RPGs can become much more “radical” but hardcore players are “resistant to change”, says Obsidian

And why should you not show the numbers to the players? A lot of people are simply confused by your comments as they seem to be contradictory. It's like as if you want a role playing game, with stats, but only in the background and implement in a way that you don't ... notice them?

It's very dificult to understand what you really want.

I know quite a few people that think like that.

 

You can convey the information without the numbers, trough visuals and sound and so on. There's nothing contradictory, you have the character progression or "stats" but it's in the background, again it's getting tiresome to explain this constantly only to see someone say "Oh so you want Counter Strike?" or something ridiculous like that.
Anyway it's not like arguing over this matters anyway, the only thing that matters is if the game is made.


As for Sawyer, maybe he should take the risk with whatever idea he has, maybe it could be very popular and might be beneficial to the studio, it might be disastrous, you either try or you don't, expecting people to support an idea for a game they've never experienced is a bit far fetched.

 

But what would that look like in a real game? Can you name some example of that?

Again, it's hard to follow your thoughts, because I am not even sure how you represent 'stats' with sounds or purely trough 'visuals' - I guess you mean graphics and animations.

What people argue about here, is the difference between direct player input like minigames, first person combat and character skills like stat checks.

 

Animations, sounds, decals, sprites and so on. Again it's tedious explaining something so many times only for someone to overlook the comment and ask me again to explain it. Also it's a game, sometimes you can't visualize a concept until you have played the game.

There is no such a thing as a game without direct player input, what you're talking about is movies. You choose the role you want to play, you pick a movie and you watch it, you watch the character and you role play, no player input, no skill required when it comes to leveling up, conversations, combat and so on. Perfect RPG

But as I have said in my replies to Kohno, character skills can still be the focus just like in every standard RPG, but instead of just passing a skill check you gain strong advantages during gameplay and so on. Again it's not worth discussing it anymore, especially when someone is going to take it to the extremes and say something along the lines of "OH so you wan't no numbers?? More gameplay? Different way to visualize things? I see, you want 9/11, pure gameplay, vizualize that heretic" and get 5 upvotes because nobody bothers to read what I said and at this point it's just mob mentality.


Like when I said I didn't want to remove character skill progression but just do it differently (and then I explained how) and the next comment I see a person talking about how dumb I am for wanting to remove character skill progression. How do you argue with a person who skims over what I wrote or simply ignores it?

Now imagine me going super in depth about every single mechanic and animation system and so on, basically creating a game in text form, imagine how long that would be and how most of you will skip it anyway. I don't judge though, long walls of text probably aren't interesting to read.

Sadly I can't show an example because such a game doesn't exist (which I said many times), however there have been games in the past that have done some of what I have explained, like using animations to represent your skill in combat. Games like Gothic 1 come to mind, however they are quite dated and so the feature is not in depth, but still when you level up your skills with a weapon the character itself slowly starts to hold it properly and swing it properly as if he's using actual technique.

 

Yeah, no such game exists. And that for a simple reason. What you demand, is contradictory.

 

It's not contradictory, an RPG with gameplay beyond adding skill points trough a UI is perfectly reasonable, an RPG that conveys information without numbers is perfectly doable.

And stop with the "RPG's shouldn't require player skills" because they already do, if you play a healer you still need to prioritize who to heal and when and which healing spells to use, that's still skills. What, you want to play a healer that is goot at prioritizing when and who to heal but you suck at the game? Does that mean the game should now play the healer for you? Oh wait it wouldn't be a game then.

No matter how much you dumb down a game someone is always going to suck at it, if a person has a strong warrior character but is too stupid to pick his battles and fights a dragon bear or whatever that is 30 levels higher than him and dies, should we remove the combat? Just so we can have a level playing field, maybe the game should play for him. But oh wait, maybe he'll pick the wrong dialogue option and he'll screw himself, should we remove all negative dialogue options? No, because as soon as you remove the game from the RPG you also remove the RP, because games are interactive and give you options, when you remove the interactions you take away the options and the Role Playing itself.

In the end of the day it doesn't matter what you think or how much you value having numbers and ui interfaces to add skill points into, or how much you value the game doing a skill check for you and automatically making your character succeed in that action. The game I'm describing is bound to happen because people move more towards in depth interactive games and not just hollow simulations. Skill checks are flawed by default because in real life no matter how skilled you are, you still might fuck up, a skilled surgeon might still fuck up. And yes you can make it so the character in the game fails but it feels better if you fuck up trough gameplay and not trough a random dice roll.

By the way it's not a demand, it's just seeing the future ahead. And honestly I don't care if it removes the "RPG" term as a description, as long as the game is good and allows for good role playing. You will still be able to play old school stuff

 

This depends ENTIRELY on the game and the experience you want to provide. That's like saying, you don't need any kind of numbers in a racaing game to display how fast you are, because it chould be done entirely trough graphics, animations and other visual clues.

You're statements, are simply way to generalized and unspecific to have any meaning. Even the most action oriented games, like Skyrim or Mass Effect have some way to check for your progression eve if they have no classes. Besides If you have the numbers even if they are just working in the background, why not give the player the option to see them? How else would you know where your character is lacking in skills, how professicient he is and how much time you need aproximately to progress? Unless you're talking about a Matrix like simulator I am afraid that you will never have a game that can completely work without some kind of 'progress' mechanic here if we're talking about RPGs.

It's seriously very difficult to really know what you want here as you're explaining it poorly and contradicting your self.

I never said that.

But what most people here talk about is the difference between genres. Shooters require more hand-eye cordination and faster reaction times compared to turn based games or most real time strategy games out there, for example like Call of Duty vs. Command & Conquer.

No one as far as I can tell ever disputed though, that a certain amount of reaction time is required to play any game.

Which probably explains why a lot of turn based and 'stat driven simulatiors' as you call them are succesfull on kick starter and why X-Com has been a success and why we still see games like Pillars of Eternity released even by studios like Obsidian.

No one here said that games with a large emphasis on stats and stat progression would ever become the 'main stream' you know. Those genres are niches, but they have their player bases and fans, so I do not see why they should dissapear in favour of your idea.

Yeah, and we know how corect that one always is when people predict the future or claim to 'see' it.

 

Comparing running in RPG's to racing games, yeah this conversation is going nowhere.

 

Finally you get it.

 

If that was your goal then seem oddly proud that you wasted your time.

 

Oh boy ...

You should look at how many posts I have and then ask your self whos time I wasted.

 

We need a Skateboarding RPG so the genre can get really radical.

 

*losing his mind, not loosing.
Also I agree with Walpknut, but the RPG should also be an eSport.

 

Why an esport? I don't want a fad game.

 

Cause it's skill based, that's how RPG's should be. Ideally it would be FPS games but you can try different things, like card game RPG eSports, or even Beatemups would be ideal and very radical.

 

RPGs are skill based, Character skill based.

 

That's not true skill, player based skill is the future. I hope Sawyer makes a game like Skyrim, I like killing things.

 

Skyeim is to rpgs what sniffing glue is to reading books.

 

I don't care, all that matters is if I kill things and like the world. I like deserts, and killing things in deserts.

See? Sand. More games need to be like Fallout 3 and 4 so we can progress the genre and killl.
That's how RPG's work.