Maklak said,

Off topic rant:

I’m wondering why computer RPGs are pretty much stuck with simplistic systems made for Pen and Paper RPGs, where most calculations might as well be done in the head with a dice roll or a few. Examples:
*) HP (usually healable in combat, (even in modern settings like Wasteland 2) for a ludicrous effect of killing dozens of people and shrugging off what should be moratl wounds) rather than something more realistic, like hit locations, lasting critical wounds effects (including neve damage and limb loss), blood loss, infections, etc. Combat should generally be dangerous and something you want to avoid, not XP grinder and mass murder simulator.
*) Grenades / Fireballs are most often modeled as a circular area, such that if you are inside you roll for evasion and damage (which are the same, regardless of distance) and if you are outside, you’re completely safe. A more reasonable system would be something like concentric circles (the father you are, the easier it is to evade and the less damage you potentially take) plus sharpnell as a random number of “rays” from the center. If any of them touches you, you get a chance to be hit. I’ve seen a Neuroshima (Polish post-apocalyptic RPG) do a decent model of Claymore mine with cone-shaped area of effect and about 5 zones based on distance with diffrent damage and number of sharpnell. Pretty good for a Pen and Paper RPG.
*) Ranged weapons tend to have a very limited range. With high level of skill and short-ranged weapon you can have almost 100% chance to hit in one spot and 0% one square further. Even if you want to stick to % chance and not do the whole weapon spread / area of target / hit locations thing, there are more gracious ways to do it. For example Eve Online has a formula where each weapon has an optimal range and a range where accurracy starts to drop rapidly. WH 40k allows to shoot at up to 4 times maximum range, but at increasing penalties to hit. In short: dropping accurracy is the way to go here.
I mean you have computers with ludicrous memory and processing power and are already using complex graphics, pathfinding, etc, so why not do full frontal Dwarf Fortress? My theories:
1) Programmer Laziness – this stuff needs to be programmed by hand, while libraries / frameworks do a lot of heavy lifting in areas like graphics. Combat systems from Pen and Paper RPGs are “good enough” and widely accepted, so why change?
2) Perceived player laziness – players like to optimize and therefore like systems that they can understand and mimic in something like Excell. They don’t want to read a PhD on game mechanics just to know how to build their characters. So familiar, simple, good enough systems are all-around win.
3) Balancing – there is a strong notiona that games should be like theme parks, with everything balanced between classes, levels, enemies and so on. It is nigh-impossible to do it in a complex system, but something like DnD is basically built around this concept. To me an especially repulsive concept is that the number and strength of the enemy group should varry depending on power level of the murderous hobos. Simply put, the game universe should not revolve around them.

Slighly more on topic:
It is probably a bad idea for FK, but I’d like to see an RPG that doesn’t “think” in terms of encounters. Rather, there are some places with creatures who try to defend against wandering bands of murderous hobos (player characters), but they can do it intelligently, rahter than divide into level-appropriate groups, stand around, then fight to the death and drop only a small fraction of their inventory on death. So no encounters, just competent defenders with a mastermind. Examples:
1) A dragon rules over a band of Kobolds. She has alarm spells and enough telepathy to command her minions. They will attack with ranged weapons from murder holes over trapped choke points, use cover, fall back through small tunnels to the next choke points and so on. The dragon will be reluctant to fight the hobos and try to escape when wounded. Or circle-strafe and breath / magic a party that’s too stupid to have ranged weapons for everyone.
2) Hobgoblins inhabit a small fortification. Rather than aimlessly wander their corridors in small groups, they sound an alarm when intruders enter, fall back, some of them use a secret tunnel to go behind the party, then do a massed assault where their enemies are surrounded.
3) Forest creatures (faries, elves or whatever) spy on a party of high level intruders, while massing a few groups of militia some distance away. They use their native terrain advantage for sniping and hit and run, plant control and illusions to lure them into a trap, then massive assault to finish them off.
4) Counter tactics: A high level party uses illusions to make the enemy try massed assault with most of “encounters” in an area. Then cluster-bomb it all for t3h l00lz.
But then player stupidity indiced TPKs (for example from charging into encounters on the assumption that they must be balanced) are mostly great fun for the GM in Pen and Paper RPGs and it wouldn’t be trivial to do in a computer game, so it’s probably a moot point. However, it might be feasible to have several wounded enemies fall back and join the next encounter or an alarm that makes every encounter in the area go towards the alarm.

You want a deeper world with more things to do? Give me more realistic economy and logistics, like in this book: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/27934657/images/1382726888015.pdf Sure, it is an infinite money machine and most today’s RPGs abhor that, but I like the concept that economy makes sense and trading and crafting can be profitable.

Any thoughts on another one of my long off-topic rants?