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I'd like an open world star wars single player RPG where you are NOT a force user. Or at least have a choice in character creation. It doesn't always have to be about the jedi.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I'd like an open world star wars single player RPG where you are NOT a force user. Or at least have a choice in character creation. It doesn't always have to be about the jedi.

Even better would be a simple radio button option: on/off/random. Would be cool/possibly more fun to create your character not actually knowing whether force options aare going to come into play for your character

 Grey Templar wrote:
I'd like an open world star wars single player RPG where you are NOT a force user. Or at least have a choice in character creation. It doesn't always have to be about the jedi.

That doesn't have the marketability of a Jed/Sith focused game and having the ability to be a Force User or not would expand the scope too much. You'd just end up with something like Skyrim, where your character skills don't really matter to the greater world or story. Best case scenario would be that being a Force User unlocks extra dialogue and quests...but a Force User can also do everything a non-Force User can so the inverse shouldn't necessarily be true.

I'd love to have more games where my character's skills don't matter to the greater world or story.

'Chosen Ones' are terrible. Gimme some personal stakes and a Galaxy/World/Country/City that doesn't get blown up or stomped on by the regional equivalent of Godzilla.
I'd _love_ a SW game where the Force = No.
Pretty sure the best run-through of KotoR was sticking with the real classes for as long as possible and avoiding getting a lot of jedi crap.

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Also, as an aside, in most SW RPGs Force Users _can't_ do everything a non-force user can. They don't have the breadth of skills/influence/contacts/experience with the world and can't deal with a lot of problems.

If its a problem that needs solving without stabbing, mind rape, or telekinesis, they're pretty helpless.

I have to say I'd also welcome some RPG games where you don't save the whole world/country/universe. Sometimes all you need are some smaller adventures and then a semi-big one that has some impact, but isn't saving all of creation.


I feel like both games and TV/films have latched onto the idea that storylines have to have MASSIVE end boss event consequences to have gravity and attraction; when in actuality you can build up all that drama around a much more modest story.


Take The Witcher 3 - Bloody Barron. It is by no means world shattering, the events don't even really have any great influence outside of the family involved nor the sub region its set in. And yet its one of the best bits of story and quest writing that I've ever encountered in an RPG. It has all the drama, gravity, attention grabbing moments and all. All the emotional ups and downs and in the end all you get for it is a tiny bit of information that contributes to your greater quest.

Voss wrote:

Pretty sure the best run-through of KotoR was sticking with the real classes for as long as possible and avoiding getting a lot of jedi crap.

Also, as an aside, in most SW RPGs Force Users _can't_ do everything a non-force user can. They don't have the breadth of skills/influence/contacts/experience with the world and can't deal with a lot of problems.

If its a problem that needs solving without stabbing, mind rape, or telekinesis, they're pretty helpless.

That only works in group based game and even in KotOR it isn't true. There's a tradeoff between building up your Force Skills or Tech Skills, but you can have both. It's just pointless because you have a party and specialization is better for minmaxing.

It's also kind of pointless to argue about a theoretical game that will likely never be made.

It's a MMORPG but built to be efficient as feth for content to reduce costs and increase playability and replay value for the consumer.

It comes down to these concepts.

1) The Bartel Test and how other companies fail to take meaningful information from it.

The Issue: Everyone who takes the Bartel test is some % in all 4 categories. Explorer, Killer, Achiever, Socializer. But in MMOs on the market you are often pigeon holed into a particular type of content. Raid gear is really good for raids but really sub par for competitive PVP. PVP gear doesn't hold up in the raid game. Player made equipment is always lagging behind and is near meaningless.

The Solution: All the gear really worth having in the game will be player made. Equipment will degrade and need to be repaired. When it is repaired there is a chance a certain % of it's durability will be permanently damaged and thus it will need to be repaired more often, eventually needing to be replaced. Content will provide caches of resources with which to make new gear. You do some PvP? You get some resources. You kill a raid? You get some resources. Even better, the "Onyxias" of the world now don't really loose value. Instead of providing a magic hat that eventually becomes obsolete content, they always provide their cache of resources which is always valuable. The players will drive an economy in the world.

2) Diverse Types of Content.

The Issue: Content in games generally boils down to things that become obsolete by the end game. Quests and stories end and are not revisited. Instances give way to raids. PvP becomes a series of death matches or whatever near devoid of context outside of grinding for gear.

Solution: Keeping the various types of content relevant will mean making some interesting choices in the content.

Social: Players can own and build cities. These cities will require upkeep and costs but provide a number of benefits. Cities will create tensions and/or alliances with in the world.

PvP: Some of the pvp in the game will revolve around "mines". Locations in the world that can be captured by guilds/cities and provide resource caches. Once captured the controlling group will set a vulnerability window. This window will have a minimum and maximum time. I.E. you cannot make it vulnerable for 6 hours and must become vulnerable within 48 hours. If no time is picked within 30 minutes it will default to 6 hours. When it becomes vulnerable it will trigger a minigame of some kind. An escort of the resources. A king of the hill type scenario. Upon victory of the vulnerability match the victor will receive the cache of resources and get to set the next window. The more often you make it vulnerable the more resources you can claim. These will be public knowledge visible from a war room/guard barracks building in your city so that everyone and anyone can show up and compete for the prize. There will be less mines than potential city locations. These will create local tensions. This can create social opportunities for intercity/kingdom politics.

NPC factions: Cities can have a town hall which will be populated with delegates from the major NPC race factions. Based on a system I will get into a minute they will have a series of tasks and quests they will have running at any given time that will allow members of the city to go earn Favor for themselves and the city. Favor can be spent as currency to purchase faction specific blue prints for crafting, consumables, and other stuff including small amounts of special resources unique to each faction. On the city level you can purchase battle horns that summon small groups of NPCs to assist in sieges and ctiy defense. A group of elven archers, or orc berserkers etc etc.. These quests will potentially put players into conflict with other players as the factions can be in conflict with each other. Raising orc will reduce elf or whatever. And the Orcs and Elves might send you to the same forest to help their side in a conflict. With players trying to gain the other faction for their city being in the area putting the players in conflict with each other. Not all quests will do this but a good chunk will. This creates social opportunities for intercity/kingdom politics.

Events and Quests: The world is going to be basically built on events. It would work like this. The world has locations or "zones". Murkwood forest or whatever. Each of these locations will have their default content/stories. But, every day the game will generate event content with a certain amount of content allowed in the world at a given time and certain types of content superseding others. Player cities can have a Inn. The Inn will spawn NPCs based on the events currently going on in the world and provide the quests or seeds to get out there and experience it. Quests will come in 2 varieties. Leads and Tasks. Leads point players in a direction to go investigate or explore something and be rewarded with experience while leading to tasks. Tasks will be rewarded with experience and physical rewards including items and/or resources and money. So example: An event might trigger for 3 days out of every month when the world has a full moon resulting in were wolves. There will be 7 different versions of this event taking place in different zones around the world with different quests and circumstances built around it. These will have weighted chances to trigger. So 3-4 of them will be pretty common, 2ish will be kind of rare and 1 or 2 will be very rare (might only trigger once a year).

The guy giving the lead will spawn in the Inn being all "People have gone missing in the Murkwood recently..." which will give the Lead that leads to Tasks to do over the course of the 3 day event. Some of these events can have bigger effects if not handled. A cult forms in x area. If the players as a group don't do enough to stop them over x period of time the event could spread into surrounding zones as the cult gains power. If left unchecked for long enough it could create a powerful roaming world boss that could end up attacking the surrounding area. NPC factions will have little stories triggered by these events. World content will be in constant flux by these events. There could be weather events (the full moon basically counts as that), faction events, little conflicts in a particular area. All kinds of stuff. The thing is, once these scripts and events are written the developers can kind of step back and let the world run.

Think about it. Every single god damn year the players of WoW go to do the xmas event. Not because it's all that different from last year, but because they don't have access to it all year long. It's limited. So it's experienced when available. The world will run on limited access events triggering daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. Once a year a giant ass world dragon will wake up for 1 week. It will march around the world in a more or less random pattern and it can run into and attack player cities cause damage to walls and assets. The players will have 1 week to try to learn it's patterns and kill it. And then it will go back to sleep and they will have 1 year to plan how to deal with it next year. Then it wakes up and it maybe has a slightly different pattern (it rolls 1 of 3 at generation). Not only giving vast rewards in resources and some unique weapons (maybe an extra slot for a rune stone (enchantment) but not otherwise much better than the best player made stuff) but that sword will still degrade and break like any other and need to be replaced eventually. Meanwhile the Dragon acts as a disruption in the world. Something that causes shake ups so things don't become too static.

The thing a lot of these games get wrong is it's not enough to let the players influence the world. The world needs to influence back. This is that. The events are that. The mines are that. The inherent conflicts, diplomacy, war, that results from them is what will keep the world interesting and driving forward. Players will log in every day to See what is going on. On the individual level there on small NPC tasks, there are world events in all kinds of directions, there is picking up a trade and trying to turn a profit contributing the crafting you choose to do. On the guild/city/kingdom level all those things expand out but all of it always stays relevant.



The end result is instead of hiring a massive team to constantly create new content with planned obsolesces, your team instead writes more events and which provide years and years of content that never becomes obsolete. Launch with the default world and 500 events big and small. With an expansion add a new land mass with another 2-300. It could be 3-5 years before they even all trigger once.The important bit is you never spend time and money building content that just goes in the dumpster as soon as you raise a level cap or some gak. But also, the players are always encouraged to engage in it in whichever way they feel like that day. Want to go do a raid with your bros? Go do it. Wanna pvp? You can go fight over NPC factions, or mines, or a war could be brewing, or just go do some gak. Though the rewards of the other methods should keep most pvpers focused on where the rewards are at. Want to set up shop and craft/sell some gak. You can! And the world literally needs people to. The Bartel Test in action. Whether it's for your own kindgom or selling outside it players are needed to make gear.



Brief over view of crafting.

Every type of item will have 3 blueprints with variations on the basic stats.
3 types of light armor.
3 types of 1 handed swords.

Then, each faction will have their own unique blue prints either gained from being that race/faction or from Favor (making some mutually exclusive).

So while 1 handed swords might have the same DPS 1 blue print might have a wider min max damage. Another might be faster with lower individual hits. 3rd slower with bigger individual hits. Etc etc...

Then it requires say 1 wood or leather and 3 metal or stone. The types of resources you use to make it will determine it's end attributes. Resources will come in tiers with higher tiers having side grade variations. So copper t1, bronze t2, iron t3, steel t4, and then things like adamantine, or some elemental crystals of t5.

Make a sword with 1 fire crystal and 2 steel and it will sit between t4 and t5 damage with a portion of it's damage being fire. This will influence all the attributes of the item. Durability, influence speed, damage, crit chance etc etc.. Example of an extreme. Obsidian would have a really high crit, a pretty low durability, and down the middle of the road damage and speed and such.

What variation on the type of gear you use and made of what materials will be a part of how you spec your character with their build and powers. I could go on forever with the systems I have designed for that. But for the over all game I think thats a pretty good introduction.

I have to say I'd also welcome some RPG games where you don't save the whole world/country/universe. Sometimes all you need are some smaller adventures and then a semi-big one that has some impact, but isn't saving all of creation.

Thinking about it, my biggest bugbears in RPGs right now are Strongholds, Crafting and fething War Tables (timed missions with basically non-existent abstracted minions).

I'm just tired of all three, metacurrencies and picking up garbage to either create meta-currencies or 'resources' for improvements. Its really distracting from gameplay, and if there is any sense of urgency to quests/adventure, pausing to go pick flowers or whatever just kills the pacing.

Just focus on the story, characters and fun & engaging gameplay. Replaying DA3, I'm boggling at the amount of time I'm watching the animation for my character bending over and picking up crap. Even if its 'necessary' in the first place, area looting is much more functional then a new flower or chunk of ore every few feet.

DA:I is really bad about War Table missions, but at least you can change system time on console to finish them instantly. >.> Unless they patched that.

I would enjoy a Dark Souls style game with a Warhammer Old World aesthetic, or a Mount and Blade style game where you play as a Rogue Trader, with spaceship battles.

Just give me Titanfall 3.

I'd also avoid going down the route more and more developers are sadly taking these days of "Make everything a Season Pass and it has to be like Fortnite because people like Fortnite". Still pissed off that Halo has finally decided to go down this route.