Poll: Who here actually wants RPGs to get easier?

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Feb 24, 2011
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Blood Brain Barrier said:
sextus the crazy said:
Blood Brain Barrier said:
There's no doubt that for the past 20 or so years RPGs have increasingly been dumbed down to become more accessible. How many people approve of this?

I started playing a 22 year old RPG (I won't say which one) and after spending 2 hours creating my party got massacred nearly every battle. I'm no stranger to RPGs either and consider myself experienced and a reasonably good player.

The point is, I like this. It gives a sense of challenge and adversity which needs smart thinking to overcome. Modern RPGs don't have this. Even Legend of Grimrock was easy.
The Problem with RPGs is that you can grind your way to victory in most of them. Most of the challenge comes from higher leveled monsters or cheap tactics. What RPGs need is some sort of non-stat based modifier to combat such as strategy (over come bad odds with tactics) or real time combat (I.E. demons' souls).
Not true. You can't do that in Icewind Dale or Pools of Radiance. Maybe in Skyrim or Diablo.
in skyrim the mobs did scale with your level but it was waaaaaaay to easy
 

Agayek

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Oct 23, 2008
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It depends on what you mean by "easier".

I would agree that RPGs should be made more intuitive, but not in any way easier, or simpler. I think RPG mechanics should embrace the concept of emergence [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence]. Essentially, there should be a very simple core set of rules. The complex would then emerge naturally from the interactions of those rules.

The ultimate example of this is Chess. It's a horrendously complex game, but it's only got 7 rules, 6 of which are movement rules and the last one is "players take turns".

RPGs need to embrace that same concept. Any given mechanic should have a short list of rules that give structure, then let the rest rise from the player. This applies just as much to the story as it does to the gameplay as well, though we're not quite at the technological level for a fully emergent story to come about.
 

Kahunaburger

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May 6, 2011
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Ranorak said:
You know what I like in RPG's these days.
fluidness.
I want to be there in the world, live, fight, quest.
I don't want to spend half the time in an inventory screen looking if my damage output will increase, if I take this 2D8 sword or keep using this 2D6+1.

Complexity is nice, but if I wanted to look at a spreadsheet again, I'd renew my EVE-Online license.
I think this needs to be balanced with the transparency issue. Take Oblivion - the goal of that game's leveling system is to be fluid and organic, but the result is just that the player needs a guide to avoid gimping his/her character. Or take something like Modern Warfare or Battlefield -3: you need gun stats to tell you whether, for instance, a 25% damage bonus is worth it for a particular gun. But, since the devs don't want to scare the players with a bunch of numbers, the stats aren't in the game and you need to find a spreadsheet online. I like RPG design that gives you stats and leveling up front, because then I don't have to metagame or look stuff up online.
 

Ranorak

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Feb 17, 2010
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Kahunaburger said:
Ranorak said:
You know what I like in RPG's these days.
fluidness.
I want to be there in the world, live, fight, quest.
I don't want to spend half the time in an inventory screen looking if my damage output will increase, if I take this 2D8 sword or keep using this 2D6+1.

Complexity is nice, but if I wanted to look at a spreadsheet again, I'd renew my EVE-Online license.
I think this needs to be balanced with the transparency issue. Take Oblivion - the goal of that game's leveling system is to be fluid and organic, but the result is just that the player needs a guide to avoid gimping his/her character. Or take something like Modern Warfare or Battlefield -3: you need gun stats to tell you whether, for instance, a 25% damage bonus is worth it for a particular gun. But, since the devs don't want to scare the players with a bunch of numbers, the stats aren't in the game and you need to find a spreadsheet online. I like RPG design that gives you stats and leveling up front, because then I don't have to metagame or look stuff up online.
Exactly.
Having a complex level system is great. A thousand stats calculating your hit chance, damage, great.
Just make sure that as a player, I can easily see what what the difference in my choices are.
 

Clive Howlitzer

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Jan 27, 2011
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No, no, no, no, no. Please god no, not anymore. They are already sooo easy it makes my brain hurt. I am not saying I want to go back to the days of god awful interfaces and massively unintuitive controls.
I just don't want to keep sliding in the direction of everything being an action RPG I can mash click my way through and win without a single thought.
 

RagTagBand

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Jul 7, 2011
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Yes.

And frankly I find the "No" attitude to be akin to ARMA fans demanding that All FPS's follow the same mechanics of being a simulator so that they can feel superior, and keep their invisible ego clubhouse free from people who don't treat their precious game as...*shudder*...entertainment.

This is why I don't like Hardcore RPG fans, they are almost always so far up their own asses to a degree that their heads have reappeared on top of their necks.
 

sextus the crazy

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Mindless1 said:
sextus the crazy said:
The Problem with RPGs is that you can grind your way to victory in most of them. Most of the challenge comes from higher leveled monsters or cheap tactics. What RPGs need is some sort of non-stat based modifier to combat such as strategy (over come bad odds with tactics) or real time combat (I.E. demons' souls).
There is this one out there called Fortune Summoners, I only to play on my friends netty last night because he wanted me to see the combat. It plays like a side scrolling brawler kind of. You can only level up by finding fortune tokens (Think of the heart pieces from Zelda) that you have to fill by defeating enemies. After beating enemies you and filling up the token you can finaly level up. If you've filled your token then you have to find a new one some where hidden in the game before you can start trying to level up again. So the game kind of sets a level for your and you can't abuse a grinding mechanic to win.
Personally, my favorite grinding prevention technique is the game streamlining that Fire Emblem does. It simply doesn't allow for much grinding (outside of arenas, where it's easy to permanently lose characters), because the game only has a certain number of missions with a finite number of enemies. This makes it so that you can't just power your way through levels and you have to think about what characters you wanna use and distribute XP to.
 

tycho0042

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Jan 27, 2010
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I think it's good to make them accessible to more fans so more people can see how good a given game can be isn't good. I think there needs to be a limit to how accessible it is. That point is what needs to be discovered. Too many games were damaged by how accessible they were made. Personally I think that the FF and ME series have been good examples of how dumbing down can hurt a game. I'm sure people would say the same of others like WoW or whatever else.
 

ThePenguinKnight

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Mar 30, 2012
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babinro said:
Do I want the mechanics and background systems simplified? Absolutely.
Do I want them to get easier? No.

I feel they are doing a great job with varied RPG's that are eaasier to get into but still challenging at the proper difficulties.
Basically this, developers seem to believe that to streamline a game is to make it as easy as possible while still giving options to become even more powerful for veterans. Fallout New Vegas did a good job at increasing the difficulty and creating options to make the game challenging at any level, Skyrim did not. Skyrim is the product of what happens when this streamline/difficulty disconnect isn't realized, it's ABSURDLY easy.
 

lacktheknack

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Jan 19, 2009
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sextus the crazy said:
Blood Brain Barrier said:
There's no doubt that for the past 20 or so years RPGs have increasingly been dumbed down to become more accessible. How many people approve of this?

I started playing a 22 year old RPG (I won't say which one) and after spending 2 hours creating my party got massacred nearly every battle. I'm no stranger to RPGs either and consider myself experienced and a reasonably good player.

The point is, I like this. It gives a sense of challenge and adversity which needs smart thinking to overcome. Modern RPGs don't have this. Even Legend of Grimrock was easy.
The Problem with RPGs is that you can grind your way to victory in most of them. Most of the challenge comes from higher leveled monsters or cheap tactics. What RPGs need is some sort of non-stat based modifier to combat such as strategy (over come bad odds with tactics) or real time combat (I.E. demons' souls).
Legend of Grimrock had those, that's what made it "too easy".

What made it harder (and in my eyes, hard enough) was the lack of grinding opportunities.
 

nuba km

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Jun 7, 2010
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babinro said:
Do I want the mechanics and background systems simplified? Absolutely.
Do I want them to get easier? No.

I feel they are doing a great job with varied RPG's that are eaasier to get into but still challenging at the proper difficulties.
this, a million times this, and not even just for RPGs but for every type of game in general.

More OT: Also a game being hard is not the same as being challenging, demons souls and dark souls, hard yes, but they are fair when it comes to difficulty, nearly every time you die you are like 'That is my fault and I could have avoided that'. a lot of old games just have cheap deaths which makes the game hard but not challenging as skill has much less to do with surviving rather memory was the much more important part.
 

Broderick

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May 25, 2010
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tycho0042 said:
I think it's good to make them accessible to more fans so more people can see how good a given game can be isn't good. I think there needs to be a limit to how accessible it is. That point is what needs to be discovered. Too many games were damaged by how accessible they were made. Personally I think that the FF and ME series have been good examples of how dumbing down can hurt a game. I'm sure people would say the same of others like WoW or whatever else.
Accessibility is a must for these types of games. Sometimes people forget that with new players, they dont have the past experience of 10-50 games of the same genre. However, like others said, if they are having trouble, perhaps they should read the manual, or a tips and tricks section =P.

I dont think WoW got hurt from any "dumbing down" that it has done, if anything, it made the game less tedious. Hell, when cata released, the game was so "hard" that people on forums complained until there was a a nerf to nearly all the dungeons. Some people were just so use to the "gogogogo we dont need cc because we are so geared!" mentality of the last expansion. For another example,LFR didnt make the game "dumbed down", if anything it helped a HELL of a lot with people being able to do dungeons instead of waiting around org for a group. However, LFR did kind of kill some of the comradery that goes with having a group. Pros and cons.

I do like the way they have the difficulty set in the newest raid(and they have done this in the last expansion as well), where there is a stacking debuff to the enemies of the dungeon that reduces their health and damage. It however, can be removed by talking to a person in the dungeon, so both the "hardcore" and "casual" crowd get catered to. It is unfortunate that people stil complain about it.
 

Quaidis

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Jun 1, 2008
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If anything, I would like rpgs to be harder. They are far too easy and brain-slacking now. When a game comes down to 'hit A to win', it's no longer good.

But there are right and wrong ways to do this. Sometimes in a more recent jrpg, you couldn't walk two steps or turn around without running into an enemy. That's lame and makes my playing miserable. Whoever came up with that idea needs to be shot in the foot. There are far better ways to engineer a game so you can get from Point A to Point B in a decent amount of time without ramping up the encounter rate.
 

Zen Toombs

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Nov 7, 2011
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Kahunaburger said:
Zen Toombs said:
Kahunaburger said:
Zen Toombs said:
Mechanics and background systems should be simplified, generally speaking.
I don't think we can make any broad statements on what sort of mechanic complexity is good. Mechanics should be whatever they need to be to make the game work.
I did say generally speaking, and by "simplified" I mean that most games shouldn't be "charts: the game". Overly complex mechanics are bad. Deep mechanics are good.
Once again, depends on the game. Crusader Kings II is basically Charts: The Medieval Bastard Simulator, and the level of emergent fun in that game stems directly from the complex mechanics. There's nothing wrong with a game that requires a little bit of system mastery from the player, as long as that game then goes on to allow the player to apply that system mastery in interesting ways.
And once again, I'm going to repeat the "generally speaking" part. Things should always take into consideration the audience and the game itself.

I have no problem with complex mechanics. However it is entirely plausible for a game's mechanics to be too complex, and I do have a problem with that.