Quote:if you have a system where there are raw forces around you all the time and while casting you manipulate them and create some sort of effect, then doing that is a spell, and doing it again and again is what spells are there for.

That is correct, but why create situations that require one set of actions to be done over and over ? This is good for action/arcade/h&s games , but i would like to see something different in games that call themselves RPG and allow you to play as a mage.

At the very LEAST, maybe make not a total-custom spell, but a custom macros that would do the same set of actions ? If you really want to do that - you could. If not - you still have your individual actions.

Quote:How about summoning a creature you've already made contact with?

Could be good, but i am, personally, an adept of total randomness in everything. >:D

Quote:You can't just rely on a PC to react a certain way just because a character looks different.

True, but PC doesnt have to react differently. The game social system will take care of that. Suppose that you got beaten out of your home and have to sleep on the street - you havent changed at all, but after a while you will look like a bum and high-class people will avoid you like plague, while various "undesirable" elements of the society will try to befriend of use you.

Quote:If you change it without their explicit permission, then they may react negatively towards the game.

It doesnt matter in the slightest, as long as it doesnt happen every half and hour. Mostly it will depend on the overall game image. What comes to mind are vampiric quests in TES and sides changing in Chrono Cross.

Quote:For example lets assume there is a spell "Lightning Bolt". Normally a mage that knows this spell can cast it at will, but that takes 10 seconds to do. However, the mage can perform a ritual which takes 30 seconds to perform, but then allows them to cast the lighting bolt once for each time the ritual is performed (up to a limit) in only 2 seconds.

This is actually implemented in ADoM. You can cast from spellbooks, which is long and costly but infinite, or you can learn the certain amount of spells from the book, thus degrading it, but cast quickly and cheaply.

Quote:True, but PC doesnt have to react differently. The game social system will take care of that. Suppose that you got beaten out of your home and have to sleep on the street - you havent changed at all, but after a while you will look like a bum and high-class people will avoid you like plague, while various "undesirable" elements of the society will try to befriend of use you.

In the real world yes. However, in a game there exists social bonds that are outside the game. Friends will play online, player will make friends online and so forth. You have no control over these external social bonds. Players (unless they are so delusional that the confuse game world with real world) will no see changes in a friends avatar (even if just cosmetic) as anything but a cosmetic change.

Even if they lots their house and were thrown out on the street, this would not alter the way their friends treated then. In a game world you don't (usually - as far as I have seen) have item degradation as part of the environment. So not having a house will not cause the character's cloths to rip, etc. And, because the player is not online all the time, they will not be present to any of the "Street Life" (if they are on line then they are out adventuring).

Because of these differences between real life and game life, this sort of example does not apply. Just because people behave one what in real life, doe not mean that they will behave in a similar (let alone identical) way.

Quote:It doesnt matter in the slightest, as long as it doesnt happen every half and hour. Mostly it will depend on the overall game image. What comes to mind are vampiric quests in TES and sides changing in Chrono Cross.

Even if it happens once it will make a difference. In the Elder Scrolls the Vamperic quests were a choice the player could make. They knew the outcome of it (or could make a good guess at it) and so when they took it they were making that choice for their character. In effect they chose that change for their character.

If it is woven into the story, or if the player has control over it, then it can be accepted. However, if it is because of a "penalty" applied because of some arbitrary rule, then they will be annoyed. Even in games where it is planed as part of the story, players can be annoyed about it. It takes a great amount of skill in story telling to make such kinds of changes acceptable to players (and even with TES games, players had the option to restart/reload games when something that occurred that changed the character - with an online game you can't do that).

Quote:This is actually implemented in ADoM. You can cast from spellbooks, which is long and costly but infinite, or you can learn the certain amount of spells from the book, thus degrading it, but cast quickly and cheaply.

Yes, I know it is not original :D .

Quote:Original post by Edtharan
However, in a game there exists social bonds that are outside the game. Friends will play online, player will make friends online and so forth.

Thats a fairly big assumption, I think, for an RPG...

Even Neverwinter Nights, which is widely regarded as one of the most multiplayer friendly RPGs apart from MMOs, had only a small percentage of its player base ever play online.

If this particular RPG is intended as single-player, or even both singleplayer and multiplayer, I dont think the difference between a human reaction and an AI reaction should really be much of a consideration. Even in multiplayer, having the AI react in a certain way adds a certain feel... It might be somewhat offset by the players reacting differently, but a 50% success at making the game feel the way he wants is obviously better than not trying it and therefore having 0% success.

Personally, I am all for that sort of attempt at deeper consequences and stronger themes in RPGs. Some of the NWN servers Ive played on have used just that sort of consequence... and it actually works quite well for a roleplaying server (probably not a hack and slash powergaming server, I admit)... rather than showing up the difference between the AI and players, it provides a guide for the players as to how society reacts to certain things - some players even willingly play along with it.


There are arguments for not having this sort of system for certain target audiences, but I personally believe that if making your design inclusive of the wants of the lowest common denominator means that you have to sacrifice what you want to do with the game, then usually its better off keeping your vision and simply accepting that you are designing the game for a specific niche of the market.

Quote:Even Neverwinter Nights, which is widely regarded as one of the most multiplayer friendly RPGs apart from MMOs, had only a small percentage of its player base ever play online.

My post on this was in response to how Player Character (PCs) will react to the appearance of another Player Character. NPCs didn't come into it, so I assumed that the game was an online game we were discussing.

I am currently developing a Online Wolrd for my Pen an Paper gaming group in the Neverwinter Nights engine. In a brief survey of them (I just asked around :D ), they overwhelmingly stated that the character appearance was very important to them and that I should put in system to allows Avatar customization (luckily for me NwN has much of that included).

Quote:If this particular RPG is intended as single-player, or even both singleplayer and multiplayer, I dont think the difference between a human reaction and an AI reaction should really be much of a consideration.

It does if the reaction is supposed to be a balance mechanic for the player character.

This thread of the discussion started in response to what ways we could make the use of magic more risky to the player. Therefore this "fear" response was supposed to be a Negative effect on the character using magic. Therefore it was supposed to be a balance mechanic.

Quote:It might be somewhat offset by the players reacting differently, but a 50% success at making the game feel the way he wants is obviously better than not trying it and therefore having 0% success.

Well if you look at it in this way: Would you rather drive 50% of your players away or have 0% negatively effected by this mechanic? Looking at it in that light it does make a big difference and it is not just that 0% success, that 0% Success is also equivalent to 0% negative effects as well and that 50% success is equivalent to 50% failure as well (Glass half empty/full debate - except we have to consider both viewpoints).

Quote:There are arguments for not having this sort of system for certain target audiences, but I personally believe that if making your design inclusive of the wants of the lowest common denominator means that you have to sacrifice what you want to do with the game, then usually its better off keeping your vision and simply accepting that you are designing the game for a specific niche of the market.

This was not about "the lowest common denominator". It was about not putting in something that only a few people would want and the majority would dislike. It is about designing a game to fit the player market base.

Here is a question: Would you include a trap at the entrance into a treasure room (that it was optional to enter) into your game that cursed the player to always be a constant Blue shade even if they changed cloths?

Players can avoid the trap and not go into the treasure room, but if they what that treasure, then they have to be permanently turned blue.

Is this a good idea to put into a game?

This is even less of an impact than using the character's appearance (influenced by a choice they make) to give them an evil appearance and so have NPCs (and hopefully PCs) react differently to them.

Yet, I think most designers will not include such a trap because they can perceive that it has an alienating effect between the player and their avatar.