Why are RPGs so concerned with the acquisition of (new) equipment?

[rusty_shackleford]

It's not really something found in the material that influenced the creation of RPGs.
How often does Conan find new weapons and armor? If someone thinks of new equipment in Lord of the Rings, you'll probably come up with Sting, the mithril coat, and Glamdring — across two massive stories.

[Stack of Turtles]

It's not really something found in the material that influenced the creation of RPGs.
How often does Conan find new weapons and armor? If someone thinks of new equipment in Lord of the Rings, you'll probably come up with Sting, the mithril coat, and Glamdring — across two massive stories.

I feel like protagonists in sword & sorcery films and stories are losing their weapons in different ways and then looting new ones pretty often, which is probably the inspiration, but I agree it's way too emphasized.

[Acrux]

It also makes for awkward situations like characters who start with a signature weapon or armor from their backstory. Most games end up treating these like junk to throw away when something better comes along.

[TKVNC]

It's not really something found in the material that influenced the creation of RPGs.
How often does Conan find new weapons and armor? If someone thinks of new equipment in Lord of the Rings, you'll probably come up with Sting, the mithril coat, and Glamdring — across two massive stories.

Well, don't forget that Gandalf gets epic robes too.

I think it's to account for the idea of looting dungeons, or such.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It comes down to JRPGs preferring a faster pacing of the gameplay experience. (EDIT: I misread the title as JRPGs, not RPGs, my bad!)

JRPG character kits are usually pretty simple and do not have that many mechanics or abilities built into them. There are usually no talent trees, and if they are there then there are usually only a small handful of actually meaningful nodes that change how that character functions, if at all. Most of the Sphere Grid and Crystarium are +1 STR increases, so the only thing you have to remember is that Auron can shatter heavy armor, Snow can either tank, build stagger gauge or consume it, Rufus can fuel the party's CP, etc. This makes their kit simple enough that you can glance at a character and pick them up, and easy to remember. The most in built character customization/talent system you might get outside of Matsuno and SaGa games is Dunban having a talent that allows him to become a tank by wearing no equipment and fighting naked.

The game designers still want character building to be a part of the game experience and for the player to be constantly thinking of new ways to build their characters. So the solution is to have them constantly picking up items that will soon be powercrept and are thus disposable. Because, again, character kits are simple enough to recall off of the top of your head, that means you pick up a new piece of equipment, read the description, and then quickly figured out which characters it could work with, plug it in, and move on with your life. And then you'll do it again soon enough in 30 or 60 minutes.

WRPGs go into excessive build autism and overload their characters with too many build options (which class should they be? which spells and traits should they learn? what stat breakpoints? etc) that makes them too difficult to remember in your head. So too often you have to look up an out of game guide to understand the character's capabilities, the build possibilities, etc. That massively bogs down the pacing of the gameplay.

[rusty_shackleford]

It comes down to JRPGs preferring a faster pacing of the gameplay experience.

JRPG character kits are usually pretty simple and do not have that many mechanics or abilities built into them. There are usually no talent trees, and if they are there then there are usually only a small handful of actually meaningful nodes that change how that character functions, if at all. Most of the Sphere Grid and Crystarium are +1 STR increases, so the only thing you have to remember is that Auron can shatter heavy armor, Snow can either tank, build stagger gauge or consume it, Rufus can fuel the party's CP, etc. This makes their kit simple enough that you can glance at a character and pick them up, and easy to remember. The most in built character customization/talent system you might get outside of Matsuno and SaGa games is Dunban having a talent that allows him to become a tank by wearing no equipment and fighting naked.

The game designers still want character building to be a part of the game experience and for the player to be constantly thinking of new ways to build their characters. So the solution is to have them constantly picking up items that will soon be powercrept and are thus disposable. Because, again, character kits are simple enough to recall off of the top of your head, that means you pick up a new piece of equipment, read the description, and then quickly figured out which characters it could work with, plug it in, and move on with your life. And then you'll do it again soon enough in 30 or 60 minutes.

WRPGs go into excessive build autism and overload their characters with too many build options (which class should they be? which spells and traits should they learn? what stat breakpoints? etc) that makes them too difficult to remember in your head. So too often you have to look up an out of game guide to understand the character's capabilities, the build possibilities, etc. That massively bogs down the pacing of the gameplay.

Funny, collecting data before I made this thread and the number of RPGs where you can stick with one weapon throughout the entire game is heavily tilted in favorite of Japanese games. Somewhat due to "Mystery Dungeon" games almost always featuring an item synthesis mechanic, but still.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The later Trails games (Cold Steel through Kuro/Daybreak series) approach WRPG levels of build autism due the Quartz grids and all of the different quartz effects that can be slotted, the Master Quartz/Holo Cores, Arts, and EX Shards. The character building and shopping sections for just four characters (not even the reserve backup team, just the front 4) can take 30 minutes to an hour+ each time. Your average JRPG does not allow for anywhere near as many item slots to consider and thus take nowhere near as much time to build out your characters.

It also makes for awkward situations like characters who start with a signature weapon or armor from their backstory. Most games end up treating these like junk to throw away when something better comes along.

In Trails, the character's visible weapon almost never changes throughout the game. The weapon/armor equipment are invisible non-canon stat sticks.

[Norfleet]

How often does Conan find new weapons and armor?

Probably some combination of "never" and yet "constantly". The World of Conan is not filled with tons of magical artifact weapons. Weapons are just weapons. In the books, Conan just has a weapon whenever he needs one and it is not remarkable or unique in any way. It's not the same weapon, so at some point he has acquired a new weapon, but it's not a remarkable event, so no page-space is really given to where he got it and when. So on one hand, Conan constantly gets new weapons, because he's using a different one every time. On the other hand, Conan never gets new weapons, because all of those weapons have basically the same stats and are not artifacts in anyway. In the context of a game, Conan exists in a world where there are no magic weapons so all weapons more or less function about the same, and they apparently wear out constantly, so you are constantly replacing them, and every sword is thus swordish and can be used mostly interchangeably.

[Roguey]

As https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-ori ... ul.666872/ puts it, it's something that players responded well to.

[UltraFan123]

When it comes to armor in particular, I reckon that players simply enjoying getting new drip as they level up.

Makes a good visual representation of progress as well. You start as a nobody with rags and by the endgame you are fully kitted with awesome armor.

[Norfleet]

Makes a good visual representation of progress as well. You start as a nobody with rags and by the endgame you are fully kitted with awesome armor.

The flipside is that all this makes the character his equipment. We see this aspect in old permadeath MUDs, for instance, where the loss of your equipment would often thus end up being a greater loss than the loss of your character. Assembling that rare assemblage of high-quality kit from tons of different sources on the game was way harder than simply levelling up a new character with the kit you already have. Major battles would be fought to recover the corpse of a dead guildmate.

On the other hand, the tales of Conan are about CONAN. Not Conan's +5 sword of slaying and his +5 armor. Conan could and did simply use any random weapon he had available. Conan would fight in any armor he had available. Or just his furry loincloth. The gear wasn't important to being Conan.

[maidenhaver]

The acquisition of renown would be more important than new gear, but strongholds and the social dimension of becoming a monster killing, bandit clearing, wizard slaying, quest taking adventurer aren't well depicted in rpgs. The best gear would come with titles, wealth, and Luck of the gods.

[Old One]

It's a fair question.

It goes back to old Dungeons & Dragons tabletop, I would say. Gear acquisition is a major part of most TT RPGs.

[Havitner]

Because looting cool **** and amassing power are both satisfying things to do in vidya gayms, obviously? Is this a trick question that I'm too dumb to understand?