Sorry I forgot to mention, I actually am advocating this idea, if it was my game I’d actually do just this. I’m liming it to make my point.
Don’t insult me. And even if you had a reason to be angry the correct word would be stubborn.
And that would be a real pain in ass. I could only see it work in a Baldur’s Gate type game where you couldn’t control any other character but yourself so they would have a lot of stuff jammed into their AIs to determine their behavior or a strategy game in which your character is barking orders at the other units from some place were he can’t be hit. Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense.
In every other kind of game, your characters don’t receive orders of any kind. When you tell a knight to attack using his sword, you are getting in the knights own mind and telling him to attack. Turn-based RPGs work like that, you as the player have control over your characters’ minds, they don’t receive orders, they always do stuff out of their own will, which you just happen to have complete and absolute control over. They do what you tell them to do, because that’s what you tell them they want to do. They can’t hesitate.
And, going back to the swinging dagger at a dragon example, even if it occurred to you yourself to swing it at the dragon, are you sure you’d do it absolutely the moment it occurred to you? Courage is one’s ability to face the repercussions of his actions, or of events in general, and I’m pretty sure I’d hesitate for the moment to consider the possible repercussions had from potentially catching the dargon’s attention.
You don’t get my point. I from my comfy seat in front of the monitor am telling my character to swing the dagger at the dragon. I don’t give a crap about what the dragon might do to me and therefore, since my character thinks and does exactly the same as me while in the battle, he will swing the dagger regardless of what might/will happen.
Your point would, again, only be valid if you order another character who has his own AI, which would only be possible in a game like those I described before.
SE, you don’t get OUR point. Or THEIR point. Whatever. You may be in a comfy seat, but the CHARACTERS are facing a Red Dragon thingy. 
It would be another stat, like how strong you are. You can tell your character to lift a large boulder, but it doesn’t mean your character is strong enough to do it. You can tell your character to attack something scary, like a dragon or Keanu Reeves’ acting, but it doesn’t mean your character is brave enough to do it.
Let me try again: Either your character has an AI or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t have an AI then you have complete control over him, you ARE the character and you can do whatever the hell you want. So if I, from my comfy seat, want my character to jump into a lake of lava, he’s going to do it.
If he DOES have an AI, then you would really be ordering him to do something stupid in which case his Courage (Although it should be called Common Sense by now) would play some role. But again, that wouldn’t work on a traditional turn-based RPG.
Clear enough?
By that logic, if I knew in real life how to, say, swing a sword, then when I jump into the mind of my Black Mage, I can tell him to swing a sword, and he will do it. But wait, he doesnt! Thats because the Black Mage doesnt have the ability to wield swords! Likewise, I may, in real life, know how to use medicine appropriately, doubling its effectiveness. Yet, despite this, only characters with the chemist ability use healing items at double efficiency, even though I myself told them to use the items in question. Why is this all the case? Because they have stats and abilities! Just because I tell the person what to do doesnt mean they can; strength is one’s ability to use muscle, intelligence one’s ability to think things through, courage is one’s ability to face fear appropriately. NO ONE chooses to be afraid.
Also, the idea that when you command a character directly ala a traditional RPG makes you the character himself is your belief, but disputable; I always saw commanding characters in RPGs, or anything save for games where you only control one character (and even then, sometimes those with only one character), you are merely telling them what to try to do. They still need to face things like strength checks, dexterity checks, intelligence checks, whatever, maybe even our theoretical courage checks on their own.
This is very evident in a D&D campaign I am in; we have a Wizard in the group who has an intelligence of 18 (for those D&D illiterate, that is as high as a stat can go without modifiers. Einstein). But, his player is fucking retarded, the rest of us ended up regarding him as the ‘I cast magic missile… at the darkness!’ kid. Hell, tonight he was literally just that, going so far as to attack one of our own! If magic existed, his real self would never begin to comprehend even that simple spell, but we still let his character carry out the action. Your mentality is never the character’s mentality, even if it is the only one under your direct command.
You completely missed my point. Of course your character can’t do stuff just because you can, we are talking about taking decisions on the use of their existing abilities. The situation we are discussing her is whether or not a character you are directly controlling should be allowed to have a “hesitate“ status check-like thingie to determine his speed and efficiency after a command is issued, in other words, the only statuses that take effect here are those that could affect his reaction time, not whether his action will have any kind of result. If your character has the weapon equipped, by the universal laws of RPGing, he will undoubtedly have at least a minimum ability to use it and that is all that matters when carrying out the action. Yes he will get squished like a bug, but that’s dependant on constitution, defense, HP and other stuff that doesn’t relate to this.
The only real influence YOU have on your character is your speed of decision while during the battle. You are the one that takes the decision to attack, defend, or blow the fuck up with Ultima. The way a non-AI character uses his skills in battle is completely up to you. When you press the “Attack” command, that completes all decision taking and the only thing left is the execution of the action which is entirely dependant on Strength, Accuracy and other combat-related statuses. If you want to have a “Paralyzed With Fear” status effect while entering combat with enemies that outmatch you, that is entirely possible (If annoying), but once the action menu comes up you character WILL carry out an action.
Really? Then tell me, who are you in the game? Who is, from the point of view of the characters, telling them what to do? God? Are they schizophrenic and hear voices inside their heads? If you can control all the characters, then you are playing their role, if you are controlling one character and all the rest are up to the AI, then you are playing only one role. In a traditional RPG, no one is giving orders, you are just playing the part of the decision-taking mechanism inside your character’s head. There IS already an option to hesitate: YOU are the one that does it. You are the one that tells the rest of your character’s body to make a suicidal move and you are the one that takes the time to wonder whether it’s a good idea or not. So unless you are A)A strategist barking orders from high above or B)A mysterious voice inside your party’s psyche, you simply replace the Ego/Superego/Id decision-taking mechanism (And ONLY that, the rest of their body is still subject to their own statuses).
See above. You take decisions, that is all. What do you have to take your decisions about is entirely up to your character’s skills.
SE, I do understand your point here. Your argument is that the character’s actions are entirely dictacted by controller input, without any sense of self, beyond what you think before pressing the button. According to what I understand you to be saying, characters are like the computers that run the game system, completing the action that is laid out before them. To force a stat like courage on a character, it takes your control away from the scene, and detaches you from the avatar-like aspect of being the guy holding the controller. For standard setting RPGs, this is a VERY VALID ARGUMENT. It would piss me off to no end if Celes was to afraid of Kefka to swing the atma weapon in time and kill that s.o.b.
But we are talking about a newer concept here. We are trying to bring the character to life a bit more. I for one know that I am many times willing to treat characters like pawns in chess, especially when I have control of a full team like in FF games. The more vital a character becomes to not losing, the more sensible I am about keeping them from reaching the status of dead. You the player may be more than willing to sacrifice black mage to the dragon of doom (there would be an umlaut in doom if I knew how to put umlauts on words in this format), but try to think as though you are the actual black mage with a toothpick, who has been sent to battle the dragon of umlauted doom. You would hesitate a little. Not a full fledged stall, but just a half second or two of serious uncertainty about the future as a result of the action. That is the delay we are talking about. Yes it takes some control away from the player, but I would be willing to argue that you have little control over your own courage attribute in this sense. It is almost an instinctual level of effect on a person.
From the point of view of a tactics game, even if you are in their heads, they should still have that subtle lapse in the attack if the character really doesn’t have the guts to swing.
And ion, as for the 18 Int wizard played by a fucktard… I know what you mean, but my personal favorites are the paladins and bards with 18 Charisma and a player that couldn’t convince me that they had even enough personality to compare with an aloe plant and a face that could make a medusa run in fear.
I pretty much agree with all you’ve said. In a game where you play one role and the rest of the part obeys your character’s orders, fear and hesitation would be perfectly possible. It’s not so much as a matter of how annoying it would be in a traditional RPG, but of how illogical it would be to lose control of a character that‘s supposed to be you.
I’m all for new systems, just as long as they aren’t way too illogical [Insert rant about FFTA’s Judges here].
Play FF6 or FF4 and say “supposed to be you” again. Hot damn, all I wanted was some ideas for what it’d be used for, I didn’t expect some kinda flamewar over one of 'em.
My point still stands, FFVI was exactly what I was thinking about when explaining my reasoning. In that game, you control the battle actions of every character.
I didn’t see this as a Flamewar, it was a just discussion between two points of view.
Well, we weren’t talking about FF6, which I think was the biggest misunderstanding of all.
I saw this as a discussion that was coated with flammable liquids, and someone was throwing matches at it, but it still failed to become a full-scale flamewar. We got very lucky.
Damnit, it seems I need to start speaking more clearly: I was thinking about FFVI, but there are lots of RPGs that I could have used as examples: Lufia, Breath of Fire, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy Anything, Dragon-fucking-Quest, Phantasy Star, Golden Sun, etc. FFVI was just the first to pop in my head.
hugs everyone in turn
I think we did well today. But rather than risk a further argument, lets have cookies instead.
[STRIKE]We. Aren’t. Talking. About. Existing. RPGs. We. Are. Talking. About. Doing. Something. New. Which word are you having difficulty understanding here, SE? :P[/STRIKE] Oh, whatever, so much for my actually getting any new ideas.
Didn’t Ion and I have something valid? Come on Yar, thats what I got, if you want more brain storming, it might help to know how complex the stat system is and how much everything plays off everything else.
I could ask the same thing about what word from “It wouldn’t work on a traditional turnbased-type RPG” you don’t understand. If you come up with something NEW, it’s fine, but incorporating it into an otherwise common RPG (And here is when I use all those games as examples of what I call common, and I should also note that this started when you talked about incorporating it into FF’s ATB system, which isn’t new at all) wouldn’t work. I can’t imagine how I can be that hard to understand when I’ve basically said the exact same thing the last five posts.