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File: 1754630286640.png (485.66 KB, 478x700, night elf huntress.png)

 

So we've recently had a spate of games come out in the old CRPG style which directly follows pen-and-paper or tabletop RPG rulesets. In many ways, this can be very clunky, especially in comparison to systems that were made specifically for video game RPGs. For instance, I would argue that mana systems are way more natural and fluid for video games than a daily-usage resting system. In a way, it makes me wish they would go back to using classic video game systems instead of using pen-and-paper or tabletop rulesets.

HOWEVER, there is a weird slippery slope effect I don't quite understand. The moment you start moving away from these pen-and-paper/tabletop rulesets, you quickly start hurtling towards the total annihilation of all RPG flavor, like these archaic rulesets made for a different medium entirely are somehow holding back total enshittification. Racial traits are done away with and races become entirely cosmetic, wizards have their magic systems and spells whittled down to nothing until they're little more than a particle effect turret. Priests and clerics might have it the worst though, because I can't think of ANY game that gives the priest/cleric class any kind of religion system that isn't being forced to by some kind of pen-and-paper or tabletop ruleset.

Why is this? Why does it seem to be so hard for developers to have both modern video game RPG mechanics AND all the little things that give RPGs their fantasy and flavor?

Any examples?

>>43926
The gameplay of a computer game is conceptually determined in the same way as that of a pen and paper game, by a set of rules applied by the computer or the players/gm respectively. Using MP instead of spell slots is relatively transparent to the player, nevertheless it clearly takes advantage of the arithmetic capabilities of a computer. With respect to the full capabilities to the computer the rule is still quite arbitrary though and i would argue the rules surrounding character sheets determine what an RPG is irrespective of how their content is measured or represented.

Something like racial traits is a natural way to diversify builds, irrespective of whether they are stored on a piece of paper or in computer memory, and their removal therefore constitutes nothing more than "streamlining" player experience. Similarly the overuse of clerical classes as either healers or DnD clones seems to speak more to the designers lack of imagination than anything, because even though RPG game rulesets are executed by a computer, they have to be designed by a human.

>>43936
What do you mean? In most CRPGs, they follow some kind of pen-and-paper or tabletop ruleset and have lots of flavorful abilities. In most RPGs that have abandoned these rulesets for mechanics that are more designed around it being a video game, they don't. If you mean in a single game, there's World of Warcraft. The player classes and a significant number of their abilities were inspired by D&D (when they weren't just outright copied.) Then, over time, these abilities and mechanics got removed, whittled away and sidelined. I think they brought a couple of them back after the WoW Classic thing, but Blizzard is very definitely not headed in the direction of more RPG flavor.

>>43941
What are you getting at with this?
flood detected; post discarded

>>43948
Always kind of pissed me off that in wow paladins are supposed to be strong against undead but somehow the undead faction is exempt from this.

give one exemple that isn't weighted down by pvp balance

>>43950
This was the start of Blizzard's downfall right at the very beginning. They were doing something cool, and then immediately backed off from it when they got some minor complaints and replaced it with bland bullshit. It was a pattern of behavior that started when they made the Forsaken humanoid.

>>43952
The Warcraft example wasn't entirely PvP. Them getting rid of the priest racials had nothing to do with PvP. Them getting rid of Ritual of Doom for a while (until they finally brought it back in the Classic era) had nothing to do with balance at all, it wasn't some super meta strat. It's just a part of the general trend of all RPG flavor getting wiped away.

>>43949
Your OP is misguided. Complex rulesets and character sheets are the point of video game RPGs and not solely something that comes from their pen and paper roots. Nethack and Angband are both very DnD inspired roguelikes, but Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup a lot less so while offering a comparable amount of depth. Dwarf Fortress is a pretty lousy RPG from a player perspective, still the gameplay is equal parts simulation and character building.

When a game calling itself an RPG doesn't offer this experience, it is either going for the more conversation-heavy c&c approach, adding light RPG elements to its main genre or failing at its job of being an RPG.

>>43953
I suppose so. I remember also reading about WoW dev in the lead up to its launch and vaguely recall it having a lot more RPG "flavor" I guess. Like it seems a lot more quest lines would have had solutions other than going to a place and hitting a guy until he dies.

>>43958
>Complex rulesets and character sheets are the point of video game RPGs and not solely something that comes from their pen and paper roots.
That's not how its actually working out. Even when name dropping games, you can only name a bunch of really old freeware passion project games.

>or failing at its job of being an RPG
This is what is happening, for the most part. I'm not talking about games with "RPG elements." Modern RPGs produced in the last decade by professional video game developers only seem to have any degree of RPG flavor and fantasy if they are following some kind of pen-and-paper or tabletop ruleset, otherwise its stripped out.

Maybe the most egregious current example of this is the Dragon Age series. Dragon Age: The Veilguard advertises itself as a "role-playing game," but at this point the gameplay is completely unrecognizable as a RPG of any sort, and it plays more like some kind of Hack n Slash action game that has conversations in it (but with conversation "options" that are so fundamentally railroaded, your character doesn't even have the option to be rude.)

>>43963
>you can only name a bunch of really old freeware passion project games
Fine, let's look at common tropes of the JRPGs. Turn-based battles are their main point of player interaction and they primarily achieve build variety through pre-made characters, equipment, a lot of consumables and sometimes skill acquisiton and/or materia some kind of aspect slot system. This type of character building is complex in its own right, despite being unwieldy with pen and paper, considering the amount of options most games throw at you, and clearly the point of JRPG combat. You can find a lot of people complaining about FFVII, because it reduced the maximum party size in ATBs from 4 to 3.

>>43964
"Build complexity" doesn't really mean anything in the "RPG flavor" context if ultimately all "build complexity" amounts to is the numbers going up.

>>43969
Yeah, that's why in pokemon combat rare skills, items like heat orb or focus sash and the monsters themselves are the most interesting aspects of combat, while nature marginally so and everything else a matter of mindless optimization. It's about linear upgrade paths you would see in a bad rpgmaker game vs. interesting tradeoffs or other unique rules that increase complexity exponentially. Ideally the complexity isn't collapsed into dumb number checks, the way speech skills usually work, but determines the way the player interacts with another system accomodating to it, usually combat.

File: 1754992917795.png (95.02 KB, 258x387, larian.png)

>>43952
Larian is actually an example.

While I liked Divinity: Original Sin 2, and messing around with the various elemental abilities and how they interact with each other can be fun, its a game about being a sorcerer where you don't really get to do much sorcerer stuff beyond doing damage in various ways, and the meta was actually focusing on physical damage over spells. In addition, it's all based around a classless system which I've never been a big fan of since they're kind of boring.

Then they make Baldur's Gate 3, which is tied to the D&D 5e ruleset, and suddenly all the cool wizard shit is back in, along with classes and all the flavor those classes bring.

File: 1754993940375.jpeg (205.46 KB, 1400x900, one-of-the-2-rpgs-larian-….jpeg)

>>43974
I'm still waiting for Larian Studios space opera kino, I hope it turns out well.


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