ITT I go over a list of things that I consider to be essential mistakes to avoid when one is trying to make an RPG that isn't shit/mediocre. This isn't really my opinion, but rather the OBJECTIVE TRUTH™ about RPGs. You can disagree with it, but you're just exercising your right to have a wrong opinion.
DISCLAIMER: EVERYTHING HERE IS 100% TRUTH
TL;DR:
I- RNG Chargen/Levelling needs to die in a fire ASAP
Chargen is the most obvious problem, with leveling being more of a gray area. Still, clicking on "new game" and being greeted by an obviously gimped character and the option to reroll him is a pointless waste of the player's time. Point-buy >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> RNG. Coming from GURPS I always loathed AD&D lolrandom chargen and only adopted D&D with my friends after third edition DM book brought along an "alternative ruleset" for pointbuy chargen + average hitpoints per level. "Now THAT is more like it" I thought at the time.
Another less important problem is lolrandom progression, with the mentioned hitpoints being a prime example. I don't really have an issue with things like JA2 random-ish XP gain, but REALLY despise seeing an opportunity being wasted simply because RNG says fuck you. This is a trend I'll repeat in this thread: games should reward good gameplay and punish bad gameplay. I don't give a shit about "muh realism" or any other excuse for "haha, fuck you" mechanics. Speaking of which...
II - "Haha, fuck you" mechanics need to die in a fire, alongside whoever came up with the idea
First, let's make one thing clear: opening the ship's door and eating a rocket does NOT qualify as "haha, fuck you" and neither does getting shot by an alien 40+ squares away in month 2. Point II is specific about pure RNG mechanics that dish out punishments (or rewards, it doesn't really matter) and the player has absolutely no agency over it. Examples: EUIV's shitty Monarch Mana system. An X-Com equivalent would be something like "your scientists went on strike and we lost all progress on Heavy Plasma, lol, get fucked".
It boggles my mind how much kids nowadays WORSHIP RNGesus. The whole battle royal fad is so hard to comprehend as aiming skills can be easily overruled by not getting any weapons and/or getting a shit weapon while your opponent gets something better. Why someone would even play this crap...? I once theorized it had something to do with responsibility being a thing of the past and RNG + teammates being a super convenient scapegoat, but I never bothered making a wall of text about it.
III - Resource management needs to be meaningful or ditched entirely
Inventory management isn't fun. Collecting 53 bottles of water and remembering to right click them every ten minutes is absolutely NOT fun. Managing resources adds an interesting layer of strategy into any game but fake-scarcity is a widespread cancer these days. "Hohoho, don't die due to lack of X, CHARNAME!" and then X can be found on ever corpse, dumpster and barrel, you just need to right click it, alongside Y and Z = fake scarcity = shouldn't be in the game.
I NEVER install any "survival" mods on any game, because it's always the same shit: your sword now needs to be sharpened every 21 beheadings. And the game suddenly becomes a nagging wife going "SEE!? I TOLD YA, I TOLD YA TO REPAIR THE SWORD! Now it broke after 22 beheadings, hope you learned your lesson!!!!". OTOH, look at CIV 4. Strategic resources don't even have a quantity count, but OH BOY, you WILL notice pretty soon the difference between having a source of Iron/Copper and not having it.
IV - Turn economy is real and it's dev-made
Plenty of "RPGs" are now adding a shitload of skills, items and whatnot just for the sake of checking boxes without even considering if the opportunity cost of these things is worth the turn or not. Vigilantes is a fresh offender in my memory, a game that adds smoke, flash, medkits and whatnot and everything is worthless because just having a 6-man firing squad is better in every scenario, lol.
It should've been obvious by now, but death is the best debuff ever. Debuffs should only be included in a game if using them is actually worth the fucking turn. I know a "tactical" game is garbage when I look into all the options apart from direct damage and see shit like "reduces the accuracy of one enemy by 5 percent for two turns". Meanwhile option B is "shoot him in the face for -100% to everything permanently".
What I'm trying to say is that turn economy makes or breaks a game. D:OS was a great game because every turn had plenty of possibilities. D:OS 2 is utter trash because every turn boils down to "break their silver/blue shield OR chain stun whoever lost his shield OR replenish your own shield", despite clearly having more skills than its predecessor. Blackguards OTOH is a game with amazing combat encounters that provide for a lot of variety and fun when it comes to deciding how to use a given character's turn.
V - Build variety should translate into gameplay variety
It's obviously impossible to account for every single choice a player makes while building his character, but shit like "option A goes 'pew pew pew' while option B goes PEW...PEW" is trash design. A LOT of developers like to advertise how their game has so many options, but when you actually install that shit you quickly realize the stuff in your inventory/sheet might be different, but the mechanics are indistinguishable.
Offender example: PoE's implementation of bows, crossbows and guns, where everything is a matter of choosing how fast you wanna shoot. GOOD example: Underrail. Pistol, SMG, Sniper, Knife, Hammer, EVERYTHING has its own gameplay "identity". Wasteland 2 at release was a laughable mess with every gun being a bad AR. Hilariously enough, some dumbasses thought nerfing ARs would actually solve something.
It's funny, really, how nu-Xcom is an incredibly mediocre game, but I held it as my "low bar standard" for tactical games and it's actually quite surprising how many games completely and utterly FAIL the nu-Xcom standard. A super shallow character system translates into a meh combat system, but some "indie" devs managed to make even shallower combat systems that try to hide their simplicity behind a seemingly complex character system.
VI - Autopiloted turns are also bad
This is a bit of a step up from IV, but also an issue that led some people into believing RT/RTwP was somehow superior to TB. Yeah, if every turn in a TB game boils down to "Fighter moves forward and attacks, mage casts fireball, cleric buffs, Jew subverts host nation" then you might as well make shit real time. That was Baldur's Gate/Diablo's greatest "discovery". If the moment-to-moment gameplay is gonna be repetitive as fuck, you might as well make it all go faster.
And that's the cornerstone of designing a good TB game: you need to justify the slow pace of TB with an engaging turn economy. Battle Brothers is another recent "success story" and I believe its success are mostly due to the fact that you get a 12-man squad and things still feel like you have more than one or two options for every character. In a bad TB game you can easily have a 4 or even 3 man-party and every turn boils down to pressing the same buttons over and over.
And feel I must mention Blackguards here again, a game where every turn of every fight feels fresh and engaging.
VII - "Reverse difficulty" is a shitty meme. It never was and never will be a problem
Aren't RPGs about starting small and working your way up? Then where the fuck did the "reverse difficulty" meme even came from? Because there are really just two options: either your character is growing in power and will eventually outscale enemies in a noticeable way, or you're spinning wheels and will eventually be outscaled. You can have a better or a worse sense of progression, but you'll eventually fall under these two categories. There is no third option AFAIK.
Well, there kinda is...
VIII - Gimmick fights need to die in a fire
I define "gimmick" as something that completely overrules regular game mechanics in favor of something "new" that isn't explained anywhere and isn't used again, except in the case of the gimmick fight being recycled. Shit like "this boss can only be killed while wielding the Sword of Biggus Dickus. And then you can 1-shot him" is garbage and it isn't limited to RPGs. I ditched "The Old Blood" after running into one two many enemies that needed to be killed via AWSUM MELEE CUTSCENES that are somehow better than bullets.
Don't confuse this point with unique mechanics in general. A fire elemental being immune to fire is fine assuming every other fire elemental in the game is also immune.
And in order to avoid yet another item, I'm gonna use this one to include another shitty tired trope: fake combat sequences that are actually scripted "deaths". If you want a cutscene, then put a fucking cutscene, don't make me fight big mace guy for an hour, only to google and discover getting one-shot is in the script of KCD's super awsum story. Fuck off.
IX - NPCs need to at least RESEMBLE a fucking human bean
Witcher 3 got infinite praises for being the first AAA title in a long while to present NPC interaction that felt even remotely human, in stark contrast with the constant interaction with liberal propaganda stereotypes and/or walking and talking wikia articles of the mainstream games that came before.
Protip: if your NPC can be defined as "a person who stands for X" or "a kinky guy/gal/tranny that likes to do XYZ in bed" then your NPC is trash and all interactions with him/her can be defined as "trash text". Modern Bioware games are examples of the former while D:OS 2 is filled to the brim with the latter. It's like every character is a horny mutt desperately trying to hump your leg while also trying to convert you this his shitty cause. Hopefully both.
Also, le reddit "oh so quirky" dialog lines are not amusing. I just glanced at some of Disco's screenshots and immediately thought "who the fuck speaks like that? Is this set in an alternate reality or something?". That's more trash text, but I guess some people enjoy it.
X - Dumbing down doesn't improve sales, but "incline" doesn't necessarily sell either
It is an often parroted argument in the 'Dex that dumbing games down = more sales. That is false, or at least a half truth. A game doesn't sell because it's sterilized and designed-by-committee shit, it just so happens that the things we value just don't increase sales enough to justify their cost most of the time. We notice things the average player doesn't, so devs can cut corners with minimal losses. That doesn't mean the corners cut magically made the game sell more.
However, "dumbing down" a game comes at the cost of diluting its identity, its..."essence" or "soul" if you will. It backfires more often than people around here notice and/or are willing to admit. Take FEAR for instance. One of the best shooters of all time that simply decided to ditch its own identity in order to appeal to the mythical "broader console audience" in its shitty sequel FEAR 2. What happened instead was the franchise dug its own grave and was eventually forgotten. Do you hear about FEAR sequels, reboots? No, because the game was snuffed out in its cradle, drowned in a sea of similar looking and feeling generic military shooters. It gave up on being "FEAR" and decided to be "Generic military shooter #1233425546 + spooky ghost girl". It failed.
Devs need to be on the same page as their core supporters/customer base at all times. RPGs are a niche interest, they will never sell Cowaduty numbers, but betraying your core supporters isn't 100% inconsequential. Path of Exile "stole" loads of Diablo fans, Amplitude "stole" from Firaxis and so on. Even if the throne remains vacant for a really long time, eventually someone will rise to take it. Remember all those threads about W3 outbiowaring bioware? Yeah. That eventually happens.
XI - More dialog doesn't make things better
"AH, FRESH MEAT!!!" - The Butcher, 1996. Still fondly remembered more than two decades later. So simple and elegant, one line of dialog tells you everything you need to know about a character, his personality, his life goals AND how the encounter is gonna play out. Fucking memorable is what it was. And a stark contrast with "lemme tell you how I feel about bigots" you see in every single modern RPG.
You can't force shit into being memorable. And sometimes a character can be unremarkable while his role on a somewhat interesting story makes him memorable. Eg: Yoshimo. Devs need to stop making characters that just try too hard and stand out horribly.
Speaking of trying too hard, I'm done for the day. Happy reading, boys.
DISCLAIMER: EVERYTHING HERE IS 100% TRUTH
TL;DR:
There isn't one. Go back to Twitter's 140 characters cuz this post is gonna be long and hard. Just the way urmom likes it.
I- RNG Chargen/Levelling needs to die in a fire ASAP
Chargen is the most obvious problem, with leveling being more of a gray area. Still, clicking on "new game" and being greeted by an obviously gimped character and the option to reroll him is a pointless waste of the player's time. Point-buy >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> RNG. Coming from GURPS I always loathed AD&D lolrandom chargen and only adopted D&D with my friends after third edition DM book brought along an "alternative ruleset" for pointbuy chargen + average hitpoints per level. "Now THAT is more like it" I thought at the time.
Inb4 "but that existed since" - I only had the AD&D player handbook, sry, shit was super expensive in my country back in the day.
Another less important problem is lolrandom progression, with the mentioned hitpoints being a prime example. I don't really have an issue with things like JA2 random-ish XP gain, but REALLY despise seeing an opportunity being wasted simply because RNG says fuck you. This is a trend I'll repeat in this thread: games should reward good gameplay and punish bad gameplay. I don't give a shit about "muh realism" or any other excuse for "haha, fuck you" mechanics. Speaking of which...
II - "Haha, fuck you" mechanics need to die in a fire, alongside whoever came up with the idea
First, let's make one thing clear: opening the ship's door and eating a rocket does NOT qualify as "haha, fuck you" and neither does getting shot by an alien 40+ squares away in month 2. Point II is specific about pure RNG mechanics that dish out punishments (or rewards, it doesn't really matter) and the player has absolutely no agency over it. Examples: EUIV's shitty Monarch Mana system. An X-Com equivalent would be something like "your scientists went on strike and we lost all progress on Heavy Plasma, lol, get fucked".
It boggles my mind how much kids nowadays WORSHIP RNGesus. The whole battle royal fad is so hard to comprehend as aiming skills can be easily overruled by not getting any weapons and/or getting a shit weapon while your opponent gets something better. Why someone would even play this crap...? I once theorized it had something to do with responsibility being a thing of the past and RNG + teammates being a super convenient scapegoat, but I never bothered making a wall of text about it.
III - Resource management needs to be meaningful or ditched entirely
Inventory management isn't fun. Collecting 53 bottles of water and remembering to right click them every ten minutes is absolutely NOT fun. Managing resources adds an interesting layer of strategy into any game but fake-scarcity is a widespread cancer these days. "Hohoho, don't die due to lack of X, CHARNAME!" and then X can be found on ever corpse, dumpster and barrel, you just need to right click it, alongside Y and Z = fake scarcity = shouldn't be in the game.
I NEVER install any "survival" mods on any game, because it's always the same shit: your sword now needs to be sharpened every 21 beheadings. And the game suddenly becomes a nagging wife going "SEE!? I TOLD YA, I TOLD YA TO REPAIR THE SWORD! Now it broke after 22 beheadings, hope you learned your lesson!!!!". OTOH, look at CIV 4. Strategic resources don't even have a quantity count, but OH BOY, you WILL notice pretty soon the difference between having a source of Iron/Copper and not having it.
IV - Turn economy is real and it's dev-made
Plenty of "RPGs" are now adding a shitload of skills, items and whatnot just for the sake of checking boxes without even considering if the opportunity cost of these things is worth the turn or not. Vigilantes is a fresh offender in my memory, a game that adds smoke, flash, medkits and whatnot and everything is worthless because just having a 6-man firing squad is better in every scenario, lol.
It should've been obvious by now, but death is the best debuff ever. Debuffs should only be included in a game if using them is actually worth the fucking turn. I know a "tactical" game is garbage when I look into all the options apart from direct damage and see shit like "reduces the accuracy of one enemy by 5 percent for two turns". Meanwhile option B is "shoot him in the face for -100% to everything permanently".
What I'm trying to say is that turn economy makes or breaks a game. D:OS was a great game because every turn had plenty of possibilities. D:OS 2 is utter trash because every turn boils down to "break their silver/blue shield OR chain stun whoever lost his shield OR replenish your own shield", despite clearly having more skills than its predecessor. Blackguards OTOH is a game with amazing combat encounters that provide for a lot of variety and fun when it comes to deciding how to use a given character's turn.
V - Build variety should translate into gameplay variety
It's obviously impossible to account for every single choice a player makes while building his character, but shit like "option A goes 'pew pew pew' while option B goes PEW...PEW" is trash design. A LOT of developers like to advertise how their game has so many options, but when you actually install that shit you quickly realize the stuff in your inventory/sheet might be different, but the mechanics are indistinguishable.
Offender example: PoE's implementation of bows, crossbows and guns, where everything is a matter of choosing how fast you wanna shoot. GOOD example: Underrail. Pistol, SMG, Sniper, Knife, Hammer, EVERYTHING has its own gameplay "identity". Wasteland 2 at release was a laughable mess with every gun being a bad AR. Hilariously enough, some dumbasses thought nerfing ARs would actually solve something.
It's funny, really, how nu-Xcom is an incredibly mediocre game, but I held it as my "low bar standard" for tactical games and it's actually quite surprising how many games completely and utterly FAIL the nu-Xcom standard. A super shallow character system translates into a meh combat system, but some "indie" devs managed to make even shallower combat systems that try to hide their simplicity behind a seemingly complex character system.
VI - Autopiloted turns are also bad
This is a bit of a step up from IV, but also an issue that led some people into believing RT/RTwP was somehow superior to TB. Yeah, if every turn in a TB game boils down to "Fighter moves forward and attacks, mage casts fireball, cleric buffs, Jew subverts host nation" then you might as well make shit real time. That was Baldur's Gate/Diablo's greatest "discovery". If the moment-to-moment gameplay is gonna be repetitive as fuck, you might as well make it all go faster.
And that's the cornerstone of designing a good TB game: you need to justify the slow pace of TB with an engaging turn economy. Battle Brothers is another recent "success story" and I believe its success are mostly due to the fact that you get a 12-man squad and things still feel like you have more than one or two options for every character. In a bad TB game you can easily have a 4 or even 3 man-party and every turn boils down to pressing the same buttons over and over.
And feel I must mention Blackguards here again, a game where every turn of every fight feels fresh and engaging.
VII - "Reverse difficulty" is a shitty meme. It never was and never will be a problem
Aren't RPGs about starting small and working your way up? Then where the fuck did the "reverse difficulty" meme even came from? Because there are really just two options: either your character is growing in power and will eventually outscale enemies in a noticeable way, or you're spinning wheels and will eventually be outscaled. You can have a better or a worse sense of progression, but you'll eventually fall under these two categories. There is no third option AFAIK.
Well, there kinda is...
VIII - Gimmick fights need to die in a fire
I define "gimmick" as something that completely overrules regular game mechanics in favor of something "new" that isn't explained anywhere and isn't used again, except in the case of the gimmick fight being recycled. Shit like "this boss can only be killed while wielding the Sword of Biggus Dickus. And then you can 1-shot him" is garbage and it isn't limited to RPGs. I ditched "The Old Blood" after running into one two many enemies that needed to be killed via AWSUM MELEE CUTSCENES that are somehow better than bullets.
Don't confuse this point with unique mechanics in general. A fire elemental being immune to fire is fine assuming every other fire elemental in the game is also immune.
And in order to avoid yet another item, I'm gonna use this one to include another shitty tired trope: fake combat sequences that are actually scripted "deaths". If you want a cutscene, then put a fucking cutscene, don't make me fight big mace guy for an hour, only to google and discover getting one-shot is in the script of KCD's super awsum story. Fuck off.
IX - NPCs need to at least RESEMBLE a fucking human bean
Witcher 3 got infinite praises for being the first AAA title in a long while to present NPC interaction that felt even remotely human, in stark contrast with the constant interaction with liberal propaganda stereotypes and/or walking and talking wikia articles of the mainstream games that came before.
Protip: if your NPC can be defined as "a person who stands for X" or "a kinky guy/gal/tranny that likes to do XYZ in bed" then your NPC is trash and all interactions with him/her can be defined as "trash text". Modern Bioware games are examples of the former while D:OS 2 is filled to the brim with the latter. It's like every character is a horny mutt desperately trying to hump your leg while also trying to convert you this his shitty cause. Hopefully both.
Also, le reddit "oh so quirky" dialog lines are not amusing. I just glanced at some of Disco's screenshots and immediately thought "who the fuck speaks like that? Is this set in an alternate reality or something?". That's more trash text, but I guess some people enjoy it.
X - Dumbing down doesn't improve sales, but "incline" doesn't necessarily sell either
It is an often parroted argument in the 'Dex that dumbing games down = more sales. That is false, or at least a half truth. A game doesn't sell because it's sterilized and designed-by-committee shit, it just so happens that the things we value just don't increase sales enough to justify their cost most of the time. We notice things the average player doesn't, so devs can cut corners with minimal losses. That doesn't mean the corners cut magically made the game sell more.
However, "dumbing down" a game comes at the cost of diluting its identity, its..."essence" or "soul" if you will. It backfires more often than people around here notice and/or are willing to admit. Take FEAR for instance. One of the best shooters of all time that simply decided to ditch its own identity in order to appeal to the mythical "broader console audience" in its shitty sequel FEAR 2. What happened instead was the franchise dug its own grave and was eventually forgotten. Do you hear about FEAR sequels, reboots? No, because the game was snuffed out in its cradle, drowned in a sea of similar looking and feeling generic military shooters. It gave up on being "FEAR" and decided to be "Generic military shooter #1233425546 + spooky ghost girl". It failed.
Devs need to be on the same page as their core supporters/customer base at all times. RPGs are a niche interest, they will never sell Cowaduty numbers, but betraying your core supporters isn't 100% inconsequential. Path of Exile "stole" loads of Diablo fans, Amplitude "stole" from Firaxis and so on. Even if the throne remains vacant for a really long time, eventually someone will rise to take it. Remember all those threads about W3 outbiowaring bioware? Yeah. That eventually happens.
XI - More dialog doesn't make things better
"AH, FRESH MEAT!!!" - The Butcher, 1996. Still fondly remembered more than two decades later. So simple and elegant, one line of dialog tells you everything you need to know about a character, his personality, his life goals AND how the encounter is gonna play out. Fucking memorable is what it was. And a stark contrast with "lemme tell you how I feel about bigots" you see in every single modern RPG.
You can't force shit into being memorable. And sometimes a character can be unremarkable while his role on a somewhat interesting story makes him memorable. Eg: Yoshimo. Devs need to stop making characters that just try too hard and stand out horribly.
Speaking of trying too hard, I'm done for the day. Happy reading, boys.
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