Do RPG elements ruining gaming?

Hello friends,

So recently its a trend nowadays that every game either gone open world or get RPG elements or both. lot of action games today getting RPG elements including bulletsponges enemies or enemy health bar in general, leveling system, loot and grinding in games that doesnot even match those. Assassins creed went from pure action games to now full fledge RPG, Far cry now have RPG elements and having bulletsponges enemies. and thats why im glad ubisoft are not working on new splinter cell. otherwise it would have been open world game with RPG elements.

it make me think that these kinda stuff are ruining gaming. i remember RTCW how amazing it was, then machine games first turn it into cinematic game, and now RPG with enemy health bar.

RPG elements make gameplay mediocre. it scarifies good combat and gameplay in a favor of more leveling up, more bulletsponges etc.

I dont understand why developers are so obbsessed with RPG elements. what next? Max payne 4 has RPG elements? or Doom has RPG elements?? like seriously.

so friends, do you think RPG elements along with open world are ruining gaming today?

lets discuss

Depends on the implementation and intent. Character progression can make the player character feel stronger as the game wears on, enhancing sense of achievement, enabling personalisation and potentially replayability as you try different builds.

But to rip off Destiny wholesale like the latest Wolfenstein game just did, I'm just not interested.

There was a time when RPG elements really improved games, in basically every genre.

Now we get all these boring open world games with repetitive MMO style side quests, basically mandatory to progress in the game.

The new Wolfenstein putting RPG elements above all else (fun) and just being a total disgrace compared to the games that came before.

STALKER put RPG elements right. with no bulletsponges enemies or enemy health bar, and no levelling up, grinding. but thats about it.

Deus Ex and System Shock both were immersive sim FPS/RPG hybrid.

im both worried and excited about cyberpunk. on one hand it looks like deus ex successor. on other hand it can turn into borderlands/fallout like open world game with bulletsponges enemies.

These days, definitely. I liked how one of your superpower upgrades in FC: New Dawn was "automatically loot enemy whilst performing a takedown".

Not only has that been in this franchise since the third, they're shoving it into this game as a superpower, too.

Potentially. Most games seem to go open world or invest in RPG mechanics as a way of extending game length just for the sake of it and/or to include monetization and microtransactions.

However, that's not always the case. Sometimes it's an attempt to evolve a franchise and experiment in terms of design. The Witcher 3 going open world felt right.

I don't like rpg elements in games like far cry the ability upgrades just feel useless.

FPS need things like RPG elements as that genre is among the most stale in gaming, I mean start at point A, shoot some shit then exit at point B. Anything added to that genre would help greatly.

Assassins Creed Origins is amazing and the best in the series. I LOVE the direction of those games now.

I have NEVER beat an AssCreed game before this. I got the platinum for Origins. This was a huge plus going in the RPG direction and they finally made combat easy to beat.

The old games are terrible compared to Origins.

I am going to play odyssey soon as it’s in my backlog. Heard it’s just as great as Origins.

I know you fanboys go on and on about AC4 Blackflag, but that game is trash compared to Origins/Odyssey. Black flag may be the best for the old style, but the old style sucks.

Those old AC games had horrible mission design. They finally fixed my main complaint and made the damn game beatable..

Oh yeah, I love games severly hampering you at the start only so they can put in RPG-style unlocks like:

"Hold your breath for longer than 2 seconds"

"Increase your health by 0.00001 points"

"Aim your gun slightly steadier"

I don’t play RPGs because of RPG elements. Ironically, they take away realism to a game for me. I’ll explain. If I’m playing a shooter and I’m to ‘save the world’, how would I go into battle not fully prepared? That’s what training is for. What Battle gets harder as you progress? Especially in games where these learned RPG elements are required to progress? Huh? It’s stupid.

RPG elements can be implemented well. But generally speaking everyone begins Tabula Rasa so when you start, you only play as a character with weaknesses and no strengths. A better idea would be a class system or picking between a cast of characters and use that to define your playstyle rather than the mess most games have right now.

The most pitiful example i've seen is Ghost Recon: Wildlands

The idea originally was a pre-plan, for the player to make tactical choices through personalized load-outs of both weapons and characters.

Now, because Ubisoft (being pricks), chase after modern trends like a dog salivating as it chases after rear end of a moving car, everything is a grind wall, with standard tools used before (flashbangs) locked behind a level.

What the **** is this shit? I mean, Ghost Recon and Rainbow 6 were ruined long ago in Ubisoft campaign to dumb it down for 12 year olds on Xbox Live, but this is just pissing on a corpse.

They also messed up immediately after their peak with Splinter Cell 3, by once again, pointlessly putting unlock mechanics in Double Agent that (mandatory), removed key components of the game like lock-picking with auto lock-picking.

Ubisoft can make great games, but they're just too cynically driven that they couldn't be trusted to make an omelet.

Depends what you like. If you like racing games and all of a sudden the game has you stopping to pet some sad dog following your car around, then yes.

I wouldnt even say rpg elements as exclusive to this but too many games take too many breaks, to let characters speak, or the player control segments are far too short.

Uncharted 2/3 does a pretty good job of being quick about the talk. The Train level is a thrill ride where the cutscenes just introduce new challenges or indirectly tell the player what they can do.

By the time 4 came out theyve got you walking around at dinner parties and driving a jeep through africa, which does have good play segments but think how much better it would be if it was adrenaline all the way through.

@uninspiredcup: ‘Splinter Cell 3, by once again, pointlessly putting unlock mechanics in Double Agent’

Not to split hares, but Double Agent would technically be considered Splinter Cell 4 as it’s the fourth game in the franchise.

Also, for shame. The Tom Clancy games for the OG Xbox Live were multiplayer perfection.

"They also messed up immediately after their peak"

RPGs are too complicated, make my head hurt.

Depends on the implementation.

My main problem with the majority of games using RPG elements that are not RPGS (e.g action games, FPS etc) is that due to the base way the games work you already start off strong.

Some of these games, by the time you reach the final unlocks, these final unlocks remove absolutely ANY weakness your character had and stream roles the content... and typically in these game,s you can get most of the unlocks, theres no clever character building.

Or just plain boring (Witcher 3 the most "immaculate game ever praise Geraldo" has f*cking terrible talent trees and RPG elements outside of its dialogue trees.

how many SP FPS release every year? literally 2 and 3.

while open world and RPG games release every month. we have anthem as RPG loot shooter, then division 2, and now borderlands 2 is next.

but you cant play anything other than shitty forza games so i can see my friend.

that's not irony because the vast majority of rpgs aren't trying to approximate reality. the genre you're thinking of are simulations

nothing complicated about mechanically broken gameplay, bulletsponges, tons of boring text/dialogues which was and never fun.

I don’t think it inherently ruins games, but a lot of them do end up feeling similar.

Implemented properly, RPG elements make for memorable games that are played well and talked about for years after their prime sales lifetime has run out. Sometimes decades later, as Final Fantasy and Earthbound demonstrate.

Implemented poorly, RPG elements are a massive annoyance or hindrance and can actively hurt sales of a game.

Don't 98% of humans alive who've played video games say Final Fantasy's combat sucks butt?

Generally I am for RPG elements as long as they are kept to a minimum.

A few RPG elements (perks, upgrades, new abilities) can add a nice variety to a game, but they shouldn't steal too much focus from the game itself. I also hate it when too many perks make the player overpowered and ruin the challenge, for example Fallout 4 on about level 30 or Dishonored.

Do you have a source for that figure?

@baelnergal: Yes. See the post above.

No source is provided in any post on this thread. As such, I have to conclude you were making things up.

@ghosts4ever: You talk a lot about bullet sponges for someone who's constantly praising Doom. Plus you can't even shoot lamp in Doom.

Rpg elements ruined Symphony of the night. Made it too damn easy to get overpowered without trying. Really it's all about how they're implemented though.

@baelnergal: Hes not wrong. Final Fantasy is generally praised for story telling and characters more so than well balanced combat. FF6 is known for being piss easy and having a poorly implemented magic system and plenty of obvious stuff to abuse.

I'm not disagreeing that the majority of people view FF's combat mechanics as, well, not really that good at combat. Even the FF series has acknowledged this to a degree, with recent experiments in changing up combat mechanics.

But, I want the source for that 98% figure.

@baelnergal: I mean obviously he didnt mean it literally :p But my issue personally isnt that traditional turn based mechanics are inherently bad but they rarely seem to be properly balanced with care.

I think it depends a lot on the focus of how the turn-based battles are implemented.

JRPGs that use them seem to be intended more towards replicating anime-style battles, where the main heroes tend to win very easily and exploit tricks quite often. Final Fantasy, in particular, has always been heavy with anime tropes.

Many Western RPGs that use turn-based combat seem to be instead either focused on replicating the turn style of DnD (Pillars of Eternity, Torment: Tides of Numenera) or replicating tactical shooting like XCom does (Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland 2).

So, what counts as proper balance depends entirely on which of the three design strategies you use. For JRPGs, a certain amount of ease and exploit is part of the point; you're basically playing an anime hero. For Western DnD-style games, there's a lot more difficulty but you're still playing what amounts to fantasy heroes, so there should be a high chance you win most fights. For Western XCom-style games, there should be an extremely high chance you die if you don't utilize proper tactics, but you're essentially playing soldiers on the battlefield.

@baelnergal: Have you played the original Final Fantasy?

Yes. It was about what you'd expect for a game of its era, as far as technical capacity. That doesn't change or negate anything I said.

@baelnergal: I mean the idea of playing as an anime hero had almost nothing to do with it. You pick 4 characters based on 6 fantasy tropes and the game was actually challenging, less easy to exploit. The game flow was also dependent on the characters you chose.

Either way it just seems pointless to play a turn based games that's that easy. Turn based game play in and of itself isnt that exciting its strategizing and taking risks that makes it fun.

RPG elements can work well in the right game. I gave examples in your other thread.

Good use of RPG elements: Assassin's Creed Odyssey. That series is now transformed into something amazing IMO.

Bad use of RPG elements: Wolfenstein Young Blood. They didn't re-invent the franchise like Ubisoft did with AC, they shoehorned RPG elements into a classic shooter formula and it just looks wrong.

I agree there are too many games now using RPG elements, it seems to have become fashionable in the same way most games now seemingly have to have an open world. Like someone said above, you end up with a lot of games that just feel the same to play.

Some games are just inherently good and will stand out regardless like AC Odyssey but the vast majority will go down as 'oh it's another one of these'.

A good example of that for me is Days Gone. It has strong RPG elements and there are a lot of ways to get exp to build up your skills but shoot a few zombies and you get a nominal amount of exp honestly I think the devs want you to feel you're rewarded every time you kill something but the game simply does not need this at all.

It doesn't matter though because the game is fantastic so I just overlook this so no I don't think the RPG element obsession is ruining anything I just think it's over-used and if they all keep doing it the review scores will drop as reviewers get bored of playing the same thing over and over and they'll copy whatever the latest trend at the time happens to be instead.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I went back and played some classics I missed like Chrono Trigger and it's got awesome moments and epic music but it fails.

It's not an exploration game like Myst which had true openness and a sense of wonder, it also doesn't have like the intensity of a fairly linear game like Super Metroid with statistics and all that.

Oh alt ghosts is sad :(

What is it with you and this friends stuff, you sound like the Forrest Gump of SW, and its cute that you mention Forza to try & hurt my feelings but it doesn't work.

Thanks for not negating anything I said and thus agreeing with me the FPS genre is stale af :)

Have a nice day my "friend" :P

That matches up to a lot of fantasy anime and manga of the period and just prior. In general, I've noticed that JRPG difficult tends to trend a little behind what the current anime trend is. Given certain growing trends now, we're going to start seeing particularly bloody JRPGs in a few years.

RPGs are a synonym for shit.

again. how many SP FPS release every year? if they are so stale? you wont answer my friend

for once i agree with you champ. RPG is worst gaming genre ever.

They release so few because they are a stale dying genre, I mean it makes sense.

As for you champ, well ghost agrees with you which automatically means you're both wrong, congrats lol.

they release few means its far from stale.

stale is open world games you praise alot. they are all same, having same objects, long driving from point A to point B, empty and bland. copy paste another.

stale is loot RPG shooters

stale is sony movie games

FPS used to be stale in last gen. now theres few of them and they are all excellent.

btw, you are also splinter cell fan like me. do you want them to turn it into open world RPG? like they did with AC and far cry? that would ruined the series even further than conviction and blacklist did.

@i_p_daily: broken clock rule, even a dingus like sniper can have a solid game. Rpgs aren’t about mechanical depth, mastery, or interesting micro decisions. IE the thing that makes action games fun in the first place, it is what it is. Adding RPG elements to an action game is dumb.

Youngblood > Doom 2016

Steam disagree with you

https://store.steampowered.com/app/379720/DOOM/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1056960/Wolfenstein_Youngblood/

and by very very large margin. 97% vs 46%

Rpg games are great. Many fps are shallow and boring.