/v/ - Video Games

>>16799058

Fallout 2 tbh

>>16799065

I heard good things about AoD but when I played it I played as a merchant and by first task was to contract an assassin to get rid of a guy. Then I got a task to get of a guy by any means and when I went back to the assassin it had no option. So I got turned off.

How do you improve upon the perfection that was The Elder Scrolls(tm) V: Skyrim(tm).

What a grand and intoxicating innocence.

>>16799143

You have like 8 starting options, check them out. Praetor and loremaster are good if you want to be a talker, but hybrid builds are the best, because you have both the challenge of combat and the story.

I fucking loved Arx Fatalis, but could not into ultima underworld for the life of me. Why?

>>16799058

This madness. A replacement for living. The true idea of the rpg is adventure, seeking treasure and the unexplored, conquering the dark unknown. Stats and skill checks were mechanisms that gave purpose to the trials and tests in preparation for the ultimate battle or the end. The best rpgs have treasure chests behind a waterfall, and dogs and cats that greet you when you wander into a new town or settlement. The variety of weapon pre and suffixes and classes is a substitute for the realization that you've gone on too many adventures and should be doing something else, like helping the young prepare for their trials and tests for your time has come and gone. Those who have ears to hear should hear.

>>16799355

We need a new name for this. JRPGs and other RPGs where the characters are predefined aren't really role playing games. They have stats, but stats do not make a role playing game, even if you choose the stats. If you aren't making plot-related choices and deciding how to solve problems based on your character's personality, not just their skill set, it's not a role playing game. "Stat Building Game" maybe?

>>16799058

I like the reputation system idea. Generally games represent it by having you gain or lose favor with specific factions, but that is still :) and :(, just split out over multiple factions. Here's my idea on it:

First of all, you have two reputations: your light reputation and shadow reputation. No, this isn't good and evil. This is "what the random NPCs see" and "what people who are in the know see". For most characters, they're exactly the same; in fact, unless you delve deep into shady underground stuff, your shadow reputation is a completely hidden statistic. Both of them are affected in the same ways with the same actions; things you do in public affect both, things you do in the shadows affect shadow reputation, things you do in absolute private affect neither.

Secondly, instead of faction alignments or good/evil, what you have are a series of traits; doing certain actions increases or decreases those traits; very few actions will only affect one trait. Let's start with a random "there are bandits in the hills, and there's a dead-or-alive bounty on their heads" quest. You could do the standard RPG murderhobo thing of going into their camp and killing the lot of them. That gets you some points in the "reliable" and "lawful" traits, but also gets you "ruthless" and "murderous" points as well (though obviously not nearly as many as if you'd just killed some random NPCs). Killing some and bringing the ones that surrender back alive will get you "reliable" and "lawful", and a tiny amount of "murderous", but also a small amount of "merciful" and "just". Bringing all of them back alive gets you a large amount of "merciful" and "just", although keep in mind that both of these traits are not necessarily always good traits to have; you're much less likely to intimidate people if you have a merciful reputation, and having a just reputation will bar you from many social and economic circles. By the same token, being known as murderous and ruthless can help you intimidate people and make it more believable that you'd seek shadier means to accomplish your goals. Alternatively to all of this, you could choose to help the bandits instead; this will have you be seen as much less reliable and lawful, but will get you some nice loot. If you didn't accept the quest and help the bandits while wearing a mask, none of your stats change at all unless someone figures out who the masked man is. You can even do the quest normally while wearing the mask; doing good things anonymously will also not affect your light reputation… but sometimes it will affect your shadow reputation. Most NPCs will use light reputation, obviously, but a select few will use shadow reputation, which can drastically help or harm you depending on how well you're manipulating it.

Honestly, the most important thing about this entire system is that you should be allowed to complete the game while ignoring it completely. You should have to go out of your way and get some kind of social skill to determine when your reputation is changing and what it is at the moment, and you should not have to play oddly to beat the game, only to see every part of it.

>>16799501

My guess as to why games like Ys, Megaten, and most other popular JRPGs were created in the 80s and 90s, and of the course games inspired by them that are popular now. Back then, the role playing part was not just the gameplay, but imagining yourself in this world that was represented by more than what was on the screen. Took a lot more imagination, I guess thats where the RP part came in

>>16799243

If you go to play Breath of Fire II afterward, make sure you get the retranslation patch for it. Official English script for the game has longstanding notoriety as being utter garbage and the GBA port reused it regardless.

>>16799562

>Bad english

You weren't wrong. Nina's spells: Recover is called cure in the menu and it heals. The spells that cures poison is called heal in the menu…

>>16799058

I'm currently playing Jagged Alliance 2.1.3, I'll see how it lines up with your list.

1. In the first major city this bitch named Doreen runs a sweatshop to make T-shirts with child labor. If your character has high leadership you can convince her what she's doing is wrong, or you can fucking spray bullets into her. At one point you get a list of internationally wanted terrorists hiding out in the country. One of them is a sniper. He's faking being crippled in a wheelchair in one town, you have to threaten him and he gets out of the chair. You can then kill him, or you can hire him if your character has good leadership. He's fucking expensive but a great roof sniper. Your questgiver turns hostile after this, and the sniper bails after a week, unless you blackmail him or threaten him significantly. Personally he's too expensive so I always kill him.

2. Mercs all have their own personality and it's kept mostly to a few paragraphs of spoken dialogue. They're characterized mostly through their behavior. Some mercs will not work with each other. Some mercs will also attempt to kill other mercs they don't like if left too long together. Some mercs are psychotic and will randomly full auto spray at enemies even if its a bad idea. One character is Polish Arnold Schwarzenegger. One mercenary got kicked out of one company because he couldn't stop doing drugs and he signs on with another company after rehab. He has good explosives skill and decent medical skill. However if you leave a med kit in his inventory he starts shooting up the fucking morphine and falls off the wagon. His stats take a massive drop and he becomes almost useless as a soldier. This also happens with alcohol, amphetamines, or even leaving him in an area with a bar. Some mercenaries can't stand him sober because he doesn't shut up about 12-step, some really like him drunk. I love him drunk because bottles of moonshine spawn in his inventory regularly and you can make molotov cocktails with these.

3. Game plays like if XCOM had more RPG elements and wasn't absurdly fucking unfair. You don't get infinite recruitable troops and this means the characters are way more fleshed out.

4. Your rule only works for some games. JA2 is politically relevant to the 90's. The US financed mercenary ops in south america and supplied several dictatorships that got out of control. At the time this was modern politics. Fuck, the game even talks about gun control and socialism as asides. They're not central to the plot, but they were interesting themes for some characters. One character is a disgruntled postman who's a decent sniper. Some characters are aware that diamond companies capitalize off of the suffering of third world countries and don't like working with one security consultant who specifically made his name protecting south african diamond companies. Some mercs are racist. One redneck merc has a crush on this trinidadian merc but she thinks he's racist when in reality he probably just wants to fuck her ass and call her a jizz nigger til she does the big cumz. Some mercs are sexist. In both of these cases it can work across the board. Some american mercs won't work with slavs because they're like those dumb boomer fucks who to this day won't get over the cold war. Some black mercs won't work with this guy Bubba because he was a cop who got fired for police brutality and they're all fucking criminals. You get equipment from a site called Bobby Ray's Guns and Things and it is like every ridiculous gun-sale loophole of the 90's rolled into one and it's pretty funny. One quest to get to the arms dealer involves finding lesbian porn tapes for a dyke in a sex shop. There is politics in JA2 but it's fucking nuanced and not central to the plot.

>>16802393

cont

5. The two mercenary companies function entirely differently. A.I.M. is an actual professional corporation which takes money up front and also has medical deposits for their soldiers. M.E.R.C. is a startup that poached half its recruits from A.I.M. dropouts and charges you based on daily recruitment invoices. A lot of their mercs are also clearly common criminals or only there because of nepotism. One girl is only there because she's the boss's girlfriend but she was also a clerk for a gun broker and can get you major benefits when working with arms dealers. There's a mafia in the game that starts sending hitmen after you if you steal their money stash. It's a shitload of money so it's really tempting.

6. Everything from shooting to lockpicking to hiring people is a skillcheck.

7. There are dicerolls and they mostly make sense. Dumb rule outside of ARPGs. Sometimes you really do just get unlucky with something, and if that something happens to be disarming a grenade wired to a supply crate, that's just too bad. Characters will tell you if they can't succeed in a task.

8. JA2 is basically an open world and some questlines and options are scripted. Some RPCs are only hireable after doing a quest. One scripted event really fucking ruins your day if you're playing on scifi mode but there are ways around it. If your mercs get captured they might end up in jail. You can break them out if you're careful and don't set off any alarms which makes the army flood the jails with mustard gas.

9. Yes.

10. When you first land in Arulco you fight police forces who are poorly equipped. Soon after you take on the regular army. Take an important town and the Elite forces start coming after your towns. The final map is nothing but elite forces. It's not level-scaling but it is plot-scaling. Taking some towns is a big fucking deal and waves of enemies get sent there so you better train up some goddamn militia to fight back.

11. You make money in this game by taking over mines from the dictator. How much money you can make from this depends on how many miners are willing to go to work in a town. This is tied to town reputation and these can be raised by completing quests or training militia in those towns. One quest raises your rep across the country if you can do it without killing one shitty mall cop.

So if you haven't played give it a try?

>>16802004

>Recover is called cure in the menu and it heals. The spells that cures poison is called heal in the menu…

I don't know the reason, but it's like that in a lot of old JRPGs actually.

>>16804712

D&D did it, Final Fantasy copied it, and everyone else copied FF

BoF1 was localized by Squaresoft due to brand penetration, with Capcom only committing their own name to it once the first game gained traction. BoF2's poor translation is probably partly artifacts from Square's initial translation of 1

>>16799446

the point of RPG games are to create experiences. From these experiences come stories to tell others. Lessons. Sometimes help build your own set of morals, self esteem or sense of self. And yes, fun. Essentially, the opposite of what our '"modern" society does to the individual. RPGs were first attacked in it's tabletop form, for being demonic or satan worshiping. Next, it was infiltrated. Wonder why something seemingly so fun, normal and healthy would be targeted so?

>>16799058

I am talking about tabletop RPGs. Best start your quest there, OP and quit being a faggot. Nothing you build on shaky ground will last. Go to the source of RPG vidya.

this bread is byond stale

/tg/ died the saddest death of all