RPG gameplay elements/habits you don't understand

[*-*/\--/\~]

Also cutscenes and voice acting. Widely demanded by players, yet completely lost on me.

Sometimes, it's not so bad ...

Spoiler

Specially when you can skip them.

I guess. Though the choice between skipping content and trudging through it sluggishly isn't a good one. Let me read at my own pace, dammit.

Let me add to that my main gripe with JRPGs: the horrendously slow yet verbose dialogs.

Every sentence types out letter by letter rather than displaying instantly.
A single dialog window only has a low amount of text in it. Compare western RPGs like Baldur's Gate, where an entire paragraph fits in the text window, vs your average JRPG where it's merely a sentence.
You don't get any dialog options, so the dialogs are basically cutscenes.
Cutscenes where you have to press enter 50 times in a row because the characters can't shut up with their inane banter.
Imagine Minsc and Aerie banter, except a lot more juvenile, and delivered sentence by sentence, and after each sentence you have to press enter to go to the next.
You can't just skim through it like you can in western RPGs. No. You have to click through it sentence by sentence, and you don't even get to pick dialog options to offer your own opinion on all that blah-blah.
It's so fucking tiresome.

Thank you for reminding me that JRPGs rightfully belong in my "never touch this, ever" pile. :D

 

[DraQ]

If the game has a lot of reactivity surrounding the companions (ie. them responding to whatever the fuck's going on etc.) then i like that as an RPG mechanic. Helps if the companion has nice TnA.

What if companion is male? Or a reptile. Or arthropod.

How the "good" choices usually lead to more content and "evil" ones to a harder difficulty with less content. This is probably due to developer laziness and tight budgets because they can't afford to make all possible playstyles equally viable, different but with approximately the same amount of content. Whatever the intention is on their part, it's not realistic. When playing a new rpg I'm compelled to be everyone's lackey, fearing that choosing any other way would gate away some of the content and in the worst case, break the game because of sheer developer stupidity.

Also "evil" choices are usually either completely retarded "for teh evulz" evil or completely sensible, merely not senselessly altruistic "Uh, we're risking our life and limb to get your ring back, so we really wouldn't mind some compensation".

 

[JarlFrank]

I wish evil choices were more like "this is going to further your cause, but it's a real dickish thing to do" such as terrorist acts against a powerful enemy, torture to get information, etc. Where there's an actual reason for you to do it but also a reason why people would hate you for it. Like massacring a village of civilians working in the enemy's weapon facories, with the result being fewer enemy soldiers to fight in the final showdown.

Most evil choices are either not evil (I saved your life, now I demand a reward, MWA HA HA!) or don't benefit you whatsoever, so what's the point?

 

[DraQ]

I wish evil choices were more like "this is going to further your cause, but it's a real dickish thing to do" such as terrorist acts against a powerful enemy, torture to get information, etc. Where there's an actual reason for you to do it but also a reason why people would hate you for it. Like massacring a village of civilians working in the enemy's weapon facories, with the result being fewer enemy soldiers to fight in the final showdown.

Most evil choices are either not evil (I saved your life, now I demand a reward, MWA HA HA!) or don't benefit you whatsoever, so what's the point?

Also interesting moral axis would be balance between altruism and survival.

Evil actions like above come off as just being a lazy asshole if advantage they confer is not actually meaningful.
Ideally you should be forced to do some nasty shit at some points merely to not game over but what kind of nasty shit would vary depending on circumstances, build and player's choices.

 

[V_K]

TnA.

What if companion is a reptile.

Looks like someone has already forgotten about the lusty Argonian maid. Let me remind you:

 

[DraQ]

TnA.

What if companion is a reptile.

Looks like someone has already forgotten about the lusty Argonian maid. Let me remind you:

Bro, does she even lift?

Spoiler

her tail, I mean.

Also, The Lusty Argonian Maid is Morrowind book written by monocled individual Crassius "Uncle" Curio.
There are no reptilian mammaries in Morrowind :

 

[octavius]

Count on modders to "fix" that.

 

[DraQ]

Count on modders to "fix" that.

They have:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51232

 

[V_K]

Also, The Lusty Argonian Maid is Morrowind book written by monocled individual Crassius "Uncle" Curio.
There are no reptilian mammaries in Morrowind :

Um, there are actually:

 

[DraQ]

Also, The Lusty Argonian Maid is Morrowind book written by monocled individual Crassius "Uncle" Curio.
There are no reptilian mammaries in Morrowind :

Um, there are actually:

That's just clothes being race-agnostic.
Underneath she's flat-chested.

(Also kudos to Larian for not giving their Lizards bewbs.)

 

[RNGsus]

Um, there are actually:

Those are just human/elven female shirts incorrectly pathed to argonians.

Sent from my SM-J327VPP using Tapatalk

 

[Black Angel]

Fucking scalies

 

[DraQ]

V_K
Just make a female Argonian character and take off your shirt.
Bewbs->no bewbs

Also, IIRC in the earlier version of the game there were no gender specific meshes for clothes (but most were rather baggy, so they looked OK on females).

 

[Cat Dude]

Checkpoints save system. Only Japanimu developers still have such an outdated mindset to incorporated this shit into their games.

 

[DraQ]

Checkpoints save system. Only Japanimu developers still have such an outdated mindset to incorporated this shit into their games.

I saw an interesting hybrid of a checkpoint and at-will save system once.
Not in an RPG, mind you, but it could work there.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Shin Megami Tensei balances good and evil paths pretty well. Law/Neutral/Chaos paths have similar amount of content and it's arguable which of then is the correct one.

 

[CryptRat]

Ideally you should be forced to do some nasty shit at some points merely to not game over but what kind of nasty shit would vary depending on circumstances, build and player's choices.

Depends on how much you like grimdark stuff. As someone who does not like this kind of things, and that's only my own taste, I hate to have to do nasty shit for non-evil reasons (I know we're talking about mass murder simulators but anyway). Fighting against some wanna-destroy-the-world evil guys and their minions is 100% fine to me, but if I get to choose between different sides to work for then I'd rather have everybody you can work for be a bastard (like some crazy megacorp leader) and the jobs being about slashing other dickheads so that's it's cool, not cringy. I hate edgy moral choices such as choosing which group of kittens (you can replace kittens with civilians if you want) to work for, slaughtering kittens because they're contagious or choosing between saving a child or his mother or which of the two poor pacifist towns will get running water or such stuff. I want this kind of stuff to be reserved to evil parties so that I can skip it myself.

 

[Anonona]

Checkpoints save system. Only Japanimu developers still have such an outdated mindset to incorporated this shit into their games.

I'll argue that it actually has its function in certain games when the challenge is about doing stretches of the game without dying while managing resources. Basically, you can compare them to classical Survival Horrors. That means being able to escape if things go south is also important, so spells that allow you to return to a safe place fast are also more important, and multiple fights are more dangerous as you cannot save in between. For examples of actual japanimu games that makes a good use of this, I'll say any SMT or Breath of Fire V: Dragon's Quarter (which also has limited saves). Of course, many games use them without any real reasons, making them more of an annoyance, but there are some games that use them well.

 

[anvi]

There are millions of things really, RPGs are full of stupid shit. Looting barrels crates and boxes every 2 fucking steps. I understand it... they do it because it wastes time and their crappy 20 hour campaign would be 2 hours without all the time wasting. But what I don't understand is why people are so willing to put up with that sort of thing. Same goes with walking all the way to some quest location, then walking all the way back to get the reward, then walking another 10 miles to the next NPC who will send you on another hike. I also don't get why most games have dialogue options when the options are mostly meaningless. Do people really need to have their virtual character tell another virtual character the exact same thing in two different ways for the same outcome? No, is the answer. If you can't make it like BG or something with 20 wildly different options then just don't bother.

Also stats, why give people attribute points in a game where they don't even matter, it is fooling nobody.. And even if it does matter, it still doesn't even make sense sometimes. Like if you can pump strength on your wizard and end up with a broken character, then why do it? Anyone who knows RPGs already know where to put stats so don't need to do it for the 1000th time for no reason, and anyone who doesn't know RPGs doesn't deserve to be gimped because they tried to do something different in a genre that is supposed to support that kind of thing... Rarely can a game let you build your characters in multiple significant ways, and that's sad.

Companions are stupid because if the player is an action consoletard moron then they don't need companions getting in the way, just give them bigger guns and easier enemies. If the player has a brain, then they don't want pointless companions, they want other characters that they can control and tweak. Also the pack mule excuse is stupid. Just have a bigger player inventory and/or less junk to loot. p.s. The worst thing of all though is multiple quests.... If a single player RPG has more than one quest then it is stupid and doing it wrong.

 

[Trashos]

Looting barrels crates and boxes every 2 fucking steps. I understand it... they do it because it wastes time and their crappy 20 hour campaign would be 2 hours without all the time wasting.

The main reason why that is done is to pace the reward cycle. It gives you something to do and be rewarded for. If a game you are playing has too much of it (quick reward cycle), it means that it either does not think very highly of you or it is trying to get you addicted.

 

[Max Damage]

Drawn out animations and pauses that have no reason to be this long. When multiplied by number of times they happen through average full-length RPG playthrough, you can't help but notice how much of your time is wasted because some dev wanted to masturbate over how cool he is. Also, turn-based RPGs with no concurrent turns/options to speed up or skip animations. Nothing makes me uninstall faster than a game that feels lethargic.

 

[Cat Dude]

If the game has a lot of reactivity surrounding the companions (ie. them responding to whatever the fuck's going on etc.) then i like that as an RPG mechanic. Helps if the companion has nice TnA.

Vince Russo said TnA stands for Tits and Ass

 

[Cat Dude]

Drawn out animations and pauses that have no reason to be this long. When multiplied by number of times they happen through average full-length RPG playthrough, you can't help but notice how much of your time is wasted because some dev wanted to masturbate over how cool he is. Also, turn-based RPGs with no concurrent turns/options to speed up or skip animations. Nothing makes me uninstall faster than a game that feels lethargic.

I like Final Fantasy 9 though

 

[Max Damage]

FF9 can be sped up through emulation, can't imagine playing it on console though. Not only it has those annoying trances, but everything takes forever to load.

 

[Cat Dude]

FF9 can be sped up through emulation, can't imagine playing it on console though. Not only it has those annoying trances, but everything takes forever to load.

I gave up ff9 mostly due to slow battle transition screen loading time.