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Opinion: Waypoints And Questlogs - Moving The JRPG Forward
by Nayan Ramachandran [PC, Console/PC]
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April 13, 2009
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[What can RPGs do differently to avoid their old pitfalls? Writer and commenter Nayan Ramachandran unearths some old chestnuts to make recommendations.]
I don’t think there is any question that I have an almost insurmountable devotion to the RPG genre. My very first RPG was Dragon Warrior for the NES. After it and Final Fantasy, my undying love for RPG genre was officially cemented. I have a healthy background in PC gaming, but just like any person whose gaming education was heavily based on console gaming, my most formative RPG years were spent playing games from Japan.
My entrance into Western RPGs started with Ultima VII. I had no console at home at the time, and my friends were all enjoying Super Nintendo RPGs like Illusion of Gaia and Final Fantasy III. I was looking for the replacement that would keep me going. I enjoyed what Ultima provided, and was always amazed by the series’ level of depth and freedom, but there was a certain je ne sais quoi about Japanese RPGs that I still missed.
When I finally got a SNES and returned to modern JRPGs with the Playstation, I was surprised to find that while games had moved forward in a storytelling and cinematic capacity, the games themselves were largely unchanged. The depth, freedom and malleability of Western RPGs that I had started to take for granted was nowhere to be seen. I was happy to be back, though, and enjoyed Wild Arms, Final Fantasy VII and its ilk without regret.
It’s now 10 years later, and admittedly, not a lot has changed. RPGs have become prettier, have better translators and occasionally sport new battle systems. Like the Joker raising his shoulders in disappointment after a hospital fails to self-destruct, I find myself wondering what can be done.
There’s so much ground that could be covered, but with executives begging for cash cows and a tough economy nipping at their heels, only those who have enough capital and/or guts will step up to the plate. Perhaps its not such a gamble, though. No one is asking for drastic and sweeping changes in the RPG formula over night. Gamers themselves treasure a certain level of familiarity in what they play, but little changes can go a long way to make a consumer truly appreciate the effort.
More Interesting Encounters
Screen wipes are old, even if they are still there to hide load times. Even those who still love the idea of the random encounter are tired of going to a completely different screen to start a battle. It chops up the pacing and lacks the smooth transition that a game largely based on adventure and exploration should have.
The solution is simple: be inventive with transitions. No game should have a player blindly run into giant hawks and sandworms without proper introduction. Passing through a forest? Thieves might jump out of the trees and ambush. Traipsing through a swamp? A large creature might emerge from the murky waters to capture its next meal. Don’t treat this as a replacement for random encounters. People love the excitement of an unpredictable environment. Dynamic enemy spawning does not have to be planned. It just has to be believable.
Make Each Encounter Matter
RPGs have a horrible habit of throwing “trash mobs” (useless, weak, time wasting enemy groups) at the player on their way through a forest, mountain range or dungeon. Especially in games where random encounters are the main course of battle, monster encounters are numerous and in many situations, not a challenge.
Encounters are meant to fulfill two jobs: initially, they are meant to provide an obstacle between the player and the boss creature of ultimate goal of the dungeon. Secondly, they are meant to be a source of strength and experience upon their defeat. Unfortunately, most RPGs tend to fulfill the second requirement but overlook the first.
When a game has enemies only to pad the world’s empty landscape and provide the player with the ability to grind their way to victory, the experience begins to wear thin faster than possibly intended. Higher risk and reward might be the best way to alleviate this. Make each fight count.
Increase experience gained and the difficulty of each encounter, but decrease the frequency of encounters. Instead of breaking up the flow of exploration with incessant and worthless fighting, make encounters a slightly more unusual occurrence, and make each one special and worthwhile.
Quest Logs and Records
This is a problem particular to the Japanese RPG. JRPGs in the past never kept any record of one’s progress in either the main story or in the plethora of side quests they might stumble upon. While some are starting to emulate the quest structure of MMORPGs and more Western-centric RPGs, JRPGs still manage to cling to incomprehensible idiosyncracies for no other reason than to infuriate the player.
Sega’s 7th Dragon has the ability to pick up quests from townspeople and even provides a fantastic quest log to keep everything in order. The quest log even provides a five star rating system that gauges the difficulty of the quest, and clues players in on how to proceed.
Strangely, though, the quest log can only be accessed at a Guild Hall in town, which means that if you forget what exactly you’re looking for in a forest you must return to the nearest town. It’s unnecessary, and reflects absolutely nothing about reality. Why can my characters not keep a notepad of active quests in the inside pocket of their armor?
Provide Waypoints
Why RPGs still refuse to give players markers on the map that identify the general area a player must go to in order to fulfill a quest is beyond me. Hybrid RPGs like Level 5’s Inazuma Eleven and Sega’s Ryu Ga Gotoku (Yakuza outside of Japan) give players waypoint markers for most quests, but other games refuse to follow suit.
Even Level 5’s less than stellar White Knight Story provided a useful waypoint system that made finding the next part of the story much easier. There are cases where waypoints should not be used (like forcing the player to search for a person or object), but there’s usually no legitimate excuse other than to artificially pad the game’s playtime.
Give Characters Life
JRPGs, now more than ever, have become painfully rote. Effeminate protagonists are more ubiquitous than the much parodied bald space marine, and player character archetypes (like the adorable lolita with an oversized weapon) run rampant. It would be wonderful to see developers break away from fan favorites and try to be a little dangerous. If that means choosing new and unusual settings and environments or even picking an untapped and strange art style, players will be open-minded enough, and they will thank you.
Additionally, try to add character interaction that does not interrupt the player experience. Cutscenes are not always the best way to develop characters. Exploring a large and empty landscape? Why not have characters converse in real time. Namco’s Tales series is famous for its skits, but with current hardware, it could be taken to the next level. Have players talk and comment in and out of battle, but add enough dialogue and content that players never hear the same comment more than twice.
Explore New Locales
This is a point that I belabored both in real life and in my writing, but I have little problem touching on it again. RPGs grew from Dungeons & Dragons and Wizardry, but that does not mean that the genre is irrevocably tied to Fantasy, or even Science Fiction.
Just like adventure games, why not explore other, more unusual locales? Inazuma Eleven successfully brought soccer into the RPG space, and Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei series has long had its fingers in the pop culture pie, but most series and new releases seem happy to wallow in the tired fantasy pool. Sure, taking a chance can be scary, but when it pays off, it can be a huge success.
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I am a huge jrpg fan and share many of the same frustrations. Most of what turns people off from jrpg's (linear story, very repetitave battles; etc.) is what I actually enjoy, but the genre can use some improvements for sure.
The quest log issue is a major one as many jrpg's can clock in at 60-80 hours. I personally tend to play these games not all at once, so if I stop 20 hours in, and go to restart a month or two later, there is typically a 2-3 hour period of just re-learning/remembering where you left off.
Another major pet-peeve is jprg soundtracks. There is just not enough music being composed for an 80 hour saga, which leaves the player listening to the same tunes over and over and over again. Many titles do not give the player to turn the music off, and I have stopped playing many games just because I can't stand to hear the same song over and over again. This is true even on those games with outstanding soundtracks like the Shin Megami games.
I've just finished Star Ocean 4. Honestly, a beautiful game with a great battle system, tons of challenges, tons to do, etc etc... but the story was paper thin, the dialogue was atrocious, and the characters (outside of looking like creepy dolls) were blatantly shallow. The worst part of it all was that they started to get it right and then just blew it with the interactions. There are plenty of awesome character interaction possibilities and histories to explore that were buried under a forced and unrealistic mood. The potential for Lymle is outstanding. A harsh past that has stunted her emotional growth and the "baby act" she puts on as a defense mechanism is set up as pure gold... but she NEVER comes out of it! Are you serious? The potential for a dialogue on forming new emotional bonds as an effective cure for past trauma is just massive, and they actually start down that path with her half-hearted love/hate relationship with Faize, but then it just dies. I know, I know, the private action endings take it a little further but it still falls woefully short of the potential. She never really changes, there's no real development, there's no real healing. She ends the game still suppressing her womanhood and covering it with a child's affectations. I was so disappointed by that story line. There were plenty of others as well, but that was the most glaring example.
Perhaps it was only a time consideration, but there were so many opportunities to dig into the "human" psyche that were started but never truly expanded. I think they wasted most of their dialogue on stereotypical idealistic babbling that really adds nothing to the depth of the characters or the story.
Anywho, I'd like to see some more grown up characters with grown up problems and resolutions. That would go a long way in making JRPGs more relevant in general, but especially in the Western market.
While the points stated in this opinion piece are valid, what we need is more focus on "soft skills" in the interaction between players and NPCs, not just ways to make combat cover up for the lack of actual roleplaying.
Soul Nomad and the World Eaters (NIS) had an excellent battle system that was similar to other srpg's, but instead of each charachter being one unit, they represented an entire squad, and most of the strategy was in setting up the squad. Also they got rid of the "wandering around town" part all together with a menu system that made the game more efficient.
Other more well-known innovators would be Odin Sphere, and the Persona series. There are a lot more, but these stand out most in my mind.
Also hats off to Atlus - I see these guys as being the most willing to take a chance with the jrpg's that DO break the mold.
There certainly are a lot of models to look at in terms of differentiating the encounters for the player that would be great inspiration for future designers to note. Ogre Battle (a Strategy RPG developed by Enix for the SNES) used a real time combat system where enemy units (groups of up to 5 "character points" (1 for small humanoids, 2 for larger monsters)) would spawn at the enemy's base and march towards your base, your units or cities on the map that you had liberated from them. It is fairly traditional with the wipe effect as soon as you engage in a fight and then it takes the battle to another screen, but part of the challenge is to keep tabs on all of your units, their locations, any strategies such as utilizing their effectiveness (some people fight better on plains, some in mountains, some fly and it doesn't matter, some fight better during the day, some fight better during the night, etc) but also being very aware of where your opponents are.
There is the Action RPG style like Secret of Mana where you can run past enemies if you don't want to fight them. Personally, this is the game that made go from a kid that "plays games" to "gamer" and looking back at it, it really was revolutionary for its time. There could have been other RPGs which used the real time combat since, but the next major game that touched on the that system was Final Fantasy XII, which was just as stellar and revolutionary, in my opinion. Something about encountering enemies in their turf and being able to choose whether you want to fight them or run past them really makes that style of combat very appealing to me.
There's also the "AP" system where your characters have action points which they can use on moving on the field and using attacks and abilities around it. Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter was the first time I encountered this style, and am really glad to see it getting another go with Valkyria Chronicles. Enemy placements make sense and it is up to you to decide how to approach and fight them. This leads to a little bit of menu selections, but certainly not as bogged down as the JRPG genre is infamous for.
I think that one of the greater things that the [J]RPG genre can do to freshen itself up is to mix with other genres. Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy XII, Valkyria Chronicles all are RPGs at heart, but cross over into a more Action genre with combat that keeps the game feeling fresh, but still offers up all the RPG elements that the RPG nuts love about the genre anyways. I think the reason RPG fans love RPGs is because we get a physical reward to show for our time and effort. Be it levels, stats, new weapons or magic, our time invested has a material reward that you can look and point to.
On the matter of making each encounter matter, making them less frequent and harder is not a great solution. As someone who fanatically plays Pokemon Platinum and has gotten all four of his roommates addicted to it as well, it is an interesting case study to see each person's different reactions to problems. In many cases, some players cannot overcome certain milestone challenges, and their only solution is to grind more levels. Were encounters less frequent and more difficult, this may become even more annoying and difficult to overcome these challenges, as some people just like to grind a bit more to make everything afterwords easier.
Everything else about your point about making encounters matters rings true (as a DM for D&D, the value of less, more important encounters is very apparent to me), but the matter of difficulty must be approached carefully to make sure portions of the audience (or potential audience) are not alienated. In this case, some form of difficulty scaling may be appropriate.
@Eric Rampson:
Yes, there is a turn-based RPG that allows you to interact with the environment like that: paper-and-pencil Dungeons and Dragons. I've yet to see any other type of game (outside of other paper-and-pencil ones) that lets you do that, concidering the amount of ridiculous preparation involved.
Going a bit deeper, I think JRPGs need to evolve along their own path, not taking cues from WRPGs, arguably a whole different genre. JRPGs are a narrative shell wrapped around a tactical combat system (if that, Pokemon is little more than the combat system itself). Let them evolve that gameplay concept where it wants to go: better interactivity and craft in the narrative and better combat systems.
So in my own list of things to change in modern JRPGS you'd find some different items:
- Less wordy conversations, no text-only conversations, no colour, no-quest related NPCs. They're all time wasters that typically don't move the plot forward in any significant way.
- More story beats per hour, better pace. More little story elements in between battles, less hours of grind or dungeoning before the next story beat.
- Complexity in the combat system needs to scalate with the difficulty of the battle, both up and down. Let me mash "attack" for the grind or, better yet, use and "attack all" command but let the strategy come out during boss battles and quest-relevant combat.
- Story is action, no talking heads.
But then, if JRPGs did all those things and the ones in the article we'd have solved many of the issues in all of Japan's pop culture, and those have deep roots in their working habits, genre conventions and budget restrictions.
I don't think this is a big issue one way or the other. Some people like random battles some people don't, some people like being sucked into a battle screen and others don't. If the underlying battle mechanics are fun it won't really matter.
Make Each Encounter Matter:
As you say the best way to solve this is to increase the difficulty of the game. I have had some of the best JRPG experiences with games that have a difficulty level that I can set. I always set it on the hardest because the game tends to end up being more enjoyable if I'm not breezing through all the filler battles. A recent game that I think really messed up was Star Ocean: The Last Hope. They locked the "hard" and "hardest" difficulties until the game is beat and played in New Game+. I was left wondering, why? I literally don't have to do anything during battles on "normal" difficulty, my AI is fully capable of surviving. Alternatively, Blue Dragon allowed for an extra hard mode to be downloaded which made the game so much more enjoyable. I had to actually take advantage of enemy weaknesses and use a bit more strategy on trash encounters and definitely bosses.
Quest Logs and Records:
Nothing really to say here, a log to keep track of things would definitely be helpful in any RPG with multiple side quests.
Provide Waypoints:
I don't really agree with waypoints most of the time for the reasons you stated, person or object search. Isn't going to a new location just a "place" search though? For a game that is about exploration it makes sense for you to have to take the clues you gain through speech and whatever else to find the next location you have to go. So I don't think the problem is lack of waypoints, it is lack of description of where to go next. This can be done simply by saying directions and highlighting them so the player knows the next place they have to go is "to the north".
Give Characters Life:
Definitely a place where JRPGs need to mature. I would say most of the time it is simply due to the writing though, not the actual characters. Writing in the JRPG is notoriously bad. The back and forth conversations between characters are just not natural, and that doesn't have to do with the character types, it's just bad writing. I think more has to be done by way of acting, character movement and non verbal communication to really infuse some of these characters with some life. As it is now the writers just see it as stiff boards standing around setting X exchanging remarks, and this leads to the unnatural speech writing.
Explore New Locales:
Hey more locations is fine with me, but by no means are fantasy or science fiction pools dry. The great thing about these locations is that they're so broad and open to pretty much anything you can think of.
Fallout, while a nice game, does annoy me with the Waypoints.
I have mixed feelings about quest logs, as it does kind of take away some of the immersion at times. Sure, having a notepad with notes is fine, but, shouldn't you have to pick what goes in that notepad, as well as discover the clues that need to be added to the notepad. Some questlogs are too descriptive, and hand holding, and don't let you really get into the flow of the game. Couple that with waypoints and it's not a roleplaying game anymore.
I think the WRPG's have dumb downed the RPG genre in some respect. WoW really did a number of MMO's (I still play FFXI, cause I like the challenge, and sense of satisfaction from accomplishing something). WoW is fun for a hot second, but had no staying power for me.
My game jouney started from FC and Chinese video gamers can get closer to JRPG than Western players.Equivocally speaking, I still believe different players have different standards to judge a game. But just like what the writer mentioned, we share many things in common.
As for the way to encounter enemies, I agree with the point that game maker should make each of them matter. In fact many JRPG companies have noticed that massive random battles drive some fringe players out of some series like DQ and FF, so do some core fans,even though massive meaningless battles have elongated the play time. So I am happy to find that the coming DQ9's battle system have been revoluted and now all the enemies are vissible. To battle or not? It's up to us.
When we talking about "giving lives to charecters", I strongly recommand “Neverwinter Nights”. Though I just dabble it , I still shocked by the scrupulously designed world and vivid different characters. As the player but more like a bystander, you can explore different stories, your friends experience , backgrounds and interests, which means you are not playing but enjoying an epic story.
That's more, maybe it is because JRPGs are less shackled by D&D rules and Western cutural systems, they care create more types of stories like a fallen Angel or a war between God and Devil. There is a good example "The promised land" that depicts an Angel ,Ein, who is ordered to devastate a continent which is regard as depravity, finally changed his mind and takes his weapon to protest the "Promised land Riveria". I mean, maybe Eastern are good at blazoning the spiritual contradiction between different values , producing a movie-like episode but not simply a program script.