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[HyMyNameIsMatt]

have good exploration. this is what made kh1 interesting, and kh2 a huge piece of shit. verticality is always a good thing.

THANK YOU

Huge difficulty spikes drive me insane.  Its a common issue in games so heavily stat dependent.  Ff12 did it all the time and even its optional hunts didn't cover the xp needed to prevent excessive grinding.  OFF was really good about its difficulty curves, also about battles being relatively loose despite its simplicity.

Also I've never had a problem with random encounters.  Pokemon I think does them better since they are more predictable, but even though they probably aren't that good sounding on paper I enjoyed the tension of the mechanic a lot.

[Graham-]

Haven't gone through it all yet.... One thing to add that isn't a "trope," but is a thing that I think is important... since we're talking about JRPG goods/bads now.

The main drive of an RPG is the story, and the main drive of a JRPG is a narrator-directed story.

I want the tension in the combat to match the tension in the narrative. If the protagonists are fighting for their lives, I want to fight for mine. If they aren't then I don't want to be.

[Graham-]

To what JW said, about having crazy amounts of powers/spells at the end.... You have to get totally decked out in gear.  The acquisition of increasingly complex abilities is a necessity for JRPGs. You just have to balance them right. That's no easy task.

[JWK5]

To what JW said, about having crazy amounts of powers/spells at the end.... You have to get totally decked out in gear.  The acquisition of increasingly complex abilities is a necessity for JRPGs. You just have to balance them right. That's no easy task.

The problem is there is more often than not no complexity at all with all the mechanics in JRPGs, just a collection of obsolete options. 99% of the time you are just equipping what does the most damage, what has the most defense, etc. and occasionally swapping for elemental rock-paper-scissors. You're not really "decked out", often not even cosmetically (looking exactly the same despite your gear).

A player-selected set of options composed from a larger collection of options with equal weight (balanced on risk/reward) will yield better results I think. At least then you're planning a strategy rather than just skimming through a list of now-useless options.

[s0]

that's why i like the gear leveling in vagrant story. it's a good antidote to the "buy biggest sword and call it a day" syndrome. and the pokemon attack learning mechanic is a good antidote to huge amounts of obsolete spells.

tangent: "progression" and "opening up more options" are 2 separate things and imo one can't really replace the other.

[Schilcote]

The problem is there is more often than not no complexity at all with all the mechanics in JRPGs, just a collection of obsolete options. 99% of the time you are just equipping what does the most damage, what has the most defense, etc. and occasionally swapping for elemental rock-paper-scissors.

Any game where you can mathematically solve for the best choice out of the ones the game gives you (without having to, say, be a supercomputer) is not going to be a fun game.

In fact, I think there was an Extra Credits video that said exactly that.

[JWK5]

tangent: "progression" and "opening up more options" are 2 separate things and imo one can't really replace the other.

Though, when they are one in the same that is when I find they are best.

[Graham-]

Extra Credits actually said that "calculations" and choices are different things. Calculations can be fun. Just don't confuse them with choices. The skills trees in D2 and WoW are often calculations masquerading as choices, for example.

JW, I don't agree that usually you aren't "decked out." In Grandia II I felt powerful enough. Sure a lot of spells were useless, but a lot weren't, and I was certainly using progressively more as the game moved along.

I like leveling straight - just doing more damage ... but what I really like is acquiring more options.

tangent: "progression" and "opening up more options" are 2 separate things and imo one can't really replace the other.

Though, when they are one in the same that is when I find they are best.

Yes.

[Faust06]

I was actually thinking of starting a thread titled "fixing rpgs", but it would be redundant now. They're mostly terrible and unplayable. I agree with the vast majority of what's on Sandoval's list.

Exceptions I've seen don't necessarily have much strategic or tactical depth (which I agree is desperately needed) but at the very least aren't grind-heavy, have no random battles, and flow rather well (e.g. SMRPG). I've also tolerated FF7 when I was younger simply because it plays faster than most jrpgs (including most other FF games), and was one of the very first forrays I've had with jrpgs. The remainder of the content at the time made up for gameplay shortfalls.

[Graham-]

See Grandia II for a good battle system.

[JWK5]

See Grandia II for a good battle system.

The problem with Grandia 2 is that it is pretty easy to accidentally become way over-powered which waters down the battle system badly. To be fair though, that is another problematic mechanic I find in most RPGs and JRPGs: eventually grind overtakes skill. It is easy to accidentally over-level when trying to explore for treasure and such and once you start to get ahead you tend to just stay ahead.

[Graham-]

Do not grind, run from battles. No random battles in Grandia II, so no excuse.

But there should be something in the game that prevents people from grinding more than they should be.

[JWK5]

Do not grind, run from battles.

You grind to get money to get gear, to learn spells, etc. Let's say you are just trying to get more money or just learning spells, you'll gain experience whether you want it or not. If you want more options you grind, but if you grind you over-level. That is what makes it easy to accidentally put yourself ahead of the enemies in the game.

I've always wondered why they just don't tie the stat progression solely into the gear (a la Final Fantasy Tactics). Tying the spells into the gear would be good too. That way your primary means of progression is money which buys the gear that grants the options and better stats which gives more value to the equipment and better paces the progression. Even if you had ridiculous amounts of money you could only buy what was available so you'd only be as far ahead of the curve as your progress would allow.

[MAVW]

Well, I think everyone said about everything I'd say. I'll just add that if you want to make an JRPG alike deconstructing some of it's elements, I'd suggest you to play the Earthbound/mother series, specially Mother 3.

[Graham-]

jw,

You can run from 75% of the battles and have plenty of options. But that's a tangent now.

Your idea is right though; it is a good one.

You don't need gear tied to abilities. You could restrict leveling in any way you want. But gear is easy for the user to understand. He/she knows what is available. Honestly anti-grinding mechanisms aren't that hard to build. Designers just have to choose to put them in there.

I guess that's my "most annoying trope:" bad grinding. Never grind boring monsters. Never power-level.

[Faust06]

Tying abilities to gear sounds like it would be interesting. It would force swaps, as the selection process is more complex than just picking the strongest of anything and accounting for something rudimentary like one stat for a battle (fire res/atk). I would be rid of blanket leveling altogether (the sort that increases all/most stats per increment), and at most allow the player to tweak a limited number of stats to balance characters differently. Emphasis on leveling and grind is a pretty tell-tale sign that a game is virtually mindless.

[s0]

the tying levels to gear stuff is exactly what monster hunter does. it's more interesting than normal leveling but it's not necessarily a safeguard against grind (MH is very grindy)

also im doubtful whether removing grind from a standard jrpg is going to make it that much "deeper". i mean normal turnbased jrpg combat (the kind that consists of selecting options from a menu) is pretty limited and it'd probably be easy to figure out the optimal strategy for every enemy regardless of grind. at best you'd get a kind of trial and error puzzle game.

of course you could always make a "srpg" but thats just a tbs with a jrpg theme.

[Faust06]

also im doubtful whether removing grind from a standard jrpg is going to make it that much "deeper".

True, it would have no bearing on that. The tossup seems to be between fewer boring battles or more interesting ones for more enjoyable progression.

Roguelikes almost universally have leveling of sorts, and while deep they aren't laid out exactly like srpgs. I could conceive of a field-map switching to a fast-response turn-based system when enemies are in the vicinity with more environmental factors than what's typical of srpgs (a giant empty grid basically with some elevation), like traps, pits, rooms and hallways, etc. But then micromanaging several characters, as is typical of jrpgs, could ruin the whole thing, so I guess the difficulty is in making that fun. In DF you just set automated tasks, which could go well with helper-types, as in Brogue, with more advanced AI. Again the logistics of this sounds daunting as hell, but it couuuuld work. Maybe offer the ability to switch between characters to control directly for turns.

[Graham-]

sinclair,

I don't mean you should remove fighting. I love fighting. If you want to level that's fine. Just make the process of leveling interesting, and don't let it break your challenge curve.

You're right, without leveling you do not have an RPG anymore.

--

Faust, you're talking about leveling inside a SRPG? Yeah, you have a difficult balancing problem. That's probably the only reason we don't see things like that. But it could more than work. No one's done it yet, is all.

--

As a comment on the value of leveling in JRPGs, since that seems to be relevant to the topic, and helps explain why we get the endless random-battle mania.... When I fight in a JRPG I am thinking about how my party is structured. I have to think long-term, over and over, in every battle. That ties me emotionally to my progress.

[s0]

Roguelikes almost universally have leveling of sorts, and while deep they aren't laid out exactly like srpgs.

oops, you're right i somehow forgot about roguelikes. there are actually a couple of attempts at party-based roguelikes ("real" roguelikes), but they end up not feeling very roguelike and more like a squad tactics game set in a dungeon (and also tend to be very, very slow). roguelike with a ff12 style "gambit" system for your party members sounds interesting.

btw i was just thinking how FTL is kinda set up like a jrpg (explorable overworld with modal combat encounters), maybe that's an avenue the genre could explore?

I don't mean you should remove fighting. I love fighting. If you want to level that's fine. Just make the process of leveling interesting, and don't let it break your challenge curve.

You're right, without leveling you do not have an RPG anymore.

i never talked about fighting idk where you're getting that from. also i wasnt talking about removing leveling, just removing grind (my game has leveling but no grinding btw).

Faust, you're talking about leveling inside a SRPG? Yeah, you have a difficult balancing problem. That's probably the only reason we don't see things like that. But it could more than work. No one's done it yet, is all.

uhm... what? almost every srpg ever has leveling. in fact i can't think of one without it atm. what srpgs usually do is make the leveling strategic, e.g. "do i let this weak unit kill this enemy for the exp so it gets up to speed with the rest of my army or do i level up my strongest unit even more?"