8 replies to this topic

[Ash]

I direct our RPG fans to this Kotaku article, which bemoans the continuation of including numbers to indicate damage values in RPGs.

The article fails, in my view, in that it uses Mass Effect to compare against more traditional/hardcore RPGs. I think this is a bad comparison, mostly because in real terms Mass Effect bears more in common with third-person shooters like Gears of War than it does with an RPG. Sure, it has the branching dialogue options and upgrading your character's skills and abilities but that's pretty much where the similarity ends. Everything else about the game is geared as a full on shooter with chest-high-walls and all that gubbins. Mass Effect 2 goes even further by basically doing away with a health system and basically has the 'cower like a girl for 5 seconds and you're back at full health' that seems depressingly pervasive in modern shooters.

I also think that their use of FFXIII screens is a bit sneaky, as that is a game where the numbers really are rather arbitrary. Your own character will scarcely have more than 1000 health, will deal ridiculous thousands of damage in quick succession but barely even cause a flicker on the enemy's health bar. In previous games you could more or less guarantee that an enemy would have a fixed amount of hit points which would go up as you went to new, tougher areas, but that your characters would similarly be getting more powerful so the fact that your enemy had 4000 health made little difference to the gameplay; he'd still go down in four hits of 1000 damage, where your enemy a few hours earlier into the game had only 400 health but you were hitting for about 100 damage. Apart from anything else, seeing the rapidly-mounting numbers is a good gauge of how powerful your characters are.

FFXIII, on the other hand, floods the game with enemies that have totally absurd amounts of health from the get-go, and unless you can get everyone to hit it at just the right time battles will literally last hours and hours. Or you'll get party-wiped. Or turn the game off...because it's shit.

On the other hand you get the likes of Dragon Age, which is much more traditional. We know that the 'random number god' is operating in the background, and it's true that we don't need to see the dice-rolls going on. But it's still nice to know how much damage we're hitting for, and how much health the enemy has left. Besides, seeing four-digit numbers flash up wheneever you use 'Assassinate' or 'Arrow of Slaying' is ever so satisfying in a game where damage usually is dealt in numbers below 100.

So, for me the numbers ought to be kept in. Just as a gauge of how well you're doing in traditional RPGs. It's also nice to have an easy reference of just how much the enemy hits you for. "Ok, I have 500 health, the enemy's biggest attack nailed me for 100. I can do without healing for another couple of turns". I fail to see how else you could do this, and I would sort of pay less attention to my own health without the numbers flashing to show just how badly I'm getting dicked. Kingdom Hearts had a really annoying wailing siren which totally got on my nerves, so that's not an option either, IMO.


Discuss.

[duke_Qa]

as a pretty experienced tabletop RPG player and generic game enthusiast, I read that article and found it completely missed the target.

If you can't read the numbers in something that pretends to be an rpg but you have tons of weapons in it, someone then has to hack into the core files and get those numbers and put them in a wiki.

If you want to make rpg games without numbers just don't make weapons that are almost the same but with slight random variations. Then I'd call it Metal Gear Solid or "cinematic game", and we are all on the same page again.
Proper RPG game combat usually contains strange modifiers that turns one generic weapon into 200 000 possible weapons with randomization. Cinematic games have one kind of weapon that feels one way and does that well and keeps the numbers out of it.

[Beowulf]

Traditional RPGs need numbers. End of discussion. I think we can all agree to that.

But, honestly, why'd they choose Mass Effect? Why not Borderlands? It's a lot more of an RPG than Mass Effect is. Seriously. Lazy article writing is what it is.

[duke_Qa]

Because it would implode with its own stupidity if they chose Borderlands, since that is a game with hundreds of thousands of procedurally created weapons. Not having the ability to see numbers for those weapons would make the game a nightmare and even a game critic would be able to see that.

Edited by duke_Qa, 01 April 2011 - 07:39 AM.

[Allathar]

Not to mention it's satisfying to see how far your character has progressed. Dont't tell me it's not awesome to go back to previous areas and wiping the floor with enemies you previously had great difficulty with. If all enemies are relativated to your character's current abilities, then that disappears, too.

[Ash]

Yea level-pegged enemies really take the fun out of levelling up. At least with Oblivion as you leveled up you got new, different enemies. So while you could easily complete the game at Level 1 you wouldn't have the fun of taking on high level Dremora, Xivilai and Daedroths.

FFVIII on the other hand...nah, enemies are location-specific. They just get tougher. Not that you actually had to level up at all on FFVIII. A coupla hours spent spamming the draw command at the beginning of the game before things got tough and you could basically two- or three-hit just about any boss or hardcore monster you would ever encounter. Yay, 100 Full-Lifes to health, 30 Ultimas to attack and 100 Firaga to defence. I am invincible!


Can't say as I've played Borderlands...does that have the numbers? I thought it was just an MMOFPS?

[duke_Qa]

not much mmo about it as far as I know, its 4 different classes running around a wasteland shooting things, diablo-style.

[Mathijs]

It's a lot of fun, though.

[Beowulf]

Can't say as I've played Borderlands...does that have the numbers? I thought it was just an MMOFPS?

You can play co-op, which is where it's best, but it's an RPG that's also a great FPS. Four classes, each with their own specialties and thousands of guns to use. It's a blast to play solo, and even more fun to LAN. I highly recommend picking it up since it's so much fun.