Hoplite_22;n8573600 said:
I know they want to make something that is more of an RPG, I just don't know how you do that and make it a fun game. Partly that is a problem with me, turn based mechanics make my teeth hurt. Partly it is because the base system is predicated on having a group of people working together and this is more than likely a single player game.
The single player part means you have to try to rely on AI companions to fill the other rolls. It has been done but it's not great since it would always require you to take over them to do a thing, for instance picking a lock, or if you could pick the lock you needed the AI to be the front line fighter. you end up screwed one way or the other.
They might be able to improve on this, hell I really hope they do. but adhering to close to a PnP system can really hurt crpgs because so much of those mechanics the don't need or can't use.
The thing about "fun" is that it is extremely subjective. Turn based mechanics makes my heart sing for the most part... and if a game is good on top of that as well... well then great! XD
Speaking of turn based... I don't think there is a single person here... not even
kofeiiniturpa or
Suhiira (sorry if I am mistaken and spoke out of turn with the two of you though), or me for that matter, who thinks this game will actually end up being turnbased. I mean sure... there is always a chance of it happening... but that chance is so small currently, that no one would put money on it. I am pretty certain that most here are certain that this game will be real time (at the very least for the majority of the gameplay).
What I, and some other of us, are asking for is for certain aspect, of what the CP2020 pen and paper rpg's is (and pnp rpg's in general are), to be included in the mix. To speak about two of the things (and maybe the main two, atleast for me), the character stats, and the skill system. Where your characters levels of Body, Intelligence and Reflexes, and several other, plus the skills which you have decided to put points into, dictate for the most part what your character is actually able to do... rather then the players own skill in using a mouse and keyboard (or controller for the ones who use that). Like many of us have said, we don't want this game to be an FPS, or 3rd person shooter, where the players twitch skills matter much or at all... and one of the main guys behind the CP2077 game has him self said that this game is not going to be a multiplayer shooter (which I do also asume means that it will not be a shooter in singleplayer either... but I might asume wrong).
So yeah... just because we want CP2077 to be as close to CP2020 as possible, that we wants stats and skills that actually matter, does not equal the game having to be turnbased.
I know a lot of people really don't like the idea of "I swung my melee weapon and clearly hit them, but I still missed" (like in Morrowind), or "I pointed the crosshair on the opponent and fired my gun, but I still missed (partly like in some of the new Fallout games)... but this is how it should be in my opinion if the game devs are claiming that this will be a true RPG (which they are claiming of course).
The melee thing from Morrowind I can understand that people disslike, but a fix to that is by making some kind of system where the opponent actually reacts to what you do... so if you missed you see the opponent maybe sway back out of the reach of your weapon, or dodge or block or parry if you hit but they managed to stop your attack or something.
But for missing the opponent when your crosshair is on the enemy with ranged weapons, that is a bit more difficult to convay in a good way I think. Part of the problem here is that a lot of people (mostly people from the FPR and Shooter only crowd, but a lot of people in general as well) are so used to (or feel it is logical) that their weapon will hit exactly where you point the crosshair... and that is just not the case in real life, atleast in anything outside of extremely controlled enviroments (like indoors, with a none moving target, at the same constant range, no timelimits on when you need to shoot or something, etc)... real combat is chaos, and as such even professionals miss from time to time with what would be seen as an easy shot by most people.
As for other things you said. I don't think there has really been any kind of word that your actually going to have companiones in the game (be it like in something like Dragon Age: Origins, or like in Mass Effect). I don't recall ever reading anything about it anyway. It has been talked about though by both me and others on the forum befor though, but that has been in the capacity of wondering if there is going to be, and/or wanting, companions in the game.
And there are loads of games which actually do handle companions very well. Mass Effect is not that good at it sure, but part of the problem there I think is that you have no real choice in the matter of what kind of AI each companion in those games used. Other games do this a lot better. Dragon Age: Origins for example is fairly good where you could pick a style of AI that they would use, but especially since you had direct controll over creating an AI behavior for each character your self... something which they totally borrowed from Final Fantasy XII by the way, where it worked really well as well. If you put together a good set of AI rules/conditions for each companion (and your own character as well in DAO) in those games, then you could for the most part stick with controlling one character and let the others do their thing. Occationally you had to switch control though to another character and steer them right... especially in cases where you had to make sure the healing went where it was needed... but for the most part it worked really well. Man... I really liked that system in Final Fantasy XII... it's one (of many) parts of the reason why FFXII is one of my three favorit Final Fantasy games. If Mass Effect had such a system, then the companion system in combat had been much better. XD
Also, there are a lot of games where you do not have to switch characters to for example open a lock, or dissarm a trap or something. Both Dragon Age: Origins, Pillars of Eternity (as far as I remember), Tyranny, and Wasteland 2, has a system where if your targeted character does not have the right skills to unlock a lock or disarm a trap, etc, and if you had a character in the party which could, then that character would actually say
"Let me handle that for you. / Step aside, this is my job!" (or something of that nature), and automatically run up to said thing and try and unlock/disarm/do the thing you tried to do. So there is nothing saying that you could not have a system like this in CP2077, if CP2077 will have a companion system that is.
And PnP RPG mechanics can not hurt cRPG's... because if you look at which games are considered to be "cRPG's" you will find that almost all of them are games which are very closelly related to PnP RPG mechanics. Fallout (the original ones that is, anything from 3 and later are ARPG's), Balders Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age Origins (not 2 and Inquisition, they are ARPG's), Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, Divinity: Original Sin... etc. Of course... today that "c" at the start of "cRPG" has been dropped, and most people say "RPG" for the most part... but yeah.. cRPG = extreamly simmilar to PnP RPG's in general, and as such PnP RPG mechanics cant really hurt cRPG's, since most of those games are built around PnP RPG like mechanics to begin with. XD