Repeating my rant on a previous topic, but it really annoys me how pointless psuedo-RPG combat mechanics crept into every other genre. It ends up "gamifying" the experience, when in tabletop and old CRPGs all these stat and point systems are meant to be proxies for simulating and simplifying real scenarios and force everyone to follow the same rules - not be the end goals of gameplay itself. I appreciate the tradition in actual RPGs but then they add it to shit like The Division - which would work better as a straight FPS/tactical-shooter - or Starfield, which has piss poor combat mechanics and AI that's only made worse when you have to deal with hit points and armor classes. What you end up is a grindfest where the only goal is to lower the little health bars above all the bullet sponges in the room. In my opinion this is blending the worst aspect of genres, but people seem to like it for some reason. I never understood the point. I love the idea of being in a "space simulator" and hauling goods between planets or being a pirate and raiding freighters or whatever. Starfield could be a dream game. Instead what I see from people streaming it is they jump into an area and say "Oh that's a level 16 mook. I'm a level 12 Space Paladin so I'd better steer clear of this sector and only shoot the level 11 Space Orks Gang until I level up." It's so shallow and boring. I want to feel like I'm actually in a fantasy scenario, not manipulating points on a character sheet to beat the points of random enemy mobs.
There are hybrid systems I do enjoy. Deus Ex and immersive sims typically have complex mechanics that don't get in your way. Most modern games don't work for me though. Starfield is only the most egregious example because outside of those pointless psuedo-RPG mechanics its combat offers little else.
Totally agree. Not everything needs any of these RPG elements. Especially character levels. Character levels aren't all that fun. That's one of the things I liked about Breath of the Wild, nothing had a level, you could decide to deal with an enemy or area if you wanted to in the way you wanted to and not be held back by a magic number. You see an enemy that appears overwhelming, you do like you would in real life, freak out and run away. Maybe it was easy, who knows, you have to judge for yourself and not just look at a number.
I do like numbers in some cases though, but that would be more something like KOTOR, where the entire game is based on dice rolls and skill levels.
Agreed. This was one of the most eye opening lessons I learned when I was first getting into game development and design theory. An experienced friend of mine touched on same basic premise you mention.
I forget how he phrased it exactly, but the general idea as I took it is that mechanics and systems with that kind of abstraction are best utilized in cases where you cannot provide a workable apparatus for the player to simulate it through pure and direct input and actions.
IE, in games we've used numerical values for decades to represent how alive or close to death the player and NPC's are, and even before that tabletop RPG's did the same. And in a fair majority of cases, these values aren't even hidden under the hood. Nor are damage values. We do this because there are limits to how far we can simulate physical trauma to the human body in a live action game. Even if a game were to try to seriously go in-depth to simulate it, it's still going to have to put it into a calculable framework that is distinctly artificial in nature.
The same thing goes for how a lot of melee systems have employed different kinds of attacks, with different damage values. Trying to implement the strength of swings power based on direct player input is often not very practical. Granted, a few games have been able to attempt this with varying degrees of success (as well as calculations based on contact/impact point and velocity of the swing), but it's still an ideal example for how game developers often have to come up with different ways to simulate basic things, while taking player input into account.
I'm still not sure if I'll actually use stats or perks at all in the game I'm planning though. I actually was trying to go out of my way to conceive of ways to implement mechanics for things like repairing a power generator, without just resorting to "hit the x key to fix the thing". Instead I wanted to lay out the general concept for what would likely make such a thing "tick", and what kinds of sub-components might need fixing, different methods that could be employed to fix things, etc etc. Truth be told though, the further down such a rabbit hole you go, the faster you realize just how unfun and tedious such things would likely get in an actual game.
Sort of a sidebar to what you’re talking about here: I think the action RPG genre is actually obsolete. I tried playing some of the more popular entries over the last few years, and I ended up bored to tears every time. This confused me because I was a huge Diablo 2 junky back in the day. Why wasn’t I having fun in these very similar games? At some point I realized what the problem was: Dark Souls exists. I can play a third person action RPG with actual skill-based gameplay. Mindlessly clicking on enemies in fights that are essentially predetermined by our relative stat values just didn’t cut it anymore. Not when I can perform most of the “abstracted actions” of the action RPG manually.
I've experienced the same issues in a few games in recent years, and especially with ARPG's. It's also the same reason I could never really get into most MMORPG's. I need to feel like I'm actually interacting with the game's world and environment, with immediate and responsive feedback based on my movement and actions.
Another thing that's always bugged me is the frequent dependency on NPC level-numbers as a metric for measuring enemy or area difficulty. I want the reason an enemy is a legitimate and dangerous threat to be because it's actually smarter, faster, more accurate, and/or better armed. Or of course because they're more numerous. Where the combat actually has punch and substance to it, and every so often you'll experience fights that are distinct or unique in some way, specifically because of how the flow of the fight can unfold.
And there's absolutely ways to implement a feeling of an ever increasing challenge in a game without depending on level systems. Just look at STALKER as a perfect example. You don't have a bunch of idiotic bullet sponges at later stages to bore you to tears. You have mutants with psychokinetic abilities who will straight up yank your gun out of your hands and bash you over the head with it. Earlier game mutated beasts who can still manage to tear you up if you slip up at the worst moment. And the classic "cheeki breeki" bandit who might just manage to land a lucky shotgun blast to your face as you turn a corner.
Sounds like you want to play a functional Star Citizen. I keep debating hopping into the alpha for $50 or whatever, but then realize that a buggy 30FPS would drive me crazy, I have a Steam backlog that will take 1,000 hours to clear with a few games I want to buy, plenty of games I beat years ago I kind of want to replay, and a job and life outside of video games.
Yes, naturally I bought SC years ago and here we are still waiting for them to make it work and move out of alpha. Some areas were even decently playable on my monster rig at the time but did have random crashes and NPCs standing on chairs, and I'm not going to waste any time on my character when it will just get wiped in the future anyway.
I should also make clear that I can have fun with hardcore RPGs and min-maxing or experimenting with DEX vs INT builds or whatever - when that's the game's style and how it was designed and advertised. (like BG3 is meant to feel like a tabletop session with dice rolls) It's when they tack on half-assed systems to other styles of games that you get the worst of both worlds and think "I have a gun, why can't I just shoot the guy point blank?"
Repeating my rant on a previous topic, but it really annoys me how pointless psuedo-RPG combat mechanics crept into every other genre. It ends up "gamifying" the experience, when in tabletop and old CRPGs all these stat and point systems are meant to be proxies for simulating and simplifying real scenarios and force everyone to follow the same rules - not be the end goals of gameplay itself. I appreciate the tradition in actual RPGs but then they add it to shit like The Division - which would work better as a straight FPS/tactical-shooter - or Starfield, which has piss poor combat mechanics and AI that's only made worse when you have to deal with hit points and armor classes. What you end up is a grindfest where the only goal is to lower the little health bars above all the bullet sponges in the room. In my opinion this is blending the worst aspect of genres, but people seem to like it for some reason. I never understood the point. I love the idea of being in a "space simulator" and hauling goods between planets or being a pirate and raiding freighters or whatever. Starfield could be a dream game. Instead what I see from people streaming it is they jump into an area and say "Oh that's a level 16 mook. I'm a level 12 Space Paladin so I'd better steer clear of this sector and only shoot the level 11 Space Orks Gang until I level up." It's so shallow and boring. I want to feel like I'm actually in a fantasy scenario, not manipulating points on a character sheet to beat the points of random enemy mobs.
There are hybrid systems I do enjoy. Deus Ex and immersive sims typically have complex mechanics that don't get in your way. Most modern games don't work for me though. Starfield is only the most egregious example because outside of those pointless psuedo-RPG mechanics its combat offers little else.
Totally agree. Not everything needs any of these RPG elements. Especially character levels. Character levels aren't all that fun. That's one of the things I liked about Breath of the Wild, nothing had a level, you could decide to deal with an enemy or area if you wanted to in the way you wanted to and not be held back by a magic number. You see an enemy that appears overwhelming, you do like you would in real life, freak out and run away. Maybe it was easy, who knows, you have to judge for yourself and not just look at a number.
I do like numbers in some cases though, but that would be more something like KOTOR, where the entire game is based on dice rolls and skill levels.
Agreed. This was one of the most eye opening lessons I learned when I was first getting into game development and design theory. An experienced friend of mine touched on same basic premise you mention.
I forget how he phrased it exactly, but the general idea as I took it is that mechanics and systems with that kind of abstraction are best utilized in cases where you cannot provide a workable apparatus for the player to simulate it through pure and direct input and actions.
IE, in games we've used numerical values for decades to represent how alive or close to death the player and NPC's are, and even before that tabletop RPG's did the same. And in a fair majority of cases, these values aren't even hidden under the hood. Nor are damage values. We do this because there are limits to how far we can simulate physical trauma to the human body in a live action game. Even if a game were to try to seriously go in-depth to simulate it, it's still going to have to put it into a calculable framework that is distinctly artificial in nature.
The same thing goes for how a lot of melee systems have employed different kinds of attacks, with different damage values. Trying to implement the strength of swings power based on direct player input is often not very practical. Granted, a few games have been able to attempt this with varying degrees of success (as well as calculations based on contact/impact point and velocity of the swing), but it's still an ideal example for how game developers often have to come up with different ways to simulate basic things, while taking player input into account.
I'm still not sure if I'll actually use stats or perks at all in the game I'm planning though. I actually was trying to go out of my way to conceive of ways to implement mechanics for things like repairing a power generator, without just resorting to "hit the x key to fix the thing". Instead I wanted to lay out the general concept for what would likely make such a thing "tick", and what kinds of sub-components might need fixing, different methods that could be employed to fix things, etc etc. Truth be told though, the further down such a rabbit hole you go, the faster you realize just how unfun and tedious such things would likely get in an actual game.
Sort of a sidebar to what you’re talking about here: I think the action RPG genre is actually obsolete. I tried playing some of the more popular entries over the last few years, and I ended up bored to tears every time. This confused me because I was a huge Diablo 2 junky back in the day. Why wasn’t I having fun in these very similar games? At some point I realized what the problem was: Dark Souls exists. I can play a third person action RPG with actual skill-based gameplay. Mindlessly clicking on enemies in fights that are essentially predetermined by our relative stat values just didn’t cut it anymore. Not when I can perform most of the “abstracted actions” of the action RPG manually.
I've experienced the same issues in a few games in recent years, and especially with ARPG's. It's also the same reason I could never really get into most MMORPG's. I need to feel like I'm actually interacting with the game's world and environment, with immediate and responsive feedback based on my movement and actions.
Another thing that's always bugged me is the frequent dependency on NPC level-numbers as a metric for measuring enemy or area difficulty. I want the reason an enemy is a legitimate and dangerous threat to be because it's actually smarter, faster, more accurate, and/or better armed. Or of course because they're more numerous. Where the combat actually has punch and substance to it, and every so often you'll experience fights that are distinct or unique in some way, specifically because of how the flow of the fight can unfold.
And there's absolutely ways to implement a feeling of an ever increasing challenge in a game without depending on level systems. Just look at STALKER as a perfect example. You don't have a bunch of idiotic bullet sponges at later stages to bore you to tears. You have mutants with psychokinetic abilities who will straight up yank your gun out of your hands and bash you over the head with it. Earlier game mutated beasts who can still manage to tear you up if you slip up at the worst moment. And the classic "cheeki breeki" bandit who might just manage to land a lucky shotgun blast to your face as you turn a corner.
Sounds like you want to play a functional Star Citizen. I keep debating hopping into the alpha for $50 or whatever, but then realize that a buggy 30FPS would drive me crazy, I have a Steam backlog that will take 1,000 hours to clear with a few games I want to buy, plenty of games I beat years ago I kind of want to replay, and a job and life outside of video games.
Yes, naturally I bought SC years ago and here we are still waiting for them to make it work and move out of alpha. Some areas were even decently playable on my monster rig at the time but did have random crashes and NPCs standing on chairs, and I'm not going to waste any time on my character when it will just get wiped in the future anyway.
I should also make clear that I can have fun with hardcore RPGs and min-maxing or experimenting with DEX vs INT builds or whatever - when that's the game's style and how it was designed and advertised. (like BG3 is meant to feel like a tabletop session with dice rolls) It's when they tack on half-assed systems to other styles of games that you get the worst of both worlds and think "I have a gun, why can't I just shoot the guy point blank?"
Were there not talks about implementing stat for pc and not only npc in that game aswell?.