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This one ain't for you young 'uns out there. And maybe I'm beating a dead whores, but, have RPG's gotte ridiculously easy of late? By of late I mean, in the last 15 or more years. I mean, I must've spent a HUNDRED hours on Phantasy Star, and I still never beat it. Then, I got a nintendo, and spent a goodly amount of time on Final Fantasy, I mean a good, long time, but I beat it. Then I got a genesis, and I got some silly game that I beat in like 20 hours and I was all "WTF"? then, Phantasy Star III...and, while the generations concept RULED ALL, there was an hour of shit between fucking generations. Then there was Secret of Mana, and I thought "Well, things are looking up!" then, there was FFXII, and I thought "Goddammit" (There was a long time where I didn't play too many video games)

Now we have KoToR, and the like, and we're LITERALLY measuring game time played in like 20 hours or 30 hours and people are IMPRESSED by that! Am I the only one who misses mindlessly grinding away fro hours at a time to build up my strength and shit so I am actually ABLE to move on in the storyline without being smashed to a pasty goo?

No? Well, fuck you anyway.

I was considering that very thing yesterday.

I remember grinding my characters on FF3 so much that Celes could do 79,992 damage in one attack. Illuminaire (sp?) and the Atma Weapon. My characters could cast all spells... handed Kefka his ass.

Nobody grinds anymore. (I did enjoy Kotor and Kotor2 though, don't get me wrong)

Chardok wrote:Am I the only one who misses mindlessly grinding away fro hours at a time to build up my strength and shit so I am actually ABLE to move on in the storyline without being smashed to a pasty goo?

You might be. What's the point of all that mindless leveling? I think the difference is that we've moved away from roll-playing hack and slash to role-playing (as RPGs should be). The focus is on the story and character development, not abusing rules loopholes to get insane numbers. Which is a very good change, in my opinoin.

Chardok wrote:This one ain't for you young 'uns out there. And maybe I'm beating a dead whores, but, have RPG's gotte ridiculously easy of late? By of late I mean, in the last 15 or more years.

First; those poor whores.

Second; I don't think so. Take a look a Persona 1 and 2. Those games are rather difficult (well, two mostly due to the battle system) and then there are games like Unlimited SaGa. It's more that the average gamer has gotten older and more experienced at playing games and have come to notice trends and ways of exploiting common battle system themes.

Then you should probably take a look at why those games were hard. Were they hard in a fair way, or were they hard because the system was broken?

Though, in the end, I suppose it comes down to the percentage of RPGs that are harder. Is it larger now or back then?

The last RPG I played that actually grabbed me in any way was Arcanum. And Fallout 1 & 2 before that. And in there as well, Planescape Torment.

KotOR was very blah. NWN had the most ridiculous opening chapter that went forever and did nothing. BGs I found to be nothing but the life of a US Postal Worker - deliver something, kill shit, deliver something, kill shit. Morrowind was an over-rated and horribly unbalanced pile of shit. Man - when the hell is Final Flamewar 2 coming out, at least that gives me something to look forward to.

Nobody grinds anymore.

I think games just need to be more creative in how they design their grinding. FFX had a good idea to give the player a lot of side activities to do, but failed by making those activities too mind-numbingly frustrating. Making battles less repetitive (read: not the same dozen enemy formations all the time) or just plain more exciting would alleviate the annoyance.

One game that took forever was the Xenosaga series, the first one you sort of kinda had to level to beat one or two of the bosses, unless your stratagy was down pat you would get your ass handed to you over and over agian.

The second Xenosaga demanded leveling, and I mean DEMANDED there were parts in the game were you would hit the next boss and it would hand your ass to you six diffrent ways. Plus you had to keep everyone leveled because you never knew when the game said, ok Jim John and Jeff, your level 99 so you get to sit this one out, random charater two and three, and you Innocent Bystander, you guys get to defeat the supreme evil, good luck with that.

I found Baldurs Gate not easy, but really boring like Anders makes it out. So boring I never bothered actually finishing the story. Kotor was good, but after you play it once why play it again?

I find the whole concept of CRPGs to be flawed however. An RPG is a game you play with your friends. It is NOT solitaire.

Mr Bean wrote:One game that took forever was the Xenosaga series, the first one you sort of kinda had to level to beat one or two of the bosses, unless your stratagy was down pat you would get your ass handed to you over and over agian.

The second Xenosaga demanded leveling, and I mean DEMANDED there were parts in the game were you would hit the next boss and it would hand your ass to you six diffrent ways. Plus you had to keep everyone leveled because you never knew when the game said, ok Jim John and Jeff, your level 99 so you get to sit this one out, random charater two and three, and you Innocent Bystander, you guys get to defeat the supreme evil, good luck with that.

Actually, I found that the key to fighting in Xenosaga II was matching your fighters to the enemies' weaknesses(i.e.: If they are weak to fire, use Ziggy), and making extensive use of the Boost system. I literally went from nearly getting my entire party stomped in one fight, to totally owning the exact same battle the second time I fought it, with no levelling in between.

I like an RPG to require strategy, but I was never particularly fond of wandering around in a big circle doing endless random encounters to level up. My favorite console RPG of all time is Chrono Trigger, and a big part of that is that it featured precisely zero random encounters and zero level grind.

I see it as the designers aren't as creative as they used to be. Most games are fairly short (including Xenosaga, although I love them), and many of the puzzles are "find the hidden item" where you don't get enough clues to really know what to do.

The exception for length is Star Ocean, which is a game I despise for a horrible combat system and terrible plot. It's long, but it's just a waste of time.

The lack of length in modern games comes down to the type of content that has to be created for them. It probably takes longer to design and path a single area of something like Jade Empire, with all the geometric complexity and textures required than all three worlds of Phantasy Star.

Stofsk wrote:Kotor was good, but after you play it once why play it again?

I play it again because I really enjoy the story. It's the same reason why I read my favorite books many times over.

As for RPG's I find that endless leveling is rather boring. I play games for the story not to spend hours trying to beat the boss. Although making it too easy isn't a good idea either.

Which is why I try different things each time I play a game to make it more difficult.

Well, the games have gotten shorter, and and I think easier. Granted there are a few gems out there, but even they are not as long.

(For mindless leveling up in KOTOR II, the hidden tomb with the dead Jedi in it. Keep searching him with then the Hssisss (sp) keep appearing, make sure you have force drain.)

Stofsk wrote:Kotor was good, but after you play it once why play it again?

Play it again as Evil, or as Good, do the oppisite of what you did the first time.

I usually play RPG's 2 times. The first time I go through, playing the story, usually do very little of the sidequests. The next time I use hints from the net, to get all the items and see what I missed the first time.

An important consideration when we discuss difficulty in games as a whole must be made between what I like to term "intelligence difficulty" and "stupid difficulty".

I define 'intelligent difficulty' as the kind that relies on relatively fast reaction time, strategical/tactical knowledge, and accuracy. I define 'stupid difficulty' as just giving the enemies 3423892378HP and 5762341273 attack strength, or making you restart from the beginning of a stage if you die.

The major problem with RPGs is that the vast majority of difficulty comes from stupid sources. I think grinding is the videogame Spawn of Satan: I have never liked it, and will never view it as anything other than a waste of time. So yes, to answer the question, RPGs have decreased in difficulty. What needs to happen in the genre is to replace stupid difficulty with intelligent, as opposed to just removing the stupid difficulty, which is the current-day state.

I never understood how people could apply labels like "easy" or "difficult" to RPGs. The difficulty of a video game is a measure of the amount of skill required to complete it, and in non-hybrid RPGs skill simply isn't a factor. The main factor behind success and failure in an RPG is simply how long the player is willing to put up with the mindless tedium that passes for gameplay in those games before he/she gives up and finds something better to do.

I've never played an RPG I thought was really easy, because I don't have the time to level up my characters like a munchkin. I have to use every trick and strategy available to me to scrape by a battle at the lowest possible levels.

DrkHelmet wrote:I remember grinding my characters on FF3 so much that Celes could do 79,992 damage in one attack. Illuminaire (sp?) and the Atma Weapon. My characters could cast all spells... handed Kefka his ass.

Ultima is easier, and you can do 99,999 damage in one attack pretty easily. If you have an economizer and someone with Ultima, that makes a very powerful combination---without lots of grinding necessary.

sketerpot wrote:

DrkHelmet wrote:I remember grinding my characters on FF3 so much that Celes could do 79,992 damage in one attack. Illuminaire (sp?) and the Atma Weapon. My characters could cast all spells... handed Kefka his ass.

Ultima is easier, and you can do 99,999 damage in one attack pretty easily. If you have an economizer and someone with Ultima, that makes a very powerful combination---without lots of grinding necessary.

Oh she could do hits like that at like... level 46 if I remember correctly (which I probably don't, been a long ass time since I played). However, I got everyone up to like level 73 just for the hell of it. Max damage as I remember was 9999 (spells or regular attacks), but she had a Genji glove so that's 19998, and an offering (attacks x4), which brought it to 79,992 damage in one attack.

You people need to play Fallout on the harder settings. That actually makes consequences matter. Heck, get away from those consoles and play Fallout 2. Now, I say.

My main beef with RPGs is the lack of intelligent puzzle design. It's all "find the hidden object" or "press the right combination of floor panels". They need riddle games that involve elements of the storyarc. It'd serve two purposes: A) It'd make you think and B) It'd make you pay attention to the story. Requiring you to develop and use different stratagies to defeat various enemies would also help add a sense of accomplishment when you finally win through.

The thing that makes or breaks an RPG in the end, though, is the story. If you don't care about the story, no amount of clever puzzles will keep you going. The developers need to get away from pretty eye candy and cool fights and focus primarily on the world and the characters. Who is this person and why is he here and what is he doing/has he done are all major questions that should be answered long before graphics or combat is planned. One of the reasons I liked KotOR so much is that it's story kept you hooked. It wasn't about the fight system, which could use a bit of improvement, or the graphics, which were ok but suffer in the facial animation department to a degree. It was about the story. I've played it over and over, and I continue to find it fun, to find myself drawn into the world despite knowing how things will turn out. As someone above said, it's like reading a good book over and over. It just never gets old.

Fallout! You don't really HAVE puzzles, except that I can only think of ONE at the end of Fallout 2, which is minor. The closest thing to puzzles is figuring out (logically) how to do a situation. To use diplomacy, force, stealth, or manipulation. Or blackmail. Each of which is workable.

Chardok wrote:Then there was Secret of Mana, and I thought "Well, things are looking up!" then, there was FFXII, and I thought "Goddammit" (There was a long time where I didn't play too many video games)

Er, what?

Darth Raptor wrote:

Chardok wrote:Then there was Secret of Mana, and I thought "Well, things are looking up!" then, there was FFXII, and I thought "Goddammit" (There was a long time where I didn't play too many video games)

Er, what?

I think he means FF X-2. Which might I add was extraordinarly weird. Being a fan of FFX, I thought I'd get into it. I...didn't, to say the least. It felt so disconnected and random.