LogFAQs > #897929368

SmartMuffin posted...

hey foolmo can I commission you to create a WRPG that actually has a reasonable difficulty curve?

Sure I just need literally 100 million dollars

The problem is WRPGs are inherently unbalanceable due to being targeted at a crazy broad audience. You have people who just want the story, people who just care about RPG and combat, and you have people who like combat but then the instant it gets boring wants to ditch all that crap and just experience the story (me), and everyone in between.

You can't have discrete difficulty modes to support all playstyles, so it has to be in-game dynamic. RPGs usually do that with leveling, letting you stay underleveled for a challenge or overleveled for an easier time. But that's contradictory because people who want a challenge end up fighting less, while people who don't want to worry about fighting have to grind a lot.

You could have a bunch of content that is either combat-focused, or story-focused, but then you're splitting content in a weird way. There could be a really awesome boss with a cool story that I want to fight, but if I didn't play in a certain combat-centric way, I wouldn't be able to experience it (WoW was the worst at this which is why they added a thing to let you to experience raids much easier)

I think the best way is to give massive and unique combat rewards for non-combat gameplay. Questing and talking to people and exploring the world and such. This allows non-combat players to plow through combat when it's necessary without wasting their time, and also provides a way for combat players to be more interested in certain story content that they wouldn't care about otherwise.

Xenoblade does that pretty well while still maintaining the core RPG leveling system. It also sneakily introduces a lot of non-RPG difficulty, which provides a non-grinding way to get better at the game. Games like Mass effect 2 do this by using FPS mechanical skill to determine difficulty, but Xenoblade integrates its mechanics way better into traditional RPG gameplay. This is still difficulty to balance though, and Xenoblade ends up having some stat-gate bosses. But it's still probably the best example, especially towards the end where bosses are far more skill-based instead of stat-based (like FFX but more extreme).

Those are JRPG examples, but the concept is similar. Dark Souls is a good WRPG example too. Tons of ways to get an advantage by doing story stuff, but you can also just grind a bunch, AND you can also get gud at the mechanics. It's self-balancing on multiple playstyle axes, not just the 1 combat-focused axis. For example, you can do this one quest to get a +5 lightning spear, OR you can grind 30000 souls to upgrade a spear to +5 lightning. Same result with a totally different gameplay path.
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_foolmo_
2 + 2 = 4