[General Discussion] Improving elements of an RPG

Actually this is my first post here, so hi! So I figure I'd start off with a question related to my favorite game genre, RPGs!

I'm always interested to know what exactly RPG gamers look for when they play, as there are so many different styles out there! Truthfully, I love it when I can spend hours on hours just exploring, finding secrets, and viewing a beautiful and extremely scenic world map. Character development is also a biggy for me, I love being able to customize (usually on the job class side of things). Two big games for me include Ragnarok Online and Final Fantasy XII.

So, what is it you want to see come out of future RPGs? What do you love about them (or even hate about them?). Please, elaborate on your answer!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

A main character that actually has two parents. A mother and a father. Not just ONE.

And a plot that isn't so cliche about the whole world ending.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Chaotic

A main character that actually has two parents. A mother and a father. Not just ONE.

Or that neither of them were killed by some tyrannical government or bad ass military invasion, leaving the child an orphen to fend for himself, and going on a personal vendetta.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Yeah! I feel the same way about cliches and stuff, seeing the same thing over and over in a game really gets annoying after a while. Originality is a plus!

Also, that's a first... about the mother and father thing. Interesting, though!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

A good system for battles, and for building my characters. Interesting sidequests with rewards that actually matter in battle, such as great equipment. I can forgive a terrible storyline, if the system is good. For example, Tales of Symphonia had a terrible story. I mean, really dire... whoever wrote it should be shot. Did I care? Not a bit.

I've given up on expecting good stories from most RPGs. There are only a handful out there that have great stories, and they seem to have the less interesting systems, too.

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A good battle system is necessary. If I'm not having fun doing the thing that takes up the most time in the game, then I'm not having fun, regardless of how well everything else is done. I'd also like a good challenge, but I'm sure really challenging RPGs would make more people complain than it would please.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

A good battle system that works is always good, makes the game easier to play. If the battle system is bad, then the game isn't worth playing at all.

Storyline has to be good as well, doesn't have to be fantastic, not that stories for RPG's are ever fantastic, but they have to be good enough to hold my interest.

Side quests that reward the user well, and with useful equipment are always a bonus.

FELIPE NO

Very true. If the battle system is dull, nobody would play it. But I still think the story has to be good. If the story sucks, no matter how good anything else is, you'll have little motivation to continue to beat the usually long game. Characters have to be at least somewhat interesting because you'll be playing in his/her/their shoes.

Minigames are usually a waste of time in an RPG game. I suppose maybe 1 or 2 minigames are fine, but more than that and it just gets ridiculous. Especially since there's no point in playing the minigame.

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Building Characters - I didn't really expect this from RPGs until I played Final Fantasy Tactics, and even moreso when I played Disgaea. I love having generic characters that I can build up to be invaluable powerhouses.

The plot has to be at least entertaining. Deep and involving, not a requirement. I found Tales of Symphonia's plot to be typical anime-ish, but it didn't keep me from chuckling at it here and there. Political/religious corruption, all for the better, but the plot can't put me to sleep.

Also I think spell effects and such are a nice bonus. However, I like when they're flashy and fast. A sudden hard-hitting impact followed by a huge explosion really makes combat seem intense. Yggdra Union handles this exceptionally well.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I'd wish some more RPG's would focus on a story, rather than some other things. I don't mind cliche's, as long as they use the good ones (I really like the apocalypse setting, when it's done right that is >.>). I would really like to see a more innovative storylines in RPG's. Although, putting all of your effort into the storyline and forgeting the rest is possibly the worst choice while developing. But, I have played some RPG's with a poor battle system, and an amazing story, and they end up as one of my favorites of all time.

Along with story, comes characters. I would like to see more variety in the characters. I'd also like to see some more realistic characters also (FFXII was extremly bad in this case). I'm sick of writers (of any medium) staying away from any form of a sophisticated character. I'm sick of running around with a crew of circus employees, seriously.

It seems not very many people enjoy minigames as much as I do. Lots of times I enjoy the minigames more than the actual game itself (battles). I think the incoporation of minigames makes the RPG's more fun.

I say, leave extreme customization to the MMORPG's. I tend to like a more guided progression in single player RPG's (not as simple as Xenosgaga III, and not as free as FFXII).

Amount of time spent in an RPG matters if it's focused on maxing, and battling. While if it's more story oriented then the max time isn't as important.

Anyways, just a small list of things I look forward to in future RPG's.

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SGC. No, not Stargate Command. Soundtrack, Gameplay, Characters.

Soundtrack is self-explanatory. Hell, this is GFF, it should be an item on everyone's list.

Gameplay: Gameplay in RPGs is an interesting quality to consider. Controls per se aren't really an issue the way they are in action/adventure games, but there are still certain rules that RPGs need to adhere to.

-Menus in a menu-driven RPG must be fast. Really really fast. Effectively instantaneous. You can do cute little sliding/fading transitions if you want, but I need to be from one menu to the next in less time than it takes me to process the thought "I am transitioning menus right now." If it takes long enough that I have a chance to think about the transition itself, it's too slow. Game consoles are fast and powerful now. Take advantage of that. Take advantage of that, Xenosaga.

-In games with statically-rendered environments (Legend of Dragoon, Shadow Hearts, FF7-9), please make screen entrances/exits clear and easy to find. Secrets are fine, keep hiding those. However, the entrance to the next critical area of the game should not consist of 8 slightly-off-color pixels in the most distant part of the map and should not be accompanied by shitty collision detection that makes it nearly impossible to use that entrance once you do locate it. I don't care what the designers' "artistic vision" may be. I don't care how pretty a town, castle, or cavern may be. If I can't actually play the game for the complexity of the design, something is wrong. Legend of Dragoon had a good way of handling this: entrance/exit markers that could be toggled on and off, as well as a marker indicating where your character was on the map. That allowed the artists to design the cities the way they wanted and still enabled the player to find his way around. GOOD JOB. We need more of that.

-On a related note, and this is less of a problem in American-developed games, give me a clear idea of where I have to go. It's okay to have "detective" segments of a game. It's okay to have treasure hunts, manhunts, or other deliberately-ambiguous sections of the game. What's not okay, though, is for the first hour of the game to contain "go talk to the village elder" snore-fests that leave the player with only that one nebulous objective in mind and NO FUCKING CLUE how to find his way to the elder's place to begin with. Less important in later segments of the game when you know where everything is. In the very beginning, though, acquaint the player with his surroundings. Usually talking to townspeople will help. Usually. Not always, though, and that's the problem. Particular offenders are Shining Force Neo and some segments of Xenogears (I seem to remember Aveh being a bugger to navigate).

-Don't let me sell my equipped items. I know, I know, it boils down to my own stupidity, but...goddamn. Castlevania: PoR did this. Konami, it's 2007. You should know better. Then again, I think the 'Vania team are a bunch of sadists anyway.



As for characters, simply put, they make or break the story, if not the entire game itself. I can deal with cliched plots if the characters feel genuine enough. Take Soul Reaver, for example. Classic tale of revenge and betrayal. Older than dirt. BUT--Kain and Raziel made it interesting through their dialogue, actions, and reactions. Lunar and Lunar 2. About the most stock-derived, cliched plot you can imagine. The characters, though, turned it from a boring, typical JRPG into one of the most unforgettable games of the PS1/32-bit era. On the flipside, and I know this is a hugely unpopular opinion, but I couldn't stomach Chrono Trigger because I couldn't stand the characters and how overstated they were (namely Frog and Mrs. Chuck Rock AKA Jane AKA Ayla). List goes on. Grandia 2, Skies of Arcadia, Xenogears, and the queen mother of unique and memorable characters, Disgaea. Characters with personality give the game personality. Remember that, developers, and use it to your advantage.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Such a wide array of comments, and they're all quite good I must say. That's the problem with RPGs these days, there are so many different styles that people just don't know where to begin! I guess it all depends on the target market, either have games for "these" types of RPG fans or "those" types. It must be hard to implement everything!

Quote:

Characters with personality give the game personality. Remember that, developers, and use it to your advantage.

Oh, I think they hear you...

Also, about minigames, I used to love them myself! Now I don't find the time with them as I'd much rather explore and focus on an amazing plot more than anything. No time for silly minigames unless they fit in with the plot or something else in one form or another!

Nice to see all of these views from everyone!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Characters are what make the game. Simple as that.

Building my characters for battle needs to be interesting. Learning skills simply by levelling up got old 10 years ago. Give me at least some choices or more interesting ways of learning skills, but not so many that I get bogged down on it. I quite liked FFIX's way of learning skills, and FFX's skill grid. XS and XS3 were good on character customization as well (though not as much in the latter case). Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation (and 2) are probably my favorites in this area, which explains why they rank in my top RPGs.

What I do NOT want is generic characters, though. If every character is the same, I don't grow attached to them, and just don't care how they're built. I'm looking at you, FFXII.

Characters also need to be interesting outside battle, as well. Characters drive the story (or at least they should) and therefore need to have distinctive personalities and actions. A game could have the best story ever, but if the characters suck or are bland, I'm not going to care. Characters give the story flavor.

So yeah, characters pretty much make or break the game for me. That's why I like the game Koudelka as much as I do despite horrid gameplay and not spectacular plot. The character interaction more than makes up for it. It does have the problem with all the characters being carbon copies of one another battle-wise, though...

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by CelticWhisper

-On a related note, and this is less of a problem in American-developed games, give me a clear idea of where I have to go. It's okay to have "detective" segments of a game. It's okay to have treasure hunts, manhunts, or other deliberately-ambiguous sections of the game. What's not okay, though, is for the first hour of the game to contain "go talk to the village elder" snore-fests that leave the player with only that one nebulous objective in mind and NO FUCKING CLUE how to find his way to the elder's place to begin with. Less important in later segments of the game when you know where everything is. In the very beginning, though, acquaint the player with his surroundings. Usually talking to townspeople will help. Usually. Not always, though, and that's the problem. Particular offenders are Shining Force Neo and some segments of Xenogears (I seem to remember Aveh being a bugger to navigate).

Yes, that's a horrible problem. Those invisible checkpoints and triggers that exist need to be done away with. Being sent to a place with no idea of what to do is bad enough, but when nothing happens until you speak with Villager B, and there was nothing at all to hint that you needed to talk to that villager, that's bad. It's even worse when talking to that villager sets a trigger, and you then have to talk to another random villager that was never pointed out or mentioned to set the next trigger. I started Baten Kaitos Origins recently, and only 10 hours in, I've hit dozens of these damn situations, and I'm about ready to quit the game, even though the battles are fast, challenging, and fun.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Well, since the RPG genre is kinda broad it's a bit hard to answer. I would want different things for a so called jRPG or a cRPG.

For computer roleplaying games, an interesting setting is really important.

Good writing, it doesn't have to be all shakespearian or anything. But it has to make me feel that there is a person actually speaking. Fallout is a great example of this.

Having choices and & consequences are important for me. It has to feel like you're changing the world in some ways, manipulating, or having it manipulating you. This is where the Elder Scrolls series fails for me ultimately. The world feels to static. This would be a problem in jRPGs as well, but for the most part they're much more storydriven so it doesn't become as big a problem.

FELIPE NO

Building characters - let me make my game different than everyone else's.

Big world - give me the option to spend hours exploring if I want to.

I don't see "exceptional story" as essential because really, if it has a great story but the gameplay sucks ass, why would I play it? I can read books and watch movies/TV/anime with better stories for sure, and I don't have to play a game that I hate in the process.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

As far as the story goes, my attention span is appalling anyway so it's not something I am too fussed about, although the execution can turn me off like FFX, where I found the scenes to be atrocious. I rarely hold originality against a game.

Battle system - I think as many touched upon, one that doesn't have me running through locations praying that I don't have an enemy encounter.

Which leads me to
Exploration - I like a sense of being rewarded for looking high and low in places, I felt this was missing in FFX but was what I loved about FFIX.

Not forgetting:
Characters - I have to say in FFX (yes I have been playing lately) it's hard to believe Tidus and Wakka, even Lulu dress the way they do. I want some sort of realistic edge to the characters.

Jam it back in, in the dark.