RPG gameplay elements/habits you don't understand

[InD_ImaginE]

A game economy that revolves around getting and selling lot of loots from enemies.

A lot of inventory tetris/limitation problem stems from the fact that players need to loot nearly all thing of value as part of the game economy. Some try to limit it through inventory tetris. Some through weight. Some through both.

Then we have economy problem that stems from it too. Should you balance the game price/economy based on the player being a looting hobo? Or shouldn't you, considering the limitation of inventory applied to your game?

Instead of doing it like that, why not make gold as part of quest progression? It ensures you have control over the game economies. You can just implement a simpler inventory system considering the player will only be bringing their important items, not as stash for loots that will be sold for gold.

I do understand that for some games, like open world simulation RPG, this won't work. But for "quest focused" RPG?

 

[JarlFrank]

They're brainless AI bots.

That's the best friends we can get.

The best friends are those you get full control over.

 

[Quillon]

They're brainless AI bots.

That's the best friends we can get.

The best friends are those you get full control over.

Then you'll love the degeneracy of BG3 companions that you'll even get to control what they say in dialogue.

 

[JarlFrank]

No, that sounds stupid.

 

[Farewell young Prince into the night]

Tutorials that take more than two minutes to complete. Get me into the game so I can explore it on my own.

 

[CappenVarra]

I don't get the appeal of having companions in first or third person action RPGs, yet devs keep implementing them and players apparently like it.

to be honest, i've concluded i don't like pre-built companions in any RPG, period

full party creation please, and save the dev budget planned for writing/animating/voicing an insufferable character some dev thinks deserves to join my party

let people without imagination or taste have Imoen in their party; i have plenty of voices in my head who are happy to be given a chance to see daylight

hirelings are okay: i pay, you shut up and do your job Generic Fighter #62; try interrupting me with off-topic dialog about your emotions or opinion on what we should do - and just look at the time: it's Shocking Grasp to the face o'clock

:shrug:

 

[Ventidius]

Lack of party control - Four aspects of this, specifically: 1) When you are not allowed to make a custom party, 2) When premade party members are available but you cannot fully customize their stats and/or manage their equipment (this is especially bad when their stats suck), 3) Party members cannot be fully controlled at the tactical/combat level 4) Party members can leave the party/betray the player. If you are gonna make a party-based game, designing the whole game as if a full party was the main unit of player agency is key, and having party members not be a liability to the player is important to that. Otherwise, one wonders what's even the point of opting for this format in the context of single-player games.

Unskippable intro sections - Especially when they are 1) long, 2)filled with setpieces, "cinematic" parts, or exposition 3) tutorials. They are frankly annoying, don't add anything to the experience, and hamper replayability. It goes without saying that this is mostly an issue with modern games/RPGs. The best type of start is when you are just thrown into the world and are expected to figure things out for yourself. That said, I don't necessarily have a problem with "starter dungeons" so long as they play like actual normal dungeons for the most part, like BG2's. That said, if you are going to go with a starter dungeon, the best way to do it is going the Elminage Original way: you are limited to that one dungeon until you clear it (like BG2), but you still have the option to go back to town whenever you want to buy/sell stuff, recruit and dismiss party members, save/rest, etc.

Itemization and crafting that don't encourage exploration - Getting loot should be one of the incentives of exploring the world/dungeon/dungeons in the game. As such, itemization should be designed in close concordance with that, instead of working against it. The best way of doing this is by making it so that the best gear has to be obtained by exploring rather than crafting, advancing in the story, or what have you. Perhaps crafting systems can be well done, but I have seen very few cases in which they don't either trivialize a big chunk of the exploratory aspect of a game or make it about trash collecting tedium.

 

[King Crispy]

especially in something as clunky as Bethesda's Fallouts where they only get in your way when you wanna shoot at the enemy.

I'd like to introduce you to my friend here. His name's Ian.

Don't ever turn your back on him.

Edit: Forgive me, octavius, for you made the joke first.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[King Crispy]

Now come on. I hate to defend Bethesda here *ahem*, but the purpose of playing their newer games isn't for challenge nor for and kind of intellectual benefit. Their only purpose is to LARP. So if you don't play games like Fallout 4 using mods that make your companions never run out of ammo, for example, then you're doing it wrong.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The best friends are those you get full control over.

That's some "friends" you have ...

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Hirelings and full party creation are boring unless you are playing blobbers.

 

[Zanzoken]

Another one of mine that is less insidious, but has still played a role over the years in eroding my desire to play cRPGs, is the sheer amount of running around that you end up doing over the course of a game.

I don't mean exploration, which involves seeing new and interesting things. Or even fetch quest destinations where you'll visit, poke around a bit, do the thing you came to do, then leave and probably never return.

Mostly what I am referring to here is the banality of a big hub area where you end up commuting back, and forth, and back, and forth just to do basic shit. Usually dozens of times over the course of a game. And you see the same scenery, and same stupid NPCs over and over and over again, with their couple of boring lines of dialogue. Run over here, talk to quest dispenser, now run over there, offload vendor trash, now back here again, rest at an inn. Zzzzzz

People seem to love the concept of "cities" in games even though they only have like 50 people, and are usually static as a painting. I admit they are fun to look at once, but after many hours I am ready to be literally anywhere else.

 

[Ventidius]

Even if a game is built around pre-made characters, there is no harm in allowing the player to easily recruit hirelings or create his own party members if he so chooses. Some might complain that this harms the balance, but that is only the case if the pre-made characters are gimps, which they shouldn't be. There are many ways pre-made characters can be made effective enough so that hirelings don't become "unbalanced". One is the DOS 2 way: make the pre-made characters basically fully customizable. Then there is Baldur's Gate 2, which, despite the fact that it had a couple of characters that were in some way sub-optimal (Nalia's thieving skills, for example), also had others that were straight up better than customs, such as Edwin (more spell slots), plus some that had some key flaw that could nonetheless be patched up through itemization (Keldorn's Dexterity, which can be easily fixed with the Dex gauntlets). There are ways to allow the player to have an "immersion-friendly" party that is not gimped, devs just need to exercise some imagination.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Fixation on Lore. If you want to amuse the storyfaggery part of my soul (which is rather small and gradually diminishes with years), just give me a good plot and dialogues instead.

Lore never makes a shit game not shit. I am looking at you, Morrowind.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

• NPC schedules. I'm sure it takes monumental effort to implement and then you just press "T" until day resets and NPC is back to his house. So immersive.
  
• Level locked items. Literally beats the point of having loot in the game.
  
• Adding stealth just for the sake of checking the box without adding necessary systems to support the stealth gameplay. Do or do not, there is no try.
• Making open world only to fill it with trash-tier content just so it doesn't seem empty. If you don't have resources, cut it down to size, not every RPG needs to be 100 hours.
• Hiding the underlying mechanics from the player. I wanna crunch those numbers baby.
  
• RTWP. Just die already.
• Making all women look like 50 year old lesbians

 

[Strange Fellow]

The 1 MC + party of player controlled NPCs "gather your party as you go along" thing. I hate playing a party-based game as a single character, or as two or three characters, for the first few hours before getting to the full experience. It also makes you pick up annoying companions or companions that don't fit your planned party, simply because playing without them prolongs the gimped party stage as you'll have to search for longer before you get a full roster. It always feels like an extended tutorial until you get at least a few guys along, and I hate it.

 

[V_K]

Fixation on Lore. If you want to amuse the storyfaggery part of my soul (which is rather small and gradually diminishes with years), just give me a good plot and dialogues instead.

Lore never makes a shit game not shit. I am looking at you, Morrowind.

On the contrary, as far as I'm concerned in-game plots and overwritten dialogs can die in fire. Give me some backstory and lore and an overarching goal and let me do the rest.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Let's agree to disagree. For me, lore is the lamest way of world-building.

 

[Ventidius]

A good setting and lore can actually contribute to gameplay by making exploration more interesting, especially when navigating and progressing through the gameworld requires and/or rewards player involvement and observation. Art direction and music can also be put to the service of world-building and improve atmosphere in the process, which may be a less tangible aspect, but is nonetheless closer to the moment-to-moment gameplay experience than dialogues. The latter, if anything, often end up feeling like an interruption of gameplay rather than a complement to it.

 

[Desiderius]

Invest skill points in crafting so your professional fighter/wizard/diplomat adventurer character can forge better weapons than life-long blacksmiths!

I'd rather find unique equipment by exploring the game world, rather than collecting hundreds of pieces of generic components.

I'd... never thought about it that way before. Maybe that's why crafting has always been vaguely disappointing.

Convinced of something by a good argument on Codex.

Is that shit allowed?

 

[Zanzoken]

Fixation on Lore. If you want to amuse the storyfaggery part of my soul (which is rather small and gradually diminishes with years), just give me a good plot and dialogues instead.

Lore never makes a shit game not shit. I am looking at you, Morrowind.

I may be in the minority on this, but in addition to being outstanding in terms of worldbuilding, I think Morrowind has a pretty good story and characters as well. The main plot does rely on the Chosen One cliche, but other than that it's quite decent. And the Tribunal and Dagoth Ur are some of the most memorable NPCs in the history of RPGs.

The gameplay is shit, though, no getting around that. But you only get one first love, and Morrowind will always be it for me.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

I prefer show-don't-tell approach of worldbuilding. Good level design, implicatures in dialogues, environmental storytelling - things like these.

Looking for notes and books scattered through the gameworld and reading the long descriptions of items and codex entries ain't activities which I can describe as fun.

 

[Desiderius]

They're brainless AI bots.

That's the best friends we can get.

Can?

All about trade-offs man

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

 

[Desiderius]

But you only get one first love, and Morrowind will always be it for me.

I don't know. Pong paddle characterization was pretty shallow. Glad I moved on.