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[Reasonableman]

Now now, before you go off on a rant saying how this topic should be in the Suggestion sub-forum, keep in mind that this is the best RPG ever, not necessarily ideas for improving the existing adventure mode. So, it doesn't have anything to do with DWAAARF FORTRESS really, except that some ideas could cross over in either direction. I just kinda wanted to see what you guys and gals would like to see in a strictly role-playing game. What I do NOT want to see is something like "D&D is the best RPG evar" (and I'm not saying it isn't) but
instead try to point out what about D&D is interesting to you. Also, I want this to be a single player videogame RPG, so while multiplayer is certainly a possible idea, MMO's are right out, along with pen-and-paper (sorry everyone, sorry.)
With that I begin spewing creativity.

1)First of all, I think that immersion is one of the most important elements of a good RPG. Otherwise you feel like you're playing a game and it's easy to start acting that way rather than truly role-playing.
2)To that end, I think that a first-person perspective is rather important. Elder Scrolls, Ultima Underworld anyone?
3)Also important is a text-based speech system: while voices certainly add to the immersion factor, the inevitable bad acting and repetitiveness incurred by it isn't worth it.
4)On that note, music should only be used if it is both appropriate to the time period and the situation you find yourself in. No rap in the 14th century while you mourn your dead grandmother for me, thanks.
5)Graphics don't have to be very good at all, but they must stay the same quality level throughout.
6)Physics and such are always immersive, but not if they're glitchy or laggy.
7)Weather, and especially the sound that accompanies it, are always a plus.
8)Ambient noise is also good, so long as it has a visible source that makes sense. I don't like dripping noises in caves when there isn't water anywhere, and I hate bird noises when I've never seen a bird.
9)Things that tie the game to real life, IE the progression of time, hunger, sleepiness, etc. are all quite keen, so long as they are realistically handled. No instant death from sleeplessness or hunger, no two-minute days, and for cheesecake's sakes don't make a grape and a loaf of bread have the same nutritional value.
10)All levels and such should be handled 'behind the scenes' so to speak. I don't like quantifying how skilled my adventurer is with a sword. Instead, a meditative interface could be used. When settling down to camp or rest you could meditate on your skills and such, entering a dreamlike trance wherein you examine your character from the inside out, perhaps in an environment determined by your character's nature. Your most basic information (name, date of birth, etc.) could be gleaned from a government issued ID ala Morrowind's tutorial scene. Also, perhaps leveling up and one's experiences could be examined from within a dream sequence while your character sleeps.
11)For once, an inventory should not be invisible and intangible. If you have a bag of holding, fine, but it should be displayed on your character's belt or something. If you just have a sash around your waist and some pockets in your vest, the inventory menu should take the form of a physics enabled set of pockets and pouches. Either that or you have a pack mule that follows you endlessly. Way to go Alone in the Dark!
12)Spells are almost always imbalanced in some way or another in RPGs. I think one decent solution is to make spells require either timed gestures, spell components, reading from spellbooks, runes, or any other combination of these and other ideas, so that they aren't just super-powerful insta-nukes.
13)No instant travel between areas. You walk there, you ride there, you spend a month on board a ship. Whatever. But you do it IN REAL TIME, or the time system the game uses, be it 1/24 scale or whatever. If you can't make the ship ride interesting there aren't enough pirates and storms.
14)Your skills, visible or invisible, should have affects on EVERYTHING you do. Strength shouldn't determine damage alone, but also how well you can intimidate people, carry things, throw, hammer, lift, climb, and so on.
15)If you can't get something to look at least mostly believable, don't do it at all. I'm looking at you, Oblivion's NPC conversation system.
16)Let the player mix and match bits of armor, weapons, toasters, and allow him to strap them to his character in whatever manner seems even remotely possible, using a system kinda like the Spore creature creator, but with a requirement that you have enough binding agent.
17)In combat, don't use arbitrary numbers to determine whether or not I die. Use precisely location-based hit detection and effects that are also dependent on the type of weapon used. When someone punches me in the solid steel chest plate and I die, I feel veeeeery silly.
18)This kinda goes without saying, but give the player as many choices as possible in every situation. I want the option to choose between a 32" sword and a 34" sword, dammit!

You peoples continue from here, I'ma getting tired. Feel free to disagree with any of my points, but please explain why.

EDIT: Ooops, misspelled please and the spellchecker didn't get it on account of pleas being the plural form of plea.
MORE EDIT: Formatitization.

[ June 13, 2008: Message edited by: Reasonableman ]

[Duke 2.0]

Most of those things are in Morrowind. That game is the love.

I literally mourned the day my X-box died and I could no longer play. Sure tombs were repetative, but I liked discovering all of them in the world!

What I want is a type of mix between Morrowind and Oblivion. Take the things we loved about Morrowind, take the mechanics of Oblivion that fixed the bad things about Morrowind, add a few extra things that could be helpful(Like matching whatever piece of armor I want), mix all those together in a secrect project that only has minimal advertisements before launch...

Mmmm, Gamegasm...

[Asheron]

Last time I checked, I had a character who had 400 hours of game time in Morrowind.
Now THAT'S a game you can keep playing. (Unlike others, cough Oblivion cough.)
Actually, I think every RPG should have atleast a bit of randomnisation to keep you playing. If every game you play is exactly the same copy of the previous one, it gets boring rather quickly.
I just hope Bethesda can pull off the fifth TES. If they make a game with Morrowind game value and Oblivion graphics, I just MIGHT think of becoming a fanboy.

But is it me, or has the amount of RPG-related threads gone up since I've started the RP forum game? ^^

[ June 14, 2008: Message edited by: Asheron ]

[DreaDFanG]

RP on the forum hasnt gone up much, it has although lost some momentum.

As well morrowind used a much nicer random creature generator than oblivion.

Any good RPG has to have a very friendly Random Monster Generator.

[Reasonableman]

As much as I hate to turn the focus even more towards TES, Oblivion has a rather nice mod, I believe called Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul that takes care of monster randomization, loot balancing, and adds a bunch of new weapons, armor and suchnot. Isn't very stable though.

[Asheron]

I downloaded that mod. I haven't noticed any unstability.
Ah, and something else a good rpg needs; a lot more powerful monsters right from the start. Really, it was that what made Morrowind and to take for example, X-COM ( I know it isn't a real RPG, but it has parameters,   ), so good. If you attacked a guard, you were dead. Aliens were supreme to your soldiers, so you always had to be alert. If you can just wipe out yet another town right from the start, there really is no fun in the game. It helps feeling you part of whatever world you are playing.

[Keiseth]

^Yes! Asheron said it perfectly! That's what I loved about X-COM so much. Aliens *murdered* you effortlessly, laughing as they fired blaster-bombs through your base.

It made it so much more satisfying when you managed to kill or capture a few, research their weaponry and- oh! Hey! You dropped your blaster bomb; want it back?

RPGs need more murderous monsters. Nothing upsets me more than fighting sixteen breeds of Goblins in an hour. The perfect RPG would have something like the Terrasque from D&D, something huge and damn-near unstoppable that inspires fear in any other creature. Maybe some enemies could take a page from Half-Life - those things that hung to the ceiling and waited for somebody to run into them spring to mind. Something other than the "run up and kill you" intelligence that almost every enemy has.

I think of the carp in DF- something that tries to drag you into the water. Something that flies, grabs and tries to drop or throw you into a cliff. Morrowind could have used some enemies like this. Something that just attacks in a different way (besides "melee" and "ranged"!)

[Torak]

You should be able to take anything from anyone, dead or alive.

That counts armor, and, if there will be crafting, raw materials. If I want my pointy stick to have an eyeball on the end of it, who says I can't take that dead guy's eye?

[a1s]

one of the things I disagree with is the travel time thing (#13). This lead to either very small areas of where the game can be set or trips stupidly (and annoyingly after you've done this 100 times) filled with random encounters. Or, obviously, it could be equally stupidly boring as you go from point A to point B for half an hour without any events. that is not fun! and while you walk you could at least expect some scenery, and turns in the road, and plats to gather, or whatever. Boats would deprive you of even that: imagine sitting for 10 minutes in front of a screen waiting to arrive, then becoming bored, going to get lunch and coming back to find out that while you were away a pirate killed you!

I disagree with 3rd person being unimmersible, but I guess 1st person is more immersive on average...

and what does #10 mean anyway? how is fining out your stats during meditation non-quantifying?

about spells, if you look into the D&D books (since you mentioned it), you will find why spells are so powerful- they cost mad monies!
you fist have to buy and then carry round with you all the components for you spells. So it turns out that the usual Rocket-Artielry-In-A-Can mage, actually has maintainance cost of a Rocket-Artiley piece. Games (and some GMs) neglect this, making late game mages overpowered.

I don't think there's a need for a choice between a 100 cm sword and a 102 cm sword with an eye on the end, or at least that should have a very low priority.

[Reasonableman]

As far as number 13 is concerned, I kindof agree with you. Perhaps, instead of one, long, drawn out travel sequence with the player in full control, a sort of time-lapsed rail shooter sequence could ensue. I just hate the way Oblivion lets you bypass all the countryside, it really makes it feel a lot more like a series of disjointed levels as opposed to a single, cohesive world.

What I mean by #10 is I hate how numbers are attached to everything. I think that at the very least level-ups should be slightly randomized, so that you can't measure the number of wombats you have to milk before your farming level increases. Similarly, you won't have to be level 17.3124 to use a certain skill; depending on how complicated it is, you might be able to use a toned down version a few levels earlier. In any case, levels should be measured in a continual and unbroken scale, so as to prevent the immersion-breaking DOO DOO DOO DOOOOOO that pops up every ten minutes.
And yeah, your last point has merit. Still, whenever possible choices add to the experience, however small they may seem. A Spore-like morphing system for all items during creation would be keen.

[qwertyuiopas]

If no stat numbers were used except when you die or use some spell to get specific details, instead using something closer to Dwarf Fortress' naming of skill levels and such, with general messages not always displayed and with a bit variance if they increase.

[a1s]

speaking of not being level 17.2, I think that an immersive RPG should do away with the levels entirely, and possibly classes too (classes are an inheritance from wargaming and should have no place in modern RPGs, no matter what WotC says)

[Duke 2.0]

speaking of not being level 17.2, I think that an immersive RPG should do away with the levels entirely, and possibly classes too (classes are an inheritance from wargaming and should have no place in modern RPGs, no matter what WotC says)

 Perhaps just skills. And stats only being gained from training specific skills. You lift weight well? STR increases. Studied a spell? The relevant stats increase.

 Perhaps there could be classes, in the sense of a professon. Some skills are easier to larn. You can learn everything, but somebody who read books their whole life would take longer to learn to take a blow than somebody in the arena their whole life. Doesn't mea he can't possibly larn it.

 Imagine a maceman who practices throwing thunderbolts. It would take a good deal of effort, but he can do whatever a mage can do. He just needs to work for it. Perhaps harder than a fully-trained mage.

[a1s]

have you ever seen a fully trained mage in RPGs? 
I agree that learing how to throw thunderbolts should be harder for a maceman, but only because of his lower intelligence and heavier armor, not because he was born to be maceman.

[Devath]

Anyone ever play Dungeon Siege 2? The class/skill system in that game is a bit limited, but it roughly encompasses the concept that is being looked at. Class is an approximate value determined by the skills you have, obviously. Therefore, what needs to be discussed is levels in skills. To bring this back to dwarf fortress, if you look at the system DF uses for skills, it makes loads of sense, yes? DF makes skills require use of that skill to level that skill. In all honesty, what we are discussing is DF in 1st person 3D with more item selection. With some tweaking of concepts, of course. But that was assumed by the vague references we were using, yes? I think I make my point here.

Interestingly enough, this is the concept that the RP thread I started was based around, only we focused a lot more on originality, since the original development was on paper. In any case, I should stop trying to divert attention to my thread and get back to the main point.

As for the quantification of skill levels, unfortunately, if the game is to be balanced, the skills must be quantified somehow. However, the fact is that the game doesn't actually have to tell you that you are gaining skill points. Looking at it that way, it's pretty obvious that there must be a nearly infinite number of skill levels in each skill. They would have to run on the increasing EXP system, but there would also have to be ways around that. For example, learning leatherworking from a master leatherworker would get the training done a lot faster than doing it from scratch, right? You see what I mean.

Honestly, if we are all this interested in making outlines, it is only a minor step further to begin actual development. The real thing is that threads like this one, if populated by lazy people, die dramatically fast. If populated by people who have loads of time on their hands and very little to do, as well as at least minor skills in random computer-related areas, as well as by at least one someone who recognizes and wishes to take advantage of this situation, can start an actual game project.

The reality is that the game does not need funds to be done extremely well. It only needs attention. While Toady chooses to do his project single-handedly, a large number of the games out there were not done this way. Realize this, and decide that making our own project is what we want, and a new game development project begins. There just need to be a few organizational steps taken to make sure that the development doesn't stall, is all.