mathematical interpretation/organization of the effects of wounds in combat, and wounds in combat are a natural part of the game world. Anywho... Quest markers = bad. The ones that literally just mark unknown quest objectives. That's what I'm calling a quest marker. The only information you should get is the information your character has. So, if someone knows EXACTLY where someone's lifeless corpse washed up after it was tossed into a river because they FOUND it, then totally tell my character (and thus, me) where it is. However, I STILL believe that the line should be drawn at locations. Only the location to which you need to travel should be directly marked. The rest should be directions. Of course, "directions" brings me to my 2nd point, which SunBroSolaire's quote, above, remound me of: Directions should be intuitive! If you're in a retail store and you ask someone where the syrup is, they're most likely not going to say "On the same aisle as the honey, to the northeast." and go on about their business. They're MOST LIKELY going to say something like "Oh, that's on aisle 12. Go down this aisle (points in the direction), then take a right when you get to Electronics. It'll be past the Christmas stuff, on your left." Boom! Now you know that, WHEN YOU GET WITHIN VISUAL RANGE of the correct aisle, you can look for a "12" somewhere. AND you know which the hell direction to start out in from where you are currently. I know that in a fantasy world, people are most likely going to tell you the cardinal direction that something is from you, but, in a town, you can't just walk straight to things, usually. Streets go various ways, and there are often fortifications and gates to go around/through in certain places, so telling me that something is "to the northwest" doesn't really tell me where to go when I walk away from you. Often you start heading northwest, only to run into a large structure or cliff face, upon which an entirely different section of the city resides. Getting back to quests, this becomes particularly annoying at times. When someone says "it's north of town," I'm going to leave town to the north and head as straight north as I can, assuming that if I keep my eyes peeled, I'll encounter what I'm looking for. Then, 2 hours later, I find out that it's actually 90% north of town, then east into a thicket of woods about 1,000 feet. So, really, the person, KNOWING where this place is, should have given you some other visual marker or something at which you could turn east. OR, some kind of contextual aid. "There are blue flowers that only grow near that cave." Great, now, you just point me near enough to the general area in which I need to find the cave, and when I see blue flowers, I'll know that I need to turn towards the blue flowers. They won't necessarily lead me straight toward the cave in a pretty little breadcrumb line, but at least I know that it's "somewhere over here" now, instead of "somewhere within this 1,000-square-mile forest." What would be even better is if NPCs would, whenever it was feasible, provide directional information for things that were in their vicinity. That way, someone might say "I just know that a man with a red feathered hat and large silver medallion left town 2 nights ago on the northern path." Then, you travel north, and you bump into someone else, and ask them if they've seen him. They say "Ahh, yes, he had a wagon and several guards, I think? They turned west through the forest here." Boom... now you get to actually track in a quest, but, at the same time, it's not just "Find the man in the red feathered hat. He's somewhere in the mortal plane." Also, regarding the "where the hell is that NPC I'm supposed to talk to, who lives in this town?" problems, you could ask someone "Hey, have you seen Will Vingleton? He's not at his shop." And, unless he's a friggin' ninja, SOMEONE's going to be easily found who can help you out, and they'll say "Oh, yes, I saw him head down to the riverfront (once again, /POINT). I think he went fishing for the afternoon." And if heading the way the person points doesn't take you directly to the waterfront, they should break it down a bit with the visual markers. Head down the hill on your right, just past the blacksmith's forge. He'll probably be on the pier by the big willow tree." Unless the riverfront's 7 feet wide, in which case I guess I don't need to know which pier to look for. So basically, you shouldn't ever have a giant, artificial User Interface beacon flashing on your objective, because it's completely unnecessary and unimmersive. As many have said here already, descriptions and directions are MORE than sufficient tools of getting you to your objective. And lastly, the descriptions and directions should be both detailed and intuitive. That still has nothing to do with whether or not you should know where things are, though. That is completely dictated by reason and context. You should only know what you should reasonably be able to find out. If something was stolen, or someone went missing, or there's a secret (the key word being "secret") passage in someone's manor, then someone who didn't DO the stealing, or kidnapping, or constructing of the secret passage shouldn't be able to direct you straight to the objective. But they should provide very clear and useful directions. If Tara Sharinval saw something the night of the kidnapping, or supposedly knows more about the secret passage, I shouldn't have to "explore" just to find her. This person obviously knows her, and they live in the same town. How can they not be able to point me to her? That's the ONLY thing quest markers get right. But, I'd much rather have non-artificial systems direct me and not skip immersive dialogue and such. "GO FIND STEVE!" *Steve instantly marked by heavenly aura*
  2. Well, you could, perhaps, expect SOME kind of not-perfectly-realistically-determined disappearance of the bodies, after some decent minimum amount of time has passed. Depending on where you are, I'd be happy with a 1-day period. Maybe if it was a big battle with 30 dead littering the ground, you'd see remnants of bodies there still. Bones and tattered garments and blood stains? But, I mean, unless you're out in the middle of nowhere, where no one else will probably travel for the next year, some organized town/government/faction is probably going to get the body off the road and burn it or something so it doesn't fester and spread disease to other travelers, and/or bandits will loot all its belongings and toss it in a river, and/or ants and crows and maggots and stray cats will devour it. And I wouldn't expect the developers to go into such detail that, every 5 hours, were you to return to the same location, you find that 7% more of the remains are gone or something. I don't expect the body to just lie there for 3,000 years and weather like a temple ruin or something. Heh. __________________________________________ And for today's Joke du Jour, do you know what the bodies of enemy bards turn into? ... ... ... ... Bags of lute. It's not my fault. I have horrendously low Charisma. u_u
  3. Unless you actually had confirmation from the designers then you don't know that some of those walking times had included the time needed for rest. And if a walknig period states 24 even if you rested for 8 or even 10 of those hours fatigue would be a natural side affect from such a long trek. not to mention the magical light sources could turn traveling at night into easy as day. Yeah, but if a game mechanic falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? . Seriously, though, if all the "actually accounting for resting times" bit is doing is adding to your travel time, then there's no point in having it in there. Also, she was citing a game that had a fatigue mechanic, and stating that you always arrived from a journey quite fatigued, unless you specifically stopped to manually rest. I don't know about you but I don't like the idea of missing quests because the npc will be wandering around. And the only your character would know that is if they watched them for 24 hours straight. Now who's not roleplaying realistically? I don't think she was suggesting NPC's just wander aimlessly. But that it's perhaps, slightly unimmersive that an 8-year-old child is just standing on the outskirts of town at 2AM because he's still waiting on you to find the flute he dropped by the river and bring it back to him. I think it would be pretty interesting if they simply had the NPCs sleep at their dwelling (unless there was some specific reason for them to be up and in a certain place) in the middle of the night, but perhaps you could still "turn in" a quest at their humble abode. I personally don't think I would mind being briefly woken up to be told that the remains and personal effects of my long lost brother who disappeared without a trace 3 months ago had been found, or that my 1,000-silver debt to the corrupt tavernkeeper was no longer an issue. Of course, things that went beyond delivering an item or some information to someone would sometimes still require a certain time of day.
  4. Well, if you're trying to define a class, you must start with the seed. You cannot start by naming what kind of flowers the plant will have. How do you even know the plant will have flowers? I know that may seem silly and overly philosophical, but it holds true. The question I would pose is, what makes a town? Or, rather, what makes the path 50-feet outside of a town "outside of town," and the path just inside the town "inside of town"? If the town has a wall around it, how do they know where to build the wall? Well, the town ends where everything-that-isn't-that-town begins. The specific mathematical measurements of the edge might be fuzzy and up for interpretation, but no one denies that that town definitely ends, or argues that the forest outside of town is actually just more town.They call it a forest, and they call the town a town, and they know there's a boundary there. That is truly just an observation of differences, but I believe it is that boundary that defines a class. Again, I know that's seemingly silly, but I think that provides insight into when exactly you don't have a successful class system in a game. Whether it's skills, or what quests become available, or how NPCs behave towards your character, you've got to have a substantial enough boundary between classes, or there isn't a point in having them. These boundaries inherently produce limitations. Obviously, if Class A is different from Class B, then Class A must be limited by being incapable of doing SOMETHING that Class B can do. However, if the ONLY difference between Classes A and B is that Class A gets more hitpoints or deals more damage than Class B, or has the ability to throw a stone while Class B cannot throw a stone, then you don't have enough difference to constitute two classes. A perfect (though somewhat simple) example is merchants. One merchant might sell some rope, some healing items, a weapon here or there, maybe a boot, and another merchant might sell a completely different list of "random" items, yet you'd be perfectly content calling them both "General Goods" merchants. Why? You don't feel that there's a fundamental difference between them, even though they don't sell the exact same lists of items. They don't really DO anything different. They sell miscellaneous items. Meanwhile, the weapons vendor sells only weapons. A slight distinction, in comparison to an entire playable character class, but it makes my point, nonetheless. The weapons vendor might even be a blacksmith, and repair or otherwise customize your weapons and/or armor. But, exactly what specific weapons he sells, or whether or not he sells armor, too, is irrelevant beside the fact that he is distinguished from any other merchants in the game who aren't also weapons vendors. The problem with simplifying class boundaries with overlapping circles drawn around groups of skills within a big field of skills is that you can very easily end up with just a bunch of "Miscellaneous Task-Performers" rather than actual classes. A blacksmith fashions metal, and no other tradesperson does. That gives the blacksmith a purpose and a role. If the baker could ALSO fashion metal if he so chose, just not quite as awesomely as the blacksmith, then you'd have a town filled with merchants who ALL repaired and customized your metal equipment to various degrees. So, when asked "what makes the blacksmith the blacksmith, since everyone can provide metal equipment?", you could only answer "Well, when I finally get halfway through the game, and I can afford/need exceptionally good equipment, I'll need to go to him, because no one else will have that." And that's just plain bland... A Wizard and a Warrior and a Rogue all try not to be seen by the enemy, but a Rogue is the only one of the three who SPECIALIZES in not-being-seen. As long as you provide each class with some distinct, encompassing role to fill, you can overlap their skills and stats all you want. With that in mind, look at it like this: In an RPG in which you must combat enemies, ANY class you have is going to ultimately do the same thing -- Eliminate enemies. Therefore, within the combat system, the only thing that reinforces class distinction is the manner in which each class ends things' lives. I apologize for the length of that, but I think the seed of thought on this matter is more important than the color of the leaves (as it ultimately decides the possibilities of the color of the leaves.) Since it's almost impossible to make all the classes in a given class system have COMPLETELY, 100% different skill/ability sets, what if there were a great deal of skill overlap, but each class got unique, over-arching abilities that greatly affected these skills? For example, many classes could utilize magic, but Mages could develop the manner in which their spells behave. Spell-customization, to put it simply. ONLY Mages could ever access the spell customization options. Everyone else just gets the basic pool of spells. Warriors could have melee-weaponskill customization, allowing for bleeds and combo attacks and stances with the very same thrusts and slashes that anyone else with a sword has access to. I know it's almost the same thing as simply having skill trees and only allowing the trunks to overlap, but it seems like it could be much more interesting if done properly. I just think what a character does isn't as important in class distinction as is the manner in which he does it (as with the "all classes ultimately kill things in combat" example.)
  5. That would, indeed, be quite awesome, . You've just gotta tread carefully along the edge of "too complicated." Not because being able to set up a zombie trap in a town and having control over luring the zombies into position and igniting it yourself, specificailly, is too complicated, but because venturing beyond a certain level of choice complexity either means programming for a truckload more choices (basically, whatever could be possible with the level of realism you've created), OR shattering everyone's hopes and dreams by falling short with the actual choices available. Games tend to do that. You know the ones. "Hey look, if you fire an arrow at this bucket, uber-realistic physics take over! Oh, but your arrows only affect about 7 different objects in the game world, because we didn't really expect you to use ingenuity with anything but buckets and a handful of other objects that WE thought up really specific instances for, AND because we didn't have the time or the means to program in all that stuff..." It's one of those things that, if you don't go all the way with it throughout the whole game world, you might as well not have done it. You give someone a swingset and they'll enjoy it as best they can. But, if you give someone a playground, then tell them they can only use the swingset, they're going to be upset. However, if they CAN get things to that level, then I SAY YAY!
  6. I definitely like that idea, Osvir. I think being a Warrior doesn't mean you can't fight with a quarterstaff, or use magic, just as being a Mage doesn't mean you can't handle a weapon well. I've ALWAYS loved the idea of a combat Mage. A Mage who can do more than poke people occasionally with a dagger in between spells. You just don't want to take it too far. Like in Skyrim, for example. Or Fable. Yeah, you could "make your own class." But, since you could pretty much do everything to the fullest, there really wasn't much of a specialization. You shouldn't be allowed to do EVERYthing. It just doesn't make any sense in an RPG. If you play ALL the roles, then you're left with a PG. I think a very good way to handle this is how Guild Wars 2 did their combat system. I know, I know... it's just an MMO. Bear with me, though. With their system, different classes get different skills, even when using the same weapons. So, instead of being a Rogue, and just getting only the first 3 abilities in the generic Axe skill tree while a Warrior gets all of them, you get ROGUE-axe skills. You use an axe in such as way as to maneuver a lot in combat and bleed and poison people, whereas a Warrior might knock people around a lot more and attack in a much slower, more straightforward fashion, probably striking multiple foes at once with cleaves and such. I just REALLY like the way they handled that, because you really feel like a different class, even when you're wearing the same armor-type and carrying the same weapon as someone from another class. So, I'd love to see something similar in a cRPG. Like... a battle Mage who gets to use lots of pure magic on people and still fight with Mage-like combat skills (you don't just run around cleaving everything in sight, and leaping across the battlefield.) Then, maybe that Warrior who wants to use magic gets a lot of combat-magic -- spells that don't simply create fiery explosions out of thin-air so much as they augment weapon combat. Maybe you'd fight a lot more like the element-benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Ya know? Thrust earth at people, rake fire about in waves around you, etc. That way, you'd still get cool magic, but, it wouldn't be quite so bland as "I'm a Mage, and I get firebolt, fireball, firewall, and meteor strike." "Oh, hello, Mr. Mage. I'm a Warrior, but I ALSO have firebolt and fireball! The exact same spells YOU have! Only I carry an axe and you don't, ^_^. I just don't get access to firewall and meteor strike... but who cares? Those cost a lot of mana, anyway, and I have less than you do, 'cause I'm a Warrior, u_u." That system is what always gets implemented, and it just seems far too simplified. I think we can to better.
  7. I think for the day/night mechanic to be worthwhile, you just need night to be significantly different from day. As some people have mentioned, perhaps certain characters (both PC and NPC) will actually BENEFIT from night. I mean, it certainly would give a stealth class a benefit. Or what if your character is just really pale? They could avoid sunburn by traveling at night. Joking aside, it's a point of fact that, with a game, if it serves no purpose for the game experience, then it's pretty much pointless. So, night needs to provide something not found in day. It needs to be pertinent to quests and NPC behavior in a way that directly affects the player and the gameplay, not just for realism's sake. So, as far as the "option to always arrive places in the daylight" goes, I'm in favor. Perhaps the option should simply be resting behavior, though. You could choose to travel as quickly as possible (camp whenever everyone happens to physically need to stop traveling and rest), OR you could automatically make camp every night at a certain time. Maybe have a very simple ration system, just as an example of potential factors to consider when picking resting behavior. If you camp EVERY night and only travel during the day, then a 70-mile journey might take you a week. This would also affect any time-sensitive quests/situations. So, you might want to squeeze in those extra 8-10 hours of travel in between camps. But, pushing on through the night would have to be more dangerous, as you're more open to ambush from anything that is sentient and wants to ambush you, or really just anything on the prowl that's nocturnal. Low-visibility, your torches like beacons in the night. If you camp at night, you could still have random encounters (VERY in favor of this), but at least you're set up in a defensible position in your low-visibility environment. Then, of course, certain people (perhaps nocturnal races, stealh-based classes, etc.) would have the ADVANTAGE during the night. The night is still the night, and more things are still prowling about, but you could deal with them so much more easily, as you have a lot larger of a cloak of shadow at your disposal. For this reason, you could totally set the camping behavior to ALWAYS travel at night, and sleep during the afternoon or something. What I'm saying is, I'm very much in favor of meaningful day/night cycles, as well as a camp-at-certain-times-on-a-schedule-like-normal-fictional-people system. I just want to emphasize that A) There need to be as many good reasons for a player to want to do things at night as there are for a player to want to do things during the day. And when you rest should have some effect, as well. I think that, maybe, you shouldn't even be able to simply "Rest until dawn!" whilst just standing outside a shop, waiting for a sword to be made or something. If you're out in the woods... sure. But, you really shouldn't be able to make camp in the middle of a town. That would kinda be in people's ways. And you shouldn't be able to just sleep on the ground in the middle of a town, either. People would worry you were dead, or guards would throw you in prison 'til the morning to keep you out of drunken trouble. (I apologize for my semi-sporadic thought-flow. My brain sometimes refuses to let me organize everything it's thinking about before I type it.)
  8. Simply put, a class should be defined by a specialization, be it in role, skillset, etc. For it to be valid, the specialization of all classes must be equally as interesting. Not necessarily preferentially, to every single person on the planet. But, in general. You don't want a Warrior's only depth to be how much damage his skills deal and how long he stuns, for example. Because, then, there's hardly any difference between him and any other combat-heavy class. But, a class should play a role, and it should be a useful role. There might be an engineer class, or some other tech-related class, and they should be able to modify weapons and armor, and affect traps and environments in their own way. This should include how to deal with quests and NPCs and lore. Since there's a tech-person in your game world, there must be tech, and, therefore, they should be able to interact with it in a unique way. Other classes may know what tech is, and perhaps even use a bit of it. If they didn't, it would be TOO forcefully divided. I mean, when your mage is the ONLY person in the universe who can do anything magical, the world becomes a little weak. Everything's too separate, like you put ingredients in a bowl and didn't stir them enough or something. You've got lumps of flour in your cake mix... But, obviously, classes like Warrior and Ranger will be similar in ways, as they can both physically enharminate (that's definitely a word) foes in combat. It's necessary, however, for a good RPG to have a strong sense of uniqueness to a class. The Ranger doesn't just need to be a Warrior with a bow who can possibly call an animal to help him. It's a bit like a cat and a dog. At a glance, they're both furry, and they both have four legs, and a tail... I mean, really, they're QUITE similar. BUT, cats and dogs, as most of us know, behave in remarkably different manners. So, you don't want to run into the situation where you've just got various breeds of a couple of animals. You don't want a Barbarian who's just a bigger Warrior with berzerking capabilities, or some kind of Rune Guard guy who does everything a Mage does, except he uses magic items instead of drawing on mana or some other direct magical energy. They have to DO differently, not simply technically be different. Like the forms of water. Ice is crystalline and rigid. Water is flowing and enveloping. Vapor is nimble and permeating. They're all water, but they DO things in very, very different ways. You fill a room with water vapor, and you fill a room with ice, and you've got two COMPLETELY different rooms.
  9. I'm not sure there should be a chance specifically that the stuff you did would produce the OPPOSITE effect, you know? I mean, where do you draw the line there? "I choose to not kill this guy who might've deserved it, because I am merciful." *Some game-engine dice roll* "Oh no, he died of a heart attack mere moments after you decided to spare him!" That could just get REALLY annoying. BUT, using the zombie-assault example, I DO think it would be cool if the chance affected how things panned out. i.e. you planned out this elaborate trap for the zombies using a single person and lots of fire, but now some other things in the town caught fire, and you've got to make your way through town rather quickly to try and douse flames, fighting some straggling, flaming zombies along the way who just haven't had the decency to re-die yet. OR, the person in the center of town panics (assuming they were supposed to light the fireworks) and fails to do so, and you've got to end up lighting them, which would be difficult. OR, the basement folk get attacked after all, and you've got to try to go help them. I'm just very, very against the "Welp, it turns out everyone died anyway" odds. I don't mind people dying, and bad things unavoidably happening in an RPG story, but I don't want it to seem like I have the ability to do something, then turn out that, through random chance, I actually couldn't accomplish half of what it was suggested I could. Random behavior/occurrence-development: GOOD! 8D Random consequences? Baddddd...
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