RPG graphics

#1 First person - I thought this would be good because
it is very immersive, has greater LOS realism the
isometric.

i don't have any technical arguments, but from a gameplay standpoint i don't think it matters as long as it is well executed.

i'm mostly a counterstrike guy, and feel like the first-person 3d perspective is my native habitat. but my all time favorite rpg's (planescape: torment, and the fallouts) were all isometric games, and it wasn't an obstacle to me losing myself to the environment.

#2 As a long-time Thief player/DromEder, I can vouch for the concept of 1st person games being more immersive.

Just look at games like Morrowind. That sucker looks incredible, and VERY immersive. There are not nearly enough 1st-person 3D *quality* RPGs.

#3 Seriously, the future is in 3D.

No matter what anyone says, it is always more immersive to be IN the action. However, for some RPG playing styles, it can make controlling the character and playing the game more about your 'twitch' response than about the level of your character, which many people feel is the real point of an RPG.

Myself, I like the hands-on idea. I think the player should be able to acquire more powerful tools, weapons, spells, etc, and he should be able to become faster, stronger, etc -- just like any other RPG.

But the whole 'detatched' viewpoint and management of your character is directly derived from pen-and-paper RPG's, when there was no way to really swordfight with your friend short of physically going at it. So the pen-and-paper, stats-decide-the-outcome method was decided upon. Dice were used to make up for the uncertainty of real combat.

Now that we have the capability to actually control our characters, I think it's foolish to retain the trappings of pen-and-paper RPGs. Sure, let the player get stronger, let him buy better armor and weapons, let him become able to cast better spells.

But leave out the element of chance -- make the characters actually fight their fights. If you're better, you win. If you're worse, you lose. None of this 'You missed big dragon dude!' 'Dragon dude lands a nasty hit!' 'ButtPimple319 tries to hit you, but misses!' I mean, wtf? That 'random' element robs the player of a sense of 'fairness'. Besides which, it lessens the immersion -- after all, there was nothing YOU did wrong; your character just missed. Not you. Your character.

Ideally, you should create a combat model where the player is directly responsible for his actions; ie, he missed because he aimed too high.

It's called a 'Role Playing' game. I will always maintain that the closer you bring the player to actually living and breathing in another world, the more they can live their role.

#4 While I do agree 3D is the way to go these days, first-person isn't the only way to use it. Look at what they did with Diablo II (which I thought was very ingenious).

Sure, all they really did was map sprites onto polygons, letting the renderer handle things like parallax, scaling, and lighting. The lesson is, though, that 3D can be used in different ways. There's a completely free-form environment with 6-dof (eg. Descent), then there's Diablo II with it's fixed camera angle, zoom, and fairly orthogonal world. Both use 3D rendering technology, but in different ways and for different ends.

I'd like to see 3D in different ways like this more. Six degrees of freedom isn't always necessary, but that's not the only thing 3D has to offer. A wayy simpler art cycle, for example: no more exporting 16 million frames of animation, because we have skeletons.

In short, 3D != first-person-shooter. Go nuts! You can achieve immersion without a first-person viewpoint, honest. How many ppl have gotten lost in Diablo for hours on end? Or found themselves playing Starcraft for the whole day? Ok, enough Blizzard examples. Umm...city builders/simulators, for those who enjoy them. Anyone remember Civ? Anyone remember loosing their lives to it?

I think I digressed. Think I got my point across, though.

#5 Luc,

I agree with you on most points. Role-playing requires taking on the role of another character, and the more realisticly that transition can take place, the better. However, there is a delicate balance between 'more realistic' and 'just plain tedious'.

I'm not sure where that line gets crossed, but a D&D game some years ago where my character had to take a leak every few hours was definitely over that line. Suffice to say, I only played once with that group.

I really liked the Outcast model. The 1st/3rd perspective in a 3D world, with realtime action (albiet slower than an FPS). It was a lot of fun, but it was also designed more as an adventure game than RPG, perhaps the models could be combined to form a hybrid?

Also, dropping the statistics is not always desirable. For instance, when making an item. I really don't want to have to hammer in each nail, or sand down a table, etc.. Some things I'm happy to take a die-roll for.

As for 2D vs 3D, I'm definitely a 3D evangelist. But I know a whole slew of people who can't stand 3D. Either the graphics are too 'blocky', they can't identify with the 1st person viewpoint, or they feel sick while playing.

Anyway, just adding $0.02.
--Bryan

#6 Luc, I know what you mean about the control systems, ie - random combat. I really liked the control's in Deus Ex, it's sort of a hybrid. You do point and shoot yourself, but depending on the skill you have with that weapon, the shot may be slightly off, it doesn't seem random, but more like you have a shaky hand or something.

I am going to go for first person, but in no way does that mean it will have anything to do with an FPS. I hate using genres to describe your game, I was using RPG as a sort of catch-all description. If the game had to be classified, it would be closest to an RPG as it is such a broad catagory. I do think that the idea I have is completely original, the whole game system is nothing like anything I have heard before, and the setting really doesn't matter - new settings can just be plugged in and mix'n'matched. Personally, I think that starting off a game by saying "it's going to be a (insert genre)" already limits the boundaries of the game idea, before you have even really started to design it. Just my own oppinion, I may be wrong.

Just to clarify, I have an idea for a game, and it shares more features with RPG's then any other genres.

Sorry about that, but I have a thing about genres. Bit hypocritical though, I'm in process of developing an RTS engine... I can explain!

anyway, thanx for your input, I think I will go for first person, as immersion is the key.

PS. About that sickness thing, I never really thought of that much, but you saying it made me remember 1 game that really made me physically sick. No one believed me but it really did. I'm not sure, but I think it was because the perspective was just a little bit off.

#7 Bryan --

I agree totally that actions should be kept simple. But games like that Dungeons and Dragons game you mentioned, where your character had to take a leak all the time, illustrate an obvious point: that we use computers to handle that sort of thing now. That stuff really is irrelevant. Of course, a game that lets you take a leak every few hours would be hilarious. Hehe, that should be an Easter Egg.

But as to hammering in nails, etc -- no. I don't like it. Creating custom objects, for instance, sould always be kept simple, otherwise it's next to impossible to balance. For instance, I would say that creating a custom object should never be more involved than combining existing objects using certain tools. Frankly (and yeah, I'm an LGS whore :-)) I think that the Thief 2 method worked best -- you take the source materials and run combine them using certain other objects (machines) to create your new object.

Just basic guidlines -- if I miss someone, it should be because I aimed wrong. Now, if you want to literally make a new player's aim wobble up and down as he breathes, fine. If you want to make it harder for players to abuse the bow, make the bowsight shake violently when the player runs. But never introduce that goddamn random aspect into the game. We have computers now; we don't need a randomized combat system.

I sort of like the Deus Ex approach -- but even that irritates me a bit, because they don't make it hard for you to aim -- they just make your weapon's cone of fire wider, and make it narrower the better you get with it. That is objectionable to me -- but it makes sense for some games, like PlanetSide, where we're talking about massively multiplayer FPS action. A less stringent accuracy model -- where there is no true 'per-pixel' aiming -- would speed up multiplayer immensely.

#8 I disagree. I think that in an RPG, you are supposed to play the role of a character. If that character can't aim for squat, then it is unfair to let them hit every time, just because the user is an expert aim with the mouse. I do think that the player should still control the aiming, but not totally.

#9 Well-

all old-school stuff aside, I think there are some useful lessons to be learned from "random" combat a la d&d style dice-rolling. My particular take on RPGs is that the ones which have been the best thus far (planescape, the fallouts, to a lesser extent bg2) have not given the player what you maintain would be best, that whole missed someone because "I aimed wrong angle".

Maybe it's the old rpg guy in me, but I feel personally like I'm cheating if my own motor skills are allowed to dominate the narrative or course of a game. In an fps like Half-life, it makes sense. In rpgs, tho, I kinda like the idea that yr forced to deal with the limitations of the character you've created or are controlling. Stuff like planescape, say, would it have been more rewarding if I was forced to adopt some weird player-controlled fighting system instead of the admittedly abstracted one that's there right now? Maybe so. The thing I distrust most about this notion is probably that it places everything solely in the realm of what the player is capable of personally, reactively. What if the player sucks at controlling his character? The majority of game players ain't thresh, after all. Isn't the nominal point of rpgs to "role-play"? But I dunno. I know my resistance to it is also based purely on the lack of convincing games made in the way you describe. Deus Ex? Feh. Think descent to undermountain or return to krondor and you begin to see why I distrust it so much.


Re the 2d/3d angle, time will tell. I like both. Maybe 3d is the future, but you know, for every HL there are 19 daikatanas. Or to paraphrase that idiot mathematician from Jurassic Park: "just because we can doesn't mean we should." And shenmue, supposedly the shining example of successful 3d, is complete and utter shite. If I wanted a drawer-opening simulator I'd have purchased one.

/d

#10 There is an interesting line being drawn here. The side of the 'old-school' model, with statistics and abstracted interfaces, with you controling a character through a series of actions which are restricted based on that character's abilities.

The other side is the FPS model where you hone a set of skills to play the game with which directly correlate to your character's ability to survive in the world.

There's also the Deus-Ex hybrid, with the cone-of-fire based on the character's skill, but the actual aiming done by yourself.

I think all three methods are perfectly acceptable for an RPG. However I have more fun with the FPS-style (and presumably the Deus-Ex, though I've not played it).

I had an idea for the magic system of an MMORPG game that fell into the same kind of categories. Instead of the 'I memorize fireball, then when I have enough mana, I blast you' model ala EverQuest/UO/etc.. The magic system would require picking and choosing among talismans, symbols, reagents, words, etc.. in a manner similar to building a deck in the game Magic:The Gathering. Thus your ability to cast fireball is directly related to your skill in manipulating these arcane elements.

When two mages come upon each other, it really would turn into a game of intelect - as any good magic duel should. The fighters on the other hand would need to hone their FPS skills to avoid those nasty cuts. Players who don't do well with FPS would make poor fighters, and players who are mentally challenged would make poor mages, etc.. It's an interesting twist on the 'stats' model - you're working with your own stats instead of your characters'.

*shrugs* Some more kindling for the fire.
--Bryan

#11 some very good ideas, especially on mage combat there.
I like the way UO mage pvp works, playing against someone you have to predict what they will cast to heal or cure. Black and white were on the right track with the hand drawn spells but i think that spells should have some sort of preperation before being cast.

#12 As for the original question. I think that any perspective is fine.
Personally the rpg our team is working on will have 2 views, 3rd person and 1st person.
there wont be a top down view or isometric. We want the player to be immersed in the world around them. these 2 views put the player closer to the actual world, instead of the old 'im watching myself from the sky' perspective.

#13 Go 1st person - but stick to making a good RPG - not a shootem up with RPG ellements - at the end of the day you are ROLE playing - seeing through your characters eyes is the most direct way of achieving that -