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[do not see the point of having RPG elements in a FPS or tac sim]


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I agree with Kurtz, but I don't think he has argued his point as well as he might... A similar discussion became a heated and interesting topic on the Red Orchestra forums as well, when the 'let's add RPG features crowd' wanted to add 'Mystical Fear Of Suppressive Fire'... The RPG Fans complained: 'players weren't afraid enough of sustained high caliber suppressive fire" (in a respawn game :rolleyes:) -- and suggested that various elements of paralyzing fear be hard coded into the game that might be mitigated by yet other elements (point harvesting of some kind or other).

The point that is missed in this discussion is that performance and efficacy in a Tactical Realism game, is 'Tactical', and a are real skills that are a direct function or analogs of real world skills:

· marksmanship

· clear and effective communication

· eye-hand coordination

· real practice

· team work

· studied and practiced tactics

Where as in an RPG game, nearly all skills are abstracted to numbers that may have little or absolutely nothing to do with a player's real world or even analgos of real world skills in: eye-hand coordination, how practiced he are, how well he actually works as part of a team, how studied and practiced his squad tactics are, or how well he communicates.

I'm all for 'genre bending' in games -- it's an important part of progress, but there are obviously good and bad twists in execution... I for one don't want my accuracy with a weapon mitigated by how many magical accuracy points I've gathered in a game calling itself a 'Tactical Simulation' or or some flavor 'Tactical Realism' -- because that is not Simulation it's Emulation and it's not in the least 'realistic' with respect to scale; i.e. the skill to harvest magical accuracy points is not in any way a scale analog of game or real world marksmanship.

:whistle:

Edited by Waika
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As I havent' seen "game 2" yet with my own eyes I can't comment on wether or not there will be "magical accuracy points" involved but I can come with a rather calculated guess that there won't be anything like that.

What more seems to be the case is simple information gathering, and with terrains as large as what we will see it might just be a very handy thing indeed. To use your words I'd call using these features "clear and effective communication", "team work" and "studied and practiced tactics".

Say your mission is to first move from point A to point B and while on your way there you meet friendly units that are coming from point B. Had that happened in real life I can almost guarantee you any squadleader would of taken the time to find out what your buddies acctually saw there. Call it a roundabout way to battlefield reconosense....or "communication" :whistle:

Or in another scenario you see civilians running from something, heck I can remember seeing that in GR and the first time I ran that mission it could of saved me alot of headaches knowing what they knew. With these RPG elements you might just be able to stop said civvie and ask what they saw around that corner instead of having to poke your head round the corner inviting a 7.62mm lobotomation....hey...that might just be "studied and practiced tactics"

As for "fear of sustained high-caliber suppressive fire"....have you ever been in a situation where a bullet acctually zooms past above your head? I have, fair enough during a training excercise that went wrong, and I can tell you it's not something you take lightly. The natural instinct is to keep your head down, to the point that if you have a shovel you might just start thinking about making the hole you are hiding in deeper! It is something I'd love to see in a realistic first person shooter...along with some memory of it in the enemy AI. That way we won't see what happened in GR all the time...

your first shot misses and the tango dives for cover...perfect, just what you wanted, he can't shoot at you from where he is and you know exactly where he is...you now know that if you keep your aim just where he dived down he's bound to pop his head up in 10 seconds...totally oblivious of the fact that someone acctually shot at him 11 seconds ago :wall:

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I don't think the sarcasm is helping the quality or clarity of the discussion; I was illustrating how RPGs emulate and substitue applied FPS game skills with in essence script by way of very simple examples; if you missed that point, I'm sorry; if you didn't there is no need to be so rude.

And yes I've been under fire -- but that, and your remarks are moot if you actually read the discussion for meaning...

:blink:

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I for one don't want my accuracy with a weapon mitigated by how many magical accuracy points I've gathered in a game calling itself a 'Tactical Simulation' or or some flavor 'Tactical Realism' -- because that is not Simulation it's Emulation and it's not in the least 'realistic' with respect to scale; i.e. the skill to harvest magical accuracy points is not in any way a scale analog of game or real world marksmanship.

But that isn't going to happen. All it is, as Snowfella said, is information gathering. Perhaps this is the point that is being missed. There aren't going to be any 'accuracy points' in Game2, at least according to the available information. You will not be advancing your character in any way. I feel I should stress that.

Going up to other soldiers and civilians to garner valuable intel is my definition of a simulation feature. It is the next level of realism. In most other war games all you have is cold and silent AI who serve no other purpose than to populate an area and offer themselves up as cannon-fodder. The AI in Game2 may well be no better at taking care of themselves than in OFP, but at least they may help you out with some intel before they go down.

To repeat what Snowfella just said (and what several people including myself said at the beginning of this discussion), talking to people on the battlefield is realistic. You cannot dispute that. Nor can you say that this feature will ruin the game by turning it into an RPG.

The original features that made OFP the great game it was will still be there. Your above list;

· marksmanship

· clear and effective communication

· eye-hand coordination

· real practice

· team work

· studied and practiced tactics

All of that will still apply. None of that will be marred by asking the AI questions before you commit yourself to an action. If anything the information you receive will aid you in your tactical decisions.

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It's important not to speculate too much, here is the article that stemmed the RPG discussion. Obviously there are a lot of elements in an RPG, the focus here seems to be persistent worlds that react and remember.

Their new, as yet untitled, game is the next step on from Flashpoint, toward creating this far-future dream - marching what was a straight soldier-sim into new, more obviously cross-genre terrain. "We don't necessarily have to stay with the same gameplay," explains Marek, "That's what Armed Assault is far: a new engine, but the old gameplay. [The new game] could easily have been a sequal as well, but we had a different style of gameplay in mind." And what's that? "Most of us are more roleplaying game fans," Marek grins. "We love first-person shooters... but we like roleplaying games much more."

An RPG? Previously, the only RPG that had anything to do with Flashpoint fired rocket-propelled grenades. "For a sequal, it'll be a surprise, but hopefully a good surprise," says Marek. "Our take on a roleplaying game is very different, unlike other games. But still, 'roleplaying game' is the only term we can use to describe it." They're talking about creating a game that reflects your actions.

You are a soldier, in a war zone. There are no seperate missions, or 'Level Complete' screens. The world continues around you - generating situations and objectives determined by your actions (and those of the AI) in previous encounters. The nearest game to what they're describing, according to Marek, is Morrowind - an open world where you're free to go and do as you please. [Map feature as part of magazine] is your first look at that war zone, targets marked for your elimination. "The gameplay is more continuous in nature," Marek expands, "You don't have short, isolated missions. Rather we have much larger level goals. What you might call a chapter will last for many hours of game, but still be in a persistent world.

Whatever happens goes forward to influence what happens next." On top of the size and continuity of this world, they're aiming to make it far more lively. "Wherever you go, any place in the map, there should be something there," Marek states, "not only men with guns!. While they're adding as much of an ecosystem as they can manage (during [PC Gamer's] visit, we found the team busily researching butterflies to add to the simulation), the biggest change to the platers will be the NPC civilians. Depending on your actions you will either alienate or befriend the population, the help they provide dependant on your social standing with them. For the first time a soldier game is about something more than just pulling the trigger: the very real business of soldiering in a difficult political situation, trying to win hearts and minds.

And to communicate with civilians, you need a conversation system. The game will feature an elaborate version of a conversation tree system, where you choose the line of interrogation. While some topics will be pre-determined, many options will be contextual, and generated on the fly. If you interrogate anyone about the locale, for example, they may know something about the movement of nearby troops and tell you (the information is actually taken from the AI's knowledge of the world's changing events). Friends, captured enemies, the local baker - anyone can be talked to. How the world dynamically changes is crucial to Bohemia's plan. Games which try to create a large continuous environment usually just treat that environment as a static place to explore.

More elaborate games such as Vice City introduce simple reputation systems, so the inhabitants of a region change their behaviour towards you as you progress. Bohemia's shooter will go further, actually making inhabitants move about the map accordingly to their desires and orders. While the technology is currently being tested on seagull colonies and how they spread across the map (look closely in Armed Assault, and you may see them), its eventual use will be modelling the behaviour of thousands of soldiers. The distribution of troops will change constantly, depending on the offensives, manoeuvres and retreats - with your soldier often stuck in the middle.

And more than just 'stuck'. That implies the situation is passive. In fact, you'll be given missions that are generated by the circumstances you find yourself in. If the movement of troops means a group has been ambushed in your locale, your commanders may order you to take a look. Incredibly, even this technology isn't centred on you, but simply on following the logic of the situation. You're the nearest soldier? You go and see. A computer-controlled patrol is nearer? They get the order.

This dynamic war feature, previously only seen in combat flight sims, was supposed to be a cornerstone of the original Flashpoint. It was hopelessly ambitious at the time. "The idea was never wrong," Marek insists, "it was that we started the dynamic campaign before we even had a game. We're not looking at something that drastic now. We still want to do some storytelling. The [unused] original campaign was fully dynamic."

http://www.ghostrecon.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=26704

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Yes, my point as I said in my post; quote: "I'm all for 'genre bending' in games -- it's an important part of progress, but there are obviously good and bad twists in execution..."

It warrants mention that BIS have chosen an independent publishing route, and have generally discouraged question and suggestion posts on their forum -- so it appears they're going to build the game they want to make; not something to satisfy the loudest segment of their audience...

But the door swings both ways, they could go wild with the RPG stuff, and where it impinges on actual skills of execution and makes them into emulated RPG game feature abstracts rather then scale simulation is where I believe many STS Fans will draw the line and loose interest... I also feel that this was the emphasis of what Kurtz was talking about, that it's a valid and important point, and I sympathize...

<_<

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Maybe I should clarify what I mean by missing the RPG elements in GR. In [GR] your squad would have to act independently when you are not "assuming" their role, so the combat abilities they have SHOULD affect their performance.

I did not like the fact the in [GR] your strength and endurance improved. Many people deployed on long tours often end up in worse shape then when they started. I know someone who has a son that is a Marine and he just returned from Iraq. Noticeably thinner, and he remarked how he needed to "get back into shape".

However I would not have minded seeing categories like Leadership, and Knowledge/Combat experience. Elements like these are crucial to survival on the battlefield.

It goes without saying that any soldier with real combat experience is much better off than any soldier that does not have any "real life" experience.

I liked the RPG elements as it made me more willing to preserve the lives of my squad members so that I could use their expertise in later missions. I also always tried to place the person with the most leadership "points" as the first on each squad.

This sure a heck beats the pants off of a game like GR2 that completely disregards this aspect of combat.

Edited by jchung
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  • 5 months later...

Now you're talking - dungeon quests! Wizard keys! You still got to have elves, it's not an RPG without them.

Old Man: You must be that American soldier that is wandering aimlessly through the kingdom.

Soldier: You got a whorehouse in this ville.

Old Man: No time for that. Chuckles. I have a quest for you. Some Russian brutes have abscoded with several of our village virgins. I want you to rescue them, in return for this almost new FN P90.

Soldier: Virgins?

Old Man: Yes, you have a moral choice, take the quest and ally with the village or side with the brutes.

Soldier: That P90 looks sick....wait a minute, is that an Axe of Extreme Decapitation?

Old Man: Check your experience credits, you don't have enough to use it.

Soldier: This game sucks! "Riddles the old man with his M16."

oh man, now THAT's a GAME!

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