Poll: Who here actually wants RPGs to get easier?

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Nope...

The games I most enjoy at the moment are Dark Souls and I just finished Legend of Grimrock on hard with the maps turned off.

My favourite game is Baldur's Gate 2.

I don't mind rpg's where you can switch your mind off like Fable or Kingdoms of Amalur (and I enjoy them) but I certainly wouldn't like it to be the only thing available. I like to be challenged sometimes.

In the end it's all about choice. Companies need to make sure their hard modes are actually hard.

 

[Mindless1]

There's no doubt that for the past 20 or so years RPGs have increasingly been dumbed down to become more accessible. How many people approve of this?

I started playing a 22 year old RPG (I won't say which one) and after spending 2 hours creating my party got massacred nearly every battle. I'm no stranger to RPGs either and consider myself experienced and a reasonably good player.

The point is, I like this. It gives a sense of challenge and adversity which needs smart thinking to overcome. Modern RPGs don't have this. Even Legend of Grimrock was easy.

The Problem with RPGs is that you can grind your way to victory in most of them. Most of the challenge comes from higher leveled monsters or cheap tactics. What RPGs need is some sort of non-stat based modifier to combat such as strategy (over come bad odds with tactics) or real time combat (I.E. demons' souls).

There is this one out there called Fortune Summoners, I only to play on my friends netty last night because he wanted me to see the combat. It plays like a side scrolling brawler kind of. You can only level up by finding fortune tokens (Think of the heart pieces from Zelda) that you have to fill by defeating enemies. After beating enemies you and filling up the token you can finaly level up. If you've filled your token then you have to find a new one some where hidden in the game before you can start trying to level up again. So the game kind of sets a level for your and you can't abuse a grinding mechanic to win.

 

[DJjaffacake]

I like a mystical thing called difficulty settings. Mainly because I'm bad at games so I set the difficulty nice and low. I also don't like dying, it breaks the immersion and therefore dents the story for me, and story and immersion are my favourite gamey bits. I like dying to be a possibility, but only if I really screw up, because being fucking Thor can break the immersion as well. On the other hand, I know some people like a meaty challenge, so I like the games to have higher difficulty settings for them. Aren't I nice?

As an aside, I like it when the difficulty settings aren't patronising a la Deus Ex HR. 'Easy' was labelled as 'Tell me a story' which is exactly why I pick it, not, as most games suggest, because I am a beginner.

 

[Substitute Troll]

Dumbing down is never good, no matter what genre it is. Making things more convenient or sleeker is another thing. I loved the way DA2 handled skill trees, but I didn't agree with how they dumbed down other aspects of the game.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Dumbing down is NEVER good.

Ideally, all games should be easy to learn, but hard to master.

Even better, give players a difficulty setting to mess around with.

Depth is better. You start the game by being introduced to a simple world, but you're constantly given new mechanics to take advantage of, until little by little the world isn't so simple anymore and the only way to progress is by cleverly manipulating the mechanics you've learned. But the key here is that the game has to teach you how to manipulate them, it has to set you on the right track first before leaving you out to dry.

This. This is the best.

My friends and I are making an RPG, and this is what we will be striving for. We will be slowly increasing the amount of tactics the player has at their disposal, and making sure that they understand the implications that this has.

 

[RyoScar]

Don't make the game stupidly easy, remember what happened to Fable 3.

 

[Darkmantle]

Don't the old kind of RPGs get easier as you level up?

and that's the problem. It's exactly the opposite of an appropriate difficulty curve.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Don't make the game stupidly easy, remember what happened to Fable 3.

Or, really, any Fable game. Those are everything that is wrong with western ARPGs in a nutshell.

 

[smokeyninjas]

Do i want games to be streamlined by removing options & features = No

Do i want games to be streamlined by making interfaces more user friendly & intuitive = Yes

 

[Xanadu84]

The answer to the question, "should games do X or Y " is always, "Both"

The trend towards streamlineing is good. In terms of raw complexity, there are merits in both directions that are equally worthy of exploration. Bastion is increadibly simple in terms of complexity, but that simplicity re enforces the combats flow and the overall aesthetic and focus. Other games use complexity to flesh out a sense of realism. You also have needlessly obtuse games and dumbed down games. Games don't need a set path, they need to explore wider possibilities.

 

[Callate]

It depends. There's harder as in "more challenging, requiring greater thought and planning to overcome numerous fair and intriguing challenges" and then there's harder as in "This monster has a 33% chance of killing everyone in your party in any given battle" and there's harder as in "unless you spend twenty hours grinding mooks in the early areas you'll end up in a position where you cannot possibly win and fifty hours of your life will be wasted between the time you spend getting to this position and the time it takes you to recognize you're screwed."

The first one? Sure, why not. The latter two? Keep your sick fetish out of my gaming.

 

[ZeroMachine]

You know what I'd really, REALLY want?

For people to stop using the term "dumbing down". It's insulting, narcissistic, pathetic, and it makes you sound like you believe you're smarter than everyone that doesn't happen to be as good at games as you.

All you're doing by saying that is reinforcing the stereotype that gamers are a non-inclusive group of "elitists" who don't like the share.

NOW, more on topic- YES.

But, I would also like them to still be brutally difficult.

I'm totally ok with accessibility. I love to see people get into games they normally wouldn't enjoy. But the industry needs to find a way to make it so the same game can be played by someone new to the genre and still be a massive challenge to an old pro.

I can't wait for that to happen. Grimrock was a step in the right direction.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Bastion is increadibly simple in terms of complexity, but that simplicity re enforces the combats flow and the overall aesthetic and focus.

I'm not sure I agree with Bastion's simplicity being a good thing - my experience with that game basically boiled down to playing the demo, realizing how much of a grindfest it was going to be, and deciding it wasn't worth slogging through that just to look at pretty pictures and hear a guy talk to me in an awesome cowboy voice. IMO, gameplay should be the thing you get a game for, not the thing you tolerate in between story segments.

 

[Mandal0re]

If easier means "streamlining" and making it more intuitive instead of a convoluted mess of confusing stats then viva la easier. I like modern RPGs more then the clunky older ones.

This, a thousand times this. I play a lot of WRPGs, and what makes them fun is depth not arbitrary complexity. Whenever an RPG sequel features 'streamlining' before joining in with the whingers I take a look at the mechanics in question and think 'will this take away from the games depth or will this make the games depth more accessible?' For example anyone who complained about the removal of attributes in Skyrim? You're an idiot.

As for difficulty a lot of modern games are too easy on the default setting but I tend to find that simply cranking it up is fine. Where I draw the line is when difficulty gets cheap, or the game mechanics change sufficiently that the style of play required to survive is very rigid and restricted. Example: imo Mass Effect 2's insanity mode was fun and challenging, I had to plan my fights strategically and it never felt too cheap, if I died I could normally pinpoint why and alter my strategy accordingly. This is very satisfying. Dragon Age 2's Nightmare mode on the other hand is cheap and frustrating with massive double standards between enemies and your characters, one shotting that is impossible to avoid and friendly fire that is beyond unbalanced. As a result I stuck to hard in DA2 which is imo nicely balanced and much more fun than either Nightmare or Normal.

To summarise Depth and Challenge are the important things to get right.

 

[DRTJR]

I miss AD&D style of RPGs...

 

[Kahunaburger]

Whenever an RPG sequel features 'streamlining' before joining in with the whingers I take a look at the mechanics in question and think 'will this take away from the games depth or will this make the games depth more accessible?' For example anyone who complained about the removal of attributes in Skyrim? You're an idiot.

Skyrim's a good example of both the good and bad sort of streamlining.

Attempting to improve the beyond terrible Elder Scrolls leveling system? Good.

Improving it by adding a pseudo-Fallout perk system? Good.

"Improving" it by throwing the emergent gameplay made possible by attributes out as well? Bad.

Failing to improve other crippling problems with the leveling system? Bad.

 

[Wayneguard]

All I'll say is that I find Baldurs Gate and similar DnD based crpgs to be incomprehensible. I really REALLY want to enjoy playing them but I just can't because they are so complex to me. I really appreciated the "dumbing down" of Dragon Age from Baldurs Gate.

 

[SoranMBane]

Wow, that must be one of the most blatantly loaded poll questions I've seen yet. No, "dumbing down" is not good. Now ask if I think cutting out useless, pointlessly complex bullshit is good, or if I think properly teaching the player how to use the game's systems is good. Not every RPG has to be The Witcher or Dark Souls; there can be different types of RPGs with different levels of challenge and complexity to appeal to different people's tastes. The genre isn't so sacred that it has to always appeal to a specific, niche set of sensibilities all of the time. Personally, I prefer RPGs to have a balance, so that they're easy to learn, but hard to master. It's entirely possible for a game to have a lot of depth hidden beneath simple mechanics, and that's the kind of depth that I like to see. Plus, there's no reason an otherwise simple game can't have special difficulty settings to add more complex mechanics, sort of like Fallout: New Vegas' hardcore mode.

 

[somonels]

RPG is about mechanics, not fluff; more numbers, more charts.. nrgh.

I don't think that an RPG can't have a heavy emphasis on story, but I would like to see more attention being paid in RPG games to the mechanics. There's really no excuse for taking an action game, slapping an extraneous leveling system on it, and calling the result an RPG.

Double negative :/
"I think that an RPG can have a heavy emphasis on story, ..." Absolutely! But a story doth not make an RPG, and neither can the existance of 'RPGish elements' mean it can be tied to the genre.

All I'll say is that I find Baldurs Gate and similar DnD based crpgs to be incomprehensible. I really REALLY want to enjoy playing them but I just can't because they are so complex to me. I really appreciated the "dumbing down" of Dragon Age from Baldurs Gate.

*Slaps Wayneguard*
It's because of people like you that we can't have good things. Try another approach, start with NWN, failing that look for a PnP group, though if you manage to do that you probably won't want to go back to cRPGs.
I still harbor extreme dislike and disappointment for DA since it was the equivalent of a slushie.