The start of games

[Jericho]

I love RPGs.
This topic is mostly about RPGs, but also relates to most genres to some extent.

I love starting a new RPG. You always start out with nothing and have zero skills. You find random loot which you use to teach you how to play the game and what your character is going to be.

Then, after many hours in, I start to get bored as the grind hits. I have good weapons and armor. New experience points to spend just become "Meh, might as well improve my needlepoint skill I suppose."

Nothing really left to play for, other than the completion of the main story, which feels like a formality as I now have great gear.

(Don't get me started on crafting!!! Who the hell thought crafting gear would be a good idea for an RPG where half the experience is gathering loot and using what you find?)


FPS games, after you get all those SMGs and shotguns, the challenge starts to go.

Driving games, after you get those great cars with their great powerups, the game becomes less fun.

I know a lot of people like the feeling of being powerful in games. They are often the same people that complain about:
"Oh my God! Just played Mass Effect 2, and my character was reset from the first game!!!!!" What would be the point of playing an RPG where you are just a god from the start?


How do games fix this? How do they keep the progression without making it a grind?

Elder Scrolls Oblivion 'kind of' tried it with enemies that leveled with you. I like it as I was still better than they were, but it also meant that you were attacked by random bandits wearing armor so valuable that they could have sold it and bought an island.

What's the alternative?

[Antilogic]

Nothing really left to play for, other than the completion of the main story, which feels like a formality as I now have great gear.

I do not understand this sentence.

But then, I play RPGs much more for the story, (and the story you create in the game) then the gear....

[burger1]

- zones that can change depending on your level. For example lvl 1 in the same zone will be different than lvl 50. Same zone different instances. - current eso?

- stuff that you can only get from the story line - oblivion with the orbs

-level dependent merchandise/stuff like alchemy in oblivion and buying spells, making spells

-rare drops ? maybe like cards in two worlds 2 where you craft spells from a deck of cards

-skill trees/perks make an attempt at changing stuff

-stealth dependent game?

-don't min/max or try different builds go for a theme rather than the best

-need a skill to regenerate mana (gothic 3?)


Most games get boring because the story isn't engaging. Having interesting areas to explore and interesting npcs makes it much easier. Most mmos are bland.

[Mightysword]

If I'm understanding what you're saying right then tbh I think you're asking for the impossible. I think game is like an exponential curve with a horizontal upper bound, a good game can have a very high upper bound but if you keep playing it, you will eventually have to reach it and the experience will have to flat out. The only way to improve it is physically raise the bound, aka adding in new content through expansion pack, mods or DLC. Whether game start with 3 or 12 classes, eventually you will play them all, whether a game have 10 cars or 100 cars, eventually you will have them all if you play long enough.

The only exception I can think of this is games like The Sims, where the bound is basically where your imagination is.

Then, after many hours in, I start to get bored as the grind hits. I have good weapons and armor. New experience points to spend just become "Meh, might as well improve my needlepoint skill I suppose."

I'm guessing you're talking about Skyrim here, and IMHO this is one thing that a lot of people miss out on the game value playing certain way. While the game offer the opportunity to have an ultimate character, but large value of the game are missed out this way. For example people will start with a fighter because it's easiest, then as they finish lvling a fighter which mean they think "oh alright I gonna try out a mage or a thieft now!?". But at this point they already have a well established character, the change in the gameplay seems interesting at first but the novelty usually wear out fast without the challenge. Instead I find it much better to have separate characters that stick to specific thing and their own story as your RP them, you get a lot more bang for the bucks that way.

[burger1]

-fight rank (x3tc)

-npc guilds + quest lines

-bounty system with named hard npcs

[matthewfarmery]

I think what you are asking for is pretty tricky, unless its got some iron man mode, but most RPGs will make you pretty much all powerful once you hit that certain point.

I'm currently playing Prey, (the 2017 one) its fairly close to system shock 2, has had a pretty rough time, as it got released too early. while iit did have a fear factor in it, its not a bad game, and has kept me going for some time.

But it's also a game based on choices, and there are a few ways to play the game, 9save crew members or kill them all. and the progression of the game reflects what choices you make.

But once you get a fully upgraded shotgun, that is a beast, but combat is a poor aspect of the game, but it is based more on exploring and finding ways past stuff.

Then again, pillars of eternity isn't too bad, OK it's story isn't that good, but it's still a pretty good game, also once you level to a point, they added a level scale option that scales monsters to your level, so it keeps the challenge.

otherwise, not sure what else to suggest.

[mrbadger]

How do games fix this? How do they keep the progression without making it a grind?

They don't, because far too many people are happy buying the games they are selling now for them to bother.

The only chance for a small indie dev to stumble upon a real alternative and make it big. I don't rate that as very likely right now.

The thing is, Skinners Box (Operant Conditioning) is a very real and powerful thing. That's not going to change any time soon either. This is the basis of all reward based games, particulerly ones where you are required to 'grind'.

People can, and do, make games with no actual content beyond pretty colours, sounds and some Operant Conditioning actions, and they make plenty money.

The question isn't how to replace Operant Conditioning, since it obviously works and people like it, but how to apply it in a new way.

I have zero clue how to do this, but I am tired of grinding too, so I no longer buy any game that requires it unless it is implemented in an interesting way, or there is an easy workaround (as in the X series).

[Jericho]

Then again, pillars of eternity isn't too bad, OK it's story isn't that good, but it's still a pretty good game.

I quite enjoyed Pillars of Eternity, just felt a bit more tricky and fresh. But then arrived at that first big city, and I just didn't want to read all the stuff to explore it. I did a quick mission in some barracks and I got tired just exploring that. The rest of the city started to open up, and I just got bored. It felt like "Well, we're not doing voice over recordings, so let's just make it huge for no real reason."

I will go back to it in a couple of years when my son needs less attention.

[pjknibbs]

Thing is, I actually *like* old-school RPGs for that reason. Something that has always been true about me is that, when I start a game, I like to also finish that game. The problem with the usual difficulty curve system is that there is a good chance there'll be a point in the game where the difficulty exceeds my skill level, leaving me unable to finish it. The old school RPG has a completely backwards difficulty curve, though--it's at its most difficult at the beginning, when your skill is low, and gets easier as you level up. I like that, because if I can get through the first couple of hours I can be pretty sure I'll be able to finish the game as a whole. For me, the satisfaction comes from crushing enemies that I found really hard a few levels ago.

This is why I dislike level scaling in RPGs, especially when it's done in the brain-dead way it was done in Oblivion. Go back to the old system where you know that monsters of a particular level will exist in each area, so if you want a challenge you visit a high-level area and if you want to feel like an unstoppable god of combat you go to a low-level one!

[mrbadger]

I liked Dungeon Seige (well still like, but lack the time to play it currently, since I want to play through from the first game to the last).

That had the occaisional out of place far too high level enemy in side quests that you really had to work hard to beat, but only if you wanted to, since you could just walk past and ignore them every time, except if you did you missed the chance of some very nice items.

I liked that. And it was a feature I didn't see in many other RPGs I played.

But yes, I agree with @pjknibbs, different level monsters in different areas is better then monsters that level with you. I recall my son getting annoyed by that in Oblivion.

[muppetts]

I think it comes from the skills on offer, I too like the start when you have to scrap and save, be careful, use more skill etc.

Maybe something from Stellaris, you could randomise the skills you can choose from at level up (say 3) and have allot more skills. You may get something crap, you might get something cool.

Yes it is artificial, maybe you could work it into the narrative (magic skill skull of bluurrrrr or whatever).

What I would like to see is every skill with 'add x% to' scrapped, no more percentage increase, only have that on weapons or armour.

[BigBANGtheory]

I kind of liked how STALKER handled it.

You have artifacts (can be combined and crafted in some versions) which you equip to boost your personal stats and items to boost your capability. The key difference with say Fallout4 is that good stuff was hidden. So you had a mini-game of finding hidden/invisible artifacts via a detector and enviromental cues with stashes of items in hard to reach locations.

With this in mind you start to look at any new area as the potential to hold hidden stuff which makes for interesting gameplay beyond the plot elements.

[Len5]

I think it's the character building that keeps an RPG interesting. If you don't plan your build carefully enough, you won't make it through the story in the harder difficulty levels.
Often I also lose interest after a while, even if the start was fun. I played a lot of Sacred and Sacred2 and found those fun enough to get my builds to or even through the hardest mode.

[euclid]

Interesting questions you've raised there, Jericho. Funny thing is that most (if not all) of these have been topics of the interview with the creator of the upcoming MMO Ashes of Creation (hope I've linked the correct one). He shares your concerns and explains how to avoid those in his game. Sounds promising although I'm not convinced (yet).

Cheers Euclid

[RAVEN.myst]

EDIT: Warning: the following post is comprised entirely of musings and observations, yet no actual point do I make!

Jericho: I see that you have a similar outlook to mine, when it comes to games (I include RPGs, but don't restrict myself to them.) Personally, I find the low and intermediate levels of a game the most engaging - when one has to figure out how to accomplish stuff using limited resources. Once I get to the "uber" end-game phase, I start yawning (hence I tend to restart the X games often - once I pass a certain point, there is little appeal to me in endlessly growing my fleet and empire infinitely beyond the scope of the greatest challenges the game can throw at me.) I am constantly puzzled by those impatient players who can ONLY play at the "end-game" levels - they consider the stages before that as nothing more than an inconvenience to be rushed through. This attitude is, to me, particularly puzzling in first-timers - then again, I suppose not everyone can be intelligent enough to figure out that one is to LEARN and develop necessary skills along the way... But no, they skip ahead ("powerlevelling" used to mean something very different some 15-20 years ago, to what it does these days!), thereby robbing themselves of the journey on account of their obsession with the destination.

Unfortunately, in open-ended games, the set-in of the grindy phase is pretty much inevitable - it's impossible for infinite and infinitely diverse content to be created to accommodate players' unbounded growth, and so these games feature diminishing returns with exponentially escalating costs/requirements. This is clearly demonstrated in something I've been playing of late, wherein skills are trained purely over time (well, you can also buy skill point injectors, but those have been extracted from some other character somewhere, so have ultimately cost time to generate in the first place), and the typical progression is along the following lines: first skill rank takes typically 15-30 mins to train; second rank now takes a couple of hours, or a few, depending on the skill; third rank takes ~12 hours for "easy" skills, as long as 36 hours (perhaps more, I'm unsure) for the more "high-end" skills; 4th rank takes from a couple of days to over a week; and the final, fifth rank, can take from several days to several weeks. And there are hundreds of skills, of course with numerous interdependencies.

In a game I previously used to indulge in heavily (the above example was a space-themed title, the one I mention now is a high-fantasy-themed MMORPG), it is quite doable to race to max-level in a few days - only to then be faced by weeks and months of grinding to acquire the most minor of improvements and refinements to one's armour/weapons/etc. And this, apparently, is how the majority WANTS to play! (Irrelevant aside: at the time I stopped playing that game, maxlevel was 65, since raised to 70 or perhaps 75, yet while I had a couple of maxed out characters, I spent little time in those, mostly enjoying characters that I DELIBERATELY kept at 50 or less by means of diligent repeat-suicide sessions to incur experience loss. The 40-50 band was in fact my favourite phase of that game, with each of my 15 or so characters, and the levels below that I enjoyed more than the levels above.)

Len5: Ah, Sacred.... I not only have fond memories of those, but I periodically dig up my Sacred 2 and dust it off and play it intensively for months at a time. What a gem! In fact, it was only a year or two ago that I invested in the expanded version of it... Oddly, that game doesn't feel grindy at all, to me. They clearly got something right! Too bad about the abomination that came after it... (since Ascaron weren't involved, hardly surprising, though.) In fact, I started getting a craving for it last night or earlier today - and now it's been reinforced by you mentioning it. Thank you! [/b]

[Morkonan]

...
How do games fix this? How do they keep the progression without making it a grind?...
What's the alternative?

Here are some end-game strategies that some games use to keep gameplay from being grindy. Or, in other words, to keep it from being a linear progression.

Diminishing returns: Things you may have focused on in the early game and where they were most powerful are... no longer so powerful. So, having topped off your "armor" value in the early levels helped your melee character survive a great deal of deadly combat. But, in later levels, it doesn't do quite as much and continuing to stack it is just a waste of your efforts. Further, you have to counter that loss of durability, either by improving another stat, like dps or resistance, or by simply "getting gud."

Gold sink: All that collectible resource stuff, like gold, gems, credits, whatever, in the early game turned out to be a really powerful thing. But, later on, you have to do so much more than you will literally never have an equitable accumulation of wealth. At high levels, you can no longer buy out the entire inventory of "good items" in a village since anything useful for your level is very, very, expensive. BUT, to counter the "time sink grindiness" of "gold farming" a variety of paths are available towards earning whatever currency/expendable items, so play doesn't get too repetitious.

Uber Spell 009 Doesn't Matter Anymore - Mechanics Changes at high level : Building your character around "that one cool item/ability" isn't an option for later levels. Instead, in order to survive, you must incorporate other items/abilities in your character. Magic Reistance, Armor Penetration, Attack Speed, XRay Vision, synergistic abilities or tactics, two-handed weapons, non-combat abilities, etc.. So, in the end game, your character or playstyle will change dramatically and what you consider as you progress will be entirely different than just "poke it with the pointy end."

Cooperative play in games that allow it: Almost always seen in MMOs, players must not just focus on building up their character's strengths, but they must learn how to work with other players to overcome obstacles they could never overcome by themselves. This truly changes the gameplay experience for those players who wish to reach "end game." Sometimes, this isn't a good thing, leaving some players out, however. ("The casualties of Casuals")

"You need a key for that" - Changing gameplay and goals: Games sometimes separate the mark between early and late game by putting in more and more barriers that the player has to overcome that don't involved repetitive grindiness in character development, but involve character gameplay goals directly. So, instead of just running around and stabbing enough stuff so that you eventually kill nine rats, your character has to reach a certain level, then they have to attain a specific item, then they have to collect five keys, then they have to kill three bosses, then they have to build up a certain level of faction or join a certain guild, then they have to kill nine rats again...

In any event, the idea is that one stays away from simple linear progression and "saminess" in gameplay in favor of introducing new challenges and goals for the player to overcome using their knowledge of the game's mechanics. That is extremely important, since a player learning how to manipulate the game due to their knowledge and skill is intrinsic in a player's opinion of how satisfying a gameplay experience it is.