What's the ONE Thing You've Wanted In RPG's Over The Past Decade?

[Keyrock]

To do away with trash mobs.  Entirely.  They add absolutely nothing but tedium to a game.  They are a necessary mechanic if killing enemies is a major means of gaining experience, but proper game design can eliminate that need entirely.  Just say no to trash mobs.

[Wolfenbarg]

Trash mobs aren't always bad. They can make you feel powerless or godlike depending on the stage of the game and their relative difficulty. Trash mobs were punishing in Baldur's Gate, and kind of a fun reward in Baldur's Gate 2 to carve through. The times where they're bad are when the game isn't fine tuned to support their existence. Planescape: Torment would have been a superior game without trash mobs, while Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale would suffer greatly without them. They offer a change of pace, which is why lots of games of varying genres use them.

[smithereen]

...Planescape: Torment would have been a superior game without trash mobs...

 

Off topic, but I have to disagree with you here. I felt that the endless, grindy combat was included in PT for a reason - to emphasize how much suffering and killing the Nameless One and his companions endured. It wouldn't be the same game if TNO and his party didn't die, come back, suffer horrific injury, kill dozens of people, die, come back, be injured, slaughter hundreds, over and over again.

Edited December 8, 2013 by smithereen

[MrCobweb]

An important factor in RPG's is the uniqueness of each character. I love the feeling that playing a stealth-based character will feel almost like a seperate game than if I was playing a bloodthirsty melee character. I don't mind sacrificing pure power for unconventional means of dealing with a situation. I say this because I find myself becoming disengaged with a game when it becomes apperant that high dps will outweight any other means of winning. I would rather explore a character and their "build" to find fun and exciting ways to play, even if it meant that I won't be killing them with one attack.

Another component I would love to see would be challenging and satisfying battles. Having a wizard that stands still and nukes an enemy is fun for a few fights, but eventually becomes dull and boring. Maybe a foe causes a rockslide that a wizard will have to escape or even splits the earth beneath the warriors feet, making him choose to stay on the ground with the enemies or leap back to guard his companions. Interactive combat is what I enjoy.

Last but not least, story. What I remember loving about most of the BG series games was the range of choices a player could make throughout the game. Even though it is a component that many current RPGs utilize I always felt satisfied during the BG games and the choices I would make.

[anameforobsidian]

I thought the trashmobs were generally great for atmosphere.  The brain rats wouldn't feel like a threat if you didn't run into them.  The slums wouldn't feel like slums without gangs hanging around, etc.  Also, trashmobs give you a far greater sense of your character's progression than bossfights, which are normally balanced towards the player.

[Tryggen]

Good combat encounters/design.

[SummerDay]

More ways to avoid combat and less button smashing.  Oops, is that two things?

[Sakarabu]

What I really want is extremely hard to pin down.. I would just put it simply as "atmosphere".

 

In Baldur's Gate 2 there is such a sense of mystery.. from the very moment you start the game you are plunged into a situation out of your control, you don't have a clue what is happening and have to rely on your party members to get what little information you can. You are then thrust into a massive city which just oozes atmosphere and activities, with people to talk to, things to see, and everyone has their own story. While for the most part you are guided in the story, it still has just the right amount of freedom so as to feel like a huge world open to be explored.

 

The city is a masterpiece, it feels like home, but there is still danger around every corner.. you think you know it inside out then you find a new area and a new group of people with their own story, voice acting, personalities and quests. There is such a wide range of encounters all squeezed into one area.. taking the graveyard as an example, you go there to confront Bohdi: When you first enter there are typical skeletons to fight outside and in the crypts while you are searching for her lair (even a lich if you are unfortunate to wake it), there are quests to do here aswell, you  end up finding her lair, but on the way is a huge spiders nest part way through the level.. there is also even a whole side area with its own quest to be done with Korgan. Once you enter her lair there are vampires to kill, spells to find, parts of the level to interact with.. it's amazing.

 

So that's what I have missed most.. levels which feel lived in and are packed with interesting stories and characters. I don't want gameplay which is basically "follow this path from A->B to complete the quest", or talk to people you aren't even interested in. I think the atmosphere is much easier to pin down when using an isometric viewpoint though, and I already got a good feeling from watching the latest trailer.

[extliquani]

I wanted to get back that squad-level tactical combat feel of Ultima IV, the Gold Box Games, and ToEE.

This!  Please, please, please!

[Kurumi Morishita]

Spells like in BG2.

[Mishra]

It's hard to nail down because I'm an ideas guy... But I would probably ask for more of a real-world immersion. I want purpose behind all actions. I think I hate general 'triggers' the most. 

 

Why is that bear attacking me? I don't want the classic 'you got too close so it triggered'. Maybe it runs away sometimes. Maybe there is a "spot" notification and I see that it is staring me down. I need to probably back down. It can probably kick my ass despite my full plate armor and sword. If it hits me I should be in a world of **** no matter what "level". 

 

Why am I the only one or only group that can go stop the dragon all of a sudden? Haven't other groups or guilds been recruited in the past? I would love to see other characters living their lives and you can track them. Skyrim did one of the best jobs with this I think. "wait until 2am to mug said person because he normally goes to visit his buddy". 

 

Can my character carry water around? Can he not like the way it tastes sometimes?

 

I can't carry around tons of gear. I need a horse and buggy to places in order to store more items from the dungeon. 

 

If I receive a quest from a neighbor asking me to go get a ring from her dead husband, she probably won't appreciate me taking 48 days to finish other things I have to do... She probably will find someone else.

 

 

 

It doesn't have to be perfect... But the more sensible logical things that are built into the world, the better. 

[Oerwinde]

One thing? New World colonial setting where your colony competes with others and your decisions determine how it develops.

[TheOptimist]

More than anything else, I want an RPG with a victory condition, an ending where my character walks off into the sunset with his companions having made the world a better place.  Not a scene where we get set up for a sequel, not some dark edgy melodrama, not some half-coherent cut-scene, and sure as hell no Red/Green/Blue pick your color cause your choices are irrelevant BS.  I want to be able to sit back from the keyboard and feel like I won.

[Wolfenbarg]

It's hard to nail down because I'm an ideas guy... But I would probably ask for more of a real-world immersion. I want purpose behind all actions. I think I hate general 'triggers' the most. 

 

Why is that bear attacking me? I don't want the classic 'you got too close so it triggered'. Maybe it runs away sometimes. Maybe there is a "spot" notification and I see that it is staring me down. I need to probably back down. It can probably kick my ass despite my full plate armor and sword. If it hits me I should be in a world of **** no matter what "level". 

 

Why am I the only one or only group that can go stop the dragon all of a sudden? Haven't other groups or guilds been recruited in the past? I would love to see other characters living their lives and you can track them. Skyrim did one of the best jobs with this I think. "wait until 2am to mug said person because he normally goes to visit his buddy". 

 

Can my character carry water around? Can he not like the way it tastes sometimes?

 

I can't carry around tons of gear. I need a horse and buggy to places in order to store more items from the dungeon. 

 

If I receive a quest from a neighbor asking me to go get a ring from her dead husband, she probably won't appreciate me taking 48 days to finish other things I have to do... She probably will find someone else.

 

 

 

It doesn't have to be perfect... But the more sensible logical things that are built into the world, the better. 

 

What in the what? 

[Hiro Protagonist II]

It's hard to nail down because I'm an ideas guy... But I would probably ask for more of a real-world immersion. I want purpose behind all actions. I think I hate general 'triggers' the most. 

 

Something like this?

 

 

 

 

Why is that bear attacking me? I don't want the classic 'you got too close so it triggered'. Maybe it runs away sometimes. Maybe there is a "spot" notification and I see that it is staring me down. I need to probably back down. It can probably kick my ass despite my full plate armor and sword. If it hits me I should be in a world of **** no matter what "level". 

 

It doesn't have to be perfect... But the more sensible logical things that are built into the world, the better. 

 

I'm guessing if you walked up to a bear in real life then it might want to attack you because you're too close and encroaching on its personal space? That would seem the logical answer to me.

[dr-nix]

If we are talking about the last decade in gaming and rpgs. The big games have been more like fps-games in rpg-drag. The only recent game i can remember (that wasn't that) is basically Dragon Age Origins (which i liked). 

 

So i want that experience again. The top down thing that they are doing. Beyond that i think that a good story that makes me want to play "just another hour" is important. The atmosphere in the world-building is also important. A good example of that is that game Stasis (check out the alpha-demo if you haven't already). That game oozes atmosphere.

 

But this was about the one thing i would want in the game. So i guess i would go with atmosphere. I think the the rest i mentioned just feeds into that anyway. 

Edited December 12, 2013 by dr-nix

[Lioness]

Something I miss is having control of bigger groups. PE's, IE style 6 character party is nice. 3 or 4 has been the limit in recent games, that I have played.

To my limited knowledge Dungeon Siege is the only game where 8 characters were availabIe... and that's a so log time ago.

 

Otherwise a pet peeve of mine is animals in RPGs systematically fighting to the death of the last member in a pack. Heck to be realistic even a group of person's wouldn't necessarily fight to the last one,... the remaining would beg/plea/surrender when the majority of their group is cut down with little effort. Fighting mobs and NPCs in RPGs often feels like fighting Monty Python's Black Knight.

[Mishra]

I'm guessing if you walked up to a bear in real life then it might want to attack you because you're too close and encroaching on its personal space? That would seem the logical answer to me.

 

 

Yeah. I'm pretty sure I thought of that one. I guess you think if you walk up to a bear it will attack you 100% of the time?

[dsmoak]

More interavctivity between party members and more development of them as well. After all, these are characters, and many games just add stereotypical ones that you don't really care much about just to run through the game. I want to know about the characters, and by doing so, I'll care about them.

[Paulicus]

I'm a simple man, I just want to be able to fight a Dracolich again like back in Curse of the Azure Bonds!

[Dwarfare]

A game with an expansive, intuitive toolset for people to create their own unique worlds, placables, items, classes, models, etc. to create online communities around to enjoy together.

 

However, developers seem to have little interest in that these days, likely due to the amount of work it takes to do it properly compared to the minimal earnings from drawing people in with player worlds.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Dwarfare

[CommentTater]

Surrendering, fleeing (you or an enemy), bypassing combat with nonviolent or less violent means as a feature, rather than a dialogue choice here or there, prisoner dilemma, less obvious good guy/bad guy characters.

Also, this is something that is more a a genie lamp kind of wish, but I'd like the ability to from a greater (in terms of size) party, like a gang or a band of public servants, bounty hunters, or bodyguards. Something that could operate off screen without too much input, but could still have an impact on the player and their reputation/well being. State of Decay was a pretty solid attempt at that, but it's strange to me that more games haven't tried it, considering it happens very often in tabletop games I've been a part of.

[Lephys]

I'm guessing if you walked up to a bear in real life then it might want to attack you because you're too close and encroaching on its personal space? That would seem the logical answer to me.

When's the last time you walked "up to a bear" in a video game before it started to become angry with you? You know, instead of "Oh no! You've entered the bear's scent radius, which is 7.3 miles! It naturally wants to murder you now, because it's obviously just a death machine, and not an animal that just so happens to hunt other animals for food when it's hungry. Also, it will never, ever stop chasing you now, ever..."?

 

Because... I wanna play that game. Where you first have to be RUDE to the bear and actually invade its personal space. Like, it's just chillin' in the river rapids, grabbin' fish and stuff, and you come spla****y-splashin' along, like 20 feet away, peeing in the river and whatnot (upstream, even), all over its fishy, fishy dinner. Then, bear goes all hands-on-hips, then charges your arse.

 

That would actually be pretty awesome, humorous exaggeration aside. Not, "I'm a bear, and I have a radar, and if I see a blip on my radar, I ALWAYS murder it!" You could be a pure-metal golem, and it would still just charge right at you, not even having any clue what you are, and knowing you're not even made of meat.

Edited December 18, 2013 by Lephys

[neo6874]

 

I'm guessing if you walked up to a bear in real life then it might want to attack you because you're too close and encroaching on its personal space? That would seem the logical answer to me.

When's the last time you walked "up to a bear" in a video game before it started to become angry with you? You know, instead of "Oh no! You've entered the bear's scent radius, which is 7.3 miles! It naturally wants to murder you now, because it's obviously just a death machine, and not an animal that just so happens to hunt other animals for food when it's hungry. Also, it will never, ever stop chasing you now, ever..."?

 

 

Last night, Baldur's gate; Area where Gorion gets killed.  Bear shows as blue til you're relatively close (within sling range).

[Plutone00]

Single-player RPG with not just non-linearity, but with true branching storylines, kinda like VNs.

 

Most non-linear RPGs follow the formula of slightly different events during the course of the story depending on player choices and then comes the choice that affects the ending right before the "final boss" and those endings are usually not that different, most of them end with "final boss" defeated and one in which player joins "team bad guys". You still go from point A to point B. Even Witcher 2, that fancies itself a game with branching story still follows that formula: no matter who you side with, you still have to go to Loc Muinne in chapter 3.

 

Let's take Skyrim for example. You can be thane of every hold and head of every guild. "Realistically" that can't happen. What if you could choose only one home and one career? What if guild story arcs were more polished with their own twists and turns and friends/love interests and took about 10 hours to complete?

 

Not talking Skyrim-specific here (just took it as an example, since most people probably played it), but that's the kind of RPG I want to see: a game with a branching storylines that lead to different  places, not just to one same final boss. Doesn't even need to be a good vs evil type of thing. Life as swordsman/soldier would be different from life as a mage/scholar - the people in your immidiate circle, the things that you do and want to do would be different. Not just doing an origin story, throwing you in the world, role-playing a couple of converstions and running to defeat the "final boss". Careers of the swordsman and the mage have to be totally different stories and totally different expiriences. TOR mmo attempted to do it, but it is a very bad example since aside from picking your faction and career at char setup, it still followed "from point A to point B" formula, but true branching storyline is impossible with mmos anyway.

 

I realise a true branching storyline is hard to do outside of VNs, especially if we are talking cinematic quality RPGs here, but I won't lose hope and if sometime there will be a kickstarter for it, I will pledge my every single penny.