my whole thing about rpgs now adays is that people focus too much on visuals more than story or gameplay. i feel kind of empty when i finish a new RPG, so i end up going back to the oldschool SNES rpgs, which dont look nearly as nice as new age stuff but play so much better.

so basicly i made this thread to kind of get an idea of what you guys feel is lacking in a RPG now days.

i myself wish characters were more.. eh, deeper, like the characters seem shallow.

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FFXI - Yurichan: 75THF(Ret) / SC2 - Lawncare / XBOX - Zombie Sharks / PS3 - Zombie_Sharks

I want RPG's that don't hold your hand the whole way. Current Gen of RPG's is short, decent story, and too easy. I remember taking 2-3 weeks to beat Chrono Trigger or FFVI and loving every minute of it. Scaling difficulty, unique battle mechanics, excellent story, and LENGTH. Tired of dropping 40-50 bucks for a game i can beat in like 2 days.

Character customization, battle system, interesting characters and a decent story. Length also factors into things.

chrono trigger was easy, but it was overall fun and interesting.

As for what i want. I truly believe next gen rpgs can be fun and can evolve well with the times. They really should make a secret of mana type of game using networking abilities modes like live and psn to have people pick up and join you on the fly.

Remove the love stories, or at the very least quit making the girl look like another version of Rhiona from ff8. Stop making the characters basically the same. Another blond uncanny ability to handle a sword is not cool.... not anymore. Make the characters flawed. I'd like to see a character who's fat. Seriously speaking, and nothing sterotypical like ohh then he's slow and dumb or immensely strong slow. Whatever mix things up already. Make it so when you don't do something, things can go bad. THe world changes as you deal with peoples troubles. The can be lost or saved. And you don't necessarly have to do either. You can do things for yourself, or for others you have the choice. You can fight or you can the make the monsters fight for you, or both even. You can combine avatars to make them even stronger, sorta a gene splicing thing. They need to mix things up because the market is in danger, Especially In north america.

I just want some god damn variety. People loved ff7 so much because it was so full of a game. It had like 6 side games inside the game itself. And an interesting ( for the most part story). 8 was good but not nearly as strong 9 was great and deserved more attention. And 10 was a mess imo. 12 tried doing things with mixed results and let me not talk about final fantasy 11 ..

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Job 10: 20
The mikey's have a plan. Djay isn't all powerful.

Games that don't feel like interactive animes

Gameplay
Gameplay
Gameplay
Gameplay
Puzzles
Length
Not a set path, you actually have to figure out where to go next
Music
Turn-based
Magic (with MP)
Invisible lines you cross on the field where enemies get 10x harder
World map + airship/boat/whatever
Require lots of leveling between missions, i.e. you won't be the required level just by fighting your way through
Sidequests with awesome rewards
Good story
Good character development (you actually understand how they think and feel + know their backround)
Graphics

I enjoy the cutscenes in new games, because they implement facial expressions and movement better. It's 1000000000x easier for me to get sucked into the dialogue when it's movie like. I agree new RPGs are more focused on graphics and drawn out cutscenes than gameplay. But they aren't all bad.

What matters the most, is I enjoy playing the game! I don't think the new games are better than the old, but I do think they are better than people make them out to be. They are definately too easy. If Blue Dragon was 50% harder (I guess there is an option on the JPN version) I believe most of you would really like it. Nothing new will be as good as SNES and PS1 RPGs. We are gonna have to accept that and move on.

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you move on!~

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Job 10: 20
The mikey's have a plan. Djay isn't all powerful.

Length/Difficulty
Character customization
Battle System/Party mechanics
Story/Music
Quests
etc

As long as the game is fun I'll play it. Take a game like Wild Arms for example.

The story is pretty basic. Some demons want to take over the world, theirs was destroyed, so they're weakening the light of the earth so they can take over. They're gonna revive their mother to be the queen of the earth (but later find out her ambitions are nihilistic, she doesn't want to rule, just wants to destroy).

Our protagonists are a Robot with a conscience, a wandering treasure hunter/swordsman, and a witch princess who speaks to the avatars.

Fucking basic.

The combat system has hardly any customization, and is purely turn-based. Not only is it turn-based but it's perfect turns, not "You have a speed stat but it doesn't really matter" shit from FF. So EVERY SINGLE FIGHT is exactly the same.

But there's just something great about WildARMS. It has one of the best game soundtracks ever, a fun (if simple) cast of villains and friends, good magic, and a main game that keeps a relaxed rhythm, but still makes you feel like you're on a great adventure.

Xenosaga was 80% cutscenes (story) and fucking blew. I did not give a shit about that horrible story, the gameplay sucked, and the combat system was a horrible ripoff of FFX. That game was about 12 year old robot panties and little else.



Long post made short:
Gameplay first. Story can be shit, music can blow, just give me a fun game.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

Gameplay, Storyline, and graphics/setting/ambience, etc. in that order of importance.

If the gameplay is deep and involved (not nessecarily complicated), I can overlook the graphics and (sometimes) storyline. Grandia is a good example of great gameplay. I think that's still my favorite battle system in any RPG.

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Retired 8/21/06
Don't click this link.

i just want something that makes me excited about fighting challenging battles, excited about leveling up to gain new abilities, the battles should make me utilize every ability and then pull something outta my ass to win (figuratively).

right now i want something with a job system, something that requires the balance of every cog working together to bring the enemy down.

and purpose besides just killing for the sake of killing or for just gold or completing mundane quests. in ffxi, i pushed onward because i wanted new abilities, i wanted to see new areas, i wanted to fight new enemies, i wanted to be there side by side with friends as they face their own challenges, i wanted to see how the storyline played out with missions.

i want a game where i can remember events years later like they were yesterday. pretty much just ffxi has been like that.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

It's all about grinding!

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Take this quiz!

FFXI really ruined video games for you haha. Maybe you will be in luck with their future MMO. I'm hopeful it will live up to the standard FFXI set before it went to shit.

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FFXII played fairly similarly to FFXI

yea and i really enjoyed it.
it had a few broken features, especially the complete gimpage of black magic and support magic leading to reliance on physical damage almost exclusively--that and the easiness kinda ruined the game for me. still probably 9/10

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

Yeah, Quickening chains did sort of ruin the game in a way because most fights were impossible without them but many become one shots with them

wtf how can you want a Final Fantasy game get rid of Chocobos!? That's like getting rid of Moogles.

All the Final Fantasy elements like Moogles, Chocobos, Airships, familiar summon spells, crystal theme music at the beginning, etc made FFXI that much cooler. If it didn't have that stuff I wouldn't have played it in the first place.

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thanks for the input, i'm currently writing a story for a rpg game i'm trying to develop.

i got the main basic storyline for it, and a main character. cant tell you about the story line, but the character is more of an anti-hero, definatly has issues.

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FFXI - Yurichan: 75THF(Ret) / SC2 - Lawncare / XBOX - Zombie Sharks / PS3 - Zombie_Sharks

You should put little cameos of everyone from the forums in your game, Yurichan.

For me, storyline is the most important part of a game. I usually endure any game I play just to get to the end, even if the gameplay sucks or the graphics aren't the best.

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[In Yarr we trust.]

Did you go to school for making video games?

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Take this quiz!

graduating in 3 months as an animator and in works of developing a studio for video games. i just need to find more investors and a distributer and it would be finished, next step after that is the recruitment although thats not too hard since i know a ton of programmers, modelers and so on to get it rolling.

i already have a location and all the assets i really need.

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FFXI - Yurichan: 75THF(Ret) / SC2 - Lawncare / XBOX - Zombie Sharks / PS3 - Zombie_Sharks

Where are you going to school?

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Take this quiz!

And it occurred to me the other day, I miss overworlds. Overworlds give such an open ended feel to a game. I really thought that was missing from X and somewhat XII.

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Retired 8/21/06
Don't click this link.