Gameplay not focused on battle

[chungsie]

While I'm not saying conflict or physical conflict does not exist in my game, it's that it is not the primary focus of my project.

One of my fears is that gamers expect battles in an RPG.

Spoiler: Premise

What I have decided on is that you get to pick between one of two human races to play as, Kowa or Nijo. The choice will change things like starting locations, and storylines (to a point) as well as windowskins and bgm.

Either way, you start as a member of the general garrison of your starting capitol. Something has happened and the leader of your people has ordered you to never fight again, under threat of execution. To make certain you do not, the King/Queen appoints a local of the garrison to accompany you, and he/she is sort of like a narc(?)

That's not to say there won't be a fight. The end game involves you having a showdown with a summon against a foe, but in respect to your leader, you actually don't do any fighting.

The game would focus more on skills that involve barter/trade, and being of assistance to others in non violent ways, be it solving interpersonal conflicts or psycho-analyzing an npc to help aid your people in making important decisions (if you go with the adviser quest line).

Would a game like this be boring to you? Does it interest you (y/n)?

I'm curious to know what non-combat elements interest you.

 

[Lantiz]

I think it can work if done right, To The Moon is a great example of an RPG without battles.

Now about your idea, I would like to play your game.
Even yesterday I was too tired and wanted to play something without combat.
Sometimes I just don't want to think about combat strategies (and I usually like to), and I can't think of many games that fits the bill.

 

[Llareian]

These sorts of games can definitely be fun, but to me this would be more of an adventure game or visual novel than an RPG.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I think games with puzzles, exploration, trade/collection, etc can all be very effective modes of primary game play. Though, I do think something that does get overlooked is that "combat" doesn't necessary need to be "fight-kill." I think there are many imaginable ways to reskin, re-word, and retool an RPG "battle" to be a different kind of event.

 

[Amarok]

have you played plane scape torment? there was combat, but most of it if not all of it was optional, there was always a way to get trough it without fighting.

 

[ydoolb]

have you played plane scape torment? there was combat, but most of it if not all of it was optional, there was always a way to get trough it without fighting.

Yeah, great game. I wish there was moe games like that.

 

[Arisa]

Eh, to be honest, I'm not a fan of battle focused games. I rather the game have deep emotional meaning, and/or a cool story and goals.

 

[chungsie]

oh wow.

I had been thinking of goal oriented competition in place of combat, as sort of an optional focus for achievements and game progression. For instance, something like Cricket or Soccer(football). Only they would be invented sports/games for the player to learn. I'm in no condition to think any up as I want to nap suddenly. but I'll get there

The two cultures in question are vastly different from another (Kowa vs Nijo) and so there would be similar themes but completely different execution. One for sure would involve the technological puzzles of the cultures, be it mechanical or electrical. There would even be issues of digression and regression of opinions about other cultures that can be hindered or boosted with the assistance of the player.

MS Little Fish: I had considered it as a VN, however I like the retro feel of ACE style RPGs. I don't like that most games I've seen made with ace or similar engines, rely on a heavy amount of combat to keep the player interested and progress the story. I think mini games such as invented board games or card games or even sports can help allow the player to think critically about strategy when one so desires, without forcing the player into the situation for the sake of the story. You see this sort of thing in aspiring authors, where physical conflict as a resolution is relied on so heavily, but the fascinating stories (for me) tend to gravitate more to the philosophical and surreal side of things.

 

[Wavelength]

I've made two complete (though as of yet unpublished) games that I'm working on improving which both focus more on large-scale strategic decisions as well as action minigames, and focus less on combat. But I still put a lot of effort into making combat unique and interesting, adding several mechanics that aren't in an average RPG Maker game and including unique gimmicks for each boss battle to add wrinkles into battle strategy.

My good friend @hadecynn gave me some sage advice, which is: if you are adding complexity to a system, give the player a lot of time to use that complex system, in order to let it breathe and make it feel satisfying to the player. He likened it to having someone teach you the rules of a cool board game for two hours... then you play three turns of the board game and you're out of time for the day, you can't play (use those interesting rules that you learned) anymore! That can feel disappointing or unsatisfying to players.

I'm bringing this up here in hopes that you don't make the same mistake that I did. If you are downplaying something like combat (and I'm using the word 'combat' in this post to mean "the mechanic of turn-based competition based on stats and skill choice", not combat in the sense of "the aesthetic of violent conflict"), make the rules of combat simple and very intuitive; make combat require as little instruction as possible. If you're really going to downplay combat to the point where it only appears a few times as a formality - then leave it out of your game entirely. If your game can float on its action, dialogue, strategy, exploration, whatever, then it doesn't need a few battles throughout to complicate things.

===

Finally, to answer your original question about "would a game about trade, psychoanalysis, decision-making and questing be interesting to me?" - I would say that yes, it absolutely can be interesting to me. Lots of people are looking for games like this, where you do something a little different.

This kind of noncombat RPG game is a little harder to design well because combat tends to be a good "crutch" for creating gameplay without creating too much individualized content (i.e. the core rules of combat, which drive most of the combat experience, are consistent throughout your game; once you've created them, the amount of marginal work done to make additional troops is minimal). Making interesting noncombat gameplay that doesn't require handcrafting every element of every activity is a challenging design task. A lot of people have tried to do it and failed. But some have succeeded, and I think that those who have ended up with really great games.

 

[chungsie]

@Wavelength oh wow. those are great points I had not considered in full. I suppose there could be a less involved execution for the end game playing out properly that won't leave the player confused or frustrated. I am still in the planning stages of development, like making decisions on what hues/tones npcs should have, and what kind of patterns are important to their cultures. I fully intend on developing from scratch whenever possible.

 

[Wavelength]

@Wavelength oh wow. those are great points I had not considered in full. I suppose there could be a less involved execution for the end game playing out properly that won't leave the player confused or frustrated. I am still in the planning stages of development, like making decisions on what hues/tones npcs should have, and what kind of patterns are important to their cultures. I fully intend on developing from scratch whenever possible.

Yeah, I hadn't ever considered it either until my friend brought it up, and for one of the games it was already too late in development to change the structure of the game's flow, so my only option is to eliminate some of the least important complexities from combat. The feedback on the game overall is still very positive but it seems like combat was kind of a missed opportunity because it never got to "breathe" due to the small amount of combat time in my game.

So, since it sounded like you were going for somewhat similar design to what I was trying to do, I figured I should bring up that advice, if only so you don't corner yourself like I did.

 

[chungsie]

@Wavelength I appreciate the advice man. I have been focusing on different kinds of storytelling for about a year now, where conflict is the end solution for a major/main character with no good outcome, enforcing the notion that combat is not a true solution for conflict. And slowly been working towards different kinds of storytelling. So it was only as a secondary kind of thing to have a game where it was not the way to victory per say, or even the way to progress the story along.

Like the idea I had for an intro, was at first so similar to Skyrim, where you were a prisoner in a jail cell and you are summoned to a king/emporer/queen or what have you. I figured I did not want something that close to a AAA game, so I decided the player starts his/her story off as a member of a homeland army only to be told to never fight again under punishment of death. Which lead me to the notion that combat should/could be this sort of suicidal option for the player, where the reward was starting the game completely over everytime, and having an end game combat scene.

WIth your advice, it became apparent I may be overthinking the end game scenario, and perhaps there could bed a few interactive variables for the player to determine success of the end game, and just have sort of cutscene evented out.

 

[Wavelength]

Yeah, you're on the right track. As far as what to do for the endgame/climax - whatever you find is the single most compelling activity in your game, I would make that the way to "play" through the climax. If dynamic storytelling, rather than any kind of activity, is what you think players will find most compelling, then I agree that using interactive variables to control a cutscene would probably be the best way.

Your game sounds like it will be very interesting if you fully bake the ideas in it, and focus on streamlining out what's not really important as you go.