I'm wondering what kinds of things that are either traditional or common in most professional games would you leave out of yours? I know the industry has learned to reduce things like cheap deaths and even in many cases random battles but I wonder what you would leave out of yours that still seems common or traditional. I guess you could also list stuff that you think have a unfair bad reputation.

For example I actually like turn-based rpgs with random battle dungeons as long as the dungeons are reasonable in length, complexity, and save points. I also like fetch quests when I know I'm doing something easy and at the end will get a nice reward.

However I don't like really tough boss battles or even in some cases boss battling at all. I like how the original Halo did it where there were areas of differering difficulty but this was usually due to more or less enemies, etc. Then Halo 2 started using boss battles like rpgs and I thought that was stupid. I admit that it is rewarding to beat bosses but I think the reward does not generally outweigh the frustration or the break in momentum of the usual pacing so I wouldn't put those in my games too much or with too much difficulty.

I also don't like treasure chest events that give you rare items that you can also buy at a store. It is either frustrating when you already have the item (like a more powerful sword or armor that you paid heavily for) or it is a buzz-kill when the item is too easily given to you as part of the fun is saving to buy the item. I think treasure chests for items should only be for common items (like health or magic restoring items) or uncommon ones that you can't also buy at a store, i.e. a truly rare sword or armor.

Your thoughts?

that is a tough one. i think reducing the amount of status causing monsters goes along way. instant death, paralyze, stone are all nasty nasty nasty and i try to avoid using them for anything other then a rare attack.

ive also left out much of the filler dungeon space that takes up room in all professional games. no path leads to nothing, and no path is a thousand miles long with nothing along the way.

the biggest one is my hero talks, the entire party talks, and every char is multi dimensional.

beyond that i really dont know what would qualify for this. the industry has broken a lot of bad habits of late which is awesome.

Those are good one. Instant death annoys me but I don't mind status changes as long as they are relatively rare. It is annoying when most of the enemies attack incorporates them because it is either ho-hum, die, buy appropriate accessory before retrying, and then wow the enemy is totally ineffective or drag out the battle using spells and items to cure the status and continue attacking the enemy. I do however like the occasional status change that you can't (or don't) really prepare for that mixes it up a bit.

Ditto on the dungeons, man I hate dungeons that lead nowhere.

The thing about many fetch quests is that there's generally nothing to them. You just go into a dungeon, collect stuff for 20 minutes or so, and return. It'd be a lot more interesting if stuff actually happened during that collection.

It's also annoying when the fetch quest has absolutely no purpose other than to stall for time. Especially if it's at the beginning of the game. "Hmm, how do we start this game out?" "I dunno. Let's just throw the player into an unimportant fetch quest to give time for something to happen." I can name three games where this happens: fu-ma, Sands of Destruction, and Untamed Madness. fu-ma, you collected 20 mushrooms, and this had no bearing on the quest outside of you gained your second party member for it. Untamed Madness, you collected 10 flowers (which you had to actually fight), and this had no bearing on the quest outside of you gained your second party member for it. Sands of Destruction at least had you only collecting a single item at the end of a dungeon (a mushroom, of all things), but it really had no bearing on the quest, either. Except you discovered a whale that "usually is such a gentle creature, why did it attack me?" Which is one of the most overused cliches out there.

Oh, and don't get me started on fetch quests that require collecting items based on chance (e.g., random monster/drop).

If I ever include a fetch quest, it'll be something that contributes to the overall goal of the game, and the task will not be littered with redundancy.


On the idea of boss battles, generally in RPGs I try not to include boss battles for the sake of including a boss battle. If I can't think of any reason a dungeon should have a boss, I won't include one. The best comparison to this is Final Fantasy 7. There were a lot of bosses that really served no real purpose to the quest. Like when you visited Mt. Nibel midway through the quest, and there was this random spider thing sitting at the end. You bumped into it, you fought it, you moved on. No dialogue whatsoever. Might as well have been just another random encounter. Or when you visit the Northern Crater for the first time, and at the end of the ice cavern, you see a guy get knocked out, the screen shakes, you fight a two-headed dragon, and you move on like nothing happened. One particular boss that's bothered me was that sea serpent you fight when you arrive at Junon for the first time (the place with the giant cannon). You're talking to this child about dolphins, she's showing you all the neat tricks her dolphin friend can do, and OMG IT'S A MONSTER, OMG SHE ALMOST DROWNED, you save her, she helps you get to the next location. Not only does the scene go from peaceful to UTMOST PANIC in 0.2 seconds, but since the child is friendly to you when you met her, there was no reason she couldn't have helped you out right then and there.

she couldnt help you out right then because she was attacked by a sea monster. being a child she was interested in showing you her fun pet. also you never asked! ironically its these battles that i remember and liked most about ff7. they introduced something different and they where sufficiently random. a boss is just a very powerful regular monster. not every boss has to have a story dialogue or a purpose for being where it is. with an over world and subsequent dungeons filled with monsters it would make sense that something large-monster-wise would be lurking around. might be better to be more hidden but then again the sea monster was at sea, Schizo was in an ice cave that really wouldnt get any use from travelers (the clones are the exception), and due to Nibelhiem's situation no one would really be traveling through the path there either.

placement of battles is key. if it doesnt make sense then it breaks the story. the plot hole and issue is more to do with how convenient the monster shows up, rather then its placement. im playing a game that has you go through the same motions 5 times to get a stupid "dragon orb" and each dungeon always ends with a similar style of dialogue and boss fight. this kind of use is over cliched. having powerful monsters at the very end of a dungeon is ridicules. why does the most powerful monster always protect the item you need or reside in the furthest point of the dungeon? why isnt there any medium sized bosses in between or large ones in the middle too?


one of the biggies ive left out is the acquisition of ultimate weapons after some overpowered boss. by the time you fight the monster for the weapons, you end up not needing them or there is literally nothing left in the entire game to do. you got a super awesome weapon, but the end boss is already a joke as you out passed it hours before and there are no side quests or anything else to do left.

also the discovery of penultimate weapons in the final dungeon is annoying. so you tell me that out of every weapon in the world besides the divine great rare ones that you can find, that the best weapons in the game are in the final dungeon you visit? why isnt everyone going to the cave and finding rare weapons for resale? im not saying dont put good equipment in the final dungeon, but please dont outfit the whole party by doing a single pass through the cave.

But what if... okay, stop me if this sounds crazy... What if she, oh, I dunno, wasn't attacked by a sea monster? Eh? Eh? It could work.

That said, I do see your point about these big baddies being in uninhabited areas. And maybe your idea of having these bosses appear somewhere other than the end of the dungeon would help break the redundancy.

id like to actually see that. percilla joining you on your tour through enemy lines. maybe ill try a random boss in a few dungeons ill make.

I guess that when I was thinking of fetch quests I really meant either in RPGs in towns mostly with only a small dungeon or limited off-path field activity or I meant something like in survival horror where you have to go back and forth to find the right key items to carry on the story. I hated the original fetch quest in fu-ma and thought it was the absolutely most annoying thing to do precisely because it halts exploration (via excessive battling) rather than enables it (via a light battling or battle free fetch quest). BUT as long as the fetch quests are light on the battling I oftentimes would rather have them as sort of linear tasks which allow you to get used to exploring the world in small doses rather than always be on some main task where you never know what lies ahead of you. You never feel at ease that way. I do agree that the fetch quests have to at least be naturally related to the world you encounter but I don't think they need to be related to the overall storyline.

I read that and was reminded of Paper Mario 2's goose chases. >_<

I like for a plot to be short and sweet, with heavy side-questing accounting for the rest of the game. I usually work on ideas for very non-linear plots, with little direction given to the player. The actual plot would be fairly short, but the player might spend a lot of time exploring and getting caught-up in side-quests before they can figure out how to advance the main story arc. The same idea goes for the game world - the player is dropped in the middle of nowhere, and would freely explore all sorts of towns, dungeons and wilderness before they incidentally stumble upon something crucial to the story.

That sounds like a terrible idea. I hate not knowing where I'm going. If I find myself aimlessly wandering for too long, I'm not gonna want to play the game.

I second what Draygone said. Sorry.

I like to know what's going on, what I have to do, and where I have to go. Unless it's a classic text adventure (Myst for more current generations) where the entire game is a puzzle and you have to figure out what to do. But that type of game is definitely not an RPG. They don't have battles, experience, or any of the usual RPG trappings.

An idea: Perhaps make a Myst-style game with the wandering around and figuring out what to do. Then place the RPG elements in a different game that's more focused with its plot and game goals.

At the very least, provide a Quest Journal that keeps track of the player's game goals. Which side quests have been finished, which ones haven't, and so on.

@granzie
I actually like the idea you mention and I definitely don't see too many games like this. It all depends though on how much plot you give the player I think. I personally don't know if I would have the patience to play such a game but as long as the player is enjoying the gameplay and enough of the plot is conveyed I think it is a good idea.