Lots of RPGs especially lately rope off areas where you aren't supposed to go yet in the story. One of the few things I actually enjoy about MMOs is that you're generally free to explore most areas from the beginning. It's a lot of fun sneaking across a zone full of monsters way above your level to get to a town or area you aren't supposed to visit until you're many levels higher.
I really do miss this. That's another reason I dislike the "click here to move to the next area" format many games are turning to now - removing the risk of going through a dangerous area and then the reward for getting there before you're supposed to.
Yes. Most people love stumbling into an area where they can be instantly slaughtered, and should they beat the odds and make it somewhere, they love backtracking out of it even more.
Yes. Most people love stumbling into an area where they can be instantly slaughtered, and should they beat the odds and make it somewhere, they love backtracking out of it even more.
Save multiple files, and save often. Problem solved.
Yes. Most people love stumbling into an area where they can be instantly slaughtered, and should they beat the odds and make it somewhere, they love backtracking out of it even more.
So long as there is warning, I do. It's better than a plot wall keeping me out or poorly done level scaling.
Yes. Most people love stumbling into an area where they can be instantly slaughtered, and should they beat the odds and make it somewhere, they love backtracking out of it even more.
Warn them. Borderlands has a convenient "make sure you check the level of the dudes out here" pop-up when you're going into territory you might not be ready for.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yes. Most people love stumbling into an area where they can be instantly slaughtered, and should they beat the odds and make it somewhere, they love backtracking out of it even more.
Warn them. Borderlands has a convenient "make sure you check the level of the dudes out here" pop-up when you're going into territory you might not be ready for.
Unfortunately, reading that message is usually longer than it takes for those baddies to kill you; however, Borderlands does also give you an indicator for enemies too many levels above you when you actually shoot them. And I would also infinitely prefer having the choice of facing tough enemies over being crudely and obviously forced down a given path.
Of course, that brings up a major gripe for me with FPS RPGs: an enemy can take fifty shots to the head at the same level as you before going down. In turn-based strategy RPGs, yeah, it makes sense that skilling up in a gun increases your hit rate (better aim) and how much damage you do (you know what to hit), but in any sort of RPG with manual aiming, it's pure aggravation to have enemies which can take a rocket to the face without being insta-killed. Even way back with Deus Ex, upping the skill for rifles meant you got a slight increase to damage, but the main bonus was a huge increase to accuracy. Shoot someone in the head with a rifle, bam, dead. Shoot someone in the head with a rifle in FO3 and the guy turns around to unload on you. Completely kills the suspension of disbelief.
Something I would like to see in pretty much every genre and not just RPGs are enemies which are believably equipped. Pretty much 100% of the time, devs only let you loot a couple of items from a baddy. I hate this since I have to haul around a whole slew of things to survive, yet encounter kamikaze baddies who were somehow only equipped for the one single fight in which I encounter them. If I have to carry food, heal items, repair items, armor, and so on, enemy NPCs should have to do the same. Drives me crazy to hose an enemy with bullets or smash them with a hammer only to be able to recover 5 silver pieces from their body or a busted gun with 3 bullets.
There should be no healing in combat in RPGs period. The only point of healing is to restore lost HP, thus unnecessarily prolonging any fight. A character that is capable of healing efficiently will do so roughly 90% of the time instead of directly contributing to the cause, and games are generally designed so that you either need to bring a healer or lots and lots of healing potions (which, when provided in large quantities, are also stupid gameplay decision) to stay alive (see Dragon Age for a recent example). Saying that the ability to heal adds deepth to the gameplay would be complete bullshit, because all it does is making you babysit your (usually wimpy) healer so that he can constantly refresh your parties HP pool (which is such a mudane task). It's just there to annoy you as a player and hide potential balance weaknesses because hey, it doesn't matter if that particular enemy deals too much damage when you can just migitate it with healing spells and potions.
One good implantation of this was in the D&D games, because most healing spells were rather lackluster compared to damaging attacks and spell, and you only could cast a limited number of spells instead of having infinite mana at your disposal.
I like what Mass Effect (the first one - haven't had a chance to crack open part 2 yet) did. Each squad member can (if you choose to throw points into armor) regenerate their respective shield. And if you find your shield going down a lot you can throw on an armor mod that regenerated your health. Nobody in any squad of 3 you care to create (that I know of) can heal the entire group's HP or shield, everybody takes a combat role in every fight, and class skills are useful beyond "man, this fight is hard - I sure wish I had a healer."
there were actually mass healing in mass effect 1.
You started with 5 or so first aid kits that healed all your alive party members.
They were just limited reasonably low so that you didn't have stacks of:
99x potion
99x high potion
99x x-potion
or 256xsomething.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited January 2010
The problem is that tons of RPG enemies can regenerate in order to make the fights more tedious (or more difficult, depending on how you look at it) and longer. In ME2, I find myself very rarely having to use any healing because getting out of the line of fire means your shields and health regenerate. Enemies do this too, but you focus fire and kill them before they regenerate.
In ME1, one enemy type (the krogans) made the hardest difficulty mode virtually unplayable since they would automatically get a super-regen and massive damage resistance once their health reached a critical level. This was a terrible idea; it just made combat tedious and aggravating.
Regardless, RPGs in general could do with a lot less of having to face enemies which can regenerate massive chunks of health in order to justify making the the player do the same. Not all RPGs since there are a number in which healing is part of the strategy, but a lot of them.
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
there were actually mass healing in mass effect 1.
You started with 5 or so first aid kits that healed all your alive party members.
They were just limited reasonably low so that you didn't have stacks of:
99x potion
99x high potion
99x x-potion
or 256xsomething.
Also most characters could unlock the First Aid skill. This skill is stackable. So if your squad of three has three characters with First Aid leveled up a few points then the amount that an aid kit restores is the sum total of each characters healing ability.
The Soldier class automatically regen HP as well in ME. And then you have the different healing mods for armor.
I'm enjoying some aspects of the trimmed ME2, like fewer skills to decide between divvying points to. I also like that I don't have to dedicate points to things like Charm, and Electronics only to be pissed off when I reach a point in the game that blatantly gives me the finger for not wasting ENOUGH points in those skills.
I really don't like that credits really only flow during missions, and usually in the form of big chunks of it at a time from doing the tedious hacking and bypassing mini-games. One 20 second minigame brought me 12000 credits, but a sidequest, in which I ran back and forth across a planet, cleared out several floors of bad guys, and a mini-boss to retrieve a missing heirloom for someone only gained me 500 credits.
If I need alloys, I can go farm planets, but if I need credits I pretty much have to continue the storyline. At some point I'm bound to run out of missions I need to buy upgrades for before I have the credits to buy the upgrades.
Makes me wish I still had random loot to sell off.
I don't know if this is really related to cutting fat, but one thing ME2 does great is making credits matter the entire game instead of just reaching a point where money is meaningless and you have 99999 of everything (like in ME1). The upgrades are supposed to be a tougher decision since you can't just farm them all.
It also makes renegade decisions where you can do something shady for more credits an actual decision rather than just something to do to get more renegade points like the first one.
I like when an RPG drops me into the wilderness with a club, doesn't tell me where to go, and wants me to die.
I don't, however, like needless 'grinding' fat that certain jrpgs added over the years. Where getting a level was some sort of chore that should require you to kill the same thing 3000 times in a row.
I guess I'm saying there is a good fat and a bad fat. I do not think oversimplification should be considered good, even if it's for the sake of "plot" which, often brings up the point of, if the game is so easy why don't I just watch a movie w/ a better plot....
Yes. Most people love stumbling into an area where they can be instantly slaughtered, and should they beat the odds and make it somewhere, they love backtracking out of it even more.
Warn them. Borderlands has a convenient "make sure you check the level of the dudes out here" pop-up when you're going into territory you might not be ready for.
Unfortunately, reading that message is usually longer than it takes for those baddies to kill you; however, Borderlands does also give you an indicator for enemies too many levels above you when you actually shoot them. And I would also infinitely prefer having the choice of facing tough enemies over being crudely and obviously forced down a given path.
Of course, that brings up a major gripe for me with FPS RPGs: an enemy can take fifty shots to the head at the same level as you before going down. In turn-based strategy RPGs, yeah, it makes sense that skilling up in a gun increases your hit rate (better aim) and how much damage you do (you know what to hit), but in any sort of RPG with manual aiming, it's pure aggravation to have enemies which can take a rocket to the face without being insta-killed. Even way back with Deus Ex, upping the skill for rifles meant you got a slight increase to damage, but the main bonus was a huge increase to accuracy. Shoot someone in the head with a rifle, bam, dead. Shoot someone in the head with a rifle in FO3 and the guy turns around to unload on you. Completely kills the suspension of disbelief.
Something I would like to see in pretty much every genre and not just RPGs are enemies which are believably equipped. Pretty much 100% of the time, devs only let you loot a couple of items from a baddy. I hate this since I have to haul around a whole slew of things to survive, yet encounter kamikaze baddies who were somehow only equipped for the one single fight in which I encounter them. If I have to carry food, heal items, repair items, armor, and so on, enemy NPCs should have to do the same. Drives me crazy to hose an enemy with bullets or smash them with a hammer only to be able to recover 5 silver pieces from their body or a busted gun with 3 bullets.
To an extent, that's a problem with both Bethesda games (see Oblivion) and older FPS games. Personally, I can't play Half Life 2 now because it takes so very many bullets to put things down.
Borderlands is very good about this and so is Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 1 had some issues on the higher difficulties with non-Geth enemies, but usually wasn't too bad otherwise.
I like when an RPG drops me into the wilderness with a club, doesn't tell me where to go, and wants me to die.
I don't, however, like needless 'grinding' fat that certain jrpgs added over the years. Where getting a level was some sort of chore that should require you to kill the same thing 3000 times in a row.
I guess I'm saying there is a good fat and a bad fat. I do not think oversimplification should be considered good, even if it's for the sake of "plot" which, often brings up the point of, if the game is so easy why don't I just watch a movie w/ a better plot....
Here's a good example of bad fat. You get a quest to collect 20 orc ears. Every single orc had better have an ear in its inventory when you kill it. If every third orc has an ear, that is just the worst way to extend what is already a really stupid quest. Stalker (the FPS) was really bad about this - "bring me a pseudodog tail" when the tails drop on like 1 in 20 pseudodogs.
I don't, however, like needless 'grinding' fat that certain jrpgs added over the years. Where getting a level was some sort of chore that should require you to kill the same thing 3000 times in a row.
Cross Edge was notorious for this. The entire game was a major grindfest to gather resources - some of which were extremely rare - for creating new items and weapons, and you always had the chance to fail and lose your materials in the process. It really was quite maddening.
Sometimes the game went easy on you, where if you created an item it moved to the shop and you could buy it instead of having to farm for it. Unfortunately, only about 20% of the game's actual inventory allowed this, and of course the best weapons and items all had to be created from resources every time you wanted one.
Probably not much of an issue, but why not just ask the player if he wants to fight against a random encounter or run before a switching to the combat screen occurs (and call him silly names when he runs)?
Sort of but not really. Its more accurate to say there isn't a hub to go to; it takes place in the Terminus Systems which is deep, deep space outside the Council's control.
Basically you're in the Wild West of the ME galaxy, and you don't find Manhattan in the Wild West.
This ties into the crux of why this argument is pretty pointless: 'trimming the fat' is fine if its done well and results in a fun game. I try and be mad that ME2 is missing team inventory management and planet roaming and can feel like an action spin-off at times but I get overwhelmed by the awesome. You don't have a single huge hub city like you might in other RPGs, but it doesn't matter because its done well and makes sense in the context of the game. You could also not have a single huge hub city and have it suck because it was just left out.
There isn't any inherent merit in the inclusion or removal of features, its about how those features are implemented.
Honestly, it feels like a lot of this trimming is in the form of coddling bad mistakes for people who don't want to pay attention. They're just fortunate enough to be the entire base of the gaming community now, and that this whole trim is the popular thing to do. I'm tired of seeing potentially awesome lite-RP games just fall short of being a really awesome RPG because people who can't or don't have the time to understand that RPGs take a great deal of consideration can't put two and two together.
This in itself I have no problem with. To all those, the best of luck. The bottom line is, create your own games that support these trimmed RP ideals. In example: do not take preexisting games like Mass Effect, and turn it on its ass. What you do is create a game "Mass Effect: Tactical Space Action!", label it a spin-off, and profit from two games because people are going to buy into the Mass Effect franchise regardless, and let the people who care and do not care enjoy themselves equally.
Certainly I would have loved to own a true ME:2 and any sort of tactical spin-off at the same time, and the same space. I just didn't want to lose everything I loved about ME to coddle people who don't care. Now instead of getting a real sequel to ME, I have to wait for ME:3 in hopes that they merge the two very extreme gameplays that they invented to get the game I want.
This annoyance isn't selective to ME, though. I loved Borderlands, and the only thing keeping it from being as awesome as Diablo are all the trimmings. The same goes for Bioshock as well, but that was rearing to be a whole different RP beasty unseen by the gaming industry. Instead we got a lite RP, recycled and seen many times before it, that, I will admit lovingly, had a enthralling story (up until the end).
In short: our ball is heavy, and barely held together in stitches. You're welcome to play with it. If you don't want to, please invest into your own ball. Don't forcibly take ours and start ripping everything that makes a particularly tattered albeit beautiful and loved ball out in an attempt at making your game more easy to play with.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is just about the most perfect and streamlined RPG experience, if it weren't for just a little too much backtracking at some parts. If they had taken that out (all it does is annoy and arbitrarily prolong the game's length) it would have been as close to perfection as you're gonna get. It doesn't get any better in terms of balance, gameplay mechanics, graphics and sound, and a battle system that makes you want to play just because it's so good and fun and not merely to level up. Still the greatest RPG ever made.
I don't, however, like needless 'grinding' fat that certain jrpgs added over the years. Where getting a level was some sort of chore that should require you to kill the same thing 3000 times in a row.
No.
Darn it no.
When a game makes the level up requirements high, the game is mainly telling you "hey, you've been in this area long enough. Move on!"
I don't, however, like needless 'grinding' fat that certain jrpgs added over the years. Where getting a level was some sort of chore that should require you to kill the same thing 3000 times in a row.
No.
Darn it no.
When a game makes the level up requirements high, the game is mainly telling you "hey, you've been in this area long enough. Move on!"
It's not saying "fight 10 million bats."
Ehhh... not always. I mean, some games have it rather built in. Obviously the design is probably not "force them to fight same enemy a billion times haha" but I mean in more than a few I've had the next fight be level 10 and me be level 8 and man, 9-10 will take a dozen times longer than 8-9. That, or it'll be like FF VIII, which I enjoyed, but which rewarded you gigantically for grinding. Which is still optional, yes, but encourages play that isn't fun.
It's especially important in something where there are save points, because the negative associated with losing any fight is pretty high, and you'd want to avoid doing it in the random field fights as much as possible so you don't really push ahead fast. Plus, there usually aren't clever ways to turn fights to your advantage when you're very underpowered.
FF8's enemies and bosses scale with your character's level~ Only normal battles reward experience; boss battles do not. The Diablos GF can learn a skill called NoEncounter which lets you avoid all random battles, and any enemy finished off with the Card ability will reward no experience, but will yield AP, which you can use to learn new abilities and unlock new junction slots. You can also get a lot of cards through the Triple Triad card game.
By using NoEncounter and refining high level magic from cards, then junctioning them onto your level 1 characters, you can be massively overpowered while still remaining at level 1 and breeze through the game.
It's a different, but fun/easily abused system once you've figured it out.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is just about the most perfect and streamlined RPG experience, if it weren't for just a little too much backtracking at some parts. If they had taken that out (all it does is annoy and arbitrarily prolong the game's length) it would have been as close to perfection as you're gonna get. It doesn't get any better in terms of balance, gameplay mechanics, graphics and sound, and a battle system that makes you want to play just because it's so good and fun and not merely to level up. Still the greatest RPG ever made.
Unless you're looking for variety or a challenge?
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great game for its presentation and atmosphere if nothing else, but it was rare for me to take damage at all and you're using the exact same jump and hammer attacks in hour 1 as you are in hour 15 as you are in hour 30. Well balanced and deep are not words I'd ever use to describe it.
I don't, however, like needless 'grinding' fat that certain jrpgs added over the years. Where getting a level was some sort of chore that should require you to kill the same thing 3000 times in a row.
No.
Darn it no.
When a game makes the level up requirements high, the game is mainly telling you "hey, you've been in this area long enough. Move on!"
Actually, FF VIII rewards you most for NOT GRINDING.
You don't consider sitting there and absorbing 99 "spells" from enemy creatures so you can add stats to your characters, grinding?
To be honest, I don't mind absurd difficulty, and I don't mind modest grinding as long as the game designer and I are on the level with each other. I knew from the outset that Demon's Souls was difficult and frustrating, and I loved the game for it. I didn't mind hopping in and out of an area to farm souls in order to afford the next upgrade because I knew that upgrade would help.
What I do mind is upping "difficulty" by making me perform mundane tasks an absurd number of times to advance.
I'm also starting to get irritated at the current trend of new abilities/weapons/armors/etc only being available by being "purchased" through some form of currency (gold, souls, etc.).
In The Legend of Zelda, I could buy bombs, but first I had to find the initial bombs and the ability to use them in a dungeon. If all I had to do was farm 2 screens of critters over and over until I had the money to buy bombs, what fun was that?
It's ok to make me purchase >SOME< upgrades, but dammit, the best stuff should just be found. I should have to climb a mountain to speak to the guru to train me to use the dragon kick. I should have to slog through a remote cavern that's not part of the main story and defeat the keeper of the Blazing Sword of Asskicking in order to wield the previously mentioned sword on my further adventures in tracking down the big baddie that pissed me off in the first place.
If all I had to do was buy it, then there was no point in me buying anything else in between. Just suffer with that board with a nail in it until I can afford the Blazing Sword of Asskicking, then be on my merry way, happily laying waste to all the bunnies and kittens in my path.
There very few spells in the game you can't obtain en mass from cards. Really though, drawing is for chumps, or obsessive people who absolutely have to get 99 of a spell when they run into the first enemy that carries it.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is just about the most perfect and streamlined RPG experience, if it weren't for just a little too much backtracking at some parts. If they had taken that out (all it does is annoy and arbitrarily prolong the game's length) it would have been as close to perfection as you're gonna get. It doesn't get any better in terms of balance, gameplay mechanics, graphics and sound, and a battle system that makes you want to play just because it's so good and fun and not merely to level up. Still the greatest RPG ever made.
The coolest parts of the game were those that didn't follow the standard RPG level design, like the arena or the train. Although technically the arena was just one hell of a grind, I didn't mind it the least. Sometimes I wonder if TTYD wasn't a Mario game and so choke-full with charm and humor, would I still like it?
So, do you all agree that playing through the storyline should be sufficient experience for your character to progress through the game and maintain a consistent difficulty level?
If that's the case, how much control do you give to the player to choose how their character progresses?
If your player decides that they want their character to progress in knitting instead of swinging a sword, the game could become unplayable very quickly. On the other hand, if your player concentrates progression into an unbalancing tactic, the game could become way too easy.
Alfred J. Kwakis it because you were insultedwhen I insulted your hair?Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
I like how Oblivion handled this - the enemies didn't have any set levels, but rather leveled with your character. So for example, if you increase your skill in alche ... waaaiit.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
So, do you all agree that playing through the storyline should be sufficient experience for your character to progress through the game and maintain a consistent difficulty level?
If that's the case, how much control do you give to the player to choose how their character progresses?
If your player decides that they want their character to progress in knitting instead of swinging a sword, the game could become unplayable very quickly. On the other hand, if your player concentrates progression into an unbalancing tactic, the game could become way too easy.
By giving them multiple ways to progress their character, but not enough experience through the campaign to unlock everything. When you get to the end of the campaign, you should have a 'complete' character, whether it's highly specialized or does everything slightly well.
I like how Dragon Age did it - every character had an assload of different ways to go. Mages had quite a few spell trees, warriors had 3 different weapon styles and rogues had a bunch of different abilities. Add specializations, and there was no way to unlock everything, so your character would specialize in one thing and dabble in another.
Play the game a second time, same class, and you can still play the game differently, like Warrior 1 being a Berzerker 2 handed warrior, Warrior 2 being a Sword and Board Champion tank. No grinding, not getting everything by the end of a campaign, but getting enough to make a complete character.
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I really do miss this. That's another reason I dislike the "click here to move to the next area" format many games are turning to now - removing the risk of going through a dangerous area and then the reward for getting there before you're supposed to.
Save multiple files, and save often. Problem solved.
So long as there is warning, I do. It's better than a plot wall keeping me out or poorly done level scaling.
Warn them. Borderlands has a convenient "make sure you check the level of the dudes out here" pop-up when you're going into territory you might not be ready for.
Unfortunately, reading that message is usually longer than it takes for those baddies to kill you; however, Borderlands does also give you an indicator for enemies too many levels above you when you actually shoot them. And I would also infinitely prefer having the choice of facing tough enemies over being crudely and obviously forced down a given path.
Of course, that brings up a major gripe for me with FPS RPGs: an enemy can take fifty shots to the head at the same level as you before going down. In turn-based strategy RPGs, yeah, it makes sense that skilling up in a gun increases your hit rate (better aim) and how much damage you do (you know what to hit), but in any sort of RPG with manual aiming, it's pure aggravation to have enemies which can take a rocket to the face without being insta-killed. Even way back with Deus Ex, upping the skill for rifles meant you got a slight increase to damage, but the main bonus was a huge increase to accuracy. Shoot someone in the head with a rifle, bam, dead. Shoot someone in the head with a rifle in FO3 and the guy turns around to unload on you. Completely kills the suspension of disbelief.
Something I would like to see in pretty much every genre and not just RPGs are enemies which are believably equipped. Pretty much 100% of the time, devs only let you loot a couple of items from a baddy. I hate this since I have to haul around a whole slew of things to survive, yet encounter kamikaze baddies who were somehow only equipped for the one single fight in which I encounter them. If I have to carry food, heal items, repair items, armor, and so on, enemy NPCs should have to do the same. Drives me crazy to hose an enemy with bullets or smash them with a hammer only to be able to recover 5 silver pieces from their body or a busted gun with 3 bullets.
I like what Mass Effect (the first one - haven't had a chance to crack open part 2 yet) did. Each squad member can (if you choose to throw points into armor) regenerate their respective shield. And if you find your shield going down a lot you can throw on an armor mod that regenerated your health. Nobody in any squad of 3 you care to create (that I know of) can heal the entire group's HP or shield, everybody takes a combat role in every fight, and class skills are useful beyond "man, this fight is hard - I sure wish I had a healer."
You started with 5 or so first aid kits that healed all your alive party members.
They were just limited reasonably low so that you didn't have stacks of:
99x potion
99x high potion
99x x-potion
or 256xsomething.
In ME1, one enemy type (the krogans) made the hardest difficulty mode virtually unplayable since they would automatically get a super-regen and massive damage resistance once their health reached a critical level. This was a terrible idea; it just made combat tedious and aggravating.
Regardless, RPGs in general could do with a lot less of having to face enemies which can regenerate massive chunks of health in order to justify making the the player do the same. Not all RPGs since there are a number in which healing is part of the strategy, but a lot of them.
Also most characters could unlock the First Aid skill. This skill is stackable. So if your squad of three has three characters with First Aid leveled up a few points then the amount that an aid kit restores is the sum total of each characters healing ability.
The Soldier class automatically regen HP as well in ME. And then you have the different healing mods for armor.
Keeping your health up in ME was stupid easy.
Just about any status effect would do the trick with Krogan. Burn em, freeze em, poison em. It's all good.
I'm enjoying some aspects of the trimmed ME2, like fewer skills to decide between divvying points to. I also like that I don't have to dedicate points to things like Charm, and Electronics only to be pissed off when I reach a point in the game that blatantly gives me the finger for not wasting ENOUGH points in those skills.
I really don't like that credits really only flow during missions, and usually in the form of big chunks of it at a time from doing the tedious hacking and bypassing mini-games. One 20 second minigame brought me 12000 credits, but a sidequest, in which I ran back and forth across a planet, cleared out several floors of bad guys, and a mini-boss to retrieve a missing heirloom for someone only gained me 500 credits.
If I need alloys, I can go farm planets, but if I need credits I pretty much have to continue the storyline. At some point I'm bound to run out of missions I need to buy upgrades for before I have the credits to buy the upgrades.
Makes me wish I still had random loot to sell off.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
It also makes renegade decisions where you can do something shady for more credits an actual decision rather than just something to do to get more renegade points like the first one.
I don't, however, like needless 'grinding' fat that certain jrpgs added over the years. Where getting a level was some sort of chore that should require you to kill the same thing 3000 times in a row.
I guess I'm saying there is a good fat and a bad fat. I do not think oversimplification should be considered good, even if it's for the sake of "plot" which, often brings up the point of, if the game is so easy why don't I just watch a movie w/ a better plot....
To an extent, that's a problem with both Bethesda games (see Oblivion) and older FPS games. Personally, I can't play Half Life 2 now because it takes so very many bullets to put things down.
Borderlands is very good about this and so is Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 1 had some issues on the higher difficulties with non-Geth enemies, but usually wasn't too bad otherwise.
Here's a good example of bad fat. You get a quest to collect 20 orc ears. Every single orc had better have an ear in its inventory when you kill it. If every third orc has an ear, that is just the worst way to extend what is already a really stupid quest. Stalker (the FPS) was really bad about this - "bring me a pseudodog tail" when the tails drop on like 1 in 20 pseudodogs.
Cross Edge was notorious for this. The entire game was a major grindfest to gather resources - some of which were extremely rare - for creating new items and weapons, and you always had the chance to fail and lose your materials in the process. It really was quite maddening.
Sometimes the game went easy on you, where if you created an item it moved to the shop and you could buy it instead of having to farm for it. Unfortunately, only about 20% of the game's actual inventory allowed this, and of course the best weapons and items all had to be created from resources every time you wanted one.
Or use biotics on them so they're dead before they ever get a chance to activate the ability.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Sort of but not really. Its more accurate to say there isn't a hub to go to; it takes place in the Terminus Systems which is deep, deep space outside the Council's control.
Basically you're in the Wild West of the ME galaxy, and you don't find Manhattan in the Wild West.
This ties into the crux of why this argument is pretty pointless: 'trimming the fat' is fine if its done well and results in a fun game. I try and be mad that ME2 is missing team inventory management and planet roaming and can feel like an action spin-off at times but I get overwhelmed by the awesome. You don't have a single huge hub city like you might in other RPGs, but it doesn't matter because its done well and makes sense in the context of the game. You could also not have a single huge hub city and have it suck because it was just left out.
There isn't any inherent merit in the inclusion or removal of features, its about how those features are implemented.
This in itself I have no problem with. To all those, the best of luck. The bottom line is, create your own games that support these trimmed RP ideals. In example: do not take preexisting games like Mass Effect, and turn it on its ass. What you do is create a game "Mass Effect: Tactical Space Action!", label it a spin-off, and profit from two games because people are going to buy into the Mass Effect franchise regardless, and let the people who care and do not care enjoy themselves equally.
Certainly I would have loved to own a true ME:2 and any sort of tactical spin-off at the same time, and the same space. I just didn't want to lose everything I loved about ME to coddle people who don't care. Now instead of getting a real sequel to ME, I have to wait for ME:3 in hopes that they merge the two very extreme gameplays that they invented to get the game I want.
This annoyance isn't selective to ME, though. I loved Borderlands, and the only thing keeping it from being as awesome as Diablo are all the trimmings. The same goes for Bioshock as well, but that was rearing to be a whole different RP beasty unseen by the gaming industry. Instead we got a lite RP, recycled and seen many times before it, that, I will admit lovingly, had a enthralling story (up until the end).
In short: our ball is heavy, and barely held together in stitches. You're welcome to play with it. If you don't want to, please invest into your own ball. Don't forcibly take ours and start ripping everything that makes a particularly tattered albeit beautiful and loved ball out in an attempt at making your game more easy to play with.
No.
Darn it no.
When a game makes the level up requirements high, the game is mainly telling you "hey, you've been in this area long enough. Move on!"
It's not saying "fight 10 million bats."
Ehhh... not always. I mean, some games have it rather built in. Obviously the design is probably not "force them to fight same enemy a billion times haha" but I mean in more than a few I've had the next fight be level 10 and me be level 8 and man, 9-10 will take a dozen times longer than 8-9. That, or it'll be like FF VIII, which I enjoyed, but which rewarded you gigantically for grinding. Which is still optional, yes, but encourages play that isn't fun.
It's especially important in something where there are save points, because the negative associated with losing any fight is pretty high, and you'd want to avoid doing it in the random field fights as much as possible so you don't really push ahead fast. Plus, there usually aren't clever ways to turn fights to your advantage when you're very underpowered.
Something something Guardian Force.... hm. Well, whatever, I was 11. Maybe I was thinking of a different one.
Edit: oh, no fucking wonder. I was 11 and had no internet. I beat things by getting to high levels with everyone/all the GFs.
By using NoEncounter and refining high level magic from cards, then junctioning them onto your level 1 characters, you can be massively overpowered while still remaining at level 1 and breeze through the game.
It's a different, but fun/easily abused system once you've figured it out.
Unless you're looking for variety or a challenge?
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great game for its presentation and atmosphere if nothing else, but it was rare for me to take damage at all and you're using the exact same jump and hammer attacks in hour 1 as you are in hour 15 as you are in hour 30. Well balanced and deep are not words I'd ever use to describe it.
Grinding is fine if the combat is fun.
You don't consider sitting there and absorbing 99 "spells" from enemy creatures so you can add stats to your characters, grinding?
To be honest, I don't mind absurd difficulty, and I don't mind modest grinding as long as the game designer and I are on the level with each other. I knew from the outset that Demon's Souls was difficult and frustrating, and I loved the game for it. I didn't mind hopping in and out of an area to farm souls in order to afford the next upgrade because I knew that upgrade would help.
What I do mind is upping "difficulty" by making me perform mundane tasks an absurd number of times to advance.
I'm also starting to get irritated at the current trend of new abilities/weapons/armors/etc only being available by being "purchased" through some form of currency (gold, souls, etc.).
In The Legend of Zelda, I could buy bombs, but first I had to find the initial bombs and the ability to use them in a dungeon. If all I had to do was farm 2 screens of critters over and over until I had the money to buy bombs, what fun was that?
It's ok to make me purchase >SOME< upgrades, but dammit, the best stuff should just be found. I should have to climb a mountain to speak to the guru to train me to use the dragon kick. I should have to slog through a remote cavern that's not part of the main story and defeat the keeper of the Blazing Sword of Asskicking in order to wield the previously mentioned sword on my further adventures in tracking down the big baddie that pissed me off in the first place.
If all I had to do was buy it, then there was no point in me buying anything else in between. Just suffer with that board with a nail in it until I can afford the Blazing Sword of Asskicking, then be on my merry way, happily laying waste to all the bunnies and kittens in my path.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
The coolest parts of the game were those that didn't follow the standard RPG level design, like the arena or the train. Although technically the arena was just one hell of a grind, I didn't mind it the least. Sometimes I wonder if TTYD wasn't a Mario game and so choke-full with charm and humor, would I still like it?
If that's the case, how much control do you give to the player to choose how their character progresses?
If your player decides that they want their character to progress in knitting instead of swinging a sword, the game could become unplayable very quickly. On the other hand, if your player concentrates progression into an unbalancing tactic, the game could become way too easy.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
By giving them multiple ways to progress their character, but not enough experience through the campaign to unlock everything. When you get to the end of the campaign, you should have a 'complete' character, whether it's highly specialized or does everything slightly well.
I like how Dragon Age did it - every character had an assload of different ways to go. Mages had quite a few spell trees, warriors had 3 different weapon styles and rogues had a bunch of different abilities. Add specializations, and there was no way to unlock everything, so your character would specialize in one thing and dabble in another.
Play the game a second time, same class, and you can still play the game differently, like Warrior 1 being a Berzerker 2 handed warrior, Warrior 2 being a Sword and Board Champion tank. No grinding, not getting everything by the end of a campaign, but getting enough to make a complete character.