As I read older forum threads, I see that good RPGs should consist of new ideas such as corpses of killed monsters attracting other animals, using magic uniquely- instead of just typical 'x damage', and many more ideas.
I'd like you, the public, to post as many creative ideas you have to hold intrest for a game. This includes thoughts on appearances, visual effects, and perhaps what a 'Quest' should consist of.
Eliminating traditional one-training-style, pure repitition of BYOND games would be nice.
I'd also like comments on appearance regarding character icons. Say there is..12 unique classes, with a variety of skills and abilities.. Should each class have a male+female icon specifically for that class, or should everyone be a 'base' icon, and you can develop your look by wearing armor, swords, and etc. for overlays?
Simply post your thoughts/comments/suggestions, everything is appreciated.
ID:152219
 Sep 10 2007, 3:45 pm
|
|
I completely agree on the lack of rigid "classes"
in my current project you mix and match skills as you level that define your character, and someone can be as specialized as they want. | |
I understand what your saying on 'Classes', but perhaps an 'evolution' system similar to that of Fire Emblem would help? Say adding much more Classes, Mage > Sage, or Druid..or something along those lines.
-Classes are intended to limit specific skills to that player. Anyways, you said traditional 'Kill-non-stop' is something you don't like to see.. Well I agree, I was asking how to avoid that, by hearing everyones thoughs. | |
basic mud "class" selection
everyone has acess to all skills on char creation, you can take as many as you want, but the more you take - the longer it takes you to level up | |
Ter13 wrote:
No, I mean no classes. I mean SKILLS purely define your character, not classes. Meh. I prefer classes a lot more than just loose skills, most of the time. It's pretty hard to balance a game when there are just a bunch of skills that people can use. In theory, having no classes and just having skills works fine, but it just ends up to be a mess and nobody's ever motivated to do anything. [edit: Recently I've been playing FF5 and its job system is one of the most addicting things I've ever played. It's one of the few games where I'll actually sit and grind to get levels and abilities before going anywhere else. The idea of levelling one job up and then having the ability to have a second subjob is awesome to me, which is what FFXI does and does well, other than the game being nothing but that job system and grinding. Basically, a skill-only system can work well if it's a unique and interesting way of leveling up skills. I grind in FF12 because the license system is fun and interesting to me, and I'll gladly grind in FF6 because I want to have every character to have every spell from every esper. A character should gain something if they go out of their way to achieve something, which is why I like the 360 so much. Playing through Bioshock on the PC would not nearly have been as much fun, because half of the fun for me was getting all of the Achievements unlocked. This sort of thing in a BYOND game would be *awesome*, but you'd have to include it intelligently. In Nexus: TK, every character had a "legend": click on their character, then flip through their character profile and it has a big list of basically everything they've ever done. * Born in Yuri 31 * Aided Chu-Rua, Yuri 31 * Raided the Lost Mines, Yuri 31. * Slew the mighty Sute, Yuri 32. etc. These would all be quests that the players could do, and their reward for completing these quests would be a good item, some coins, and a legend mark. Usually, I'd have done the quest for the legend mark alone. Furthermore, one of the things that I think ruins a good RPG is to have too many different types of items. If I'm playing a game and I do a quest and get a "Dagger +1" I sit and say to myself "ugh, this is awful." However, if I do a quest and get a  Moonblade or a  Maxcalibur or even something as simple as a  Runed dagger, I will be so happy. Intelligent item design is one of the most important things to keep a player interested, in my opinion. Intelligent map design, too, which very few people on BYOND are capable of.I could go on for hours, really. | |
Well, having never played FF games, I cannot comment on 'Job-System', explain if you'd like.
On another note, regardless if I decide to being another project.. I thoughts of systems to (hopefully) improve overall gameplay feel. It would be similar to MJ (which I haven't played since 02 I think?) With targeting etc, nothing turn based. I've read ideas like corpses attracting specific animals, which I would implement.. also weapons would naturally be great in variety, from simply power boost to weapons that can cast certain spells by chance, while being used. I've also considered the 'Gold' aspect of many games.. Which typically fails. My idea was.. each Shop-based NPC has a preset Gold, Wood, Bones(?) etc. NEEDS. The number of a specific need would decrease after certain purchases have been made..eg: Wood Shield, he lose some wood? Then, the amount you could sell said resources for would be based off whether they need it or not. Selling resources decreased need. Also note: shops have a limit of items, eventually requiring resources for specific items. Im considering many different weap. variables, such as speed, durability, and many more.. Also, I'd like feedback on whether overlays or Class-icons are best suited. | |
Vortezz wrote:
...The idea of levelling one job up and then having the ability to have a second subjob is awesome to me, which is what FFXI does and does well... the leveling/job system in ffxi is horrible -it litteraly takes 4+ hours of non stop level grinding to gain 1 level once u get above 20 -you have to level your sub job completely seperate from your main job -your sub job can only reach a max of 1/2 whatever you main job is -when you switch jobs it completely resets your level, its basicaly like starting the game all over with a completely different character --theres no overall level to pad in the new class from the 10 billion hours u just spent leveling your previous one RnsMcity wrote: Well, having never played FF games... zomg u fail at life! go download an emulator and at least play some of the old school snes FF games | |
I'm sick of RPG games with the goal of killing stuff. If you want that, make a Roguelike or a Dungeon Crawl.
I'm sick of magic, its exceedingly cliche. I'm sick of RPGs that use generic classes (fighter, mage, thief, paladin, whatever). I'm sick of RPGs that use the same old human/elf/dwarf/orc race selection nonsense. I'm sick of RPGs that have no plot. Never base an RPG on anything you see on BYOND. That said, I've always wanted to make a prehistoric RPG where the goal is to hunt, get food for your tribe, explore new places, and find medicines or things that can aid your tribe. If you can put some kind of plot in there, that would be better, but given that online RPGs don't typically have plots (which is why they suck), it might be hard to do. I guess it would have to take the setup of several competing tribes though, otherwise it would get old once you've found everything. The more goodies you bring back to your tribe, the more players in your tribe will have to work with, and there better your tribe will do, etc... At least it would be different. Different is good. | |
Foomer wrote:
That said, I've always wanted to make a prehistoric RPG where the goal is to hunt, get food for your tribe, explore new places, and find medicines or things that can aid your tribe. If you can put some kind of plot in there, that would be better, but given that online RPGs don't typically have plots (which is why they suck), it might be hard to do. sounds more like a survival game then a rpg o.O | |
Well, these are ideas that I am currently using in a ORPG that I am working on for BYOND. Feel free to use whatever you want.
Players have most of the same bases. I offered some variations of colors in the skin types. I also offer them about 4 or 6 different styles of hair. I have pre-defined colors for people who want a certain color, like red, blue, green, purple, red, or whatever, and then if they don't like those colors they can manually input the colors they want like r,g,b My game is classless, instead the players will gather "Titles" in the game. Titles can be gained from quests, found in treasure chests, or found laying around. Some titles include Warrior, Wizard, Thief, Monk, ect. Each one of these titles effects the players stats in one way or another. For example, the title "Newbie" which players start with, give them a 10% bonus on their max hit points. Of course, these titles also appear to other players in the game too. There are not just class related titles either, players can find titles like The Butcher or The Avatar. Gear is never defined in the source code, like a dagger or leather armor. Instead, when gear is found, it is randomly generated in game at the time it loads up. One time you might find Leather Armor, another time, you might find Hard Leather Armor, yet another time you might find Leather Armor of the Wolf, or Master Work Leather Armor, there is 4 different categories of types of armor, each having about 10 different suffixes added to it, which will change the stats and value of the gear. So one type of armor, like Leather Armor, can now become almost limitless. And of course, when you wear your gear, it shows up as an over lay. There is actually two types of armor, normal armor and clothes. You can wear clothes under your armor, the clothes is just for a style aspect. Treasure Chests work on this idea when you find them. They are randomly loaded in the world each time there is a re-pop (new day), each time you open a chest, it will randomly generate a amount of treasure in it, and what it might be. You might find gold, treasure, gear or even monsters. Merchants work on the same concept, each new day (in game) they will re-stock their inventory. It is always different, so it will pay off to check every single day what they have in stock, and of course, stock is limited. Besides that, the game is level-less. In the style of God Wars (see muds), the players gain experience points for almost every aspect of the game. They can then go to the training grounds and train stats they want to upgrade. Evey stat will effect them in one way or another. As you build stats up, the cost for those stats will go up as well. Besides just stat increases, players can buy new skills or feats with their earned experience. Magic is found in the game through magic tomes players can find, either on quests, or almost anywhere else. And once again, you guessed it, the tomes randomly generate what spells you might learn. The game is set up to a point where a lot of work on content (gear, spells, treasure) is already taken care of. Players can fine tune their players how they exactly want them to be. | |
Those first six apply to the RPG I'm semi-working on (still lots of stuff to do in order to start the hard stuff with it which is a story for another time) in that I don't use any of them. Of course, my game is going to be singleplayer and has no chance of being multiplayer.
| |
Falacy wrote:
Foomer wrote: So how exactly would you define the difference? | |
rpg = turn based battle system, or something similiar - with battle taking place in its own map area, leveling - but not with the goal of just leveling like you say, thats an MMORPG's leveling system, the point of leveling in a real rpg is so u can make it to the end, save the world from utter destruction brought by the bad guy! cant have an rpg without a story, just doesnt work. shops with equipment to buy, which get better as u progress through the story and into new towns, somewhat linear gameplay, cant goto the last area of the game and get the best weapons or hardest monsters 2 minutes after u start playing
survival = either no leveling at all, or leveling isnt a main focus, open battle system where enemies are just around and you run up and battling right there, free world exploration is definetly non rpg, maybe orpg, but thats y most orpgs/mmorps get boring after a day. the overall goal of the game isnt really to progress, its just to not die collect supplies to provide for a tribe is more of an rts sounding thing | |
Do Final Fantasy GBA games count? I have FF I&II for GBA.. I think I've played+beat the first one only.
| |
Oblivion / Morrowind Style Class system is nice, you choose your class but you don't even have to play the class you chose, although it is intended.
I mean, if you choose a Mage and want to swing Battleswords around, sure you can do it, but you aren't going to do much damage with the sword if you don't have any skill in there. | |
the problem with games like oblivion is that you can go anywhere from the very begining, wheres the fun in that?
if you could just run up to the final boss in an FF game and defeat them 10 minutes after starting the game it wouldnt be very fun oblivion is designed like a MMORPG, except without actualy having any online capabilities | |
Foomer wrote:
That said, I've always wanted to make a prehistoric RPG... And I'm still waiting... ;) Somebody else, Maggeh I believe, started working on a caveman/neandertal based game, but it seems to have died off as well. *sigh* Being only a half-step or so from a caveman myself, I've always wanted somebody to finish a prehistoric RPG/sim so I could express my inner caveman. :P | |
Oh, it's not fun it all if you love the feeling of being dragged along on a leash by the developer. I'm right there with you. I hate games like Oblivion and GTA. GTA would be so much better if it was just one long road and you had to do what the developer says to move forward. That would be awesome.
| |
Second, if you do classes, at least do a job change/remort/multiclassing system.
I'm a fan of putting survival elements into a game, and allowing the players to build their own homes and such. It adds a surprising amount of depth to the game world.
As for other things, combat should be more thought out than: "Kill to get loot". I mean, it's just overdone. I hate grinding away just to level up...
"Why am I killing things?" -- "to level up"
"Why am I leveling up?" -- "To kill stronger things"
"Why do I want to kill stronger things?" -- "to level up"
"Why do I want to level up?" -- "To kill stronger things"
That sums up just about every game. The final question is: "Why did I level up to the max level?" -- "To laugh at noobs."