Whats the thing you liked most in any RPG/MMORPG?

[TopDawg540]

What are things that have been done in games that you wish would become a standard game feature? what have you seen done that defines a character class for you? what has been done in the past that could have evolved into a great idea but died off?

 

For example on the poll i made earlier i touched on Treasure boxes being found on creatures in Gemstone. I love getting boxes as additional treasure then taking them back to town and seeing what they hold while i absorb the exp i got hunting, its a GREAT game concept that i cant belive another game hasnt copied (Diablo kinda has someting like this with the random boxes spread around the land but not quite the same)

 

Any other thoughts?

[JunkerSeed]

ooo, there's a damned bunch of great thing that RPGs have done that noone caught up on.  The first few come from one of my favorite RPGs of all time, fallout.  One great thing it had was a "perk" system.  As you level up, about every 4 levels along with your stats increase, you would get a perk.  This could range from getting +2 chance of stealing stuff, or being able to see and enemies hit points and inventory.  It was a good way to keep your character interesting, and give you a vastly different character every time you play the game.  Speaking of vastly different characters, another thing it did really well was to be able to do everything in the game in very different ways.  For just about every challenge, there was a way to get through with combat, diplomacy, stealth, and usually also one that any character, no matter how shitty can do, but it's usually the hardest.  More games should do this, in fallout your intelligence matters even if you're a plain fighter.  Make it too low and all your character can say is stuff like "you ugly" (actual quote) and you find yourself getting into a fight with half of the people in the game.  Another thing I like, is to be allowed to be evil.  In fallout, at first you can just be an ass by screwing people over (ie "some of my cattle (which are two headed) are lost, save them!" and you proceed to find them, then slaughter them, along with the few that weren't lost....) or just by picking insulting speach choices.  When I got good enough though, I found myself taking over towns, killing every living thing within a mile radius.  In fallout two you can even make money by capturing people as slaves for a slave trading company.  In your stats you even earn fun ratings like "child killer" and "lunatic."  At the end of the game, you get a round up of each town's fate, according to whether you decided to help them or not.  I know you can have an evil alignment in other games like baldur's gate, but it that game it means not being able to finish the game.  In fallout you can save your people, but be a real asshole doing it.  Oh, and from the makers of fallout, there's another great one called arcanum, that i haven't bought yet but played the demo and it has asome great ideas in it too.  When you create your character, you can optionally choose some traits for him to have.  They all have strengths and weaknesses.  For example, you can choose to be butt ugly, of course, this makes people react more negatively to you then they normally would, but all the beatings you got as a kid increased your endurance.  You could also be a book worm, which increases intelligence related stats but makes you damn near blind from staring at text, and so on.  I just love any new way to customize your character.  'nuther cool thing about that game is there's a dichotomy between magic and technology.  Since technology uses the rules of physics and magic breaks them, they can't coexist very well.  For example, a gun will constantly jam in a mage's hand, and a demolition's expert will have to heal with potions, because spells will rarely do much to him.  However, you don't pick classes in the game.  You start pretty much neutral, and as you go along, you can choose to stay neutral and be decent at both tech and magic, or specialize.  It creates a cool world where the magic people and tech people resent each other, the magic folks sticking to the old ways and the tech ones embracing the industrial revolution.  Straying from the makers of fallout and their insanely innovative non-tolkein-esque games, a game called daggerfall (also on the pc) was basically the ultimate in non-linear gameplay.  While it was flawed (bugs galore, vague plot) it did some great things.  One was letting you make any damned character on earth.  If it wasn't part of the huge class list, you could make your own class.  Everything was an option. Sunlight, water, different types of metal, could hurt you or heal you if you choose them to, you could be healed or hurt by killing a certain type of monster ( or person) etc etc etc etc etc.  The same company is coming out with one called Morrowind which will have the same basic concept and hopefully more polished gameplay.  But I like the idea of there being, for all intents and purposes, an infinite number of different characters to play as.  More games seem to be going in this direction (like the superhero mmorpg) so that makes me happy.  I'll stop rambling now, but those are good examples from games I know not all of you have played.

[TopDawg540]

Yeah Fallout was a fun ass game. i'm still kicking myself for never finishing it. tried looking for it the other day and realized that i left it back in Miami with you.  ???  I need to find a copy of it eventually and give it another go.

 

"Remember kids! if you see a bright flash and a Mushroom cloud just Duck and Cover!"