5 Rpg Dealbreakers
Posted by DanielHere’s the top 5 things that will make me stop playing a new rpg:
#1 – Too much backstory before the game starts
When I start a new game I don’t really care about the backstory yet, unless of course it’s an established franchise. I despise long text sequences about the world and ancient wars and political nonsense.
I would much rather start playing as soon as possible. In Dawn’s Light we just have a quick opening scene before you’re in control but I think it could be even better. I think the best solution would be a very short scene to grab the player’s attention and then a fun sequence to start off.
#2 – Random Battles
Random battles are an outdated game mechanism. Personally I cannot play a game with random battles for more than a few minutes without being annoyed.
Adding visible enemies is not at all hard and it doesn’t even take that long. When we put in the enemies in Dawn’s Light it was really just a copy/paste job that didn’t take much more than an hour.
# 3 – Nothing but fighting
When I play an rpg I want to be entertained. That means I want some variety. If all I ever get to do is fight enemies in a dull cave I’m going to be bored.
This doesn’t mean I just want a block pushing puzzle every 3 rooms either. I want content that matches the setting. I want to explore an interesting environment, collect items to build a solution or at fight enemies in a different way.
#4 – Too much blah blah
Sometimes characters just go on and on about nothing. If there’s an emergency, why are the characters standing around talking about it for 12 minutes instead of doing something. If somebody has something to say I think he or she should just get to the point.
#5 – Stalling
I absolutely hate when I feel like my time is being wasted. If you don’t have 20 hours of content in your game please don’t try to stretch out what you do have. Many games are guilty of this. Things like random battles every 3 steps, dialogue that just goes on forever, unnecessary 2 second pauses after every line. I would much rather play a short fun game than a long boring one.
I also don’t understand games that boast 50, 80 or 100 hours of gameplay. They are lying. There is quite simply no way to create that amount of content for a game unless of course you have too many battles or giant empty maps to run across. I would like to see play times measured after you remove all of the fighting, that way you could really see how much content there was.
The worst example of this in Dawn’s Light is the slime island which I’m really not a big fan of. The sole reason we put it in was to offer something for players who do like to fight a whole bunch of enemies.
After you finished though you always seemed to have some spare tickets. We decided to put something in that would cost a whole bunch of tickets that most people wouldn’t bother to get. I think we underestimated people’s desire to get 100% because quite a few people mentioned that they were frustrated by the grind. I have since lowered the ticket requirement by a whole lot.
By the way, has anybody gone back to slime city while wearing the slime outfit? We wrote new dialogue for pretty much every slime there just as a bonus for anybody who got the slime outfit.
I accidentally wrote too much in this blog post…
So what are your Rpg Dealbreakers?
1. Boring Dialogue – “Hi, I am training to become a mage” BOOORING!!! Stop wasting my life!!!
2. Characters named boy, woman or old man – PEOPLE AREN’T CALLED THESE NAMES!!! Talk about lazy! I blame this on Chrono Trigger, quite possibly the worst game of all time.
3. Games with 5k moves – Hmmm, will I use punch, kick, bite or claw? Who cares anyway, they all do exact same thing!
4. Games with one overpowered move – What is the point in equipping all of your guys with different items if you can just use shockwave every time and then spam mana pots out of battle?
5. Games with horrendous character portraits.
Only have two REAL deal breakers…
1. Random Battles – HATE THEM! As soon as the first random battle occurs, I escape the fight, shut down the game, and uninstall the program. The whole reason that Aveyond, Eternal Eden, and, of course, Dawn’s Light got the chance to strut their stuff was because of no random enemies.
2. A combination of weak, clichéd, annoying, or just plain awful storylines, characters, and dialogue – There really is no excuse for any of these blunders. The whole point of an RPG is to take the role of interesting character and follow them on a journey. You have to be interested in both the characters taking the journey and the journey itself. If the storylines, characters, and dialogue suck, no one would want to spend hours reading the dialogue and playing the game to its conclusion.
All in all, Random Battles is non-negotiable. It really is the only 100% deal breaker. I can look past bad storylines, characters, or dialogue (not a combination mind you, just one of the three).
Crono trigger one of the worst games ever? WOW you must hate jrpgs.
I like Random Battles, more annoying are enemies you can see but are unavoidable.And a real jRPG does not have a problem with randoms fights. None of you has grown with games like final Fantasy 1-6, Lufia, Dragon Quest etc.
But to be fair the game here are not jRPG they are casual RPGs.
I am afraid I have to agree on the random battle thing. I played DQ1 on the NES and the thing is, back then, the random battles sort of made sense. They added a real sense of nerviness to the game; or maybe it’s just that things were new. I still remember going to get Erdrick’s Armour (I think) from that scary rundown town. Or how when you crossed a certain bridge, the enemies would get so much harder. Shivvver!
And stop trolling RE: Chrono Trigger, which everybody knows is one of the best paced RPGs of all time. And one of the first console RPGs to do away with random battles.
^DQ1 has a Zen like quality to it. I don’t think it’s possible to be nervous when playing that game…
Again, since this is just for commenting on RPG deal-breakers, I won’t slam any games specifically. However, I only have one real deal-breaker anyway. I find that I’m able to get around most game flaws in some roundabout way and continue playing, much to the annoyance of people around me, except for one thing:
*Character Development*
It needs to be there. This is the reason I treasure Fire Emblem games. Hell, this can be unnervingly subtle as well. Best example are the countless “silent protagonist” RPGs out there. The world literally revolves around your decisions, and your decisions define your growth, which can either be taken at face value or embraced by your imagination. Best example? Shin Megami Tensei 1, 2, and 3. Those who ponder their actions and bend the game’s world to their knees understand it all best. Given the proper NPC responses and your own interactive ego, even the most obtuse and intangible settings/characters can transform and develop into something undeniably compelling and, for lack of better words, bad*ss.
Random battles in puzzle rooms are a big turnoff. Things like random/non-random battles or save point/save anywhere can all work if the game is designed nicely. But I shouldn’t get into battles when I’m trying to solve a puzzle.
With action-RPGs, my big dealbreaker is if the control is bad. I should not have to fight with the camera and the controls to make my hero jump from one ledge to another. Platforming is fun, but not when the camera is drunk and the control is loose.
And lately, I’m getting a little tired of childish heroes. At least in Persona, those teenagers talked and acted like typical teenagers and not like 8 year olds. I’d also like storylines to not be afraid to go deeper into interpersonal character relationships and not just leave them at shallow grade school crush level.
This blog post is now one of my favorites ever. #2-5 hit exactly on what I think when I’m trying a new rpg. Even more glad to hear it coming from a developer that has the power to shape the creation of future adventures.
as for the #1, I don’t mind too much backstory, but eventually fantasy names and places mesh together, and i’m not going to remember that at XX years in the past, a powerful character by the name of “Oeiur’thdifsh” vanquished demon “Maiuxiozp” in the realm of “Blarghsville.”
I put up with random encounters, but at some point that feeling creeps in – I just walked into a pointlessly placed dead end with a chest containing a potion. PLEEEEEEEEASE let me reach the next doorway without having to fight 10 more goblins. If the game has long load times(hi FFXII), I know I’m in for a long night.
I know something is wrong with game design when I just hold down Z(or A for xbox360 or x for ps2/3) to mash attack, then alt-tab to read up on gaming news, or even go get a drink, while my characters take their turn. It’s not good for the player to be losing interest and getting bored mid-game.
I couldn’t agree more with the RPG dealbreakers Daniel posted. In addition to those, I have two more pet peeves:
1) Bad grammar and spelling!!! Seriously. I know many game developers aren’t native English speakers but how hard is it to find someone who does have a good grasp of the English language and get them to quickly go through your dialogue etc. (SHAMELESS PLUG to all you game developers out there: I am an editor with a passion for RPGs and would looooove to get involved in RPG storyline editing. I’m sure there’s a market for this out there!)
2) Guesswork/mindless clicking. I absolutely hate having to interact with every stone, every plant, every blind wall just to find hidden rooms, quest items or sometimes whole new quests! Games like Dawn’s Light and Eternal Eden are set up a bit differently and tricky quest solving isn’t as big a part of the game, but Aveyond is an excellent example of how to do it right (in my opinion, anyway). Some quests take you to various continents through many different steps, but if you pay attention to what you’re doing and who you’re talking to you should be able to figure out how to solve your quest logically and not by guesswork.
The games I have invariably gotten very annoyed with were games where you had to stand in exactly the right spot at exactly the right moment and then make sure your party leader is wearing the flibbertigibbet bracelet and then you’re transported to a new dungeon… but you never get ANY clues about this whatsoever. Good games will allow you to finish 100% of the quests through logic and deduction.
Sorry for this super-belated reply (the Christmas game brought me back to your site and made me realize I ought to have been reading the interesting blog all along). But anyway…. in response to your question…. after compulsively grinding my way around Slime Island for ages in order to get the slime costume, I did go back to Slime City and it was SO awesome to find the dialogue written there just for visitors wearing a slime costume. That whole scene made me super happy, as did the slime costume itself. The grind…. not so much. But the costume and the reaction of the slimes to the costume…. very happy!
keep the games as you are doing them they are great i have played most of the rpg games and liked most of them i played zelda and final fan, dragon quest as i have had most every system since pong way back when then the nintedo plus the sega then playstation etc plus my computor and guess what these games are the best. my husband would not play on other systems but he does now and likes them
My five MOST UN-FAVORITE things of a RPG that will cause me to stop playing or never buy from that company again are:
1) Deliberate time-stalling … such as: your character suddenly being unable to walk quickly, but rather in slow motion … or, such as: going deep into a dungeon and then having to walk back out and then finding out you must go back into that dungeon later in the game and again walk back out …
2) Racist language or sexism. This is sooooo prevalent in the gaming industry that I can barely tolerate it.
3) Offering nothing but fighting. There has to be some variety to get this writer (me) back, to spend my hard-earned money on another game by the same company.
4) Not offering enough “save” points … in case you must leave a game (cause you have things to do in the real world) … so that you can come back another day to finish up where you left off.
5) The value of a Quest Log or some sort of way of keeping track of what has to be completed in a game is invaluable to us (the public).
The rest of the comments that I have viewed so far in this section (in my opinion) are things that I do not mind enduring. If you buy a game that is decent (in storyline and variety of quests/things to do), then you MUST endure instructions of how to do things, or the history behind a certain artifact, and so on.
Thank you for allowing me to express my opinion.
1. Impossible battles- Specifically, Battle of South Moundtop in Saga Frontier 2… challenging fights are good, it keeps you on your toes. But, do you need to go online and pull up a walk through every time your faced with an impossible fight?
2. Too much story- I’d rather buy a book then pay 20-50 dollars for a game that’s all story
3. Poor character development- enough said
First, an admission: I’m 63 and been playing games since the birth of the ‘Master System.’ I’ve had every game console since then (even the failures, Saturn etc.) That said, yes I agree with all those who hate random encounters. Totally frustrating. If developers loosely based their games on the success stories (Dawn’s Light and so on) I think it would be better. My perfect game? No random encounters, heavy puzzle element (challenging) detailed quest book, a genuine 50 hours+ gameplay. For a game loosely following these suggestions, I wouldn’t care what it cost.