Dream team to develop the next great RPG

As in camera control and general direction of a scene?

Umbran Climax◊

No, there is no such choice. It's more like bad quest design vs. good quest design and a separate choice for balanced skill set vs. unbalanced skill set with cheaper and faster development cycle. Given the budget of something like Oblivion of Rallout 3 there is no excuse. 'Railroading character progression' doesn't make sense when you leave it up to the player, and there's nothing innately wrong with jack of all trades characters if that's how the player chooses to play.

If players making gimped builds is really such a huge problem then they can make a trait for new players or some other mechanic in the game world for new players to retrain their characters.

I was actually referring to in-combat skills. For example, in Star Ocean 2, every in-combat skill have their own experience meter, which goes up every time you use it. The more you use a skill, the more powerful it gets and more visual effects are added. It got me to actually use the stuff instead of just mashing "attack".

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I fully support the ability to reroll in-game without restarting, especially if it is supported by lore.

And regarding a good design for quests, I guess I need some pointers to some games that exemplify the ability to solve a quest with multiple builds because in my limited experience, I've never seen it, though I completely acknowledge that I'm not remarkably well-played.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

the only thing i remember about bioware conversations is a lot of awkward standing around and exit stage left

is that what you meant...?

edited 9th Aug '11 12:46:35 PM by Tarsen

I mean that of the games Ive played with dialogue trees, Bioware games are the only ones with dynamic camera work that goes establishing shot -> mid shot -> close up then switches back to mid while waitig for the player, close up when someone is talking about serious business, mid shot for someone pacing, and reestablishes the entire shot if the 180 rule is getting redirected. The animations aren't perfect, but at least the basic technique is there.

Its pretty basic camera work for film dialogue, but you only ever see it in games with noninteractive cutscenes.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

I see what you mean, although I find Bioware's camera work to still be very basic and not very interesting. Better than most for dialogue-tree-style cutscenes, but that might just be showing a problem with the dialogue tree system.

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Basically what I'm trying to say is I just don't want a static camera during dialogue because the film industry figured out that was a bad idea back in the 30s (? Probably earlier. Always was bad with dates)

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

...I'm not quite sure if an ideal RPG of mine would have dialogue, but if it does, I'd like something other than a dialogue tree system.

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I mean there are two schools of thought regarding RPGs: those who believe in using their character to shape the plot (probably requires dialogue somewhere) and those who believe that their actions are shaped by their character (eg how they go about solving a quest).

I figure with infinite time and money, why not have both?

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

I know this thread's gotten kind of off track, but I've revised my list.

• Music: Square Enix (I love a lot of RPG music, but probably Square Enix the most)
• Story: Not really sure anymore, to be honest, but then again I don't play RPG's for the story
• Writing: Intelligent Systems
• Gameplay outside of battle: Camelot (The puzzles were the best part of Golden Sun without a doubt)
• Battle system: Namco, I guess, or Square Enix again

Welcome to th:|

The guys who made Chrono Trigger

No need to make a new dream team when that one existed

Two Wong's don't make a white.

This makes me feel like the out-of-battle portions would involve playing golf.

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I didn't play that enough to where I can comment, but that doesn't sound too bad. Part of that game uses a regular experience system, no?

Pure usage based systems don't work in either RP Gs or JRP Gs (see Final Fantasy 2).

That works really well in Mass Effect and The Witcher where you have a voiced player character but I wouldn't be too fond of such a feature in Fallout.

I think it worked great in Dragon Age where the camera would stick to a mid close up while waiting for you to make your selection then simply switch to a mid close up of the NPC. Actually felt like a conversation and not a one sided ino dump, especially since it allowed the PC to do minor actions. I feel like the New Vegas characters would have benefitted much if they could do more than shifty eyes and standing in place.

Though If you're seeing your character, it would also be nice I'd it were possible to make a character thy didn't look like butt with Bethesda's gamebryo engine. good thing this is the dream topic!

Also, I've decided I want Bioware Edmonton on experience design. Most memorable instances of gaming have been the first 5 minutes of Mass Effect 2, the collector ship from the same, and the last hour or so of Mass Effect 1. Everything from sound to visuals to physics came together perfectly in the first instance, Bioware was just taunting me at a meta level to accentuate the creepiness in the second, and sovereign's growing tentacles as you passed each obstacle in the last made me realized just how fucked I should have been. Not a fan of the final boss fight ofE1, though, but at least I could talk my way out of half f it.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

Long as someone else handles the animation.

Umbran Climax◊

What studio specializes in good, dynamic animations? I want to say Ubisoft for their Assassin's Creed work, but I'm not 100% behind that.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

I'd agree with that. It's Ubisoft Montreal, to be specific. Their work on the Prince Of Persia series was great in that regard as well.

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Eh, gaming in general doesn't have great facial and body animations at the moment. Until the tech improves enough to give a genuinely convincing act good writing will easily compensate for any ventures in the uncanny valley.

I think Valve's one of the best gaming companies out there for animation.

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How was LA Noire's stuff? I remember seeing an article on how they spent bajillions on their mocap stuff, but I don't really feel like picking up their game when I don't even know what the gameplay is.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

I dunno about the game itself as it's not out on PC yet (reception's been pretty mixed on it from what I've read though) but the Facial animations from what I saw looked pretty weird. Not for the acting itself. That was really good.

The problem was the fact that they had these actual actors performing the role...and then applying that facial animation to a low poly, low texture model. It looked pretty uncanny to me, like photoshopping a photo of someone's face into a comic book. It really stuck out.

that's a shame.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

LA Noire has amazing facial animation actually, it's the textures that are truly bad.

The body animation is not nearly as good(in fact it's pretty meh), so it looks weird when both the faces and bodies are animating at the same time.

Also SE has pretty good animators.

Umbran Climax◊

Yeah that's what I was trying to say. It's why I think we should be waiting for the tech to improve to the point where we can make decent looking faces before attempting those animations- also wait until doing animations like that isn't so damn expensive.

I mean spending millions of dollars on a feature not many people will care about is such a waste when that money could be spent towards features that are actually important, like good gameplay (although i guess we're still talking infinite money + resources here)

edited 9th Aug '11 11:54:44 PM by ShadowScythe