GDC Europe: Obsidian's Five Hard Lessons Of RPG Design

I think most of what is said in this article is far more intelligent than most discussions of RPG-dom amongst the game design community, both developer and player wise.

Lol, he supports letting players re spec in RPGs.

Ouch.

When I played AD&D, that was called you died and got to start over with a new guy. With only 60 percent of the average experience of the party (so you could get back into the game, but you still took a big hit).

Honestly though, that is a problem caused by overspecialized class-based games IMO. When you didn't spend 18 levels building the most perfect spiked chain using ogre/drow/devil/elephant/grue fighter/circus freak/acrobat/glarer build possible, you just picked up a new weapon and used it. I always disliked the way that played out in 3.0/3.5.

Well, there are a number of really good reasons to let players respec in video games, not the least of which is that video games are often *very bad* about communicating to players what things are important and what things are not important in terms of where you spend your points. Or even what things do when you purchase them. Or what many, many games allow you to do in terms of digging yourself into a hole... You wanna spend all your XP on Speech, Repair and Science in Fallout 1, while having a 9 Charisma, 9 Intelligence, and shitty combat stats? Yeah, you can do that and still win the game! Fallout 3? No, you won't get ANYWHERE like that.

As much as we tabletop gamers love to pooh pooh that as "bad game design", look at the kinds of things you can to do utterly fuck yourself in most tabletop games, due to poor balancing, XP sinks, and broken powers. In a tabletop game, though, the GM can say, "Hey dude, that doesn't fit with the game I'm running, try X instead" and you're golden. In a video game you pay your money and you take your chances, and you may have invested a lot of time and effort before you discover you've fucked yourself.

I dunno, I never finished Fallout 1 due to statistical difficulty basically, but it is still considered a great RPG.

Sure, but do YOU consider it a great game?

Maybe that's not a fair question, since we know you're a crazy man. Do you think the average non-tabletop gamer would find a game to be great if they never finished it due to such problems?

I liked Fallout 1 and 2 enough to make a mod for Fallout 2.

As far as what the average gamer wants, I have a feeling of dread that what he wants is Call of Duty or somesuch. I cannot believe that regenerating health has become so commonplace.

Apparently the average gamer wants waist-high objects that are completely bulletproof to hide behind and the blood splotches on your screen to go away while you magically heal those bulletholes.

At least cRPGs have the "Magic" of high technological medicine and actual magic potions to explain feeling better after someone's used you as a pincushion, be it from arrows or bullets.

how can one not finish fallout 1 or 2 ? O.o

*Young Gamer Mode*"This sucks, I mean, look at the pathetic excuse for graphics. And no first-person mode? And I have to think!!! Forget that."

Lest our rose colored glasses and 15 years of official + fanmade patches let us forget, Fallout 1 could easily render itself incompletable without telling you, could corrupt your saved game at random, could delete critical windows system files, and had a tendancy to get your player stuck because an NPC would stand in a doorway and you'd have no recourse but to wait, because the shove command was only introduced in Fallout 2.
I love Fallout, probably more than any other game except X-Com, but jesus fuck it had some problems.

And I know "bashing on young gamers" is fashionable, but let me put it this way: how fond were most of us, in 1997, of going back and playing 15 year old games? We're talking Intellivision Frog Bog shit, here. I know we love to pile on the "console kiddies", but it's largely bullshit.

Also, don't knock regenrating health in FPSes. Shit be awesome.

Edit: Favorite implementation of regenerating health to date is probably FarCry 2, wierdly. Regenerate up to a point, but past that you need to use up some medicine/morphine/surgery to fix bigger shit.

I'm just tired of being sworn at and called "Gay" like it's just another four-letter word.

i never STOPPED playing games likie Civ1 for example . .

That's the damn truth, and no mistake.



Well, neither did I. But you didn't stop playing NEW games, either. And when taken in comparison, Civ 1 isn't as good as Civ 5 in many regards.

I miss CivI.

Although, the Facebook Civilization is decent.

i like civ1 better than the later ones . .
fuck isometric view <.<
i'll give Civ5 a try, if somebody makes a battletech mod for the now HEX-based game . .

Like I said, I had the patience to make a fallout 2 mod, but I never finished fallout 1. What it came down to was the statistical difficulty of solo-ing the military base and the cathedral with the .223 pistol and a suit of metal armor. I tried many times including such strategies as maxing out Small Guns and engaging the super mutants from the maximum distance the game would allow me to and one shotting them a lot with criticals, but when it came down to it eventually one of them would hit me and I'd basically die in one hit.

I never used the power armor because I felt in character that my character would not associate with the BoS.

Regenerating health is one of the single most jarring things to my suspension of disbelief.

It is downright bizarre when you consider the kind of destruction caused to the body by gunshot wounds. (I recently attended a tactical trauma care lecture and have even more respect for the destructive power of firearms.) It is hilarious that you can apparently just walk it off in a lot of games.

At least make there be some "magic" item to let you do that, like a nano repair kit or something.

A stimpak, a potion, some radioactive meat, ANYTHING!

Certain sacrifices need to be made in the name of playability, however. If we were to play Call of Duty - which is a fine example, because it's super popular - with realistic damage models, the game would murder you nigh instantly. I loved the original Rainbow Six for how a bullet will take you down no matter how rad you are, but you can't make certain kinds of games with that kind of rigorous adherence to reality. The modern military shooter - by far the most popular genre for core gamers - out and out can't exist, because it relies on allowing the player to be Rambo, and murder hundreds of faceless mooks.

So you take your choice: do you allow regenerating health, and suffer because bullets are a temporary inconvenience? Or do you populate Vietnam/Iraq/New York with first aid kits dropped in improbable locations?

At the end of the day, the majority of players care about playing the game, not versimilitude. And regenerating health is no less jarring to me than "I stepped on an object with a plus on it, and now I'm all better!"

I miss Wolfenstein 3D...

Reading that article... it sounds like they want to make RPGs more like FPSes than anything else. I mean... take away random failures? I don't mind the idea of removing a 25% chance that you fail to open a lock, or something like that, but if you want to make a D&D based game, and instead of having a %chance to hit, you have constant movement and have to time your sword swings, or have to aim your bow, or whatever, no. I don't want it. I play RPGs because I don't like the fast paced first person shooters. I like a game where I can sit back play with one hand while browsing the internet, and turn my full attention on for cutscenes and the like.