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[Epitaph64]

I was thinking that it would be funny, and perhaps fun to make, this type of game. Basically, you create a character, and design his/her appearance, etc. Then, you have to level them up. Sounds like every other RPG right? Well, the twist is, you only do the grinding! They do all the leveling/skill deciding/talent spending/etc. Now, you may think, "What the f***? This is a waste of my time, if I don't even design my character to my needs!" Well, the thing is, you can control as many of these characters as you want! Let's say you create one, and go out into the forest to kill slimes, and after reaching level 10, they customize themselves as a priest. "Well this is no good! I wanted a Warrior!" you say, and now you can decide what you want to do with them. You could raise another class and hope they choose masonry as a crafting profession, so as to build a chapel to place the priest, and therefore that priest would offer healing services and curse removal to the rest of your party, etc. Or, perhaps, you could train them further, and hope to make them a great leader of a local village. Or, maybe still, you would prefer to create another character, and play them in a party, allowing the priest to heal your new... whatever it may become class! Anyways, there's my idea rant, let me know what you think. I know that it's ambitious, and I probably will never make it, but it sounds like a fun game anyways!

EDIT: Also, as you build up your band of adventurers, you could be good or evil. If you are evil, you could make human sacrifices of flawed creations to power your empire, and if you're good, you could pray to receive benefits from the gods.

[Cokho]

So it would basicly be a god-game/sim in a RPG world? Well why not ! Not my cup of tea but it may be interesting  .

 

[Eraser]

I would only play a game like this if everything you said would actually happen. That would be hilariously awesome. Do it.

[SirNiko]

Brute Wars (A F2P MMO type thing) operates vaguely similarly to this. You get a randomly generated character, choose to have them fight another player's character, and after enough fights, they gain a level and power up.

They you agonize when every level they choose terrible upgrades, like getting a knife when they already have a greathammer, or jumping into combat, pulling out their best weapon, then tossing it away to use their fists for an inexplicable reason.

If you made the grinding non-tedious, and created enough hilarious variety in the possibilities, your concept could be pretty fun. It almost reminds me of "Sims RPG", where you have less ability to micromanage but more interactivity (Going out and killing stuff).

-SirNiko

[Alex Vostrov]

I believe that good games have interesting choices in them.  One interesting thing about RPGs is the resource management aspect - maximizing the power of your hero with limited resources.  The grind is the boring part; nobody likes killing 1000 boars in a row.

How is your proposal different from a virtual slot machine?  What is your audience going to be interested in?

[SirNiko]

I believe that good games have interesting choices in them.  One interesting thing about RPGs is the resource management aspect - maximizing the power of your hero with limited resources.  The grind is the boring part; nobody likes killing 1000 boars in a row.

How is your proposal different from a virtual slot machine?  What is your audience going to be interested in?

I view this idea as being the RPG equivalent of the "Random" setting when playing a fighting game. You're still in control of the game, you're the one deciding which skills you use to defeat the bosses, or which zone you explore next. You just don't get to choose whether you get to pick the healing spell or the nuke them all spell.

When I think about it, the concept isn't entirely unlike a Roguelike, except with the randomness inherent in the character and not necessarily the dungeon.

I think there's merit to this idea, so long as it has meaningful gameplay as opposed to tedious grinding between level-ups.

-SirNiko

[Alex Vostrov]

Ok, what's interesting about the random setting in fighters?  Isn't it the surprise of seeing the fighter combination and having to adapt to it?

If you choose this as the core mechanic, then you should amplify and refine it.  I would suggest throwing lots of crazy situations the player's way and giving them equally crazy ways to solve them.  "You've been swallowed by a whale man! What do you do?"  "I use my self-exploding ability to blow the whale-man up from the inside!"  Well, maybe not that crazy, but the point is that floppy skill trees won't cut it - none of that +1% damage with swords crap.  Make every skill point do something awesome.

[SirNiko]

Ok, what's interesting about the random setting in fighters?  Isn't it the surprise of seeing the fighter combination and having to adapt to it?

If you choose this as the core mechanic, then you should amplify and refine it.  I would suggest throwing lots of crazy situations the player's way and giving them equally crazy ways to solve them.  "You've been swallowed by a whale man! What do you do?"  "I use my self-exploding ability to blow the whale-man up from the inside!"  Well, maybe not that crazy, but the point is that floppy skill trees won't cut it - none of that +1% damage with swords crap.  Make every skill point do something awesome.

Alternately, make it an RPG with scenarios that force you to play with a different hero or set of heroes for each encounter. FF4 on the Wii sort of did that, where each scenario had you fighting with a different team, including a few that shied away from your typical Figher Healer Wizard combo such as teams full of wizards (hard) and teams full of monks (easy).

So, you get variety in the gameplay without resorting to randomness. Each scenario is handcrafted to be challenging and unique.

I think Double Dungeons on the TurboGraphix did this? I never played that, but I saw it on Wiiware as well.

-SirNiko

[Alex Vostrov]

Alternately, make it an RPG with scenarios that force you to play with a different hero or set of heroes for each encounter. FF4 on the Wii sort of did that, where each scenario had you fighting with a different team, including a few that shied away from your typical Figher Healer Wizard combo such as teams full of wizards (hard) and teams full of monks (easy).

So, you get variety in the gameplay without resorting to randomness. Each scenario is handcrafted to be challenging and unique.

I think Double Dungeons on the TurboGraphix did this? I never played that, but I saw it on Wiiware as well.

-SirNiko

This is tricky.  Obviously, if you hand-craft the scenarios, you have more control over the player's experience.  On the other hand, if you go with a random scenario generator, you have more breadth and replayability.  In general, the latter is preferred if you can pull it off.

This actually touches upon a greater topic of guiding the player through the game.  Players tend to get stuck in certain ruts, especially if their solution already works.  Good games give players a kick in the ass so that they explore the rest of the game.

One example is the gargoyles in Batman: AA.  The gargoyles make Batman invisible and virtually invulnerable.  They're a good mechanic for beginning players, because they're a safe haven if things go badly.  Advanced players don't need them, though.  You can do really crazy stuff by crawling through vents and just skulking around.  The problem is that as long as the gargoyles are there, they mask the other interesting parts of the game.

So, what does Arkham Asylum do?  It takes away the player's crutches late in the game.  They have joker rig the gargoyles with explosives so that they blow up if Batman sits on them too long.  This is a brilliant move.  Remember, you not only have to make a good game, but you have to wring 100% from it.  Taking away the player's favourite cheap trick is one way to do this.

[SirNiko]

The problem with that design is that the players are never given a reason to stray from their comfort zone. The path of least resistance gives the players no less benefit than playing the hard way. Better ways to play are giving players trade offs, such as exposing yourself to danger to earn more points.

I don't think this is really applicable to this particular game design, though. The benefit here would be variety of play, not difficulty. The player isn't necessarily being pushed into a more difficult situation (such as coping with a lack of safe points). It's about creating scenarios where the player is forced to play a different way simply to see things from a different perspective, or to create puzzles where the player has to solve the same situation again from a different angle due to different abilities at their disposal.

This game design could be particularly easy to play and still be entertaining due to the variety of situations presented, as opposed to a traditional RPG where you put all your points into "Attack" and then kill everything by hitting "Attack" until it dies for the rest of the 20 hours of the game.

-SirNiko

[EmThree]

Do the opposite and and create an RPG where the game does all the grinding.

[SirNiko]

Do the opposite and and create an RPG where the game does all the grinding.

This has existed for a long time. It's called Progress Quest. Look it up.

-SirNiko

[Theotherguy]

Sounds really, really, really annoying. Please do not make this.

[Alex Vostrov]

Sounds really, really, really annoying. Please do not make this.

I don't know if I agree, strictly speaking.  If he thinks that it's an interesting idea to explore, he should code it up.  Worst case scenario - don't play it.

[Parthon]

If the gameplay itself was made interesting and compelling, then you'd want to play it even if the "progress control" was taken away from you. You'd still be progressing, just you wouldn't control the direction.

The challenge and fun of the game could easily be kept, as long as it's not just one long grind.

Unless people are too accustomed to having rewards from rpgs in the form of levels and loot. That would be a shame.

Some kind of side-view beat-em-up or platformer could work. The player actively participates in an interesting and challenging game. The random skills/classes choices from the character they play would just add more challenge to the game.

It wouldn't be for everyone of course.

ps. A top down rpg might work too, as long as it wasn't grindy.

[Theotherguy]

Here is how I see it.

People often complain about the arbitrary and boring, repetitive nature of the RPG system of grind/level/grind, and the blame has been laid on various different aspects of the design.

Some have tried to eliminate grinding altogether and make leveling based on what you actually do in the game. Others have tried making leveling automatic or based on a linear game script rather than on the grind.

What you are proposing is to still have leveling, and grinding, but you intend to take all of the fun out of leveling. Why even have leveling at all, if that's how you're going to do it?

In my opinion, any RPG that has arbitrary "skills" which you "level" is fundamentally broken. Playing these games is always a chore for me.

[Parthon]

That's the point. Take the grind out of the RPG. Make the core mechanic fun. RPGs have devolved into grind/level/grind/level. You have to work through the boring and annoying part so that you get a reward with a ding, a whoosh, and some skill points to spend, spells to learn, or whatever. People have tried to separate the levelling from the grinding, but that's pointless, because there's still grind in the game.

There are other games that are fun just to play for fun's sake. RPGs are one of the few genres that aren't. You grind in order to see numbers go up, or to get to the next part of the storyline.

So to facilitate the idea that the levels/skills/etc are chosen by the character instead of by the player, we'd have to make an RPG that's fun to play, not just for the carrot/stick method of modern RPGs. Make exploration, progressing and combat be interesting, rather than the repetitive monkey tasks they are now.

[JamesGecko]

This could be an Oblivion mod. The random leveling up stuff, I mean. Swapping between characters would be the hard part, but it might be possible with some advanced scripting.

[SirNiko]

RPGs have devolved into grind/level/grind/level.

I really disagree with this. Most modern RPGs have all but eliminated the grind to level. WRPGs like Oblivion use scaling encounters to ensure that the player can participate in quests even if they haven't pounded out a bunch of levels. Final Fantasy games since 4 are designed so that the characters grow at a rate perfectly suited to the monsters they encounter. The player's task is to decide how the character grows between levels, either by selecting a direction of growth (picking a class, selecting which equipment to wear) choosing which abilities to learn (equipping espers for magic in FF6) or completing optional tasks for little stat boosts or rare items.

To further deconstruct the stereotype, hit up gamefaqs sometime and look at the different RPG pages. There is almost always a "Low level run" or "No equipment run" listed for a game. FF9 even includes an optional speed-run that requires the player to pound through the game's events at a blistering pace to complete. FF9's speed run is legitimized by the devs by rewarding a very rare and powerful weapon for completing it. To me that's the ultimate proof of an RPG that does not contain grind.

-SirNiko

[Parthon]

I agree that there's many modern RPGs that are fun to play, as well as giving the bonus of choices in class and level.

And that's the exact game that would be needed here. If this game was nothing but grind, most people would not play it. There would always be the treadmill sychophants though. (I mean no offence, but seriously guys!)

As an alternative idea, the player doesn't directly choose what his character does, but it's also not completely random. What class/skills the character chooses could be based on the way the player plays, evolving in a semi-predictable way, but still with just enough randomness so that the player isn't quite sure.

Like if his brutish orc maul wielder healed himself a bit too much and became a cleric or priest, then the player could refocus on more armour and more swords and soon have a chance of becoming a paladin, and who wouldn't want to be an orc paladin?

It would be a case of managing the excitement of not knowing what your character is going to do, while alleviating the disappointment of things turning out not quite how you wanted. It definately wouldn't be for the rpg purists who want a character just they want it, but for those that like the challenge, randomness and variety of a game where they aren't sure what's going to happen next.