Topic: What Do you think is the biggest Problem with Modern Rpgs?

@Kidfried Back then it was mostly for leveling up to beat a boss Now you have to do it for Money Items that Have a ridiculous drop rate and in some games you have to do it to just progress to the next plot point and the fact that they make it as boring and Tedious as possible doesn't help

The biggest problem with rpgs now is pretty simple. They are doing away with turnbased as much as possible to make action rpgs. I have always , always not been a fan of action rpgs. I loved mana , s d 3, secret of evermore, y's just now they are turning the greats into action. Such as ff 15 which was ug. They also are hiding most or half the game behind dlc. Once again reference to ff 15. They are pushing w rpgs so much more and making j rpgs a thing of the past. They are also trying to make most rpgs and merge them with visual novel. I do like how they are trying new things i just cant really get into the new rpgs like i used too. The old games did not focus so much on graphics but really focused on story and characters above all else. Im not saying action rpgs are bad but there should just be its own genre . Dont try and force everything to become that. I really am hoping for turnbased j rpgs to make a huge comeback but i doubt it. I kinda blame the developing companies for just stopping. Persona comes out once every 10 years or so well the main series im not talking about the dancing and fighting games they use to milk money out of saps. Thats kinda another point they want things to earn them as much to get people to spend money and never play it again then to love the game make it an all time classic but not make as much. Suikoden series just stopped, breath of fire series stopped , grandia stopped, final fantasy comes out once every 7 years or so and they really screwed it up the last 2 entries. Well my rant is over.

@Areus I feel that the recent-ish trend of creating your own character is limiting story telling and character development. It is very hard to make a very compelling story when you have to have tons of options to let you make the decisions. I recently played Tales of Vesperia Definitive edition and loved the fact that it wasn't a self insert story, it was distinctly the story of Yuri, Estelle and their friends. I feel you can do more with character development and world building when you are writing the whole cast, not writing a story around the different options you provide a player created character.

Furthermore, in most modern games, it can be awkward how your character doesn't really have a voice when everyone else is talking. That was my main complaint in Pokemon Sun and Moon, how they tried to push more story into the game but your character was always silent and staring blankly...

Character creation can work well however in something like Dark Souls, where there really is just lore, not a story though.

@Heavyarms55 An Rpg is Kinda suppose to be a self insert the whole create your own character and story goes all the way back to Dungeons and Dragons you are suppose to be the character you define there race sex social status Job Religion if they follow one and how the world and the people react to you thats why the Genre is called Roleplaying. JRpgs on the other hand have you assume the role of a predetermined character and a story thats already set in stone you are pretty much just along for the ride to see how it plays out

@Heavyarms55 Also Vesperia is one of the better storys in that series some of the others aren't as good like the one in graces f didn't even know that added voice acting to Pokemon i haven't played any since ruby and sapphire but they did that for Dragon quest as well and if breath of the wild is anything to go by they are doing it for zelda to

@Areus Which is why JRPG's are better. Western RPG's more times than not may as well not even have a story and the gameplay is usually atrocious. There are exceptions, but more times than not they are so barebones that you'd be hard-pressed to even consider them a game.

@TowaHerschel7 You can say that about JRPG's too. Or any other genre for that matter.

@TowaHerschel7 But How offen is that story any good its mostly the characters that both move things along and what people tend to care about most in jrpgs not the story

As an avid player of both JRPGs and Western RPGs (Not to mention having tried at least one of all the G's in-between) there seems to be a bit of an over generalisation of each genre in this thread as @Ralizah already pointed out on the first page like three comments in

It can't be helped I suppose for a more general argument based around two particulaly broad genres of games (Especially if we took them at the broadest measure).

... But still.

The average 80 or so hour rpg/jrpg is obviously quite a problem here to all of us. Particularly the parents of us here with our hectic schedules of work, the kids, our friends, wondering what the heck is going on with the country, social obligations, shopping...

... We could game for hours on end if we liked when we were younger. Or at least to a much higher degree. It's probably why our tolerance for padding has decreased drastically as we have less and less free time.

Not to mention with RPG mechanics creeping into every game, sequels upon sequels, rehashes, remakes, remasters of all our favourite games of yesteryear.

I think one of the biggest problems is that because of all our years of gaming, reading books, watching films & television & plays & theatre... We're that much more knowledgeable about character arcs and the workings/tropes that are associated with them.

It's much easier to notice if we've seen "Bad guy on the road to redemption #865431" or "Kooky girl who's had a messed up past #675429" pop up once more into our stories and get a bit tired of it.

Overall I guess my point is we're old, less free time to be had and we've seen/played/watched too much stuff to not notice these well played arcs and padding out as we used to 😅

Though chasing after the white whale of gaming that is the "best" graphics, less rpg games in particular being about older characters, a decline of 2D or more varied art styles and a general trend of traditional turn based games being considered "boring" doesn't help things either for a wider and more diverse range of games...

Also as a side note the teacher in me wants to say that your comment @Areus to @Heavyarms55 seems rather dismissive (and a bit condescending) of their opinion.

As it is their opinion on the matter after all.

We all have different views on this and the whole reason you yourself created this thread was you were interested in hearing everyone's opinion... Not just ones that matched your own.

I can say the same to @TowaHerschel7 too about their generalisation of western RPG's (Though they at least admitted there are exceptions)

We all love games here there's no doubt about that, we don't need to disregard or put down anyone else's thoughts on the matter!

The problem with RPGs is they’re invading all the other game genres. They’re like cranberries in the world of fruit juices - Cran-grape, Cran-apple, Cran-orange, Cran-cherry... 😉
Almost every AAA game can be considered an RPG. Games have evolved so much that sub-genres all mix together.

But jesting aside, I like RPG mechanics and most games are better for it. It helps the immersion.
It’s an interesting debate about the blank slate protagonist that you inject yourself into vs. the well-written main character that you play as who has a definite identity. There are benefits to both approaches. The strong protagonist with a definite personality and back story offers the chance to play and do things that you would never actually do. You can play as the bad guy or the womanizer or the high school student or the opposite sex and see the world through another’s eyes and try to make decisions based on ‘being’ that person. Or if the game has a customizable voiceless character, you can make yourself the star of the show and make choices in the game world that you would make and see how it plays out. We all yearn to be heroes and sometimes you want to be yourself and sometimes you want to be someone else.
It’s been said, but the RPG where you assume the role of a pre-written character (such as Aloy or Geralt) does afford for a more concrete narrative usually. There is just limitations where a story can take you if you’re a generic hero making your way.
Although I quite enjoy a game that tries to do both, like Mass Effect. I fashioned my Commander Sheppard to look like me and act like me, despite that fact he definitely had his own back story and lore.

The writing is important for me. I like a good RPG with decent writing, likeable characters with plenty of character and a bit of humour too. It's why I love The Witcher 3. The combat isn't the best but there are plenty of brilliant characters and the writing is often sharp and witty.

@themcnoisy I’m not actually sure lol 😂 it was probably about the fact that many big rpgs are full of time wasting fetch quests which obviously waste your time and can result in feeling your not using your time to the best that you can. This is where I think the Witcher 3 was so great, it tied an interesting story or mystery to even simple fetch quests, which meant you always felt like your achieving something. The Division 2 has done a good job of this recently too, both with Loot and story snippets

'I fashioned my Commander Sheppard to look like me and act like me, despite that fact he definitely had his own back story and lore.'

Which one? Spacer, Earthborn or Colonist?

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Well did I lie? Most have very generic stories compared to JRPG's. I'm not a big fan of the identity-less characters in tons of the WRPG's. The Dungeons and Dragon's approach leaves much to be desired. I don't want to be "myself" in a game I want to be someone else and see their compelling story, be it an epic adventure, space odyssey, or something else entirely.

Well it's your preference so you can't be lying in a sense @TowaHerschel7 . But y'know JRPGS are your thing and that's perfectly fine. Never said you had to like western rpgs or anything.

Just didn't want either of you to put the others opinion on the matter down was all as I already put before 😅

@themcnoisy Earthborn of course. It grounded my character and helped me feel more like that could actually be me roaming the galaxy and romancing aliens.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I Wasn't Trying to be Offensive if i was i apologize i was Simply just trying say that you can't Say that Created Characters Can't be used to tell a good story. and that a good number of jrpgs nowadays tend to be a bit lazy on the storytelling and more on the flashy side Kingdom hearts 3 comes to mind on this they put more effort into the Graphics and the Combat while the Story Characters and Game Content was more of an afterthrought Which and Turn Disappointed alot of fans.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I have to say I really agree with your point about how us "older" gamers (I am only 27 darn it!) have seen many of the popular tropes and cliches at this point. The disillusioned former soldier, the naive princess, this out of touch noble, the corrupt politician, the evil greedy corporation, etc etc. And that can absolutely make it harder to please us than children who haven't seen all that already. An RPG for us might seem stale or cliched but for a kid be as memorable and ground breaking as the RPGs we played when we were that age.

Sometimes I find it useful to take a step back and remind myself, "there is a reason this trope or cliche became popular in the first place".

@Areus don't worry, it is cool, trust me there are people on here and Nintendolife 10,000 times more offensive than anything you said. Though I do think you misunderstood my points a bit. I did not mean to imply that created characters can't be used to tell a good story, but that they can be limiting in story telling. What I am getting at is - the more freedom you give the player in creating their own character, the more work a studio needs to do to tell a good story. And it's not a 1-1 trade off. Let's say you have a romance option in the game, but you allow players to set their character's gender, do you make the romance options all bisexual? Do you limit them to male and female routes? Let's say there is a plot point where an antagonist is dismissive of a character because of their gender and said fantasy world thinks men cannot be soldiers or something. If you're not playing as a man, then that whole plot point can't work, or the story has to be heavily altered.

Every detail you all the player to control limits things the writers can do or demands they do huge amounts of additional work to account for all options.

@Areus Kingdome Hearts 3 has a better story than the vast majority of games though.