What do you love/hate in RPGs?

What I mean by this are features.  Gameplay or game mechanics.  Not narrative events or characters specific to certain RPGs.

So, as a starter for ten I'd suggest co op is a great feature for an RPG. 

For me I always harken back to the best times of my pen & paper roleplaying games.  And that was almost always about co op.  Even when the party was divisive and split down the middle and one half waged war with the other.  (Which reminds me of a story I might share in a later post) - it was always about players discussing their next moves and then embarking on a quest together.  So co op is something we aim for here.

Another great feature was Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system.  This provided some truly memorable moments for me, playing that game:

          "Oi!  Man filth!  I killed you before...."

And then the intense satisfaction of besting an opponent which has killed you repeatedly. Nothing quite like it.  And they say genius steals, so we've wholesale borrowed this system, massaged it to suit our purposes, and Underland will present its equivalent - which we call the Bane system.  Except, obviously, we do things a little differently.  And virtually any creature can become a Bane of the protagonist in our game.  Because we want to capture those moments that engage a player.  When an enemy slips through your fingers, learns from your mistakes, and ambushes you later.  Taunts you.  Steals from you.  And then you eventually out smart that sonofa, and crush its skull beneath your boots.

For years, as a games designer, I used to think that game play was the pinnacle of game design.  It's what you allowed your player to do that was important.  How you extended and evolved a genre by applying a new feature.  But it is not that.

Don't  get me wrong.  All that is important.  But it's emotional engagement that is the pinnacle of game design.  If you can get your player to love, hate, be furious in (temporary) defeat, bring tears to their eyes and fist pump the air when they ultimately succeed. These are the moments that define a game.  These are the moments that stay with you as a player.

Gameplay and game mechanics support them.  But it is emotional engagement which captures the heart and mind and rewards the player.  It is for these reasons gamers invest time and money.  And this is what we strive for with Underland.  We want you to tell stories around the water-cooler and down the pub, and salivate for the next time you log on.

So what features in other RPGs have you loved and/or hated?

What's made a game for you, and what's broken a game for you.

I could fill pages with this stuff.  But I want to hear from you.

Please.

There, I said please!  :-)

Core features, gameplay - extracts from the Game Design Document

CORE FEATURES

• The exploration of catacombs based on the actual real-world environment the player inhabits - where the streets and buildings become the caverns and content of the world to explore.
• The game ‘sniffs’ the real-world location via IP and allows the player then to wander anywhere, using the open source, Open Maps (.org) to provide base content.  In this way players may wander far and wide from their actual location.
• Real-world time and weather is also captured to further augment the environment.  Play at night and the catacombs will be dark, play when it’s raining and the catacombs will be flooded.

GAMEPLAY

• Being a spirit, Dread Pirate Booty cannot be killed, the body they possess might die in combat, but this merely releases the spirit and the player may continue to ghost form until it finds another body to possess.  In this way virtually ANY creature in the game may ultimately be taken over and used.  Thus the player can be a pirate, or a soldier, or a dog, or a rat or an eel.
• Every creature has particular innate skills.  So a player may decide to possess a fish in order to navigate a series of flooded caverns, or take the form of a rat to slip past a tough enemy unseen.  In this way the game provides a unique puzzle solving element to the gameplay whereby there might be several different ways to bypass the possibly tricky, procedurally generated levels.
• The game will use physics to allow players to knock over objects, create barricades, cause train reactions or explosions.
• The game also incorporates a 2D free-running element (a la original Prince of Persia) and a grappling hook to facilitate negotiating the vertical drops that might be present.
• The game also uses a Shadow of Mordor style Nemesis combat system (the Bane system, see appendix) which allows key enemies to develop over time.
• Complex, progressive upgrade paths exist for skills, spirit form and key pieces of equipment, enabling players to develop their characters in myriad interesting ways which expose additional aspects of gameplay (i.e. the grappling hook skill can be upgraded to target objects and entities and drag them toward the player, rather than to be merely used for climbing, swinging and rappelling…)
• DPB is at its heart a game of exploration and character development.  A player may find themselves initially pitched against seemingly unbeatable opponents, but a few choice skills later, may see you not only defeat that minotaur, but steal its shape and go on a rampage!
• Day / Night Cycle.  To further augment the aspect of time, the game presents a Day / Night Cycle which has a palpable effect on the denizens of the Underworld.  Some of the particularly nasty entities only spawn at night.  Additionally, virtually all entities become more hostile and more powerful and night, effectively ‘mutating’ into more evil versions of their daytime selves.  Adding to the nightmare.  The Prefix NIGHTMARE is added to most creatures during the Night Cycle illustrating the fact they are tougher and more hostile.

Much of the rich content of big-budget RPGs is actually quite achievable in a lower-budget 2D title. Much of the expense of producing a game like World of Warcraft or Shadow of Mordor comes from the huge, open 3D world and its inhabitants and objects.

Stripping this back to 2D and procedurally generating the environment makes it possible to create an RPG which is as rich in content and detail as its big brothers, but affordable and more accessible to those with lower-end devices.

The aim of this project is to create an immersive world that is every bit as enthralling as the AAA titles, but which can be made for a fraction of the cost.  And procedural generation provides for longevity of play.  A game to capture people’s imagination, passion for exploration, love of character progression and a title they are happy to play frequently, and for a long time - providing good value for money.