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[Melly]

That, and the latest game has some really fucked-up-looking pokes. I think they're running out of ideas.

I never could get much into Pokemon games because of the lack of a plot, and if there is a plot it sucks.

[dustin]

That, and the latest game has some really fucked-up-looking pokes. I think they're running out of ideas.

WHAT?! I love diamond pearl!  Much more then ruby/saphire.

I think Tales of Phantasia deserves a mention for its battle system, as well. I've never played any others in the tales of series, though, were they similar? Sidescrolling realtime combat as opposed to the turnbased drivel, ftw. Far from perfect, but it was fresh.

yeah all the tales games have that battle system.  I particularly liked tales of symphonia, it was lots of fun to go through with multiple people each person controlling one of the charecters.

I feel Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga has one of the best I've seen in any RPG, ever.

yeah I love that game to.  Also the leveling system was great to.  Like that Paper mario and the thousand year door.  I love how the stats are simple, just 3 hp, fp (magic points), and badge points.  Also I love how a lot of the leveling elements are gotten through exploring, you collect badges by exploring and the other charecters level up simply by gathering certain items that are hidden.  I feel like this turned the focus onto exploring instead of fighting for levels.

[Melly]

That, and the latest game has some really fucked-up-looking pokes. I think they're running out of ideas.

WHAT?! I love diamond pearl!  Much more then ruby/saphire.

It's not a matter of the game being good or bad (I haven't played much of it) but 80% of the new critters are just plain ugly. Some of the new legendaries look like Digimon/YuGiOh rejects.

[Guert]

Great comments guys!

Xion: that spark system to indicate damage is quite interesting. I personaly don't like popping numbers and this alternative seems simple and effective

In general, what transpires so far is that you guys seem either want to remove battles (or at least make them a lot less important) or have more control over them (like Tales of Phantasia or Mario RPG). Of course, it's hard to tell what is better since it depends on the kind of player you are in my opinion (see the Bartle test). I feel that, if you are the kind of player who enjoys exploring, battles are irritating because they distract you in your exploration. If you are more of a killer, battles are the best part because that's where you get to beat the game viceraly. Personaly, I like both, depending of how I'm feeling. One game I truly enjoyed that has something "in the middle" in terms of battle system and general feel was Grandia 2 (dc version). I truly enjoyed it because I didn't have to grind and I could skip simple battles if I wanted to. It offered enough strategy so I didn't feel like the randomizer went for or against me. Also, I enjoyed the storyline which was original to me (even tho it was predicatble most of time ) 

I'm happy Disgaea was brought up regarding grinding. I'm a big fan of the first game because of this too: you didn't have to level up (wll almost no grinding) in order to finish the game. The players who want to really play the game for the story can play through it without worrying much while those who enjoy stats battles have long hours of gameplay in their hand. 

As cgmonkey mentionned, it's also important to look at the japanese market as well. I mean, we all know that the western and european markets are different, hence why there's an actual JRPG sub-genre. My experience tells me that japanese player all seem to be "obsessive" when playing games. They grind alot, whatever the game is. I might be completly wrong tho, but it always felt to me like the japanese player will study the rules and make sure he applies them to perfection. The vertical shooter genre is a good example of this. But of course, I may be wrong as I am not a japanese player and never did some actual play tests with them.

About the unoriginal storyline... No, using cliches do not make something bad automaticaly. Everything can be done with great originality even tho we've seen it a million times before. My question was rather toward how, in jrpgs, can we have that spark of originality when so many titles exist. For instance, if a jrpg featured humoristic content instead of being serious (like save the princess but turns out the princess is an actual dragon) or staged in a new world (you live on a cupcake and your goal is to make it unatractive to the eater's eye while eliminating bacteries, hence saving the world from a great powerful being who wants to consume your world while fighting evil monsters that spawn from nowhere),would it still be a jrpg?  Is there some settings that could be interesting to use in Jrpgs, like westerns, prehistoric era or something like that?

Yes, Pokemon is a great twist on how you can dress up an rpg. Let's not go too far with the pokemon subject since these games are created as products, we might find ourselves very far form the original topic

Great discussion guys! It's quite fun to see all your different point of views on the topic! I'm not an rpg expert so I don't have much to say about that but it's great reading your posts!

[William Broom]

I would love to see some original settings for JRPGs. It seems like every single one is based on this haphazard mashup of sci-fi, fantasy and steampunk, what you might refer to as 'airship fantasy'. However there are a few settings that stand out: Kingdom Hearts, Disney worlds of course; Wild Arms, post-apocalyptic western; Persona, Japanese high school with demons; Digital Devil Saga, Matrix-style cyberspace with demons; various other Shin Megami Tensei games like Raidou Kuzunoha which is set in the 1920s (?) with demons; The World Ends With You, set in Tokyo's trendiest shopping district. With demons.

The lesson here is that any location can become a JRPG setting if you pepper it with demons. Since most of the time these demons can't be seen by most people, you can add them to any setting without disrupting it at all. Bring on the Western with demons, space opera with demons, political thriller with demons, 60s gangsters with demons etc.

But seriously, I can see why so many of these games have demons. It's because of all the random battles. If all your enemies were gunslingers and sheriff's boys, it would soon become unbelievable because you slaughter, what, 5000 enemies in your average JRPG? There just aren't that many cowboys in the Old West. Demons can respawn infinitely without hindering the plot.

[Bree]

Don't forget about Shadow Hearts: From the New World, which is set in a bizarre 1930's America with talking cats and a ninja named Frank. No, really. Earthbound is also unique, being set in the present day. And I think we can all agree Barkley: Shut and Jam Gaiden has one of the most unique settings of all.

Besides, if demons don't work into the plot, they really shouldn't be there in the first place.

What's more, we need more cowboys in games, period. And airships. And cowboy airship pirates.

[Quetz]

For me, JRPGs are fun because of both the progressive stat improvement and the plot. Really though, the connection between them is minimal. When I'm out of battle, I pay attention to the plot, especially if it's a good one, and don't even take notice of my stats. While I'm trawling through a dungeon, though, I love finding new gear and seeing my characters' stats grow.

The thing that disrupts this balance is when I need to grind to beat a boss or something. I think a more linear experience-gaining system would be best, such as one that rewards you most for exploring as mentioned before, or a system similar to Chrono Cross. In it, you get a small increase in stats after each fight, but the amount you get from a particular level of enemy decreases as you get stronger, until you aren't getting anything. However, if I remember right, certain special battles (bosses or other encounters) will give you a "star" level which increases your stats A LOT. But only once. This makes levelling a bit more linear and goal-based, but leaves enough room for people to grind a little to be at the top of their game.

Couple that with Chrono Cross's elimination of random battles and a great storyline, and it really defies the stereotype of a typical JRPG. (I haven't played  it since it came out... I'm really not sure how accurate any of this is... but I still like this system!)

[Quetz]

In terms of setting, anything genuinely original works for me. The Star Ocean series of mashed-up pseudo-medieval-fantasy-meets-sci-fi-space settings come to mind. The main character in Star Ocean: The Second Story is a crewmember of a space fleet, but gets stuck on a planet with a mildly generic JRPG setting. What makes it interesting is his high-tech gadgetry and technical knowledge sparring with the whimsical, sword-clangan' world of the planet he's marooned on. Mixing worlds like this works oddly well, for me.

[Guert]

I think we've reached a point where most people seem to have similar opinions...

The main points that were brought up so far to enhance Jrpgs:

• Put less focus on combat and more on exploration
• Find original settings where the action could unfold
• Find alternative storyline that do not use the many cliches of jrpgs or use these in new ways
• Put less rational information on screen, such as popping numbers, so that the content focuses more on emotional play than statistic play
• Allow players that want to focus on the story to play through the game with minimal battles while allowing players who focus on the battle to grind their characters to their liking.

Anyone else has something else to add?

[Lukas]

One thing I'd like to add:

Don't be an evil designer! -> avoid frustration at all cost!
This means (amongst other aspects):
- let the player save really often.
- don't create points which trap the player in a "trapped" situation.
Example: A dungeon with a really, really strong boss/something and no way to get out of the dungeon again without facing the challenge. (+ a savepoint in that dungeon, that can destroy a whole game since some players tend to have just 1 Saving Slot they overwrite all the time.

Also: (even Final Fantasy does this all the time)
Before challenges there always has to be something like an "auto-save" which allows to return to it in case the player fails. This autosave has to happen immediately before the player is challenged.
Example: In Final Fantasy 8 there is a boss called "Norg" (or something) which can be pretty difficult to defeat if the players weren't maxed/grinded out (see initial rules Guert stated)... the only Savepoint before the player could face the boss made it necessary to do the following things before even facing the battle: Walk to the evelator, Use the evelator (loading...), Listening to dialogue 1 (~1 minute)and next: listening to a 10~minute dialogue revealing important plot elements...
As a player you feel fu***d after going through this cycle at least 2 times.

- also: never include any challenges after a really challenging part which maybe even bumped up the difficulty curve a bit for the sake of being thrilling.
Always let the player save immediately after a battle.

If you have a (classical) "Save Point"-system there is no reason to feel bad about showing a black screen and a "do you want to save?"-offer.

- make the savestate system simple and fast-forward:
FF4-12 (at least) hat pretty awkward saving systems. Players don't feel like saving often (which is a good thing) if they have to klick through several menu screens/options every time.
A way to solve that:
Savepoints open up two options: "Fast Save" and "Advanced Save Options".
-Fast Save- saves the game to a predefined file without even opening up a menu screen.
-Advanced Save Options- are pretty much what you see in most JRPGs, including Final Fantasy4-12.

Also: If the player receives a "Game Over"... don't show him all the Game-Startup again... over him to immediately jump to the last savestate.

-------------------------------------------------------------
- Idea of mine:
Try designing a really intuitive and simple "menu-screen". And try f*cking that goddamn shell menus we have since... Final Fantasy I and Dragon Quest whatever...
Back in the day those games had like... 150x150 pixels to display the graphics.

It's a bad design decision to make the player get "out of the game" everytime he wants to check equipment or ability information.
Look at... Final Fantasy XI or ... Burnout Paradise! The game action is going on all the time and the menu is an expandable element in a screen corner.

Opening a window which stops the gameplay and obscures the fancy graphics is one of the decisions modern game designers have to avoid at all cost...
People just got used to it and don't know how refreshing the alternative would be.



Those are my 2 cents...

[Zaphos]

One thing that bothers me is the way stat systems are sometimes used to give a high level 'strategy' to the game.  They let you choose which skills to level, but if you don't level skills in the right balance, you have a much harder time getting through the game.  The problem is that the feedback is too delayed because the games are so long: if you've been doing it wrong, you might not really feel that until hours of play have gone by.  So basically the game is forcing you to make an arbitrary decision, but giving the impression that it is 'strategic,' and you have to do it based on assumptions about how the designers think or based on past, similar games you've played.

I think a better system would instead act to give the player more choices on how to experience the game.  So the game would not be particularly more or less difficult if you focus on skills A vs B, but it would give you a very different play experience.  Games like Deus Ex seem to show this can work pretty well.

Similarly, in the games where they give you the option to see and avoid your enemies, or to run from battle, it's often not actually a valid play style because you'll 'under level'.  But in, for example, Tales of Symphonia, avoiding the enemies actually often takes more skill than beating them, and is a neat mini-game in itself.  So I think there's room to make a JRPG where avoiding enemies is an acceptable play style, not something the game will punish in the long run.

[diaskeaus]

I seem to be in the minority here, but I happen to enjoy grinding.  I also happen to enjoy MMORPGs, replaying (and grinding) old NES games (including the original Final Fantasy II, and others that required an insane amount of grinding), and stuff like DragonFable and other mindnumbing RPGs that require you to fight the same battles over and over again to get any progress.  It's my opinion that the system was designed not only as a reward system for working hard (or long), but also as a sort of philosophical statement about the nature of cultivating one's talents.

The level-up system I believe works really well in JRPGs, because it provides a simple strategy to a simple reward.  However, the fact that most JRPGs require the hero character to kill thousands of monsters does seem a bit off to me.  If I were actually out in the wilderness killing thousands of monsters, that would change my psyche.

I'm designing a game (this is not an advert, but just an explanation of how I think  this system can be improved) where there are three ways to level-up: either through exploration of the world (like Planescape), or in battle.  In battle, you can either beat the enemy into submission, or force them to surrender through methods of subduing.  Whether you interact with the world, kill enemies, or subdue enemies, will in affect, change the skills you receive at level-up (observation skills, violent skills, or non-violent skills).  It's not a perfect system and still mostly operates on a symbolic level (as most games do), but it alleviates a lot of the problems I see currently.

I still absolutely love the JRPG forumula though.  It's very mythic and distant, but keeps the player involved through the special rewards they get for their work.  It's a slower game, one that provides more attention to story and allows for a tighter relationship between the player and the hero, with more integration of what the hero is doing and what the player is doing.

[Craig Stern]

I'm kind of wondering if an RPG without levels could work. The idea is that the player ends the game with the same predefined stats he starts with, bosses and enemies are designed around these stats to provide a steady difficulty curve. Defeating a boss would be more a matter of finding or exploiting a weakness than being the correct level. I guess a different reward system for defeating enemies would have to used.

Sure--that's pretty much how Zelda: A Link to the Past does things. You have very limited opportunities in-game to permanently improve your character's stats, so the game designers will always have a reasonably good sense of how strong you are when it's time to face any given boss.

[William Broom]

I'm kind of wondering if an RPG without levels could work. The idea is that the player ends the game with the same predefined stats he starts with, bosses and enemies are designed around these stats to provide a steady difficulty curve. Defeating a boss would be more a matter of finding or exploiting a weakness than being the correct level. I guess a different reward system for defeating enemies would have to used.

Sure--that's pretty much how Zelda: A Link to the Past does things. You have very limited opportunities in-game to permanently improve your character's stats, so the game designers will always have a reasonably good sense of how strong you are when it's time to face any given boss.

But LttP doesn't really play like a JRPG. It would be nice to see a turn-based RPG with no levels, since then the developers would be forced to create a deeper combat system so players can win by skill rather than just grinding like mad.

Also,

[Seth]

I would love love love to see a turn based battle system that has absolutely no heals involved (also an MMORPG with no healers)

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

Nethack is the best RPG ever because it will RAPE YOUR BRAIN and then allow your ghost to KILL YOU THE NEXT GAME. 

(edit: my apologies if I already posted this earlier. I just read this and thought of it..)

[Akhel]

RAPE YOUR BRAIN

Seen it happen. Not as fun as it sounds.




















Oh wait, you mean in-game?

[Shambrook]

Get rid of save points, they're an archais device that serves no function in modern games other then to act as a crutch for lazy game designers.

[Seth]

As long as you only get one save game at a time, so you actually have to face the consequences for your actions instead of loading a save state.

Not that many jRPGs have consequences

[Xion]

Not that many jRPGs have consequences

don't be so sure.
Have you ever saved with all your party members half-dead and itemless near the end of a dungeon, right before a boss fight, which is right before another boss fight, and right after a series of friggin' tough enemies (who are the reason you're half dead and itemless in the first place)?
That's a consequence of NOT GRINDING ENOUGH, and then, after grinding, NOT GOING ALL THE WAY BACK TO TOWN TO STOCK UP ON SUPPLIES THE ENEMIES FAILED TO DROP, and then going ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BOSS WHILE BEATING ENEMIES THAT NO LONGER POSE ANY THREAT OR CHALLENGE.