My Biggest Gripe

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Reavera

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My biggest complaint with open-ended RPGs is the lack of impact that your character seems to have on the world around him/her.

I loved morrowind for its endless array of options, but I felt utterly alone. I could not get past this, and was anable to play it for long before I got bored. I have not played mount&blade long enough to see any real impact on the world around my character. Please keep in mind that I am not just talking about having an impact on the story, as the story is focused and the impacts you have tend to be related to the main story path alone. I am talking about things like, your relationships with certain towns or areas, you relationship with certain characters, you relationship with traders in certain areas, even your relationship with your squad of men.

I want to talk a bit about ego. I think whenever a developer is making a game it is important for them to keep the players ego in mind. A developer would be hard pressed to make a game that did nothing but deflate the players ego. Alot of games deal with this by making the character more powerful than those around him, making him feel stronger and better. There is a since of satisfaction to be gained from this.
The best example I can think of, when in reference to another title, would be fable. I thought fable was an average game, but it did a satisfactory job of inflating your ego. The man behind this game, Peter ( don't ask me to pronounce his last name ), knew very well that games need to boost the ego of the people that would be playing them. He knew this fact so well that he initially called Fable, Project Ego.

I dont want to run around a world killing people aimlessly and leveling without end, or with end for that matter, just to see that I have no real impact. Finishing a story is great, but after that story is completed 1 - 3 times the replayability drops dramaticaly. If a main story element is there and is backed by a " player created story " then I beleive this can have a huge impact, not only on a players ego, but on replayability in general.

Although I have already given some examples for player impact on the environment, I will list a few others and games that I have seen implement them.

- Reaction to a characters stats, most Black Isle games
- Reaction to a players sex, again most black isle games
- Reaction to a players character class, cant think of any off the top of my head
- Reaction to a players actions, such as, killing a random group, making successful trades over a period of time, getting goods to a needy city. Many games have implemented these features.
- Reaction to a players good or evil deeds, again MANY, MANY games have done this well.
- Reaction to a players equipment, fable, darklands
- Reaction to a players social status, darklands
- Reaction to a players excessive trading, many games
- Reaction to a players military involvement, The space based X series
- I could keep listing but I think this is a good list of examples to start with.

I know the story has yet to be implemented, but a story alone does not garantee repalyability. I really dont want to go through a game story or no story when I have no impact except on the battles I choose to engage in.

Edit: I am including a short overview of examples that the developer can use for M&B

-Direct Ego Boosting Mechanics
*Fable
*Neverwinter Nights (overbearing in its implementation)
-Social Impact
*Elder Scrolls Series
-Economic Impact
*Can't think of any off the top of my head
-Social and Economic Impact
*Elite
*Patrician
*Port Royal
*Pirates!
*X series


I appriciate anyone who took the time to read this,
Reavera
 
Raevera, I must say there that you have hit the nail on the head. I feel exactly the same thing about this game, that extended replayability is best gained by non-linear action/reaction.

I would much prefer that in this game you didn't just walk around thwe world map looking for a convenient battle to fight, but then, this is early days. As long as Armagan looks at the suggestions I'm sure we will see improvements with each new installment of the game.
 
A good game to look at in this respect is the latest version of Sid Meier's Pirates. Not only do you develop a reputation with certain factions, but the gameworld is continually developing around you. For example, grain transports arriving in a city improves its population, soldiers arriving improves its military strength. Cities can be captured by other powers, or raided by indians, lowering their wealth. Merchant ships arriving improve the city's wealth, new governors are transported improving settlements into proper cities and so on.

This could easily fit with Mount and Blade - attack merchant caravans and you restrict the flow of wealth into the coffers of enemy cities, stop troops arriving in the city and you make it more easy to capture - of course, all this requires that cities can change hands in the war between the Swadians and the Vaegir, but it would really make the world feel more 'real' - you'd be able to properly affect it, and there would be a point for all the battles between the Vaegir and Swadians. I also think it would be vital to this to have outlying settlements like farming villages around the towns - destroy the farming villages and you damage the towns wealth and population as it doesn't have as much food to feed the people. This would add a sense of strategy to the game that is lacking, considering it's set in a war situation.
 
Reavera said:
- Reaction to a characters stats, most Black Isle games
No, could you see my stats if you saw me? Nooo...

Reavera said:
- Reaction to a players character class, cant think of any off the top of my head
No, thats not good either... Really.

Reavera said:
- Reaction to a players actions, such as, killing a random group, making successful trades over a period of time, getting goods to a needy city. Many games have implemented these features.
Thats good if its done right. If you kill someone and noone saw you kill,
no one would react on you. And killing bandits and no one knows about it, is not realistic either. But if you bring a captured bandit maybe people would react... But this is already implented in the game in some kind of way.

Reavera said:
- Reaction to a players good or evil deeds, again MANY, MANY games have done this well.
No again. Like I said: If people see you do anything, then they would react, but in most games its just a stat thing, and I have never liked that. Like Neverwinter Nights: If you do something, everyone knows it even if they were there or not. And rumors isnt that fast.

Reavera said:
- Reaction to a players equipment, fable, darklands
Yes! Thats the thing. People always see a person at first, and that makes the persons decisions if he/she thinks you are bad or kind.

Reavera said:
I appriciate anyone who took the time to read this,
Reavera

I did :wink:
 
yes you are appriciated :smile: Anyhow, as far as the reaction points I mentioned, I could have listed them better. When I was talking about reaction to states I was talking about things like muscle mass or, a characters look, often associated with charisma. And in reference to class, you may be right, looks can be decieving, so scratch that idea.

In responce to the comment about pirates!, EXCELENT game. But I think it could have pumped up the players ego more than it did. You could see the effects of your actions, and you would be praised when you talked to the mayor. I think one of the biggest things I'd like to see when I walk through a town is something like the following.

In responce to a fairly new character who has just commited a minor action in the game early on.....

" Hey, isn't that... you know whats his name... YEAH! thats it Reavera, he took out that party of river bandits a few days ago."

In responce to a character who has achieved alot of noteriety....

" Good Lord, I can't beleive it... Thats.. Reavera, I have heard that the Count of ( some odd estate ) is going to promote him. Its about time to after all that man has done. "

I'd like to see recognition beyond spread sheet stats, economic changes, or the ocasional visit to the town mayor.
 
About the good and evil argument. Normally I would agree, but this can be handled as such.

character commits a deed on such and such grid location. This deed is then added to the games area deed array. Or to put it another way, if you commit a deed here then only people who have something to do with " here " will recognize it. This kind of stat keeping mechanism wouldn't even have to be constantly running in the background. It could jsut be triggered when certain events happen, like if the game allowed you to attack neutral caravans or inocent farmer groups.

So in this way I can commit a deed in the far northwest and if it does get noticed it wouldn't be noticed in a distant town. But I dont know as if I wouldn't want it to be noticed in some distant town if the dead was good or evil enough, I'd like to see it eventualy " leak " to a far off area. After the deed is commited the game might look at how good/evil it was then use a random number generator to figure the chance of a group seeing or hearing of it so that it might or might not spread. I really dont think this system would be that hard to incorperate.
 
Reavera said:
yes you are appriciated :smile: Anyhow, as far as the reaction points I mentioned, I could have listed them better. When I was talking about reaction to states I was talking about things like muscle mass or, a characters look, often associated with charisma. And in reference to class, you may be right, looks can be decieving, so scratch that idea.

In responce to the comment about pirates!, EXCELENT game. But I think it could have pumped up the players ego more than it did. You could see the effects of your actions, and you would be praised when you talked to the mayor. I think one of the biggest things I'd like to see when I walk through a town is something like the following.

In responce to a fairly new character who has just commited a minor action in the game early on.....

" Hey, isn't that... you know whats his name... YEAH! thats it Reavera, he took out that party of river bandits a few days ago."

In responce to a character who has achieved alot of noteriety....

" Good Lord, I can't beleive it... Thats.. Reavera, I have heard that the Count of ( some odd estate ) is going to promote him. Its about time to after all that man has done. "

I'd like to see recognition beyond spread sheet stats, economic changes, or the ocasional visit to the town mayor.

Exactly, but it is all about the look of the character, and then when you talk they get the real thing. Even if you look like a small and kind peasant kid, you can be the worst mass murderer ever seen.

About those things with sentences and stuff: They should still just work with people who is involved. Like those pirates, who never saw their companions again, but they should not know it was you. They wasnt there. But if the player is wearing a item (weapon or armor, things in chest doesnt affect) which one of their dead members had, they could recognize it and tell the player something like that.
 
Reavera said:
My biggest complaint with open-ended RPGs is the lack of impact that your character seems to have on the world around him/her.
Yeah, right.
You mentioned Morrowind.

In Morrowind I scored the highest rank in Imperials, (general or something),
but even after that all the flea-ridden dirty imperial grunts still kept saying to me "Move along, nothing to see here" or something. I don't have to add, that I had to kill them all the time, otherwise my prestige would suffer greatly.

How come the relational database technology remains unnoticed by game developers? The right time for that has been long ago. (btw. SqLite looks ideal for games).
Maybe it's because such features can't be seen on promotional screenshots.
 
Very interesting points. In my opinion Pirates! is a very valid benchmark for M&B, as it is that kind of free form game we are playing. Other free form games with similar design issues are:

Elite (particular the 3rd game, "Frontier: First encounters"), a free form game with some scripted and lots of randomly generated quests.
Daggerfall: RPG with lots of random quests and a main storyline. Tonnes of factions whose disposition is affected by your actions, but their disposition towards you had too little visible impact on the game world.
Darklands: RPG with random quests and random encounters plus a very loose main story.
Patrician/Port Royale: Free form trading games where the player has a very big impact on the world economy.

Of the ones mentioned I think Pirates should serve as the most important source of inspiration. There you have global reputation with the powers of the world, local reputation with each city, and can attack anything on sight (which of course affects reputation). A realistic reputation system is very hard to code, so I would prefer going for a local/regional rep system. Ie attacking a Swadian caravan in the vicinity of a Swadian city will affect your rep in all Swadian cities within a certain radius, and have a smaller effect on the rep in other Swadian cities.

Cities changing hands would be nice, but would affect game balance. I am sure Armagan has some plan for implementing it (or at least has considered the idea even if it has been rejected). Otherwise I think at the very least the following should be implemented:

Attacking caravans affect the economy of the caravan's target: Shop inventories and purses are reduced. The preferrable outcome is that the city shop is losing high-end items.

Killing lots of soldiers/war parties from a city (i think it would make sense for these to belong to one of the nobles) would result in less troops being available for hire in that city, as the local noble conscripts these into his army.

Wrecking the economy of a city should have some effect on the number of troops available, maybe they increase as desperate men start looking for new ways to make money? Soldiering is an alternative to farming.

Attacking peasants should affect the amount of food available in nearby cities.

Selling slaves to Zendar should boost the local economy:p

Maybe a news option in the taverns telling about how other towns have been weakened (similar to that available in Pirates!) could be a good idea?
 
As Elite was mentioned, I suggest you guys buy X3: Reunion which is being released in a few days, that game is like your own living micro-universe and you can affect it in many different ways, think about the Pirates! game on steroids.

I'd like to see the kind of living world you have in Pirates or X3 or any other games of that kind in M&B, it would definitely add alot, because right now you are only fighting for yourself, idealists forgive me, but there is no way to contribute to this war, it doesn't matter how many caravans, how many war parties, how many cities you siege, how many bandits you kill or let live, nothing changes, everything respawns without affecting anything at all.

You can join the Swadians and cheat Truesight and Teleport to find, fight, and win (with or without cheating) over every single Vaegir army and it doesn't really matter because the unconquerable Vaegir cities are still prospering, rich, full of goods and more men and the Vaegir Armies will keep respawning over and over again, no matter how many you kill.

So, you are out there to boost your stats, only. An interactive, living, dynamic world would be a nice addition, at any level.
 
The game's a friggin work in progress, you didn't really think they were in the final stages?
Oh wait.. you did..
 
Nobody is saying that Raz. Everyone is just giving their opinions on the reactions to players in this game, so don't get all sarcastic and waste everyones time.

Yeah, I think that the people talking about you as you walk down a street would be good. This I think could be easily implemented with simple variables (preferably not seen by the player, I hate seeing a thing on your sheet saying [Renown 52] or whatever) and when you kill people or do things this could be added to, and a random varible between 1 and 5 triggering various conversations to be said by the people walking past. First though the whole city would need to be implemented. Take an Example from the new Elder Scrolls Oblivion, where every NPC have what they call a radiant AI system, where they go around and do things that they need to do, such as shopping, sleeping, playing catch with the dog, etc.

I also think that your clothes could make a difference, as walking through a street wearing black Plate would prolly turn a few heads. However, I think that when you change clothes this should reduce you (invisible) renown because there would be some who would recognise you by what you were wearing, but still many who would recognise your face.

I also think that it is damned stupid that people of an opposing nation allow you to go and see their counts and kings. I have -65 relations with Vaegirs, and they let me in to see the king, with no guards or anything. I think you shouldn't be able to go to cities which are fighting against you because they would surely kill you on site. If you want to go there then you should go in disguise (Dual Identity so you are not recognised) or sneak in (inclusion of stealthy clothes like hoods, cloaks and stealth attacks by which you can kill someone from behind). This would add soem coolness, for example, if you want to siege a town you could sneak over the wall, kill the tower and gate gurads and then open the gates and let your men in to raid the town.

Thats it from me for now
 
Calm down, Raz.

Noone said that they thought the game was in its final stages. Everyone here is expressing opinions on what might make the game better and how they see examples of that in other games. Nothing wrong with that, especially considering thats what this area of the forum is for.

Back on topic ... I would love to see more local awareness of my deeds and actions, but I want a chance of global recognition to be small. If I slay a troublesome group of bandits outside of Wercheg ... I would expect Wercheg to be the only town to recognize such an act. If however ... I saved a group of Swadians from a V. War Party ... I would like to think that eventually every Swadian town would hear of this.

Just my thoughts,

Narcissus
 
Well i think the devs are planning to have a dynamic world, i would guess they still flesh out the design of it. (preparing the grounds)

Basically from my experience, to have this dynamic politics the world must first be divided to groups and subgroups (like a tree diagram), have reputation between everyone (currently there's no changable reputation between the various groups/factions), nearly every action should effect that reputation and lastly different reputation levels should have different implications.

I gotta admit a dynamic world (politics,economics) is the thing i wanna see most here.
 
As others have mentioned, just because we post oppinions on how to make a game better does not mean that we think what we see is what we are getting. Yeah I know its not anywhere near done, I also know that I have no idea about what is on the developer's TODO list.

As far as it not being able to be implemented more, I have to disagree. If you study sociology you will learn that even within a small group setting you can have MANY different environmental factors that effect the groups disposition towards you. In M&B's current state there is plenty of opertunities for this type of interaction between player and world, world and player.

As to the individual who stated that they did not want their actions to have an effect that was wide sweeping, such as killing a group of soldiers and being well renowned for it. I agree, if you will read one of my earlier posts you will see that I mentioned a "grid" system, as well as a system that would determin the level of importance that an action has. I think that most of us would agree on what is realistic and what is not in this regard.

P.S. Sometimes my words can seem.... sarcastic in nature, please understand that no amount of sarcasm or condesention is ever intended.

Thanks,
Reavera
 
Svart, I agree politics and economics would be great, no disagrement at all there.

However, It scares me any time a developer tries to implement a dynamic economy. I cannot count the number of games that have tried to construct a dynamic economy and have failed on some level. A perfect example would be X2. A HUGE chunk of the game is about economy, yet the system is broken on some levels. I also have noticed that, in general, when a developer tries to emplement a dynamic economy it ends up being a huge part of the game. This means alot of time must be spent on this issue, and even when the time is spent, again I point out that most companies fail at some level. And it makes sence that they would to, I mean if developers could come up with a perfect economic model, they would have one of the most desireable programs on the face of this planet.

The political model, I beleive, is reletively easy in comparison, and much less time consuming. There is also less of a risk of " getting it wrong ".

Please understand that I dont want a static ecomony, I want to see the economy effected, but I dont want to see a model that is complex enough to cause the need for some sort of fan patch or mod or that the developers would end up sacrificing some more desirable additions to M&B.

After thinking about the economy some, I think a good way to handle economical imbablances would be to have a reset timer, after so long the economy resets. That could be abused, but I am sure there are plenty of ways around that sort of abuse.

Thanks,
Reavera
 
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