The big RPG problem.

Dist said:
So if you say you played it the same as i did and just took it easy while playing. Whats the problem? I would say 40 hours to max level is a decent ammount. Most games these days usualy have no more then 24 hours of content.
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Well i'm guessing i couldn't have been exactly like you then, since it didn't take me long at all to reach max level. After finishing the wasteland survival guide and some random locations (barns, bandit camps etc) i was already level 14.

The leveling as already stated by a lot of people on this forum in other threads and all over the internet is far to short.
 
Teki187 said:
Well i'm guessing i couldn't have been exactly like you then, since it didn't take me long at all to reach max level. After finishing the wasteland survival guide and some random locations (barns, bandit camps etc) i was already level 14.

The leveling as already stated by a lot of people on this forum in other threads and all over the internet is far to short.
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I think if they made leveling any longer, there would be less incentive to create new characters as it would mean more effort to get the higher end perks.

If you want leveling to last longer, simply make a quick mod to reduce the ammount of exp you get. If you want more levels, make a mod to do that. Personaly i think the developers have got it just right. I admit the leveling system may not be perfect for those who want to spend hundreds of hours on a single character and want to gain so many levels and perks that they want to be a god in the game. But IMO it adds to the replay value, and is also easier going on the players who dont want to have to spend hundreds of hours on a single character just to get the best out of him.

Anyway, can we please just leave Fallout 3 at that. Great game, just a difference opinions on the leveling system.
 
Umm, being a hardcore gamer isn't necessarliy defined by how many hours you play games for. My mother-in-law used to play Tetris 6-8 hrs a day once, and she wouldn't really know about a video game even if it jumped out and bit her :p Just that she got addicted to Tetris for a while, lol. Thank goodness nobody in the family introduced her to WoW...

Point being, there's a blurry line between what's considered hardcore what in actual fact is just plain old addiction ;)
 
Sweetloaf said:
Not a mention of Morrowind yet? (unless I missed it).

That game hit the nail on the head for me, unsupassed to this day for it's atmosphere and levelling system.
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I think 'unsurpassed for its levelling system' is a bit, uh, overenthusiastic? Like Dist said, my abiding memory of Morrowind is spending god knows how long jumping on the spot or weighting the keyboard down so that my character was running against a wall and then going and doing something else for an hour or so. There's also the other thing someone else mentioned in that mobs level with you rendering the primary motivation to level up null and void. I'm not trying to do Morrowind down in general, it was a beautifully realised and alive gameworld with involving NPCs and a fantastic amount of content, but the character progression system could have done with some tweaking, it really could.
 
Antar Bolaeisk said:
I think Oblivions major problem was that it was empty. The surrounding countryside felt like more of a wasteland the the Capitol Wasteland in Fallout 3 ever did.
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Heh, I thought Oblivion's biggest problem was that it was so overcrowded- you couldn't walk 10 feet without finding a goblin infested cave or a ship full of undead or similiar. Remember the invisible village? Right beside it, like 20 seconds away, was a gigantic cave full of either goblins or undead. Yet they never mentioned it.

A lot of people are complaining about the shortness of the core stories. If you choose to only play the core story and ignore the majority of content, then frankly too bad. It's like playing CIV once and then saying "I've completed it, no point playing it again". Just because the games don't force you to see every single detail doesn't mean it's not there, you only diminish your own experience by missing it.
 
oblivion and Fallout combat system is horrible, other than that annoying fact they are good. But I much prefer the story and characters from Mass Effect. Hoping for Kotor III sooner than later ;), looking good so far. In the meantime will have Diablo III to keep me busy.

wondering wether Fable 2 is worth it while I wait, just something that annoys me about a kid and a dog?
 
Teki187 said:
So I've been playing a lot of RPGS recently, there my favourite genre and I'm passionate about it.

Anyway, I'm currently working my way through the witcher enhanced and it hit me, why are RPGS always always missing the mark.

Take oblivion for example, alright graphics, free open world and good first person combat style. It was only let down by bad programing, bad leveling and bad story.

Lets now take its follow up, Fallout 3, that improved graphics, AI and the questing system but it still lacked horribly in the leveling, the quests and shortness of the main story.

So lets look back and see what did things right.

Well Baulders gate is a good start. Great long story, great graphics for the time, lots of characters and a leveling system that worked. This was only really hindered by what i feel is a "difficult" to understand D&D rule set.

So what has gone wrong? Why are we left with the "left over" bits of the RPG genre? Why do so many RPG games have such great potential for them to be squashed? What is the major failing point of them?
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A fantastic RPG is Morrowind, all's they had to do is update the graphic's, add lot's of new content and you have a winner, company's are trying to many radicle changes in RPG's that just dont work.
Go back, look at what we had that everyone loved, just tweak and update.
Adding things like every NPC in the world that you most likely will never see. eat's, pee's and sleep's, its a total waste of development time.
 
I can't decide, theres many good things about Fallout 3 and lots of bad. Personally, I hate VATS completely, but early in the game with very little ammo and dodgey "cone aiming" with normal fire so you can really hit where you aim its fairly unavoidable if playing on a higher difficulty.

But in general you don't know you shouldn't really stick with the main story line, i did what I thought was a lot of side stuff and still finished far to quickly. THe main story did need to be much longer and drag you around a LOT more of the side content.

I personally hate the addon's you get for things like oblivion. To much time spent making it moddable, then when you come in later on to play the game, you ask someone what you should install to make the game better and everyone tells you a completely different combination of things to install. YOu end up having no idea why its better, or worse, what you're making better, what you've screwed up, etc, etc, etc. I generally felt lost with Oblivion because so many people slated the standard version, and there was simple to many options to add into the game. I don't want to play through a long RPG 10 times to find the perfect way to play.

A game made by the designers thats finished, and made themselves with a story that incorparates most of the content is really the way to make a decent RPG, and you don't seem to get that any more.

FAllout 3 has probably been the exception of the RPG's in the past few years, I think both KOTOR's and Mass Effect were brilliant, with the later a little shallow and light on content, with too much of the side quest stuff, utterly irrelevant and generic but the best main story in a game in years.

I think maybe those 4 titles have maybe been the best for me as far to many are based in the "fantasy" world, and they all have orcs, and elves, and goblins and dragons in. The storys always end up being so similar and completely not original. The fact theirs 10 new big rpg's a year and 9 of them are fantasty elf/goblin type storys with the same sides being writen the same(when will we see one with elf's, man and dwarves being evil and the goblins and orc's good guys), is always going to mean overcrowded market of unoriginal crap.


I think what would help massively, would be a big break from the fantasy setting for a few years. Give everyone a chance to get over the concept, all try their hands at sci-fi and in 5 years when they go and start a new one they'll hopefully have a fresh take and not just churn out the same thing over and over.


Oh, I forgot, Fable 2 is pretty smegging good but is pretty heavily limited, not much in the way of character customisation and no armour's, limited range of weapons and so on, but made great by a really good story and characters.
 
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One thing the developers need to do is all of them get together and decide one thing, dont make anymore for a good few years, this would make for a very huge polished product in the end.
Take Oblivion for example, personally i love it along with Morrowind, couldnt live without them :p but one thing they did with Morrowind that they didnt do with Oblivion was, longevity.
You can complete Oblivion in roughly 30 hours of gameplay, Morrowind on the other hand is anywhere from 100-400 hours depending if you do all quests and explore everwhere and Morrowind is HUGE compared to Oblivion, i know oblivion has better graphics but they really arent THAT much better so why Oblvion is so short i will never know.
If modern RPG's are going to be loved by players all round they need to make them have a lot more longevity.
 
It seems to me that the OP isn't really comparing like to like, except in the broadest possible definition of "RPG". Bethesda always refer to Oblivion as an adventure game, never as an RPG, and IIRC it's the same for Morrowind. These games have a totally different play style to traditional hardcore RPGs like Baldurs Gate. But I for one prefer them, because at least in Bethesda's worlds you can get stuff done. I've tried pretty much every one of so-called "classic" RPGs and think they suffer the same problem: too slow, too dull. They are slogs, and long-winded ones at that.

But that's just a matter of which type of play you prefer, and I prefer the adventure end of RPG. Or even the "kill everything that moves" end like Diablo2.


M
 
I'm not sure what you thought was difficult about the Baldur's Gate DnD system. It remains, however, the greatest RPG series to date (along with Planescape: Torment and to a lesser extent, Icewind Dale).

Titan Quest is keeping me amused for now, though.
 
For me nothing compares to the old school Squaresoft games.

FF7 was probably the best RPG I have ever played and in all honesty nothing came close except possibly WoW. Although two different things really.
 
I've never come across something like Fallout 3, in that it's one of the best games I've ever played, and at the same time I won't be touching it again until one HORRENDOUS thing is fixed.

What spoils it COMPLETELY for me is that whatever I'm doing on side-quests and exploring, I'm worried sick that without knowing it, I might be mucking up the main story line when performing some action that's actually meant to be done later.

I honestly hope this gets patched, it makes FA3 completely unplayable to me.
Where's the immersion in a game when this thought is always pulling me back to the fact that I'm not in the game but sitting in front of a PC, biting my nails for all the wrong reasons!
 
A lot of people seem to like Baldurs gate 2, and similar games, but for some reason i can never get into those sort of games. I find having to develop and controll a whole group of characters instead of just focusing on a single main character means that i no longer feel attached to the characters i am playing.

I have Icewind dale somewhere, and last time i played it i tried to play it with a single character to see if that would work and in the end i just found it too hard, and then when i tried to add more characters it took the interest and time away from that main character that i had.
 
If you like good storyline RPGs that aren't hindered by flash graphics you have to go back to the Eye of the Beholder series. Especially 1+2.

Fantastic games I often go back and play them.
 
Diablo 1, had awsome replay value. Every game had random maps, random mobs, random shop items ect. Same basic story but beause of all the random elements you could keep playing it again and again.
 
krooton said:
I found Diablo tedious and boring, just a big grind-fest, paving the way for WoW
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If there were more than 3 of you it was awesome, just mass carnage. Harder monsters with each added player. Was it diablo 2 that had upto 8 players at once?
 
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