Notable RPG Elements

#1 Okay - things that really WORKED for me. I'll start with a semi-obscure game:

Vampire the Masquerade - Redemption: I'd love to hear people's thoughts on why this game didn't seem to do so well. I really enjoyed it, though multiplayer wasn't all we'd hoped. The thing that really worked well, at least in the first half of the game, was the establishment of a solid MOOD and setting. The use of Jewish tradition with the runaway golem, and the heavy Christian influence permeating all of Prague --- into which you become a child of darkness. Really awesome stuff.

Ultima Underworld: Lacking real 'shops' in these claustrophobic environments, all of the friendly denizens of these areas were inclined to barter with you. Usually they didn't have much that you'd want at higher levels, but there was at least one key plot element that required you to perform a clever trade with a fellow who was afraid of the dark. Why hasn't anyone done anything like this since? Or have they, and I've just missed it. I'm tired of shopkeepers who have stalls of +3 swords for a higher price than anybody BUT you could possible afford.

And in the drives-me-up-the-wall category:
The 3D Final Fantasy games... the "summoning" effects. Okay, I understand that it took a small team of developers weeks to do each one of these really cool, beautiful summoning scenes. But its only breathtaking the first few times you see them. A dozen times later, it's getting pretty old. A hundred times later, you about to throw your controller through the TV for lack of ability to skip the dang scene!

#2 @Jay: Here's my contribution.

Vampire: I agree. It was a totally immersive game with regards to mood. I think it might have been partially the fact that it was one of the first good vampire games out or the music, atmosphere, etc. I don't know why it didn't do so well but it did spawn a sequel.

Here's an oldie but a goodie. Eye of the Beholder (any of them). These games were old technology, but they simply rocked. This was mostly due to the gameplay and involved story. You really felt you were part of the world, not just observing it from the outside. Personally I've always wanted to do a 2004 update to EOB. Dungeon Master was a good one too, but it was more along the lines of hack'n'slash than RPG from what I remember.

In general a couple of things that should be held true to form by anyone planning to write something:

Mood, atmosphere, etc. We talked about this with Vampire. Immerse your players into an escape that is both thrilling and a challenge. Look at how Doom really took a player into the dark and threatening world of Imps, Cacademons and BFGs. The new Doom is trying to recapture that.

The World is not enough. It's not just enough to populate the world with NPCs that don't know what they're doing or wander aimlessly saying 8 different phrases. AI must be looked at as a project unto itself and given care and feeding just like the rendering engine would. I look at examples like Dungeon Siege where characters were there for a purpose (advance your quest, give you a new task, perform a duty like blacksmithing). Morrowind was good at this as well, where you could go anywhere and interact with anyone not just in a pre-canned fashion.

Open ended but controlled. I think having an overall arc that governs the world you create is important. This all contributes to the factors above, but brings together consistent views of why things happen and where things are headed. In addition to providing backstory to players who want to care about the world they're in, you need to allow them freedom. If someone wants to spend months playing your game give them that opportunity by not leading them down a single, linear path of right or wrong. I think to the creation of a character of the Ultima series. Instead of the typical "roll dice, select numbers, rinse, repeat" they asked you questions that, when first presented with the situation, you didn't know where it would take you. Escalate that up to a story arc and you have a game where players don't know what is going to happen next (and it doesn't always happen the same way each time).

Hope that helps.

#3 Its kinda small thing, but I really love how Diablo handles item hightlighting (press Alt and all the items around will highlight their names). Its awesome, simple and eliminates any pixel hunting.

More *interesting* quests. You mentioned Ultima Underworld - remember when you had to learn lizardmen language from a prisoner, pointing to items and "hearing" the translation? I had long list of paper on table and spent some half hour just trying to speak with him and looking up the words. But that half hour was not "lost" - I was struck by designer's twisted mind :)

Some quests should have several possible results, depending on characters *moral* choices. Possibly game would even monitor those choices and respond adequately later when new quests are offered. Simple FedEx quest might become not so boring when you choose whom to deliver item, (or you keep it or sell it).

Characters worth becoming a friends. Now, what has always made me edgy is that in games main hero is isolated wanderer. Ok, lets assume he has just entered the realm, knows nothing etc. But then create characters who are alive enough to become friends later as the game progresses. My favourite example of things done right would be Gothic series - there were characters in the first part who appeared and reappeared (ok, which was easily done, as gameworld was pretty small) and played essential role *through the whole plot* and had dialogues and characters polished enough that you became attached. When I reencountered them in the second part, I really felt good as meeting old friends after years. They were distinct, interesting and played crucial roles in the game. Now, in most of the RPGs - how can you attach to NPC whom you meet 2 times (once when he gives you FedEx quest and once when you deliver the item, har-har)?

Mood, yeah, but i dont think there are any recepies - that is the magic where designer encounters slippery terms such as Art of Design :) sometimes it works although the game is quite shallow (Diablo series are quite moody, but I think no one can argue that there is much plot or detailed world, its just a dungeon hack after all) and sometimes it just doesnt click although you can see that people have tried hard.

Another thing - make player see that his actions have consequences in the environment. Released political prisoner? Let there be political scandal later with street brawls and everything. Stabbed commander of the Watch? Let the thieves swarm the town. Opened Pandoras Box? Let the storm start raging over the realm and let it rain until player fixes his error. Whatever, just give me a feeling that those enemies, quests and towns are not just cardboard props, swinging in the wind.

ahh, I'm rambling :)

#4 Asheron's Call had a very good magic system during beta and when it first came out. There were 4 or 5 different types of spell components(each type having a dozen or more different kinds of that type) such as potions, tapers, talismans, etc. If you started off with a school of magic as one of your character's skills then you would get a few basic spells and the recipes for them. There were literally thousands of spells in the game and the player had to figure out the recipes for them. The order of components was the same for all the spells but the player had to figure out all of the spells, you could also learn spells through scrolls. Some of the components were different for each character after level 1 spells so you couldn't just get all of your spells from someone else.

However someone made a program that was able to figure out the pattern for each character based on other spells that they had. It's a shame that this program was released because, I feel anyways, that it ruined the entire game. It made magic way overpowered which caused the developers to increase the power of other skills which then caused them to increase magic, and then back again and eventually they took out the ability to learn spells through research and you can only learn them through scrolls now. It was very fun while it lasted though.

#5 I hate it when an RPG begins with a long intro followed by a long period of 'go here, do this, go there' just to build the story. Rather than throwing the player straight into the story, drop some hints, let them play and explore and slowly introduce and develop the story as they play (basically at the player's speed, not your's). It is possible to go too far with this of course, the player can't get bored with the game before the story begins to unfold.

#6 - Please note in this thread I'm talking about console RPG's, and no other/

I totally second you Andrew. I despise it when it takes you 2 hours to get past an RPG's long winded intro. Funk that, let me kill something!

Other complaints - scarce save points. There's way too much to lose when you die in an RPG because you only get to save every 20 to 30 minutes. If I die in an action game, I don't lost much progress, and can start over. If I die in an RPG and lose 25 minutes of experience and progress... then I won't be able to play it for at least a day.

Also, the BIG problems with RPGs is a lack of challenge. Most of these games are total cookie-cutting silliness. In almost every cosole RPG I have to play with no armor on in order to get a proper challenge.

The last problem, which I think is getting less of a problem as of late, is a lack of depth and strategy in these game's battle system. It just takes very little thought (if any at all) to beat these monste encounters in many RPGs.

Having to watch the same looong cutscene over after dying and retrying a part of the game.

And the worst thing of all is when you have to fight a boss you didn't expect, but the developer didn't put a save point in front of him!!!

Other than that, I love my console RPGs. Don't you dare take them away from me :)

#7 Speaking of RPGs in General. Console and PC heh :)

I found I like a lot of little things.

1. Story

2. In a single player game I like the complex magic systems. In one in which I cant remember it was for the amiga. It involve mixing, you could mix up different known attributes of spells to come up with new ones. I had one that once I shot it I could blow up the entire room with fireballs LOL.

3. In multiplay RPG I prefer to jump right in and explore and find things. If this means a reduce magic or combat system Iam ok with it.

I also like side scrolling RPG's
Secret of Y's series. Socerian for the PC.

John H.

#8 I can sum up what I like with one word: Nonlinear

This one word, makes for exponentially more content. The price of freedom in a gaming environment.

A straight up Dungeon Crawler might have been a better game for us to undertake. Dungeon Crawlers are mostly linear, but you can usually skip ahead a few levels, and get your ass handed to you. :)

Anyone who makes a good Dungeon Crawler, has a sale here.

-Josh Ritter
Prairie Games

#9 So Josh, what makes a good Dungeon Crawler? Examples you've seen?

#10 I played "The Standing Stones" quite a bit on the C64. Between that and Pirates!, this would have been some of the first source code I ever looked at... both were writtin in C64 Basic... but, that's ancient history.

There were others of course, I consider "The Bard's Tale" a Dungeon Crawl. The earlier Ultima games had dungeons and outdoors. I would call Diablo a dungeon crawl, even if some of the levels look like they are outside.

I would highly recommend stomping around in Demise some... it's got a great advancement system... it's also $20 and technically indie :) I spoke with David Allen on the phone at some length recently... nice guy.

Another indie RPG/Dungeon Crawl is Devil Whiskey. It has some great art, but by all accounts it's a bit flawed. They are supposedly taking what they have learned and making a better version/sequel... we'll see :)

A good dungeon crawler has a moderate to high level of difficulty. It also presents the user with choices at quick and regular intervals. There's very little wandering around wondering what to do... hack'n'slash, action rpg, etc.

-Josh Ritter
Prairie Games

#11 One thing that I think of which greatly contributes to a good RPG is the stability of the program. I know that might sound a bit off-base, but bear with me.

Many people have mentioned "Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption" has a lot of good elements: mood, setting, background story. But one thing that really killed a lot of the fun was the instability of the program. If I take a swing at a monster, I shouldn't have to worry about the program crashing. If I save the game, I shouldn't have to worry about the program crashing. If I initiate a conversation with an NPC, I shouldn't have to flinch when the audio starts stuttering because I know that the program is about to crash.

This goes beyond mere annoyance. It goes right to the heart of the game experience. When a game program is stable and runs like a champ even after you've slaughtered a few thousand orcs and hellspawn, when time just seems to melt away from your counsciousness and you're totally immersed into the game, THAT is the hallmark of a good RPG. Glitches, bugs, crashes, and the deliberate conscious avoidance of actions that are known to generate crashes, all of those snap you out of the game, far more so than a cut-scene ever could.

#12 Axel, i dont think stability is somehow specifically RPG-related. CTD should not be a standard action in any game, regardless the genre.

#13 Another hallmark of a good RPG is the details. The little things, things you might not notice off the bat, things that really bring the world to life. It could be the little bugs and insect sounds in the swamps of Morrowind. Or the different descriptions of similar generically enchanted weapons in the Baldur's Gate series. The little touches that make you smile.

As a corollary to that, one that applies more to RPGs working with a pre-existing license (D&D, GURPS, World of Darkness), is faithfulness to detail. Consider the Baldur's Gate series. Detail out the ying-yang. While it may not have been precisely laid out according to the material set out in the D&D books, there is enough flexibility in that system and in that setting to allow for small changes or twisting of details to suit an individual pen-and-paper campaign, and by extension a computer game. The result: one of the best RPG series ever made, perhaps on a par with the vaunted "Gold Box" RPGs of old.

Compare that Vampire - Redemption. From the handling of Disciplines to the way that the character levelled up flew in the face of the White Wolf books. It took a dark, moody, and very story-oriented RPG system and turned into a 3D hack-and-slash that looked fairly pretty but played pretty ugly. All of the neat little details, the subtlety, the machinations, the ideological differences between the clans and even within the clans, diminished or outright eliminated from the game. Hordes of enemies and limited ammo does not a good RPG make.

Let's hope Vampire - Bloodlines turns out a lot better than its predecessor.

#14 Here are some of the better RPGs I remember..

C64: Ultima V
It was very nice that day and night meant something. Alot of the NPCs had a schedule they would keep, and occasionally you would have to follow someone around to find things.
It was very open ended.. You could go completely off the story and just wander about.
Excellent game and I can't remember anything at the time I would have said it needed to add.

Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos
This is a game I go back to every now and again... Technically probably not an RPG. But it had alot of the good elements. Open ended to a point. You could travel to any station and see the traffic.. Follow it.. Pirate it, etc.
They had simple trades and more complex missions.
Some of the features it was missing was hiring other people to fly your other ships.
Leading a squadron of people out to pirate, etc would have be nice.
Although it felt open, it was actually a more or less linear story line. You couldn't go "evil" and come out to a different ending.
It would have been better if the people you pirated developed dislike/hate and it influenced how things played out.

Fallout / Fallout 2
Both of these games get very high marks in my book.
They both set a very good mood and followed it through.
Your actions made a difference in the short and long term.
Open ended for the most part. In fallout I you had the whole water chip this much time before we all die plot line. However, I didn't consider this a big problem.. That is why I left the vault.
One of the nice things about the fallout series is that a simple mission like go retrieve this usually turned into something very complex. And there was often a couple of different ways to solve the problem.

Vampire the Masquerade - Redemption
This was an okay game. Way too linear for my tastes though.
It had good mood.. But it felt like I was being dragged through someone elses story.. Not going out into the world and making my own.

Universal Combat (Derek Smart - 3000AD)
Here is a game that had all the right pieces but dropped the ball badly.
It's control system is a complex mess of abbreviations.
It has no real mission structure.. It's just a big simulation you can fly though..
It has potential, but needed a little bit more to pull the player through the experience.

X2 - The Threat
Definitely better than UC. It's very open ended.. But has a very short and weak story line.

Freelancer
I liked most of this game.. The mouse control were alot better than I thought they would be.
The story line was interesting but a bit too linear.
Once the story was over there was alot to do/explore.

A good atmosphere is the best starting place.. Then a dynamic world in which the players actions make a difference make the game more enjoyable.

If it turns into a treadmill of y says do this. I go do this and return. y says do this other thing.. I go do it and return... It gets old and boring real quick.

Now if I go.. hmm.. I'd really like to find a .. Or I need to make money for ..
Then I have to go hunt for a way to do that... That's better.. I know as a player I want to have to thing.. And I want a few options to choose from usually.

-Jerry

#15 Heh - I keep half-joking that the best RPG I've ever played was Falcon 4.0 --- it did what an RPG is supposed to do, make you FEEL like you are in another world, playing the role of someone else. In this case, you were in an alternate / future history Korea as a fighter pilot & squadron commander. And it REALLY made you feel the role. The immersion factor (when the bugs didn't kill ya *grin*) was incredible.

You really had this detailed world that you could interact with. REALLY interact with --- maybe that was the key element. You could decide to bag your current mission, and instead of going deep into enemy territory to bomb some ball-bearing plant you could decide to take out a couple of bridges. YES, you'd get a "mission failed" warning... but the effect of blowing up the bridge was noticeable when the enemy advance was stopped at the river. THAT was freaking amazing. Particularly when people figured out how to re-task missions and even order ground troops around. Sort of combining a real-time-strategy game with a simulation. I can't even imagine a true RPG with that level of interaction and immersion... but it would be awesome, wouldn't it?

It seems that "story" and "interaction" tend to be at odds with each other - a Gordion Knot that some of the best minds in the business (like Chris Crawford) have been trying to unravel.

Many years ago I picked up a book about the Ultima games. I've been starting to re-read it, noting some of Richard Garriott's design techniques. The big thing he does (or used to do... I'm not sure how he does things nowadays) was to plan out all the things he wanted the player to be able to do first. Only after he'd defined a ton of actions, people, and places did he create a story that wound its way through all of these elements. It seems like a pretty smart way to do things in a game... and completely opposite of what the Hollywood-wannabes would have us believe.

Another hated moment: PUZZLES & MAZES. Now, I do *kinda* like these elements in a game, don't get me wrong. But trying to solve the temple maze puzzles in Final Fantasy X drove me up the wall. I think they have a place in RPGs, but if I was REALLY into puzzles, I'd be playing a puzzle game (or maybe an adventure game). I think they are great if they are kept simple, or if they are optional. Otherwise they feel like 'filler' roadblocks that simply block my progress and cause frustration.

#16 @Jay - I think that the wrangling over the "story vs. interaction" debate could be solved with a lot less effort if we look at the story as the output of the interaction. I believe that the process of storytelling ("I go into this bar one day...") combined with the process of interaction can create a good story. Maybe not the one that the creator may have envisioned at first, but definitely a good story. Perhaps the fundamental problem people have been wrangling with is that conventional wisdom says the story is the framework upon which the interactive components fit into, when in fact, the interactive framework (What can I do? Where can I do it? When can I do it? Why can I do it? Why should I do it?) should be setting up the potential outcomes for the story, which could be infinite.

Perhaps computer RPG developers should be looking at their pen-and-paper counterparts very closely. Not necessarily in licenses, but in their open and mutable nature. Instead of giving a player a set storyline, give them an entire world to play in. Let them ramble where they will, or let them stay in one place the rest of their days, constantly generating new adventures. And while you're at it, give them the tools to create their own adventures and swap them around with friends. Think Neverwinter Nights done on a much larger scale with much less actual oversight. Think Neverwinter Nights combined with the TES Construction Set from Morrowind. Instead of trying to duplicate a novel by pre-plotting the entire campaign, let characters adventure and evolve...naturally, for lack of a better word. Friends, enemies, families, these things should come about from the larger backdrop of nations, continents, and the march of years.

#17 I don't really enjoy really challenging combat in my hack and slash CRPG games. I just enjoy the immersion, of being able to be there. If I have to concentrate too hard on the controls, that kind of breaks me out of it. However, I know people who are totally the opposite, and only play if it's challenging (adrenaline).

Story is of course important for a story-driven game (like I imagine Japanese CRPGs are), but for a hack 'n slash it is IMO a secondary concern at best. You just need to set a mood pretty much. Try playing the old ASCII games like Nethack, Moria, and Rogue. Very addictive, but very little story. I'm pretty sure Diablo grew out of those games.

The one main thing you need is a feel of character progression and accomplishment. Whether it's in the form of skills/stats going up, better equipment, or whatever.

#18 An important issue with me is not having to do alot of extraneous "busy work" in RPGs.

- I don't like having to talk to everyone in a town just to find the one person who tells you what the next quest is.
- I don't like minigames that I'm FORCED to play to move on in the game. The problem is that minigames often aren't as fun as the rest of the game.
- I don't want to get stuck for a long time in one spot. If one area is way too hard, the story effectively halts, and that messes up the game.
- I don't want to lose experience/equipment/time. You should be able to save the game at any time, and if I do something stupid and get killed, I should respawn at some starting location with no significant loss. I could lose some money or experience, but only a little bit.
- I don't want to watch a movie. Any in-game cutscenes or movies should be short (at most a minute long). There should never be a movie appearing for an attack (which happened sometimes in FF7).
- Space should be stuffed full. I don't want to have to walk all around to get from place to place. You should be able to move from map to map easily. Have waypoints like in Diablo 2 or at least some sort of world map where you click on an area to go there instantly.
- I don't like extraneous graphics. If there's an object displayed on the screen, I want to either be a wall (furniture, etc. count as walls) or something I can interact with. And it should be clear what things I can interact with and what I can't.
- No pixel hunting. I don't want to have to look around the screen searching for items that I have to pick up. The items should just appear in my inventory. Or a window should pop up allowing me to select which items I want (if that's appropriate for the game).

I mostly enjoy the combat and the storyline. Choices at level up and with equipment that has a variety of magical effects can be fun too.

Also, I prefer mouse controls over keyboard controls, but that's just me. Implement both if you can, but it's better to have 1 kind of controls with a great interface than 2 kinds with an interface that's screwy for 1 kind of controls or the other.

For mouse controls, everything has to be laid out with buttons, etc. so that you can do everything in one click, but with keyboard controls you usually select things from menus, which are sometimes nested (especially in complicated games).

If the game uses mouse controls, I want to be able to click anywhere in the current map and have my character walk there (or collide with a wall if there's no path to that location). As such, screen scrolling with the mouse is a must. To make this as efficient as possible, it's good to have a minimap that you click on to move the screen to any area on the map. Download the shareware game Geneforge from Spiderweb Software to see this.

#19 @Steve - I may be terribly ignorant, but which RPGs out there force you to play a mini-game? I must've missed them for one reason or another. The only RPG with minigames that I can think of which I have played was Knights of the Old Republic, and of those, there was only one mini-game which you might say you were "forced" to play, but not constantly, more of a random diversion which fit contextually into the game. As for movies playing before attacks, I think that would have to depend on the game. Grandia II had some mini-movies that played during some special attacks. While they weren't vital, they were entertaining, and they lended weight to the anime feel of the game, trying (and perhaps not entirely succeeding) to generate the feeling of an interactive anime series. For myself, I liked them. But then again, I could reasonably be called an otaku without much insult. :)

#20 @Axel the final fantasy games force you to play mini games at certain stages in the gameplay. Final fantasy 7 had several, most notably the bike ride and the snow boarding.