Monsters in RPGs

I've lately downloaded and begun playing a new roguelike, Doom RL. Now, it has few characteristics of RPGs; it really is more of an action game, faithful to the spirit of the original Doom. However, I have noticed some features that I find particularly noteworthy and from which RPGs might perhaps benefit.

Am I the only one to have noticed that in many RPGs, monsters, despite their diversity and great monsters, are completely irrelevant to gameplay? Most are easily defeated and seem to serve as fodder for increasing one's skills. Few have interesting attacks or weaknessess. NetHack, for instance, despite its amazing variety of creatures, had few monsters worth remembering, such as the nymphs, precisely because they agressed the player in an original and meaningful way: losing that precious armour and potion of healing is more intimidating than losing a few HPs. Well, Doom RL has few sorts of monsters, but even the lowliest are dangerous to the player. Even a former soldier can make one lose half one's health if one is not careful. Furthermore, each has a unique attack. This encourages the player to be cautious, duck behind walls, try to find which weapon works best for each monster, etc. I would love to see an RPG with fewer enemies, each individually presenting a threat to the player. One of the reasons why I love Betrayal at Krondor is that most adversaries are human: possessing (more or the less) the same strengths and weaknesses as the party, they make more formidable foes.

Another nice feature in Doom RL is having to use healing kits to heal oneself (Yes, this is also the case with most action games). Resting does not help. Wouldn't RPGs be tenser, as is Doom RL itself, if medicine and food were the only ways to heal, and sleep served only to regenerate, say, fatigue?

Hopefully, I won't be deemed a blasphemer for daring to suggest that features present in action games might be worthy of being introduced in RPGs. Do discuss.

Certainly, in Oblivion for instance everything is scaled so monster types don't really matter at all. There are a few exceptions of course, like the mountain lion which is fairly tough, but other than that I never even notice what I'm killing; there's no need to actually pay attention.

I find that older games had more variety, in Baldur's Gate 2 you have to really pay attention to who you are facing because of various resistances and tactics on different monsters. This is something about the more tactical combat in older RPGs that I miss(hopefully NWN2 will have something similar).

I agree, Most recent rpg monsters are totally derivative,generic & forgettable(zombies, anyone?), serving only as experience fodder.
The idea that combat should be strategic and tactical seems to be old school. Even in the original Diablo which can only be called an rpg by stretching the term like spandex, the monsters were more truly real, threatening, dangerous and memorable than they are in say, Morrowind.(Haven't played Oblivion)
I think rpgs could defintely benefit from the concepts Aides describes in his roguelike.

Personally, I almost hate the concept featured in many RPGS that monsters are only standing still in dungeongs with no other purpose in theitr whole life than being slaughtered and give experience points. Cannon-fodder, nothing else.

My personal dream of an RPG is a world that lives and breathes, and in that even the tumbest monster has kind of a life circle. It should go out for food, actually live somewhere, and have a purpose. A *real* purpose, why it stays in a duingeon and protects treasures an adventurer would also like to have, for example.

If an adventurer kills a "monster" that protects a chest, then the adventurer should actually / really get to know the reason why the monster was there. Maybe it was the last one of a long, long generation line of summoned protectors of a crown of a king or queen who had died a millennium ago.

I wonder why they never seem to attack each other, but always attack me!!

They are programmed to be brainless and aimless...

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Personally, I almost hate the concept featured in many RPGS that monsters are only standing still in dungeongs with no other purpose in theitr whole life than being slaughtered and give experience points. Cannon-fodder, nothing else.

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Exactly!!! And why is it that they drop money and things and stuff... WTF???
I can understand that you could salvage some raw materials out of it for whatever purpose. But not the dropping of money and a wooden club. That's one of the most retarded things I've always depised about today's RPG's...
You can most objectively confirm with the DragonWarrior series...
Yes, pick up the healing herbs, yes yes?! :lol:

Alrik Fassbauer said:

If an adventurer kills a "monster" that protects a chest, then the adventurer should actually / really get to know the reason why the monster was there. Maybe it was the last one of a long, long generation line of summoned protectors of a crown of a king or queen who had died a millennium ago.

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That would've indeed been a great idea for a level raising quest. I can even hear the FF theme of when you defeat your foes right now and how many xp i'm getting for defeating it!
We're missing on such enticing events in today's games.

I also think that a lot of video game designers, scripters and whoever else is involved in the process, have lost touch with the basics of rpg's.
They are untrue to their gamer selves. They have forgotten the true meaning of rpg's : Imagination and emotion. You need passion.
I think they're too stressed with all of the compromises they have to deal with that they don't put enough love into it.

I think that monster AI and true variety is one of the biggest, under-mined areas for RPG's to grow in. If companies would spend half the time they do in coming up with new graphic tricks and physics engines and super-duper-humongous worlds that only the more dedicated (read:time on their hands) gamers can ever fully explore on monster AI and variety, I think great things could be done. From where I'm sitting, monster AI and variety hasn't progressed very much at all in years. By the way, when I say variety, I mean not sucumbing to the temptation of the lesser/greater/champion model whereby the only real difference between the 3 "different" monsters they add to the "x different monsters!" claims is HP and damage output. cRPG's cry out for a system that generates true variety (e.g. special abilities, tactics, looks, intra-monster relationships such as leader, inciter, enemy, etc.) in it's monsters on the fly. I think, together with AI improvements I'm sure we all have 100 ideas for, significant advances in this area would add way more to immersion and challenge these days than the latest shader-100.2b-physics-treeseeded-hyper-shadow-reflection-active-DirectX20-graphics-saturated-humungo-world. Don't get me wrong, I love the eye-candy, but (wo)man can not live on candy alone!

Well said chamr.

Aides said:

Hopefully, I won't be deemed a blasphemer for daring to suggest that features present in action games might be worthy of being introduced in RPGs.

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Haven't played Doom RL (though I know I should), but in my opinion the best and most convincing 'monsters' in any game I have played were the Marines in the original Half-Life - not a CRPG, either. Not only did they have a reason to be there, they also were 'smart', and they had a reservoir of words they could string together to fit the situation... this impressed me to no end. Other enemies - 'human' and 'animal' alike - I thought were rather well done were those in the Thief series and (a CRPG at last) Gothic 1/2.

Stonekeep back then was quite impressing me, because the monsters really could use healing potions - which were even sometimes hidden behind bricks in the wall !

Yes, I agree, a good AI should the game make a challenge.

Currently, I'm avoiding hack & slash games widely, as far as I can spot them. Simply because a game world I imaging simply isn't only hacking & slashing.

I mean, what I want is a living world.

I've definitively become bored of hacking & slashing. I almost hate it nowadays, especially the real-time version of it. I still like turn--based combat, though, because it forces me to think instead of to merely hack.

My dream is to be able to solve a game without combat at all - even with monsters !

But this means that "monsters" must be treated as "non-monsters" by the programmers and developers, and that means they must be given culture, background, dialogs, reasons, etc. . If I want to let the gamer to be able to solve a quest entirely without combat, THEN my approach to designing a game must be completely different ! [Different to the concept of a mere hack & slay game at least.]

PS-T came close. From memory, U6 could be finished with almost no killing. Perhaps you'll enjoy the remake!!

Maylander said:

I find that older games had more variety, in Baldur's Gate 2 you have to really pay attention to who you are facing because of various resistances and tactics on different monsters. This is something about the more tactical combat in older RPGs that I miss(hopefully NWN2 will have something similar).

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Allow me to disagree. BG2 had very few enemies (though, as noted, a few exceptions apart from bosses can be noted) that required more attention. Most of them could be taken down with simple bashing or even more bashing. There was the occasional troll, that required fire or acid, the mage/lich fights when the party is low level or with low equipment, and the battles where the party is simply outnumbered so some degree of tactics is required. But on the other hand there is the Demogorgon, supposedly the toughest monster in the game, that my last party dispatched in a single round, the Feeblemind-reload routine for dragons and other such things.

That's because you know the game mechanics, try to take care of a bunch of Beholders or Illithids by running straight into them and you'll do the reload dance quite a few times.

Yeah, that's true. A newbie will really have some troubles there, I fear.

One of the most difficult and memorable battles in BG2 was in the Throne of Bhaal expansion: The final guardians at Watchers Keep --> Y'Tossi, The Huntress, Xei-Jan-Wei, Hive Mother (a Beholder), Nalmirissa (or something like that)

You pretty much had to plan every step with precision if you wanted to surive that one.

Indeed, it's a very hard fight, and gives a feeling of "YES!!!" the first time you pull it off. In fact, it's one of those few fights which gives a "YES!!!" feeling every time you pull it off.

Those three seals is a perfect example of BG2 variety - the three fights are all very different, and require completely different tactics. I remember struggling in all fights, and after I defeated the blue mage-types I figured this just can't get any worse. Boy, was I in for a surprise..

Yeah, and for the fights that don't give you the "Yes!!" feeling, there is just the .."blahhhh...meh" feeling.
Not necessarily in BG series--I remember a great many of the fights being challenging and brain destroying--but in so many games there seems to be this "combat=loot+exp" take.

Jaz said:

...Other enemies - 'human' and 'animal' alike - I thought were rather well done were those in the Thief series and (a CRPG at last) Gothic 1/2.

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Don't know about the thief series, but I agree with the Gothic comments. I found the beasties to each have very distinct patterns of response - more so than the humanoids.

As to Corwin's comment about the beasties not eating each other ... the closest I've seen recently is WoW's animals occasionally chasing the odd rabbit. And the random spurts and direction changes of some of the cat like monsters. It is not much, but it is more than almost any other game (for some reason the rabbits never seem to get eaten! Wish they did, it would add that much more to it).

And what about the herbivores? The large ones have to eat pretty much every waking hour ... yet how often does one see a deer in a game striping the leaves off a tree? (when one *does* see a deer, which isn't often).

Lintra said:

As to Corwin's comment about the beasties not eating each other ...

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In Divinity, the local cat of Aleroth chases and eventually kills Rabbits it can find - and the meant can actually be collected by the character as food.

In Gothic I monsters can chase one another as well, if I remember correctly ...
At least I remember wolves doing this.

I have seen some attacking each other in G3!!