By Kieron Gillen on March 6th, 2009 at 4:11 pm.
Michael Norskov suggested we play this. I did and then Walker revealed he gave it a crack a couple of days ago and didn’t think it interesting enough to post about. Which lead to a little RPS-chat-room debate about why he didn’t, and why I thought Sophie Houlden had nailed it, admittedly in a pretty mean-spirited way. And the fact we were having the debate at all probably meant it was worth posting about. In other words, it’s one of those videogame deconstruction things which wind some of you up right rotten.
It’s the Linear RPG. You can move along a line in both directions. As you do so you suffer damage. You move to the right, you gain experience points. Get enough XP and you go up a level, increasing the size of your health bar. When you reach a node, you restore your health and save your progress. Any time you die, you go back. And as you travel to the right, a story scrolls in the background. In other words, to read the story, you have to carry on walking. Eventually you get to a bit where you can’t reach the next node, forcing you to wander back the way you came and go back and forth until you’ve leveled-up enough to make it. Eventually, you’ll get to the end of the story. Oh – and the story is a openly scornful stomp through RPG tropes. Oh noes! Iz the bad guy! And Etc.
Like most of the deconstructions, the point is “This is all there is to these games”. And in an reductio ad absurdum – and man, I hope I’m that firing that particular round the wanky latin-o-gun correctly – way, show their underlying pointlessness.
Walker’s reason for not posting it? Well, he’s never played an RPG where he’s had to backtrack to gain levels so he can make progress. Therefore, its analysis of mechanics was bullshit. It was saying nowt.
This made me think two things:
1) Walker’s had a lot of luck playing RPGs.
2) Sophie hasn’t been clear about what she’s talking about.
What she’s really talking about is a jRPG rather than a western-model one. The clues are there in terms of the specifics of the story she choose to tell, and how she’s reduced it. jRPGs have traditionally been totally linear stories. The only obstacle to your progress tends to be fights. Whether you win them or not depends on your character rather than… well, there you go into the question of how much skill there is in a fight versus you just having to be harder. Sure, some RPGs slow your progress by misjudging how much power you’ll have a specific point so you can go back and grind up so you can deal with the problem… but saying all do is a bit of a stretch.
In other words, I suspect, her reductio ad absurdum is flawed – it just describes a bad example of the genre. And reducing the genre to a bad example of the genre is the thing which makes The Linear RPG seem so mean-hearted. It doesn’t exist to examine it. It exists to mock it. And that’s just a trifle cruel.
Beautiful executed, with great visual flair, though.
06/03/2009 at 16:13 Jim Rossignol says:
I totally didn’t post about it either.
06/03/2009 at 16:24 Red says:
“I totally didn’t post about it either.”
Neither did Kieron, apparently.
06/03/2009 at 16:30 matt says:
i’m the sort of rpg person who will spend 4 hours between each and every dungeon grinding exp/loots…apparently even in a game this simple.
06/03/2009 at 16:39 Tei says:
Great!
Really artistic presentation, nice style. A great nonsensical reduction ab absurdum of linear RPG games.
Could we have something like this for Civi games? for some reason Sid Meier civis are this linear. You are like forced to invent piramids and the zen, … And why? not all cultures invent the zen, so why all cultures have this stuff on his tecnological tree. Most RPG are the same, you are doomed to save the pricess. But what If the player is a women, and think the evil wizard is kind of sexy and the princess a idiot?
06/03/2009 at 16:40 Janto says:
It’s not that absurd – I’m amazed John’s never been in a situation where he’s hit a wall and had to go off and do sidequests of the – deliver my cheese before you save the world – variety. Not because sidequests are fun, and entertaining, but because that 200 xp will push you over into the next level.
06/03/2009 at 16:40 P.T. says:
It actually reminded me of Dungeon Siege in terms of the seam-less level load times. The left-right mechanic seems a reasonable distillation of the click-click-click mechanic of DS. One thing really nice about this one was that it was *just* the right length. It’d be nice in some (real) RPG game if entering one’s 4th dungeon to get the 4th key to unlock the low gate the game just popped up a dialog “Yeah, pretty much like the last one, you kill the monsters and get the key.”
06/03/2009 at 16:43 teo says:
Great concept, I love it!
Is it just me or are things like this becoming more and more common? Gravity bone, Passage and certainly many more, I don’t think we would’ve seen them a few years ago
06/03/2009 at 16:43 Jaxtrasi says:
That seems like correct usage to me.
06/03/2009 at 16:57 subedii says:
And Doom is just a game about shooting things. Abstracted even further, the entire genre of FPS’s is nothing more than lining up pixels with the centre of the screen, then selecting them. All in the meantime the story scrolls in the background.
Pretty much anything can be reduced to utter fundamentals and then mocked as unimpressive. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re still missing the point whenever you do.
I’ve never been all that impressed with these kinds of “analysis’ ” of genres. Reducing to things to their base bullet-points is the sad purview of those seeking to look art and intellectual by attempting to prove how pointless any one popular activity is because “look, this is all you ever get up to”.
06/03/2009 at 16:58 LionsPhil says:
Next up: the deconstructed RTS and thinly-veiled commentary on the futility of war, in which both you an opponent continually generate piles of little stickmen who annihilate eachother on a 1:1 basis to the sounds of orphans weeping.
No, wait, that’s Multiwinia.
06/03/2009 at 17:08 solipsistnation says:
Um, I can name a lot more bad JRPGs than I can good ones. In my experience, people who play and enjoy JRPGs have really low standards. I’ve had people whose opinions I otherwise trust come up and tell me with great enthusiasm how awesome some JPRG or other is, only to find that it’s yet another linear slog through nonsensical cutscenes. I guess that’s okay if you like that kind of thing, and cultural differences and bad translations explain some of it, but still. I think it’s not so much that this reduction is describing a BAD example of the genre as much as it’s describing a TYPICAL example of the genre.
06/03/2009 at 17:09 Tei says:
“the deconstructed RTS and thinly-veiled commentary on the futility of war, ”
I think this has ben done, and is Sims Ants.
06/03/2009 at 17:10 marilena says:
I think the RPS guys undersell this. The actually interesting thing is to observe your behavior while playing this. How you start spotting places where grinding is easy. How you start grinding just to be sure, even though your current level may be enough. How you start to sort of enjoy leveling up for the sake of leveling up, how you start to look for more varied ways to grind. How the end comes as a surprise and doesn’t feel different from the rest of the game.
It’s interesting as a study of the player’s psychology and how it is exploited by games more than as a study of JRPGs.
06/03/2009 at 17:14 schizoslayer says:
I actually think it’s very clever.
This is why RPG’s layer on other mechanics that require you to use skill (granted normally all tactical skill rather than mechanical) in order to keep the act of progressing through the story interesting.
What this game has removed is the increasing challenge that keeps the game bit from getting boring. You very swiftly master the skills required to overcome the challenges faced. This reduces the Gameplay to an act of going through the motions until you can progress again. Each time requiring less attention from you until it becomes boring. AKA Grindy.
Fortunately the writing was awesome and it was very short. 9/10.
06/03/2009 at 17:15 Q says:
I reached level 57 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt…
06/03/2009 at 17:15 Kieron Gillen says:
As I wrote somewhere else…
Gaming’s dark secret: occasionally watching a number slowly increase is enough.
KG
06/03/2009 at 17:15 Ben says:
I liked it. Not necessarily because I agree with the absurd reduction of the gameplay, but more because I have naught but disdain for the JRPG plot tropes that are openly mocked here.
06/03/2009 at 17:17 undead dolphin hacker says:
We RPG fans are like the woman who always ends up with the mean, uncaring guy who’s only interested in sex. The woman who just wishes she would meet a “nice guy” who’d finally love her. The woman who makes her dissatisfaction known to anyone who will listen.
We say we want a mature, middle-aged Average Joe protagonist, but when we get one we lament it’s all too generic and tacitly lust for the amnesiac Byronic young-adult hero. Such a boring protagonist is Unfair and Bad Design.
We say we want open-ended, non-linear gameplay, but when we get it the characters aren’t believable enough, or the “main” story is too short, or not fleshed out enough, or the game is pointless and empty without clear goals. The messiah non-linear game is a disappointment, that’s Unfair and Bad Design.
We say we want choices that actually matter, but when we get it we Quicksave before every conversation, or print out a FAQ and follow the optimal path, or come on forums and bitch when a choice made ten hours ago affects the game in a way we didn’t think it would, and it’s Unfair and Bad Design.
We say we loathe “grinding,” and anything that can be done to reduce grinding is next to godliness, but when we get a game with vastly reduced grind it’s too easy or just boring and soulless. We spent our $50 on a carebear product, that’s Unfair and Bad Design.
We want a massively multiplayer living, breathing, dynamic world, but then we bitch when other players don’t act the way we wanted them to act, or cry when the bosses in the non-instanced dungeon are already dead, because it’s Unfair and Bad Design.
We piss and moan about how bad AI is, but when we get our asses kicked, it’s Unfair and Bad Design.
But in the end, like the woman above, we keep ending up buying, playing, and enjoying the same exact RPGs. They might have superficial differences — blond hair this time, Planescape setting another — but it’s all essentially the same. And out of shame for our preference or the simple desire to be a victim, we bitch about it.
06/03/2009 at 17:19 Kieron Gillen says:
I’m impressed by you lot today.
KG
06/03/2009 at 17:23 LionsPhil says:
Keiron’s been playing Progress Quest again.
Tei: Nah, Sim Ant also had resource gathering. Also, a feature where you could vomit food into the queen’s mouth. Because computer games are all about escapism, or something.
06/03/2009 at 17:28 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
Gonna see a doctor now, I sort off enjoyed playing this ‘game’.
06/03/2009 at 17:34 James G says:
At work at the moment, so can’t play the game, but it got me thinking about how many non-gamers seem to view games in a similar manner. They reduce everything down to the most base mechanics, and will look on the results as the sole rewards. I don’t know if this is a case of inexperience, or if it is more a case of different outlooks, and that it is this outlook which precludes people from enjoying games (or in some cases ‘a game.’)
It also makes me think of something like Peggle, which could so easily be seen as a reductionist approach to a computer game. It involved only the most rudimentary skill, being largely down to chance, and presents some of the most simple rewards imaginable. (Whoo! Flashy lights!) It barely even gives a nod to progression of gaming mechanics for example.
06/03/2009 at 17:39 Chris R says:
Man, someone needs to save undead dolphin hacker’s post and get more people to read it… that was a thing of beauty.
This paragraph struck a chord with me, because it explains how Far Cry 2 came across to many people, although I loved it to death.
06/03/2009 at 17:48 Howard says:
@undead dolphin hacker: I have never seen the nail hit quite so perfectly on the head, sir. Kudos.
06/03/2009 at 17:49 Pags says:
I think honestly what was most interesting about this was that the game obscured the story; it says a lot about how narratives can be broken by arbitrary requirements to hit a certain number before any progress can be made. Try and focus on the scrolling story in the background and you’ll inevitably find yourself dead very soon. But trying to play the game effectively means you spend more time looking at numbers than concentrating on the story that’s being told.
I interpreted that as being a deconstruction of the MMO grind myself. Not sure how others would feel.
06/03/2009 at 17:59 Dave says:
Level 52, bitches.
06/03/2009 at 18:00 schizoslayer says:
The story given however is much more a description of the events happening to you and in a “Real” game things like you chasing the bad guy would be actual gameplay and not story.
The fact that you can’t read the story while walking around is purely due to the fact that reading uses alot of your available attention so your brain cannot process the words and monitor your stats at the same time. In a well-designed game this information is presented in ways that do not use up all of your available attention.
That just represents bad game design.
However if the author wants to specifically use those techniques to highlight the problems of trying to do two things at once then so be it. It isn’t exactly scientific proof that you cannot process a story while playing a game. You just can’t process that much text while doing something else.
06/03/2009 at 18:02 apnea says:
undead dolphin hacker said it best. But still, can’t someone lust for a bit of romance, or covering up, of the old grindy, samey, numbery act?
RPG fans are like any other game enthusiasts, that is, they enjoy a particular brand of reward-failure algorithms ; where they sometimes differ from other gamers is in their expectation of a measure of narrative (JRPG) or non-linear (WRPG) underscoring of that algorithm. Nothing more, nothing less.
There. Is that absurdly reduced enough for you guys? Cynical Fridays…
06/03/2009 at 18:07 Pags says:
I’m not sure I meant it in the way that gamers cannot multitask; rather I meant the game shows how a narrative can be broken because the numbers above your character aren’t high enough.
Of course it is possible it’s just bad game design, but in an uncomplicated, specifically-intentioned deconstruction it’s not exactly likely that it was just a poor design choice that slipped through the cracks but was intentionally done that way to highlight something about the way stories are told in linear RPGs.
06/03/2009 at 18:10 apnea says:
And for the record, FC2 was the barest excuse of a so-called sandbox game : it should have been called The Non-Linear Shooter.
Meaning, to enjoy it is to enjoy shooting the same peeps in the same wide corridors, again and again, with some arbitrary binary mission possibilities at some points. It was pretty abstract and experimental in only that reductionist respect.
06/03/2009 at 18:14 Jaxtrasi says:
I remember doing a literature review of a paper from the Interactive Institute titled “The Gameplay Gestalt, Narrative and Interactive Storytelling”. It suggested, broadly, that we could never have truly interactive narrative while controls were difficult (because the “gameplay gestalt” – understanding the controls – interfered with the “narrative gestalt” – understanding the story).
They proposed to fix this with their “Purgatory Engine” whose primary feature was that it wasn’t going to include any treasure or weaponry.
They also claimed they were going to have a game with no gameplay gestalt, which as far as I could tell from the paper literally means you don’t have to learn the controls. They didn’t explain how they were going to perform this impossible task.
06/03/2009 at 18:20 Dizet Sma says:
Hmm, becomes easier once you hit lvl 60 and get the flying unicorn.
06/03/2009 at 18:26 Jaxtrasi says:
Nerf unicorns IMO.
06/03/2009 at 18:35 teo says:
the deconstructed RTS and thinly-veiled commentary on the futility of war, ”
I think this has been done, and is Sims Ants.
lol, excellent =D I love Sim Ant though
I disagree
Shooters are about interaction with the game, about playing the game. Yes, you can reduce that and complain about its pointlessness, but this is not that, because JRPGs aren’t about the interaction. They’re about telling their stories, and for some reason they choose to do it in a game while abandoning everything that’s interesting about games. That’s the absurdity
06/03/2009 at 19:02 JonFitt says:
My experience of JRPGs is limited to a few Final Fantasy/Chrono games, so I can’t speak for all JRPGs, however FF is heralded as one of the best series.
So speaking of FF and it’s ilk, I’m of the pretty firm opinion that it is not an RPG. There is no role playing. You merely work your way through a fixed story with fixed characters.
It’s an action adventure game pure and simple. Diablo with (tedious emo) cutscenes.
There’s not even the oft derided Bioware good|evil|arsehole dialog choices, your spiky haired lady-boy just says what he wants.
So I’m not sure how making a reduced take on JRPGs affects my opinion of RPGs at all.
06/03/2009 at 19:06 KafkaTamura says:
Did anyone actually read the story?
IT WAS AWESOME.
(Sorry, I appear to have lost control of the capslock key for a moment there).
06/03/2009 at 19:08 KafkaTamura says:
@ marilena
I found myself grinding across ‘nodes’, to be sure.
Man do I feel used.
06/03/2009 at 19:11 Nimic says:
I’ve always been a big fan of RPG games, but not JRPG games. Granted, for some reason I find FF8 very pleasing, but I detest almost every other FF and almost all JRPG’s.
06/03/2009 at 19:12 Markoff Chaney says:
Commentary
06/03/2009 at 19:35 Heliocentric says:
The difference between jrpg’s and mmo’s(not planetside)? When you get to the end of an jrpg it and the grinding ends. Also, more teen angst in the plot in jrpg, mmo instead has teen angst in the players.
06/03/2009 at 20:03 Switchbreak says:
I think if you only associate JRPGs with SquareEnix ultra-linearity, you need to look deeper into RPGs that have come out in Japan. Look up, for example, the Lunatic Dawn series. There are many, many interesting and experimental RPGs coming out in Japan that push the limits of the genre, it’s just that we only tend get the ones with “Final Fantasy” in the name over here.
06/03/2009 at 20:05 drewski says:
What amused me was that you could never “finish” the final node.
I tended to go halfway to the next node and turn back if I didn’t think I could make it. Died a lot, because the replay of gameplay (for me the real penalty for death in an RPG) was effectively nil – you did exactly the same gameplay no matter how many times you died.
Finished on about level 37, I think.
06/03/2009 at 20:32 CdrJameson says:
CRPGs need grinding because they follow the HIDEOUSLY FLAWED Dungeons & Dragons model of epic fantasy, where player character levels range from peasants to demi-gods. This makes such a ludicrous spread of abilities that decent (level-appropriate, interesting, could go either way) encounters are very few. Usually you’re either hideously over- or under- powered.
A decent RPG would be more like Warhammer (WFRP) or Traveller. Here you start off Average and after some extensive effort, end up Competent. You get your real ‘levelling’ through increased knowledge, not major stat boosts, and the narrow spread of stats makes most encounters vaguely appropriate.
You could also make a decent The Linear RPG style criticism of some western RPG features though. For example such ugly, hacky fixes to the inherent HIDEOUS FLAWS of the D&D approach as Oblivion’s dynamic difficulty adjustment. Just make each line out of a node exactly long enough that you always get there with 2 health to spare.
06/03/2009 at 20:34 Legionary says:
The funny thing is, even though it’s literally just two increasing numbers in response to you pressing right or left, it does tickle your gaming node. It makes its point well.
06/03/2009 at 20:34 clovis says:
That’s true, but I personally have this problem during RPGs. I always say to myself that I’m playing for the story, but then I rush through the story parts and almost NEVER read all the flavor texts/books/etc. I always collect the books, planning to read them, but pretty much never do. I like how the Witcher provides a tl;dr in the glossary after you read them, BTW.
Why don’t I read them? It is not because I don’t like reading, or that I’m not interested. I just want to get back to “playing” the game. I did this with Linear RPG. For example, I found it hard to read the text while moving, so I would stop. But then my gamerbrain kept yelling at me that I’m wasting time that I could be grinding. Then I’d try to do both at the same time, and ended up skimming most of the text.
So, I found this interesting…
06/03/2009 at 20:35 Pijama says:
LONG LIVE PLANESCAPE TORMENT AND
oh, wait a minute.
06/03/2009 at 20:46 Jaxtrasi says:
clovis:
Books in games are a rubbish way to communicate story. You’re not in any way to blame for thinking that it doesn’t sound like fun. Morrowind is the worst offender I know of personally for this.
It doesn’t help, of course, that you know the books are going to be hackneyed flavour-text quality drivel in a style completely inappropriate to the setting they were supposedly written in.
Show, don’t tell. Of course, exactly what constitues “show” depends entirely on the context. In Interactive Fiction, show would still involve a whole lot of reading.
06/03/2009 at 21:16 Somedude says:
It’s not just JRPGs, any game that requires skill or familiarity will go through the same pattern. Leveling up just isn’t explicit.
06/03/2009 at 21:21 CdrJameson says:
Show, don’t tell is films.
Do, don’t tell is games.
06/03/2009 at 21:33 Sam C says:
@CdrJameson:
You get your real ‘leveling’ through increased knowledge, not major stat boosts, and the narrow spread of stats makes most encounters vaguely appropriate.
Isn’t the whole point of the stats boosts to simulate increased world knowledge? Or are you talking about some other form of knowledge besides knowing how to crush your enemies more efficiently?
06/03/2009 at 21:39 Jaxtrasi says:
CdrJameson:
Show, don’t tell applies metaphorically to everything. With game story, do, don’t tell might be applicable and it might not. Sometimes an interactive sequence is far preferable to a cutscene (especially when it involves the actions of the protagonist) and sometimes a cutscene is fine.
Tell is never okay. Show is sometimes; okay. Show is always preferable to tell, even in games. Do is sometimes preferable to show.
06/03/2009 at 21:41 Jaxtrasi says:
Haha, what a mess.
06/03/2009 at 22:49 kafka7 says:
Mean spirited seems to nail it. Game mechanics are easy to mock in hindsight. It’s as it if some said, ‘Waitasec, that Space Invaders has a certain repetition to it’. Linear RPG seems little more than visual sarcasm: the lowest form of gaming wit.
06/03/2009 at 22:54 symuun says:
I’ve got to say, this perfectly replicated the experiences I’ve had with all the JRPGs I’ve played in the past (which is admittedly not many): confusion, frustration, and finally endless repetition and grinding because damnit, I’ve come this far and I’m going to see it through to the end rather than admit defeat to a collection of moving pixels. And then I reached the end and it all felt decidedly anticlimactic.
I suspect I’m probably not the game’s intended audience, of course…
06/03/2009 at 22:56 Tre says:
This is also technically a “Strawman” argument, if I’m not mistaken.
But really, that’s ok, media has this genre already known for reductio ad absurdum, it’s called a Satire, more specifically: Farce.
Still, in my mind, there’s only half of the work here. To be more complete. an absurd SOLUTION should be made by the author. Then we are talking; the Modest Proposal of RPGs.
06/03/2009 at 23:04 Xercies says:
Hmm I don’t mind JRPGS but that’s because I know what I’m getting into, a 20 hour story that I basically do the fights for. Its a good game for me because I’m usually rubbish at games so it makes me feel that I have actually done something even though i haven’t actually done something.
06/03/2009 at 23:16 Eschatos says:
So damn true.
07/03/2009 at 00:15 Pidesco says:
It’s a pretty accurate description of almost all RPGs. Even if you remove the backtracking bits, it’s still evident how the genre hasn’t really gone anywhere in years.
What The Linear RPG really nails is how the narrative and the gameplay in almost all games(not just RPGs) are virtually unconnected parallel threads. And this almost damns the entire medium as a means of cultural expression.
07/03/2009 at 00:17 Mike says:
I understand what you’re saying Kieron but, come on, did you not laugh at the ‘Bruce Lee’ speed setting for the Pegacorn?
What I found interesting was that to level up I just ran back and forth past an inn, not necessarily backtracking. Staying near save points is basically the heart of Final Fantasy levelling. Made me chuckle.
I don’t know if it’s truly a bad example of the genre. If you cleave the RPG genre into two, East and West, this is actually quite a common format. And not considered bad by a large gaming subculture.
07/03/2009 at 00:21 charlie says:
I think it’s okay to deconstruct things to their basics if it’s done for the right reasons. Not to mock something but to better understand it so you can improve on it IMO.
In fact if this wasn’t a nasty piss take but funny it would be alright. Although maybe it wasn’t meant to be and it is just Mr. Gillen’s views rubbing off on me.
07/03/2009 at 00:39 Nick says:
Not sure why Morrowind was bad for having books in it.. pretty much none of them required reading and only contained backstory / side tales of the world itself.
07/03/2009 at 00:42 Jaxtrasi says:
The thing is, as rubbish as they are, there’s also a gem of brilliant design in the grindy RPG formula. The genius is that they have implicitly selectable difficulty levels. A more “skilled” player (whatever that means in the circumstances) needs to grind less, and a less “skilled” player can either try repeatedly, or go away to collect more plusses before trying again. Both are forms of grinding.
WoW uses this system very cleverly both while levelling (doing instances underlevelled and doing them overlevelled are very different game experiences) and during the endgame (some people spend weeks gearing up in heroics before starting raiding, whereas others pile straight in still wearing their level 70 epics).
This simulation misses that subtlety. If the combats required you to play an absurdly fast game of pong, and each point of XP slowed it down slightly, it’d be closer to accurate.
07/03/2009 at 00:45 Jaxtrasi says:
Nick:
It’s not that Morrowind was bad for including books at all, but the books are the only way you learn about the wider world.
07/03/2009 at 00:46 noexes says:
Yea, I didn’t find it that mean spirited. If it ended with a song like YHTBTR maybe people wouldn’t be mad at it.
07/03/2009 at 01:40 Noc says:
Jaxtrasi, you also learned about the world through the crapload of conversations. There are also a lot of subtler world details if you look closely, like they murals in Vivec.
Also, they didn’t use books to communicate the plot very often. Most plot-relevant things happen through interactions with plot-relevant characters. The books just provide an optional way for the player to learn more about the setting. You can get through the main questline without reading a single book, and it will all make sense.
Morrowind DOES have a very static world. Things tend not to happen, and when they do it’s more a matter of NPCs telling you that they do than you seeing them with your own eyes. But the books are a very, very small part of that.
. . .
Also, grinding is NOT a piece of brilliant design. You’ll find, I think, that people who are very skilled at grind-heavy games are so not because they’ve found the best ways of developing their characters to be more effective with less grinding involved. Rather, the people who are more skilled at JRPGs tend to be so because they know how to grind more efficiently. Instead of progressing through the game as best they can, and repeatedly hitting a difficulty wall because they’re underleveled, they instead find areas where they can gain experience more quickly, and spend time milking those areas until they’re OVERleveled and can progress through the story in relative ease.
With the WoW example: common wisdom (as of a few years ago. I’m not quite current) was that you should be grinding enemies one to two levels below you, because they gave the best balance between XP reward and time lost from resting, healing, and dying.
This makes the game easier for skilled players, who know how to grind quickly and efficiently, while it becomes harder for unskilled players who consistently try to push ahead with the story because it doesn’t occur to them that when they going’s comparatively easy for decent rewards they should hang around and grind it for a while. This is because the skilled players know that they’re in a game where they become more powerful by grinding, while the unskilled players are less aware of this and instead try and solve the problems in front of them with the tools at their disposal.
Elements layered over this design (Real-time elements, reflex-based games, etc) are intended to distract you from the core, grindly game. This is also why lots of RPGs have a card game or similar optional minigame in them. Things like that are there to make the game look like it’s got more stuff in it than random encounters and cutscenes. This occurs with various level off success.
Thus, the fact that the Linear RPG doesn’t involve a scaled-difficulty ping-pong game on top of the leveling is part of the deconstruction. It’s an additional element often layered over the core gameplay that’s been removed to illustrate how the core game works.
Interestingly, not all RPGs are like this! I’m replaying Baldur’s Gate this week, and it is all about using the tools at your disposal. Fights get super-easy when you’ve outleveled them, but even difficult fights can totally be won by low-level parties with some good tactics and a little luck. This has not happened in any JRPG I have ever played.
07/03/2009 at 01:46 apnea says:
As a counterpoint to Noc:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/Morrowind.html
But yeah, I get your point. Don’t worry.
07/03/2009 at 03:06 El Stevo says:
You bastard, Kieron. How do you write legibly when you’re drunk? I’ve had to check this worthless three sentences about six times so far.
07/03/2009 at 03:30 Garrett says:
You can exploit the movement-experience system by moving constantly to the left while on the first node. After sufficient repetition this will give enough health to make it between nodes.
07/03/2009 at 03:49 bhlaab says:
It is mean, but the jRPG is a genre that deserves abuse.
07/03/2009 at 04:08 Tonamel says:
Lv 75 and counting.
I don’t think this is the kind of behavior the author was trying to encourage ¬¬
07/03/2009 at 04:22 I am beginning to understand this comment system says:
@undead dolphin hacker(if that is your real name)
We say we want choices that actually matter, but when we get it we Quicksave before every conversation, or print out a FAQ and follow the optimal path, or come on forums and bitch when a choice made ten hours ago affects the game in a way we didn’t think it would, and it’s Unfair and Bad Design.
I think there is a spectrum here, on one end there are people who like consequences and the ability to make choices, on the other, people who like to power level and always want to see the ‘real’ ending. From a game design perspective I can see the dilemma here, you can’t make all the people happy all the time. However I think modern games tend to err on the side of (for lack of a better term) the power leveling perfectionist.
It’s rare to see games today where you choices have real consequence. It’s even rarer to see games where the game world / rules are just plan hostile. Games like nethack and dwarf fortress spring to mind as being designed with the philosophy that “dying is fun”. Another, non-ascii, game that springs to mind is capcom’s Dead Rising, which drew a lot of flack for taking place in quasi real time, allowing a player to miss critical events and basically screw up royally.
I don’t know where I am going with all this, though I personally would like see more games that allowed the player to fail, rather then guiding you through an adventure that has all the danger of nerf playground. I think certain indie games will lead to a revival of ‘failure’ based gameplay, by placing an emphasis on making the failure part fun instead of frustrating.
07/03/2009 at 04:23 I am beginning to understand this comment system says:
My kingdom for an editor.
07/03/2009 at 04:26 Maxson says:
For an upcoming JRPG that does require actual skill at grind-heavy gaming, try . You’re a standard JRPG hero who has to stop a demon lord from casting a world destruction spell- but you have 30 seconds to stop him. Grind against the clock- take too long and it’s goodbye, don’t grind enough and get pulverized.
There’s a PSP demo available, if you’ve got access to one.
07/03/2009 at 04:27 Maxson says:
…I would like an editor, too.
07/03/2009 at 08:34 MrFake says:
Well designed, well executed, and totally nails jRPGs. Or at least nails the common perception of them, from both inside and outside the fanbase. But perceiving and playing are two very different things. There is so much more to them beyond the grind and the linearity*, good and bad. Still, the only absolute difference I perceive between jRPGs and western RPGs is that you’re commonly forced into a role in jRPGs, so perhaps RPG is a severe misnomer; is that the source of all this unnecessary animosity?
I used to think it was the grind that people hate, since that’s also the main complaint against MMOs (as a game). I must be immune to it as a game-aholic, as most games seem a grind to me. Slaughter the next twenty or fifty guards/aliens to get to the next boss fight, kill boss, repeat. Build my main base and defenses, thwart the enemy’s advances while pushing forward, take expansion bases, crush opponent, repeat. Drop T shaped block onto L shaped block, drop I shaped block into hole, four lines vanish, repeat. No, I think the grind is a weak excuse, as I’m not sure I’ve played any RPG without grind (except maybe Fallout 3, but that’s because I picked up some kickass gear right from the start; it felt like cheating).
The mocking tropes are just petty (Angsty teenagers? Man, the internet seems to be nervous about “angst” these days). The most accurate one I’ve heard is on the use of spiky hair. Really, I can’t name a jRPG without spiky hair. And I just don’t give a pootonky about hair in a game, or most other style choices. No… maybe I do. I think if the characters had been sporting a more reasonable do, y’know, like the kind you’d wear for an interview, I’d probably not have as much fun. Oh, I happen to own a leather coat, too. Angst, man. …Angst.
Since RPS has lately had some thought-provoking pieces on industry-shaping and groundbreaking games, I hope that in between the well deserved sardonicism we can think to ourselves on what exactly jRPGs have given us, despite all the things we hate about them.
(*I don’t understand the thought behind the term “linear RPG.” Are there non-linear stories out there? I mean I can run around Tamriel, the wasteland of DC, or Sigil and the planes and create my own stories, but I can do that in my imagination, too. I can think of some games where there are meaningful choices to make, but not many, if any at all, where you can escape the script, and these games are not the norm in any genre or sub-genre. Story linearity is all-inclusive.
Or is linear referring to the game world, because that’s a commonplace “failing” of the majority of games, not to mention the subtle contradiction in saying the game is linear yet you have to frequently backtrack before being able to make progress, which comes up in Houlden’s crafted critique too. Consider why you play RPGs in the first place: maybe to advance a story, to fight unique boss fights, to explore another world, to be another person, to escape entirely into an alternate reality, or maybe just to watch numbers slowly increase. Are any of these conducive to or hindered by spacial linearity? Where linearity is a problem, what kind of “non-linearity” is the solution and is it feasible?
Oh, don’t point out that you can’t explore within linear bounds. It’s not just that all games are bounded to begin with, but you can explore just fine along a set path. You’ll be experiencing something new either way you go about it. If it’s a matter of depth, that’s a poor way to judge exploration, as everything is subject to levels of magnitude no matter whether linear or open-world.
This aside became quite long … sorry.)
07/03/2009 at 10:09 Kieron Gillen says:
El Stevo: Depends what you count as Legilible, really.
MrFake: I suspect jRPGs could be the backbone of something I want to write. Everyone says how stories in games are pretty terrible and wonder when we’re going to get better ones. I want to flip that around – I wonder why we feel interested in stories in games which we would have no interest in any other medium. And often it really is genuine involvement in sub-literate trash.
KG
07/03/2009 at 10:48 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:
Every single genre could be broken down into a simple game like this. Same with illustrating different genres of movies. All are very basic and archaic. Pointing it out and making a game poking fun about it certainly isn’t worth noting. Walker was correct in not writing about it.
07/03/2009 at 11:20 marilena says:
@KG
That sounds like an interesting article idea. But then, you do like the story in Bioshock, so I don’t know :P.
(Of course, the story in Bioshock, as much as is there, is better than what you can see in most games and is enhanced by the game’s atmosphere. But still. Is it great in a real sense?)
07/03/2009 at 17:13 Kadayi says:
@Chris R
I think given Farcry 2 was open world, there was an expectation on the players part that it was going to be more than just run & gun through out. There was almost certainly the opportunity for the developers to make a decent first person open world story driven action RPG, but they never had any ambitions to go that way. That there has been a degree of player dissatisfaction with the game accordingly that the missions are monotonous and lacking in depth will no doubt impact upon whatever the developers make next. Personally I’m excited to see what they come up with, as it might well be the next step in computer RPG games finally throwing off the shackles of the largely redundant P&P tropes of ‘levels’, ‘Character classes’ and ‘+3 swords’.
All of these mechanics are hangovers of games where in the resolution of players actions are determined solely through open statistical assessment. In open 3D game environments, where physics can be simulated, the necessity for that kind of thing rapidly dissipates and in fact often intrudes on the game play experience. One minute you’re in a dungeon soaking up the atmosphere, the next your wading through endless inventory screens to tweak a bunch of abstracts. It’s continually taking you out of the one thing modern computer games are exceptionally good at doing and that is of putting you firmly in the game space. Why do people love Half life 2? Because you encounter it as if it was you. You truly are Gordon Freeman through out. Farcry 2 rightly builds on that legacy, it just didn’t build upon it enough in terms of mission depth in my view.
Interesting game btw, but it does seems like it’s beating things a little cruelly.
07/03/2009 at 17:18 Vanderdecken says:
The best thing about this:
07/03/2009 at 17:26 perilisk says:
@MrFake
I think when people talk about “grind”, they’re talking about an activity that isn’t especially engaging or enjoyable on its own, but is done to gain more in-game power; either to get to a more enjoyable gameplay mechanic, or to see more of the story, or whatever. Tedium as gatekeeper, essentially.
Tetris isn’t grind — people don’t keep destroying blocks, despite it being tedious, so that they can eventually have fun, they do it because destroying blocks is fun and challenging.
I think jRPGs are most guilty here because the combat rapidly loses its challenge and interest. That is, it usually doesn’t present much of a reflex challenge, so the challenge comes from tactics. Unfortunately, even if there are interesting tactical questions (“pick the right element” is as interesting as playing rock, paper, scissors with a guy that always chooses rock) that aspect is reduced the second time you fight the same group of enemies, and reduced even more the third time, etc. I can’t speak for modern jRPGs, but I know the old Final Fantasies and Dragon Warriors (and their remakes) suffered from filling an entire dungeon with five groups of enemies, and then making you fight one of those groups every four steps you took. Maybe if they just stuck to boss fights they would be ok.
07/03/2009 at 21:21 Jaxtrasi says:
Noc:
Re: Morrowind
That’s why I said “world”, not “plot”. There are a few details about the world outside books, but really barely anything.
Re: Grinding
You’re right that if what you prize is speed, then efficiency in accumulation of plusses is the most effective strategy. That has nothing to do with the point I’m making, because I’m starting with the assumption that your objective is to complete the game (or win this fight), not to hit the level cap. You’re also right that players tend, in the long run, towards that sort of thinking, which also has nothing to do with it.
In WoW, you can complete instances below, at, or above the level (and level of gear) the instance intends. This is a fact. The higher your level and the better your gear, the easier the instance run becomes. This is also a fact. Some players enjoy doing harder runs, so they intentionally underlevel instances (my guild did this while levelling in TBC and while levelling in WOTLK). That many, many players treat the level cap as a goal to reach as quickly as possible doesn’t change the fact that you don’t actually have to, and that in many ways the game is a better “game” if you don’t.
What I said was, that you have a choice between using skill (by conventional definition of skill, i.e. skill at manipulating the game mechanics as in your Baldur’s Gate example) or going away, accumulating plusses, and then not bothering to use skill. This is true in most RPGs, and is more or less exactly the same as turning the difficulty down.
If you can’t beat a boss in God of War, it asks “would you like to drop to easy mode?” You can choose either to drop the difficulty and just spam the attack button until you win, or you can persist, learn the fight, learn to use your tools and win on normal.
JRPGs are like this. You made a general sweeping assumption that “skill” as I’ve defined it doesn’t exist. I’m not a very experienced JRPG player, but I’m experienced enough to know that my experienced JRPG playing friend is better at them than me. His knowledge of the mechanics allows him to defeat enemies more quickly at a lower level than I do.
08/03/2009 at 00:27 Adventurous Putty says:
That sounds like an interesting article idea. But then, you do like the story in Bioshock, so I don’t know :P.
Actually, if you ask me, a methodical deconstruction of Objectivism and, later, the genre conventions of an FPS seems to me to be a rather clever, literate, self-reliant sort of story that I’d appreciate in any medium.
Played the game. I thought it was rather clever, but I wish it said something about what linear RPGs COULD be instead of simply being a caricature of them. It’s kind of like a long-winded, animated political cartoon.
08/03/2009 at 01:11 EyeMessiah says:
Noobs! I ran a bot on it and maxed my XP out while I watched Come Dine with Me.
“All of these mechanics are hangovers of games where in the resolution of players actions are determined solely through open statistical assessment.”
Its interesting to note that some recent tabletop rpgs have gotten over this hangup and simply sidestepped the issue of drip-feeding character capability progression by having relatively static power levels and focusing the games activity on other sorts of challenges. IMO computer RPG devs need to spend some time playing more forward thinking tabletop RPGs before they decide that the game they are working on absolutely must have XP & levels or its not REAL ROLEPLAYING.
Also I don’t know why everyone is picking on JRPGS, mechanically this reminded me of the MMO more than anything. I’ve never really had to deliberately grind in a JRPG, often because those interminable random encounters are so bloody frequent.
08/03/2009 at 01:16 EyeMessiah says:
“In WoW, you can complete instances below, at, or above the level (and level of gear) the instance intends. This is a fact.”
Its also a fact that a magical invisible wall prevents you from even entering a given instance if you haven’t accumulated enough ++s. This is only fair in the sense that the game arbitrarily skews the behind the scenes maths so far against you that it would be madness to try and enter at a very low level. Still I find the whole set-up quite galling.
I don’t like to be presented with a seemingly open world only to be held back by invisible walls simply because I haven’t accumulated enough nonsensical pluses. Down with pluses I say!
08/03/2009 at 01:20 EyeMessiah says:
Also, as I have said before, its OK to be cruel. Cruelty is as interesting as it gets. Even if it seems unsatisfying sometimes its worth remembering that every other possible response is even worse!
08/03/2009 at 03:14 David says:
What are the names of these tabletop RPGs that you speak of?
08/03/2009 at 04:17 Jaxtrasi says:
EyeMessiah:
That seems like a fairly unrelated complaint about hard level-based content locks. I’m not saying WoW is perfect in this regard, but isn’t it reasonable for them to use some kind of pacing mechanism to prevent you entering every instance on day one?
I see your point about the open world (as distinct from a linear game where you expect to have your progress totally halted by each obstacle) but does WoW ever really claim to be an open world? Venturing outside of the zone you’re “supposed” to be in is always extremely dangerous. Getting to an instance portal you’re too low level to enter is an extraordinary effort.
08/03/2009 at 04:17 Jaxtrasi says:
Except the Stockades, of course.
08/03/2009 at 11:00 Kadayi says:
Let’s not get side tracked into the pros and cons of WoW or other MMOs. As games they are by and large all about the grind as a means to keep you paying & playing, which is the antithesis of where the single player computer RPG could go.
@Eyemessiah
Which P&P games are you referring to exactly? I’d be interested to see how they work
08/03/2009 at 12:19 Kieron Gillen says:
Eyemessiah: yeah, name names. I’m interested.
(Oddly, I’m playing around very vaguely with turning Phonogram into an RPG – and have a character-development-but-no-character-improvement system I’m tossing around)
KG
08/03/2009 at 14:16 Helm says:
“I wonder why we feel interested in stories in games which we would have no interest in any other medium. And often it really is genuine involvement in sub-literate trash.”
I suspect it has to do with the vicarious fulfillment of several basic instinctive desires, dominance and control most importantly. I am level 1 and the feral rabbits around the first town can kill me. Now I have ground myself into level 6 muscles and the feral rabits are a joke to me, can’t even hit me for 1 damage. I FEEL SAFER NOW. This is what animals do, they attempt to pacify their surroundings. The awful jrpg stories are an excuse to inhabit that id-construct that we so rarely get to fulfill in our real lives. As long as you can discern spatially where TOWN is and where WILDERNESS is, it’s barely enough. Go out, kill rabbits. Return, rest, go out again. Now it is safer. You are stronger. Safer. Stronger.
I have actually seen a friend of mine fire up a new jrpg and simply *click through all the intro story* to get to the feral rabit grinding.
But yes, write that article, I’d be very interested in reading it.
08/03/2009 at 15:29 Ergates says:
“I wonder why we feel interested in stories in games which we would have no interest in any other medium. And often it really is genuine involvement in sub-literate trash.”
I’d guess that it’s something to do with being directly involved in the story (and seemingly influencing it) makes it inherently more interesting. Pretty much anything becomes or interesting if we’re personally involved.
For instance, if you were walking down the street in winter and stepped on a patch of black ice and your foot started to slip out from under you, but then you managed to regain your balance. To you that’d be exciting, you’d get an adrenaline rush, you’d be thinking “man I nearly went over there, I could have been badly hurt”, it’d be interesting. To anyone one else it’d be “I nearly slipped on some ice, but didn’t”, not exactly entralling.
Or to quote Mel Brookes: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into and open sewer and die“
09/03/2009 at 13:40 CdrJameson says:
“I wonder why we feel interested in stories in games which we would have no interest in any other medium. And often it really is genuine involvement in sub-literate trash.”
Because it’s your story.
See also: Dreams, stoned/tripping stories, D&D campaign write-ups.
09/03/2009 at 13:42 Kieron Gillen says:
CdrJameson: There’s been enough people’s RPG campaigns that have been turned into pulp fiction to disprove the latter one. Regretfully.
KG
09/03/2009 at 13:50 CdrJameson says:
Were there any that weren’t sub-literate trash?
09/03/2009 at 13:59 Kieron Gillen says:
Quality doesn’t matter to counter your argument. That they’re popular is enough.
The Feist Riftwar books are the earliest example I know of, which were fairly accepted as fantasy books.
KG
09/03/2009 at 14:08 CdrJameson says:
Maybe it’s the worrying belief of the players involved that it isn’t sub-literate trash. They’re clearly assigning more value to it than it deserves.
I still cringe to think that I wrote a ‘book review’ of a Dragon Warriors campaign for English when I was 12.
It was some consolation that as an English undergraduate I discovered I was apparently being daringly and preciously post-modern.
09/03/2009 at 14:52 Kieron Gillen says:
CdrJameson: I believe the fact Riftwar was based on Feist’s RPG campaign wasn’t common knowledge when it came out.
KG
09/03/2009 at 14:58 Kieron Gillen says:
(Actually, now I think about it, one the exercises I did when learning to write comics was to transform a role-playing session ran by Mark@Edge into a standard length American comic. Which was an interesting one, in terms of choosing what to lose, what to compress, how to present climatic scenes, etc.
Clearly, tosh and no-one’s going to get to read it. But not the point!)
KG
09/03/2009 at 14:59 BooleanBob says:
@Kieron: What would a “character-development-but-no-character-improvement system” entail, exactly? “Sidegrades”? An expansion of possible strategies, none with a clear overall advantage over the others? Or are you just going to scrawl backstory over the stat tables on each PC’s character sheet?
Either way, colour me intrigued.
09/03/2009 at 15:19 Kieron Gillen says:
The easiest way to think of it would be guild wars. As in, a character has – say – five ability slots. As a starting character, you get to choose from a certain set. As the game progress, you get the opportunity to swap them for other abilities. In fact, depending on your decisions and actions, you’d have to.
With Phonogram the world doesn’t really work with the “People get powerful as they get experience” one*. It’s magic based around your attachment to music. In practice, for most people, your attachment to music lessens in intensity as you get older. At the least, your relationship to music hardens depending on those earlier experiences. And you never grow back the virginity.
What I’ve been playing with is that a new character is actually most abstractly powerful – with six slots. That sixth slot is always going to go, and go quickly. Naivety is actually a strength. Also, when you swap an ability, it can be a one-way street – for some you never get to replace it. For some it puts you on a (forking) path. And for most of those paths, the end of the path is actually losing the slot. The powers you gain are more specific and mostly more subtle and can probably make you survive better in the world – but the raw powers are far more in your face.
(For example, a basic power may be – say – letting a pop record ride you, and gain increased physical abilities in a Voodoo-esque fashion. Which is great. But an advanced power may be being able to transforming tapped magical energy from visiting a gig into cheating the system of life and having enough money in your bank account to live acceptably constantly. Choosing the latter simplifies your phonomancers life enormously, because they can concentrate on just magical stuff – the former will still have to actually *earn some money* so they’ve got 10 hours a day less time to pursue this kind of stuff. Which could include stuff like “Listening to music all the time” – and as your slots require upkeep activities, not choosing to go for the cheating-system-option could cause you to lose the slot anyway. It’s *hard* to keep that power and creates real sacrifices in a character’s life.)
I was thinking this for the magical skills alone. For normal abilities (skills, etc) there would be a normal, if vestigial, system. It wouldn’t be a game where you’d be worrying about your general skills that much. Magical skills tend to trump.
It’s very much a story based system of RPGs in the Storyteller/Unknown Armies vein, but with all the mechanics twisted to support Phonogram’s conceit.
KG
*To be honest, I’m not sure it works generally as well as people always think. We all can think of people who were better at their jobs when they were 23 than they were at 43.
09/03/2009 at 15:21 Kieron Gillen says:
(Worth noting that I think the system of upgrades could be used in quite a few other RPG-esque systems, even one with a more game-esque bent. Guild Wars with rather than freely changeable abilities, having it as development trees – just not abilities which were more *powerful*.)
KG
09/03/2009 at 15:42 BooleanBob says:
Um, the upshot of that post was that I now want to read your comic.
Dammit.
But also, yeah. Totally. I’ve always thought that experience alone was an odd reason for people to get unswervingly better at their craft. Especially when it comes to HP meters! Regardless of what abstract notion that value expresses, the same draconic fireball should be equally lethal to two equally fleshy and combustible bodies.
I’m – uh. I’m actually trying to hash out the details for a strategy-RPG myself at the moment. I keep thinking what I really want to do is bring a deck-building element into it. And not just an overall deck for your army, but decks-within-decks for key units to customise their personal utility within your grander strategies. My thinking is to assign values to ability cards, unit cards and so on, and to maintain strict value limitations on a deck- so you might have a level one Raise Undead card that cost 5 points to apply, and a level three Raise Undead card that cost 7. But at the same time, while you get a bigger zombie, maybe the casting time is longer, or you only get one shambling minion instead of two.
I do think that something kind of stale about tradtional RPG progression is that your character improvements are really quite arbitrary – you get a better sword for beating a boss, but it only exists to make the next one ~about~ as difficult as this one was. At no stage has your skill really been reflected in your character’s progression, and similarly, you’re not broadening the player’s scope for becoming more skillful at the game. Whereas broadening strategic horizons, while making sure new abilities adhere to the same strict balance limitations, renews and stabilises the challenge the player can expect to face, while allowing them a greater scope for creative expression and strategic – not arbitrary – efficacy.
..Yeah?
09/03/2009 at 15:53 Kieron Gillen says:
Re: PG. The problem with PG as a game is that I’ve written it (understandably) as a literary conceit. Transforming it into a gaming one requires a lot of hardening into the rules – trying to turn what are themes into actual hard-edged mechanics. Which is fun in a way, but also transforms the comic into something else.
(Which is fine, but always worth keeping in mind).
I’ll agree that in games there’s lots of systems for character improvement which just aren’t explored. I think stuff which has been used in pen and paper games extensively really need to be integrated by brave people – alternatively, ways which a videogame “XP” based system could work *alternatively* rather than pure grind.
(One of my favourite ideas is doing an XP system based on novelty. As you only get XP the first time you do a new thing. You get XP for defeating an orc in combat. After that, there’s none, so there’s no chance to grind. However, you do things like make leaders of groups of common monsters being novel and new – so that defeating the chieftan to an orc tribe *does* get XP because he’s a famous person. Just fighting everyone is a waste of time)
But that’s well off. I agree – lots of ways to do stuff, both for more RP and mechanistic approaches. I’d like to see ‘em tried.
KG
09/03/2009 at 16:18 CdrJameson says:
Don’t know about modern RPGs, but some classic non-improving RPG characters:
Call of Cthulhu – Increasing your true knowledge of the horrors of the universe (Mythos skill) limits your sanity. Experienced adventurers are the most prone to gibbering and sudden outbreaks of triskaidekaphobia.
Traveller – You’re largely stuck with your starting character. Learning new skills is fiendishly difficult, and the ageing rules lead to stat decrease, and possibly losing skills. Rewards are financial (bigger spaceships), and an increased knowledge of the various plot arcs.
I always think that the reward of experience should be a greater range of options, not just better versions of what you’ve already got. Every advantage should have a cost.
09/03/2009 at 18:51 WaywardBuddha says:
Out of morbid curiosity I had to run left and right until level 60 to see if there was an imposed level cap. I thought their might have been embedded and subtle commentary on MMOs as well. The leveling algorithm continues on though ad infinitum.
I guess we will just have to wait for the Linear RPG expansion pack. I hear we’ll get our own pegacorns that we can fly instead of running, but they will require 1000 coins for a ridiculously slow one, and 5000 more coins if we want our pegacorn to move like it should have all along. The rumours of being forced to pay another 1000 coins to fly in cold air are probably malicious lies being spread by people that hate Linear RPG though.
Kliche – Level 61
09/03/2009 at 21:17 EyeMessiah says:
@ David: “What are the names of these tabletop RPGs that you speak of?”
There are plenty of games that do interesting things with character advancement (including more or less just tossing it out the window in favour of other sorts of play).
E.g.
Nobilis
Dogs in the Vineyard
Burning Wheel
Sorceror
My Life With Master
Wushu
Exalted (yes, really – imo most people don’t try to climb mount impossible and actually out-essence the elder big-bads.)
A million more less notable but not necessarily less note-worthy games that do all kinds of clever forward thinking stuff are regularly discussed in incredible detail on
http://indie-rpgs.com/
09/03/2009 at 21:25 EyeMessiah says:
“Jaxtrasi says:
EyeMessiah:
That seems like a fairly unrelated complaint about hard level-based content locks.”
Very true, I’m just ranting truth be told. If it wasn’t for the fact that I actually quite enjoy wow’s core gameplay in terms of instances and group pvp and group quests (actually any of the MULTI player stuff) I’d tire of moaning about the endless meaningless treadmill.
09/03/2009 at 21:32 EyeMessiah says:
“but isn’t it reasonable for them to use some kind of pacing mechanism to prevent you entering every instance on day one?”
Its reasonable in the sense that it allows them to make more $$, and I suppose that technically its not Apeshit Crazy, but still; wow is basically a big plotless sandbox, why not just make it into a go-anywhere do anything sort of deal?
09/03/2009 at 21:51 EyeMessiah says:
“I wonder why we feel interested in stories in games which we would have no interest in any other medium. And often it really is genuine involvement in sub-literate trash.”
Its a different sort of involvement isn’t it? Its a bit more first-person. Cdr is right imo in that you come to a story in a game that you have been playing for a while pre-involved to some extent.
The story has to work that little bit less hard to draw you in because: “Woah that zombie totally jumped out at *me*.”
Other mediums have lots of advantages over games, but games are uniquely interactive and by being so get a bit of a head start in terms of closing the gap between you and the story (even if its tripe).
That said, I don’t think we should worry too much about just how bad game stories tend to be. It might seem significant, but wondering why people like stuff that sucks never got anyone anywhere. People will read, watch, play and listen to some pretty shockingly bad stuff. Someone linked to FotL recently, and they are pretty damn dire.
13/03/2009 at 12:59 Rei Onryou says:
Got bored at level 71. No pegacorn for me. :(