What systems do you hate in rpgs that other people love

[adrix89]

Items durability.
In what rpg did having to repair your junk, detracting from your epic quests of phat lewt, add to the game?

The fact that you are a random shmuck way in over your head and that will die in a ditch.
Muh Immersion!

 

[Roid King]

Another thing I can't stand is when items take up the same number of slots (1), regardless of whether it's a battle axe or a fucking cloudberry.

 

[J_C]

Voted 3:
No saves
Excessive level scaling
Respawns

Please add Open world games to the poll.

 

[Bonzai]

Also the idea of being able to talk to everyone seems kinda stupid. Can you really imagine a random dude running around asking everyone if could be of some assistance? I remember PsT parodied it a little bit in a conversation with an old lady near the mortuary. No idea how to fix that issue tho.

 

[Q]

To add something, I really hate fall damage death in most 3D games. It's just a reload element which can be triggered just by clumsy controls or game bug. It's realistic but not fun at all. Some non-rpgs adding some mechanics to it, like Prince of Persia or something. But in many action-RPGs it's just there and it's horrible.

 

[Mexi]

I can't stand an RPG game with a voiced protagonist. Pretty much #2 is a no buy from me. I've never played the Witcher games for that specific reason. Also, didn't play any of the Dragon Age games after Origin. Unlike 90% of this forum, I'll never play Fallout: 4 for that reason as well.

I never did like creating a full party. You may as well solo the game, as been said. You just have a bunch of silent statues. No interaction with characters or anything. It gets boring for me. I really like companion banter in an RPG. Characters with motivation for following and having emotional ties to them. #7 is something I definitely dislike. Reason why I never played the IWD games.

#11 is something I don't like, but it's also something that is more mild than the first two.

 

[Bonzai]

I really hate fall damage death in most 3D games.

It seems more like a level design problem rather a mechanical one. Also clibing feature is absent from most games for some reason (out of laziness i guess coz we've seen it done in Assassins Creed). So most games deal with it by making your jumps unrealistically high.

 

[janjetina]

Adding poll options should be accompanied with the possibility of changing votes. Now that new options have entered the poll, some of them bing major dealbreakers for me, I'll provide a drive-by explanation of my opinion.

1. RPG-lite and extremely basic systems. Major appeal in RPGs is mastering the intricate systems which heavily influence the gameplay. An intricate character system, being sort of a mediator between the player and the game world, is a defining feature of an RPG, and an alleged RPG with a simplistic character system fails at that defining feature. This is the flaw shared by most action adventures masquerading as RPGs and is a major dealbreaker for me.

2. Level scaling. Level scaling usually goes hand in hand with horrible encounter design filled with trash encounters. It robs the player of the sense of progression. It is just a lazy artificial attempt to provide challenge in lieu of the encounter placement consistent with the game world.

3. Respawning enemies. This usually goes hand in hand with trash encounters and (2). The end result is repetitiveness and tedium. If a designer doesn't want to compromise the plausibility of the game world (e.g. a wilderness area that was once cleared won't stay clean under normal circumstances), there is the following solution: let the monsters or animals respawn, but please instill them with the instinct of self-preservation: they should not engage the player who is clearly too strong for them, but remain peaceful unless the player attacks, or flee from his sight.

Dishonorable mention: Checkpoint save system. I'm a busy man and my time is not cheap. I need to quit when I need to quit and not a minute later.

 

[Irenaeus III]

Agree with janjetina's points.

 

[thesheeep]

Honestly, almost all of these are "it depends" for me.

Just as one example:

Respawns would suck / do suck in some games, but are perfectly fine - even desirable - in others.
Imagine Diablo-style H&S games without respawns. Going through every area only once, no possibility to level a bit just for fun, or to find some cool loot, boss did not drop something good and can't be killed again? Ugh...
Yet imagine Gothic with them. No more sense of achievement, ridding the land of vile beasts, finding chests. Far less immersive as the whole thing would be much more "gamey".

 

[Roid King]

To add something, I really hate fall damage death in most 3D games. It's just a reload element which can be triggered just by clumsy controls or game bug. It's realistic but not fun at all. Some non-rpgs adding some mechanics to it, like Prince of Persia or something. But in many action-RPGs it's just there and it's horrible.

Play moar Super Mario.

 

[Roqua]

Items durability.
In what rpg did having to repair your junk, detracting from your epic quests of phat lewt, add to the game?

I 100% agree with you, but do you think this is something people are passionate about? Its mainly just a gold sink that annoys everyone unless it is a player crafting economy driven mmo where the crafters claim it is necessary.

Voted 3:

Please add Open world games to the poll.

Open world versus what? Straight linear games? Semi open world? I'm not understanding really. Do you mean sandbox games where the player is supposed to create their own content like in survival games? Because they aren't rpgs in my mind. Do you consider Arcanum an open world? Because if you follow the story you can hit places at about the right level and play it as a linear game, same with most rpgs. If you explain and give some more information and examples so I can understand it would help.

Adding poll options should be accompanied with the possibility of changing votes. Now that new options have entered the poll, some of them bing major dealbreakers for me, I'll provide a drive-by explanation of my opinion.
.

Good call and done.

 

[jimmy_pvish]

Mostly items relate.

Random loots.
Random stat equipment.
Grind fest xp/items

I prefer fixed item, fixed stat, fixed item location, all handcraft by game creators.

 

[J_C]

Open world versus what? Straight linear games? Semi open world? I'm not understanding really. Do you mean sandbox games where the player is supposed to create their own content like in survival games? Because they aren't rpgs in my mind. Do you consider Arcanum an open world? Because if you follow the story you can hit places at about the right level and play it as a linear game, same with most rpgs. If you explain and give some more information and examples so I can understand it would help..

Open world games like The Elder Scrolls series, nuFallouts, The Witcher 3, where you are dumped into a huge ass open world and you can fuck around with millions of stupid side quest. Instead I like more semi-linear ones like the IE games, Old-Fallouts.

 

[Explorerbc]

I just need to vent somewhere right now so I'll do it here.

I voted restrictive saves and respawns because why the fuck do I have to spawn in a bonfire and go through the same trash mobs everytime just to get a try at the boss.

Fuck bonfire placement in dark souls.

 

[Neanderthal]

To be honest all them I voted for are not me major annoyances, i'm just a bit irritated by em, thinkin about it me really hated ones are:

Craftin: How the fuck is a sellsword wi no formal training, no long years o apprenticeship an journeyman training matching or exceeding master craftsmen o world? Fuckin stupid, in old AD&D magic users could craft great stuff wi their high level spells, but they needed a craftsman to create an exceptional item first, then they could add their spells to it and use permanency to hold em. Now every Tom, Dick an Harry is a fuckin Wayland.

Lack of Attrition: Mental, physical, financial, you only get better in CRPGs, an theres no challenges you can't overcome. I'll gi Darkest Dungeon its fair dues (sorry Celerity) in that it deals wi this, but it also invalidates it by givin you unlimited heros to throw away. Theres this fuckin stupid idea now that you should always be at your prime in every scrap of every adventure, never wounded, injured or anythin less than perfect no matter what you've gone through. We're playin fuckin superheroes not people. An don't get me started on this stupid fuckin notion that the wilderness o ancient worlds we're travellin through should be so safe, pleasant an oh so happy, a medieval wilderness wi fantastic elements should be worse than a post apocalyptic wasteland, an survival an horror elements should be a real thing.

Squeeing: All this childish, giggling fucking Joss Whedon humour that fuckin infects games, thats not fuckin wit except for a retarded five year old.

Lootwhoring an trash mobs: Cheap an nasty way to pad your game when you can't be arsed to make real content, an worse thing is that it fucking works, you hear whole groups o prats sayin that CRPGs should stick to their "core" elements o grindin XP an hoardin identikit shit, like this is only shit thats ever mattered or is good. Fuck me this is exactly why Arneson an Gygax started gettin away from wargames, they wanted someat more an now we're wantin to go backwards, real fuckin popular decline.

The Decline: Us customers not askin for more when objectively inferior gold are sold, this has been happenin for so long its not even funny anymore, you've got thirty years old games that were at height o industry at time, an modern games can't match em or implement features that they had! What the fuck is this shit? All this talk about evolution an innovation an you still can't do what were done decades a-fucking-go, load o bloody horseshit excusing developers from pushin boundaries an matching past games. An you've got twats who cheer this on an fanboy for all new shit, even when its laughable compared to decades old stuff. You mention this anywhere away from Codex an folk think you're a nutter, cos we should all be content an never ask for more, be good little consumers an eat our dollops o processed shit while never complainin about taste.

Now thats what I fucking hate.

 

[Sheepherder]

Add puzzles to the list.
They're extremely annoying on the first playthrough, and a tedious chore when replaying.

 

[DraQ]

I could definitely get into a system in which the personalities were somewhat deeper. I'm even fine with "my" characters having hidden agendas and story beats and so forth ... as long as these stories didn't become the main reason for the game. For this type of thing, I think Jagged Alliance got it exactly right. It was done with a light enough touch that when a mercenary did something without being ordered, it came as a surprise. I didn't want or need a big cutscene between Reuban and Ivan. Reuban just issued threats for a while, and then one morning Ivan didn't show up for the daily briefing. No evidence, nothing further said ever. That was one of my landmark moments in gaming. I wouldn't want it to become like Mass Effect where every moment you're watching these fascinating scripted dramas unfold. But having more impact than in Wizardry 8 (zero) would be cool.

I think the main problem here is that there doesn't seem to be a way to create a formal system that would allow expressing all the personalities player may wish to create and that it would be difficult to delineate player agency from responsibilities of such system.

Still, some soft and fragmentary trait system that would leave moment to moment decisions in player's hands but would result in some penalties if player regularly violated their stated "alignment" (occasional weak "violations" wouldn't be penalized at all as they might represent the way player's interpretation/character concept differs from what could be codified).

For whatever it's worth, I completely understand that satisfaction. You said it yourself: "clearing" a map extends the zone of player supremacy. This makes my Achiever sense tingle and gets me a little closer to "100%ing" the game. I don't actually want this kind of feedback from a game, but it's no mystery why it feels rewarding.

Do note that this kind of satisfaction is self defeating, though. Cleared map is dead, it's no longer an asset to gameplay. Anything involving a map that's already cleared becomes a chore.

Items durability.
In what rpg did having to repair your junk, detracting from your epic quests of phat lewt, add to the game?

In any game that uses varied materials for weapons and armor.
For example silver(ed) sword may be effective against supernatural or incorporeal enemies but it will dull much faster.
A glass weapon may be incredibly sharp and lighter than a metal one, but it will be much more fragile.
A bronze or lower quality iron weapon won't differ much from a steel one in terms of effects it has on flesh, but durability will be a major concern.

Additionally repair is a viable form of resource sink.

Resource sinks are pretty much a prerequisite for functional in-game economy.

1. Crafting

Quest-based crafting (as in collect prerequisites to make a powerful unique item) is good.
Repetitive crafting can be good as well as it allows disposable gear and better self-sufficiency, as long as the crafting itself isn't pointlessly grindy.

2. TES Level-skills-up-as-you-use-them system. makes you feel Uber. I hate Uber.

What makes you Uber is badly balanced character development. It doesn't matter how you level up.

6. TES-like Sandboxes with tons of meaningless filler in it.

Well, computers cannot into storytelling and a sandbox you can do your own stuff in still beats a scripted cutscene rollercoaster.

What you write is good in theory, but practically it fails more often than not. In most RPGs the maps are full of trash mobs. What satisfaction do I get out of fighting them and how do I motivate myself to proceed in order to reach the good parts? The motivation comes in the form of XP and of clearing the map and therefore feeling a sense of progress.

But then the bad design is still bad, even if it's sugar coated.

And kill XP based systems are an awful piece of game design anyway.

I haven't played the games you are mentioning unfortunately.

You probably should supplement your gaming diet with games from other genres and hybrids. It broadens the perspective and some have long since solved the problems cRPGs still struggle with.
For example System Shock 2 just wouldn't work without respawns and durability mechanics, but with those included it's one of the most nerve-wracking survival horror experiences to this date.

Pre-defined player characters and classes are definitely at the top of the list for me. It is the very opposite of role-playing when a game puts you in a box and says "YOU ARE THIS".

Truth be told I don't even consider the Witcher games to be RPGs.

Agreed. A game doesn't need to be an RPG to be good though, so I can't say I hate to be forced to play Geralt or TNO.

Also the idea of being able to talk to everyone seems kinda stupid. Can you really imagine a random dude running around asking everyone if could be of some assistance? I remember PsT parodied it a little bit in a conversation with an old lady near the mortuary. No idea how to fix that issue tho.

It makes sense with a topic based systems, though. You can walk to about anyone and ask how to get to a particular tavern or what the fuck is a foyada.
It would make even more sense for random passerbys to quickly run out of patience so that you couldn't milk every single one for information for half an hour - Daggerfall implemented something along these lines.

To add something, I really hate fall damage death in most 3D games. It's just a reload element which can be triggered just by clumsy controls or game bug. It's realistic but not fun at all. Some non-rpgs adding some mechanics to it, like Prince of Persia or something. But in many action-RPGs it's just there and it's horrible.

It can be fun if you can use it in combat against enemies (meaning that they can also use it against you) or when falling damage can be traded off for, for example ability to get out of bad situation - might even be build dependent, a lightly equipped, acrobatic character might use a route which would make a knight in full armor go splat.

No mechanics is fun in vacuum.

Death to falling damage can also be a perfectly reasonable price of failure just like death to combat damage can.

 

[Zombra]

Also the idea of being able to talk to everyone seems kinda stupid. Can you really imagine a random dude running around asking everyone if could be of some assistance? I remember PsT parodied it a little bit in a conversation with an old lady near the mortuary. No idea how to fix that issue tho.

Actually this is incredibly easy to fix. Just make people noninteractive unless "activated" by quest information. You don't have to build a whole system for talking to random strangers just because it's possible to code, just the same as you don't have to build a system that lets you pick up and carry dinner plates and bolts of cloth just because it's possible. I'm sure I've seen this somewhere but I can't think where. I wish more (perhaps all) RPGs would do this though.

 

[Roid King]

Bunch of stuff.

Todd Squad approves of this post.

 

[Q]

To add something, I really hate fall damage death in most 3D games. It's just a reload element which can be triggered just by clumsy controls or game bug. It's realistic but not fun at all. Some non-rpgs adding some mechanics to it, like Prince of Persia or something. But in many action-RPGs it's just there and it's horrible.

It can be fun if you can use it in combat against enemies (meaning that they can also use it against you) or when falling damage can be traded off for, for example ability to get out of bad situation - might even be build dependent, a lightly equipped, acrobatic character might use a route which would make a knight in full armor go splat.

No mechanics is fun in vacuum.

Death to falling damage can also be a perfectly reasonable price of failure just like death to combat damage can.

It can, yes. I give an example of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time where it is a solid game mechanics. You can climb, you have wide range of acrobatics. And overall escaping fall is even bigger part of game then deafeating enemies. And you can reverse time if you have that resource instead of just reloading. It is a thoughtful mechanics.

But i can't remember any RPG that even takes a build into account other that movement speed or jump height maybe.

Take Dragon Age 3 or Fallout: New Vegas. There is some vertical space in these games but it means nothing - only way to reload your save, to have a barrier on a game map. Your heroes can endure a couple of dragon breathes or a couple of rocket launcher shots, but they die instantly on a fall, never give you any other mechanics like climbing or something. It's just annoying. In fact I installed no-fall-damage mods to these games and it gets only better and don't break anything.

Gothics and Risens at least have climbing - falls was annoying sometimes there too, but at least it was part of the game to climb somewhere to find something.

Some fantasy sandboxes at least have spells to deal with this: feather fall, levitate or fly. But you cant use heights as barriers now, so faggot-designers don't like it.

Another good example to this is AION MMO. It's just shitty korean MMO without climbling. But the change to fall death is that the characters have wings. It has some resource of time, which you can use to glide, or even fly in some places. So you can escape fall death if you use this wisely, and it become a new fun element of PvP.

So what I really hate is shitty instant reload situations. And most games threat falls just as this. No mechanics and no meaning attached. I say - for any death or damage situtation either do a good mechanics to evade, or didn't do that at all. Even invisible barriers are better than fall death reload.

 

[Skall]

Not quite part of the poll, so I figured I'd elaborate.

1). Open Worlds
While the concept sounds great in theory, I find that most open-world experiences quickly boil down to a handful of content-types copy-and-pasted all over the place. The lack of fast travel, symmetrically-distributed quests, and the need to constantly backtrack further exacerbate this. I still love Ultima VII, but I'm not a fan of the current approach which all too often boils down to a single-player MMO experience.

2). Tolkien/Forgotten Realms Worlds
While it's certainly a smaller barrier-of-entry to populate a world of with orcs, goblins, longswords+1 , etc., (at least to CRPG nerds) I quickly tune out to the setting and lore of these games. Everyone praises Planescape: Torment, yet -- despite the game being rooted in the highly derivative meta-world of D&D -- most projects seem afraid of following its trope-subverting mentality.

3). Lack of Non-Combat Minigames
Everyone seems to hate minigames, but in a way, combat has always been a minigame; a distinct system built around/on-top of the rest of the gameplay. Granted typical minigames tend to be shallow distractions, but that's partly because they rarely have the option of being developed. For example, I enjoyed lockpicking in Return to Krondor, and would've loved to have it expended even further: various ways of detecting/avoiding alarms, different types of tools to get past traps, penalties for using certain tools/spells to open chests, stealth/perception awareness mechanics playing a part in opening doors, risk of damaging contents of containers when forcing them open, etc. There's lots of variables to play around with, and potentially a system that could be reused to provide lots of content at a small cost (like combat). I acknowledge that such an in-depth approach would practically require a whole game to be based around it, but I'd be interested in it as I don't hate minigames as much as most people; I just hate it when they're nothing more than block-sliding puzzles.

 

[Jacob]

Everyone seems to hate minigames, but in a way, combat has always been a minigame;

what the hell is this

I think you misunderstood what minigames are.

Although, I do agree with your point on non-combat aspects usually being less developed, but what you mentioned aren't minigames.

Having your character controls a rat trying to sneak in a house and steal a cheese at one part of the game, that's a minigame.
Having your character being able to transform into rat and having developed stealth mechanics, is not a "stealth minigame".

 

[laclongquan]

Item durability and Realism is something I am passionate about but I know people will ragequit and whine like a Chinese grandson if it's properly implemented.

In actual theory, a proper ID and R should have a blade ruined after one fight, ditto with the shields. Armor is lasting longer, 2-3 fights.And arrows is heavy as fuck, one archer should have a quiver of 30 at most. And its' expensive, not like 1 gp per 30 like dirt.You can imagine the butthurts.

In application, Unreal World tried to apply this ID and R aspect somewhat. BUT.

Since each useable items has a durability factor, it mean the item count in each map go up exponentially. Say, 10 normal arrows, 10 near broken arrows (shoot it once more and it broke upon hurting), 10 half assed arrows. Worse with weapon because each has something like 1/6, 2/3, or 55/100 durability depend on the type. You can think of a post-combat map with item counts increase threefold compared to start.

You can see the problem in term of coding and game engine.

So yeah.

 

[xxxCatholicKillahxxx]

On respawning enemies. In my opinion it is more of a result or symptom of the way that exploration is handled in a game than a problem in and of itself. Games that have respawning enemies tend to have a lot of traversing/travelling in less than optimal way, imo. Be it FPP or TPP singleplayer aRPG or even isometric party-based with walking through towns to get to that one particular place after everything else there has been done, such as going to a merchant.

This sort of exploration doesn't leave much choice to break the act of monotonous walking except by respawning enemies. First the walking becomes a chore followed by the whacking of the respawning enemies becoming one.
So the players who want to smell each and every on of those pretty flowers, walk by a river or be able to visit all those buildings in any given settlement are encouraging this sort of design.


Voted
Extremely story heavy narrative with lots of cut scenes, No difficulty options/settings and Excessive level scaling. Any at all is excessive.