Okay, so I was a little slow getting around to reading this thread, but I thought I''d add my two cents on some of the parts anyway.

quote:
I played a goblin in an RPG once and I got attacked as soon as I entered a town despite my cires for mercy.

I think good guy goblins are a great idea - if only just to see adventurers charge at a goblin horde and hack them up before they realise they had a white flag and were trying to give them some vital information.

You can include friendly goblins but how do you stop players from killing them anyway?

-Forxl

Assume that the story builds throughout the game, and there are little side quests. During the early game, a "good" goblin might hand out a side quest (not necessarily a fedex knight quest, however). If the player slaughters these goblins mercilessly, drop some hint that he just screwed himself over. Then, maybe he''ll stop for the goblin that gives him useful information. As a last resort, if he kills the important "good" goblin, make him go on some *really* hard journey to find out the information from a "more normal" source.

quote:
Original post by MadKeithV
I HATE specific invulnerabilities for characters you''re not SUPPOSED to kill. Specially when coupled with them having the ability to kill you on sight.

Agreed. This follows getting people to not kill "good" goblins. In Daggerfall, if you blew off the first quest, you were pretty much screwed--you couldn''t go on in the game. So if you kill an NPC you''re not supposed to kill, either make it largely impossible for the gamer to continue, or make him undertake some quest to either find out the information or find some ancient restoration magic. Maybe one that might not even work. A game like that might drive a player up a wall, but if you introduce the concept through side quests, (s)he''s been forewarned and should have learned better than to randomly slay innocents.

quote:
original post by hase
why is it that in a postnuclear world where everyone is fighting just to stay alive (supposedly) there are TONS of weapons and ammo lying around.... werent they supposed to be used up after 60 years?
Or maybe i just don´t know america... where everybody has his own armory with enough ammo to wipe out the entire state....

This is also a problem--nay, especially a problem with FPS games. I didn''t play Half-Life, which might not have had this problem, but what about Quake, Q2, Unreal, and all those other games with their single-player modes? Ammo litters the halls...this discussion has mostly been about RPGs but I think every genre has conventions which need dealt with.

quote:Wouldnt it be more efficcient to hack the door to pieces instead of searching the whole dungeon for a key?

two words: ultima underworld. Sure, you could damage your weapon in in the process, but you could hack down most doors. In fact, that''s what I did.

quote:
original post by ahw
My own little ones :
"I''ll take this enchanted weapon, oh and that magical armor, oh and that dagger too!, just in case, now, what''s left ? Yeah, you get the club, the leather jacket and no shield. No, you can''t get mine."
Ah, the party inventory system... I am the hero, and you get the leftovers. No complaints, no haggling between the people, "No, YOU carry the corpse !"
I KNOW it''s for the good of the interface, but it would be so much more fun...
"No, you can''t carry the money !"
"Pleeeeeeeeease, I know I am the thief, but you know you can trust me"

EA''s Bard''s Tale games and the AD&D Gold Box games did this, as I recall, to some extent. Of course, you were controlling all the characters, so you could dole it out. NPCs took ''their fair share'' before you even got to look at the treasure.

quote:
original post by Rudan
"Now that I have killed 437 goblins, I can take twice as much damage as I could 3 days ago!"

I hate when your gain hitpoints for gaining levels. Why the hell would you be able to take more damage just because you have solved a few quests or killed a few goblins or whatever...

Not on this thread, but we''d talked about this before, where hitpoints are a constant based on your stats. Naturally, this means NPCs and creatures must be affected by the same "HP Formula," which means it is *technically* possible for a level 2 character to kill a dragon, given that he can acquire strong enough armor and weaponry. That is a different argument in itself...

What the hell? I was just here a minute ago...where''d that monster come from?

I remember this from Secret of Mana...still one of my favorite games, even if it was for that old, forgotten console known as the SNES. You could walk through an area and cleanse it, then turn around and see something that wasn''t there. Not even close, not even the slightest bit related to the last creatures there. Certainly, this aided levelling--wander two feet away and turn around, and there''s something new to kill!--but it promotes the kill ''em all mindset that needs altered.