Feeling of Progression in RPG's
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I think older RPGS were better at this because they were more willing to punish the player. Take the game Gothic for example. Another classic case of starting with nothing but the clothes on your back. The toughest creatures you can take on are over-sized rats and carnivorous birds. Even the way you hold your weapons shows your ineptness as a fighter. And beware if you find an Orc! A single one of those will make mincemeat out of you.
But this isn't a problem, since the placement of the enemies is intelligent in this way. The Orcs have their own region, which isn't even on the maps you'll get early on in the game. No wonder, it's not like a sane human would ever enter their territory. Wolves, and more dangerous creatures, are found in forests, and if you're paying attention, the warnings the NPCs give you will keep you out of there as well in the earlier part of the game. All of the more perilous beasts are away far from the settlements, and not in the paths immediately between them. This allows the designers to give a player a large amount of freedom of where he will venture from the get-go without upsetting the balance.
This also allows for the progression of the character to go hand-in-hand with his exploration of the world. The stronger he gets, the more parts of the world he will feel safe venturing into. He could have gone to these places early on, but only now, with the proper training and equipment, will he impose his will upon the environment itself.
To go on a bit of a tangent: This is my problem with games like Oblivion and Skyrim. By letting you go anywhere on the map right from the start, they destroy any possibility of balance, since every area HAS to be conquerable by a low-level character, level scaling is the only way to achieve this, but doing so also destroys balance, since it will make the strength of enemies completely arbitrary to their type. See: bandit leaders who are 10 times stronger than a dragon.
I wish they would start partitioning the world more in the Elder Scrolls. Have the courage to make certain areas of the game more difficult than others. Roads between cities and the surrounding environments should be less dangerous, including dungeons, such as ruins and caves filled with bandits. But the further you distance yourself, the more dangerous creatures, such as trolls, would you find. And in the deepest canyons and the highest mountains, far from any civilization, mystical creatures and mysterious elementals would overpower anyone foolish enough to venture unprepared into their homes.
But they can't do this, since people would immediately start crying: "Ohhh, this enemy is way too strong for me. This game sucks!" And then they would review-bomb it on metacritic and it would sell far fewer copies. *sigh* Now I've made myself sad.
But this isn't a problem, since the placement of the enemies is intelligent in this way. The Orcs have their own region, which isn't even on the maps you'll get early on in the game. No wonder, it's not like a sane human would ever enter their territory. Wolves, and more dangerous creatures, are found in forests, and if you're paying attention, the warnings the NPCs give you will keep you out of there as well in the earlier part of the game. All of the more perilous beasts are away far from the settlements, and not in the paths immediately between them. This allows the designers to give a player a large amount of freedom of where he will venture from the get-go without upsetting the balance.
This also allows for the progression of the character to go hand-in-hand with his exploration of the world. The stronger he gets, the more parts of the world he will feel safe venturing into. He could have gone to these places early on, but only now, with the proper training and equipment, will he impose his will upon the environment itself.
To go on a bit of a tangent: This is my problem with games like Oblivion and Skyrim. By letting you go anywhere on the map right from the start, they destroy any possibility of balance, since every area HAS to be conquerable by a low-level character, level scaling is the only way to achieve this, but doing so also destroys balance, since it will make the strength of enemies completely arbitrary to their type. See: bandit leaders who are 10 times stronger than a dragon.
I wish they would start partitioning the world more in the Elder Scrolls. Have the courage to make certain areas of the game more difficult than others. Roads between cities and the surrounding environments should be less dangerous, including dungeons, such as ruins and caves filled with bandits. But the further you distance yourself, the more dangerous creatures, such as trolls, would you find. And in the deepest canyons and the highest mountains, far from any civilization, mystical creatures and mysterious elementals would overpower anyone foolish enough to venture unprepared into their homes.
But they can't do this, since people would immediately start crying: "Ohhh, this enemy is way too strong for me. This game sucks!" And then they would review-bomb it on metacritic and it would sell far fewer copies. *sigh* Now I've made myself sad.
The original KotOR and KotOR II featured something no one has brought up yet. Each time you received a major bump in power, it was because your character's story arc brought you to it with a significant event. In KotOR I, this was represented by your character first undergoing Jedi training, with long discussions about what that meant, little subquests, and so on, finally granting you a huge spike in abilities by giving you your Jedi powers. Then, even though it had no mechanical benefit, the big reveal occurred just as you were hitting the final echelons of the game's power curve. This was an important point. It mechanically did nothing, but it made the player feel that the small, incremental boosts in power they were receiving mattered more. KotOR II tried to recreate that feeling with the protagonist reforging a lightsaber and then finally ascending to Super Jedi Prestige Class status.
Unfortunately both games were hampered by severe balance issues.
ME 2 had a similar event in the moment when Shepard picks up his/her Infinity +1 Gun on the Collector's ship, as a well-chosen weapon can outright change how you play your class. (An adept, sentinel, or engineer picking up a Mattock becomes a new character.) Unfortunately, the spike in power was not well-related to the plot event. ME 1 did a much better recreation of that feel with Shepard becoming a Spectre, and then using that event to unlock the best power tree in the game. It then followed up with the awful slog on Luna which rewarded the player with a prestige class for no reason other than they had beat down a bunch of drones. Had a similar event occurred with, say, Miranda unleashing previously limited cyberware that was installed in Shepard because of a crisis, that would have had more bite (and would make a good foreshadow of Joker doing the same to EDI later). Skyrim likewise tried to do something similar with getting the shouts, but IMHO Bethesda's open world style is lousy for narrative and the event is not very engaging. BG II unleashed your beast but tied it to the Reputation mechanic in a way such that it was a useless ability, so the player rarely found it worth activating. You were essentially punished for acting in any way except as a LG or NG character in game, whatever your alignment might actually be. Batman: Arkham Assylum and City do an alright job with this and their RPG elements. New powers and abilities are brought in at plot relevant events, making the progression seem natural and saving the player from being overwhelmed by having too much stuff dropped on them from the word go. However, it did lead to the out of character moment where Batman, the most crazily over-prepared character ever written, doesn't have his basic gear on him.
You know who pulled off a great moment of progression driven by narrative? FF VI. Learning the fate of the espers and then getting the magicite which teach magic and change how the game is played from that point forward? Take notes, devs. You were shown how to do it right at least as early as the SNES days.
So, yeah. Progression can be made far more meaningful and important when tied to the narrative, but lots of games absolutely failed to deliver on this. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of rather meaningless numbers going up.
Unfortunately both games were hampered by severe balance issues.
ME 2 had a similar event in the moment when Shepard picks up his/her Infinity +1 Gun on the Collector's ship, as a well-chosen weapon can outright change how you play your class. (An adept, sentinel, or engineer picking up a Mattock becomes a new character.) Unfortunately, the spike in power was not well-related to the plot event. ME 1 did a much better recreation of that feel with Shepard becoming a Spectre, and then using that event to unlock the best power tree in the game. It then followed up with the awful slog on Luna which rewarded the player with a prestige class for no reason other than they had beat down a bunch of drones. Had a similar event occurred with, say, Miranda unleashing previously limited cyberware that was installed in Shepard because of a crisis, that would have had more bite (and would make a good foreshadow of Joker doing the same to EDI later). Skyrim likewise tried to do something similar with getting the shouts, but IMHO Bethesda's open world style is lousy for narrative and the event is not very engaging. BG II unleashed your beast but tied it to the Reputation mechanic in a way such that it was a useless ability, so the player rarely found it worth activating. You were essentially punished for acting in any way except as a LG or NG character in game, whatever your alignment might actually be. Batman: Arkham Assylum and City do an alright job with this and their RPG elements. New powers and abilities are brought in at plot relevant events, making the progression seem natural and saving the player from being overwhelmed by having too much stuff dropped on them from the word go. However, it did lead to the out of character moment where Batman, the most crazily over-prepared character ever written, doesn't have his basic gear on him.
You know who pulled off a great moment of progression driven by narrative? FF VI. Learning the fate of the espers and then getting the magicite which teach magic and change how the game is played from that point forward? Take notes, devs. You were shown how to do it right at least as early as the SNES days.
So, yeah. Progression can be made far more meaningful and important when tied to the narrative, but lots of games absolutely failed to deliver on this. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of rather meaningless numbers going up.
This actually reminded me of many of the complaints about level scaling in Oblivion. In one case, I saw an individual who had set his level arbitrarily to 255 (higher than could ever be achieved in game) and find that a scaled level 255 ogre was invincible. And my thoughts were - what did you expect? You basically fed into a set of equations to generate content a parameter it was never designed to handle and which could never be obtained in game. And you're complaining that it broke the game.Fat_Hippo said:
There were serious problems with scaling in Oblivion, but that attitude that the devs have to completely cater to the escapist power fantasy of the players or some people will whine endlessly about the game and actually consider it bad is not going to help new games explore new play styles. It's pretty much identical to the reason we see so little true horror anymore. Horror implies weakness before an overwhelming, terrifying enemy. But because players feel a game is bad if they are not a one-man army able to decimate everything and everyone - even when they input values which the dev team's game had never been designed to handle and they could never earn - horror is a troubled genre, mostly relegated to indie realms. (No, Resident Evil and Dead Space are not really horror. Their action with horror elements that fail to horrify.)
For you, maybe. I just felt like the level designer went a bit crazy with the copy/paste function. Remember the freakin' platoon of Taurus Demons that was off to your left when you first went to the area that opens up after beating the giant lava thing? Ffffffffsomeonehairy-ish said:
Ah yeah that bit wasn't amazingly designed, but the rest of it was.Kopikatsu said:
And it's still pretty damn satisfying to mow down the army of Taurus demons :3
WoW. Oh wait, you were talking about perceived progression as opposed to actual numbers... ugh... I think non-rpgs do that better. Things with progressively improving characters, like Zelda games, where there is a literal progression as opposed to a moving target range.
OH, it is.Zachary Amaranth said:
And you get to do that right from the start.
That's why it didn't do so well on progression.
Don't get me wrong, I love the game.
I just never really felt I was building up to something when I kicked a dragon's ass in the first hour.
Dragon Age: Origins. You start pretty simple, with your character only knowing how to slash stuff randomly. Also, pretty normal armor. As the game progresses, you start encountering more fantastical creatures, you get better crafted armor and weapons and you know more moves. Hell, you even end up facing a dragon. And by then, the basic enemies you ecnoutered at the beginning of the game can be defeated with one blow.
If you were to put your character from the beginning of the game next to the one you end up with at the end of the game, you can truly see the progression.
If you were to put your character from the beginning of the game next to the one you end up with at the end of the game, you can truly see the progression.
I think the trend of games being made in 12-24 months has a lot to do with this "progression decline" being mentioned (I almost said something about EA, maybe I'll make "Adam's law" - EA will be mentioned if the decline of video game quality is being discussed).
The examples above - Origins, KotOR, etc were clearly crafted with love, and lack that feeling of having come off the conveyor belt of a video game factory. Now I'm not good with avoiding absolutes and generalizations, but I think this is clear for the most part.
The story infused sense of progression is a message from the developer to the player, almost where it ceases to feel like a game. To me, this isn't just a case of short development times, but also the focus on hyper-ultra graphics. Many of the "good" examples above aren't exactly lookers by many standards, but that doesn't prevent them from being beloved and remembered years down the road.
The example that made me think of this isn't an RPG, but it's ZombiU. It has literal and subtle messages from the developer, similar to the Souls games, and feels like a freaking roguelike of all things. On a brand new console. It doesn't look at all good relative to other titles, but I rarely thought about that, as it did well at making me feel like I was getting better at the game, and happily punished me for not doing so. Due to this, I've recently realized that it's good that Nintendo didn't push the graphical power that far forward. I'm dying for more focus on the experience as opposed to the aesthetics, and this might be a card to allow developers to focus on that. We'll see.
I'm hoping that this post makes any amount of sense :/
The examples above - Origins, KotOR, etc were clearly crafted with love, and lack that feeling of having come off the conveyor belt of a video game factory. Now I'm not good with avoiding absolutes and generalizations, but I think this is clear for the most part.
The story infused sense of progression is a message from the developer to the player, almost where it ceases to feel like a game. To me, this isn't just a case of short development times, but also the focus on hyper-ultra graphics. Many of the "good" examples above aren't exactly lookers by many standards, but that doesn't prevent them from being beloved and remembered years down the road.
The example that made me think of this isn't an RPG, but it's ZombiU. It has literal and subtle messages from the developer, similar to the Souls games, and feels like a freaking roguelike of all things. On a brand new console. It doesn't look at all good relative to other titles, but I rarely thought about that, as it did well at making me feel like I was getting better at the game, and happily punished me for not doing so. Due to this, I've recently realized that it's good that Nintendo didn't push the graphical power that far forward. I'm dying for more focus on the experience as opposed to the aesthetics, and this might be a card to allow developers to focus on that. We'll see.
I'm hoping that this post makes any amount of sense :/
Considering the question then Diablo 2, most games based on D&D, Dungeon Siege 1 & 2. Might and Magic was pretty sick for it as well.
I noticed the Fallout series mentioned and have to disagree on the basis of Fallout 2, in which you can walk from Aroyyo to San Fran to Navarro and get Advanced Power Armour and an Energy weapon that can deal with most enemies in the game by the time you are level 5.
I noticed the Fallout series mentioned and have to disagree on the basis of Fallout 2, in which you can walk from Aroyyo to San Fran to Navarro and get Advanced Power Armour and an Energy weapon that can deal with most enemies in the game by the time you are level 5.
For me, it was always a well designed skill system, and not the gear/equipment, of an rpg that made me feel like my character was getting better. An expert marksman could still be deadly with "starter equipment." Take that horrible movie "Daredevil" for example (it really is horrible). Bullseye killed some old lady with a unenchanted peanut (I think, it's been a while since I seen it). Gear (armor, weapons, etc) should just help your character, and not the reason why he/she is a bad ass.
Magicka.
Okay, it's not an RPG.
But you'll definitely feel like you're progressing, especially since you pretty much have all the best spells in the game right from the start (not counting the special spells you can pick up on the way).
QFQFSAA QERASR QRQRQRQRD EDFFF SDQ SDR EDDDD
There. Those are the ones. Literally everything can be killed with these. But the game will never tell you that. You have to figure out the ideal combinations of elements yourself. And that's awesome.
Okay, it's not an RPG.
But you'll definitely feel like you're progressing, especially since you pretty much have all the best spells in the game right from the start (not counting the special spells you can pick up on the way).
QFQFSAA QERASR QRQRQRQRD EDFFF SDQ SDR EDDDD
There. Those are the ones. Literally everything can be killed with these. But the game will never tell you that. You have to figure out the ideal combinations of elements yourself. And that's awesome.
Skyrim basically blew itself out in under an hour. You'd already survived Alduin and taken out a dragon. And the Dragons were so god-awful boring, they literally just went up in terms oft heir invisible numbers, with Alduin being just a longer battle (minus his meteor thing that usually missed anyways) and you can literally stand there while the heroes kill him for you. Both Skyrim and oblivion's scaling more or less killed progression because they just throw tougher stuff at you, both making for a WTF scenario when bandits are now rocking ebony swords and rare enemies are now commonplace, and taking out the "moment of power" when you slaughter the droves of peons en masse with your newfound capabilities.
Dark Souls kind of flunked out too. You still did the same exact things you did at the start (Maybe magics an exception?) Just now you had a +5 lightning sword, and super armor. The bosses actually get less complex (Quelag or *maybe* the tag-team guys is a turning point) and more hp inflated near the end, with the final one being just a mook (combat style wise) with super-speed and extra hp.
Without getting into silly levels, Dragons Dogma does a reasonable job, but tends to hold your hand as it goes. Either the pawns will spout off how to handle things (even if they haven't learned somewhere, they usually figure it out quick), or the weak points get out right highlighted like it was Zelda (Golems, Dragons)
Final Fantasies have never been great at it, with most of your unique powers not working on anything worth the bother, and falling back onto progressively higher numbers. Even across installments, they seem to keep inflating, with your party having more hp then the final boss of the first one early in the newer games.
The key factors to getting that sense of progression are to have (visible) hurdles (IE : The ogre guarding the bridge) that you can't cross until later, and to remember to keep the regular things around and not just keep up with the higher tier (ie : After you cross the bridge post-ogre, there's still regular orcs on the other side, not an army of ogres)
Dark Souls kind of flunked out too. You still did the same exact things you did at the start (Maybe magics an exception?) Just now you had a +5 lightning sword, and super armor. The bosses actually get less complex (Quelag or *maybe* the tag-team guys is a turning point) and more hp inflated near the end, with the final one being just a mook (combat style wise) with super-speed and extra hp.
Without getting into silly levels, Dragons Dogma does a reasonable job, but tends to hold your hand as it goes. Either the pawns will spout off how to handle things (even if they haven't learned somewhere, they usually figure it out quick), or the weak points get out right highlighted like it was Zelda (Golems, Dragons)
Final Fantasies have never been great at it, with most of your unique powers not working on anything worth the bother, and falling back onto progressively higher numbers. Even across installments, they seem to keep inflating, with your party having more hp then the final boss of the first one early in the newer games.
The key factors to getting that sense of progression are to have (visible) hurdles (IE : The ogre guarding the bridge) that you can't cross until later, and to remember to keep the regular things around and not just keep up with the higher tier (ie : After you cross the bridge post-ogre, there's still regular orcs on the other side, not an army of ogres)
You're right (and I say that on the Internet!). I was associating aesthetic with graphical fidelity, when it's really beauty in its various forms. I can be a bit scatterbrained, obviously. Allow me to restate: "I'm dying to see more focus on the mechanics, and the player's engagement with and in the game in ways other than raw graphical fidelity".Vegosiux said:
I look at our various G(ames)OTY: The Walking Dead, Journey, ME3, Dishonored...and people generally don't fondly remember those games because of texture resolution and such, but rather the things that matter in terms of gameplay, mechanics, or storytelling. In Journey's case, the visual aesthetic was in the art direction, the color schemes, and other things independent of the graphical horsepower (which admittedly wasn't half bad). I'm a believer in art direction trumping graphics, even as a PC gamer who spends hundreds on video cards.
To get back OT...I think progression is what makes Fable more special to me than 2 or 3 were. My mind discarded the battles I had in those two, as you were spamming whatever attack you chose and it was OP no matter what and everything died. This kind of thing did happen in the first, but the growth of virtue or evil, as well as your abilities actually felt like organic growth along that path. Thinking on it, I'm not sure I'd consider 2 and 3 actual RPGs.
Like a few other people on here, the Baldur's Gate games come to mind first. Playing the entire series all in one go is time consuming, but also a fantastic experience. You start as a lvl 1 nobody who can get ROFL-stomped by a wolf and end up being able to take on a demi-god. I think its helps that in Baldur's Gate 1 many of the quests, areas and enemies are difficult to tackle unless you are a high enough level, but at the same time they are still open to you. In Baldur's Gate 2, it was more about developing as a person, finding out about your heritage etc. The game actually made you question your alignment too, which was pretty cool. BG2 almost made BG1 feel like your character's origin story. Incidentally, Dragon Age Origins also had a great sense of progression, thanks to the Origin stories amongst other things.