Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu!news From: smsmith@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M. Smith) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Subject: Re: RPG opinions (was Re: Programmer...) Message-ID: <1990Nov9.005315.16572@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu> Date: 9 Nov 90 00:53:15 GMT Sender: news@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu Organization: The Ohio State University (IRCC) Lines: 165 Nntp-Posting-Host: hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu Matt Rollefson in my opinion has posted a few *great* articles in the past couple days. I would just like to comment on a few things; look at his previous postings under this same subject to reconstruct my severely cut-up quotes: >>I believe that inventory management - food, torches, and the like - is >>necessary in a truly excellent RPG... >Well, it depends on what the object of the game is... >Options: >Make the player do everything. Grittily realistic... >Let the player create 'standard operating procedures'... > ...then save that as a macro ... >Forget about all this boring stuff, and get to the excitement... Matt is right in pointing out that one has to decide first between realistic, fun, expediency, pace, etc. in a game before you can sit down to answer specific questions about whether you should include a particular item in a game or not. In other words, just *how* realistic do you want it to be? Does your character need to put his shoes on in the morning or not? Realistically speaking he does, for the purposes of game play probably not--at least not performed by the player. In my original posting I did a lot of griping about RPG methods. I would like to qualify those remarks by saying that for the limited budget and limited time some companies have put out *excellent* products. But I would also like to point out something which I have failed to notice until recently. When computer games first became popular they tended to follow the arcade games and were largely shoot'em up/ eat'em up scenarios. As we all know the majority of video games (coin op) fall into this category (Space Invaders, Pac Man, etc.). Having been weened on games in which entire ships are blown up screen after screen we have become accustomed to waltzing through scores of enemy fighters in less than a minute. I believe this mentality has been carried over into the RPG world. Think about it a second: How many monsters do you kill in the average RPG? Several dozen? (Bzzzzzzt...) Several hundred? (Bzzzzzzzt....) Thousands? (Ding ding ding!) Even in those RPG's which I consider to be most "realistic" you still have to wade through *thousands* of those hairy and scaly brutes to get through the game. This goes for Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, all the AD&D games, and Ultima. I think if we sat down and calculated how many monsters we kill in the average game we would be appalled. I'm playing Might and Magic 2 right now and I'm on about my 1400th *battle* (not enemy--BATTLE). This would translate into around 5,000-10,000 wasted critters, and I'm only about half done with the game! The reason for this, as I said above, is that this is what we are used to. What I would like to see in an RPG is more anticipation leading up to the conflict, and having these conflicts be fewer in number. Suggested scenario: You talk to a villager. She/he mentions hearing about some monsters (fill in monster's name/type) doing something bad. In the next town you find a library in which there is a book on monsters. You read up on the monster you heard about and find out it eats kyppo weed. In another place you meet a man who is a grocer, and if you ask him about kyppo weed he'll say that it only grows in certain areas, specifically in a plateau above Mt. X. (to make a long story short)...you find out all you can about these monsters, you equip yourself accordingly, you hire a guide, figure out which way the battle should be fought (tactics--based on what you know about the monsters), then you go to meet them. Tons of other stuff could be put in along the way to increase the anticipation of the encounter and to make the learning/finding process fun and enjoyable. Now, to me, I wouldn't mind a game being almost totally that way. Sure, a few surpise encounters would be necessary and welcomed. But even in those situations you should have been told how best to confront enemies under various conditions. You may say to me "how boring...walking around, gathering clues, talking to people, reading books--dullesville city." Ah hah!--that attitude to me betrays that you have been negatively influenced by the unrealistic, fast-paced, and *boring* majority of Mac/PC games. Many things in an RPG could be included for simply the *fun* of discovering; the only thing boring about a "slower paced" game would be something that the designer put in that *was* boring. >It's just that most of the computer games so far have been in >the heroic mold, and even more specifically, the 'hack-n-slash' mode, >where the whole point of the game is to kill scads of things... > ...In combat to >the death, you can only lose once. So bye-bye realism already, in any >system where you need to kill >50 monsters/fighters/whatever to complete >the game. Exactly. So what I would like to see in a game is the ability to survive your battles by means of preparation, strategy, and even character training so that your character has the ability to fight a particular foe because he has *learned* more about that foe. (Translated into computer jargon--a +4 against a kyppo weedeater because he has learned a lot about just how to strike them, etc.) I guess this betrays what I feel about resurrection spells and the like. (Hmm...my character died. No prob; I'll just toss the temple priest a few bucks...) >CRPGs in general don't model fatigue in combat very well. Agreed. The only one that I know of that has done this well is Knights of Legend. In this RPG if you try to fight too much round and after round you can fall down from exhaustion, and if you cut your enemy enough he will retire from the combat and might even die from blood loss a few rounds later (all by himself). >On another note: How do you think the program should tell the player >the state of his characters? As in, when they're wounded, tired, >hungry, etc. Hit points are annoying aesthetically, but they're simple. >What options are there besides numeric displays? Here are some of my >thoughts: >Graphical displays.. >Text alerts... >Pretty pictures... >Direct Sensory Stimulation... Aye, there's the rub. What interface will you use? Do we need to rethink our whole windowing environment? We say we want realism, but on the other hand we don't want to be bothered by the real mundane things. For me, the worst interfacing techniques that have been used have included things I already know and don't care about (like the name of the game--how stupid to take up space on your screen for that!!!), or neglected to point out really important things such as items that were picked up, or diseases/poisonings which have occurred for your characters ("gee, how did Bigsley die? Did I save the game with him dead last time I played?") Is there some way for the player to choose how his interface should look and what information is to be displayed there? This would be the *neatest* way of doing it. Like a choice between statistics via pure numbers, or a bar graph representing that. One could choose whether to have a lot of information displayed on the first screen or whether to subordinate much of that info to subscreens. Word processors and other programs allow that to some degree; would that be too costly for the commercial game? That's it for now! Not much practical advice here, just abstract philosophical mutterings. S. "Stevie" Smith \ + / ,,@ ircc.ohio-state. \ + / {7%*@,..":27g)-=,#*:.#,/6&1*.4-,l@#9:-) " edu> \ + / BTW, WYSInaWYG \ + / --witty.saying.ARC