Things worth of considering (learning from other RPG games)

[GrumpyOldschooler]

Oddly enough I haven't seen topic like this here, so I will be first to start. In this thread we post things and features from our favourite RPGs we'd love to see in Project Eternity. I'll start with few games I have known and loved very dearly.

 

Fallout 1&2:

-Humour (some might find it bit childish though)

-Very high verbal quality of dialog

-Ability to talk your way out of most conflicts (if having necessary stats&skills)

-Very free exploration (esp. Fallout 2)

-Ending slides

-Refreshingly daring take on sex (especially for it's time)

-Random encounters (funny and scripted ones, not boring monsters-only ones)

 

Baldur's Gate 1&2:

-Cities that feel big

-Characters (some might find some of them annoying though)

-Banter

 

Planescape Torment:

-Philosophy

-Story of personal exploration and rediscovery

-Nice bestiary

-Very alien world (planescape is interesting setting)

-Ability to lots of interesting things through dialogue

-Characters (very bizarre and unique, but very lovable)

 

Arcanum:

-Lots of Choices and Consequences

-Ability to create very diverse characters

-Race, gender and sometimes even clothes having profound effects on dialogue

-Raise spirit ability (sadly underused by game)

-Some great characters (ie. Geoffrey, Torian Kel, Magnus and most of voiced ones, aside Virgil)

-Interesting lore flavouring books

 

Morrowind:

-Lots of unique loot

-Interesting books (like Arcanum, but lot of more)

 

KotOR 1&2:

-Full-blown evil path (even if just silly puppy kicking in KoTOR 1)

Edited May 5, 2013 by GrumpyOldschooler

[mcmanusaur]

Nice, I've just got a few additions:

 

Minecraft:

-Physics

 

Temple Run:

-Sense of Urgency

 

DDR:

-Importance of Timing

 

WoW:

-Party Raids

 

Call of Duty:

-Community

[Profound Moments]

I don't think most of those things will be necessary in Project Eternity, mcmanasaur.

 

But, GrumpyOldschooler, you're forgetting one of the most important things: a deep tactical combat system.

[Malekith]

The only addition i have is in your Fallout list.

-Death Annimations

-Killable children

 

Otherwise, perfect list

[GrumpyOldschooler]

The only addition i have is in your Fallout list.

-Death Annimations

-Killable children

Yeah, I sadly forgot those. Also regarding killable children it shouldn't be so ridiculously punished like it was in Fallout. Jagged Alliance 2 (not an RPG, but still) series handled it realistic, mature and appropriate way.

 

 

Also regarding combat, I'm a storyfag on RPGs, for me it's all about dialogue and Command & Conquer. For tactics I go play turn based strategy, but it would be nice to se a modern RPG with good combat. I bet Wasteland 2 will deliver on that front though.

Edited May 6, 2013 by GrumpyOldschooler

[Micamo]

I don't think most of those things will be necessary in Project Eternity, mcmanasaur.

 

But, GrumpyOldschooler, you're forgetting one of the most important things: a deep tactical combat system.

 

Considering Obsidian's two most recent attempts to make Deep and Interesting game mechanics (Alpha Protocol and Dead Money) I think Project Eternity needs a tactical combat focus as much as Obsidian needs to be bought out by EA.

[GrumpyOldschooler]

 

I don't think most of those things will be necessary in Project Eternity, mcmanasaur.

 

But, GrumpyOldschooler, you're forgetting one of the most important things: a deep tactical combat system.

 

Considering Obsidian's two most recent attempts to make Deep and Interesting game mechanics (Alpha Protocol and Dead Money) I think Project Eternity needs a tactical combat focus as much as Obsidian needs to be bought out by EA.

 

True, but it's different though as when developing those games obsidian lacked a forum like this to keep them grounded on what fans are expecting and want. I'm not one of those though and I'm not particularly interested in going to gameplay forums, so I'm not suggesting it, since I have no idea what to expect. Hopefully there are some good ideas there.

 

Then again it has been said that the game will be RTWP. That basically means it's BG all over again and while combat could be fun it was by no means tactical or very interesting. I personally would wish for TB, but sadly it's not going to happen.

Edited May 6, 2013 by GrumpyOldschooler

[Sensuki]

I don't think most of those things will be necessary in Project Eternity, mcmanasaur.

 

He was just trolling.

[Micamo]

True, but it's different though as when developing those games obsidian lacked a forum like this to keep them grounded on what fans are expecting and want. I'm not one of those though and I'm not particularly interested in going to gameplay forums, so I'm not suggesting it, since I have no idea what to expect. Hopefully there are some good ideas there.

 

1. My concern is not that Obsidian doesn't know "what the fans want." We're definitely not going to see something made by people who are completely disconnected with their fanbase like, say, making Project Eternity into a Gears of War-style shooter. My concern is Obsidian is not aware of its own strengths and limitations as a developer and will try to build a game that they are completely unfit to make.

 

2. Our only real information channel to what's going on in the development process are the very vague and sparse update posts we receive. This is nowhere near enough information to give meaningful feedback on a game, especially not of the type needed to make a well-polished combat system. So most of the posts you see in the mechanics section of the board is "I think it'd be cool if we had X" or "I think Y sounds dumb." This stuff is not a suitable substitute for a rigorous playtesting cycle, something I very strongly fear the game won't have.

 

3. What's worse is that, for designing a game, this kind of advice is almost worse than useless. You can't judge a book by its cover, and you can't meaningfully judge game mechanics by the concepts behind their design. For example, pretty much all of their hard work and effort put into Dead Money with making the Ghost People "frightening" and making searching through the area for resources "important" was completely nullified by the inclusion of the Bear Trap Fist. You pick one up, then the ghost people all go down in a single punch, and suddenly all the tension and atmosphere is gone and the environments go from carefully designed resource caches to a rat maze of pointless corridors and way too many annoying mooks. And don't even get me started on how much of a horrible failure the radio and hologram "puzzles" were.

 

4. Even if this advice could be useful somehow, there's no consistent voices here. You need look no further than the romance "debate" threads to see that different people want Project Eternity to take very, very different directions, and there's no real justification to go with one direction or the other except that either way you're gonna piss a ton of people off. I'm worried Eternity will be remembered as a terrible game not because of anything in particular that it did, but rather in that it tried to cater to everyone at once and ended up satisfying no one.

[Giantevilhead]

Might and Magic (as well as Heroes of Might and Magic):

- The potential to become very powerful and wield city destroying spells.

- Breaking old fantasy cliches in unexpected ways.

- Characters that change and evolve, often times by themselves without influence from the player.

- Has a sense of whimsy and knows when to make fun of itself.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Giantevilhead

[GrumpyOldschooler]

1. My concern is not that Obsidian doesn't know "what the fans want." We're definitely not going to see something made by people who are completely disconnected with their fanbase like, say, making Project Eternity into a Gears of War-style shooter. My concern is Obsidian is not aware of its own strengths and limitations as a developer and will try to build a game that they are completely unfit to make.

 

2. Our only real information channel to what's going on in the development process are the very vague and sparse update posts we receive. This is nowhere near enough information to give meaningful feedback on a game, especially not of the type needed to make a well-polished combat system. So most of the posts you see in the mechanics section of the board is "I think it'd be cool if we had X" or "I think Y sounds dumb." This stuff is not a suitable substitute for a rigorous playtesting cycle, something I very strongly fear the game won't have.

 

3. What's worse is that, for designing a game, this kind of advice is almost worse than useless. You can't judge a book by its cover, and you can't meaningfully judge game mechanics by the concepts behind their design. For example, pretty much all of their hard work and effort put into Dead Money with making the Ghost People "frightening" and making searching through the area for resources "important" was completely nullified by the inclusion of the Bear Trap Fist. You pick one up, then the ghost people all go down in a single punch, and suddenly all the tension and atmosphere is gone and the environments go from carefully designed resource caches to a rat maze of pointless corridors and way too many annoying mooks. And don't even get me started on how much of a horrible failure the radio and hologram "puzzles" were.

 

4. Even if this advice could be useful somehow, there's no consistent voices here. You need look no further than the romance "debate" threads to see that different people want Project Eternity to take very, very different directions, and there's no real justification to go with one direction or the other except that either way you're gonna piss a ton of people off. I'm worried Eternity will be remembered as a terrible game not because of anything in particular that it did, but rather in that it tried to cater to everyone at once and ended up satisfying no one.

 

 

 

And I thought I was too grumpy and pessimistic when it comes to games, but it's refreshing to see someone who is even more.

 

Anyway,

1. Yeah, I kinda agree here, but I believe you're underestimating Obsidian's capabilities. New Vegas was hell of an achievement and KoTOR2 was quite good despite being rushed.

2. Completely agree on this one though.

3. True, but then again Dead Money was a crazy experiment done in very short time. I think Obsidian already knows better not to pull anything like that again. Ironically enough it probably taugth them something, atleast I hope so. Still, I liked the characters and story.

4. I don't believe Obsidian is going to try to cater for every possible demographic from what I've seen the game seems to be aimed at core fans of their games and similiar older games. I don't think anything on forums can change that. P:E is pretty clearly mostly "nostalgy" game aimed for older RPG fans. This group is pretty uniform even if debates like "was arcanum **** or good" or "fallout 1 is better than 2" exist within it.

 

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot those pure Baldur's Gate fans, I have no idea what they want and what they are like, but while that series had some serious malignant tumours I don't think Obsidian is going to export them to P:E, aside RT-combat that has been confirmed. I also believe those fans are pretty easy to satisfy by just having "epic" main quest where you get to fight things and maybe some romance. I don't really think their demands will conflict with story-oriented more hardcore RPG-fans, but for combat and system complexity it could be different.

Edited May 7, 2013 by GrumpyOldschooler

[Micamo]

1. Yeah, I kinda agree here, but I believe you're underestimating Obsidian's capabilities. New Vegas was hell of an achievement and KoTOR2 was quite good despite being rushed.

 

The strong parts of those games were the characters and (what Obsidian did with) the setting. That's their strong point, though they don't have a perfect track record with it: What the hell happened with the Neverwinter Nights 2 original campaign? Just about the worst thing I can realistically see Obsidian doing with Eternity is doing a retread of that, and the scary part is there are plenty of indications they're already going down that path. (But I've already had that rant in another thread, so I won't repeat it here.)

 

4. I don't believe Obsidian is going to try to cater for every possible demographic from what I've seen the game seems to be aimed at core fans of their games and similiar older games. I don't think anything on forums can change that. P:E is pretty clearly mostly "nostalgy" game aimed for older RPG fans. This group is pretty uniform even if debates like "was arcanum **** or good" or "fallout 1 is better than 2" exist within it.

 

Well, two things. First, I'm not talking about the type of divide that exists between, say, Thief 2 players and Starcraft players. Obviously, they're not trying to cater to both of those crowds at once, that'd be pretty absurd. They're making a (mostly) 2D isometric class-based party-based RPG with unvoiced dialogue trees and character creation, that much is certain. But there's room for a ton of variance within this template: How open is the world? What are our interactions with our companions like? How much time do we spend killing things vs. talking to people? What's the structure of the main quest like? How much content is put into the main quest and how much of it is put into side quests? The list goes on and on.

 

To give an example of this problem I'm going to illustrate the conflict behind just one of these points of variation: Should some dialogue choices give the player an objectively better or worse outcome for having chosen them?

 

Side A says that these kinds of dialogue choices encourage roleplaying because they force the player to stop and think about what they're saying, considering the situation as if it were real. This improves the player's immersion in the game and makes clicking dialogue options have a lot more weight and meaning.

 

Side B says that dialogue choices are the method by which the player expresses their character's personality, and by making some choices "wrong" what you're really doing is punishing players who are roleplaying characters who really would make that choice in that situation, thereby robbing the player of agency. From this perspective such choices discourage roleplaying rather than encourage it.

 

While both sides are valid you cannot possibly do both in a game: You can either punish some choices and reward others, or don't. Whichever side you pick, the other side will be unhappy.

 

 

The second problem is that a focus on providing nostalgia is one of my biggest fears for how Project Eternity could go horribly, horribly wrong. I think Jerry Holkins described the problem of nostalgia best: "It's never 'as good,' because it can't be.  'As good' wouldn't satisfy you, now, because you aren't the person who was satisfied by it anymore." What I'm worried about is P:E will try to be as good as the Infinity Engine games, focusing too much on imitating the surface elements and style of those games and miss the true core of their engagement. The core of the engagement of the old IE games was not to be found in the isometric style, the prerendered backgrounds, the D&D 2E ruleset, the RTP gameplay style, or the Forgotten Realms setting; it's in something deeper than all of those.

[GrumpyOldschooler]

The strong parts of those games were the characters and (what Obsidian did with) the setting. That's their strong point, though they don't have a perfect track record with it: What the hell happened with the Neverwinter Nights 2 original campaign? Just about the worst thing I can realistically see Obsidian doing with Eternity is doing a retread of that, and the scary part is there are plenty of indications they're already going down that path. (But I've already had that rant in another thread, so I won't repeat it here.)

 

I'm intrigued by this. Could you please link that post? It sounds worrisome indeed.

 

Also in my opinion New Vegas and KoTOR2 were much stronger on story, C&C and quest design than characters. Especially KoTOR2 wasn't very good with characters aside Kreia.

 

While both sides are valid you cannot possibly do both in a game: You can either punish some choices and reward others, or don't. Whichever side you pick, the other side will be unhappy.

 

Regardless, I think it's safe to assume they're going for same route as say New Vegas. Probably same with talking vs. killing, main quest etc.

 

It would be pretty strange if they're not, since that game was probably Obsidian's greatest success. Also now that they have Tim Cain along, I bet things will gravitate to that direction, since that's his style.

 

Also I believe atleast regarding to evil stuff "bad choices" wouldn't be punished overtly like in say Fallout 1&2 (probably the worst ones on that department that actually still allow you to be evil), since KoTOR2, New Vegas and even Arcanum did those pretty well.

 

All that aside, I still think it's bit flawed to argue that rewarding and punishing players for certain choices is discouraging roleplay as long there is reasonable balance with that, ie. consequences are not truly game breaking such as was being evil in Fallout 1&2.

 

The second problem is that a focus on providing nostalgia is one of my biggest fears for how Project Eternity could go horribly, horribly wrong. I think Jerry Holkins described the problem of nostalgia best: "It's never 'as good,' because it can't be.  'As good' wouldn't satisfy you, now, because you aren't the person who was satisfied by it anymore." What I'm worried about is P:E will try to be as good as the Infinity Engine games, focusing too much on imitating the surface elements and style of those games and miss the true core of their engagement. The core of the engagement of the old IE games was not to be found in the isometric style, the prerendered backgrounds, the D&D 2E ruleset, the RTP gameplay style, or the Forgotten Realms setting; it's in something deeper than all of those.

 

I can see what you mean, but honestly I'm not much of Baldur's Gate fan and only IE game I love is PS:T, so I can't comment much on that. Like I said for me RPGs are mostly about story, dialogue and C&C, so I don't care about rest much. I still do find focus on technical aspects of IE games bit odd though. It's not like that was their strongest point.

Edited May 7, 2013 by GrumpyOldschooler

[forgottenlor]

 

The strong parts of those games were the characters and (what Obsidian did with) the setting. That's their strong point, though they don't have a perfect track record with it: What the hell happened with the Neverwinter Nights 2 original campaign? Just about the worst thing I can realistically see Obsidian doing with Eternity is doing a retread of that, and the scary part is there are plenty of indications they're already going down that path. (But I've already had that rant in another thread, so I won't repeat it here.)

 

I'm intrigued by this. Could you please link that post? It sounds worrisome indeed.

 

Also in my opinion New Vegas and KoTOR2 were much stronger on story, C&C and quest design than characters. Especially KoTOR2 wasn't very good with characters aside Kreia.

 

While both sides are valid you cannot possibly do both in a game: You can either punish some choices and reward others, or don't. Whichever side you pick, the other side will be unhappy.

 

Regardless, I think it's safe to assume they're going for same route as say New Vegas. Probably same with talking vs. killing, main quest etc.

 

 

The second problem is that a focus on providing nostalgia is one of my biggest fears for how Project Eternity could go horribly, horribly wrong. I think Jerry Holkins described the problem of nostalgia best: "It's never 'as good,' because it can't be.  'As good' wouldn't satisfy you, now, because you aren't the person who was satisfied by it anymore." What I'm worried about is P:E will try to be as good as the Infinity Engine games, focusing too much on imitating the surface elements and style of those games and miss the true core of their engagement. The core of the engagement of the old IE games was not to be found in the isometric style, the prerendered backgrounds, the D&D 2E ruleset, the RTP gameplay style, or the Forgotten Realms setting; it's in something deeper than all of those.

 

I can see what you mean, but honestly I'm not much of Baldur's Gate fan and only IE game I love is PS:T, so I can't comment much on that. Like I said for me RPGs are mostly about story, dialogue and C&C, so I don't care about rest much. I still do find focus on technical aspects of IE games bit odd though. It's not like that was their strongest point.

 

 

This shows (in my opinion) how different we backers are. While I loved Planescape, I prefered Baldur's Gate 2 and liked all of the IE games. I also liked the original Never Winter Nights 2 campaign (I even played it through twice. Go figure). For me a traditional rpg has a lot of interesting strategic combat at its core, guided by deep story, interesting characters, and occasionally puzzles. The game is also about exploring a new world. A game missing those elements is an adventure game or a computer novel, and not for me a role playing game. I haven't played Ghost Money or New Vegas (do to the limits of my pc), but I have enjoyed every Obisidan game I have played, so I'm not too afraid Project Eternity will go wrong (coming from my expectations)

Edited May 7, 2013 by forgottenlor

[Micamo]

I'm intrigued by this. Could you please link that post? It sounds worrisome indeed.

 

The post I'm referring to can be found here, though I didn't talk about Neverwinter Nights 2 in that post specifically suppose I should explain what I meant by my first statement in more detail:

 

[T]he worst settings in games are the ones where the writer comes up with a plot line in their head, then everything in the setting is built purely in subservience to that plot. No place exists unless something important happens there except to provide a buffer of endless mooks for the player to wade through as they move from A to B (or worse, back from B to A). Nobody exists unless they have some piece of exposition to deliver about what you're supposed to do next. Everyone just apparently stands around all day waiting for the player to show up, and nobody ever has any problems unless they're somehow directly relevant to whatever storyline the writer has intended. ...

 

Honestly? I'm worried this is the road Project Eternity's headed down. Maybe I'm being unfair because we really don't have that much info on the setting/story yet, but most of what I've seen so far has been a bad sign. The creative spark behind the Dyrwood seems to be "Well, 4/5 of the IE games we're using as inspiration were Forgotten Realms, so our setting can't be too different from FR. Also, there's guns, souls work different, there are cat people, we call bards 'Chanters', psions 'Ciphers', and Planetouched 'Godlike'."

 

My problem with Neverwinter Nights 2 is that it's Forgotten Realms played as straight as it possibly can be. I've heard the expansions are better, but I haven't played them. I want to finish the original campaign before starting the expansions (I have a bit of OCD regarding experiencing parts of a series in order) and I'm in late Act 2 and can't muster the strength to power through the rest. The setting of NWN2 has all the traits exhibited by bad video game settings as stated in my original post. It feels less like a real place and more like a crappy, rickety amusement park filled with cheap cardboard castles and LARPers dressed up as orcs and elves. The game has many other problems (chief among them the nonsensical railroading), but what kills it for me is that I don't give a rat's ass about Neverwinter or Luskan, partially because of NWN2's presentation of FR and FR's defining role as the modern stereotype of medieval fantasy to begin with, and I believe that the latter is what lead to the former. Interesting and engaging places most often come about because of creative challenge, and with FR there are no creative challenges because the audience already understands everything important there is to know about the setting. There's nothing they need to put any effort into explaining or expanding upon or setting up as a mystery so all of the game's expository budget goes into the plot and none of it into making the world feel alive.

 

And I fear that Project Eternity will have similar problems due to a lack of creative challenges in its design. The biggest thing that makes me worried is this:

 

So, Eternity is set in a fantasy universe with swords, dwarves, and elves. There’s sort of this trend in the gaming zeitgeist of, you know, “I’m sick of swords, dwarves, and elves.” How would you go about selling this new setting to someone who might be of that mindset?

 

It’s not much of a sell. The differences are the following: First off, when Josh was setting up the vision goals for the feel of the world, the technology level is a little bit more advanced than the sort of traditional fantasy tech levels that we’ve seen in other games. And that definitely sets it apart from the Forgotten Realms. The world is sort of on the cusp of a technological revolution, and as a result, people are finding new ways to wage war, to defend against magecraft. And even wizards find they’re suddenly not in a completely secure location from the common populous, because these new weapons are becoming available.

 

Also, what we tried to do, even though there are recognizable tropes like elves and dwarves, we’ve tried to introduce some new elements into their cultures and make them stand out. “Elves and dwarves” are just nouns that we use to lure you in. But then, once you’re in there, you suddenly realize that there are a lot of differences between this, and what you’d consider typical fantasy fare.

 

What this statement communicates to me is that the creative process behind the worldbuilding in P:E is completely backwards: Instead of starting with themes and conflicts and building the setting around them, they've started with a convention and then searched for ways to add some conflicts and themes they wanted to it. This means there's a real danger of, consciously or not, falling back on audience expectations to fill in the blank spots for you. Occasionally you still see good stuff produced this way, but it's rare: Most of the time this process churns out a me-too world more concerned with superficially setting itself apart from its source material than providing engagement on its own terms.

 

 

I dunno, maybe I just overthink this stuff.

[mcmanusaur]

What this statement communicates to me is that the creative process behind the worldbuilding in P:E is completely backwards: Instead of starting with themes and conflicts and building the setting around them, they've started with a convention and then searched for ways to add some conflicts and themes they wanted to it. This means there's a real danger of, consciously or not, falling back on audience expectations to fill in the blank spots for you. Occasionally you still see good stuff produced this way, but it's rare: Most of the time this process churns out a me-too world more concerned with superficially setting itself apart from its source material than providing engagement on its own terms.

 

 

I dunno, maybe I just overthink this stuff.

 

Well, let's be fair here; top-down and bottom-up worldbuilding both have their place. Perhaps what you're saying is more of a deductive vs. inductive approach, but still I can't see that either one of those is inherently better than the other, and all games do both to some extent.

[Lephys]

3. What's worse is that, for designing a game, this kind of advice is almost worse than useless. You can't judge a book by its cover, and you can't meaningfully judge game mechanics by the concepts behind their design. For example, pretty much all of their hard work and effort put into Dead Money with making the Ghost People "frightening" and making searching through the area for resources "important" was completely nullified by the inclusion of the Bear Trap Fist. You pick one up, then the ghost people all go down in a single punch, and suddenly all the tension and atmosphere is gone and the environments go from carefully designed resource caches to a rat maze of pointless corridors and way too many annoying mooks. And don't even get me started on how much of a horrible failure the radio and hologram "puzzles" were.

Keep in mind that they had to answer to a publisher at the time... something they do not have to do with P:E. There's no group of shareholders telling them to put in a rocket launcher to increase profit margins.

 

Despite their sometimes-admirable efforts, publishers always find a way to force decisions that are counter-productive to the coherent vision of the game's core design, since they're not making decisions for purely design-quality reasons. It's kind of a conflict of interest. "I want this game to be really good, but I also want to try to get kids who play nothing other than Call of Duty to play it, no matter the cost to the artistry/coherence of the game."

 

It's like... if a blacksmith had a publisher. And they were like "Hey, make the hilt of that sword out of chocolate! People LOVE chocolate!"

 

Well, now the sword doesn't function like it's supposed to. The design is flawed, because the decision to make the hilt from chocolate was not based on the question "Will this hurt the design and functionality of the sword?"

 

Anywho, I can't say that they'll produce a flawless product free of any complaint at all, but I bet money (sort of literally, with the Kickstarter backing) that they're putting the maximum amount of effort and focus together on this to produce the best game they can in the best way possible for the game's sake, and not for other conflicting interests.

 

And while there are always going to be debates between conflicting opinions, I think the dev team is quite capable of processing such debates to extract their objective value and not worry about the easily-overruled subjectivity of everything. I mean, if we got all 75,000 backers to sign a petition to turn this into a racing game, I have no worries they would simply say "*shrug*, I guess that's what everyone wants, even though it makes no sense. Let's do it."

 

Our feedback is supplementary to their own expertise, not superceding.