A new golden age for RPGs?

[Xilren's Twin]

Different player skillsets are used (button timing vs Min/Maxing) but still an RPG.

Yes

Right; player skill based on button timing = twitch.  

Not my cuppa tea b/c the more twich you get, the less rpg it seems.  Too much can lead to "naked guy with dagger beats plate armored guy with sword and shield", aka Fantasy Quake which renders any sort of character development meaningless.

To each there own.

Xilren

[geldonyetich]

Too much influence of luck on the game mechanic can get kinda irritating, so I can see where a preference of twitch comes in.   If not twitch, then the other form of player interaction, providing the player with lots of strategic options.

Where I probably went wrong in BG2 is I played a Wizard.   Saving throws can make or break the game when you're relying on spells to get things done.

[sidereal]

I don't think the problem is so much random hit/miss outcomes as it is the rendering of it.  I'm guessing most people would be comfortable with letting character skill determine individual hit results, as long as it made sense visually.  When your characters does the exact same swing animation to the exact same hit location over and over, and some miss and some don't, that's kind of irritating.  If the misses are rendered as the target blocking or dodging out of the way, that tends to go over better.

[Sky]

When your characters does the exact same swing animation to the exact same hit location over and over, and some miss and some don't, that's kind of irritating. If the misses are rendered as the target blocking or dodging out of the way, that tends to go over better.

Excellent point.

[rscott]

I don't think the problem is so much random hit/miss outcomes as it is the rendering of it.  I'm guessing most people would be comfortable with letting character skill determine individual hit results, as long as it made sense visually.  When your characters does the exact same swing animation to the exact same hit location over and over, and some miss and some don't, that's kind of irritating.  If the misses are rendered as the target blocking or dodging out of the way, that tends to go over better.

Personally, i wanted the animations to somehow reflect why the attack did/didn't succeed.  Did they fail their attack skill?  Did it bounce off of my armour?  Did I block?  Did i dodge?  Ideally i would want a seperate animation/sound effect for each case.  

For example, in COH there are several powers that help in defense. But it might not be clear which was the reason i didn't get hit.  If i have acrobatics, i'd like to see my character do a cartwheel out of the way.  If I had hover, id like to see my character do a barrell roll.  If it was smoke, i'd like to see the smoke get real thick for a second.

[Riggswolfe]

I don't think the problem is so much random hit/miss outcomes as it is the rendering of it.  I'm guessing most people would be comfortable with letting character skill determine individual hit results, as long as it made sense visually.  When your characters does the exact same swing animation to the exact same hit location over and over, and some miss and some don't, that's kind of irritating.  If the misses are rendered as the target blocking or dodging out of the way, that tends to go over better.

KoTR was generally pretty good about this. If you missed alot of the times the enemy would block with their weapon or duck or something similiar.

[Riggswolfe]

Different player skillsets are used (button timing vs Min/Maxing) but still an RPG.

Yes

Ok. I understand. My big problem with games that lean more towards player skill is twofold:

1) It feels like the character development is somewhat undermined.
2) I've yet to see an action RPG (which is the genre I typically lump these into, anything from Zelda to Morrowind fits into here in varying degrees) where you had a party. And I enjoy the more tactical feel of a party, as well as NPC interaction if done right. (see KoTR or BG 1&2 for examples.)

[sinij]

Ok. I understand. My big problem with games that lean more towards player skill is twofold...

I might be in minority here but player skill is not what breaks immersion for me. If I can beat fully plated guy wearing nothing but briefs and using rusty butter knife it is because I'm Baalspaw/jedi/avatar/whatnot and guy I did it to is just canned NPC JoeShmoe.

Still I don't enjoy console RPGs even that I don't  mind twitch factor in RPGs. For me playing with console controllers is like trying to play FPS by using chopsticks to move mouse and press keys.

[sidereal]

Personally, i wanted the animations to somehow reflect why the attack did/didn't succeed.  Did they fail their attack skill?  Did it bounce off of my armour?  Did I block?  Did i dodge?  Ideally i would want a seperate animation/sound effect for each case.

Good times, good times.
To delve into uber-geekdom for a moment, my PnP roleplaying group actually did this for a while.  We'd stack the AC bonuses in a particular order, so you can see which effect contributed to the miss.  If the hit would miss an AC10, it was just a complete miss. . sword hit the wall.  If the armor was the factor, it bounced off a breastplate.  If shield, ..  If dex, .. If magical ring, .. etc.  Made for much more interesting combat narrative, but was pretty tedious.  Computers are ideal for handling this.

[rscott]

There are some very early pnp systems that had this build into the gules.  So no special fiddling was needed.  Its a shame that computer rpgs still lag behind in this regard.

[Riggswolfe]

There are some very early pnp systems that had this build into the gules.  So no special fiddling was needed.  Its a shame that computer rpgs still lag behind in this regard.

This makes me want to write a text-based RPG that does take this stuff into account. Maybe a simple gladiatorial game based on the d20 ruleset to make it easier.

[Megrim]

Personally, i wanted the animations to somehow reflect why the attack did/didn't succeed.  Did they fail their attack skill?  Did it bounce off of my armour?  Did I block?  Did i dodge?  Ideally i would want a seperate animation/sound effect for each case.

Good times, good times.
To delve into uber-geekdom for a moment, my PnP roleplaying group actually did this for a while.  We'd stack the AC bonuses in a particular order, so you can see which effect contributed to the miss.  If the hit would miss an AC10, it was just a complete miss. . sword hit the wall.  If the armor was the factor, it bounced off a breastplate.  If shield, ..  If dex, .. If magical ring, .. etc.  Made for much more interesting combat narrative, but was pretty tedious.  Computers are ideal for handling this.

Yup, that sounds about right.
Whenever i'm DM'ing a game with my group, my combat narrative always includes this kind of stuff. It's also a great way of hinting to the players if they are doing something wrong (i.e. blunt weapons vs zombies).

 - Meg

[rscott]

This makes me want to write a text-based RPG that does take this stuff into account. Maybe a simple gladiatorial game based on the d20 ruleset to make it easier.

I had actually done something like that a while back.  The difficulty was putting together interesting text so that the fight flowed.

[Riggswolfe]

This makes me want to write a text-based RPG that does take this stuff into account. Maybe a simple gladiatorial game based on the d20 ruleset to make it easier.

I had actually done something like that a while back.  The difficulty was putting together interesting text so that the fight flowed.

Well what I was thinking about was the conversation of taking things like armor, dexterity, etc into account and breaking it up that way. So then you wouldn't have to worry about the flavorful text. If say you hit a 15. The computer runs that against the opponents armor class and determines that you hit in the range covered by their chainmail. So it'd output something like "Your blade skitters over the chain mail without penetrating." Make like say, 4 or 5 random results like that for each armor type, for dexterity, for shields, and you'd have a decent variety.

[rscott]

Thats what i did, but there was still the question of making it work from one round to the next.  I was shooting for text of this sort of flavour...

http://www.bit-net.com/~johnh/dm/examples/beast.txt

[Riggswolfe]

That's that gladiator game I played in the early 90s! Is it still running somewhere?

[rscott]

My brother played it as well.  Its called Duelmasters as i'm sure you know.  

Check it out at

http://www.reality.com/duel2

[Riggswolfe]

That's it!! I loved that game but totally lost track of it after that con. Of course, back then I didn't have much in the way of internet access (1200 baud modem, BBSs were about as much as I could get).

I still fondly remember my gladiator who I named Not Bad. He dual wielded morning stars. Made it to the final round of the con tourney when a wound he'd recieved in his very first fight ever reopened and he bled to death after nearly killing his opponent. *sigh* I may have to check this out.

[sidereal]

OMFG that rules.

Computer graphics were such a mistake

[Alkiera]

Still I don't enjoy console RPGs even that I don't  mind twitch factor in RPGs. For me playing with console controllers is like trying to play FPS by using chopsticks to move mouse and press keys.

Speaking of playing an FPS with chopsticks... have you read PA's discussion of the Nintendo DS?  FPS, played with stylus and trigger buttons. (Well, that's one of the options anyway.  Stylus input works alot like mouselook, apparently.)

Alkiera