Why are PC RPGs so easy?

[deuxhero]

I played my fair share of JRPG's (wasted lots of time), and the only difficulty I had was having the patience to grind levels.

Ugh, I don't know where I got the strenght to go over the same fucking enemy encounter over and over again in these games.

If someone sees me as much as wondering if a JRPG might be good, please shoot me in the head.

Not that some don't have some good stories, but the game mechanics are crap.

What JRPGs did you play? All the ones I have seen have "difficulty" in the form of not giveing the player a clue about what the hell they intended for the player to do.

 

[Disconnected]

RPGs have two components; the stuff that facilitates role playing, and the obstacles that challenge the players.

Part of the problem in cRPGs is that players are a diverse bunch of morons. What's challenging to me may be a cakewalk to you.

But the core problem is that RPGs are fucking huge.

PnP systems fix the problem of providing a real challenge every time, and doing it so many times that players inevitably get fucked, by having a GM ready to pull tricks out of hats, and by introducing silly cheats like resurrection spells and fate points.

cPRGs increasingly go in the opposite direction. Instead of taking advantage of the fact that players can restore their progress if they do get fucked (the dev can even do it for them), they reduce the difficulty of individual obstacles to the point that players can reasonably expect to walk through an entire campaign without fatal fuckups along the way.

As for level grinding and similar shit, such things have no place in a cRPG. They are not obstacles. They do not facilitate role playing. They shouldn't be there.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

"Dungeon crawlers like the Wizardries or Eye of the Beholder are quite difficult;"

No.

I take it you didn't find Wiz 4 difficult?

Tell me what games you did find difficult, and how difficult you find them.

 

[Volourn]

I played/ beat Wizardrries when I was I guess 10 or so years old. How difficult can games be even a 10 year old can beat them?

btw, It depends what do you mean by difficult? Is it a game you did even once in, you get seriosuly injnured in but with smarts can avoid death, is it one where it might take upwards of 10 reloads to beat certain battles, is it one where if you make one mistake (ala adventure games) you pretty much have to restart the game or at least find an earlier save, or what?

I don't think I've ever played a really 'hard' game? Challenging, yes, hard no.

 

[getter77]

How would people's thoughts on Roguelikes fit into this framework? Abundance of strategies and improvisation are pretty much givens in a great many of them.

I do agree with Ironman and "hardcore" modes being a nice feature to spice things up a bit.

 

[ushdugery]

It's probably because arcade action-space shooter titles share an early/orignal demographic with jrpg's and they are typically about stupid perfecting sequence mottor responses challenges.
Just see the likes of Ikaruga
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=EGNSdcy-apU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikaruga

I don't think I've ever played a really 'hard' game? Challenging, yes, hard no.

Difficulty is a relative thing by definition so if you've never played a hard game maybe you should re-evaluate the way you analyse or class your gameplay.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

SMT: Nocturne

Okay, so Nocturne is easy, eh? Do an Ironman run on Maniax's Hard mode, True Demon ending, without grinding. Well, not Ironman: You are allowed one Death by Majin. You can die for the first time only after defeating Matador, for the second time only after defeating Dante, for the third time only after defeating High Priest, etc. If at any moment of the game your amount of deaths is higher than the amount of Majin demons you have defeated so far, you restart. THEN you can say the game is easy.

If you try to minimize reloads the dificulty is pretty hard and a certain amount of grinding is needed to have the slightest chance. If you reload whenever you like you can't say the game is without challenge.

The following goes for all games including WRPGs and JRPGs:

Whatever artificial restrictions you impose on yourself aren't factors in the game's actual difficulty. Missing overpowered setups, items, recipes, etc. because they aren't obvious and you don't like combing FAQs for them is one thing, since how well hidden such things are can be part of a game's challenge, but intentionally restricting or ignoring a fundamental mechanic like saving and loading is like inverse cheating, and is just as worthless to bring up as the normal kind of cheating when discussing a game's difficulty.

So, yes, if reloading makes a game easy, I can reload whenever I like and say it's without challenge, IF unrestricted loading is part of the game's design.

 

[Monocause]

I don't really get the point of this topic. IIRC the only really easy RPGs I've played were both KoTORs. And Anachronox maybe, but that doesn't count. Other RPGs, there were some deaths, reloads, rethinking the strategy etc. They can create an illusion of being fucking easy because you can always save and reload, but on the other hand I don't think that you would be saying the same if they were all based on Ironman principle.

I also wouldn't call ToEE easy for sure. The game started being easy only by the end, and if you tried to get through the whole game (especially the beginning) with repeating the same motions and tactics you'd get screwed. Unless I suck really hard at party creation, but I don't think so. Even the NWN OC had its tougher moments, even with the fucked up returning stone mechanic.

A game must be fun to play, not tedious. When you play something with a human you have a very elastic difficulty level, and you have to constantly engage your brains. The AI is really just a big script which a somewhat intelligent person is capable of abusing and exploiting after ten or fifteen minutes of gameplay. You can get around it and keep the game really hard only by adding tedium, and I don't like tedium in games.

TB strategy games like Panzer General have one sweet thing about them - you always had some losses and you had to cope with them. Usage of tactics wasn't meant to get a flawless victory, but to minimise your losses. I'd really like to see that in a RPG.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

I played/ beat Wizardrries when I was I guess 10 or so years old. How difficult can games be even a 10 year old can beat them?

btw, It depends what do you mean by difficult? Is it a game you did even once in, you get seriosuly injnured in but with smarts can avoid death, is it one where it might take upwards of 10 reloads to beat certain battles, is it one where if you make one mistake (ala adventure games) you pretty much have to restart the game or at least find an earlier save, or what?

I don't think I've ever played a really 'hard' game? Challenging, yes, hard no.

Excellent points. I see we fit into similar categories of how old we were at the time of playing, and yes, those games were being beaten back then...which makes me wonder how so many people are screaming about games being hard today.

Anyway, how would hard be described when it comes to RPG gaming? Saves make this kind of redundant in a way, but you can start with the classic; games that made you reload a lot due to difficult battles, or games that seemed to kill your character/s off quite easily. I don't think we should bother with games that were hard due to fighting off boredom or tedium.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

The thing is how do you make an RPG harder? If a fight is too tough, all a player has to do is go out and "farm" some more experience, which is rarely a recipe for enjoyable play.

EOT

Are you guys blind, stupid, or just too busy playing shitty games about angsty high schoolers shooting themselves in the head? Good riddance about that one by the way, now I really say why Codex is "Putting the ROLE back in RPG" lmbo.

RPG can't be hard because proper fucking RPG requires minimal input from the player. In platformers or fucking FPS or shmups or racing games or whatever, your success depends on how quickly you can waggle your mouse/keyboard around. So they can be harder, you can make smaller platforms or spawn more enemies or create more bullets or make the AI cars go faster. So the player will need to perform better to win.

In proper RPG, not shit like Oblivon or whatever, the player's role is minimal - he just tells the character what to do and the character does it based in his/her stats and skills. So how the fuck can you make a game difficult? You can't, you can only break it. If the character is getting outperformed in every fight the player will either need to resort to grinding for XP(Which is idiotic and has nothing to do with difficulty) or if that's not possible he'll just have to reload and pray for random dice to roll in his favour. Both ways as anyone with IQ higher than potted plant's can see are for dumbfucks.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Why are PC RPGs made between 2004 and 2008 so easy? Because no one has made a difficult one.

PC RPGs made before 2004 are not easy.

 

[Volourn]

"PC RPGs made before 2004 are not easy."

Liar. Consideing that many of us were just kiddie when many 'old skool games' came out and managed to beat them they surely couldn't have been that hard. L0LZ

 

[Damned Registrations]

Nocturne is a good example of how to make a game difficult without requiring grinding. It's all about creating the right setups in your party of elemental resistances and attacks, as well as buffs and debuffs, and healing, and MP efficient skills. Then knowing which to prioritize in battle, whether debuffing the enemy's str a third time is more important than doing his defense or speed, or buffing yourself, or healing, or attacking, etc. Grinding can leave you massively overwhelming compared to your opponent to where it doesn't matter, but the obvious rule still applies: If you can get through with less real playtime without grinding than with, grinding isn't needed.

The problem is that most rpgs don't have this kind of depth of combat. Elementals don't matter, they jsut offer a slight damage boost if you get them right. Buffs are handled outside of battle anyways, or are too weak or powerful to make it a real decision. Healing is too weak or powerful to make it a real choice. Resource management (What made old dungeon crawlers interesting) is completely unneccesary, usually because you can save every 5 seconds and restore all your hp and mana outside of battle pretty much at will.

There are no deadly strategies to employ to cut the difficulty in half because everything is so simple, so the base difficulty has to be lowered to the point where it can be passed even if all you know how to do is throw rocks at people. X-Com was fucking difficult. It was also playable without spamming save and load- if you knew how to abuse the enemy with explosives to create los while keeping all your guys well covered and only exposing armored tanks or shock troops to surprise attacks.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

"PC RPGs made before 2004 are not easy."

Liar. Consideing that many of us were just kiddie when many 'old skool games' came out and managed to beat them they surely couldn't have been that hard. L0LZ

So if someone can beat a game, it's easy?

PC RPGs made before 2004 were harder. This is a fact.

 

[Kthan75]

Combat in KOTOR, TOEE, NWN, NWN2, MOTB and pretty much every other game has just been nothing more than going through the same boring motions over and over again.

MOTB has quite some challenging battles. Not in the late game, where you are all pimped up with uber items and broken spells (i.e. Vampiric Feast on all characters). But in early and mid-game there are indeed some tough battles, unless you munchkinize your character. (the three death knights in the crypt, the badger, okku, etc).

And TOEE had some challenging moments as well, try killing Iuz (or whatever that god's name was).

Back on topic, I think difficulty is a tricky thing in a RPG. You can make the game more challenging by standard means (monsters do more damage, skill checks are more difficult, you have various penalties, etc) - Fallout handled this well, IMO.

But I think a RPG can be made challenging through better "role-playing" gameplay. Having certain choices and consequences, even optional, or having certain quests that are more difficult to find or solve, but which would help you in the main quest, or open different paths, etc.

But obviously, something like that is more difficult to find in today's games...

 

[Lightknight]

I played my fair share of JRPG's (wasted lots of time), and the only difficulty I had was having the patience to grind levels.

What about RPGs that have no levels ? Like Chrono Cross.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Volourn.

Supposing that we defined 'difficult' as a game where there is a serious penalty or consideration for every mistake OR a game where there are alot of things that you have to get right (character build, equipment,.etc) in order to be able to beat it properly?

Because those things aside, ultimately any game can be beaten smoothly. If the player understands the game well enough, he can simply avoid making mistakes and do all that he needs to do. Which is why the above is probably the only good way to define 'difficult'. Maybe we can focus on what the game demands from the player, rather than the player's ability to give it?

I mean, Betrayal At Krondor - Casting spells uses up your own health (there is no mana in this game), and when your health comes down, your skills and attributes are reduced by that proportion, meaning that your defense and spellcasting accuracy are also reduced. This puts the stakes so high that you can not risk wasting a powerful spell. Furthermore, resting gets back only 80% of your health. The rest is restored in inns, where you have to pay to sleep.

In Icewind Dale, a single rest gets back all your health and spells, and during a fight, you can waste a powerful spell, and not even be penalized for it.

Of course, BaK and ID are beaten just as easily, with good understanding of the games, but ultimately, BaK is still a harder game. Because you can't be as reckless in BaK as you can be in ID, right?

 

[Derek Larp]

If the character is getting outperformed in every fight the player will either need to resort to grinding for XP(Which is idiotic and has nothing to do with difficulty) or if that's not possible he'll just have to reload and pray for random dice to roll in his favour. Both ways as anyone with IQ higher than potted plant's can see are for dumbfucks.

Not in every fight, necessarily. I think it´s quite effective to seal of areas of the world with high level monsters so only able level characters can enter these, e.g. like in Gothic.

RPG can't be hard because proper fucking RPG requires minimal input from the player. In platformers or fucking FPS or shmups or racing games or whatever, your success depends on how quickly you can waggle your mouse/keyboard around. So they can be harder, you can make smaller platforms or spawn more enemies or create more bullets or make the AI cars go faster. So the player will need to perform better to win.

You can make it hard in the sense that an adventure game is hard, with hard puzzles and riddles and shit. I don´t think it it feasible to eliminate intelligence as a player skill in rpgs.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

"PC RPGs made before 2004 are not easy."

Liar. Consideing that many of us were just kiddie when many 'old skool games' came out and managed to beat them they surely couldn't have been that hard. L0LZ

So if someone can beat a game, it's easy?

PC RPGs made before 2004 were harder. This is a fact.

Harder, true. But it really depends on the game. If the kids had the 80's RPG's or even the 90's RPG's thrust upon them, they would throw a fit, smash their keyboard and refuse to play them. Perhaps it was because that is all there was? Perhaps we had no yardstick back in the 80's and 90's in which to say a game is "hard"?

In any case, I was playing and completing games that would be deemed atrociously difficult amongst todays kid gamers. Due to the fact I was a kid when I played them kind of puts a knocker on whether they should be classified as hard, but they are certainly hard next to todays games where you might be forced to reload once, maybe twice in a game regardless of character build.

Fallout for example is slated as a difficult and unforgiving game by many today. When I played it I had a ball, but remember thinking of two things that let me down at the time; It was so short (and when you enjoy a game, that is a real pain) and it was so easy compared to its predecessor, Wasteland. It amuses me somewhat when I see people lambasting todays games while bringing up late 90's/00 games as hard hitters. I guess it is true when comparing the two, but these "hard" games were seen as quite easy by gamers who grew up on the older stuff.

Your point still stands though. Games before 2004 were harder.

 

[Claw]

I always considered it a strenght of RPGs that the player has contol over the difficulty.

However, the range of character development is an issue in many games. You start as a total wimp wielding a stick, and are supposed to fight godlike enemies at the end. It's hard to balance that kind of rapid development.

I feel RoA did fairly well in that regard, although if you complete one part with a party, the next is going to be alot easier.
Gothic on the other hand is terrible. First monsters are invulnerable, then they are somewhat challenging for a few levels, and after that they are a mere nuisance.


Nonetheless, games before 2004 were harder.

 

[The Rambling Sage]

The following goes for all games including WRPGs and JRPGs:

Whatever artificial restrictions you impose on yourself aren't factors in the game's actual difficulty. Missing overpowered setups, items, recipes, etc. because they aren't obvious and you don't like combing FAQs for them is one thing, since how well hidden such things are can be part of a game's challenge, but intentionally restricting or ignoring a fundamental mechanic like saving and loading is like inverse cheating, and is just as worthless to bring up as the normal kind of cheating when discussing a game's difficulty.

So, yes, if reloading makes a game easy, I can reload whenever I like and say it's without challenge, IF unrestricted loading is part of the game's design.

Uh... So there are no hard games, since all games can be won by unskilled people by abusing the save & load system and being persistent enough. Now, i would say that if to defeat a boss a given player had to reload ten or twenty times, the boss wasn't easy.

While i understand what you are saying, understand where i am comming from: He said a certain game, in which in the second dificulty level of the original edition you can be killed by random encounters without ever getting a chance to move if you are not careful about how you create your character and how you fuse your demons, is easy. If you play in a "let's try not to die" way, the game IS challenging and you need to learn and understand the mechanics by hearth to have a chance.

If you go "Fuck. Random encounter killed me before i could act because i have low luck. Reload. Fuck. Random encounter killed me before i could act because i have no resistance to curses. Reload. Fuck. Boss LOLed because i only brought melee demons and he reflects all melee attacks. Reload. Woohoo! I won! This game is so fucking easy! No challenge!" is a little bit ridiculous. Are you careful about what demons you have? No, because if you find a immune boss or enemy you just reload a bring diferent ones. Are you careful about Inheritance & Fusion as to have a varied set of skills in your "main" group? Nah, because if i need a certain skill i reload and get my a demon with that one.

You can break any RPG by constant reloading. Now, allow me to show you some "bosses" on the main japanese FAQ for the game, in it's translated version, so you can see how easy the game is IF you save & reload, against how dificult it is if you try to minimize doing so:

This is your first Majin fight, and it can be pretty tough depending on your
party. The toughest part is actually hitting Matador, as his "Red Cape" skill is
the equivalent of casting Suku-Kaja four times in a row. If you don't have
someone with Fog Breath or Suku-Nda, he will be very difficult to beat. He uses
physical attacks and Mahazan in addition to his cape, and when you bring him
down to half health, will Taunt you, use Kiai, and use "Blood of Andalucia,"
a powerful physical attack that hits everyone. First off, to counter the Mahazan
attacks you'll want minions strong or immune to Shock--and equip Hifumi on your
Hero for best results. Some good Nakama to use would be Nozuchi (LV 14 Ryuo) or
Nekomata, (LV 18 Maju) both of whom absorb Shock attacks. Ame-no-Uzume (LV 18
Megami) is a good healer for this battle as she is immune to Shock as well.
However, none of these demons has Fog Breath or Suku-Nda, so you'll probably
have to custom-make one or bring in a non-ideal demon if your Hero doesn't have
either skill. With a team of shock immune or resistant demons and
Fog Breath/Suku-Nda, Matador shouldn't be too terribly hard to beat, though
using Kaja spells (especially Raku-Kaja) is good insurance against him as well.
If you want to stack the odds even more in your favor, use Jack Frost to fuse a
powerful fighter and transfer Silent Sky Critical to them, then fight Matador
during a new moon to guarantee criticals and fight him in a weaker state--since
enemies are weakest when Kagutsuchi is silent. (Note that while LV 17 Kishin
Takeminakata is a powerful fighter that has Silent Sky Critical naturally, he
is a bad choice for this fight as he is weak to Shock)

This is the first extra boss from Maniax edition, known as being incredibly easier than the "Hard" mode of the original one. Not that the enemy is not "terribly hard to beat" if you know what to bring, including one custom demon - If your party isn't like that because of random chance you can either spend hours grinding to Fuse & Train the demons in order to prepare the right Inheritances, or try to improvise with what you already have. Notice that, for example, Fog Breath is the higher skill from a given Magatsushi, so to have that skill you also need to grind a whole lot. Then, notice the last "trick", creating a custom demon and then fighting the enemy in an specific Kagutsuchi phase - Metagaming, anyone? The entire "strategy" is metagaming. Do you think an "easy" game needs that much metagaming? Let me show you another one.

In terms of his abilities, Pale Rider is not that formidable in comparison to
his other Majin bretheren. Pest Crop instakills the poisoned, and Venom Zapper
can produce those poisoned--but that's really the only thing dangerous about
him. The true threat to your livelihood here are the Loa that he'll summon. They
will cast Randomizer and Curse-based killing spells, and occasionally blow
themselves up. (Annoyingly enough, this will HEAL Pale Rider) They can also use
Dorminer + Eternal Sleep. And if you kill them, Pale Rider will just summon some
more.

The key to this fight is to bring in a party that's immune to status ailments. A
party consisting of other Majin (High Priest, White Rider, and Red Rider are
good choices) will make things a lot easier. You'll want a De-Kunda caster to
counter Loa's Randomizer. Or you could just kill them outright with White
Rider's God Arrow. Another thing to note about Pale Rider is that he can't use
any sorts of debuffing spells. So you can use -Kaja and -Kunda skills to your
heart's content.

Again, the key to this fight is... Metagaming and having a walkthrough. And a party of Majin. If you did play Nocturne Maniax you should already know that the Majin Demons are almost imposible to get without a walkthrough, since each Majin can only be fused in a special Kagutsuchi phase - The same combination in any other phase will result in a "normal" demon, instead of a Majin one, and will not even show you a clue that this is the correct combination. So that's what you have here: The key to defeat this boss easily is... a party of secret boss characters! An easy game, you say? It goes without mentioning that Pest Crop, Curse-Killing spells, and Dorminer+Eternal Slumber are three "instakill" attacks, the last of which can kill your entire party if the dice gods hate you. And they all exploit diferent "resistances", so a party of demons not immune to status ailments will have a pretty rough time here - Since a demon immune to Poison but not to sleep is as good as dead if he falls asleep and then to Eternal Slumber (instakills any sleeping character). So to have a chance against this Boss WITHOUT metagaming or using a walkthrough you need a very diverse and well developed party, plus a very diverse and well developed set of support demons to which change some of your main ones when you see against what you are fighting. Oh, and they have Randomizer. Good fun!

And notice that the Loas he summon are normal enemies, which you can find in random encounters. If your main character is not curse-immune and they surprise you (they get a free turn) they cast mudo-on and you are dead, game over, bye bye. Meanwhile, Dorminer+Eternal Slumber is a tactic several Low-level random encounters use against you: In my last walkthrough a single Succubus (level 30) killed my three demons (level 22 to 25) with that. My PC survived because he had sleep immunity, and then had to fight her ALONE, since all my remaining demons where fusion fodder or maxed low-level demons waiting Evolution.

So yeah, taking into account constant reloading is not fair measure of challenge for a game with a set of mechanics as complex as Nocturne.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Having complex mechanics is one thing, not telling the player about any of them is another.

 

[The Rambling Sage]

Having complex mechanics is one thing, not telling the player about any of them is another.

Who said the game does not?

 

[Wyrmlord]

I always considered it a strenght of RPGs that the player has contol over the difficulty.

Absolutely.

Like Betrayal At Krondor. If you completely ignore the main quest and the enemies on the main road, and the jump into Dimwood to simply explore around the giant forest and then try decode and unlock the many magical chests there, you will find powerful spells and equipment early on, and enough loot to sell off to make even more money to buy the best items in the game. (Before I even reached Krondor, I had 2 greatswords and 3 dragon plate armours with level 3 blessings on all of them)

With this method, you can crush the game's difficulty curve, because every enemy for the rest of the game will not be able to match you. I mean, it is possible to get the very best items in the game in the very beginning.

But it is hard. Dimwood is a gigantic forest. You would generally be walking through endless hills and trees, hoping to find some grave, some box, something from which you can dig out an item. Unlike the civilized areas of the game, there are no landmarks or objects to indicate where you are in a forest, and you can rely only on your compass. There is an expensive magical spell that you can use to detect the locations of objects with the top down map within a certain radius, and that's it.

Moreover, you can also find people who can train you in skills. But they will ask for quite a bit of money, and that's a challenge considering that you start the game with no money at all, and would need some to replace the second-rate items you have. You'd have to be very painstaking and miserly, and do all the quests that give you money. That, and you'd have to seek the locations of the right discount stores while selling items to the most expensive ones. However, the sharp rise in skills will set you ahead of the curve.

Basically, you make immense effort early on to reduce even more effort later on. Of course, BaK's tight mechanics ensure that it is possible for you to be careless in combat and still let you be killed despite the party's power.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Having complex mechanics is one thing, not telling the player about any of them is another.

Who said the game does not?

Poster before me.