Relien
Scholar
Today I've seen a topic on ESF, where the OP said that fighters should be able to bash open locks. I remember many of you saying that one of the key elements of an RPG is to be able to solve various problems differently, according to your character's abilities, with which I agree.
However, when this would be done extremely, the game could be terribly boring and the different character builds could become only a cosmetic choice. I'm talking about such elementary tasks like opening a door or getting past an obstacle. I wouldn't want to be able to overcome every single problem in "my class's way". Every character would go through exactly the same situations, and the only difference would be the manner in which he would get out/through these situations. Something like "Look, an abyss, I wonder what's the diplomat's path over it..." I think in order to put more significance to the character building there should be some places only certain characters can get to and some things only they can do. Of course that means such places/things wouldn't be required to finish the game. Either they would be sidequests or there would be another way.
There would still be different problem solving for different chars, but that should mean that there would be multiple ways to accomplish a MAJOR task, maybe even major plot branching as a result of taking a specific path.
So basically my question is about branching. Considering the impact of branching to the amount of game content, where approximately does your ideal RPG lie between the completely branching one and the "universal" one that contains only trivial branching like the fighter/mage/thief style of opening locks?
However, when this would be done extremely, the game could be terribly boring and the different character builds could become only a cosmetic choice. I'm talking about such elementary tasks like opening a door or getting past an obstacle. I wouldn't want to be able to overcome every single problem in "my class's way". Every character would go through exactly the same situations, and the only difference would be the manner in which he would get out/through these situations. Something like "Look, an abyss, I wonder what's the diplomat's path over it..." I think in order to put more significance to the character building there should be some places only certain characters can get to and some things only they can do. Of course that means such places/things wouldn't be required to finish the game. Either they would be sidequests or there would be another way.
There would still be different problem solving for different chars, but that should mean that there would be multiple ways to accomplish a MAJOR task, maybe even major plot branching as a result of taking a specific path.
So basically my question is about branching. Considering the impact of branching to the amount of game content, where approximately does your ideal RPG lie between the completely branching one and the "universal" one that contains only trivial branching like the fighter/mage/thief style of opening locks?