RPG Mechanics That Always Suck

[Acrux]

games where you control more than one character are only rpgs if you are a diagnosed schizophrenic

Rusty cannot separate himself from an RPG character. Textbook definition of grandiose delusions (aka Napoleon Syndrome).

For myself, I'm just a tactical mastermind so only having one character bores me.

you don't like rpgs, you like tacticool games

I can live with that

[GhostCow]

One character for anything real time. Full party for turn based.

[Vergil]

I like real time with pause like KOTOR personally. Baldurs Gate 3 did get a little annoying at time watching 15 trash enemies take their turn before I can do anything.

[rusty_shackleford]

rtwp when it's actually real time rather than some pseudo-realtime hack is fun
see: dragon age origins

[Vergil]

I don't like it when games limit the amount of buffs you can have at once/prevent item effect from stacking. Oblivion limiting you to 4 (or 8 if you know what you're doing) potions at once was annoying.

[rusty_shackleford]

I do not like that rpgs arbitrarily limit you from putting 10 rings on.
I feel like this has already been mentioned but I'm not reading the previous pages. I want a real reason I can't just load up on rings.

[Vergil]

I can at least understand that it is for balance reasons. It's either two ring slots or ****** enchantments to compensate.

[rusty_shackleford]

I can at least understand that it is for balance reasons. It's either two ring slots or ****** enchantments to compensate.

I do not like arbitrary balance decisions without good in-universe explanations.
Cooldowns are the worst.

[WhiteShark]

I can at least understand that it is for balance reasons. It's either two ring slots or ****** enchantments to compensate.

I do not like arbitrary balance decisions without good in-universe explanations.
Cooldowns are the worst.

Stacking enchantments should give diminishing returns, justified by some law of magical interference. It's a perfect in-lore reason for disincentivizing buff stacking.

EDIT: alternatively, if the dev prefers hard caps, he could make up some stuff about items/enchantments binding with specific chakras or equivalent.

[Emphyrio]

I do not like that rpgs arbitrarily limit you from putting 10 rings on.
I feel like this has already been mentioned but I'm not reading the previous pages. I want a real reason I can't just load up on rings.

The interior lay line only runs through one finger

[rusty_shackleford]

Vancian magic is a perfect example of a system that did not need an explanation, but greatly benefited from it. It could have been, and would have been if designed today, lazily explained in pure game mechanic terms instead of using the game's world to explain game mechanics.

[maidenhaver]

Magic always sucks. If magic is going to be real, there should be no reason setting an entire room full of monsters on fire can't be done just by looking at a door and wishing it.

[H-H-Holmes]

I do not like that rpgs arbitrarily limit you from putting 10 rings on.
I feel like this has already been mentioned but I'm not reading the previous pages. I want a real reason I can't just load up on rings.

This has never bothered me and to be honest it would feel silly to have that many ring slots. 2 ring slots and a necklace slot* are plenty and force you to make a decision on which items provide the most benefit rather than just throwing everything metallic on your character like it's a giant magnet.

Games which only have one slot for your entire armour set. One of the most fun things about RPGs is collecting or buying armour for the various parts of your body**, I can't see any reason other than pure laziness to reduce that element.

edit* and a belt

edit** To clarify, boots/legs/gloves/torso/helmet is best. Cloaks are also great and should be in every appropriate RPG.

[gerey]

More equipment slots should only be implemented if there's a good reason to do so, otherwise you're just introducing pointless busywork.

I agree with boots, gloves, helmet, but see no need for separate upper and lower body slots for armor (clothes would be a different matter since their purpose is generally to be aesthetic). You rarely have a reason to mix and match armors, and more often than not the styles clash with one another as well.

[Rand]

Stat-boosting drugs. Playing Fallout 4 last night, I thought about how tasteless it was to be shooting up heroin to help me kill mudcrabs while looking for baby Shauwan.

Todd knew it'd be tasteless, that's why Morpine was renamed into Med-X. Winners don't use drugs, they just pop performance-enhancing candies.

Jokes aside, The Witcher 1 has one of the best implementation of "buffing with meds" in rpgs - the effects last for quite a while, so you don't need to drink them again while mid-combat, and the toxicity bar limits the amount of elixirs you can chug at the same time.

Morphine was renamed into Med-X because there's something deeply wrong with Australian politicians that makes Australian gamers suffer more than just living in Australia naturally does.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Med-X

Just like there's something broken in German politicians heads when it comes to blood in games at all.

[Rand]

That's how you end up with 60 different potions in your inv screen (+3% fire resist, +4% fire resist, +5% fire resist...) I will gladly trade the "fun" of the recursive alchemly exploit to avoid the inventory management tedium.

Well, you're not actually keeping those potions. Or making those potions. What's the legitimate use of a 3% or 5% fire resist potion? Nothing. It's not enabling you to go fight anything that was going to do significant fire damage anyway. For that, you need something probably in the 90% or more range, unless your regen rate is insane as well. You will similarly not be keeping the recursive alchemical potions because you chugged those.

Inventory management tedium is mostly a function of the game being filled with trash objects that there is no good interface to avoid having to individually manage. The entire issue would cease to exist if you simply had a garbage sack, like we do in real life. Nobody individually manages garbage. It goes in the garbage bag, and then you chuck the entire bag into the bin.

Nightmare scenario: an isekai unfortunately based on ****** game design where (among others) everything you pick up and carry has to be dealt with using a ****** line-item inventory system like Starfield, and there's trillions of possible items because small changes necessitate a new entry.
...
...
I think I just created a new circle of Hell...

[Rand]

I don't like in RPGs where you only have one character, and it's built so that you're meant to specialize in just doing one or two things over and over. I would rather have lots of options available and use whatever makes the most sense at the time. It gets very boring, especially as RPGs are usually very long.

Careful, there's a lot of people that say they actually like Underrail around here.

And that's why I cheat outrageously in Underrail giving myself way more stat, skill, and feat points.
I'm there to experience the content, and the combat is difficult enough if you want it to be.
So what if I have high stats in crossbow, guns, and chemical pistols? It's not like it's possible to switch between them in every round. I just use the best/most interesting for a while.

I do have builds. The sneaky ******* build and the Arnold Schwarzenegger build. They play very differently and I don't worry about missing stuff along the way.

If the dev of that game wasn't such a paranoid control freak, it could just be modded in, but no.
He obfuscates the **** out of his spaghetti code on purpose, and even turned down a professional dev's offer to create a modding layer that retains obfuscation because he "was concerned it could be misused" or something like that. It's ******* mad.

From his own Discord:

[agentorange]

Based. **** modders and **** cheaters.

[Vergil]

And that's why I cheat outrageously in Underrail giving myself way more stat, skill, and feat points.

Why not just watch a let's play at this point?

[rusty_shackleford]

More equipment slots should only be implemented if there's a good reason to do so, otherwise you're just introducing pointless busywork.

I agree with boots, gloves, helmet, but see no need for separate upper and lower body slots for armor (clothes would be a different matter since their purpose is generally to be aesthetic). You rarely have a reason to mix and match armors, and more often than not the styles clash with one another as well.

as many equipment slots as possible

[Acrux]

Still the best paperdoll and inventory (in b4 rusty says icons suck)

[Rand]

And that's why I cheat outrageously in Underrail giving myself way more stat, skill, and feat points.

Why not just watch a let's play at this point?

It's wider gameplay, not easier.
I can craft whatever I want, and use whatever weapons I find that are the best.
And I don't have to skip out on the social skills.
My sneak guy uses pistols and crossbows, and my buff guy uses heavy weapons and melee, without feeling constrained by Styg's stinginess.

[Pretty Princess]

It's wider gameplay, not easier.
I can craft whatever I want, and use whatever weapons I find that are the best.
And I don't have to skip out on the social skills.
My sneak guy uses pistols and crossbows, and my buff guy uses heavy weapons and melee, without feeling constrained by Styg's stinginess.

I think you missed the point of RPGs

[Vergil]

And that's why I cheat outrageously in Underrail giving myself way more stat, skill, and feat points.

Why not just watch a let's play at this point?

It's wider gameplay, not easier.
I can craft whatever I want, and use whatever weapons I find that are the best.
And I don't have to skip out on the social skills.
My sneak guy uses pistols and crossbows, and my buff guy uses heavy weapons and melee, without feeling constrained by Styg's stinginess.

It's going to be a real hard sell to convince me that using cheats to boost your stats and get items instead of earning them through progression isn't easier guy.

[Rand]

Fortunately, I don't have to convince you of anything.
I don't enjoy the default stinginess, and I do enjoy having more options on what to do.
So I do that instead.

If you enjoy suffering, feel free to play Styg's ****** default and you can even crank up the difficulty to get ripped off in sales and annihilated without a perfectly curated, zero customization possible, build.
I don't enjoy that. So I fix it.

[Rand]

It's wider gameplay, not easier.
I can craft whatever I want, and use whatever weapons I find that are the best.
And I don't have to skip out on the social skills.
My sneak guy uses pistols and crossbows, and my buff guy uses heavy weapons and melee, without feeling constrained by Styg's stinginess.

I think you missed the point of RPGs

Oh, and what's the point of RPGs?
Having to follow build guides or be unable to complete the game?
Because that's what Underrail will turn into if you do things Styg's way.
No thanks.

[rusty_shackleford]

Styg obfuscating the game is the reason I did not make a Dogmeat mod.
It did not stop cheaters from creating cheat engine tables.

Cheer it on at your own peril.

[gerey]

No idea if this has been mentioned before, and I feel like it's going for low hanging fruits, but I will never understand why some developers make the success of skill-checks in their cRPGs percentage-based instead of deterministic.

I guess the idea is to introduce an element of randomness and uncertainty to the game, as is the case in tabletop. The obvious issue is that video games don't have a human GM that can adapt to the situation on the spot and come up with a new narrative, so all that happens in most cases is that players fail the check and don't get a reward or desired outcome, cue quickloading.

What's the point then? With this design decision you encourage savescumming, make the players feel cheated, weaken the importance of skills and character builds (you can just keep reloading until the slot machine gives you a win) and, if for some insane reason you are fully committed to this course, saddling yourself with extra work - now having to write and put in all the possible outcomes of failing a skill-check.

[rusty_shackleford]

No idea if this has been mentioned before, and I feel like it's going for low hanging fruits, but I will never understand why some developers make the success of skill-checks in their cRPGs percentage-based instead of deterministic.

I guess the idea is to introduce an element of randomness and uncertainty to the game, as is the case in tabletop. The obvious issue is that video games don't have a human GM that can adapt to the situation on the spot and come up with a new narrative, so all that happens in most cases is that players fail the check and don't get a reward or desired outcome, cue quickloading.

What's the point then? With this design decision you encourage savescumming, make the players feel cheated, weaken the importance of skills and character builds (you can just keep reloading until the slot machine gives you a win) and, if for some insane reason you are fully committed to this course, saddling yourself with extra work - now having to write and put in all the possible outcomes of failing a skill-check.

The problem isn't randomness, it's showing too much information to the player.
e.g., how many people knew they lost the secret checks in Fallout? Not knowing, they didn't care.

[gerey]

The problem isn't randomness, it's showing too much information to the player.

I think it's an inherently flawed design idea, one of those aspects of tabletop that never translates well to cRPGs.

Granted, deterministic skill-checks have their own issues, chiefly that they are far too often an obvious "I WIN" button the player can click without taking a moment to consider the possible ramifications of making the choice, or that it's very obvious what they are, even when developers try to obfuscate the fact.

All that being said, I have nothing against them being implemented, with the caveat that the developer then needs to put systems and content in place to account for the PC failing the check.