Quote:Original post by silverphyre673
Use your imagination! There are LOTS of ways to represent things visually in games, more than ever. This is only going to get easier and easier to do.
Of course there are stat-crunchers and munchkins out there, but maybe this will wind up being a whole new "immersion-RPG" genre.
I'm afraid it's not about originality, it's about economics. While I'm all for coming up with out of the box responses, a content heavy approach is a recipe for disaster. Since you're posting on GameDev, rather than the Shiny or EA forums, I'll assume your focus is indie developers.
If so, then most of the ideas so far simply will not scale well on a budget. When you hear the character oomph or aaargh! for the 76th time, you'll know what I mean. Visual and audio cues are long retained in the brain, making repetition annoying, whereas numbers flee rather quickly. Anyone who has had to sit through repetitive cut-scenes they can't space through knows how old it can get. Visually representing stats means that you're giving the player lots of bite-sized cutscenes, none of which they can skip.
The other problem is that the more you put into visually and auditorially representing systems that 95% of your audience already accepts in stat form, the less you have to do anything else. So, sure, you can show sweating brows, limping from herniated disks, compound fractures from falling too far, etc., etc. ad infinitum.
Just be prepared to drop alot of the quests, special action scripts, monsters, items and locations you were planning on. And call it something other than an RPG.