Terramax said:
Amnestic said:
Terramax said:
Gxas said:
I don't see exactly how else they would do this. It works doesn't it? Why change something that has worked for so long?
Because it hasn't worked. People such as myself gave up on the genre long ago, as many more are.
Racing games have always had the mechanic of being "First" in the race to win. I've never found this working and I gave up on the genre, as many other have done.
That's a silly comparison. You race to come first to prove you're the most skillful/ the best on the race course. That requires skill and determination.
RPG's are not about a players skill with the controller, mouse or whatever you happen to be using. They are about the players intellect and the player exploiting his characters strengths and covering his weaknesses to create strategies for the battles ahead. RPG's are all about the thought process. If you don't like thinking then RPG's clearly are not the genre of game you should be playing.
Stats in RPGs on the otherhand are completely illogical.
How does killing the same creatures 1000s of times somehow make you stronger/ gain more experiece? If I went out with a sword and sliced and diced 1000 rabbits would I suddenly end up stronger somehow. No (don't ask me to prove this! XD).
I don't know about killing 1000 rabbits improving your battle skills but I know killing 1000 lizardmen, hellounds, skeletons etc. would certainly make you a more capable fighter. Using rabbits is a completely stupid referance. I have seen only a handful of RPG's that included your common rabbit and those rabbits gave you barely enough exp. to level up to level 2.
Stats and battles are merely filler for turning a 10 hour story/ gaming into an 80 hour one. This goes w/o saying most stat based RPGs have battles that require little to no skill or thought at all. And how do wolves you've killed give you money and armor? Completely illogical.
I have to agree that some battles in some RPGs take no thought at all. But in that case it is your character/party and the bigger battles that you have to put the thought into. And even so, this is not the case with all RPGs. (I hate to use the example that everyone else is using but I'm going to have to) Fallout 3 has you putting atleast some thought into all of your encounters. Even if you just use VATS you still have to think about where you want to hit the big hulking Behemoth. As I said before, RPGs are all about the thought.
It's worth noting that Shenmue is one such RPG that attempted to eliminate stats. I also consider Zelda to be an RPG also. There are ones that try, and succeed in eliminating this flaw in the genre, but they're too far and in-between.
I am sory to inform you but Zelda is not an RPG. It is an adventure game. It is similar in the fact that it heavily emphasises the story and characters but there is no definition from one players game to the next. In the end everyone is still playing the same old Link with the same old equipment. RPGs are about personalising your characters to make them play how you want them to play. Admittedly "classical" RPGs in the style of games like Final Fantasy all have the same characters etc. but in the end, your party is going to play differently to anybody elses because you have fitted them with the equipment you want and tweaked their stats so that they can fullfill they're roles on the battlefield.
I think that the main defining characteristic of an RPG is that you are playing the game through YOUR character. YOUR character will be played how YOU want to play it. Whether you want to run in with a huge Axe and behead everything that stands in your way or if you want to fry everything with a freshly made fireball (sorry to use some RPG stereotypes) or a mixture of everything it is up to YOU and YOU alone.
Stats accomplish this perfectly and if you can come up with a system that works just as smoothly I would love to hear it and test it out but the fact of the matter is such a system has not been developed effeciently as far.
I do like the "Oblivion" system, where as you use your skills they evolve and you progress this way. The only problem I had with Oblivion is that you could still easily level up in the other skills easily if you knew how, creating "uber" characters and essentially breaking the game. But that is for another disscussion.
Levels are in the same boat as Stats. Levels in RPGs are indicators as to how well you will fare against your foe. They tell you how powerful your opponent is without giving away too much away. For example my Thief is level 37 whereas my opponent is level 32. This way I know that I should fare fairly well against my opponent but I still do not know the full picture. My opponent could have a devastating attack power and kill me in one blow.
Again, levels work. Simple as. If you can come up with a system that works better that let me know. But untill then, lets just keep Stats and Levels as they are.
tl;dr
Stats and Levels work. Leave them alone.
