skill in RPGs

[unwashedmendicant]

where, exactly, does skill come into RPGs?

in action games you beat stuff up because you're good at the game. in RPGs you have to grind until you get enough brownie points to kill the boss. nobody likes this, grinding sucks. it's not what you want to spend your day off doing. you play RPGs to solve puzzles, uncover evil plots, raise mayhem and/or having the feeling of discovering mysteries, not to lead a genocide against level 1 dire rats.

Japanese RPGs seem perfectly content to be unfun grindfests, movies on wheels, slowly becoming more cutscene than game. that's whatever grumble grumble it's relevant to us because this is an RPG maker forum. it doesn't have to be this way! we're hobbyists, not triple A developers, we don't have to be afraid to be zany and out there AKA defy expectations by making games about playing instead of watching. LETS BREAK DOWN SOME WALLS.

western RPGs owe a lot to the popularity of tabletop gaming in america. if you've never played DnD i'll break it down like this: it's a sandbox freeform game where you can do ANYTHING and the DM (who is human) narrates what happens based off your actions. grinding isn't a thing because nobody wants to sit in a room full of their friends pretending to beat up rats. HOW DO VIDEO GAMES GET AWAY WITH THIS?

WRPGs try to emulate tabletop games by giving the player multiple ways to deal with a problem. they're sandbox games where the player has full agency to do whatever, and they're not limited by their level this creates obvious problems for progression! just look at <insert game by Obsidian here>

they say that FPSs are replacing RPGs as the medium of game storytelling. look at bioshock

why don't we just get rid of EXP all together? but then how do we differentiate one character from another! developing your little murderhobo is one of the fun parts of RPGs--but wait! aren't skills kinda stupid? you put points into speech skill and sometimes you get to roll a random number to see if your guy tells a good lie...THAT'S NOT HOW LYING WORKS where does my SKILL as a PLAYER come in? i'm just punching buttons..let me out of this cage! and plus you can just reload and do it again if you lose, making it pointless to begin with!

let's start with reality and butcher it and leave the boring parts and take the fun ones. the fun part of reality is that you can do whatever you want, and your actions affect reality, and that in turn affects you. there's this tabletop game called dungeon world where the focus of progression isn't on Leveling up (although you can do that) or on getting phat loot (although you can do that--sorta) but on changing the world around you. your choices, the story threads your party follows, and what they do when they get there, changes the world itself. that's the reward players get for playing. RPGs already allow players to affect the world, but what if the choices you make change what kind of choice you get to make in the future? how about the things you do, and how you do them, affect how your character comes out? i'm not talking like morrowind, where you get better at sneaking by walking around a dark corner of a bar while crouching, i mean like that level at the beginning of Windwaker where you have to break into the castle, but if you choose the sneaky path as opposed to the fighty path through you get to unlock more sneaky things, not by buying points but by the nature of your 'sneak karma' being higher.

what does this have to do with player skill? well, about as much as skill has to do with real life. IRL there is no level 99, if you get into a street fight you can knock out a body builder with a lucky punch--oh, and body building doesn't mean as much as being lithe or quick or friendly. skill is a thing of diminishing returns--not that it just gets harder to get better as you go, but that getting better doesn't really mean that much, and being a jack of all trades is far FAR more useful in the long run than being a master of ONE.

so, people are mostly average, with a few things they're good at, and a bunch of things they're bad at because they have nothing to do with their life thus far. if you're not good at cooking, it's because you've never had to cook before. if you can't program, it's because you haven't been interested in it enough to learn. what does this mean for games?

condensed: an action based game, where leveling isn't that important, where things you do activate triggers that spiderweb and affect other triggers. not just ANYTHING should trigger changes in the world, but important stuff. getting good doesn't happen automatically, and it means less than setting up a situation up in your favor. i mean, RPGs already have quests, why doesn't doing them mean anything?

okay, now somebody else say something. my brains melting.

[DerVVulfman]

Now, what does RPGs have to do with player skill? Not really anything. The player directs the actions in RPGs. They're the muse for the characters in this epic drama which unfolds. The skill or finesse is up to the characters. Sure, you play as the characters.... but if you play as Peter Parker, you have the skills of a wallcrawler. It is his skills and abilities which you are calling upon. If you play as Hilda (gasp... RTP), you begin with having already learned the fire spell.

While the player may have some decision making, the skills are actually those belonging to the characters within table-top/top-down RPGs that use either tactical or strategic battlesystems. This, not so much if your RPG is an ABS (or Action Battle System). Zelda much?

Here, you do have some degree of skill. You actively button-mash your sword to swing. Time it right to avoid being shot by a rogue fireball. Jump out of the way as some idiot gorilla throws barrels at you as he's kidnapped Mario's GF. Yes, I went Donkey Kong. Still, ABS system are more akin to First Person Shooters due to higher action and the need for the player to actually control the combat action instead of mere decision making. One must have skill or a high degree of stamina to face Diablo himself, or deal with the dreaded Ganon (how many times has Link gone to save Zelda?).

[unwashedmendicant]

true, we rely on the character skills when we play a traditional RPG (character's stats), but we still make their tactical decisions for them. it's the players skill that oversees that. that's where i think most games fail to take advantage of full potential. in your standard encounter you can just have all your characters do regular attacks (including your wimpy mages--gotta save that MP for the boss) until they're all dead. no real threat. in dungeons these meaningless encounters against enemy mooks are really just supposed to use up your resources (potions, escape ropes): dungeons become about resource management. but not really! that's where the grinding comes in and breaks it.

honestly, i rarely use items in RPGs. i hoard them. dunno why. i grind on the first floor of the dungeon until i can easily mop the floor with any baddie i meet before even hitting the staircase. player skill becomes irrelevant. tactical RPGs like valkyrie profile tend to avoid this.

in what ways can we eliminate grinding while also making battles more meaningful?

one idea i had was that instead of random encounters just be against enemy troops ie battles, there could be a slew of different possible scenarios that might pop up. here's a list of random NPC encounters i stole!

1. High level wizard in full regalia, torn, blood-spattered, black-feathered arrows in back, out of spells, dazed and desperate, clutches still-smoking wand of fireballs with single charge remaining
2. Mystic levitating in lotus position, zooms through dungeon in search of (presumed dead) acolyte charmed into joining band of upstart scoundrels, issues brief but trenchant verbal dressing-down to any adventurers
3. Furious pirate captain w/squad of the vilest sea-dogs conducts brutal search for pick-pocket who slithered below with enchanted sextant, cutlasses drip with vital fluids of the last one to refuse questioning
4. Ogre with new found culinary passion has no interest in dispatching surface dwellers despite extremely ferocious appearance, will trade notched war axe for wine/spices/cooking equipment, found dead body of acolyte (see entry 2) and wants to do something really special with it
5. Impaled warrior still on feet despite near-total blood loss thinks he remembers where he dropped a sack of huge gems
6. Junior thieves hide in shadows while moving silently having stolen the kobold czar's silver circlet as part of an initiation ritual, unfortunately for them the relic glows powerfully through any wrapping
7. Mayor of nearby town in false mustache and cloak w/giant bodyguard (hairless and mute but just rippling with bone-cracking muscles), dismissed from latest mandatory secret meeting with dungeon overlord, human sacrifice demands doubled
8. Barbarian w/gore-smeared bastard sword goes to great lengths to get adventurers to indicate direction of exit while concealing total bewilderment, suggestions that he might be lost illicit foaming over-reaction
9. Quite powerful witch from across the way (accompanied by pair of towering headless kung-fu zombies) awaits arrival of local celebrity witch, irritation increases with each passing minute
10. Knight with crumpled helm and caved-in cuirass crawls toward the exit muttering about the "fist from below"
11. Thief concealing enchanted sextant (see entry 3) rushes to lower levels to meet underworld connections, knows secret way through the Corridor of Twenty Traps
12. Swarm of dark elf children tethered together by neck-harnesses scamper about snake-like having escaped their keeper, a ghastly troll hag now desperate enough to ask surface folk for assistance

this emulates tabletop RPGs penchant for >scenarios< rather than just endless battles.
not that it isn't fun to squish mooks.

[DerVVulfman]

Should try some rather 'entertaining' quests from The Elder Scrolls:

MORROWIND - A woman was robbed by a dashing bandit. Not looking for revenge, instead she gives you one of her gloves and asks you to seek him out. A simple quest. But one for your recall and dialog skills.

MORROWIND - A member of the thieves guild asks you to steal... a naughty book? Yep, its own wiki reads "No words can describe what you see. Or what you think you see." when it comes to the pages within. As a thief, you better have your wits about you for your stealth skills.

OBLIVION - A fighter's guild quest asks you to help a woman who has rats in her basement. It turns out that the giant rats are her pets and SOMETHING is killing them. What you actually have to face and how they're getting in her basement is the real punchline. Yep, you play Mister Junior Detective. ROFL. That and you have to do a little bit of hunting to deal with the immediate problem.

OBLIVION - A quest by Sheogorath (the Daedra Lord known as the 'Mad God') asks you to go into a small little hamlet and liven things up. This means driving the people nuts by fulfilling a dreaded prophecy. Reasoning required? Yeeeaaaa, if you wanna go that route with the Mad God.

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

I must admit I actually like grinding BECAUSE that minimizes the skill I need to beat a game. I'd rather bruteforce my way through a battle than trying anything that might require a modicum of strategy. If it is the wrong way to play then so be it, it has worked for me through ages and it will continue to do so.

Hell, I avoid RPGs where I cannot indulge myself in some mindless level grinding because that's what I find enjoyable: being able to crush enemies into fine dust with minimal effort.

As for "entertainment" quests, why don't you make quests that show why doing quests is a waste of everybody's time and not fun at all? You know, quests that are an intentional boring chore? That would make for a very meta commentary on the nature of those things in games.

The original NieR is the crowned king of this. In particular the "runaway son" quest that appears halfway through the adventure and has you chasing a guy all over the world. When you complete the quest and return to the home of the man who sent you on the mission, you find the place empty. A nearby man tells you that the son was actually trying to get away for his criminal family and "some idiot" i.e you brought him back. Also, you don't get anything in return.

See? What makes for a more entertaining resolution than the one where the joke is on the player?

[MetalRenard]

If a game has interesting gameplay, I think almost any type of grind or quest is acceptable to a point. Some games you just want more and more of thanks to intricate or interesting battle systems or some other reason.

The problem I find and why I haven't finished any RPGs for years now, is that games don't know how to make grinding interesting. There are ways that some games have found such as Elder Scrolls where you never grind, the game just gives you a million things to do so you constantly make progress (hell... even running levels you up, if I remember correctly). Others, such as action RPGs with interesting gimicks (for example Transistor) mean that you enjoy grinding because you get better at fighting as you practice - it requires real skill.

So yes... I agree. Blatant grinding simply for XP should be banished.