*I didnt read everypost so sorry if this is a repeat*
Fournicolas I'd like to point out that while they are opposing genres, Harvest Moon is a shining example of it working out just fine. The mangament aspects are done just right, and there's plenty of role playing to be done (getting married, making friends, meeting orders, etc.)
Brainstorming: what do you like about RPGs?
Author
Whoops, I guess I was a little too vague in my starting post. I didn't particularly want to steer the brainstorming session off in any direction by putting too many details about what I want, but I guess it won't hurt to clarify the game a little more.
You can think of the game as SimVillage, where you look after your own fantasy RPG style village from a gods-eye view; the player is not in direct control over any character. At the moment I am thinking about setting the world in a console RPG-esque environment, as I think a lot of players will be familiar with that and so will enjoy the game more. Actually, I'm willing to debate that last point, as I'm also considering a more generic fantasy world, or something set in a more European fairy tale environment, or using Germanic or Nordic mythology, or anything else that someone might suggest that would appeal to more people. But let's stick to RPG worlds for now, as that's what this thread is about [smile].
What I'm looking for here is a brainstorming about RPG elements that people like, similar to what Wavinator has written. I know I can't implement everything that makes an RPG, but I'm using a fantasy RPG setting, not building an RPG. But for this brainstorming I'll like to consider everything, so I can get a good feel of what is liked.
You can think of the game as SimVillage, where you look after your own fantasy RPG style village from a gods-eye view; the player is not in direct control over any character. At the moment I am thinking about setting the world in a console RPG-esque environment, as I think a lot of players will be familiar with that and so will enjoy the game more. Actually, I'm willing to debate that last point, as I'm also considering a more generic fantasy world, or something set in a more European fairy tale environment, or using Germanic or Nordic mythology, or anything else that someone might suggest that would appeal to more people. But let's stick to RPG worlds for now, as that's what this thread is about [smile].
What I'm looking for here is a brainstorming about RPG elements that people like, similar to what Wavinator has written. I know I can't implement everything that makes an RPG, but I'm using a fantasy RPG setting, not building an RPG. But for this brainstorming I'll like to consider everything, so I can get a good feel of what is liked.
Quote:Original post by XVampireX
I agree, but the question remains... How could someone create a Simulation game with RPG elements? :)
Well, this is TZ's thread and I think he wanted us to focus on RPG elements we enjoy, so we shouldn't derail it.
But consider this: To blend genres, the tasks in one genre should translate to successes in the other (for the two to be well integrated). RPGs normally have you bashing monsters, using skills, exploring and interacting with characters, all to level yourself and advance the story. But what if they leveled your town, and what if story advances brought new challenges and opportunities to the town? This might not be exactly where TZ's game is going, but it should hint at the possibilities.
To mix things everyone else says you can't mix, all you need is the right gameplay mechanic. Morrowind lets you build a town, even chosing what buildings will exist, but it's all through the mechanics of questing and dialog. (So never say never [smile])
It sounds like you want to recreate the game 'Majesty'. you should give it a try, it's a good example of what not to do...
[edit: suppose I should detail why...
Mainly, the game had technical issues.
Secondarily, the game (like moo3) suffered from the game design idea that units/people cannot be controlled, only pushed/prodded/bribed. Dunno, it just didn't work.]
[edit: suppose I should detail why...
Mainly, the game had technical issues.
Secondarily, the game (like moo3) suffered from the game design idea that units/people cannot be controlled, only pushed/prodded/bribed. Dunno, it just didn't work.]
Harvest Moon is definitely a sim/RPG. Azure Dreams, Soul Blazer, and Act Raiser are other interesting examples of RPG/sim hybrid games.
I have thought a lot about the fix up/build up activities in Harvest Moon and Azure Dreams, and also about gathering resources and building up tech trees in Warcraft/Starcraft. In Harvest Moon and Azure Dreams you start with an abandoned farm/poor desert town and characters who need help with various problems. You go and do the sim-like gameplay (farming, fishing, mining, fighting monsters) to earn treasure. You sell/use the treasure to upgrade yourself and the town. As you pass milestones in gemeplay you may also earn reactions from NPCs or key objects which can be given to NPCs, thus advancing the story. The story ends when the town has been completely upgraded and all the characters' problems have been solved, and/or when the PC passes a gameplay milestone (surviving 3 years, getting married, or defeating all existing levels if the gameplay has a set number of levels).
In Warcraft/Starcraft OTOH you had one (rarely more) objective to accomplish, but a limited number of resources to do it with. So you had to invest those resources effeciently to build up one branch of your tech tree, you couldn't just upgrade everything. So the different resources available in each level suggested different investment strategies, and the choice among those strategies determined not just whether you achieved the goal, but also _how_ you achieved the goal, which was the low-level 'story' told by each level of play.
In designing Xenallure I combined some of these ideas: the island Xenallure is like the abandoned farm, like the poor desert town, and also like a Warcraft/Starcraft level. There are buildings to be built, NPCs with problems to be fixed, resources to be gathered/earned through gameplay, and the island as a whole is somewhat like a sim city, with the challenge that you can only make changes from inside it as a mortal PC, not from outside it as a god.
To strengthen the RPG/story side of the game, unlike a goalless toy like Sims or Simcity, Xenallure has multiple specific strategic goals the player can play towards, and milestones on the path to each of these goals that advance the story. But to make the sim/strategic aspect (and accompanying replayability) stronger than in the RPG parts of Harvest Moon and Xenallure, there are a limited amount of resources, so the player has to choose which goals to invest the resources in working towards. Like being limited to exploring one branch of the tech tree per level in Warcraft/Starcraft, in Xenallure you are limited to exploring one branch of the plot tree per playthrough.
So anyway, here's my theory: in and sim/RPG there are two types of structure: the story and the tech tree. Both of these are structure of a type where only a linear journey of building up from the root to the branches is possible. In a standard RPG instead of a tech 'tree' there is only a linear progression of leveling up and a linear progress through the story, which happen at the same time. In a standard sim game OTOH each gameplay (or level) is a journey up the tech tree, with no progress through a story. But in some sim games such as the Starcraft singleplayer campaign many levels may be organized into a linear story or 'campaign'; thus cycles of climbing the tech tree are contained by one cycle through the plot. And in other sim games such as Harvest Moon bits of story may be triggered by progress up the tech tree; in this case mini-cycles of plot are contained by one linear path through the tech tree.
So in either case one is places inside the other. The outer one determines the journey through one gameplay, while the inner one determines the journey through one level of the game.
Xenallure takes things further by tying a branching plot to a branching tech tree in micro, macro, and meta cycles. At the lowest level subgames, combat, and puzzle-solving result in micro steps up the tech tree. These activities are organized into weeks of gametime/chapters of plot. Each chapter is thus a microcycle of both gameplay and atory. Approximately 7 of these chapters add up to one game, one journey through the macro tech/story tree of the island as a whole, where the branches are possible major story goals/end states of the island after one gameplay. And in turn the newgame+ feature means that successive macrocycles, or plays through the game, add up to a metacycle of the player's external perspective on the different possibilities of how the game can turn out over several playthroughs. This meta cycle consists of acheving several/all possible story goals and finding a story explanation for how these are consistent with each other, and what the ultimate meaning of it all is.
I have thought a lot about the fix up/build up activities in Harvest Moon and Azure Dreams, and also about gathering resources and building up tech trees in Warcraft/Starcraft. In Harvest Moon and Azure Dreams you start with an abandoned farm/poor desert town and characters who need help with various problems. You go and do the sim-like gameplay (farming, fishing, mining, fighting monsters) to earn treasure. You sell/use the treasure to upgrade yourself and the town. As you pass milestones in gemeplay you may also earn reactions from NPCs or key objects which can be given to NPCs, thus advancing the story. The story ends when the town has been completely upgraded and all the characters' problems have been solved, and/or when the PC passes a gameplay milestone (surviving 3 years, getting married, or defeating all existing levels if the gameplay has a set number of levels).
In Warcraft/Starcraft OTOH you had one (rarely more) objective to accomplish, but a limited number of resources to do it with. So you had to invest those resources effeciently to build up one branch of your tech tree, you couldn't just upgrade everything. So the different resources available in each level suggested different investment strategies, and the choice among those strategies determined not just whether you achieved the goal, but also _how_ you achieved the goal, which was the low-level 'story' told by each level of play.
In designing Xenallure I combined some of these ideas: the island Xenallure is like the abandoned farm, like the poor desert town, and also like a Warcraft/Starcraft level. There are buildings to be built, NPCs with problems to be fixed, resources to be gathered/earned through gameplay, and the island as a whole is somewhat like a sim city, with the challenge that you can only make changes from inside it as a mortal PC, not from outside it as a god.
To strengthen the RPG/story side of the game, unlike a goalless toy like Sims or Simcity, Xenallure has multiple specific strategic goals the player can play towards, and milestones on the path to each of these goals that advance the story. But to make the sim/strategic aspect (and accompanying replayability) stronger than in the RPG parts of Harvest Moon and Xenallure, there are a limited amount of resources, so the player has to choose which goals to invest the resources in working towards. Like being limited to exploring one branch of the tech tree per level in Warcraft/Starcraft, in Xenallure you are limited to exploring one branch of the plot tree per playthrough.
So anyway, here's my theory: in and sim/RPG there are two types of structure: the story and the tech tree. Both of these are structure of a type where only a linear journey of building up from the root to the branches is possible. In a standard RPG instead of a tech 'tree' there is only a linear progression of leveling up and a linear progress through the story, which happen at the same time. In a standard sim game OTOH each gameplay (or level) is a journey up the tech tree, with no progress through a story. But in some sim games such as the Starcraft singleplayer campaign many levels may be organized into a linear story or 'campaign'; thus cycles of climbing the tech tree are contained by one cycle through the plot. And in other sim games such as Harvest Moon bits of story may be triggered by progress up the tech tree; in this case mini-cycles of plot are contained by one linear path through the tech tree.
So in either case one is places inside the other. The outer one determines the journey through one gameplay, while the inner one determines the journey through one level of the game.
Xenallure takes things further by tying a branching plot to a branching tech tree in micro, macro, and meta cycles. At the lowest level subgames, combat, and puzzle-solving result in micro steps up the tech tree. These activities are organized into weeks of gametime/chapters of plot. Each chapter is thus a microcycle of both gameplay and atory. Approximately 7 of these chapters add up to one game, one journey through the macro tech/story tree of the island as a whole, where the branches are possible major story goals/end states of the island after one gameplay. And in turn the newgame+ feature means that successive macrocycles, or plays through the game, add up to a metacycle of the player's external perspective on the different possibilities of how the game can turn out over several playthroughs. This meta cycle consists of acheving several/all possible story goals and finding a story explanation for how these are consistent with each other, and what the ultimate meaning of it all is.
Author
Quote:Original post by Wavinator
To mix things everyone else says you can't mix, all you need is the right gameplay mechanic.
Bingo. I'm working on a method that will very closely tie the strategy managment and RPG elements together. I don't particularly want to describe it here; partly because that part of the design is very unfinished, mostly because it will derail this thread into discussing my game, when I want to be discussing RPGs in general. Although if you want a hint, then read the longest thread that I've started here in the design forum [smile].
Telastyn: Yes, I've played Majesty; it's one of the games I'm using as a basis for design ideas. I actually quite liked it, but I agree that the amount of control you had over the heroes was minimal, and the heroes were a bit too stupid. But that's one of the closest games to describing what I'm wanting to discuss in this thread; Majesty was a strategy game, not an RPG, but it was based on RPG elements. So I'd like to include enough RPG elements to give my game an RPG feel.
P.S. You can build a town in Morrowind? Damn, I never got that far before my hard disk failure hosed the game; I'll have to play it again [smile].
Age of Wonders? X-COM with, instead of strategic ground combat, RPG-style combat?
One thing I liked about these games was the way you had to be good at both managing resources/men/whatever outside of battle, and also be skilled when it came to the close-up ground battles. If you were only good at managing cities and always lost at combat, you'd eventually lose all of your cities to someone better at managing the fighting. If all you're good at is combat, then when you fail to manage your cities well you'll fall short of troops and you'll be overwhelmed no matter what kind of tactical genius you are.
Sounds like a really interesting project. Back on topic title:
-Character growth (both levels and personality)
-Different abilities/spells/weapons with different strategic uses
-Customizing, if it wasn't already covered by the above.
One thing I liked about these games was the way you had to be good at both managing resources/men/whatever outside of battle, and also be skilled when it came to the close-up ground battles. If you were only good at managing cities and always lost at combat, you'd eventually lose all of your cities to someone better at managing the fighting. If all you're good at is combat, then when you fail to manage your cities well you'll fall short of troops and you'll be overwhelmed no matter what kind of tactical genius you are.
Sounds like a really interesting project. Back on topic title:
-Character growth (both levels and personality)
-Different abilities/spells/weapons with different strategic uses
-Customizing, if it wasn't already covered by the above.
All of you are more or less right, but wouldn't all of that still fall under the category of STRATEGY? and not simulation? In Harvest Moon you control a hero, you can do whatever the game allows you to do, in this case, farming and living a life, similar to sims but different. Simcity is not a strategy management game, however, it's a management game, if it could be called anything like that, even.
From what I understand, you want a gods eye view, and you want to have full control on people. I just don't understand how this could be done with RPG elements. I know black and white could be considered as a simulation/management game in a way, and also SOMEHOW people claim it has RPG elements in it, I think otherwise.
Just like Fournicolas said in the very beginning - They are two opposing genres, one has you controlling a hero or a team of heroes that save the world from something (Epic Story?), while the other has you managing a world, telling people to build building and houses and create your own world and do whatever you want with it.
I don't know, it's really weird...
From what I understand, you want a gods eye view, and you want to have full control on people. I just don't understand how this could be done with RPG elements. I know black and white could be considered as a simulation/management game in a way, and also SOMEHOW people claim it has RPG elements in it, I think otherwise.
Just like Fournicolas said in the very beginning - They are two opposing genres, one has you controlling a hero or a team of heroes that save the world from something (Epic Story?), while the other has you managing a world, telling people to build building and houses and create your own world and do whatever you want with it.
I don't know, it's really weird...
Author
XVampireX, Fournicolas et. al.: I know it sounds weird; I like designing games that do things that I think haven't been done properly yet. I'm not really looking for how feasible the design is yet, I'm just brainstorming for ideas here.
It could be possible that I'm using the wrong terminology here. I don't know what games you've played, but let me describe my game a bit like this. Hopefully you've played at least one of these games:
RollerCoaster Tycoon and Theme Park gives the player the role is to manage a theme park.
Theme Hospital gives the player the role to manage a hospital.
Afterlife gives the player the role of managing their own version of heaven and hell.
Tropico gives the player the role of managing their own island dictatorship.
Tropico 2 gives the player the role of running their own pirate island.
You can think of my game being similar, except you manage a village set in an fantasy RPG style world. And, much like say Tropico 2 tries to capture everything "piratey" in their game, I'd like my game to capture everything "fantasy RPG". Which is why I'm brainstorming for what people like in that genre.
Now, there is a bit more to my game than that (the interactive storytelling part, which is the truly tricky part), but that's probably the closest description to the gameplay that I can give at the moment.
So, what is it that you think makes RPGs (especially fantasy styled ones) great? Even if you think RPGs are incompatible with this genre, if you list why you think they are incompatible (and why that element of game design is desirable), that might help. But I'd prefer to steer this thread back into a general discussion of great RPG design elements. But thanks for replying anyway! I might need your advice later, when I get around to nitty-gritty parts of the design [smile].
It could be possible that I'm using the wrong terminology here. I don't know what games you've played, but let me describe my game a bit like this. Hopefully you've played at least one of these games:
RollerCoaster Tycoon and Theme Park gives the player the role is to manage a theme park.
Theme Hospital gives the player the role to manage a hospital.
Afterlife gives the player the role of managing their own version of heaven and hell.
Tropico gives the player the role of managing their own island dictatorship.
Tropico 2 gives the player the role of running their own pirate island.
You can think of my game being similar, except you manage a village set in an fantasy RPG style world. And, much like say Tropico 2 tries to capture everything "piratey" in their game, I'd like my game to capture everything "fantasy RPG". Which is why I'm brainstorming for what people like in that genre.
Now, there is a bit more to my game than that (the interactive storytelling part, which is the truly tricky part), but that's probably the closest description to the gameplay that I can give at the moment.
So, what is it that you think makes RPGs (especially fantasy styled ones) great? Even if you think RPGs are incompatible with this genre, if you list why you think they are incompatible (and why that element of game design is desirable), that might help. But I'd prefer to steer this thread back into a general discussion of great RPG design elements. But thanks for replying anyway! I might need your advice later, when I get around to nitty-gritty parts of the design [smile].
Evolution of characters. I think that, and story, are the biggest seperators of strategy and RPG. Take a look at the game, Dragon Force (Sega Saturn). That's a great example of a strategy sim with terrific story. Character's also increased slightly and you could promote them to allow them to command more soldiers. Most sim like games simplify character growth potential. I don't follow why. If a learn-as-you-do system is implimented, the player doesn't need to take a lot of time messing with numbers.
I haven't read through all of the replies, so I'm kinda just jumping in through a window. Just ignore me if you have to repeat yourself.
Will the game focus on one person as the player, or will the player be a supernatural controlling factor like the Sims? Is there a goal? What will be entertaining? If nothing, don't fret. The Sims didn't have anything but lots of players fell in love with that.
I haven't read through all of the replies, so I'm kinda just jumping in through a window. Just ignore me if you have to repeat yourself.
Will the game focus on one person as the player, or will the player be a supernatural controlling factor like the Sims? Is there a goal? What will be entertaining? If nothing, don't fret. The Sims didn't have anything but lots of players fell in love with that.
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