How to make a bad RPG part 1 (Mechanics and structure)

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ArbitraryWater

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Edited By ArbitraryWater

 Happy Anniversary Arcanum! You're not a good RPG!
 Happy Anniversary Arcanum! You're not a good RPG!
Today is a very special day. "What day is that?" you may ask. Well, April 28 was the day that I did my first Arcanum blog and got this entire subject stuck in my head in the first place. That, and people always crapping all over Dragon Age 2 and I also finished KotOR 2 recently. Thus, to celebrate this momentous occasion, I've thought long and hard (ok, fairly long and fairly hard) about what differentiates the Baldur's Gate IIs and Fallouts of the world with both aforementioned games. Please note that I'm talking about Computer Role Playing Games, most of which are made in the west. I couldn't comment on JRPGs if I tried. You know the people who do, ask them. I'm not going to pretend I know anything other than "Yo, Final Fantasy VI is pretty rad, and Persona is as well"


To start off what may be a three parter, let me start with the less dangerous subject to tangle with: The actual gameplay part. While story can be a fairly subjective beast, and the Combat is a problem big enough to deal with in its own separate blog, The individual mechanics are a lot easier to objectify and quantify. That, and I don't entirely know what I will say for story at this point. I'll start with a general topic, and then give a few examples to show that, and while the points I list may be problems in plenty of good RPGs, they're usually either a bigger problem in these games or are compounded by the presence of other problems. Also, while my RPG knowledge may be fairly vast, it's not entirely comprehensive and in the end this is all my opinion anyways taken from some observations about my favorite genre. Remember that before you crazy people who like the games I'm bashing on come out of the woodwork to breathe fire.

Unbalance the gameplay, specifically the character building aspect


Unless we're talking about something more multiplayer or competitive focused, generally RPG developers aren't focusing on balance. And this is fine. I'm cool with the fact that Wizard Slayers are a totally bunk fighter kit in BG2 and unarmed builds or characters in any game suck balls (I'm looking at you Icewind Dale 2 and your total disregard for monks), but there's a line between something that makes your experience more difficult (or makes your experience stupid easy) and something that may require you to either restart or cheese the game to succeed. These are the kind of dead ends that frustrate after a few hours of play, or even worse only take place at the end of the game (more on that later) Fallout 1, despite having plenty of skill choices that aren't Small Guns or Speech still is probably beatable with a melee or stealth character. And I say probably, although there's like what, one good melee weapon in that game? I guess this is a problem that can be part of any genre, but it's most prevalent here in a lengthy single player experience, especially if there is only one player created character.

Example: Pretty much every RPG ever made, but especially stuff like Lionheart

 You've never heard of this game because it was bad
 You've never heard of this game because it was bad

Now while pretty much every RPG has a problem with this, I've decided to use one you've never heard of. Sure, I could talk about how being stealthy in Alpha Protocol will screw you over come the incredibly suckish boss battles, or I could tell you about how Arcanum's odd leveling system (giving you experience every time you hit something rather than every time you kill something, thus encouraging the use of quick melee weapons over underpowered guns or magic) totally favors vanilla fighters over mages and especially tech users, but I'll talk about Lionheart. For those who don't know (and frankly, that's probably all of you) Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader was the last RPG published by Black Isle Studios before they went under (but not developed by them as they were no doubt working on “Van Buren”, AKA Fallout 3) and it used the SPECIAL system like the first two Fallout games. Despite that pedigree and that fairly solid ruleset to draw from (not to mention an interesting premise), you've never heard of it because it wasn't very good.

Nonetheless, this game is a special case because, after roughly the first 5 hours the game drops any pretensions of wanting to be a CRPG in the style of Fallout and becomes a mediocre hack 'n slash with nary a speech opportunity in sight. Then add that the resolution is locked at 800x600 and the fact that all the enemies have insanely fast footspeed, and suddenly offensive magic and archery are less appealing options to build a character around. Thus, you're left with generic melee dudes, maybe with a little defensive magic for good measure. While this would be ok in other contexts, the bait and switch nature of this introductory segment (at the very least you could probably beat Arcanum with a tech character, for as neutered as they are in the early game.) and the range of wasted character building possibilities earns it's spot as my example.

Fail to differentiate the content given to the player/fail to make interesting side content


This is length padding at its finest. While one can claim the number of hours in an RPG to be massive, how much of that RPG is doing the exact same thing? This is more an issue with side content outside of the main story, as that is less likely to have a story hook to interest the player (Will talk about that in part 3. Probably). This may be a symptom of a post WOW world, where the raw breadth of content can be said to compensate for the general soullessness of it all (not to say that MMO style content doesn't work in the MMO context, but that it sucks in a single player context. Thanks Borderlands), but it certainly extends to older stuff, as seen in:

Example: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

 I'll say it once and I'll say it again: Procedurally generated gameplay isn't fun.
 I'll say it once and I'll say it again: Procedurally generated gameplay isn't fun.

I was originally going to go for Dragon Age II on this one to, ya know, be relevant, (or Dungeon Hack, to be obscure) but I thought I might as well just go for recycled content at its utmost extreme. Daggerfall is a game entirely built upon undifferentiated, randomly generated content, at least outside of the main story where the dungeons were actually hand crafted. But to get to that story content in the first place, and the real meat of the game anyways, are the dozens upon dozens of randomly generated quests given to you by whatever faction you fancy yourself a member of. All of them pretty much boil down to: Go to this procedurally generated dungeon. Find the quest object (either a creature to kill or an item to obtain). What, the dungeon is a mess of identical hallways and the automap totally sucks? Welcome to 1996. This is the game. There is nothing else. You think that Oblivion is generic as all hell? Play this sucker. To be fair, it's not the part where this content is randomized that is the problem. It's the part where this is pretty much the entire game, and it's the extremely varying quality of all the random content.

Force the use of a guide


There's a line between being clever and demanding more of the player and being pointlessly and needlessly obscure or finding a way to screw the player over . This is definitely more of a problem with older stuff, as modern game design may have finally ironed a lot of it out. What do I mean by this? I mean the part where the game difficulty spikes randomly due to the way your character is built (see above), maybe throw in an encounter that's significantly harder than everything else (See: Boss Battles). Or maybe we're talking about a quest where the best resolution is totally out of left field or maybe even a puzzle that makes no sense whatsoever because it's from a time when Video Games were for nerds and people who played old RPGs were the biggest nerds of all. This may be some sort of unifying problem, as it dips its toes into combat and story as well as the general mechanics and structure of the game. You may call me a pansy, but some of this older shit is crazy. There's a difference between answering fairly clever riddles in pretty much every Bioware game (though the ones in the maze under spellhold in BG 2 deserve special attention) and having straight up secret walls, unclear objectives, and maybe even the occasional totally batshit boss battle, especially if they're paramount to the progression of the player

Example: Eye of the Beholder


 Maybe people back then were way more hardcore or something?
 Maybe people back then were way more hardcore or something?
I figured this was as good an example as any I could think of (once again, trying not to use Arcanum for every single thing). If we want to talk about intimidating, this may be the game. Indeed, EotB isn't so much a hack 'n slash as it is a really hard adventure game that occasionally has D&D style combat. If we want to talk about invisible walls, fairly difficult boss battles (apparently, the final boss is stupid easy... if you have a specific item. Or cheese the combat, which is quite possible) and puzzles puzzles puzzles, this is it. More a question of trial and error than actually being clever, you'll find that tossing rocks on pressure plates is a necessity, random hidden easter eggs that give sweet loot are the norm, and wandering around until you figure something out or die is the thing. It's hard to quantify this one without actually showing you, so look up a LP or something if you're interested. They may make it look seamless, but I know otherwise. Once again, I'm not especially sure if EotB can be considered a bad game per se, but it's one that I am entirely incapable of playing.

And a bunch of other stuff I didn't have time to talk about in detail


I'd also like to mention Level Scaling, the antithesis of grinding though not much better, making your game stupid hard, making your game stupid easy, not explaining the mechanics especially well, doing a bait and switch into a hack 'n slash or other similar degenerations of the gameplay, usually later on, and dumbing down the ruleset for no real reason. Next time, I'll probably go into combat, and why Icewind Dale and Temple of Elemental Evil are good, and other things are less good. I hope you read all of this, because more is probably coming.

Is there anything major mechanically that you think I missed? You think I'm totally crazy? You disagree with my examples? You read like one sentence and are going to give a snarky Tl;dr or otherwise show that you failed to read the entire thing? Then comment. Or don't. I'm cool either way.
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ArbitraryWater

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#1  Edited By ArbitraryWater

 Happy Anniversary Arcanum! You're not a good RPG!
 Happy Anniversary Arcanum! You're not a good RPG!
Today is a very special day. "What day is that?" you may ask. Well, April 28 was the day that I did my first Arcanum blog and got this entire subject stuck in my head in the first place. That, and people always crapping all over Dragon Age 2 and I also finished KotOR 2 recently. Thus, to celebrate this momentous occasion, I've thought long and hard (ok, fairly long and fairly hard) about what differentiates the Baldur's Gate IIs and Fallouts of the world with both aforementioned games. Please note that I'm talking about Computer Role Playing Games, most of which are made in the west. I couldn't comment on JRPGs if I tried. You know the people who do, ask them. I'm not going to pretend I know anything other than "Yo, Final Fantasy VI is pretty rad, and Persona is as well"


To start off what may be a three parter, let me start with the less dangerous subject to tangle with: The actual gameplay part. While story can be a fairly subjective beast, and the Combat is a problem big enough to deal with in its own separate blog, The individual mechanics are a lot easier to objectify and quantify. That, and I don't entirely know what I will say for story at this point. I'll start with a general topic, and then give a few examples to show that, and while the points I list may be problems in plenty of good RPGs, they're usually either a bigger problem in these games or are compounded by the presence of other problems. Also, while my RPG knowledge may be fairly vast, it's not entirely comprehensive and in the end this is all my opinion anyways taken from some observations about my favorite genre. Remember that before you crazy people who like the games I'm bashing on come out of the woodwork to breathe fire.

Unbalance the gameplay, specifically the character building aspect


Unless we're talking about something more multiplayer or competitive focused, generally RPG developers aren't focusing on balance. And this is fine. I'm cool with the fact that Wizard Slayers are a totally bunk fighter kit in BG2 and unarmed builds or characters in any game suck balls (I'm looking at you Icewind Dale 2 and your total disregard for monks), but there's a line between something that makes your experience more difficult (or makes your experience stupid easy) and something that may require you to either restart or cheese the game to succeed. These are the kind of dead ends that frustrate after a few hours of play, or even worse only take place at the end of the game (more on that later) Fallout 1, despite having plenty of skill choices that aren't Small Guns or Speech still is probably beatable with a melee or stealth character. And I say probably, although there's like what, one good melee weapon in that game? I guess this is a problem that can be part of any genre, but it's most prevalent here in a lengthy single player experience, especially if there is only one player created character.

Example: Pretty much every RPG ever made, but especially stuff like Lionheart

 You've never heard of this game because it was bad
 You've never heard of this game because it was bad

Now while pretty much every RPG has a problem with this, I've decided to use one you've never heard of. Sure, I could talk about how being stealthy in Alpha Protocol will screw you over come the incredibly suckish boss battles, or I could tell you about how Arcanum's odd leveling system (giving you experience every time you hit something rather than every time you kill something, thus encouraging the use of quick melee weapons over underpowered guns or magic) totally favors vanilla fighters over mages and especially tech users, but I'll talk about Lionheart. For those who don't know (and frankly, that's probably all of you) Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader was the last RPG published by Black Isle Studios before they went under (but not developed by them as they were no doubt working on “Van Buren”, AKA Fallout 3) and it used the SPECIAL system like the first two Fallout games. Despite that pedigree and that fairly solid ruleset to draw from (not to mention an interesting premise), you've never heard of it because it wasn't very good.

Nonetheless, this game is a special case because, after roughly the first 5 hours the game drops any pretensions of wanting to be a CRPG in the style of Fallout and becomes a mediocre hack 'n slash with nary a speech opportunity in sight. Then add that the resolution is locked at 800x600 and the fact that all the enemies have insanely fast footspeed, and suddenly offensive magic and archery are less appealing options to build a character around. Thus, you're left with generic melee dudes, maybe with a little defensive magic for good measure. While this would be ok in other contexts, the bait and switch nature of this introductory segment (at the very least you could probably beat Arcanum with a tech character, for as neutered as they are in the early game.) and the range of wasted character building possibilities earns it's spot as my example.

Fail to differentiate the content given to the player/fail to make interesting side content


This is length padding at its finest. While one can claim the number of hours in an RPG to be massive, how much of that RPG is doing the exact same thing? This is more an issue with side content outside of the main story, as that is less likely to have a story hook to interest the player (Will talk about that in part 3. Probably). This may be a symptom of a post WOW world, where the raw breadth of content can be said to compensate for the general soullessness of it all (not to say that MMO style content doesn't work in the MMO context, but that it sucks in a single player context. Thanks Borderlands), but it certainly extends to older stuff, as seen in:

Example: The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

 I'll say it once and I'll say it again: Procedurally generated gameplay isn't fun.
 I'll say it once and I'll say it again: Procedurally generated gameplay isn't fun.

I was originally going to go for Dragon Age II on this one to, ya know, be relevant, (or Dungeon Hack, to be obscure) but I thought I might as well just go for recycled content at its utmost extreme. Daggerfall is a game entirely built upon undifferentiated, randomly generated content, at least outside of the main story where the dungeons were actually hand crafted. But to get to that story content in the first place, and the real meat of the game anyways, are the dozens upon dozens of randomly generated quests given to you by whatever faction you fancy yourself a member of. All of them pretty much boil down to: Go to this procedurally generated dungeon. Find the quest object (either a creature to kill or an item to obtain). What, the dungeon is a mess of identical hallways and the automap totally sucks? Welcome to 1996. This is the game. There is nothing else. You think that Oblivion is generic as all hell? Play this sucker. To be fair, it's not the part where this content is randomized that is the problem. It's the part where this is pretty much the entire game, and it's the extremely varying quality of all the random content.

Force the use of a guide


There's a line between being clever and demanding more of the player and being pointlessly and needlessly obscure or finding a way to screw the player over . This is definitely more of a problem with older stuff, as modern game design may have finally ironed a lot of it out. What do I mean by this? I mean the part where the game difficulty spikes randomly due to the way your character is built (see above), maybe throw in an encounter that's significantly harder than everything else (See: Boss Battles). Or maybe we're talking about a quest where the best resolution is totally out of left field or maybe even a puzzle that makes no sense whatsoever because it's from a time when Video Games were for nerds and people who played old RPGs were the biggest nerds of all. This may be some sort of unifying problem, as it dips its toes into combat and story as well as the general mechanics and structure of the game. You may call me a pansy, but some of this older shit is crazy. There's a difference between answering fairly clever riddles in pretty much every Bioware game (though the ones in the maze under spellhold in BG 2 deserve special attention) and having straight up secret walls, unclear objectives, and maybe even the occasional totally batshit boss battle, especially if they're paramount to the progression of the player

Example: Eye of the Beholder


 Maybe people back then were way more hardcore or something?
 Maybe people back then were way more hardcore or something?
I figured this was as good an example as any I could think of (once again, trying not to use Arcanum for every single thing). If we want to talk about intimidating, this may be the game. Indeed, EotB isn't so much a hack 'n slash as it is a really hard adventure game that occasionally has D&D style combat. If we want to talk about invisible walls, fairly difficult boss battles (apparently, the final boss is stupid easy... if you have a specific item. Or cheese the combat, which is quite possible) and puzzles puzzles puzzles, this is it. More a question of trial and error than actually being clever, you'll find that tossing rocks on pressure plates is a necessity, random hidden easter eggs that give sweet loot are the norm, and wandering around until you figure something out or die is the thing. It's hard to quantify this one without actually showing you, so look up a LP or something if you're interested. They may make it look seamless, but I know otherwise. Once again, I'm not especially sure if EotB can be considered a bad game per se, but it's one that I am entirely incapable of playing.

And a bunch of other stuff I didn't have time to talk about in detail


I'd also like to mention Level Scaling, the antithesis of grinding though not much better, making your game stupid hard, making your game stupid easy, not explaining the mechanics especially well, doing a bait and switch into a hack 'n slash or other similar degenerations of the gameplay, usually later on, and dumbing down the ruleset for no real reason. Next time, I'll probably go into combat, and why Icewind Dale and Temple of Elemental Evil are good, and other things are less good. I hope you read all of this, because more is probably coming.

Is there anything major mechanically that you think I missed? You think I'm totally crazy? You disagree with my examples? You read like one sentence and are going to give a snarky Tl;dr or otherwise show that you failed to read the entire thing? Then comment. Or don't. I'm cool either way.
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ahoodedfigure

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#2  Edited By ahoodedfigure

It's funny, but for me the problem I had with Daggerfall's random content was that it DIDN'T really vary all that much. In a given square whatever you'd find pretty much the same features for a good portion of the area. You might get incidental variations of objects that have no effect on anything, and the dungeons might vary inside but be fairly interchangeably the same outside of the plot dungeons, there would be a few guild quests but they'd all be the same and wouldn't even vary the type of thing you were supposed to get in certain cases (always with the mummy wrappings). So for all the random, it really wasn't. If you eliminated the sameness, you'd have a few different-sized towns, a few unique buildings in capital cities, a few weird dungeons but mostly just blobs of modular rooms that all felt like they belonged in the same place. Random as filler, not as world creation.

Any game that's requires needing a guide is either trying to sell a guide, or is trying too hard to be clever. Even if the information is buried deep, it should still somehow be reachable in-game. Especially now.

I personally don't mind so much if certain character choices are unbalancing, as long as a game is still enjoyable on some level with whatever choice you're allowed. That was my major issue with Arcanum; the creation system seemed a lot more flexible than it actually was.

Level scaling is OK as long as you never notice it happens, you dig? All these systems, if they're done right, are practically invisible to us because we're too busy having fun or at least being challenged. When we start going meta and trying to figure out how the game is fucking with us, there's something wrong.

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Junkerman

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#3  Edited By Junkerman

Your opinions are all correct, and your writing is engaging, insightful and genuinely humorous.  I was going to reference something funny but then my eyes glossed over at ahoodedfigure's essay and I was forced to reply with ineffectual positive feedback; of which I'm sure you are already aware.

Keep writing.

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ArbitraryWater

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#4  Edited By ArbitraryWater
@ahoodedfigure:  I'm pretty sure my problem with Daggerfall was also that it's content doesn't vary at all. So we're together on that one. You're old enough to know: What was the guide scene like back in the "olden days"? Now, with the proliferation of GameFAQs as the de-facto way to know stuff about stuff (for like the past 10 years actually), I don't see much use for paper. Also, most games don't demand the use of paper guides anyways. Yet somehow Prima is still in business.

Faux flexibility is something that I remember you having an issue with in your series of Arcanum themed blogs. It's a problem that seems mostly unique to games made under the Black Isle school of thought. Maybe that was something I didn't really emphasize in that section. Basically, in any of these cases I see no use for stealth. That might just be me though. Oblivion was the first RPG to have stealth I genuinely found a use for, mostly for how broken it got at higher levels. Maybe if I was more patient, the 2nd edition AD&D backstab seems like another viable choice. 7X damage with the BG2 assassin kit seems like no joke.

@Junkerman: Aww, well thanks. I find it funny that you glaze over ahoodedfigure's stuff when this is one of the longer things I've written, whereas this is roughly par for the course in his case as far as replies go.
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#5  Edited By TheDudeOfGaming
@ArbitraryWater:

You forgot to add Knights of the Old Republic...using blasters sucks balls. 

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#6  Edited By Junkerman

I mean no offense to ahoodedfigure (I actually read your post and quite agree), its nice to see discussion for older games, as I pretty much missed that boat by playing them half a decade too late.  Now a days it seems most people have either a hatred for them or a firm believe that they are infallible and that anything else is "dumbing it down" for the mass consumer.

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#7  Edited By JazGalaxy

It's weird, part of my experience in playing an RPG is an EXPECTATION that some of the game mechanics are going to be broken. In my opinion, RPGs should be games that let me influence the game world to the bleeding edge, which SHOULD be the point where the game begins to break.


I don't expect every character spec I create to be able to beat the game. 

In fact, In Oblivion I chose to play as solely an archer character because that's how I wanted to roleplay my character. The game is basically built for people to do everything at the same time, from magic to ranged combat to assasinating. This led to a quest that was essentially broken for me since I had to fight a guy in a cave and the game wouldn't let me get enough distance to shoot him. As a result I had to use my intelligence and in the single greatest gameplay moment I've ever experienced I was forced lure him to water and hold him underwater, drowning him as he struggled to surface for air.

That's what makes RPGs so great. People always wanting a clean, choreographed experience are ruining the genre.
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ahoodedfigure

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#8  Edited By ahoodedfigure
@ArbitraryWater:  You doing the age thing to rile me? It won't, but it's still sorta childish-- I guess you'll grow up eventually!

It started out with you pretty much figuring things out by gathering with your friends and hammering away at it until you or the game gave way. It took until the 8-bit consoles for stuff like Nintendo Power to really get a foothold, and I'm really convinced that without NP, a lot of the NES games would be nigh impossible for the average gamer to figure out in a reasonable amount of time, not to mention with gamers now. There were hint sections in a lot of manuals, but they tended to vary in quality, and there were pay-per-minute hint lines which I used like three times on various Master System games.

Magazines in general often had tips and tricks, especially the console mags. PC mags, not as much. There were zines, but by nature they weren't in wide circulation, and there was minor internet stuff, but it wasn't in any way comprehensive.

Then as PC gaming saw a bit of a boom I think was when guides became popular. Before they were bundled in they were sold separately, but companies tried to make bank laying out everything in guides, whether it was obvious or not.  This coincided with the upswing in internet users, though, to the point where I remember thinking when I was about to buy a bundle that happened to have a guide with it "man, I don't need this, I can just look it up online."

The problem, though, with online guides is that they often lack authoritative centers. Popular games tend to do fine, but get a middle-to-obscure title and you still may not find reliable information, and old Dynasty Warriors 4 for example often has several methods to unlock something, but all of them turn out wrong because people don't have the time or patience to figure out exactly what it took (kill all these guys because I did, even though it winds up just taking one guy's death to make it work). Most guides were either better than that and very thorough, or stuck to the basics, although the latter would probably feel like a waste of money.

As a player who enjoys stealth mechanics I tend to try to test it out, and I've tended to find a LOT more use for it than you seem to. I bypassed an entire map in the first Icewind Dale that way because I was sick of fighting ice golems or something, and up until I set BG2 aside I'd been using stealth like mad to great effect, like in an astral prison where I managed to free the mind of EVERY NPC prisoner rather than having them auto-attack me. Was pretty proud of that, but the game wasn't really geared to give me anything special for it, I don't think. I also bypassed an entire beholder warren and just killed the boss way too early through the use of stealth. I get a bit of a thrill getting away with stuff like that, and I'm happy they let me do it without it breaking the game.
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#9  Edited By TheDudeOfGaming
@JazGalaxy said:
" It's weird, part of my experience in playing an RPG is an EXPECTATION that some of the game mechanics are going to be broken. In my opinion, RPGs should be games that let me influence the game world to the bleeding edge, which SHOULD be the point where the game begins to break.

I don't expect every character spec I create to be able to beat the game. 

In fact, In Oblivion I chose to play as solely an archer character because that's how I wanted to roleplay my character. The game is basically built for people to do everything at the same time, from magic to ranged combat to assasinating. This led to a quest that was essentially broken for me since I had to fight a guy in a cave and the game wouldn't let me get enough distance to shoot him. As a result I had to use my intelligence and in the single greatest gameplay moment I've ever experienced I was forced lure him to water and hold him underwater, drowning him as he struggled to surface for air.

That's what makes RPGs so great. People always wanting a clean, choreographed experience are ruining the genre.
"
This dude gets it. 
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ArbitraryWater

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#10  Edited By ArbitraryWater
@JazGalaxy:  An interesting view. Being a person on the internet with the semi-autistic tendency to overanalyze everything, I can't not break down these mechanics anymore into their individual compartments. I'm not one to be against jank or uncompletable character builds, it's the part where a viable character build is literally impossible to complete the game with and so on and so forth. That's why I've relied on extreme examples. I mean, I've played as a Hand to Hand character in oblivion before, it kind of sucks but it's possible. I imagine an archery only build would work as well. Kinda.
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#11  Edited By Junkerman
@ahoodedfigure:  I tend towards stealth characters typically as well, when it is possible.  For many of the reasons you already mentioned, but my biggest frustration, and is something I feel is handled poorly in almost every rpg with stealth mechanics save maybe the elderscrolls games, is the fact that I am rarely rewarded in the actual game.  Sneaking and using wits to avoid fights typically results in missing important items and especially XP.  This bothers me a large degree, where I am essentially forced to cheese or metagame to a level that essentially becomes a chore.  Baldur's Gate and Icewind dale allowed abuse of this especially, enemies soon learned to fear the magical stealth properties of sharp angles, pillars and doorways!
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#12  Edited By ahoodedfigure
@Junkerman:  It would be nice if you didn't pop out of stealth automatically any time you tried to do something. TES rewards you through skill ups, which is a smart way to deal with gameplay variety without forcing players down specific paths, actually. Getting away with something is reward enough for me, but I'm aware it costs me XP and loot. I consider that sorta the price of bypassing, but I imagine it's not as rewarding for other folks.  I wonder if the solution might be to differentiate stealth a bit, make it have different sorts of rewards based on how you do it and where you go. I dunno.  New Deus Ex seems to be rewarding players with fully alternate paths; I'm curious where that'll go.
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#13  Edited By Junkerman
@ahoodedfigure:  Yeah, the breaking stealth thing always annoyed me, especially at lower levels before boots of speed, and having low skill.  A little stressful too perhaps, trying to make it to a safe place before you fully became visible again haha.

I saw that alternate path mentioned in a preview of the new Deus Ex, I hope it pans out, but I fear it might just be a little gimmicky.   I'm expecting it to be similar to the small skillpoint bonuses that were in the first one when you discover a hidden area.  But I believe the realistic solution to rewarding stealth is having the exp rewards dallied out in quests, making combat more of a choice then a nesseccity.  I would love to see more dynamic stealth play, but I feel that it would be too much to expect from a non-stealth focused game.

Something I would like to see implemented, and its probably a crackpot-fever dream and an outrage to those who fear  the words "streamlined", but a more bare bones approach with emphasis on customization over numbers.  I love customization in games, and feel that a perk based system (similar to how they are changing Skyrim if what I understand is correct) where you have more direct control over your character.  I envision something like a more realised loadout that you would select from say a Call of Duty Multiplayer game...HEAR ME OUT!...where you would pick your character archetype, and choose attributes and perks that directly reflect what you want to do, that can be swapped and interchanged in a limited number of slots.  And additional choices and upgrades can be awarded through quests, or specific events and scenarios.  Having to hungrily slaughter everything or swing a butter knife 500 times to level up your character into what you want it to be is something I would like to see change.
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crusader8463

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#14  Edited By crusader8463

  

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#15  Edited By Video_Game_King

You asked for a JRPG expert? Well, I might as well offer my opinion: Final Fantasy VI rocks, but not Persona. Here's why.

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#16  Edited By ArbitraryWater
@crusader8463:  I'm tempted to agree with you, although at this point it straight up looks like Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance or Marvel Ultimate Alliance rather than any sort of heavy hitting RPG, mechanically speaking. So while Dungeon Siege III doesn't interest me in the slightest, I dunno if I can truly count it with the rest of these games. However, if they do more of those dialog choice type things and the combat continues to be every cooperative action RPG ever, then you bet it would fit in the theoretical next two blogs in this series.
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#17  Edited By kingzetta

One major way is to screw up your RPG, is the fallout way.
Force combat when you build a non combat character.

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#18  Edited By ArbitraryWater
@Video_Game_King: I wasn't talking about Persona 1, as that game is probably not so great (somehow, I don't think the remake is great either simply because it's a remake of a not so good game). I was more talking about Persona 3 FES, which is the only one that I own. I still have yet to purchase Persona 4, and I guess I have that English ISO of Persona 2 Innocent Sin, but I only put a few hours into that.

@kingzetta: I've never made a purely diplomatic character, so I wouldn't know (ok, technically my character in planescape has far more wisdom than strength. But combat is such a sideshow in that game anyways) Generally speaking, speech skills are always something I'll take, but to focus on them exclusively seems like a bad idea. Maybe you could do that in like... Fallout 1, but that's only because I've seen a speedrun where I'm pretty sure almost no one dies.
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Video_Game_King

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#19  Edited By Video_Game_King
@ArbitraryWater:

Speaking of Japanese PS1 games we're clearly emulating, I should really get back to Tear Ring Saga. It's like Fire Emblem, only with a slight tinge of insanity. Would you believe that you can get 70% criticals in this game? Or that one of the staffs lets you save your game? Maybe next, I'll see Pegasus Mages or something. I'd say that the script would be crazy if it was translated, but from what I've read, it really isn't.
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TheDudeOfGaming

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#20  Edited By TheDudeOfGaming
@crusader8463: ...So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you think Dungeon Siege III will be a bad RPG? (haven't watched it to the end yet)
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#21  Edited By crusader8463
@TheDudeOfGaming: Ya. Everything about it looks terrible to me. Other then the name on the box and maybe some location names, it has nothing to do with the PC games it was based on. They just made it another PC game butchered to work with a 360 controller.
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#22  Edited By Yummylee

Most of those criticisms still stand to this day as well :P Pretty much all of them can be found in Oblivion, and the part of about recycling content to spread out the length of a game is the blueprint of every Diablo esque dungeon crawler ever. The two most distinguishing features between CRPGs of old and new are mostly the interfacing and graphics. 


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#23  Edited By ahoodedfigure
@Junkerman said:

 " @ahoodedfigure:  Yeah, the breaking stealth thing always annoyed me, especially at lower levels before boots of speed, and having low skill.  A little stressful too perhaps, trying to make it to a safe place before you fully became visible again haha."

It DID add an element of rushing from safe point to safe point, just like you do in full-on stealth games, though, so I can't complain too much.

 "I saw that alternate path mentioned in a preview of the new Deus Ex, I hope it pans out, but I fear it might just be a little gimmicky.   I'm expecting it to be similar to the small skillpoint bonuses that were in the first one when you discover a hidden area.  But I believe the realistic solution to rewarding stealth is having the exp rewards dallied out in quests, making combat more of a choice then a nesseccity.  I would love to see more dynamic stealth play, but I feel that it would be too much to expect from a non-stealth focused game."

For me the worry as far as gimmick would be that if EVERY path has an alternate, and if it sort of feels like they're all baked into the setting, and that every obstacle is a sort of setpiece where you can try X, Y, or Z, it won't feel very organic. I consider Thief 1 and 2 to be some of my favorite games of any genre, and part of it was, even if there was no stealth in the game, the alternate paths you could take at least FELT improvised and different. You took totally different routes through a house, did things in reverse, noticed secrets that weren't more than rumored, if that. By laying everything out in front of the player, I fear a lot of games now tend to be little more than pushing buttons for different experiences, rather than exploring the game space and finding these things on your own.

Something I would like to see implemented, and its probably a crackpot-fever dream and an outrage to those who fear  the words "streamlined", but a more bare bones approach with emphasis on customization over numbers.  I love customization in games, and feel that a perk based system (similar to how they are changing Skyrim if what I understand is correct) where you have more direct control over your character.  I envision something like a more realised loadout that you would select from say a Call of Duty Multiplayer game...HEAR ME OUT!...where you would pick your character archetype, and choose attributes and perks that directly reflect what you want to do, that can be swapped and interchanged in a limited number of slots.  And additional choices and upgrades can be awarded through quests, or specific events and scenarios.  Having to hungrily slaughter everything or swing a butter knife 500 times to level up your character into what you want it to be is something I would like to see change. "

Customization is one of those core pillars of RPGs, I think, and it's hard to give that stuff up once you've had access to a fair amount of it. And I love it, too. 

From what I gather, you're talking about how the feeling of a given...  mission, say, is that the character kind of feels like a bucket of interchangeable parts that runs through things in pretty much the same way, and that the ladder of improvement is just another form of terrain to climb, rather than a vehicle to making the character your own?  Blog about it if you have some concrete examples, I'd like to read your thoughts. Lemme know if you do.
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#24  Edited By floodiastus

Level scaling takes the cake. Oblivion was nearly unplayable because of this.

Also the whole "use one ability to level it up" in oblivion was shit, you always ran around casting spells on yourself and jumping like a bufoon.
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#25  Edited By Punk1984

I think I told you awhile back that I was going to dive back into the Sega CD version of EotB I played an hour and a half drawing out a map on old D7D grid paper, then I realized I couldn't save it unless I deleted all my other game saves. I'll get to it fully this summer.


Also my favorite part in Daggerfall is when the quest item falls through the geometry of a dungeon. That was so awesome the 20+ times that happened.
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#26  Edited By Raven10

I know what you mean about having to use guides. I still have my 400 page guide to Ultima Underworld somewhere. Should have read it while I was playing too. Never actually beat that game correctly. Too many hidden passages...

Kids these days don't get it. If you aren't holding a pen and paper in one hand while you game you aren't doing it right. Okay, so maybe not that extreme, but as recently as Morrowind I recall having pen and paper to write things down. Now we have games with glowing paths leading to your next objective. Just what would these kids think if I told them that there was a time when there was no such thing as a quest book/objective screen! If someone gave you a quest or told you something important, you wrote it down. That's what the Notes section in the back of manuals were for. Yea, they actually had a purpose at one point. These days you design games so that the player actually knows what he has to do. Something about it being more fun when you don't walk in circles for hours...

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#27  Edited By ArbitraryWater
@Raven10:  I've actually been able to get into the habit of annotating maps in older games that allow that, but the second I have to write down something on a physical piece of paper (or worse, draw out a map on graph paper) I run out of patience. There's a difference between forcing the player to be observant and throwing them to the wolves. Not much, mind you. If some of the old adventure games I've seen are any indication (usually sierra titles), crazy fairy-tale dream logic or whatever Roberta Williams was currently thinking of at the time are the golden standard for that genre in the old days. RPGs were decidedly less inane than some of the things I've witnessed in regards to King's Quest and Zork.

@Punk1984: I don't imagine Eye of the Beholder to be an especially console friendly game, so I wonder how that turns out. Being that it's a sega CD game, does it have really bad voice acting/"this is totally a CD game" music shoved in for good measure?
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#28  Edited By nintendoeats

Seriously, that was a totally busted aspect of Alpha Protocol. I literally cannot finish that game, and I'm probably a half hour from the end. This si a real shame, because the stuff about AP that is good is REALLY FRIGGING GOOD.

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#29  Edited By tourgen

I had a great time with Eye of the Beholder back in the day.  It wasn't as good as Dungeon Master or Chaos Strikes Back.  Certainly isn't a bad game though.  I don't necessarily mind RPGs that have dead-end character builds or require a few deaths/re-loads as you switch up your tactics and come at the level a couple different ways.  An RPG you can just do whatever, maybe grind a little, and walk through is kind of crappy.

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#30  Edited By QuistisTrepe

Actually. the "Force the Use of a Guide" portion can be applied to RPGs in general, both WRPG and JRPG past and present. With a more disturbing frequency, whenever I read over an FAQ of a game I'm plodding through, I sometimes feel like I'm reading about a completely different game. FFX anyone? I totally get side quests and such, but when major parts of a game are left obscured, that's where we have a problem.

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QuistisTrepe

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#31  Edited By QuistisTrepe
@Video_Game_King said:
" You asked for a JRPG expert? Well, I might as well offer my opinion: Final Fantasy VI rocks, but not Persona. Here's why. "
That game certainly wasn't for everyone. I actually enjoyed it more than FFVII. Comparing Persona PSX to FFVI is weaksauce though. You're not exactly making a huge statement there.