Level scaling OR Don't play RPGs then girlie man. - by SubJeff
Koki on 11/1/2011 at 19:55
No, try to read that again
Nameless Voice on 11/1/2011 at 22:21
Actually, yes, I do. Having everyone else progress at the same time as you is ridiculous.
Having other NPCs going about doing quests and adventuring and then gaining levels of their own would be an interesting idea, but it probably wouldn't work in an RPG.
Majesty, now, on the other hand... :)
Bluegrime on 11/1/2011 at 22:32
From what I understand Stalker could have let the NPC's complete the entire main quest before the dev team dialed down on the AI. That would be quite interesting to play a game where you actually have competition for getting quests done and such. It would make the world feel more alive and give arbitrary time limits on quests a reasonable explanation.
Like the people of Forest Town are getting their shit wrecked by trolls.. They put up the quest marker for it and you accept but do the standard RPG thing and kill boars and such along the way. You arrive to find out they got sick of waiting and hired someone who already did it. That probably sounds better as an idea then it would be fun to play, tho.
Sulphur on 11/1/2011 at 22:35
It would be rather anticlimactic to have the game suddenly end while you were still trudging around in Garbage because some idiot rallied a faction and they stormed the NPP ahead of schedule.
Eldron on 11/1/2011 at 22:44
Quote Posted by Bluegrime
From what I understand Stalker could have let the NPC's complete the entire main quest before the dev team dialed down on the AI. That would be quite interesting to play a game where you actually have competition for getting quests done and such. It would make the world feel more alive and give arbitrary time limits on quests a reasonable explanation.
Like the people of Forest Town are getting their shit wrecked by trolls.. They put up the quest marker for it and you accept but do the standard RPG thing and kill boars and such along the way. You arrive to find out they got sick of waiting and hired someone who already did it. That probably sounds better as an idea then it would be fun to play, tho.
I believe this is what toadyone wants to achieve with dwarf fortress.
Jason Moyer on 12/1/2011 at 00:05
Something needs to be done with RPG's, particularly open-world ones, to give the quests a sense of urgency. Alpha Protocol dealt with that well; instead of setting time limits on completing tasks, most of the things you do in the game close off other options. Instead of the 'faffing about while the main quest waits' aspect of the Bioware model, everything you do is somehow tied to the main quest, but not everything can be done in one playthrough. That's probably at least partly why I played through the game 5 times the first 2 weeks it was out.
Edit: Something like that could even work to some extent in the Elder Scrolls model. Part of the main quest can involve joining a guild - *a* guild, rather than all of them. The minor sidequests could all be tied into the main part of the storyline somehow, and each quest that you chose or area that you chose to dick around in would close off other options. That would be fairly awesome I think. A playthrough would probably take 50 hours instead of 150, but there'd be a reason to keep going back and trying different things. It would also add some C&C to the open-world model.
Nameless Voice on 12/1/2011 at 00:48
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Edit: Something like that could even work to some extent in the Elder Scrolls model. Part of the main quest can involve joining a guild - *a* guild, rather than all of them.
It's called Morrowind. They're called the Great Houses.
It's a matter of gameplay vs realism. Having quests time out and break on you is just simply not fun. Especially given the usual method of quest-getting in RPGs - talking to people. It'd mean you'd have to play really carefully, avoiding talking to anyone you didn't need to yet, to avoid triggering any time-limited quests that you wouldn't have time to complete with your current workload.
The original Fallout did it, to an extent - wiping out entire towns on its own timer, whether you'd been there or not. I must replay Fallout 1 some day and actually talk to the people in Necropolis, since I never got a chance to talk to to everyone there when I played it.
Eldron on 12/1/2011 at 00:59
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
It's a matter of gameplay vs realism. Having quests time out and break on you is just simply not fun.
Unless the gamedesign was actually tuned for having interesting things happen when you lose, not knowing what the bad choice was, and having to live with the consequences of your actions.
Jason Moyer on 12/1/2011 at 02:38
Yeah, I don't see why a quest timing out couldn't just be one of several resolutions to a quest, not merely a pure failure.
I forgot about the Great Houses in Morrowind. I wish all of the faction memberships had the same sort of exclusivity. In Morrowind in particular there seemed to be constant conflicts between the guilds but I don't remember anyone being overly bothered that you were helping and hurting all of them (perhaps at the end of the guild questlines? it's been awhile).
Mingan on 12/1/2011 at 03:53
IIIRC, there were only a few guild quests that were crossing each other (one quest required killing one guy that was critical to another quest), but if you knew that, you just had to do them in a specific order and you could do them all.
