abbaon
Daft as a daisy
- Joined
- October 19, 2006
- Messages
- 321
Continuing a discussion from another thread. What broad trends do you see the genre following? I see, and foresee, pretty much every entry in the field placing greater emphasis on these three areas:
Accessibility: Simpler interfaces, stats, controls, conversations, and everything else. Every possible barrier to entry lowered or removed. Why risk a multi-million dollar development budget on a trifle like endless dialogue options?
Player skill: Player action replacing chance in a game's task resolution systems. Stats determine the abilities your character possesses and their effectiveness, but the probability of success depends on you. Turn based is dead, and the to-hit roll is on its last legs.
Simulation: That "living, breathing world". In this area, we've made very little progress -- considerable regress, actually -- since Ultima 7. It's a tough problem: getting cool moments to arise out of the interactions of your simulation requires far greater engineering effort than setting them up in scripting. But I still hold out hope for it, because everyone talks up this aspect of their games. They all go on about their "living, breathing world". Clearly the idea has captured people's imaginations, and it may just take another decade or two before someone can realise it.
And yes, Oblivion exemplifies all three trends. I think that's super, although my ideal RPG is Dhruin's Microsoft Fantasy Simulator. I don't expect many people will agree with me. So: what's the future of the RPG?
Accessibility: Simpler interfaces, stats, controls, conversations, and everything else. Every possible barrier to entry lowered or removed. Why risk a multi-million dollar development budget on a trifle like endless dialogue options?
Player skill: Player action replacing chance in a game's task resolution systems. Stats determine the abilities your character possesses and their effectiveness, but the probability of success depends on you. Turn based is dead, and the to-hit roll is on its last legs.
Simulation: That "living, breathing world". In this area, we've made very little progress -- considerable regress, actually -- since Ultima 7. It's a tough problem: getting cool moments to arise out of the interactions of your simulation requires far greater engineering effort than setting them up in scripting. But I still hold out hope for it, because everyone talks up this aspect of their games. They all go on about their "living, breathing world". Clearly the idea has captured people's imaginations, and it may just take another decade or two before someone can realise it.
And yes, Oblivion exemplifies all three trends. I think that's super, although my ideal RPG is Dhruin's Microsoft Fantasy Simulator. I don't expect many people will agree with me. So: what's the future of the RPG?
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 321