RPG Combat Systems Discussion

[Spencer Petersen]

But to me all that means is more time level grinding. I hate spending hours leveling up my skills in sneaking around to complete a mission/quest stealthily, only to find that I should have been putting points into lockpicking and computer hacking.

Its important to note that the Fallout series in particular is based around focusing on a few key skills to build a character around, and thus builds its levels and difficulty curve around being completable with a few core skills (with the locked doors and computer panels usually tied to the same door/object and such) so its geared less for jack of all trades master of none mentality of building up all skills evenly.

Another thing that just bugs me about RPGs is that in many of them combat is based around numbers. In particular, the idea that no matter your skill level in other games or your elaborate strategies, the outcome of the battle will come down to whoever's invested the most playtime and has the highest numbers.

It seems you are playing RPG combat a bit strange, as RPGs (well good ones anyway) are about specialization rather than just dumping all of your points into damage and taking turns bopping each other on the head. Good RPG players (yes even WoW players) specialize in certain ways to counteract other specializations and obtain tactical advantages more than just extra damage. Keeping a target at range and dealing damage while preventing melee combat is a tactic. Trying to keep one target stunned and/or incapacitated while you engage another is a skill. Engaging multiple targets with defensive boosts as a diversion so other players can kill high value targets is a tactic.

And just to make it clear, COD still uses numbers for calculating damage, you just don't see them so it makes it easier to hide how little difference there is.

In a game like (gasp!) Call Of Duty, player skill is more important than player level. A seasoned pro with a crappy pistol can defeat a n00b with the best gun in the game 9 times out of 10 if they use their skills and tactics to their advantage. Whereas in a game like WOW, a low level player just can't injure a high level player since their damage output is so low, and any cunning plans just fall apart.

I laughed a little bit there because weapon choice in COD is a joke, as your only real choice is AR or SMG, or if that's too hard just pick the AK-74u. The only way you would pick pistol is if you are deliberately gimping yourself for the sake of this argument. Oh, and unlockable perks without drawbacks makes COD a big unnecessary grind as well.

But I love how you use level as the final verdict on MMORPG combat considering the leveling experience is not meant to be balanced for PVP, as it is the place where you learn how to play as your character. Its the tutorial for getting to the big leagues at max level. Of course level 1s and level 80s aren't going to be equal, because you first need to learn for yourself what abilities work most effectively and how to utilize them effectively, and doing quests/killing monsters is a way to learn that.

Both the combat systems in COD and WoW operate with a similar intent, to make combat between a noob and a pro more fair by adding a foreign element. WoW does it by including much of your character strength and power into the character itself rather than making it entirely decided by player choice, adding depth that allows starting players to not feel beaten but keep a level of complexity regarding how to maneuver around and counter opponents directly with skills. COD does it by basing the combat around one-hit kills and cheap weaponry that makes every encounter decided by who has the better connection and can shoot first, stripping the depth by making the noob strategy and pro strategy the same, with the only factor being reaction time and choosing the most overpowered weapon.

Basically, in many RPGs grind is king, and time spent playing will trump all else. And yet there are still players out there who look down upon us who play action games and FPSs, saying that we're just not sophisticated and intelligent enough to play real games like RPGs.

Yes many RPGs operate around performing tasks repeatedly to gain power, but good RPGs use that as a learning experience to help define your character's powers and skills and then cap it so it doesn't become a grind race. There's a reason WoW has a level cap, so that the leveling process is an introduction rather than a goal. This makes COD more of a grind-y game than WoW, as the motivation for killing and gaining COD points is to just keep leveling so you can unlock more pointless weapons and then start over so you can level up some more so...

Maybe COD is just a bad example, but don't disregard RPG combat as a grind factory. In real life you get better at something by practice, and this should be preserved in games so there is always a tangible goal to keep striving toward. Even COD would be less fun if you started out with all of the weapons and upgrades, as you never work toward any goal.

 

[A Weakgeek]

Try KOTOR, it doesent have ANY grind at all.

 

[Togs]

If you dont like the genre dont play it, and leave it to those who do.

 

[Halceon]

I'd say your just playing the games in ways that don't lead to their projected victory conditions. It's like trying to drive in a screw with a hammer. Sure you'll get the job done, but at greater cost. Sure you can grind and teach your character a skill he has never possessed, but why would you drop out of character?

 

[SuperVegas]

If you were a local of mine, i would invite you to a tabletop game.
Not to prove superiority, but to show you how vastly different it is from FPS, JRPG or even modern WRPGS.
You can't grind in a tabletop game, and its all about thinking outside of the box.
If you have any friends who play or know anyone who can let you in on a game, i highly recommend trying.

 

[silasbufu]

That's why I love Guild Wars. Maximum level is 20 and you have the same stats for prestige armor as you have for a normal armor which is alot cheaper (this also applies to weapons). In PvP especially, it all comes down to how good you are. Even if you get your builds from Wiki (which I consider really idiotic), you can still get stomped by everyone on the map.
Same thing applies to PvE.
In that game you only grind if you want to be rich or get some titles, it's all about prestige, so you can get really good gear by just playing the game doing what you enjoy.

 

[Xaio30]

I like games where you level slowly. But when you do, you get a considerable upgrade to your character. I liked the D&D rules from Baldurs Gate 2 in that way.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

STATS AND LEVEL GRINDING
[spoiler: Stats and Level Grinding]
I don't get the obsession with stat building and level grinding in RPGs, particularly in MMORPGs. Upgrading your attacks makes sense to me. Altering your gear layout to suit your playstyle makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why there are so many different stats to level up.

In Fallout 3, you can upgrade your Lockpicking skill to unlock doors and containers. However, you'll need to upgrade your Science skill to use computers to access information and open doors. To avoid being seen while doing this, you'll need to use the Sneak skill.

If you get into a fight, you'll need to have your weapon skills at high levels. These include Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Melee, Explosives and Unarmed. To use a pistol effectively, you'll need Small Guns skills. To use a laser pistol effectively, you'll need Energy Weapons skills.

From what I've heard, the original Fallout games had even more, such as separate skills for gambling and stealing. But to me all that means is more time level grinding. I hate spending hours leveling up my skills in sneaking around to complete a mission/quest stealthily, only to find that I should have been putting points into lockpicking and computer hacking.
[/spoiler]

COMBAT SYSTEMS
[spoiler: Combat Systems]
Another thing that just bugs me about RPGs is that in many of them combat is based around numbers. In particular, the idea that no matter your skill level in other games or your elaborate strategies, the outcome of the battle will come down to whoever's invested the most playtime and has the highest numbers.

In a game like (gasp!) Call Of Duty, player skill is more important than player level. A seasoned pro with a crappy pistol can defeat a n00b with the best gun in the game 9 times out of 10 if they use their skills and tactics to their advantage. Whereas in a game like WOW, a low level player just can't injure a high level player since their damage output is so low, and any cunning plans just fall apart. [/spoiler]

To address both of your points in order:

Stats: A fundamental part of RPG games is that your character has limitations: that they cannot do everything. Stat grinding only occurs when a player fails to understand this and tries to get every skill to 100. The whole point of an RPG system is that each character you play will specialise in only four or five given skills, and will have to work around his/her deficiencies. You're right, the earlier Fallout games had more skills than 3 or NV, but no single character could ever max them all. In RPG games you have to decide what you want your character to be good at and what they don't know shit about. That's integral to the charm of RPG games.

Combat: Combat in RPG games is meant to be all about character skill with a little bit of random luck thrown in, as opposed to player skill. Please try and see the difference here. The whole point of RPG combat is that for a character to be good in melee that character must have a good strength, be agile, and skilled with a blade - rather than the character being totally hamfisted but the player knowing how to abuse the combat system. Case in point, Fallout:NV has an iron sights option which I now switch off. I play quite a lot of FPS games and went through my first playthrough of F:NV taking out enemies at long range with headshots like I was playing Hardcore Team Deathmatch in the Favela - but my character only had a Guns skill of 20. Even though I could pull off those shots as a player my character shouldn't have been able to! Do you see the difference? That's why RPG combat is like it is, and why many RPG fans (myself included) were pissed at Bethesda for swapping out Morrowind's true-blood RPG combat for Oblivion's half-baked hack-and-slash bollocks.

 

[Zhukov]

RPGs should be entirely stat driven. The player should have no active role in gameplay or combat. It should all come down to whoever has the larger numbers and the best stat distribution. If real-time player input becomes relevant at any time then the game has clearly become a dumbed-down, overly streamlined brown shooter made to cater to the tastes of unintelligent people who should just go and play CoD instead. Oh, and it's very important that the player character's numbers steadily get bigger in order to sustain the player's personal power fantasies.

That's what people keep telling me anyway.

Personally, I suspect they have spreadsheets and a calculator where their soul should be.

...

[sub]In case it isn't obvious, this post was sarcastic. RPG snobs get on my nerves.[/sub]

 

[kingcom]

STATS AND LEVEL GRINDING
[spoiler: Stats and Level Grinding]
I don't get the obsession with stat building and level grinding in RPGs, particularly in MMORPGs. Upgrading your attacks makes sense to me. Altering your gear layout to suit your playstyle makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why there are so many different stats to level up.

In Fallout 3, you can upgrade your Lockpicking skill to unlock doors and containers. However, you'll need to upgrade your Science skill to use computers to access information and open doors. To avoid being seen while doing this, you'll need to use the Sneak skill.

If you get into a fight, you'll need to have your weapon skills at high levels. These include Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Melee, Explosives and Unarmed. To use a pistol effectively, you'll need Small Guns skills. To use a laser pistol effectively, you'll need Energy Weapons skills.

From what I've heard, the original Fallout games had even more, such as separate skills for gambling and stealing. But to me all that means is more time level grinding. I hate spending hours leveling up my skills in sneaking around to complete a mission/quest stealthily, only to find that I should have been putting points into lockpicking and computer hacking.
[/spoiler]

To use Fallout 3 as the example, and a good number of the traditional levelling mechanics from DnD. The reason you have a large number of skills its to represent your time spent training and improving that skill set. In Fallout 3 you cannot level skills, you get xp to simply level your character and you CHOOSE where to allocate your points into the skills you want to advance. Sneaking a lot will not improve sneaking. Leveling up and then improving sneak will. In fact most rpgs (Take Fallout New Vegas as an example) make it impossible to become perfect in all areas. You simply have strengths and weaknesses as a fact of life.

Also, MMOs are vastly different to RPGs, associating the 2 in any capacity is not a great idea. The reason the random number generator is created in most DnD based games is that its designed to represent your CHARACTER's ability to do something, not you as a PLAYER. The player can point and click in a fps because your essentially playing the game and taking your own skills. A rpg involves you being in the mind of the character, influencing their decisions and choices in life but you are ultimately not them.

COMBAT SYSTEMS
[spoiler: Combat Systems]
Another thing that just bugs me about RPGs is that in many of them combat is based around numbers. In particular, the idea that no matter your skill level in other games or your elaborate strategies, the outcome of the battle will come down to whoever's invested the most playtime and has the highest numbers.

In a game like (gasp!) Call Of Duty, player skill is more important than player level. A seasoned pro with a crappy pistol can defeat a n00b with the best gun in the game 9 times out of 10 if they use their skills and tactics to their advantage. Whereas in a game like WOW, a low level player just can't injure a high level player since their damage output is so low, and any cunning plans just fall apart. [/spoiler]

It seems to me that you have never actually played Dungeons and Dragons, thats ok, most people havnt. Theres a significant number of people who play it like a wargame, which is essentially, one big massive tactical game. Which can be planned beforehand and afterwards. Personally I find this an absolutely terrible way to play a table top roleplaying game but for a computer game, works fairly nicely.

As a table top rpg, its about a cooperative experience, sometimes combat isnt even relevent. Play an older game sometime Baldurs Gate is mentioned, Planescape Torment is another which rarely uses combat at all, Icewind Dale which is entirely a combat driven game, or even take a look at something more recent like Dragon Age Origins for a somewhat reasonable look at this kind of gaming.

Basically, in many RPGs grind is king, and time spent playing will trump all else. And yet there are still players out there who look down upon us who play action games and FPSs, saying that we're just not sophisticated and intelligent enough to play real games like RPGs.

I guess this is just a rant, but does anyone else have an opinion on this matter?

Thats a little unreasonable to talk about other games when your not fully brought up on what exactly your dealing with. MMORPGS are not RPGs, just like JRPGs are not RPGs. They are named differently to distinguish between different styles of games but here is one closing thought.

In a FPS you get better at the game over time, you gain personal experience, understanding and maybe even forming a group of friends you playing together with. Lets call this group a "Party", running a deathmatch together definitely is some kind of adventure. So we have this "Adventuring Party" running around, now pretend that your sitting over your friends shoulder telling him what to do. You cannot touch the controller, you can only tell him what action you would take and let him try and follow your instructions to the best of his ability. Thats kind of what an RPG is like but without sophisticated Artificial intelligences, we need a different way of simulating what a person is like. So we use a random number generator that can be changed based upon how much "experience" this player has shooting people in call of duty. What if hes better when using a sub machine gun than using an assault rifle? Well, why dont we set his "Skill" at using SMGs to 7 out of 10 and his skill at using assault rifles at 5. What if hes not a good shooter but really good at planning and coordinating a team? Well lets give him a "Leadership Skill" of 7. Well hes had no formal training and doesnt really lead the team much but when he does, hes just naturally good at it. Hmm thats a tough one. What if, we gave him a "Statistic" to represent how naturally gifted he is at someting? Lets say to represent his natural charm and influence, he has a Charisma stat of 14.

Now we're getting into RPG territory. Above scenario actually exists in many games, including two I currently run and/or play in.

 

[JediMB]

I'm going to be seriously opening myself up for flaming here, but I'd just like to get some other opinions on the subject.

STATS AND LEVEL GRINDING
[spoiler: Stats and Level Grinding]
I don't get the obsession with stat building and level grinding in RPGs, particularly in MMORPGs. Upgrading your attacks makes sense to me. Altering your gear layout to suit your playstyle makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why there are so many different stats to level up.

In Fallout 3, you can upgrade your Lockpicking skill to unlock doors and containers. However, you'll need to upgrade your Science skill to use computers to access information and open doors. To avoid being seen while doing this, you'll need to use the Sneak skill.

If you get into a fight, you'll need to have your weapon skills at high levels. These include Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Melee, Explosives and Unarmed. To use a pistol effectively, you'll need Small Guns skills. To use a laser pistol effectively, you'll need Energy Weapons skills.

From what I've heard, the original Fallout games had even more, such as separate skills for gambling and stealing. But to me all that means is more time level grinding. I hate spending hours leveling up my skills in sneaking around to complete a mission/quest stealthily, only to find that I should have been putting points into lockpicking and computer hacking.
[/spoiler]

See, the thing here is that you're looking at an RPG. That's a role-playing game.

Your options in Fallout 3 and New Vegas are a bit more limited than in the original games, but the idea is the same: When you start the game you decide what sort of character it is you want to play. Maybe you want to play a nerd character, whose primary skills are Science and Repair (primary attribute: Intelligence), and as such you put most of your points into those stats and make do as best you can. Occasionally you'll put a few points into Small Guns, maybe, since you figure that your character is getting better at handling his/her weapon(s).

In the original Fallout, the fastest way to finish the game was creating a knowledgeable smooth-talker, as I recall. You run through the game, avoiding combat, and at the end you convince the final boss that his goals are impossible to achieve and he should just put himself out of his misery.

You don't have to pick every lock, hack every computer, or kill every enemy. (Not saying that you can't, though, since that's usually where I eventually end up in late game.)

COMBAT SYSTEMS
[spoiler: Combat Systems]
Another thing that just bugs me about RPGs is that in many of them combat is based around numbers. In particular, the idea that no matter your skill level in other games or your elaborate strategies, the outcome of the battle will come down to whoever's invested the most playtime and has the highest numbers.

In a game like (gasp!) Call Of Duty, player skill is more important than player level. A seasoned pro with a crappy pistol can defeat a n00b with the best gun in the game 9 times out of 10 if they use their skills and tactics to their advantage. Whereas in a game like WOW, a low level player just can't injure a high level player since their damage output is so low, and any cunning plans just fall apart. [/spoiler]

Basically, in many RPGs grind is king, and time spent playing will trump all else. And yet there are still players out there who look down upon us who play action games and FPSs, saying that we're just not sophisticated and intelligent enough to play real games like RPGs.

I guess this is just a rant, but does anyone else have an opinion on this matter?

MMORPGs are (generally) grind. That's just how it is. That's what's needed to keep people paying their subscription fees. The design philosophy behind their combat systems is also one that allows for significantly more lag than you'd be able to handle in a first-person shooter.

World of Warcraft is also just a generally bad example of an RPG, because of... well, cultural reasons. You play with other people. People are impatient. It might seem like you have a lot of options in your skill trees when you level up, but if you want to be able to participate in what most players consider the "meat" of the game, you are pretty much limited to a few specific min-max builds, and have to grind for specific armor sets in specific orders if you want to get accepted into a group, etc., etc. (EDIT: Granted, PvP doesn't follow these rules exactly, but it applies for most of the co-op content.)

In short, World of Warcraft doesn't have much room for actual role-playing, and as such uses the traditional RPG mechanics in what is pretty much the worst way possible from a role-player's perspective. A good RPG doesn't have needless grind, whereas World of Warcraft is 100% grind.

 

[Ninjat_126]

If you have any friends who play or know anyone who can let you in on a game, i highly recommend trying.

I'm organising a game (or whatever) of D&D for this purpose.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad that the genre's got more depth to it than I first thought. Especially thank you to the people who actually wrote some in-depth responses.

 

[Jordi]

Role Playing Games are about role-playing a character. The player is not himself, but he "is" the character.
It's hard to roleplay if you don't get to make any choices. Having a lot of stats means being able to customize your character more. Furthermore, it kind of makes sense (you have a lot of skills in the real world too), which might make it easier to immerse yourself in the world. Grinding, when necessary, is the price we pay for that. However, I think these things are separate. You can have a game with lots of stats where grinding is not necessary (or feels like grinding), and you can have a game with only a few stats (maybe just one) where you have to grind all the time.

I would say in a 100% pure RPG, player skill would not matter at all. There is only the character. It shouldn't matter who is controlling the character (and what their skills are), because the character has his own skills. Basically a good player with a weak character should lose to a weak player with a good character, because otherwise it wouldn't make sense in the game world (why did the better character lose?).
Of course, this is not most people's idea of fun, so the player does get to use their own skills, but the balance is still shifted far more to the character's skills compared to for instance an FPS.

 

[bjj hero]

You dont really play RPGs for the combat. It is about investing in the charecters and the story for me. I'm currently playing through Tormentlanescape (thank you GoG xxx).

The combat is horrible, terrible even. But the story and the dialogue is fantastic, as are the charecters. I'm loving it. I've always played RPGs waaaay back to Lords of midnight [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lords_of_Midnight] I was playing in the 80s. I have fallen out of love with JRPG's though. I just feel like I have been there and done that with everything they have to offer. I guess you can have too much of a good thing.

I do like FPS though. It's competative and is a measure of skill x connection speed. There is grinding in COD:BO. You are in real trouble until you get the pro perk to be invisible to aircraft. A chopper gunner will win the game for you if the other team is "low level" and they light up like a christmas tree for your mini gun. Level makes a difference there too.

For those complaining about weapon balance they should move to hardcore, all the weapons kill in 1-2 rounds and explosives cause team kills that get you kicked. It goes a long way towards balancing the game.

I have finally got around to completing Mass Effect 2. I know there have been complaints about the change in the RPG system but I really liked it. Rather than having loads of skill point s that increase health by 2.5% I get a couple that make a real difference when I spend them. I still need to be able to shoot. Although its no COD/battlefield in the combat its infinately better combat than most RPGs.

 

[MasterOfWorlds]

You complain that RPG players belittle other genres while you proceed to do just that to the RPG genre.

Yep.

In particular, I was speaking about things more like D&D, where combat is controlled by dice rolls and gear is accumulated by random drops. The sort of game where tactics are almost meaningless as long as you've been playing for a while and the random-number-generator is kind.

As a long time tabletop gamer, I have to say that I disagree. While the dice represent the chance involved, a well laid out plan will almost always give whoever had the better plan the advantage. Even the best laid plans aren't a guaranteed success, and the dice allow for things like shit luck. You're going to shoot that guy? Bummer, your gun jammed, but that can actually happen in a real life scenario. Hell, I went shooting a few weeks ago and my AR-15, which I had just cleaned th day before, jammed up on my friend because he pulled back the action when there was already a round chambered. Sometimes people make honest mistakes that allow for shit to hit the fan, as it were.

I've pit my players up against something that should have given them a really rough fight, but because they had a solid plan, they were able to take it out with almost no wounds, and no deaths.

Luck has something to do with just about everything you do in a game. Sure, skill is important, but even the really good COD players make mistakes every so often. That 1 out of 10 that the n00b with the best gun beats the veteran player with the pistol is a prime example of that.

As for numbers and random rolls for loot and such, a lot of GMs come up with what we call "house rules" where we toss aside any rules that just don't fit the context of what we're running, or say "Instead of having the +5 plate mail of arrow deflection, which makes no sense for my players, since no one in the party can wear it, how about this +3 studded leather armor of swiftness?" (I'm pulling names out of the air here, so relax people).

You also should consider that the veteran players play more often. It still comes down to a numbers game. You play more, you'll probably get better. The more you play, the better you get, the more wins you get, the more you learn the maps, and then it's just a numbers game as to the probability of some asswipe on the other team going the route that you think they're going to go based on your experience from previous matches.

It's all numbers. Some just have more of a direct effect than others.

 

[AlternatePFG]

In the original Fallouts you're not supposed to grind, there's no way you're ever going to get even close to maxing all of those skills, so you have to specialize in order to be effective. The newer Fallout games aren't really grindy either, you'll level up pretty fast if you just play through the game.

The Elder Scrolls series is filled with grind though.

 

[Dr_Horrible]

As has been said, most 'true RPGs ' are not about combat, but Role playing. When it comes to RPG combat, I actually enjoy stat grinding (to some extent) and prefer stat and numbers-based comabt if it's not in the setting of an FPSRPG like Fallout 3 and New Vegas (For example, I think numbers combat fits best in games such as Dungeons and Dragons and the games that are based on it, as well as other games where the combat isn't a main attraction).

 

[WanderingFool]

On the bit with grinding, from the RPGs like Fallout or TES, you are able to play as a Jack-of-all-trades character, but also as a specialized character. My friend played through Oblivion as one character, completed everything (XBL achievment wise). Me? I had atleast 6 different characters meant to be played in different styles; one was a heavy armor gladiator, one was a stealth archer assassin, and another was a witch casting out spells that inflicted fire, ice, and shock damage for 15 seconds and had soul trap effect for 25 (loved that spell!)