1999 saw not one but two huge RPGs. First up was Planescape: Torment. While there was much to love about this game, one particular design element really stood out. Rather than allowing the player's arbitrary decisions determine the path of character growth, characters in Planescape developed according to how they were used. In other words, the only way to get better at something was to spend time doing it in the game.
Morrowind's system was the practice makes perfect thing, not PS:T.
PS:T's system was based around D&D, where your decisions in game matter more than anything on your character's alignment.
Agree.
Flexibility was also the guiding principle behind the development of 2003's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The new game proved that the new 3rd Edition D&D rules are flexible enough to be adapted to new settings. (To be fair, just substituting lightsaber for sword and Force for magic doesn't seem to stretch it too far.) More significantly, Knights of the Old Republic offered a level of moral flexibility never before seen in any game. Nearly every decision players made had the potential to lead their character down the path of good or the path of evil. Those changes would be reflected in the story sequences and the reactions of other characters in the game. Discovering that the game was not only aware of the choices you'd made but would judge you by them was an amazing first for gamers.
Actually, there was a bunch of D&D games that did this -- Baldur's Gate or PS:T, anyone?
Ps:T more than BG, since Ps:T's whole algimentsystem was based on this. I THINK that KotOR (and espessially KotOR2) was more extreme on the reaction-part though.
The upside of the looser system is that it saves the player the frustration of starting down a path that they'll later discover isn't terribly interesting. If you start out as a fighter in a traditional RPG and then find out ten levels later that your special abilities either aren't interesting or aren't effective, you've wasted a lot of time. Another bonus is that it makes the whole concept of character advancement seem a lot less arbitrary than it normally does. Suddenly discovering that after you've slain eighty-nine orcs that you can instantly either learn how to use a shield or ride a horse strikes some roleplayers as ridiculous. Knowing that you're gradually getting better at using a sword each time you swing it makes much more sense, even to non-gamers.
But there is a downside to this system. For one thing, characters who are too generic aren't very compelling. To be fair, the pig is particularly aggravating when thrust into the massively multiplayer environment. There's very little, for instance, to separate low-level characters in games like EverQuest 2. Some will argue that the early anonymity can be a compelling urge to develop more as a character but surely there's a happy middle ground between the "anything goes" approach of the open-ended system and the "you can never be anything else" system of most D&D games.
Morrowind for instance lets players create custom characters right at the start. Though there are set classes, these are really just suggested templates and you're free to pick and choose what skills and abilities make up your character. From there, however, the game assigns advancement points to you according to the way that character is played. A mage who finds himself swinging a sword or trying to pick a lock every now and then will naturally develop into a more rounded, unique individual, purely as a result of how the character is being used in the game. It still suffers from the problem of forcing players to choose an identity for their character before they know much about the game, but the fact that characters are still free to develop in other directions is a nice compromise.
I've always dug Elder Scrolls' "practice makes perfect" system. The open character system's great stuff.
The problem is that you have to spend unecesary time practising instead of gameing. And that somethings are allmost impossible to train (remember haveing 20 in block, and since I never blocked, I didn't improve my blockingskill). In other cases it's just a plane waste of time that should be removed (in order to sneak good I could either move REALLY slowlly, or spend two hours at a bar standing in a corner sneaking). I know the "BING you now know how to use a shield" system isn't very realistic, but as long as the system in general is interesting and fun (and as long as I don't have to sneak in a bar for two hours to become good at sneaking), I don't really care if it's realistic or not. But if they could come up with a more realistic way of doing it (like part lvl ups, you gain many lvl ups, but they don't do that much prehaps. Allso like the Vampire:Mascerade:Bloodlines way, where you don't get lvl ups, you only get experiencepoints from doing quests, and with these experiencepoints you can upgrade your skills).
I like how in Divine Divinity, I selected a Rogue (A Thief) -- but b/c the system's still quite open, I have picked up a few HIGH-level mage abilities, such as Healing spells along the way.
Arcanum was generally good at this. You might not be that much of a mage if you only picked three spells, but it was stil a very open system.
Really, it's too bad that most PC RPGs pass over the potential of non-combat solutions to problems. You can most easily see this in the way traditional fantasy RPGs handle thieves. Rather than focusing on the thief's core abilities, most games simply put thieves in a combat support role. According to PC RPGs, you'd hardly think that thieves could ever be capable of much more than simply stabbing enemies in the back with poisoned blades. Building new RPGs that reward players who can spot and set traps, steal items from other characters, and use stealth as a significant component of success rather than a sideline, should be a huge priority for developers. We hope that the new physics system in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion makes at least some of these dreams a reality.
Similar cases could be made for spellcasters as characters who have the ability to alter reality in a variety of interesting ways. So far though, most if not all those abilities pertain only to combat. Finding a way to incorporate a priest's communion with their deity or an open-ended mechanic for a clairvoyance spell will greatly expand a player's sense of freedom and make these archetypes more than just the combat support specialists they currently are. Many gamers and game developers just have a harder time seeing the fun in doing something other than killing enemies.
Interesting.
Agreed. RPG's today is WAY to focused on combat.
While it's a sound business model to pair a well known license with pay-for-play model, it means fewer options for fans of the focused story telling only available in offline, single-player RPGs. Thankfully, titles like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fable will ensure that the quality of the offline options remains high, even if the quantity of them remains disappointingly low.
You guys forgot The Fall, which is out in Germany and coming to the USA eventually.
And Gothic 3.
And whatever Divinity universe game Larian is working on -- likely, Divinity 2.
Dragon Age will be good I've heard...
Fans of the action oriented approach taken by some RPGs are finding more and more that their tastes are better served on the consoles. Titles like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and X-Men Legends offer up no-nonsense action and the cooperative, social format that's sadly lacking in most PC RPGs.
Speaking of all action-RPG's, what's up w/ Diablo 3?
Don't know about D3, but both Guild Wars and WoW is pretty actionbased. And there's loads of combat in most RPG's (see my thought of non-combat sollutions), so if youy want action, there's plenty. Or you can just buy a FPS <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />.
Übereil
