The Perfect RPG?

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In short, what would be your perfect RPG and I'm not talking about story or setting but more about engine, stats, magic system, perspective, stuff like that.

So basicly what are your favourite aspects of the all the RPG's you played and put them together.
You can pick anythink you like, from Final fantasy to baldur's gate from Torment to Might and magic.

My own example:

Fallout's perks
Baldur's gate's St. En. De. Wi. Int. Cha.
Perspective: ?? don't know I'm hoping for a good 3d baldur's gateish perspective but not like NWN.
Anyone know any?
Magic: A mix between Secret of Mana and Might and Magic
Weapon upgrades: I loved the loading system of Secret of Mana and how you can charge your weapons with a cool move.
Dialogue: Branch system is always good but a little more freedom would be nice, something like the depth of torment,and the sort of freedom you had with Larry . with leisure suit larry you could type words to trigger dialogue.

Probably more coming later but that's it for now

Let's see what your ideas are!

 

I'd like to finally see a game using the DI Rules

Using something *like* the aurora engine, but *nicer* not as dark and genrally just smoother

 

There's good aspects of Morrowind. And Icewind Dale 2. And Fallout. And Arcanum. And Dungeon Siege.

As far as character creation and evolution, I like the 3rd edition rules. I like Arcanum because you can build your own items throughout the game. Dungeon Siege's 3d engine is very nice. Morrowind is just huge on a scale of what you can do, quests, and sheer world area.

Fallout, more or less, has been translated over to 3rd edition rules.

But developing a game like that would, quite literally and realistically, take an AI running on a mainframe computer. Otherwise, it would take a team of developers too much money and time to make it a good investment.

 

It's not my intention to 'realize' the game or dreaming that it someday will be made.

I thought it would be fun to think about it that's all, see what other people think about certain aspects of rpg's

 

My ultimate RPG?
Hmm, tricky.

Things to include?

The entire weapons and armour collecting and customizing part of the best PS One RPG of all time, Vagrant Story, which stands on a ladder and piddles on all others in the genre, including all of the numbered Final Fantasy games (by the same developer, Squaresoft).

The intelligent plot, scripting, battle mechanics, characterisation, relevant cutscenes
and sheer cojones of the above game.

The magic system of the Baldur's Gate series, minus the inane and silly (one use then loss of memory spells) - the spells themselves are good, even though the influences of the Final Fantasy games are obvious and undeniable.

The automatically updating world map of Divine Divinity.

The tight group dynamics and convincing motivations of Planescape: Torment.

Summon spell animation that cuts out when you press the Enter button.

Well, that should be enough to be going on with.

Comments?

Tam

 

Story
Story that carries a message, like Final Fantasy 7, instead of the old good triump over evil. For adults (21 above), story that doens't need you to be the good guy.

Stats
STR, DEX, CON, INT and reputation. Reputation decides how the NPCs interact with you. You'll have to earn your reputation by quests. When your reputation is low, you'll be welcomed among the bad guys and bad guys merchants will give you a discount. i do't agree with CHA because what looks attractive to dwarves it not the same to elves.

Perspective
Similiar to first person shooting, instead of having a bird's eye view. That also means that i can only control one person. I cannot control my henchmen or allies but i can interact with them so that we work as a group. This requires high AI obviously.

Magic
i would go for 'mana system'. i haven't find a way to make myself convince to the fact that 'i write down a spell, i memorize it by sleeping, i cast the spell the next day, i forget the spell' concept. Also, there should be some 'magic' for fighters. Instead of using mana, when executing their moves, fighters use their stamina.

Equipment
There should be some freedom on customizing your own equipment. Something like what you had in Final Fantasy 7 where you can place mako in weapon slots to add in more functions and properties.

 

As once said, in a movie.. 50% of how good it is is what you see (actors, effects, the way it has been filmed). Whereas 50% is what you hear (sound-effects, *music*, atmospheric sounds, speech etc). Usually, music and soundeffects take a real small part of the money that is reserved for the rest of the product, don't ask me why. Stupid, because if it affects about 50% then shouldn't you do your best to make it as good as possible?

The Perfect RPG -Game, contents (note, the examples are current examples that I've given a go for.. they may not even come close to representing the best example of a complete success):

- The ambient sounds should fit the feeling like in Fallout. Best Examples: Fallout

- The music itself should be like... well IMO of all the games out there, FF VII does have the best full soundtrack. The style might not fit every game, but any perfect RPG should have a sountrack fitting its own environment in the same way. Best Examples: FF VII, Morrowind (with that one song it seemed to have), Squaresoft games in general.

- Freedom of gameplay should be more than any game has ever been up to date. And every event should be fully scripted for every possibility. No useless dialogues where you supposedly have a "choice", and in the end it makes no difference what you say. Best Examples: Fallout, Morrowind

- The freedom of the game should not hinder the plot. Linear games usually draw the player in better because they are perfectly designed and scripted to fit that one type of gameplay the player is allowed to use. This should be made to apply to the hundreds of different events and game-play tactics that a player could use. Best Examples: BG2

- The characters should be incredibly detailed, each having a serious background story, each having so much content that in the end you really feel as if you knew this other "person", not just a superficial npc. Also, there shouldn't be too many of these extra characters because that would lessen the meaning of each, but enough still to fit every players game-style. Best Examples: BG2, FFVII, PS:Torment

- The social relationships should be in a strong role. Relative to the amount of fights as well. No naivé kiddychat with goodygoody characters, but neither too dark or realistic. Romances should be possible with multiple characters, giving the normal types of "weak" (Aerie, BG2), "normal" (Jaheira, BG2) and "strong" (no, not Viconia, she was a hysterical unbalanced lunatic.. which I liked nevertheless) romance character options. Best Examples: BG2.

- Not too much fighting, but enough. The fights should be made so that with a completely pacifistic character, you can avoid almost every one of them. Even during a fight, peaceful options should remain. Incapacitate an opponent = you may leave them alive and see how they react. Panic-factor, meaning that ordinary bandits might come close enough for you to see and talk to them, but will NOT attack if they're not seriously drugged when they see that you're in a full-suit powerarmor and carrying a gun bigger then 2 of the bandits tied together and a half length of them added to the end. Also, if you're walking the streets in an ordinary cape and suddenly attacked by 10 bandits. They WILL rethink the sensibility of your actions in case you happen to beat the first 5 of them to a bloody pulp with your bare hands in the first 3 seconds. Best Examples: None.

- Plot should be deep and powerful. It should never be clear to begin with, but not too slow or "faked" in its unraveling either. And in the end, it should never be about saving a little village or the like, but about saving the entire world from destruction all the way. Let be about the main character being a god, or saving one, or destroying one. Let the fate of the whole darn universe be in the hands of the protagonist. The more the plot concerns, the more effect it has on the player. If it is done well enough, then it won't bother even though it might seem a tad unrealistic. Best Examples: Fallout, BG, and most of all Xenogears.

- Isometric view, and awesome graphics. No stupid 1:st person / 3d styles. Incredible control over what you can make your character look like. Style over purpose, or purpose over style, it has to be your choice. Best Examples: Any modern graphically advanced game.

- Battle is turn-based, and incredibly detailed allowing a truest range of all possible opportunities. Options to aim for every bodypart and watch every different type of consequence of whatever it is you do.
Or alternatively, real-time, where the player-skill AND character level decide the ultimate skill together. Allowing the player to feel as if he was truly in control, and still make it possible to do all those fancy moves and things that require the automated pre-programming to work properly. Best Examples: Fallout

-Stats and levels and perks, such as in Fallout. But there should be a lot more of them to be had.

-Atmosphere should be dark, and in the end start to tell a story of a hopeless battle against something. But never too dark to push the player away, and always have some sort of comedy release here and there. But no Jar-Jar Binksies or Cait Siths, that only manage to annoy you to the point of making "merging to the game world" impossible.

I guess I've forgotten a lot of things. And the ones I said weren't nearly detailed enough to make sure you all understand exactly what I mean. But I guess the general idea is pretty much there.

[ December 11, 2002, 10:43: Message edited by: Forashi ]

 

for me, a Perfect RPG would allow me to choose between the different sorts of adventures/tasks/quests I would pursue, depending on my mood.

I would like to be able to choose a dungeon crawl, a town-based adventure, maybe a mass combat scenario (see Braveheart the Movie for more details), etc, complete it, and then go to something completely different.

That kinda kills the plot aspect, but we're just day-dreaming.

I like the 3E character creation format.

I like the Elder Scrolls skills & 3D aspects (jumping pits, climbing walls, etc)

I like NWN's ability to download modules.

Add it all together, call it Mathetais-Quest, andy you'll sell 2-3 dozen copies at least!

 

Forashi, all good ideas, keep them coming.

Here is another idea, I loved the themes from both Icewind Dale and Torment, the cold and weather theme agains the death theme. IMO those themes set those games and it would be great to have a theme in 'the perfect rpg' but more then one considiring this would be a pretty huge game.

Music, I have always been charmed by the 3do soundeffects, just the crudeness but very pure, on both the might and magic as the heroes of m&m series, with nowadays technology those could be made in some pretty scary effects I think.

Oh mathetais, why won't we stick with 'the perfect rpg' for now

 

The beginning of an RPG, the very second you take control and the first 30 mins or so REALLY sell me an RPG.

I loved BGII, but its beginning section took a lot of the fun from the game.

FF7, on the other hand, threw you straight into a mission, but a mission that is easily completed.

Obviously the actual internals of a game are all important, but to get me really into a game, and to continue playing it, a large amount of dramatic flair is needed at the beginning.

The other form of interesting introductive beginnings is the "Typical day" style. An example of this would be FF8, despite I didn't like it much. Its good beginnings eventually turned sour, with spoiling factors such as character background and such.

 

My vision:

story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, a bit of fight, a bit of cutscene, a bit of betrayals, a bit of crime-scene, a bit of damsel in distress saving, a bit of vulgarity, a bit of law-forbidden things, a bit of cliche and then again:

story, story, story...

Don't give me repetative things that bore me! Tetris was popular ages ago, I don't need the same things.

 

The magic system should be like the D&D, but use the mana gauge, I don't really understand the forgetting of spells.

 

Agreed. Mana instead of memorization. My AD&D campaign DM uses the same system as well. It's as basic as simply taking the levels and changing them to manapoints. I don't remember it completely as it's been a while since we played together and my own character is a ranger there. But something like there are manapoints by levels 1-9 (same as spell-levels), and the amount of those different types of manapoints would be just as many as how many spells you could remember per level. Also, you could use higher level mana to compensate for lower-level points 1 to 1, so basicly you would "lose" by doing so, but sometimes instead of casting any second level spell, you might just need a magic missile. Also, they would compensate upwards.

I seem to remember something like this:

Let's say a mage could memorize five 1:st level spells, four 2:nd level spells, three 3:rd level spells and 1 fourth level spell. This would be converted to:
5 manapoints for level 1, 4 manapoinsta for level 2... etc. So that the spell-collection you have in your memory/books, (we also briefly tried implementing a feature where mages always read their incantations real-time from either their books or scrolls, being able to "memorize" spells that were 2 levels below their maximum spell-level.. this had to be removed for it was taking too much effort, and disturbing a mage's casting was too easy) is completely in your use, much like with a sorceress. Let's say you had a 1:st level spell called Magic Missiles, 2:nd level spell Mirror Images, 3:rd level spell Fireball and 4:th level spell Stoneskin. You could cast either one of these as many as you had manapoints of that level. Then this is how it would work like..
You could use up as many 4:th level manapoints as you wished up to the point where you no longer had any left to cast any spell between levels 1-4. OR you could use 2 of the 2 previous spell-level's manapoints to cover up for the fourth. Meaning, that if you had no lvl-4 manapoints left, but you desperately needed Stoneskin, you could use 2 lvl-2 and 2 lvl-3 manapoints to get the Stoneskin anyway. Otherwise it would work normally.

Something like this could be used.

 

Damn you guys. I was scrolling down thinking, "learn spells like in BG but use mana instead of forgetting them." But you beat me to it.

Maybe have a spell system like in Populous:The Beginning - be able to choose what spells you have charging and not wasting mana on charging a spell you use very rarely whilst in battle. BUt have no limit on the number of shots you could have charged at any time (Populous only allowed up to 4 shots of any one spell, in some cases only 1 or 2 shots allowed.)

 

Planescape Torment but longer, with more characters.