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[s0]

It's sad that a whole genre has been defined by it's worst ilk and traits. Take something like Koudelkas redemption goth theme and mix it with Rivieras exploration and combat mechanics. There is most likely a fine new game there hidden in there.

well yeah but that's largely the genre's fault bc they keep burying what originality they have under a load of recycled crap. i mean there are still occasional good jrpgs (anything from the shin megami tensei franchise, xenoblade etc), but audiences are dwindling. as a result devs seem to be playing it safe and focusing on their "core demographic" that can't get enough of those old tropes rather than branching out and trying something new.

[Alec S.]

My thoughs (as someone who doesn't like really grindy RPGs):

You should have some gameplay hooks which you can use to make encounters unique.  In other words, some mechanics that will make it so that the player can't just create a maximum damage calculation and use that for every encounter.  The Strength/Weakness system in SMT games is a good example of this.  The difference between winning and losing a fight shouldn't be what level you are.  Within the intended level bounds, you should have to work out a strategy taking into account both your current ability set and the enemies' movesets. 

A big element to support that is experience Scaling: Figure out the optimal level range in an area.  Basically, the level where the encounters, and especially the boss, provide the sort of challenge you want.  Then make it so that if players are under-leveld, they can quickly reach the right level by fighting difficult enemies, and make it so that if the player is properly leveled, have enemies give so little experience that it is difficult or even impossible to become over-leveled by fighting enemies in that area.

[skaz]

I loved FF7 back in the days, but I don't think I could play it today. JRPG suffer from a huge sum of issue to fit my current tastes. So I don't know if my point of view is relevant, but for me the worst part is the grind, random combats with absolutely zero challenge, spreadsheets management, menu based encounters. It feels like I've just described what makes a huge part of the genre though...

[Alevice]

My suggestions is to make each game component meaningfull and cut down the filler bits.

Most JRPGs have a relatively irrelevant item progression and stats system. Unless you are min maxing for fun, neither of these usually require any thoughtful action from the player. Make every stat impact the world and not just combat, have every weapon be distinct somehow and not just being a sequence of +1 upgrades, make combat distinct where a given enemy configuration requires distinct strategies, and so on.

[oahda]

Yeah, a bazillion items to collect and combine in the right way is what irks me about most RPG's. I prefer a more limited approach as taken by many other genres. However, it seems people actually enjoy this, not just in RPG's but also in games with crafting and so on, so I guess my preference isn't worth much. I also dislike experience and levelling systems, which most probably would argue are essential to the genre.

So yeah, it's probably better to conclude that I just don't like the RPG genre and don't really have much of a say in this and am better of just sticking to other games?

[Pfotegeist]

it comes down to better story material making the game worth remembering.

[oakthesnail]

To me, JRPGs nowadays are all about the story - the atmosphere and world that the writers/artists create. Combat tends to be recycled and repetitive, but that goes without saying since the formula hasn't really changed since the 90s.

[valrus]

I think the classic era you're talking about still holds up pretty well; it's the period after that (PS1 and later) that the serious bloat and over-padding set in.  But recreating that classic magic is an uphill battle since lots of people have tried to recapture that magic, and it's not the kind of magic that holds up well under incessant repetition.

Here are a few things about that era that I appreciated, that don't always survive in modern attempts at that style:

• Even though there are a lot of random battles, they don't take very long individually.  It's striking to fire up an emulator and remember just how briskly the games flowed.  An SNES-era FF battle would often be over quicker than a PS1/2-era screen transition and intro cinematic.  It's harder to get annoyed at random battles or grindiness when you can get through several battles a minute.
• The "dungeons" were, unless I'm filtering this with nostalgia, fairly interesting in theme.  Take Chrono Trigger in particular.  You don't spend a lot of time in the standard fantasy dungeon except when you are, in fact, escaping from a fantasy dungeon.  You could tell that Square put a lot of effort in the SNES and PS1 eras into dungeon variety.  That was part of the wow factor, that they now had the memory and budget that most dungeons were visually or thematically distinct, and could tell a story beyond "get to the monster at the end of the cave".
  
  After this era, I think Square in particular goes a bit odd, alternating between barely-themed dungeons and extremely abstract magical places.  Thinking of FFX and beyond, either I can't really remember the dungeons except as one-word descriptions ("sewer", "mountain", "forest") or I can't really describe them at all (floaty rock bits? purple energy stuff maybe?  It hasn't stuck in my mind well enough).  I don't dislike those games, but the "dungeons" don't stand out thematically for me.
  
  Maybe modern JRPGs are still pretty diverse, dungeon-wise, and I just haven't played them in years.  Or Chrono Trigger et al. were full of cookie-cutter dungeons and I'm only remembering the highlights.  But I see a lot of modern indie games start with this "fantasy dungeon" trope and get stuck there permanently, and it makes me miss the era when the RPG genre was actively trying to get *out* of that rut.
  
• The stories start to get serious but are still relatively breezy.  Part of this is the speed of the battles/dungeons, I think -- story arcs aren't very long because of this -- and the relative lack of dialogue.  They don't dwell on things the way later JRPGs do; a lot of the classic and emotionally resonant moments of the SNES era were really just a panel or two of dialogue, or a one-minute cutscene.  The brevity is key to the resonance; after something building up throughout the game, with a line of dialogue here or there, there's a short scene that makes things suddenly clear, and then it's let go except for one or two callbacks later in the script.

Anyway, my basic thought is just that a lot of the problems with the JRPG genre are minimized by brevity and its consequence, variety.

[s0]

actually JRPGs from the snes era already suffered from the overlong intro problem. it was pretty much there as soon as the genre started getting more story focused. both chrono trigger and earthbound take forever to "get going" plot-wise for instance. final fantasy 7 has an intro cinematic, but is actually much better on that front because it pretty much drops you straight into the story and doesn't open with some long winded bs about the protagonist's small hometown getting attacked by The Ultimate Evil(tm). tho to be fair, FF6 wasn't bad either with its twist on the town attack thing.

one thing the FF7 intro gets right that most other jrpgs (or actually rpgs in general) don't is that it doesn't try to spoonfeed you every bit of information. you start out not really knowing who sephiroth is, or what shinra or mako or etc. are, but that's ok.

oh another problem is that these games are usually overlong. for most of them there's no real reason why they need to be 50+ hours. speaking as someone who doesn't have the time to play a lot of long games anymore, it'd be great if there were more jrpgs that you could complete in under 10hrs.

[Jordgubben]

oh another problem is that these games are usually overlong. for most of them there's no real reason why they need to be 50+ hours. speaking as someone who doesn't have the time to play a lot of long games anymore, it'd be great if there were more jrpgs that you could complete in under 10hrs.

Word. This is the main reason why I stopped playing these games. It is however a tough design problem to solve. So much of the mechanics depend on the scale (number of monsters, items, locations etc.). The power creep is part of the charm with these games, but cramming the carracter growth into a 10h story line will most likely make it to steep.

[gimymblert]

I don't agree chrono trigger have the perfect pacing and the story start greatly, going from the fair to the trial is one of the most gaming memorable moment. The game always have a twist that actually advance the plot, surprise the player and lead to the next section. It owes it part in that the plot is set up as a real investigation, so you go to place always learning something, character aren't deep but have enough story to be compelling and not overstay their melodramatic outcome. There is actual level design and combat have actual dynamism, enemy attack each other, they have pattern to observe and take advantage off that aren't just RPS etc ... this game was the perfect entertainment with a perfect pacing, it has 20h max.

[Hipshot]

I thought I wrote in this thread before, guess I didn't! =D

Anyway, like others say random battles, it's the worst.
I would go as far as to say that FF w/o random battles would be a much, much better game. Make the player choose when he wants to encounter the monsters instead, Heroes of Might and Magic style.

[valrus]

I'd agree that FFVII has good beginning pacing, as well as FFVI, FFIX, and FFX.  All of these begin in medias res and then slowly reveal the what and why and how.

But even then, Chrono Trigger doesn't really take forever to get going; as Jimym says it's a game that only takes about 20 hours to play.  CT only starts off "slow" proportional to its short playtime; you're into the initial plot (the 600 A.D. Marle mix-up) within an hour, and you know about the broader plot (Lavos) within a few more hours, soon after you've escaped from 600 A.D. into 2300 A.D.  That's a pretty standard pacing for a SNES Square game; except for the heavyweight, FFVI, they were pretty much 20-25 hour games.

[FrankieSmileShow]

I think one very important thing is the beginning.
RPGs/JRPGs are so story/narrative-focused, that I feel the most important thing to make them work is the same advice as in most other storytelling genres: Your beginning needs to be really good. The very start of the game needs to put its hooks right into the player.

Do not go for a slow build. Not too slow anyway. If your draw is the characters, put some of the best characters you got right at the beginning and make sure the players fall in love with them right away. If your hook is a mystery, set it up as soon as you can and have the players keep playing to find the answer. If the creative fantasy world or strange setting is the draw, give them a very good taste of it as soon as you can. Open with it. If its the humor, make sure to showcase this as much as you can in the intro. If its the art style, show it off. Got a good musician? Put in some damn catchy tunes in the intro sequence.

If you cant think of a single specific thing your game can hook the players with, or if your game's draw is really primarily its mechanics, then try to make the story as inobstrusive as possible at the start, keep the pace as snappy as you can, or you will risk losing most players during your intro. And consider figuring out a hook, because those really help.

This hook is what makes your players follow, this is what will make them want to master whatever mechanics you have. Even if your play mechanics are really fun, many people wont give them a chance and bother to learn them properly without being hooked in first if the game has cutscenes or is generally slow paced to start.

If you are kind of improvising the game as you go, like making it with a very small team, Id strongly recommend leaving the design of the introduction for very late in the games' development, so you are in top shape for its design and have a stronger idea of your game's strengths and weaknesses, and of what things you might want to setup at the beginning. Of course you should still have a plan for how the game starts, but id wait for late in the games dev cycle to set it down to stone and finish it.

Imagine the players only giving your game 20 minutes before deciding whether to keep playing or not. Do you think that first 20 minutes works as a good little demo? Do they want to see what happens next, or were you waiting a bit more before hooking them in?
Its even better if you can do it in 10 minutes. Or in the first 30 seconds after the player pressed start, that's the real deal.

[Landshark RAWR]

basically your player is that big head thing from rick and morty

you gotta get shwifty or your planet is going to explode

[s0]

This hook is what makes your players follow, this is what will make them want to master whatever mechanics you have. Even if your play mechanics are really fun, many people wont give them a chance and bother to learn them properly without being hooked in first if the game has cutscenes or is generally slow paced to start.

yeah, this is a big problem with the genre. so many games take hours to even unlock all of the core mechanics. one of the worst offenders ive played is FF13 where it takes 20+ hours to unlock the quest system.

also one issue i have is dialog writing. the dialog should be entertaining tp read/listen to. it kinda sucks when games purport to be "story focused" but then treat writing as seemingly an afterthought. ok with jrpgs that's probably the result of sloppy translation work more often than not, but still

[battlerager]

• The "dungeons" were, unless I'm filtering this with nostalgia, fairly interesting in theme.  Take Chrono Trigger in particular.  You don't spend a lot of time in the standard fantasy dungeon except when you are, in fact, escaping from a fantasy dungeon.  You could tell that Square put a lot of effort in the SNES and PS1 eras into dungeon variety.  That was part of the wow factor, that they now had the memory and budget that most dungeons were visually or thematically distinct, and could tell a story beyond "get to the monster at the end of the cave".
  

I haven't played Chrono Trigger (EUROPEAN HERE), but for example Lufia had really repetitive and non-memorable locations while being a fine JRPG otherwise. It certainly wasn't the "Norm" for the genre to have varied, interesting locations.

[gimymblert]

Yo should play chrono trigger asap (EUROPEAN HERE)

[s0]

i played chrono trigger on emulator and got bored 

[gimymblert]

You are not fun : P

It's way better than FF whatever