[Role Playing Game] The Warcraft RPG Experience

[neku99]

Hello there! I'm trying to make a pool of opinions/ideas regarding what I call the "Warcraft RPG Experience" - which revolve around the RPG type map and would like to get some thoughts from those who play or have played RPG maps.

If you have played or actively play some RPG styled maps, these are some questions for you:

1. What RPG maps have you tried?
2. What was the most enjoyable feature, mechanic or experience you encountered while playing?
3. What was the most unenjoyable feature, mechanic, or experience you encountered while playing?
4. In what areas do you think RPG maps should improve in general?
5. What kind of interestinfg features would you like to see in RPG maps.

I myself play RPGs mostly but I enjoy other maps as well.

Your responses will be a gold mine not just for me but other RPG mappers as well.

Cheers!

 

[Veritas 117]

Personally I like as much "realism" as possible without it being too annoying. As long as you don't have to deal with something like a hunger system I usually like other features like backpacks and item limitations. I also like enterable buildings in my RPGs. If you can cleverly add mini games and other mechanics into an RPG and make it more than just hack n slash I find that admirable as well. It's not easy to do though and the mini games and puzzles have to make sense to the story.

Overall I think one of the most important things is a great story with fun mechanics that aren't too overly complicated. The saying easy to learn, difficult to master comes to mind.

 

[apsyll]

Tried many different types if rpgs but most likely shorter/dungeon crawler ones.

Most enjoyable would be to be most interactively with the world as possible and a world that makes sense in itself npc following a daily routine ect...

Most unenjoyable is by far recepie systems I posted somewhere else already that this is a part of the old limitations but should be overworked by now, don't let me search a whole map for the shop that has the item needed and then has a slightly different name because it changed later on but was forgotten to check all the recepies which this was needed for...

I like it when there is no completed space like you hqve to go to the same area over and over and always changed and fitts to the quest you do at the moment. Like you killed a boss on one place and because of this later in tge story a bunch of animals you have to observe nesting there which where scared before of the boss and even later because of the animals a rare plant starts growing nearby...

This kind of fits to the living world type.

 

[Duke]

I like interesting story and novel world. Not really looking forward to play "a farmer leaves his farm for adventure and goes into forest to kill big spiders" RPG #213365998

EDIT: also WoW style quests aka "kill 5 of these and bring me their hides" suck

 

[neku99]

Personally I like as much "realism" as possible without it being too annoying. As long as you don't have to deal with something like a hunger system I usually like other features like backpacks and item limitations. I also like enterable buildings in my RPGs. If you can cleverly add mini games and other mechanics into an RPG and make it more than just hack n slash I find that admirable as well. It's not easy to do though and the mini games and puzzles have to make sense to the story.

Overall I think one of the most important things is a great story with fun mechanics that aren't too overly complicated. The saying easy to learn, difficult to master comes to mind.

Thanks for posting! Agree with the "not too annoying" part. I find it challenging to balance actions you do for it not to be too convoluted. Also love enterable buildings as well because it sells the experience of a living world. I think puzzles are something I haven't seen that much in the rpg maps I've played and would be interesting to see some of those implemented.

Tried many different types if rpgs but most likely shorter/dungeon crawler ones.

Most enjoyable would be to be most interactively with the world as possible and a world that makes sense in itself npc following a daily routine ect...

Most unenjoyable is by far recepie systems I posted somewhere else already that this is a part of the old limitations but should be overworked by now, don't let me search a whole map for the shop that has the item needed and then has a slightly different name because it changed later on but was forgotten to check all the recepies which this was needed for...

I like it when there is no completed space like you hqve to go to the same area over and over and always changed and fitts to the quest you do at the moment. Like you killed a boss on one place and because of this later in tge story a bunch of animals you have to observe nesting there which where scared before of the boss and even later because of the animals a rare plant starts growing nearby...

This kind of fits to the living world type.

Yep totally would love to play in a consistent world. Although most of the RPGs I've played are pretty straightforward. Pick a character, level up get stronger, beat bosses, get items. I'd like to see something more advance in the future. Hopefully reforged will give mappers more power to create more complex stuff.

Regarding the "not completed space" or I think it could mean dynamic areas, that would be cool! If you've played Nier: Automata, there are just a handful of areas in that game but they made it so you go back and forth areas and it changes each time, and the more you get into the game, the greater the change. I think the story also had an impact on selling the world. That would be interesting to try out in a map.

I like interesting story and novel world. Not really looking forward to play "a farmer leaves his farm for adventure and goes into forest to kill big spiders" RPG #213365998

EDIT: also WoW style quests aka "kill 5 of these and bring me their hides" suck

I watched some Fantasy Life vids recently that kind of sound like what you are describing maybe? Haha Tho I find Fantasy Life gameplay pretty charming .

In terms of quest design I personally prefer questing which the game doesn't track. Like in Ragnarok Online, quests didn't have quest trackers back then, and so you had to take note of what you needed to do on the spot (They eventually did have some kinds of quest window tracker). I think this makes it more immersive at least but could make it more difficult and potentially frustrate some players.

Keep the opinions/ideas coming guys! Also feel free to put in RPG Map recommendations

 

[Duke]

I watched some Fantasy Life vids recently that kind of sound like what you are describing maybe? Haha Tho I find Fantasy Life gameplay pretty charming .

I don't know what fantasy life is. I just meant that lot of fantasy RPG maps follow the same pattern of bland western-type fantasy.

 

[Cespie]

1. What RPG maps have you tried?
2. What was the most enjoyable feature, mechanic or experience you encountered while playing?
3. What was the most unenjoyable feature, mechanic, or experience you encountered while playing?
4. In what areas do you think RPG maps should improve in general?
5. What kind of interestinfg features would you like to see in RPG maps.

1. A bunch back in the day, but I primarily play my own RPGs as I like to engineer the experience to my exact personal tastes.
2. Proper progression, good and systematic balance design, accurate tooltips, open world elements, playable as single-player, scaling difficulty, fun and active hero skillsets, actual item balance designs - not gut feel stats thrown on items at random, quality over quantity (especially with heroes), carefully designed learning curve (not throwing 100 features in a players face the moment they pick a hero), simple and easy to navigate landscapes.
3. Overengineered custom features that overshadowed some of the core parts of what makes Warcraft enjoyable to play. Making a map where heroes can jump around on walls, do backflips while sprinting all over the place and having custom ui elements pop up everywhere, seems to be a prevalent idea of something that's appealing, but to me, it's a massive turnoff. I don't need everything to be super flashy, I just need smooth and enjoyable gameplay. Also, gear merging recipes are almost always awful and clunky to deal with. Future custom UIs may improve on this, but I generally hate the concept. Another thing that irks me is when spells are designed in a way that makes them feel clumsy or disruptive to use. For example, if a melee hero has a melee attack skill, it better warrant me breaking my auto attack cycle to use it, and I will generally not enjoy it if the effect is hardly different from a regular attack, it just doesn't work that well in Warcraft 3, so it should be designed around being significantly different from a regular attack. All in all, what I want from an RPG, is to be able to explore and quest through a world. Not necessarily with actual quests. At first, I just wanna jump in and kill the odd forest troll or wild boar and get to level 2, maybe find a shitty item or two, then head further into the world and slowly explore it at my own pace. Most of the RPG maps made these days plump you right into a huge city with millions of features, and you spend the first 10-15 minutes trying to figure out how to go out and kill stuff while dealing with a smorgasboard of micro-management features on your level 1 Arms-specialization-fire-faction-blacksmith-profession-strength-bonus-optimized-armor-prioritized-normal-mode-enabled-high-elven-neutral-good-Warrior. I mean... just give me a break here, I just wanna smash some boars and find a rusty dagger. Also, in terms of sense of progression, don't send me out to defeat "Sargoth, destroyer of worlds" at level 2. I want to feel like I am slowly growing in power, and fighting in progressively dangerous terrain. I also want to feel like I am unlocking new features 1 at a time as I progress.
4. Get back to the roots. We are in an era where even World of Warcraft is considering that it may have departed too far into the 1000 shiny mechanics realm and is launching an actual retro-version of their game. That's not to say that everyting has to be made simple and that we can't innovate in the RPG genre, it just means that maybe spending all of those hours making a level 2 hero able to perform extremely visually intense super-abilities on a short cooldown may not be a step in the right direction. I wish more people would focus on that exploratory feeling of progression, rather than making the next big shiny pile of unrelatable nonsense and micromanagement features that are thrown in your face and makes the map feel unplayable unless you invest a solid hour into figuring out what the hell is going on, as everyone else loads up pre-existing characters and starts blowing up the whole place. I kinda liked back when RPG maps didn't try to be MMORPGs, and instead just focused on giving the player a solid experience in 1 playthrough.
   
5. Honestly, nothing much. Just make interesting heroes, a balanced experience, and large open places to explore, rather than walking through a maze. Story is nice for singleplayer campaigns, but in RPGs I really don't need a long elaborate backstory to murder 20 murlocs with a friend or by myself.