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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Non-Combat Character Development In RPGs? 53

Posted by simoniker from the swinging-swords-for-fun-and-profit dept.
Thanks to Tleaves.com for their article discussing RPGs that tinker with the basic hack n' slash formula to "try to provide incentives for non-combat development." The author comments on combat-heavy RPGs: "Sometimes my best friend sees me playing Angband and asks me what I'm doing. 'Knitting,' I say, and this is pretty accurate - it's repetitive, mindless, and somehow comforting." But he suggests that, while levelling up via combat is great fun, "...there is room (and indeed desire among players) for higher aspirations as well", referencing Ultima IV ("most of the interesting parts of the game were actually unlocked by ethical development") and The Witch's Wake module for Neverwinter Nights ("Experience is meted out specifically for reaching various narrative goals. Combat yields no experience whatsoever.")
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Non-Combat Character Development In RPGs? More

Non-Combat Character Development In RPGs?

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  • reward the non violent ways to reach the goals as well, so it doesn't matter all that much if you play an intelligent character that gets past the obstacles by wits and technical skills, or a mad sniper who can shoot anyone between their eyes before they can move.

    indeed playing them through with a very non violent character can be great fun!(blowing the cathedral up with the nuke for example, instead of killing the boss in battle)
    • blowing up a cathredral with a nuke is non-violent to you??? Jeez, I begin to understand some of the shock & awe tactics the world has seen lately...

      [I have to add this part, because I screwed up before and posted my reply as new comment :-]
    • Planescape Torment was similar, you could get a lot of XP by talking your way out of fights, or bypassing them.

      Often you could still go back and kill everyone anyway, and get extra XP from killing the critters.
  • blowing up a cathredral with a nuke is non-violent to you??? Jeez, I begin to understand some of the shock & awe tactics the world has seen lately...

  • Grrrr..arrrgh! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dr. Photo ( 640363 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @07:22AM (#7217792) Journal
    Non-combat character development?

    Like improving your Cooking skill by grinding the bones of your foes into bread?

    It's a strange new idea, but I like it! :-D
    • Funny: there was a point in Ultima Underworld I where you had to run around the dungeon collecting ingredients for a stew; I always thought that was a little quirky. :-)

      Seriously though, if you were making a game in which the PCs were trolls or giants or ogres, I would think cooking would be a good skill to have and develop. If nothing else, such a game should give you prestige, reputation, or experience, if you can come up with new and ingenious methods to create dishes of your enemies.

      (And you have to

  • In any novel worth its salt the main character develops as the story unfolds, mainly due to the interaction between the story told and himself. At no point however he "levels up". The changes are subtle, gradual and, more importantly, internal.

    As long as we pretend we can measure "character development" in terms of XP, levels, stats and skill points we ill always end up with a mediocre Diablo clone (that was in turn a rogue clone).

    • But CRPGs are *not* interactive fiction! It's an altogether different genre, and I'd argue that levelling and numeric stats are an inherent part of that genre.

      Hell, most IF isn't really interactive fiction; they're mostly text adventures, a distinct genre all its own. I'm all in favor of changing how XP is doled out, and love games like Planescape and Fallout and Morrowind and Arcanum, which all succeed on some level at doing this, but let's not try to make an apple into an orange here.

      • Beyond Zork is an example of IF that blurs the line between RPG and text adventure, at least somewhat. You get stats, you get combat, the stats have an effect on your interactions with the story, and you get the benefits of interactive fiction: a text parser, multiple solutions to at least some of the problems you encounter in the story (at least some of which tend to be non-violent), and fairly descriptive and well-written text descriptions. I'm sure there might be others, but this game immediately springs

    • I think, to a large extent, you can't really compare the modern narrative structure to the structure employed in telling or playing an RPG; it is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Yes, the standard literary tools can help to advance an RPG campaign; however, one of the differences of the RPG versus a traditional narrative is that the RPG's story is not predetermined; the traditional narrative is. Also, the idea that the characters of an RPG's story will have an effect on the story is something that is foreig

  • But I like the way levelling is done in Dungeon Siege, with your stats changing as you use different weapons, rather than just being told "go change what you like".

    It just makes more sense to me, that someone who has spent their life throwing spells at people probably wouldn't be able to say they got much stronger from it.

    • Yeah, magic in CRPGs tends to be underwhelming at best (except as buffing or fire support for your front-line fighters...).

      I always liked the idea of being able to make a spell more or less difficult to cast, depending on how powerful the spell was; i.e., if you trying to do 6d of damage on a 3d spell, that would be more difficult...or if you were trying to do 1d of damage on the same 3d spell that would be less difficult. I think you can do that in GURPS; I can't think of any computer games at the moment

  • Wouldn't that basically be more or less what The Sims is? Sure, it is not set in a fantasy word and so on, but still. Basically we need some cross over of The Sims into the typical RPG story, or? Not that I personally would like such a thing though.

  • Conscientious Objector claim (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @08:14AM (#7217999)
    Next time the government tries to draft you into the army, just say "No thanks, I'd rather engage in some non-combat character development"
  • I think the big problem is that a game can't be a subjective dungeon master. It doesn't know how to reward character development for character sake. In pen and paper RPGs, the GM can make the judgment call if a choice or activity is award-worthy (with XP or anything else) when it can't be measured by progress toward a goal. Even if the goal is life (like the Sims, which I admit I've never played), is it possible for the computer to detect for and allow every possible character development choice?

    Now if a h
    • ... are there any RPGs out there where one person "plays" the game master and other players play player characters, allowing for endless possibilities? If so, do they and can they bring anything to the table (so to speak) that pen and paper RPGs lack?

      Neverwinter Nights fits the bill quite nicely. Despite the fact that tehre were some issues with the initial released version of the game, and that it had been hyped up so much that there was no possible way it could live up to it, it does a very good job of

      • As much as I like the idea of playing a CRPG with GM on the Internet, it still remains a CRPG with all its limitations. In a classical Paper&Pencil game, I don't have to write some script or to model a dungeon for the players, I just _tell_ them how it looks.
        • Up to a certain extent here you can TYPE how it looks. Of course then you wont get the benefits of all special effects and things, but i have seen games that were basically run all in chat a-la PnP. Then when there's a batle or brawl the DM would teleport us to a suitable background and spawn the encounter.

          Doing this you dont use the full extent of the game engine, of course, but you gain in flexibily.

  • A Tale in the Desert (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Aggrazel ( 13616 ) <aggrazel@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @08:40AM (#7218158) Journal
    If you want to see a well done game such as this, check out "A tale in the desert" ( www.atitd.com )

    Its a MMORPG that has no combat in it whatsoever, its more politcs than fighting. (heh).

    Very interesting concept, has a lot of neat ideas too like the players get to vote on what features the game devs work on next.

    The pricing model is interesting for a MMORPG style game as well. You download the client for free and only pay the monthly ($14 I believe) subscription fee.

    I haven't played since beta closed because I personally like combat, especially the kind where you kill other players. ;) But the idea of a political game was interesting to me.
  • As I don't like awarding experience ONLY for combat, as so many cRPG's tend to do, nor do I like the idea of awarding NO experience for combat. Seems to me that experience should be awarded based on task completed. Finishing off an opponent is, at least to my mind, a task. What I'd like to see implemented is a system that awards experience for just about everything, with the experience awarded for a given task weighted towards the class most suited to the task at hand. Fighter classes get slightly more ex
  • I always hear people talk about spending hours playing RPGs and fighting just to get a higher level, and I don't get it.

    I may have been playing the wrong games (mostly the Final Fantasy series) but I have never had a need to be any stronger than I was. Granted, I always take the long route through any dungeons to make sure I get all the treasure, but generally I have found that the storyline combined with the random battles make you exactly strong enough to face what's up ahead. If you're not strong enou
    • I believe that if you need to spend hours doing mind-numbing tasks just to be able to keep playing, you're either A) doing something wrong or B) playing a badly-designed game. Some people also seem to like doing those mind-numbing tasks. A friend of mine spent hours improving his jump skill in Morrowind. And sometimes even a well-designed game will force you to do some silly tasks. Ah, inventory management... I almost miss that fifteen minutes of item trading between the six party members in Baldur's Gate
    • Some games are well-designed for that. Others, notably Everquest in my experience, are sadly, not. In Everquest, there isn't really a story that you can follow throughout your character's lives. There are some quests at the beginning, for some race/class combinations, but they won't take you "all the way" like Final Fantasy does. That was definitely something missing in EQ.

      EQ was all about mind-numbing tasks (pulling monsters back to a "camp" was one of the more offensive ones).
    • I believe that if you need to spend hours doing mind-numbing tasks just to be able to keep playing, you're either A) doing something wrong or B) playing a badly-designed game.

      Exactly. Ideally, an RPG should have a monster-power/level-up curve such that the random battles you have are just enough to get you as powerful as you need, and excess levelling is only needed if you the sort of person who gets off on getting a party of gods. Paladin's Quest was a horrible offender here, if I recall correctly. So wa

      • Heh heh.

        My favorite tactic in FF Tactics was having two thieves steal experience from each other while walking around with MoveJP(gain job points while moving). They were essentially passing a piece of paper with "14 xp" written on it, and gaining experience. :P

  • I like non-fighter characters (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Siener ( 139990 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @10:24AM (#7219212) Homepage
    In computer RPG's I almost always choose charaters who are physically weaker, but more intelligent.

    Problem is most games really penalise you if you do this. Even the ones that do allow you to finish some quests without combat, usually don't award the same XP as for the violent solution.

    Example : You have to find some kind of treasure, you play sweet talk a guard to let you in and sneak past all the other enemies. You finish the quest and get 1000XP. The brute force player kills the guard and everything/one else. He also gets 1000XP for the quest, but he also gets another 1000 form combat.

    Hadly seems fair, and it makes the game so much more difficult for non fighting characters.

    A few games have been better than the rest. Fallout I & II stand out. A big portion of quests had non/minimal fighing solutions ... if you could find them.

    I also liked Morrowind leveling up mechanism - instead of having on big pool of XP you develop skills individually. If you use a skill (like sneak, security of speechcraft) successfully, it improves. But at the end of the day you still had to do quite a bit of fighting.

  • Recognizing Intelligent Game Play (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @10:33AM (#7219290) Homepage
    I was playing Gauntlet Legends for Dreamcast and realizing that I did everything possible to destroy generators before tackling the enemies. This minimizes the # of enemies I killed, but minimized the amount of experience I gained. The game encourages stupidly shooting as many enemies as possible, rather than finding intelligent solutions.

    RPGs should try to recognize intelligent behavior patterns. Experience should be gained for rapidly defeating an area, finding secrets, and making efficient use of ammo and special items. I know some action games offer bonus points for defeating enemies in a cool way (Ex: IF the last hit is a jumping melee attack, rather than just hiding and shooting from a corner). This would work with experience as well.
    • In Gauntlet Legends' defense, the home ports are basically just the arcade game shoehorned into a home setting with minimal gameplay differences, except with the removal of timed health loss. That was a bad decision, because the arcade game was more than just a mindless monster slaughter, you needed to find ways to complete levels quickly to minimize your cash expenditure. You could stand in one place and level up, but this was offset by the fact that monster generation rates would increase as time passed
  • The game eGenesis bascially fits this category. No combat. Just tradeskills and building things.
  • Quest for Glory is an old series made by Sierra. Consider it a cross of King's Quest and an RPG.

    You have 3 character classes to pick from: Fighter, Magic User, and Thief. In the later games you can also be a Paladin, however, you have to earn that right in the earlier games first.

    Your character has 20-30 abilities. Strength, intelligence, dodge, parry, vitality, magic, lock picking, climbing, and various others. At the start of the game, your character is assigned points to each attribute based on his cla

  • More than stats... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sICE ( 92132 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2003 @11:25AM (#7219982) Homepage
    As always when there's a thread about RPG, i recommend to everybody to give a try at Tibia [tibia.com] (more infos here [gamigo.de]). Which is a free multi player online role playing game for windows and linux. Sadly the linux client isnt up to date and really suck by now, maybe sending an email asking for update is worthwhile (?) if you like it (by giving a try at the win32 version)...

    Though you still have to train killing small monsters to get skills, there's some points i'd like to develop about this game, and more generally about other rpg. This is probably obvious to everybody playing such games, but in fact they're actually rewarding and giving you some kind of 'XP', while perhaps not shown in your stats. I wanted to write about it, because peoples dont often think about it. While you could go killing other peoples, looting, or training alone, quests are a good way to get the 'XP' i'm thinking about. Of course, they give you some reason to be playing the game, you must solve them, find a special object, kill a hord of mutants, or save some princess (which is always captured by the same phoenix that keep resurecting), and more.

    - It may be a riddle, the quest is a challenge to your mind, you have to solve a puzzle, understand what the devolopers were thinking about, perhaps refer to some litteracy [ibiblio.org] you may find on the web. For example i remember of a quest that let you (hardly) find a secret scroll with strange characters on it and which was signed by "Geoffrey Chaucer [google.com]". It's rewarding because you had to search and find more infos about him to understand the message. The whole point is while doing that you learn new things.

    - Killing monsters while solving the quest of course get you some XP in your stats anyway. But some other 'XP' you get here are when the quest is too hard for you. You learn to find friends [google.com] (socialize), make associations or work for some peoples [google.com] (trade), or even manipulate other players [google.com] (politics).

    Socializing and politics are a good way to learn how to meet peoples (especially if you're a geek scotched on your computer the whole day). You learn how to present yourself, how you create [a list of] contacts which can be usefull -at one time or another- between themselves, giving you the benefit to know what's going on in other fields of [real or virtual] society because you are contacted first when someone needs something. And this gives you a "first turn", you can act before others. And, IRL, to find a job ;-).

    Trading is also a good way to get better skills in and out of the game. You learn where and how to buy or sell, and know how to make benifits from small/large towns markets. I got really suspicious about the prices that real life merchants where giving me, and i'm now really hard when trading, looking for other merchants, and what does it costs me to buy/sell stuff. I nearly saved 25,000 euros when i arranged my new house, and it makes a real difference -- trust me.

    Though those two are of course about getting 'XP' in real life, you still get the following one for in game playing, the goal of the quest often brings you something. First is getting an item which may be useful to you (modifying some of your stats), or that you can sell at a good
  • In almost all MMORPG games the only way to get experience is to kill something, whether it be monsters, other players or whatever.

    The reason for this is simple: If you give players a way to 'level up' without some sort of risk, then all the 'cheaters/hackers/macroers' will never fight and will find whichever trade skill grants the most xp and develop a macro or cheat program that allows them to 'level up' until they are the highest level possible in the game so they can:
    a) Tell everyone they 'won'.
    b) becom
  • referencing Ultima IV ("most of the interesting parts of the game were actually unlocked by ethical development")

    The storyline was advanced by noncombat means, but every single point of experience was awarded for combat, and the path to almost every goal was littered with monsters for you to hack your way through. Ultima VII actually had a great deal less combat, though it really failed to challenge me in any way...

    I don't know that I can call being combat-oriented a bad thing any longer, it's just the

  • Basically any system that tried to make this really work would need to have one of two things:

    -- quite linear plotlines, so that the "quests" or whatever you wanted to call them would be intelligible and fun to play toward; or
    -- actively involved "GMs" who could recognize and reward interesting styles of play.

    This is why MMORPGs don't turn my crank right now. The oversight of the admins isn't enough to keep up with abusers of the system, leave alone reward cool styles of play. Any 14-year-old D&D G

  • I'd really like to have a store in, say, Evercrack. A couple of bot salescritters to buy and sell the basics while I'm not logged in, plus the opportunity to trade for more interesting stuff when I have the time to play.
  • Why should a rogue get XP for fighting a monster directly? Wouldn't it make more sense to reward the rogue for sneaking behind him and attacking it with a backstab? I'm not saying he shouldn't be rewarded at all, only that the reward should be dependant on rewarding the character's actions based on the character. If it's a system where character is easily discernable by categories such as class, then it makes this option all the more easy to implement.

    If a wizard defeats a monster with magic (or at least
  • Two examples: on SHENMUE, there is not much combat, and when it happens, it plays like Virtua Fighter. All ZELDA games have levels with action and puzzles. Still, they are as story-driven as any stat-driven RPG.

    I like the way these games play: no hours planning your battle strategy, no menu-based combat, but still as much story developement as regular RPGs.

  • I'm sure you've all read stories about characters in the AD&D worlds that have small adventures, but don't actually battle things. I would like a game to closely mimic this. Say, a theif would get equivalent experience to killing monsters by picking locks and pockets. The harder / bigger the individual you pick/pickpocket, the more experience you gain.

    Another issue that I have with current RPG's is the difficulty of raising a magic based character. Magical ability should be more a mixture of magica

  • Essentially this all comes down to the appearance of subjective scoring in RPGs. All RPGs are basically objective games - you want to accomplish certain objectives. Initially, and for the more simple-minded among us, this consists of a Diablo style hack-fest - earning experience for each kill. In the paper and pencil world this is usually known as a hack-n-slash dungeon crawl.

    Sometimes that can be fun.

    However, IIRC at some point late in high-school most of us managed to grow up. Suddenly it just didn'

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