Thoughts on RPGs, ranging from very old to recent...Hunt

[misterhamtastic]

My first experience with an RPG was Tunnels of Doom on the TI-99/4A. Simple dungeon romp, but I was 4 and I thought it was awesome. I never did figure out how to get the stone crossbow, but just wandering around killing beasts with the occasional wander around the halls was simply amazing to me.

 

Time passed, and I ran into a couple of new ones. Bard's Tale and Ultima 4. I played both games almost religiously, enjoying the whole character creation and leveling process of BT, although the repetitious death I experienced trying to get to the first dungeon was painful. Ultima was... huge. I think I spent a couple of years trying to finish that game, eventually getting to the bottom of the stygian abyss only to realize that those odd bone shapes I got at the shrines were letters I should have written down.

 

Bard's Tale 3 was my next addiction, where I learned that it's not really that hard to manipulate the file system to duplicate items. Once you have a near unlimited supply of harmonic gems, the game became simpler, and the fun part was hunting encounters to gain XP. I learned there that, just because you CAN equip your level 1 paladin with the weapons picked up by the level 80 paladin, it sort of takes away from the enjoyment of the game.

 

I found Wasteland about this time, and loved being able to imagine myself in fights with my Meson Cannon or my assault rifle(was it the.. M-1989 or something?). I was hooked on the idea of a post apocalyptic world and all it entailed.

 

I played these games pretty consistently until I found Fallout 2. I missed fallout, so it was my first experience. Fallout 2 blew my mind. It was huge, in a recognizable setting, and my choices MEANT SOMETHING.

 

Fallout 3 and New Vegas made it into a whole new experience, but held onto some of the ideas, as well as the post-nuclear setting. I consider them a seperate genre, though, because Turn based and First Person Real-Time are such completely different experiences.

 

What did I learn from all of this? What do I want from RPG's?

 

A few things, taken from each.

 

Bard's Tale-the ability to pick a "type" of character to play. Ultima 4 had this to a lesser degree, but Bard's Tale brought home the fact that your Knight and Hunter and the rest of the melee characters really were there mostly to protect the magic-users. The specialization though and the different functions of the characters, even being locked into them, was kind of cool. I always wish for this sort of option. IE-Alt Starts in FO:NV are something I play with using mods and console commands. One character is a techno-freak, with an army of robots at his disposal, another is a simple courier, talking his way through the game. (Just examples, I have tried to play as a BOS Knight to start, A raider, a legionary, a mercenary.) It works great... until you hit that high enough level that you can't focus on your chosen specialties anymore, you have to become a super jack of all trades, master of all skills. It's like playing the "Hero" from Temple of Doom, or the Avatar from later Ultimas. Let me specialize, and give me some bonuses/penalties to go along with the specialization. I thought FO2 came close to this idea, with skill levels of 300.

 

Another thing-why do I always have to face these apparently unreasoned limits to my character's level? Use a couple of bytes of address space and make the limits obscene-and dare me to try to max them. Let's face it, once you have leveled to level 100 or more in almost any game-you're just doing it for the level and the stats that go with it. You want to be a god, and that's your goal. Let me try to become one.

 

Weapons and equipment-skill level should factor into the chances for a critical failure, not the inherent damage of a weapon. A bullet fired form a gun does the same damage regardless, although a novice with the weapon will be inaccurate, and possibly drop the weapon or have it blow up in his face if it jams hot. These are the things to be addressed by weapons skill levels, and familiarity with the weapons should affect the weapons inherent repairability. IE-you could repair the marksman carbine at a total repair+guns level of say 100 or something or higher. This is, in my opinion, a better way to limit access and use of weapons than skill damage or leveled vendor lists. (You can get the All-American at level 1, sure. Using it, you'll never be able to fix it, and expect yourself to drop the weapon when you reload, or jam it frequently as it degrades, etc.)

 

It's these sorts of things I want. Let me play the character I want to play, and let me have the option to make it work. Give me multiple "endings", more so than I saw in NV. If I start as a BOS initiate-let me have a seperate main quest and ending for that role. Main quests can tie together, and quest completion should affect other quests and people. This was implemented fairly well in NV and FO3, but I always wish for a bit more along these lines.

 

Honestly, though, if you guys did it right, you could probably get alot of it done by simply involving the top modders of past games in the beta, with the specific goal of getting them to put out some mods that can be included with the initial release.

 

Things like Project Nevada, Darnified UI, A world of pain, so many other major mods that simply made the game better. Pick 10 of them, and invite those modders to participate from an early point in the beta. Get their hands on the game and ask them to recreate their popular mods, with payment for their work being their name in the credits and some type of free collector's edition or something.

 

Another lesson from an old game-Fallout 2. If you really want to open the game up-include things like alternate speech for dumb characters(only at helios one? really?). Or let me be truly evil-a slaver/cannibal character who only wants to watch the world burn should be able to do so, and have an ending that points out what a b@stuhd the character has been.

 

Something from real life-get a survival expert like Les Stroud or someone to come in and really give the importance of survival a healthy think over. Someone playing hardcore with a survival skill of 10 should find themselves thoroughly dead from simple exposure. Hardcore should be just that... hardcore and unforgiving. (Just to point out-I use Project Nevada's rebalance to make the frequency of needing to eat drink and sleep what I think makes sense, the only issue is that death from lack of sleep is a bit odd... shouldn't I be hallucinating midget deathclaws or something?)

 

Let me stop there, I expect you may give me some doses of TL:DR as it is, but believe me, after playing RPG's and doing personal mods and tweaks to them for this long, I could write a book on what I want, and still not give all of my thoughts to you. I think the most important thing is what you have already figured it out. Make it easily moddable, provide tools, and let us get wild with it. Let us, the gamers and modders, make the game our own.

 

Please, if anyone has personal ideas, they are welcome here. We all have our own personal preferences, and I doubt anyone else has my exact mod list they use (especially since I mod the mods I get to do what I want them to do. ).