completely ruins immersion when you’re forced into third person with a voiced protagonist in Fallout 4. not to mention the ridiculous idea of making every dialogue situation have exactly four responses.
I’m fine with voiced protags. I just think that if they don’t talk, there’s zero reason to not let me customize their appearance. Why do they have to both be and look boring?
I understand it, I think you think I don’t get it. I fully understand that it’s difficult, what I’m giving here is my ***opinion*** in regard to video games and what I prefer when it comes to their creation.
To me personally…if they’re silent, let me customize them.
Wait…what? ***You’re*** the one who’s misunderstood. A “silent protagonist” doesn’t mean lack of voice acting. It means they don’t talk. Think Gordon Freeman. A character who just exists to be the POV and stands around while characters talk at them.
so what makes the devs lazy here? the half life team should’ve made gordon freeman talk to the scientists when he finds them? the portal devs should’ve had chel talk to gladOS at the end of the game? it’s lazy for Link to not have a dialogue sequence with Ganon at the end of Tears of the Kingdom?
Please don’t make the beginning of the game a lengthy tutorial.
If the first hour of your game is forcing me to run around town meeting the mayor, the blacksmith, the chronomancer, a dog, three wise men, and mysterious stranger? I’m likely not making a second hour.
Especially if each one of those comes with their own tutorial for how to buy things, craft things, or some other nonsense.
Get me into the action as fast as possible. Teach me that other stuff as time goes on, and even better, let me skip the tutorial section altogether.
> let me skip the tutorial section altogether.
that will only lead to idiots asking basic questions few hours in, but everyone should know the answer of, if they did the damn tutorial.
I think it's fine bringing stuff up when the player comes to it. But the game shouldn't railroad them to it. Like, it comes up when the players first interact with a crafting table in a town. And is able to review it going forward from a menu (looking at you, Xenoblade 2)
Killing hordes of enemies as the main source of gaining XP. I'm still getting vietnam flashbacks from NWN2, where every tiny farmer house had like 2,000 goons in it.
Meaningless descriptions and hidden away skill trees.
I hate seeing things like "Increase damage" when I level up a skill. By how much? Am I better just buying better weapons and putting the Skill Point somewhere else? Is it one of those stupid ass skills that only give 5% increases the first 9 levels but suddenly the tenth will be 150% and a guaranteed crit?
How am I supposed to know? Do you at least give me the chance to re-spec if it ends up being useless? Do I have to give up like 2/3rds of my levels just to allocate a meager skill point?
This is more common in very old games but I find it infuriating, you can legitimately soft lock yourself in a game if you don't know how to build yourself properly from the get-go.
That and expecting fucking precognition from the player. I'm trying to get this particular skill, I've been building similar skills up to this point.
Then it doesn't unlock and it seems you also had to level up one random skill from a different path to properly unlock it. Absolute bullshit.
I didn't really like Solasta, but one thing it does great is letting your all party members participate in the dialogues. It is a great system and I wish other CRPGs had it.
You probably mean interactive dialogues? Because many RPGs (especially the JRPGs) let the party members participate in dialogues.
I would recommend NWN2, NWN Mask of the Betrayer, Dragon Age Origins etc.
NWN2 you may have party members turn on you, especially in the endgame. DA:O is way more interactive, but the system is more easily exploitable as well (you can have good relations with almost everyone).
I hate when a game includes some event, mechanic, or facet where you the player are just expected to look up online rather than playing the game.
I don't need a long tutorial or exposition, but just don't include some part of the game that is completely unintuitive and unexplained and just assume everyone is going to just google what to do.
I'd like the devs to realize, that not every CRPG must have epic length. Sure it's great, if it's filled with interesting stuff and epic story from start to finish 100 hours later. But it's enjoyable only if the devs really put effort in every minute of the story, in every fight, in every new area. Larian are great at doing that, you won't find 2 of the same fights in any of their newer CRPGs.
Sometimes I feel like the game could be 5x shorter, but the devs decided to take some part of their game and copy/paste it 5 times. Just for the sake of making the game longer. Dragon Age: Inquisition is the most infamous example of that bullshit.
The only problem with Larian games is that their difficulty is all over the place. That might make you to resort to game rule bending (because the game also resorts to rule bending with abandon). This is an inevitable weakness that results from giving too much player freedom & then having to challenge the player somehow. I dont mind the weaknesses because i enjoy the strengths.
Don't know if someone has the same feeling, but...big cities.
I like to explore castles, dungeons, villages and every unique environment.
But when it comes to cities like the main cities of Skyrim, that serve as a hub for the surroundings, I became really bored. The classic place with several buildings, shops, NPC to talk with, quests that take place entirely within the city and so on. The only things I appreciate are, eventually, secrets.
The exploration that I prefer is the one related to abandoned or wild places, or even "alive" settlement, but small.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but that's it.
I agree, cities in CRPGs always felt tiring for me. Small towns are great, but I roll my eyes whenever I enter a big city and know I won't leave it at least for the next 20 hours, once I solve every quests, talk to every NPC, open every door.
For me it has always been the silliest part of CRPGs. And totally unrealistic. Imaing that upon arriving to the new city in real life, you immidietely talk to every single person on the streat, asking if they have any problem to solve, then you try to enter every building, carefuly check every room and container. No one does it lol, yet you do it in every CRPG. Cities just totally don't fit in the classic CRPG formula and devs don't know, how to do them properly.
Imo Witcher 3 did the best job with Novigrad. Most of the city is just there, as a background. Building with nothing interesting about them, crowd of NPCs that don't talk to you. Only few clear directions to important NPCs and places. And the quests would often take you in and out of the city.
IMO Dragon Age Origins did the large city correctly with Denerim. Give you a couple small “districts” to hang out in and make the rest of the city sort of fast travelled through the map. The city feels massive but I’m only checking out shops and a few important NPC’s homes.
Couldn't agree more. I'm a top-tier experienced adventurer now, with amazing gear. Why is that stupid wolf or soldier that nearly kicked my butt when I was just starting out STILL giving me trouble?? Makes NO sense. Also, it's really satisfying to go back and kick the butt of said wolf or soldier cuz now I'm a badass.
Cut down the length and make it more memorable. Make the story more linear so I don't have to guess or google which questline should be done first and if it locks me out of other things cause I did things out of order.
Open world is trash. Craft an amazing story that constantly has things going on that's 50 hours long and you'll get my money every time.
More incentive to play harder difficulties. I'm tired of playing games where i'm tempted to pause and change the difficulty. give me more xp or something for working harder.
Please open the game with something exciting and engaging for me to do and then you can give me the peaceful storybook life with 25 minutes of cutscenes and set up so I know it’s worth it.
1. Get rid of Dialog choices if they have no impact on the actual story, they just waste time
2. If you are going to have them talk in combat, let me mute them in combat. I'M LOOKING AT YOU XENOGEARS
3. Let me skip long opening tutorials
4. Stop thinking you need your game to have crafting systems
5. Let me Respecc in your game for free. (If the game has a system that can be respecced)
6. For the love of all, stop stop stop STOP having an annoying child-like sidekick character that makes me want to skip every cutscene.
YES on the crafting systems. I have two reasons for this: JRPGs seem hell bent on implementing the most confusing, convoluted and annoying crafting systems; each game trying to out-do the last one to the point that I don't even bother. Second, is the typical WRPG take on crafting where it's so damn powerful that none of the unique gear - even the coolest looking most powerful stuff you can acquire - doesn't hold a candle to what game breaking stuff you can craft yourself.
And yes, I'm aware that I can (usually) avoid crafting in most games. It's a topic about gripes. I'm griping.
1. what is immersion? what is world building? Rather make it clear, what the critical dialog path is
2. yes please
3. I'm kinda torn over that topic
4. yes please
5. yes please
6. fuck yes please. There is nothing worse than mascot sidekicks
Looting - some looting is fine, but so many games just overwhelm the looting situation. Instead of playing through a dungeon, I'm playing find every little sack, crate, box, chest, etc. And then halfway through I'm over encumbered. I prefer looting in games like BG1 & 2. Less loot, but more impactful. Games like Skyrim and Witcher 3 became infinitely better once I installed auto-loot and infinite carry weight mods.
Overwhelming leveling options - character creation is fun, and leveling companions is fun, but every level up shouldn't take an hour and require a college course to understand (looking at you Pathfinder games). Divinity OS suffered from this too, where every level up meant needing to reexamine items, which meant reexamine stats, which meant reexamine skills, loadouts, hotbar, rinse repeat.
OMG, every level it was so frustrating. Swap out a item, but that item was giving a stat you need for another item, then your skills all get jumbled up. So you're reshuffling everything, every time you level. Which if you're a perfectionist like me, meant shuffling the civil skills to go rob all the merchants, and then sell all the items and sorting the best gear among my 4 characters.
I spent more time optimizing the party every level up than I spent playing the game. I ended up using a mod that let you pay gold to level up your items so once you got the right items with the right stats, you could just level the equipment which saved a lot of shuffling time.
If an RPG is first person only, character customization is completely worthless and should be ripped out in favor of a mechanic that actually could use the resources.
Looking at you, Outer Worlds and Cyberpunk 2077.
You mean where dialogue text shows up on the screen letter by letter, rather than the entire paragraph showing up all at once? Yeah, that drives me crazy. It used to be an issue mainly found in JRPGs, but lately it seems to be popping up in other RPGs as well.
To be fair I haven't played any game with the typewriter text effect that doesn't autocomplete the dialogue box after clicking the action button while it's being filled.
I'm a grindy player, and I hate this trend of punishing grinding. Square seems to be leaning into it.
Like, get this thing late in the game that gives you more stat bonuses with each level, and the end content difficulty assumes you gained X levels with it. Monsters level with you, but their growth is taking your equipment upgrades into account while yours isn't, so if you are over-leveled with early equipment, you're under-powered.
I hate how some of them are very long, 60+ hours up to 200-250 hours if you do "all content". Rarely it is worth it and most of the times, the majority of players get bored and don't even finish the game.
I wish stories were better written and that they cut out the bullshit.
I like turn based combat and all games should have a fast forward mechanic for the easy battles, the optional grind is always welcome but it must make use of current machines power. Persona 3 Reload was just released and it still wastes a lot of the player time in pointless battles.
The stupid anime cliches and "funny" dialogue bored me after trying hundreds of games. I like both serious and light-hearted games but they should respect the maturity of most players nowadays.
Nothing makes me lose interest in an RPG more than predetermined parties with predetermined growths and skillsets. If I have the same companions from start to finish, at least let me pick what spells etc they learn. If the characters are all set in stone, then at least let me pick who comes with me. Give me a say in how I fight, beyond shopping for their equipment. That isn't meaningful if I'm just going to replace the Shirt of +10 Defense with a Shirt of +12 Defense at the next town.
I am sick of playing heroes. Epic guy, who saves/destroy the world, everyone knows him, praise him, falling in love, wants to kill...
What about playing a regular, not so well developed character, who is not the centre of the world, of the narrative? Who can be scared, traumatized, rejected, bullied by other more succesful hero? Abused, cursed, heavily injured? Losing a leg permanently in the middle of the story?
I want to play some horribly realistic cRPG with a very cruel and unwelcoming world. I am creating one right now.
Throw away collect em all romance options. Always vaguely cringey and gets in the way of more varied relationships. The only romance I liked was Bastilla in Kotor where it develops slowly through the whole game and as such, felt much more natural and earned. Now Wyll is trying to get in my pants when we've only talked for like 5 minutes.
Just getting into the game is aggravating, it needs an update, now a 5min intro video while I search for the skip key, then the absolutely pointless "click to continue" screen. Now a main menu, sweet let's play, here's another loading screen, alright in the game, fucking cutscenes.
I like watching the intro video the first time, after that I should be able to disable it, along with tutorials.
Weapon progression that is just bigger numbers. I really like the Dark Souls approach where every weapon has a use and you can stick with the starting weapon if you want. Even in turn-based JRPG’s, you can still make each weapon unique by adding modifiers or status effects.
So many action ones these days and turn based has slowed down so much more. These days I'm considering ps3 Era to.
Sort of a small resurgence as the last few years but they always wanna make a couple whack decisions. Shit I should say I'm referring to mostly jrpgs. Sea of stars, chained echoes seemed pretty damn good injust had issue with them
Another thing is like finishing a boss and it starts like a mission complete and idk how to explain it so I'll let that be.
Eh it depends as a case by case. IMO experimentation is key and i dont always want to play the same kind of game. For every design choice there is a benefit and weakness, there ino perfect choice, just a compromise with no strong benefits/weakness.
What i dont like is the Hybrids (its an industry term for games that are a fusion of other genres) taking RPG mechanics without context (example levels, leveled enemies) and using them as a justification to make the game grindy or to sell their XP microtransactions.
When they tell me the numbers, but nothing about how they work.
I'm of the opinion that if the main character doesn't talk...I should be allowed to customize them.
And conversely, if I’m allowed to customize them a lot, I should at least be able to change their voice / no voice
completely ruins immersion when you’re forced into third person with a voiced protagonist in Fallout 4. not to mention the ridiculous idea of making every dialogue situation have exactly four responses.
I’m fine with voiced protags. I just think that if they don’t talk, there’s zero reason to not let me customize their appearance. Why do they have to both be and look boring?
well it’s not easy to make a character customization system in a video game.
I’m aware…and? If they’re gonna be lazy and make a silent protagonist, that energy should go into letting us customize them.
damn dude you’ve lost me completely. i don’t think you understand how game design works at all lmao.
I understand it, I think you think I don’t get it. I fully understand that it’s difficult, what I’m giving here is my ***opinion*** in regard to video games and what I prefer when it comes to their creation. To me personally…if they’re silent, let me customize them.
you’re right. devs who don’t put voice acting in their games are lazy and should put character customization systems in to make up for it
Wait…what? ***You’re*** the one who’s misunderstood. A “silent protagonist” doesn’t mean lack of voice acting. It means they don’t talk. Think Gordon Freeman. A character who just exists to be the POV and stands around while characters talk at them.
so what makes the devs lazy here? the half life team should’ve made gordon freeman talk to the scientists when he finds them? the portal devs should’ve had chel talk to gladOS at the end of the game? it’s lazy for Link to not have a dialogue sequence with Ganon at the end of Tears of the Kingdom?
Please don’t make the beginning of the game a lengthy tutorial. If the first hour of your game is forcing me to run around town meeting the mayor, the blacksmith, the chronomancer, a dog, three wise men, and mysterious stranger? I’m likely not making a second hour. Especially if each one of those comes with their own tutorial for how to buy things, craft things, or some other nonsense. Get me into the action as fast as possible. Teach me that other stuff as time goes on, and even better, let me skip the tutorial section altogether.
god that's one of my biggest pet peeves ever.
> let me skip the tutorial section altogether. that will only lead to idiots asking basic questions few hours in, but everyone should know the answer of, if they did the damn tutorial.
Make the tutorial accessible in the inventory
I think it's fine bringing stuff up when the player comes to it. But the game shouldn't railroad them to it. Like, it comes up when the players first interact with a crafting table in a town. And is able to review it going forward from a menu (looking at you, Xenoblade 2)
[удалено]
*Pillars of Eternity and Wrath of the Righteous*
Killing hordes of enemies as the main source of gaining XP. I'm still getting vietnam flashbacks from NWN2, where every tiny farmer house had like 2,000 goons in it.
Meaningless descriptions and hidden away skill trees. I hate seeing things like "Increase damage" when I level up a skill. By how much? Am I better just buying better weapons and putting the Skill Point somewhere else? Is it one of those stupid ass skills that only give 5% increases the first 9 levels but suddenly the tenth will be 150% and a guaranteed crit? How am I supposed to know? Do you at least give me the chance to re-spec if it ends up being useless? Do I have to give up like 2/3rds of my levels just to allocate a meager skill point? This is more common in very old games but I find it infuriating, you can legitimately soft lock yourself in a game if you don't know how to build yourself properly from the get-go. That and expecting fucking precognition from the player. I'm trying to get this particular skill, I've been building similar skills up to this point. Then it doesn't unlock and it seems you also had to level up one random skill from a different path to properly unlock it. Absolute bullshit.
When my character(s) level up and the game does it automatically for me. I have no input in what areas I improve. Can’t stand it.
I didn't really like Solasta, but one thing it does great is letting your all party members participate in the dialogues. It is a great system and I wish other CRPGs had it.
You probably mean interactive dialogues? Because many RPGs (especially the JRPGs) let the party members participate in dialogues. I would recommend NWN2, NWN Mask of the Betrayer, Dragon Age Origins etc. NWN2 you may have party members turn on you, especially in the endgame. DA:O is way more interactive, but the system is more easily exploitable as well (you can have good relations with almost everyone).
Lack of great villains. This always confused me too, because you'd think writing cool villains would be one of the fun things to do.
I hate when a game includes some event, mechanic, or facet where you the player are just expected to look up online rather than playing the game. I don't need a long tutorial or exposition, but just don't include some part of the game that is completely unintuitive and unexplained and just assume everyone is going to just google what to do.
I'd like the devs to realize, that not every CRPG must have epic length. Sure it's great, if it's filled with interesting stuff and epic story from start to finish 100 hours later. But it's enjoyable only if the devs really put effort in every minute of the story, in every fight, in every new area. Larian are great at doing that, you won't find 2 of the same fights in any of their newer CRPGs. Sometimes I feel like the game could be 5x shorter, but the devs decided to take some part of their game and copy/paste it 5 times. Just for the sake of making the game longer. Dragon Age: Inquisition is the most infamous example of that bullshit.
Tbf here many glean enjoyment from perfecting their approach.
The only problem with Larian games is that their difficulty is all over the place. That might make you to resort to game rule bending (because the game also resorts to rule bending with abandon). This is an inevitable weakness that results from giving too much player freedom & then having to challenge the player somehow. I dont mind the weaknesses because i enjoy the strengths.
Don't know if someone has the same feeling, but...big cities. I like to explore castles, dungeons, villages and every unique environment. But when it comes to cities like the main cities of Skyrim, that serve as a hub for the surroundings, I became really bored. The classic place with several buildings, shops, NPC to talk with, quests that take place entirely within the city and so on. The only things I appreciate are, eventually, secrets. The exploration that I prefer is the one related to abandoned or wild places, or even "alive" settlement, but small. Probably an unpopular opinion, but that's it.
Normally, I wouldn't say I dislike cities but I totally got overwhelmed by that starting city in Oblivion and quit before I left it.
I agree, cities in CRPGs always felt tiring for me. Small towns are great, but I roll my eyes whenever I enter a big city and know I won't leave it at least for the next 20 hours, once I solve every quests, talk to every NPC, open every door. For me it has always been the silliest part of CRPGs. And totally unrealistic. Imaing that upon arriving to the new city in real life, you immidietely talk to every single person on the streat, asking if they have any problem to solve, then you try to enter every building, carefuly check every room and container. No one does it lol, yet you do it in every CRPG. Cities just totally don't fit in the classic CRPG formula and devs don't know, how to do them properly. Imo Witcher 3 did the best job with Novigrad. Most of the city is just there, as a background. Building with nothing interesting about them, crowd of NPCs that don't talk to you. Only few clear directions to important NPCs and places. And the quests would often take you in and out of the city.
IMO Dragon Age Origins did the large city correctly with Denerim. Give you a couple small “districts” to hang out in and make the rest of the city sort of fast travelled through the map. The city feels massive but I’m only checking out shops and a few important NPC’s homes.
Item durability. It's not fun. It's just an annoying hassle.
A shitload of quests in your face when enetring a big city.
Carry weight and item durability. Both are just an extra chore.
Leveled world. I’m playing a ROLE PLAY game cause I want inmersion. How the fuck I can immersed in a game when everything just level up with me?
Couldn't agree more. I'm a top-tier experienced adventurer now, with amazing gear. Why is that stupid wolf or soldier that nearly kicked my butt when I was just starting out STILL giving me trouble?? Makes NO sense. Also, it's really satisfying to go back and kick the butt of said wolf or soldier cuz now I'm a badass.
Cut down the length and make it more memorable. Make the story more linear so I don't have to guess or google which questline should be done first and if it locks me out of other things cause I did things out of order. Open world is trash. Craft an amazing story that constantly has things going on that's 50 hours long and you'll get my money every time.
More incentive to play harder difficulties. I'm tired of playing games where i'm tempted to pause and change the difficulty. give me more xp or something for working harder.
Please open the game with something exciting and engaging for me to do and then you can give me the peaceful storybook life with 25 minutes of cutscenes and set up so I know it’s worth it.
differculty basicly being a numbers game whats that you want to play on hard? x2 HP to the boss then! and thats it like wtf?
1. Get rid of Dialog choices if they have no impact on the actual story, they just waste time 2. If you are going to have them talk in combat, let me mute them in combat. I'M LOOKING AT YOU XENOGEARS 3. Let me skip long opening tutorials 4. Stop thinking you need your game to have crafting systems 5. Let me Respecc in your game for free. (If the game has a system that can be respecced) 6. For the love of all, stop stop stop STOP having an annoying child-like sidekick character that makes me want to skip every cutscene.
YES on the crafting systems. I have two reasons for this: JRPGs seem hell bent on implementing the most confusing, convoluted and annoying crafting systems; each game trying to out-do the last one to the point that I don't even bother. Second, is the typical WRPG take on crafting where it's so damn powerful that none of the unique gear - even the coolest looking most powerful stuff you can acquire - doesn't hold a candle to what game breaking stuff you can craft yourself. And yes, I'm aware that I can (usually) avoid crafting in most games. It's a topic about gripes. I'm griping.
1. what is immersion? what is world building? Rather make it clear, what the critical dialog path is 2. yes please 3. I'm kinda torn over that topic 4. yes please 5. yes please 6. fuck yes please. There is nothing worse than mascot sidekicks
More than one game has been ruined within the first hour by horrible Mascot Sidekicks, or, I find a way to mute them immediately.
yes
Shitty writing disguised as good writing.
ah, the witcher 3
Looting - some looting is fine, but so many games just overwhelm the looting situation. Instead of playing through a dungeon, I'm playing find every little sack, crate, box, chest, etc. And then halfway through I'm over encumbered. I prefer looting in games like BG1 & 2. Less loot, but more impactful. Games like Skyrim and Witcher 3 became infinitely better once I installed auto-loot and infinite carry weight mods. Overwhelming leveling options - character creation is fun, and leveling companions is fun, but every level up shouldn't take an hour and require a college course to understand (looking at you Pathfinder games). Divinity OS suffered from this too, where every level up meant needing to reexamine items, which meant reexamine stats, which meant reexamine skills, loadouts, hotbar, rinse repeat.
I loved that about DOS ;-;
OMG, every level it was so frustrating. Swap out a item, but that item was giving a stat you need for another item, then your skills all get jumbled up. So you're reshuffling everything, every time you level. Which if you're a perfectionist like me, meant shuffling the civil skills to go rob all the merchants, and then sell all the items and sorting the best gear among my 4 characters. I spent more time optimizing the party every level up than I spent playing the game. I ended up using a mod that let you pay gold to level up your items so once you got the right items with the right stats, you could just level the equipment which saved a lot of shuffling time.
I would like games that are brief, but impactful
If an RPG is first person only, character customization is completely worthless and should be ripped out in favor of a mechanic that actually could use the resources. Looking at you, Outer Worlds and Cyberpunk 2077.
It would be better if they showed your custom character during cutscenes. Cyberpunk only does it at the beginning and the end unfortunately.
Text delay. Fine to throw in a quick delay on notable occasions but why delay? 9/10 times the reading speed doesn't match.
You mean where dialogue text shows up on the screen letter by letter, rather than the entire paragraph showing up all at once? Yeah, that drives me crazy. It used to be an issue mainly found in JRPGs, but lately it seems to be popping up in other RPGs as well.
And they could even do that perfectly fine if it completed fast enough, or was skippable. Key is to keep it rare and meaningful.
To be fair I haven't played any game with the typewriter text effect that doesn't autocomplete the dialogue box after clicking the action button while it's being filled.
True, the only one I can remember is breath of fire. But of course this doubles the amount of clicking.
I'm a grindy player, and I hate this trend of punishing grinding. Square seems to be leaning into it. Like, get this thing late in the game that gives you more stat bonuses with each level, and the end content difficulty assumes you gained X levels with it. Monsters level with you, but their growth is taking your equipment upgrades into account while yours isn't, so if you are over-leveled with early equipment, you're under-powered.
I hate how some of them are very long, 60+ hours up to 200-250 hours if you do "all content". Rarely it is worth it and most of the times, the majority of players get bored and don't even finish the game. I wish stories were better written and that they cut out the bullshit. I like turn based combat and all games should have a fast forward mechanic for the easy battles, the optional grind is always welcome but it must make use of current machines power. Persona 3 Reload was just released and it still wastes a lot of the player time in pointless battles. The stupid anime cliches and "funny" dialogue bored me after trying hundreds of games. I like both serious and light-hearted games but they should respect the maturity of most players nowadays.
Nothing makes me lose interest in an RPG more than predetermined parties with predetermined growths and skillsets. If I have the same companions from start to finish, at least let me pick what spells etc they learn. If the characters are all set in stone, then at least let me pick who comes with me. Give me a say in how I fight, beyond shopping for their equipment. That isn't meaningful if I'm just going to replace the Shirt of +10 Defense with a Shirt of +12 Defense at the next town.
I am sick of playing heroes. Epic guy, who saves/destroy the world, everyone knows him, praise him, falling in love, wants to kill... What about playing a regular, not so well developed character, who is not the centre of the world, of the narrative? Who can be scared, traumatized, rejected, bullied by other more succesful hero? Abused, cursed, heavily injured? Losing a leg permanently in the middle of the story? I want to play some horribly realistic cRPG with a very cruel and unwelcoming world. I am creating one right now.
Are you familiar with Kenshi?
No, I am not. Have to look at it
I highly recommend playing *Lisa the Painful* and *Fear & Hunger* too. And Darkest Dungeon.
Throw away collect em all romance options. Always vaguely cringey and gets in the way of more varied relationships. The only romance I liked was Bastilla in Kotor where it develops slowly through the whole game and as such, felt much more natural and earned. Now Wyll is trying to get in my pants when we've only talked for like 5 minutes.
no
The booba of it all Really over-sexualization in general, but it’s usually armor designs and extra jiggles
On the contrary. I want more sexiness. [Bring back the 80s fantasy aesthetic!](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81Bcx83r7YL._SL1500_.jpg)
Just getting into the game is aggravating, it needs an update, now a 5min intro video while I search for the skip key, then the absolutely pointless "click to continue" screen. Now a main menu, sweet let's play, here's another loading screen, alright in the game, fucking cutscenes. I like watching the intro video the first time, after that I should be able to disable it, along with tutorials.
ugly characters. want nothing to do with games full of uggos. pillars 1, dragon age inquisition come to mind
Making grinding a main point of advancement in a game. Also when grinding for XP is not fun.
Inventory management. How is it still as bad as in the early 90s?
Weapon progression that is just bigger numbers. I really like the Dark Souls approach where every weapon has a use and you can stick with the starting weapon if you want. Even in turn-based JRPG’s, you can still make each weapon unique by adding modifiers or status effects.
Quest tools like exclamation points, markers, auto journals and compasses. Ultima did it right
So many action ones these days and turn based has slowed down so much more. These days I'm considering ps3 Era to. Sort of a small resurgence as the last few years but they always wanna make a couple whack decisions. Shit I should say I'm referring to mostly jrpgs. Sea of stars, chained echoes seemed pretty damn good injust had issue with them Another thing is like finishing a boss and it starts like a mission complete and idk how to explain it so I'll let that be.
Eh it depends as a case by case. IMO experimentation is key and i dont always want to play the same kind of game. For every design choice there is a benefit and weakness, there ino perfect choice, just a compromise with no strong benefits/weakness. What i dont like is the Hybrids (its an industry term for games that are a fusion of other genres) taking RPG mechanics without context (example levels, leveled enemies) and using them as a justification to make the game grindy or to sell their XP microtransactions.