Poll of the Day > Least favorite things to see in RPGs?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://i.imgur.com/WGdtgZK.jpg

Content leveling along with the player

time limits imposing missables on you

even when i know they're not a big deal they feel bad. and for stuff like early modern atelier games where you are straight up not expected to get everything on a first run? augh

thankfully the series just doesn't do real time limits anymore. atelier escha&lydie has exactly one time limit and i happened to be able to just turn it in immediately for full marks

Terrible writing.

There's something I don't like but I can't remember what it was... it's in a lot of post-2008 or so RPGs

Random and unavoidable enemy encounters. SMRPG spoiled me.

KJ_StErOiDs posted...

Random and unavoidable enemy encounters. SMRPG spoiled me.

I don't really mind random encounters that much (provided the rate is reasonable, or bonus points if there's a Bravely Default-type system that lets you configure the rate according to what you want), but every time I try to say "oh they aren't that bad" I can't come up with a single reason to defend them over a system where you just encounter enemies wandering in the field. Even the technical angle of it being harder to draw/animate enemies in the field doesn't really hold water anymore with how game development has progressed, and that was really the only genuine advantage random encounters have over direct contact.

adjl posted...

I can't come up with a single reason to defend them over a system where you just encounter enemies wandering in the field.

it's satisfying to take an optimal route. doing a weird ass dance to try to bamboozle the AI based on their patterns feels bad

It arguably feels less realistic to be able to ignore enemies by dodging the encounters (though invoking realism when we're talking about enemies magically appearing out of thin air every 50-100 steps might not be the most reasonable idea, especially when "run away and never see those enemies again" is usually an option within the encounter), but from a gameplay perspective there's a certain satisfaction to be had from saving yourself some time/resources by playing skillfully enough to avoid the encounters. It does mean you don't get to blindly run in a straight line as the fastest option, certainly, and sometimes avoiding encounters does just feel silly and not like you've actually achieved some great feat of stealth, but I don't mind if "the optimal route" includes taking some time to dodge encounters that would be slower to complete than go around.

The least favorite thing I like to see in an RPG is classical first person dungeons.

Just because they are severely disorienting. You need to pull out a notepad and draw the map.

Etrian Odyssey made this its entire identity.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/597d4af3.png

Zareth posted...

Content leveling along with the player

No game ever made leveling more pointless than Final Fantasy 8.

Zareth posted...

Content leveling along with the player

This is a good one.

It's necessary for some games but it is often a crutch.

Whargarble posted...

No game ever made leveling more pointless than Final Fantasy 8.

TES:IV Oblivion made it sub optimal to level up.

-Not having a happy ending
-Death of characters with good personalities
-Bad influences to society

Another one I hate for RPGs, but I guess it is true of all games, is when the writer is obviously trying to show off.

Like putting oscar bait shit in like terminal illnesses for no reason.

It's a game about a big sister/big brother/father going to a dangerous area to find a rare flower to be used as a cure for a loved one's super duper rare disease.

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

It's a game about a big sister/big brother/father going to a dangerous area to find a rare flower to be used as a cure for a loved one's super duper rare disease.

Exactly. But the flower isn't actually a cure it's just her favorite flower and she dies anyway.

Getting attacked by monsters, winning the battle, taking literally one step, and getting attacked again.

Whargarble posted...

No game ever made leveling more pointless than Final Fantasy 8.

At least when you got stronger you could draw stronger magic for better stats

VioletZer0 posted...

TES:IV Oblivion made it sub optimal to level up.

Being a level 1 master swordsman insomniac.

I voted for harem because that's mostly shit. I think Persona does it alright because there's friendship routes but I still don't love it.

Church is bad rates surprisingly high for me too despite being irreligious. Its a very lame trope and people that think the church (any church) never did anything good for humanity are extremely ignorant.

And also, leveling in FF8 was unnecessary and unsatisfying but it served a purpose for drops and drawing. Its pretty obvious why that system was immediately scrapped and has never appeared again.

The ancient tech thing is a big one.

Random encounters also suck. If everybody did like Cthulhu saves the world, where the random encounters had a limit per zone it would be great. Setup so if you encountered too many, you eventually ran out of them and it stopped bothering you while you were trying to explore. You could still trigger them manually if you wanted to. This had the wonderful benefit of knowing exactly when you had enough experience to leave that zone because every zone had a different max number of random encounters.

Small rocks you can't walk over.

Corny Romance

Running and loosing HP. Lunar Dragon Song

Oh, forgot weapon durability. Terrible mechanic.

you don't like Fire Emblem or Riviera: The Promised Land?

Random encounters. At least make the enemies visible, we have the technology

Damn_Underscore posted...

Random encounters. At least make the enemies visible, we have the technology

We

Depends on the game. SoS, Tales of and Chrono series does good with the enemies on the screen.

I'm not even religious but the whole "The Church is actually evil" trope makes my eyes roll sooooo hard every time.

Ninja4820 posted...

I'm not even religious but the whole "The Church is actually evil" trope makes my eyes roll sooooo hard every time.

Only because it is usually true.

NemesisOgreKing posted...

At least when you got stronger you could draw stronger magic for better stats

You wouldn't really need the stats if you were running away from most fights to avoid leveling. Especially if you were exploiting tricks like the Aura limit break.

Zareth posted...

Content leveling along with the player

I feel like this can work, but it has to be done very carefully and there need to be a few challenges that have fixed power levels so you have something to anchor your sense of progression. I think BotW and TotK actually did a pretty decent job of it: There's enough static stuff that you will get your ass kicked if you go there too soon and can enjoy steamrolling it if you go there once you've beefed up a bit, but the dynamic scaling offers a lot of freedom for exploring wherever you want instead of having to follow a more rigid zone order imposed by fixed levels.

That's also helped, though, in that your character growth is directly tied to exploration: You get more health/stamina based on how many shrines you've found and completed, the weapons and armour that you've found, and the items you pick up along the way. "Level grinding" isn't really a thing, so you aren't going to find yourself grinding to become more powerful only to not get any benefit from it because the enemies levelled up with you. It more means that whatever direction you take to explore, your first area will be tuned for a character that hasn't cleared any others, while your tenth area will be tuned for a character that's visited nine others, meaning the overall difficulty experience doesn't hinge on following a specific route or doing the "appropriate" amount of fighting.

Something like Oblivion, though, where clear statistical character growth that doesn't amount to anything because enemies match it (never mind the profoundly unintuitive levelling system that means you lag behind enemy scaling unless you metagame in some really silly ways)? That tends to just kill the sense of growth overall, which is lame and often not properly offset by the freedom of exploration that you get. Then something like FF8 that's a relatively linear game and not an open-world one that benefits from offering full freedom of exploration is just a bad fit for the concept.

adjl posted...

I feel like this can work, but it has to be done very carefully and there need to be a few challenges that have fixed power levels so you have something to anchor your sense of progression. I think BotW and TotK actually did a pretty decent job of it: There's enough static stuff that you will get your ass kicked if you go there too soon and can enjoy steamrolling it if you go there once you've beefed up a bit, but the dynamic scaling offers a lot of freedom for exploring wherever you want instead of having to follow a more rigid zone order imposed by fixed levels.

I've always preferred the Dragon Age method (albeit done by many other games as well). Each area has a specific level range. If you enter that area below that range, enemies are far stronger than you and you'll get your poo pushed in. If you somehow manage to grind past the upper limit of the range, you'll be able to kick everything's teeth in. But when you enter the area and you're in the same range, the area is essentially level-adjusting to you.

(ie, if you enter an area that is set as "10-20", enemies there will be 10 when you're 5, 11 when you're 11, 18 when you're 18, and 20 when you're 35)

It gives you the advantages of fixed-level enemies, while giving you a bit of flexibility via level-adaptation as well. It's the best of both worlds. The key is finding what the range of each area should be, so you can keep the dynamism while also allowing players to region-break (sneaking into areas they shouldn't be in) or grinding their way to godhood (because someone who is willing to overgrind by multiple levels clearly wants the payoff of being able to brutalize enemies). If the range is too high it becomes punishing, if the range is too low it can become too easy for most players.



adjl posted...

That's also helped, though, in that your character growth is directly tied to exploration: You get more health/stamina based on how many shrines you've found and completed, the weapons and armour that you've found, and the items you pick up along the way.

This is similar to the progression you tend to get in systems with "perks". Basically, the enemy level is tied to your level, but they are matching your baseline stats and expectations. But if you pick a perk of some kind every time you level up that gives you additional advantages (like a +2% damage buff, damage resistances, or even stealth/theft/dialogue buffs), it means you are slowly growing beyond the ability of enemies to match you. They get stronger as you get stronger, but you're getting stronger slightly faster (or even exponentially to some degree), so you'll always outpace them and have a sense of improvement.

The problem there is that you have to be sure to balance perks, so you don't get one perk that is basically "must have" with others that are absolute garbage. You also have to make sure you don't set enemy stat growth in a way that makes it worse for players who pick the "wrong" perks. ie, if I play a game and invest in all combat perks I should definitely feel like I'm beating the crap out of enemies more effectively, but if I instead buy nothing but charisma-based dialogue perks, carry weight buffs, exploration buffs, and stealth buffs, I shouldn't feel like combat is getting harder for me because I failed to invest in combat.

Incidentally, charisma-based dialogue perks, carry weight buffs, exploration buffs, and stealth buffs are basically the perks I take 100% of the time in any game that offers me the option. Dragon Age, Fallout, Divinity - I'm almost always the manipulative talker rather than the combat monster. And if a game rewards me for being sneaky as opposed to only giving XP in combat, I will almost always sneak past enemies rather than fight them. Sadly, most games prioritize combat both in terms of stats and rewards.

I won in the battle but they beat me in the cutscene afterwards

Cupcake2006 posted...

I won in the battle but they beat me in the cutscene afterwards

Oh that's a big one.

I don't mind an organic forced loss like Chrono Trigger does against your first fight against Lavos. Which you can actually win and end the game right there

Cupcake2006 posted...

I won in the battle but they beat me in the cutscene afterwards

That one depends why there's the inconsistency. If it's a battle you have to win to progress and can reasonably beat at the predicted power level for that part of the game, yeah, that's dumb. If the inconsistency is because I went out of my way to grind far beyond the intended power level and roflstomped what was supposed to be a lost fight, that's on me and I can't really expect the game to have a new cutscene just to pat me on the back for metagaming.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I've always preferred the Dragon Age method (albeit done by many other games as well). Each area has a specific level range. If you enter that area below that range, enemies are far stronger than you and you'll get your poo pushed in. If you somehow manage to grind past the upper limit of the range, you'll be able to kick everything's teeth in. But when you enter the area and you're in the same range, the area is essentially level-adjusting to you.

That works for providing a sense of power progression over the course of the game, since you get to break things up into "I can't go there yet," "I'm supposed to be here," and "I'm so much stronger than this," but it's arguably not ideal within level-appropriate zones because you don't have power progression within that range. With static levels, you get a progression from "this new place is hard" to "I've successfully mastered this place," which is satisfying. That approach does, however, mean you more or less always have an appropriate challenge, which is good in its own right.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

This is similar to the progression you tend to get in systems with "perks". Basically, the enemy level is tied to your level, but they are matching your baseline stats and expectations. But if you pick a perk of some kind every time you level up that gives you additional advantages (like a +2% damage buff, damage resistances, or even stealth/theft/dialogue buffs), it means you are slowly growing beyond the ability of enemies to match you. They get stronger as you get stronger, but you're getting stronger slightly faster (or even exponentially to some degree), so you'll always outpace them and have a sense of improvement.

That can be a little dangerous because you risk undermining the difficulty curve if you get stronger faster than the enemies do, but it does make things interesting if you get a lot of more qualitative perks instead of straight "number go up."

Besides terrible writing, as one of the main draws of RPGs in general for me are well written story and characters...

The entire combat system being designed around limited use disposable items.

I prefer building up my character, rather than filling my inventory with disposable junk meant to be thrown away.

SinisterSlay posted...

Only because it is usually true.

Please go ahead and list for us all the various religious institutions which you find to be evil.

Ninja4820 posted...

Please go ahead and list for us all the various religious institutions which you find to be evil.

Do you want history?
Like how North Korea uses religion to convince it's people suffering is normal?
Every religion that encouraging dying to expand the empire?

Where do you want to go with this? Crusades marching children to their death?
Or more recent... Oh actually 2 of those are but I think Israel has something to say about this topic if you want to ask them.

I'm sure the theory of religion is supposed to be good. But it pretty much is always a vehicle for evil and oppression.

I can't think of anything for scientology.

SinisterSlay posted...

Do you want history?
Like how North Korea uses religion to convince it's people suffering is normal?
Every religion that encouraging dying to expand the empire?

Where do you want to go with this? Crusades marching children to their death?
Or more recent... Oh actually 2 of those are but I think Israel has something to say about this topic if you want to ask them.

I'm sure the theory of religion is supposed to be good. But it pretty much is always a vehicle for evil and oppression.

I can't think of anything for scientology.

North Korea is officially an atheist state. Your other main example is from literally hundreds of years ago. And then you made a vague allusion to Israel, which really has much more to do with a specific people wanting to preserve themselves than with any particular tenet or faith-based element. So yeah please give us all this great history lesson to prove that religion is "pretty much always" a vehicle for evil and oppression. Because I'm looking at hundreds of years, with hundreds of religions, and a lot of that time they're doing pretty chill and pretty peaceful things. So I'm not really seeing the "pretty much always" here.

Ninja4820 posted...

North Korea is officially an atheist state. Your other main example is from literally hundreds of years ago. And then you made a vague allusion to Israel, which really has much more to do with a specific people wanting to preserve themselves than with any particular tenet or faith-based element. So yeah please give us all this great history lesson to prove that religion is "pretty much always" a vehicle for evil and oppression. Because I'm looking at hundreds of years, with hundreds of religions, and a lot of that time they're doing pretty chill and pretty peaceful things. So I'm not really seeing the "pretty much always" here.

Believe what you want. You spelled Cheondoism wrong. So I assume you got your answer from an AI search result. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheondoism
I am not going to help you further. You can choose to self help or choose not to.

Kill endless nameless minions but forgive the big bad

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I've always preferred the Dragon Age method (albeit done by many other games as well). Each area has a specific level range. If you enter that area below that range, enemies are far stronger than you and you'll get your poo pushed in. If you somehow manage to grind past the upper limit of the range, you'll be able to kick everything's teeth in. But when you enter the area and you're in the same range, the area is essentially level-adjusting to you.

Fallout New Vegas does this. So does Skyrim, but not as well.

SinisterSlay posted...

I'm sure the theory of religion is supposed to be good.

It's always been used as a tool by the powerful to keep the masses in check. Be a good boy and suffer on earth then when you die horribly you'll finally be rewarded.

Zareth posted...

It's always been used as a tool by the powerful to keep the masses in check. Be a good boy and suffer on earth then when you die horribly you'll finally be rewarded.

W post

What do you guys have against religion as a personal philosophy?

Several countries in the 20th century used your arguments to outright ban religion and persecute religious people.

Damn_Underscore posted...

What do you guys have against religion as a personal philosophy?

Several countries in the 20th century used your arguments to outright ban religion and persecute religious people.

I'm against persecution in general.
So that puts me at odd with most if not all religions because I support gay right to marry. Women priests. Trans rights. Abortion.

The harem one.

Outside of these choices, I hate missables in games. It's one thing if you have to decide between multiple choices, like the Helix or Dome Fossil, or if you simply don't have time to do everything like all the social links in Persona games. But if it's easily missed forever just because you didn't do/get it in a small window of time, it really steams my hams. Especially if it's something that's not mentioned or hinted at.

Level scaling is the most annoying by far. Leveling up should be rewarding and instead it's punishing you.

The answer is almost certainly other, but of the things you listed out id say no voice acting. Not high on Yuri as a VA, no issues with the other 7.

battle (or other) systems that use timed button presses as the core gameplay mechanic

like in Legend of Dragoon and the Shadow Hearts series judgement ring forced to be used for literally everything in the games

otherwise great games ruined by an insufferable unplayable fundamentally irreparable mechanic