

Ask HN: What game has the best RPG party interface? - blooberr

Games need great UX design too!
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Vaskivo
Well, UX depends greatly in the kind of game you are making. I consider the
term "RPG" as a super genre (super class). In it you have WRPG's, JRPG's,
Action RPG's dungeon cralwers, MMO's, etc. Depending on the the game, the
concept of party and it's associated mechanics will change.

You also have to keep in mind that in some games a good UX may not be desired.
While I believe an RPG's UX should be good (messing around with menus and
inventory shouldn't be a chore), see the classic Resident Evil games.

One of the goals of the games is to evoke an atmosphere of uncertainty, fear
and powerlessness. See how the health indicator is not a concrete value (75%
life, for example) but an approximation (yellow life. You may know yellow
means it's in [30-70]%, but you don't know the exact value.) This helps
achieve the desired emotion while being, according to the traditional UI
principles, a bad UI. It's not transparent enough for the user.

I consider the game's controls to be part of the UI. It's by using the
controller and how the character moves the you interact with the game. MAny
people dislike the RE's "tank-controls"[1], but I find it was a conscious and
deliberate choice by the game designers to adopt this type of control. It's
harder to control the character but help in achieving the desired emotions.

So, to answer you question... I don't know. But it's harder to evaluate game's
UX's because it can't be evaluated in the same way we evaluate traditional
UX's. Sometimes, in games, it's good to have bad UX's.

[1]
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TankControls](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TankControls)

~~~
blooberr
Right, I should be more specific but I was looking at party control / status /
inventory management.

~~~
Vaskivo
Ok, I know I've ranted a bit. First, what do you want? Just good examples, or
you're thinking of making a game andwant some good examples?

Now, for inventory. You can have the _party inventory_ , like in JRPGS or the
_character inventory_ like in Baldur's Gate. Personally I prefer the _party
inventory_ because there is a lot less fiddly. But the other kind is more
"realistic". There is one game that mixed the two in a way that I enjoyed. You
have a _party inventory_ but each character has "slots" where you can put
items to be used in battle. But in this case you don't have the whole
inventory available.

Then you can have an _unlimited inventory_ , like in JRPGS, or a _limited_
one. You can limit it in two ways: Limited _space_ like in Diablo, or limited
_weigth capacity_ like in Skyrim. In my opinion you should never mix them
both. It's too fiddly, and too frustrating. In limited space you also can have
item of diferent sizes. This is fun because inventory menagement becomes a
sort of minigame (again, Diablo makes this pretty well).

With party control it's a lot more complicated. If the game is turn based or
if there is the option to pause the action, the player should have total
control of all the mambers of the party. If it's all real time, there should
be an option to ssue orders. One game that does this well is Mount and Blade.
You can issue orders to your troops including, IIRC, you could issue orders to
the different kinds of troops. I feel this would be a nice addition to Skyrim,
for example.

About status, I really liked what Final Fantasy VII did for status effects. If
a character was nead death he would appear hunched, if confused he would have
stars swirling around his's head and if poisoned he would glow in green. If he
were under all these status effects, we would show all three effects and they
didn't overlap or be in conflict with each other.

But, as I said in the previous post, it still depends on your objectives in
the game. In pokemon you have direct control over your pokemons but I would
like to see a similar game where you don't have direct control and you have to
train their AI.

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RollAHardSix
Knights of the Old Republic was fantastic in terms of party management
screens. The inventory screen was rough, so some way to collapse into item
categories would have been appreciated.

Skyrim isn't bad, I still don't quite like the weapons screens though.
Something about them all being in a list bothers me. In a way I see why they
did that, but I'm so used to going to a screen similar to KOTOR or dragon-age
that doing it the KOTOR or DAO way just feels more natural.

I'm a console gamer so in my opinion the biggest problem is having controls
mapped for your character, and also having to do in-game hud menu navigation,
AND having some way to command party-members, though voice control can resolve
some of the command pain.

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everyone
hmm thats a good question. In most games like that the interface is awful.

This is not an rpg but 'frozen synapse' and 'frozen endzone' are actually good
examples of a UI for controlling multiple guys acting simulataneously.

Also I remember dungeon siege having a pretty basic interface but also being
quite functional (with 8 people in you party!)

The 'eye of the beholder' / 'might and magic' / 'legend of grimrock' way of
doing things is effective but it basically turns your 4 characters into one
big one

