Current Events > RPG games but the progression is not primarily character based?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Example: Mad Max. The RPG elements are mainly around what sort of car you want to build.

I feel like this is a fairly obscure take on the rpg genre, are there more?

It's not a RPG, but progression in Dead Space is based on weapon and suit upgrades.

Crimson Shroud characters never gain anything. Only way to get stronger is better equipment.

Final Fantasy VIII is pretty much almost completely relegated to the summons. The actual characters you use barely makes a difference.

Slay the Spire

I mean if you're counting Mad Max then I'd throw Monster Hunter in. Pretty much all your power ups are based on equipment or items. Your actual Hunter is typically as strong at the start of the game as they are 2,000 hours in.

Depending on what you mean by "character", pokemon maybe counts since it's not your character you building but the pokemon he/she collects

Some that came to mind, but may be a bit iffy depending on definition of character based.

Valkyrie Chronicles 1 - (And maybe the others, but never played them) You level up the classes themselves rather then individual characters

Monster Hunter - You upgrade your weapons and armors, the character themselves don't get any stronger

Chrono Cross - Technically you gain stat points between the stars, but the main progression is beating bosses to earn stars which make you stronger rather then straight grinding.

Never actually played it, but this topic made me think of Car Battler Joe on the GBA. It has RPG mechanics and you customize your car. I always did want to give that game a shot.

A hard mode version of this is an RPG with progression, but the progression is not tied to your stats or abilities at all, but rather some other element of the game.

I think about this sometimes because there really is no good solution to an open world RPG's difficulty problems, but something like this has never been done. In an open world RPG, your options are either balance difficulty around progressing the main story, which means you're super OP if you do all the side quests, like in Witcher 3, or balance difficulty around the assumption that you'll do a bunch of side quests, which means someone who just does main missions will be underleveled, like someone trying to just do the story in Dragon Age Inquisition. The other option, of course, is just tie difficulty to character level, like Skyrim, but then that leaves you feeling weaker as you level, like it's a punishment.

So none of the normal ways to go about an open world RPG feel good to me.

But nobody has ever tried, to my knowledge, progression based around non-stat or ability things. So you need progression in an RPG, that's what keep you going, gaining more money, gaining more XP, doing all that fun stuff. But balancing difficulty in a open world is hard.

So my idea is a big open world with challenges that are set from the start by the game makers, and you can explore at your own leisure and you can take on the toughest stuff right away if you want. And all the gold and XP and stuff is used to "upgrade" different kinds of paths. What those paths are would take some imagination on game makers' part. It could be about growing a settlement, a ship, cosmetic stuff. "Story points" that you use to unlock pieces of story, or scenes with your party members, new interactions, stuff like that. Example: Complete a dungeon and beat it's boss, receive 20 points as a reward. It takes 50 points to unlock this new interaction with a party member that can lead to more stuff. So now you have an incentive to get back out there and keep exploring, but you can go anywhere you want and it won't feel cheap because the entire game is based around set character stats and abilities from the start, like a Mario game or something.

Anyway, this is all a long winded way to say that I think an open world RPG without any kind of difficulty scaling or character power growth would be neat.

This isn't an RPG but it's a neat reversal of the idea:

In MGS Peace Walker, you actually grind out parts to make the final boss harder.

Witcher Throne BReaker

Metal Gear AC!D 1+2

I think an open world RPG without any kind of difficulty scaling or character power growth would be neat.

so i think that ends up being a good description for the gameplay of yume nikki. which i liked. i'm not saying it can't be done.

but i think that idea takes a lot of the choices an open-world game would typically offer off of the table. a power curve like in elden ring is by no means perfect, but it gives players the ability to try and solve it and it rewards exploration with solutions to that curve. in a game with combat, it encourages engagement with whatever systems it might have.

i think an open-world game is partially defined by the player having the ability to go to places whenever they want. i'm not sure it's whenever they want if i don't section areas off and say 'don't go here yet'.

('section off' sounds like i mean i outright disallow them to go there and that's not what i mean. i just mean that i think it should feed back to the player to turn back/gtfo so they can ignore that directive.)

Shandalar.