Wanted RPG Features Better Than Stealing & Killing Quest Givers

[Zloth]

Inspired by @Pifanjr response to a PC Gamer article.

I rarely kill quest givers, either. Stealing things is pretty uncommon for me, too, assuming the game even has a concept of NPCs owning things. I can certainly think of things I would rather see in my RPGs:

1. Proper night skies! Why are the best night skies in 13-year-old Skyrim!? And you know, I might have even modded that in. FF7 Rebirth has a nice night sky, but it's only visible briefly. (It has been high noon for most of the game so far.) Horizon: Forbidden West had a good one, but it moved crazy at night and the moon moved backwards! ELEX did some interesting stuff, but why isn't anyone else??
2. Make your economy work. Some games do a good job, but in most RPGs, you get stupidly rich pretty quickly and there's nothing to spend it on.
3. I earned far more than the quest pays out, please recognize that. I just cleared out an entire castle's worth of enemies. Isn't it my castle now? Sure, I couldn't haul out every piece of plate mail in there, but they are still there. Maybe the developers aren't interested in doing Dwarf Fortress as a mini-game in their RPG, I can understand that, but shouldn't I be able to get a LOT for a castle full of foul-smelling loot? Instead, I mostly get what I can carry out. (Solasta's scavenger guild did much to help with this!)
4. JRPGs, for pity's sake, please stop yelling the move you are making.
5. Non-violent solutions. We get dialog solutions sometimes, but there are far more. Hey you, lich dude! I need that magic ring you've got to save the world. I know you like it, but I've got a castle I can part with in a kingdom that's too cheap to pay me a fair price. Want to make a deal?

 

[February's Ghost]

Inspired by @Pifanjr response to a PC Gamer article.


Proper night skies!

Even Skyrim's vanilla sky is better than most, but it does have some epic night sky mods that'll blow your mind.

I earned far more than the quest pays out, please recognize that.

I don't remember what game it was, and it took me a while to realize it, but there were times I earned the same amount of gold for a quest where I killed dozens of goblins or orcs or something as I did for a fetch quest where I collected something like five piles of wood.

I haven't played Solasta but that scavenger guild sounds cool.

Non-violent solutions. We get dialog solutions sometimes, but there are far more. Hey you, lich dude! I need that magic ring you've got to save the world. I know you like it, but I've got a castle I can part with in a kingdom that's too cheap to pay me a fair price. Want to make a deal?

I always thought the ability to bribe/barter with enemies should be a thing.

 

[Pifanjr]

I'd like to see a morale mechanic in RPGs. It should be more common for enemies to run away if the fight doesn't go their way. If a territorial pack of wolves attacks me and I shoot out a stream of fire from my hands they should seriously reconsider whether it's worth bothering me.

It would be great if this is combined with a fame/infamy mechanic as well, such that a lowly bandit who realises he's picking a fight with the guy who single-handedly killed a dozen dragons should probably realise he's made a mistake.

Though on the other hand, there will probably be bandits who seek out the guy who travels alone with his pockets full of the most rare and legendary loot in the land.

 

[mjs warlord]

@Zloth hello again you know i am addicted to satisfactory ..... you mentioned night skies.
I dont know if you use the game so i will tell you about its sky.

If you make very tall factories you can build above the cloud base and not see anything below you.
It also has orange and purple fog , personally i think they look bad
At night the sky can be very black or a blue tint with star constellations.
You can see other planets at both daytime and night time.
In the last big update we got the arura borealis and it looks brilliant.

The only problem with these features are that they are a fps eater.

Boot up a game with a lot of dark areas and turn on your steam fps counter , it seems that a lot of games with dark areas are frame eaters

Even Skyrim's vanilla sky is better than most, but it does have some epic night sky mods that'll blow your mind.



I don't remember what game it was, and it took me a while to realize it, but there were times I earned the same amount of gold for a quest where I killed dozens of goblins or orcs or something as I did for a fetch quest where I collected something like five piles of wood.

I haven't played Solasta but that scavenger guild sounds cool.



I always thought the ability to bribe/barter with enemies should be a thing.

If you want to have some real fun in skyrim do a playthrough where you break all the rules and double cross everyone you can.

 

[Zloth]

The only problem with these features are that they are a fps eater.

!! That's pretty strange! Aurora can be animated, but the sky is normally just a 'skybox' - essentially a static picture that acts as the background.

I looked up a video and they seem to have a few layers going with moons (?) going one way and stars a completely different direction... somehow. Pretty crazy, but at least there's something there instead of just a superbright moon and a smattering of stars. I still don't get why that would burn frames in any meaningful way. <shrug>

I haven't played Solasta but that scavenger guild sounds cool.

I loved them! They would clean up after the encounters a few days afterward. You go to their stall in town and they show you everything found. If you decide you want to keep anything, you can take it for yourself. Otherwise, they sell it off, keeping something like half the cash for themselves.

Of course, that means even more money for the players, which means they need more money syncs - but they did a good job with that, too.

 

[Fantasy zone]

Inspired by @Pifanjr response to a PC Gamer article.

I rarely kill quest givers, either. Stealing things is pretty uncommon for me, too, assuming the game even has a concept of NPCs owning things. I can certainly think of things I would rather see in my RPGs:

1. Proper night skies! Why are the best night skies in 13-year-old Skyrim!? And you know, I might have even modded that in. FF7 Rebirth has a nice night sky, but it's only visible briefly. (It has been high noon for most of the game so far.) Horizon: Forbidden West had a good one, but it moved crazy at night and the moon moved backwards! ELEX did some interesting stuff, but why isn't anyone else??
2. Make your economy work. Some games do a good job, but in most RPGs, you get stupidly rich pretty quickly and there's nothing to spend it on.
3. I earned far more than the quest pays out, please recognize that. I just cleared out an entire castle's worth of enemies. Isn't it my castle now? Sure, I couldn't haul out every piece of plate mail in there, but they are still there. Maybe the developers aren't interested in doing Dwarf Fortress as a mini-game in their RPG, I can understand that, but shouldn't I be able to get a LOT for a castle full of foul-smelling loot? Instead, I mostly get what I can carry out. (Solasta's scavenger guild did much to help with this!)
4. JRPGs, for pity's sake, please stop yelling the move you are making.
5. Non-violent solutions. We get dialog solutions sometimes, but there are far more. Hey you, lich dude! I need that magic ring you've got to save the world. I know you like it, but I've got a castle I can part with in a kingdom that's too cheap to pay me a fair price. Want to make a deal?

Those are some excellent points! I especially agree with the night sky thing. It's baffling how many modern RPGs overlook something so atmospheric. Skyrim still has some of the best skies, and that's saying something.
The economy issue is also a huge pet peeve. I'm usually swimming in gold by the mid-game with nothing to spend it on except maybe consumables I don't even need.
And YES to the quest rewards! If I single-handedly liberate an entire region, I should at least get a title or some tangible recognition beyond a few measly coins. The castle ownership idea is brilliant!
The JRPG yelling... I feel your pain. It's charming at first, but after the 500th "SHINING FORCE ATTACK!" it starts to grate.
Finally, more non-violent solutions would be amazing. The lich example is perfect. Let us use our brains (and maybe our ill-gotten gains) to solve problems instead of just brute force all the time! More games need that kind of depth. Thanks for sharing!

 

[neogunhero]

1. Proper night skies!

Just add some cool looking planets and nebula into the night sky and there's problem solved. Don't know why more devs don't do this, or at the very least make the stars pop out a bit more. It's a fantasy world, we don't need boring black night skies!

2. Make your economy work.

Apart from getting stupidly rich early into the game, I also wish more games had specific merchants that had unique inventories. Too often, merchants in games have the exact same if not very similar inventories. Other times the things a specific merchant carries just doesn't make sense. "Why can I buy lockpicks from every single merchant in the game? Are all the traders a part of the same thievery gang?". I understand this is an annoyance and inconvenience to most players, but I think it would help make players explore the world more and make traveling feel worthwhile. An open world RPG with multiple different regions with varying geographical features, should have merchants with different local specialties you can't get anywhere else.

3. I earned far more than the quest pays out, please recognize that.

Reward should be valued at the difficulty of the task, not just in the fantasy world, but also for the player. Killing a group of local highwaymen vs clearing an entire underground troll cave should not pay out the same, but for the player, one or the other is not necessarily more difficult, so there's a bit of a dilemma. Of course missions that are more involved tend to have higher rewards, but perhaps having a bounty board that sorts missions by difficulty would work well, if I'm making any sense.

5. Non-violent solutions. We get dialog solutions sometimes, but there are far more.

More games also need to take notes from immersive sim games. Give us multiple options on how to play out the mission. Let us lean into the strengths and weaknesses of our characters. If my character is highly intelligent but physically weak, why is my only option to beat the crap out of this guy? Let me convince him why his ways are dangerous and how he can be a better human being!

 

[Frindis]

Manual change of skybox, like you can in Runescape. Instead of waiting/sleeping for night, day, you just click a button to swap.

 

[Zloth]

Wait, what? You decide you want it to be night, click a button, and its night in Runescape??

Just add some cool looking planets and nebula into the night sky and there's problem solved. Don't know why more devs don't do this, or at the very least make the stars pop out a bit more. It's a fantasy world, we don't need boring black night skies!

What I'm most after is just plain old stars and maybe a galactic arm. Like this.

But yeah, being fantasy lets the developers do all sorts of things. Drop the solar system out in intergalactic space, so everything in the sky is galaxies. Have the game take place on the moon of some gas giant. Maybe the whole solar system is headed toward a black hole with a big accretion disk. So many possibilities!

Apart from getting stupidly rich early into the game, I also wish more games had specific merchants that had unique inventories. Too often, merchants in games have the exact same if not very similar inventories. Other times the things a specific merchant carries just doesn't make sense. "Why can I buy lockpicks from every single merchant in the game? Are all the traders a part of the same thievery gang?". I understand this is an annoyance and inconvenience to most players, but I think it would help make players explore the world more and make traveling feel worthwhile. An open world RPG with multiple different regions with varying geographical features, should have merchants with different local specialties you can't get anywhere else.

I think that annoyance is also why day/night cycles that matter are a bit rare. "But I don't want to wait to sell my loot, I want it NOW!"

Reward should be valued at the difficulty of the task, not just in the fantasy world, but also for the player. Killing a group of local highwaymen vs clearing an entire underground troll cave should not pay out the same, but for the player, one or the other is not necessarily more difficult, so there's a bit of a dilemma. Of course missions that are more involved tend to have higher rewards, but perhaps having a bounty board that sorts missions by difficulty would work well, if I'm making any sense.

There's a trick there, assuming 'more valued' means 'more powerful.' Giving players that can get through the harder quests even more than other people makes the game easier for the players that are better than average! Maybe if the better stuff just looks better?

Player 1, in recognition of slaughtering the dragon, all the dragon's children, and saving the Maiden Fair, we give you this +1 sword with fancy animations that will play a little tune every time you draw it from its beautiful scabbard!

Player 2, in recognition of you poisoning one of the dragon's children, thus ensuring that some other city somewhere won't have to deal with a dragon some day, and honestly telling mamma and pappa Fair that their only child is now dead, we give you this pea green, somewhat pitted, +7 sword that gets a critical whenever you roll an even number.

Ugh. Game balance is hard.

More games also need to take notes from immersive sim games. Give us multiple options on how to play out the mission. Let us lean into the strengths and weaknesses of our characters. If my character is highly intelligent but physically weak, why is my only option to beat the crap out of this guy? Let me convince him why his ways are dangerous and how he can be a better human being!

Yeah! Queue Marvin talking up the Super Death Tank!

 

[February's Ghost]

One thing I want is better stealth and maybe more realistic stealth?

If I play a game one hard, let's talk Cyberpunk 2077 specifically for now (at least this was it way back, I don't know how much it's changed). If I play it on hard and go with a guns blazing approach and I go in guns blazing I can do well enough. If I make a mistake I can overcome it.

If my build is around stealth and I make one mistake it's game over. Every character instantly know I'm there, most know where I am, and I get ripped to shreds by the first bullet rounds that come my way. Why the hell is stealth so damn punishing? You take the direct approach you're rewarded. Stealth you're punished for it.

Of course Skyrim is the opposite. You can duck in a corner and even if an enemy walks right into that corner while actively looking for you with a torch in hand you will not be seen if your stealth is high enough (and sometimes even if it's not).