what would be your "perfect" RPG?
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Its combat would probably be a highly tactical affair with diverse character abilities. I suppose that I'm currently being influenced by the tactical miniature-based fantasy ruleset I'm working on, but that's a key part.
Aside from that, I'd toss in a setting of Planescape: Torment's quality and uniqueness, have an Arcanum-inspired point buy character leveling system, have the Longest Journey's depth of characterization for all of its NPCs, have a legitimately nonlinear storyline unlike pretty much any game in existence, have a Final-Fantasy-Tactics amount of diverse combat options but be very balanced, and eschew a standard save-the-world storyline. I'd go into length here, but that's a concise enough summary.
Aside from that, I'd toss in a setting of Planescape: Torment's quality and uniqueness, have an Arcanum-inspired point buy character leveling system, have the Longest Journey's depth of characterization for all of its NPCs, have a legitimately nonlinear storyline unlike pretty much any game in existence, have a Final-Fantasy-Tactics amount of diverse combat options but be very balanced, and eschew a standard save-the-world storyline. I'd go into length here, but that's a concise enough summary.
Heh, I'll support you on the PS:T element, but System Shock 2 wasn't *that* great, IMO. It still has a pretty good point-buy-ish character development system, but Arcanum's was better.ilion said:
It would take many pages to spell it all out, so I'll just share a few(!?) thoughts as they relate to the OP's specific areas of concern:
1)GAMEPLAY: The game should be hard, but fair. Composing a sound strategy should always be necessary. Grinding for experience should either be impossible, or very tedious (scale XP to the player's level). No random battles, unless it's the Fallout 2-style "random encounters" (which might be merchants or funny events instead of enemies, and can be avoided with the right skills).
2)IMMERSION: This one's a no-brainer. Take some time to come up with a unique game world. Write up a lot of backstory, even if it doesn't directly apply to the "quest". Make up some jargon, play around with the language(s) in the game. Revise and rewrite and revamp everything many many times. Hire good writers, or hone your technique til' a writer is you. *Try* not to fall back on cliches, though a bit of that is probably inevitable.
3)CHARACTERS: I prefer an ensemble cast that's mostly already there at the beginning of the game. Like a ship's crew or something. Throw the player in with a buncha characters who already know each other, and use flashbacks and storytelling to flesh them out as the game progresses. IMO, it's kinda weak when a new character just joins up to help you save the world every time you get to a new city/planet/chapter. If anyone wants to sign on to die with you, they should have a damn good reason. As far as the characters' stats and all that, they should be an even mix of customize-them-how-you-will and predisposed-towards-a-certain-type. For party size, I'm gonna say five or six. Larger party means more potential combinations/permutations, more tactical options.. and of course this hypothetical game is *hard*, so you'll need to use everyone skillfully. Characters not in the active party should have some alternative function, back at the base/on the ship/providing support or intelligence/whatever.
4)STORYLINE: Well, I'm not gonna give away any of *my* sweet ideas, but in general try to be as original as you can. Keep the story moving forward, ideally through both time and (not necessarily outer) space. Just like we eliminate (or seriously cripple) grinding, let's apply the same treatment to backtracking. It makes no sense when the heroes gotta go stop the bad guy from destroying the world tomorrow, at fortress X.. but they choose to go breed chocobos at forest Y until they feel like progressing the plot, and bad guy just waits for them. Either the game should force the story forward, or there should be serious consequences for blowing off the mission and foolin' around. The storyline should branch, but only as much as it can be done tastefully. I'd rather have two or three main branching points which significantly change the plot, than have a million of them which only diverge for a moment, only to herd you right back onto the singular plotline, providing just the illusion of choice.
5)GRAPHICS: I'm not big on graphics. As long as there's a cohesive style, I couldn't care less how fancy-pants it is. Personally, I prefer SNES/PS1 era sprites.
6)VILLAIN: I like idealistic, well-rounded villains, and lots of them. I don't like big evil gods of darkness that just work evil for its own sake, unless the game is purely high fantasy. Villains ala Tales of the Abyss / Breath of Fire 3 / Final Fantasy Tactics are pretty sweet (trying to avoid spoilers here). The problem with the hero/villain dynamic in those games is that the "good guys" don't usually have much of an ideology of their own. Once they beat the big bad, they tend to fall back on "we'll believe in the friendship in our hearts to forge a better future!" I'd like to see a believable villain who is really doing what s/he thinks is right, but also a team of good guys who can actually prove him wrong.
7)WEAPONS: It really depends on the setting, but in general I'd like to see less diversity in *types* of weapons, and more specificity in the individual weapons themselves. I don't like the pattern of Get To New Town->Buy All The Best New Stuff->Repeat, and I also don't like We've-Got-Swords-And-Guns-And-Staves-And-Crossbows-And-Whips-And-Bells-And.. bleh. Give me a guy with a trusty sword or sidearm, which is part of his story. Maybe it can be customized a bit or replaced at some point in the game, but the main focus should be on how it's used, not how many iterations of it get churned out by the shops. I'd rather focus on skills and stats and special moves than on slogging through my equipment screen, constantly replacing all my shit.
8)TRANSPORTATION: Not much to say on this one. Again, it has to fit the setting. If you're asking if I like airships, then no, not much. As I was saying back in "4)storyline", I'd prefer a game that propels itself forward, and doesn't let you fly around and scavenge everything from areas you've missed. So all I really care about is the style of transportation.. that it meshes with the game world and feels kinda cool and unique. Silt Striders in Morrowind were nifty in that respect.
9)NPCs: Seems like you're mainly concerned with sidequests/fetchquests. IMO, the "perfect" RPG wouldn't have too many of those. When it did, they'd make sense with the main plot, ie: "while you're at it, see if you can't find some Item X along the way".. but not if you gotta derail the storyline and go running around doing courier crap. NPCs should basically just be part of the setting, methinks.
..So yeah, I'm just full of great ideas! Not sure if you would've preferred I just rattle off a list of my favorite games, but.. oh well. I'll stop now.
1)GAMEPLAY: The game should be hard, but fair. Composing a sound strategy should always be necessary. Grinding for experience should either be impossible, or very tedious (scale XP to the player's level). No random battles, unless it's the Fallout 2-style "random encounters" (which might be merchants or funny events instead of enemies, and can be avoided with the right skills).
2)IMMERSION: This one's a no-brainer. Take some time to come up with a unique game world. Write up a lot of backstory, even if it doesn't directly apply to the "quest". Make up some jargon, play around with the language(s) in the game. Revise and rewrite and revamp everything many many times. Hire good writers, or hone your technique til' a writer is you. *Try* not to fall back on cliches, though a bit of that is probably inevitable.
3)CHARACTERS: I prefer an ensemble cast that's mostly already there at the beginning of the game. Like a ship's crew or something. Throw the player in with a buncha characters who already know each other, and use flashbacks and storytelling to flesh them out as the game progresses. IMO, it's kinda weak when a new character just joins up to help you save the world every time you get to a new city/planet/chapter. If anyone wants to sign on to die with you, they should have a damn good reason. As far as the characters' stats and all that, they should be an even mix of customize-them-how-you-will and predisposed-towards-a-certain-type. For party size, I'm gonna say five or six. Larger party means more potential combinations/permutations, more tactical options.. and of course this hypothetical game is *hard*, so you'll need to use everyone skillfully. Characters not in the active party should have some alternative function, back at the base/on the ship/providing support or intelligence/whatever.
4)STORYLINE: Well, I'm not gonna give away any of *my* sweet ideas, but in general try to be as original as you can. Keep the story moving forward, ideally through both time and (not necessarily outer) space. Just like we eliminate (or seriously cripple) grinding, let's apply the same treatment to backtracking. It makes no sense when the heroes gotta go stop the bad guy from destroying the world tomorrow, at fortress X.. but they choose to go breed chocobos at forest Y until they feel like progressing the plot, and bad guy just waits for them. Either the game should force the story forward, or there should be serious consequences for blowing off the mission and foolin' around. The storyline should branch, but only as much as it can be done tastefully. I'd rather have two or three main branching points which significantly change the plot, than have a million of them which only diverge for a moment, only to herd you right back onto the singular plotline, providing just the illusion of choice.
5)GRAPHICS: I'm not big on graphics. As long as there's a cohesive style, I couldn't care less how fancy-pants it is. Personally, I prefer SNES/PS1 era sprites.
6)VILLAIN: I like idealistic, well-rounded villains, and lots of them. I don't like big evil gods of darkness that just work evil for its own sake, unless the game is purely high fantasy. Villains ala Tales of the Abyss / Breath of Fire 3 / Final Fantasy Tactics are pretty sweet (trying to avoid spoilers here). The problem with the hero/villain dynamic in those games is that the "good guys" don't usually have much of an ideology of their own. Once they beat the big bad, they tend to fall back on "we'll believe in the friendship in our hearts to forge a better future!" I'd like to see a believable villain who is really doing what s/he thinks is right, but also a team of good guys who can actually prove him wrong.
7)WEAPONS: It really depends on the setting, but in general I'd like to see less diversity in *types* of weapons, and more specificity in the individual weapons themselves. I don't like the pattern of Get To New Town->Buy All The Best New Stuff->Repeat, and I also don't like We've-Got-Swords-And-Guns-And-Staves-And-Crossbows-And-Whips-And-Bells-And.. bleh. Give me a guy with a trusty sword or sidearm, which is part of his story. Maybe it can be customized a bit or replaced at some point in the game, but the main focus should be on how it's used, not how many iterations of it get churned out by the shops. I'd rather focus on skills and stats and special moves than on slogging through my equipment screen, constantly replacing all my shit.
8)TRANSPORTATION: Not much to say on this one. Again, it has to fit the setting. If you're asking if I like airships, then no, not much. As I was saying back in "4)storyline", I'd prefer a game that propels itself forward, and doesn't let you fly around and scavenge everything from areas you've missed. So all I really care about is the style of transportation.. that it meshes with the game world and feels kinda cool and unique. Silt Striders in Morrowind were nifty in that respect.
9)NPCs: Seems like you're mainly concerned with sidequests/fetchquests. IMO, the "perfect" RPG wouldn't have too many of those. When it did, they'd make sense with the main plot, ie: "while you're at it, see if you can't find some Item X along the way".. but not if you gotta derail the storyline and go running around doing courier crap. NPCs should basically just be part of the setting, methinks.
..So yeah, I'm just full of great ideas! Not sure if you would've preferred I just rattle off a list of my favorite games, but.. oh well. I'll stop now.
Warhammer online really should have been set in 40kMcOrdinaryish said:
OT: either a mix of Oblivions huge world and gameplay with the slight silliness and side stuff of the Fable games
OR Disgaea like characters and gameplay mechanics altered to be like FFXII...if that makes any sense
This. But there is no perfect for me, since my taste changes and i may or may not want to play another theme. Oblivion was a fraction of what i liked. Fallout was a small fraction of what i liked. I'll sum it up. Huge world, optional online, interesting skills ect, many items that don't seem same-y and dull. Nothing that'll be too uninteresting so you don't get any enjoyment from doing things, and finally, nothing too initially complicated. (Such as most free online MMORPGs, they throw so much at you at once with unintuative systems, that you lose all interest very quickly.)Demented Teddy said:
Basically Morrowind set in feudal Japan, but with more skills and features, such as weaponsmithing added to armoring and whatnot.
Throw Dragon Age Oragins, Fable, Fable II, Arcanum, & Oblivion into a blender and hit 'blend'
and the end result would be pretty close to my idea of the perfect RPG.
and the end result would be pretty close to my idea of the perfect RPG.
The gameplay of Oblivion (because I liked the stealth) with the characters or party members of Dragon Age: Origins (because they're all awesome and utterly gorgeous to listen to) combined with the immersion of Fallout 3, and a Final Fantasy-esque storyline and main villain. That would be my ideal game.
Is this completely whack or what? My ideal RPG would be a cross between Bethesda style first-person view gameplay, largely solo without a party, set in a huge GTA style city and with an epic plot written by Bioware. The game that has come nearest to this is probably Vampires the Masquerade: Bloodlines (yes, I bring this up in a good 50% of my posts), except it was half 3rd person view which for me breaks immersion and the city wasn't continuous.
It would have a morality system that isn't focused on 'good' vs 'evil', but on different conceptions of good with well written and thought out arguments for supporting any viewpoint. The main plot would be personal, so either about revenge, searching for something/someone lost or hiding, or about a personal ambition. But the bulk of the gametime would be spent taking sides in morally gray conflicts, with the main plot building slowly and over time. That way, you can avoid the endemic cartoonish characterizations of morality of the RPG genre in general; no SAVE THE WORLD bollocks.
For weapons, I would focus mostly on guns if only because of the setting. I'm sure you could set it in Ancient Rome or medieval London or Istanbul and it would be equally good, with a focus on melee, but 1st person view combat naturally meshes better with gunplay. But combat wouldn't be entirely player skill based, there should also be a leveling system with unlockable abilities, kind of like Mass Effect or Borderlands.
There should be a tonne of side-quests, in fact, most of the time spent in game should be spent doing side-quests. What I'm thinking of here, though, aren't "find my husband/kill ten hogs/FIND KHAJIT SOME BUNGLER'S BANE" but rather the House vs House conflict you get in Morrowind, or the guild vs guild conflict many games have. Maybe take the retardedly primitive gang war mini-game from GTA: San Andreas and give it a storyline, choices, and take away the annoying. I'm a big fan of making your own army, advancing in rank in this society etc type of interludes in largely story-driven RPGs, its just a matter of creating a framework that balances pacing vs exploration. Fallout 3 did this well, but I would have enjoyed something more strategic, like shepherding Reilly's Rangers through a tense period of competition with Talon Company, or an epic storyline to either reconcile the Outcasts and the Brotherhood or to destroy one or both.
The challenge, of course, is creating a city that is detailed enough when traveling on foot but expansive enough that fast traveling/driving through it takes some time. One way to make this possible is to create a highly sophisticated NPC generator, rather than making them by hand. I'm pretty certain this is an underdeveloped area in RPGs - you need a way to match up names, voices, behaviour, reaction to the player, etc but do it in a way so they don't feel artificial.
Eh, I could go on, but I already have a huge project I'm working on.
It's called a dissertation, and it's not writing itself, bah.
It would have a morality system that isn't focused on 'good' vs 'evil', but on different conceptions of good with well written and thought out arguments for supporting any viewpoint. The main plot would be personal, so either about revenge, searching for something/someone lost or hiding, or about a personal ambition. But the bulk of the gametime would be spent taking sides in morally gray conflicts, with the main plot building slowly and over time. That way, you can avoid the endemic cartoonish characterizations of morality of the RPG genre in general; no SAVE THE WORLD bollocks.
For weapons, I would focus mostly on guns if only because of the setting. I'm sure you could set it in Ancient Rome or medieval London or Istanbul and it would be equally good, with a focus on melee, but 1st person view combat naturally meshes better with gunplay. But combat wouldn't be entirely player skill based, there should also be a leveling system with unlockable abilities, kind of like Mass Effect or Borderlands.
There should be a tonne of side-quests, in fact, most of the time spent in game should be spent doing side-quests. What I'm thinking of here, though, aren't "find my husband/kill ten hogs/FIND KHAJIT SOME BUNGLER'S BANE" but rather the House vs House conflict you get in Morrowind, or the guild vs guild conflict many games have. Maybe take the retardedly primitive gang war mini-game from GTA: San Andreas and give it a storyline, choices, and take away the annoying. I'm a big fan of making your own army, advancing in rank in this society etc type of interludes in largely story-driven RPGs, its just a matter of creating a framework that balances pacing vs exploration. Fallout 3 did this well, but I would have enjoyed something more strategic, like shepherding Reilly's Rangers through a tense period of competition with Talon Company, or an epic storyline to either reconcile the Outcasts and the Brotherhood or to destroy one or both.
The challenge, of course, is creating a city that is detailed enough when traveling on foot but expansive enough that fast traveling/driving through it takes some time. One way to make this possible is to create a highly sophisticated NPC generator, rather than making them by hand. I'm pretty certain this is an underdeveloped area in RPGs - you need a way to match up names, voices, behaviour, reaction to the player, etc but do it in a way so they don't feel artificial.
Eh, I could go on, but I already have a huge project I'm working on.
It's called a dissertation, and it's not writing itself, bah.
