General Discussion

I've been wanting a good RPG (or MMORPG) to play for a good long time now, but I have not yet found one that can keep me entertained. Yet, it's so very easy to hop into an FPS game, get a few kills, and get my rocks off. Why is this? The tutorial phase.

In RPGs, so often you start off the little whelp that can barely wield a sword that runs tons of small and petty errands and eventually become the hero that saves the world (or in MMORPGs, the guy that slew the monster that was just minding it's own business in its own cave). Saving little Johnny from the goblin kidnappers gets awfully boring after a while.

Contrast this to FPS games where (typically), you're given a rifle from the get go, a tool of instant lethality and have to fight for survival every step of the way in one frantic scrap to save, well, the world. You don't have to work your way up to wield Excalibur, you get it at the start and the game is more about using it than "earning" it. Well, more arcady shooters still have the giant gun you don't get into well into the game, but for the most part they're glitz and glamor, the basic gun still does the job quite well.

Back to RPGs, I start off killing goblins, orcs, small time bandits, and whatever else. Often these starter creatures pose little to no challenge, as a kind of way to ween someone's teeth and get them used to the game. Only, I got used to the game 20 hours ago, but I'm still doing the same boring crap.

In short, RPGs need to cut out this forced tutorial stuff. Many people might say that the real game begins at max level. Yeah, well if that's the case, why did I have to pay $50 _and_ play for 300+ hours before I could play the real game? I'll have put it down well before I hit that marker and learned to avoid similar games. Many people might say that the grind up to max level is required to learn how to play a character at max level. I call bull. I could learn how to play a max level character in a couple of hours, master it after perhaps a week of solid playing. And there are plenty of people that can point out some max level people and accuse them of still not knowing how to play, so that argument is pretty moot.

In short, I'm tired of killing rabbits. Let me skip right to the important stuff and experience the game at my own pace, not at the slow metered pace of whatever grinding treadmill that starts at 1 mile per hour and works its way up to the more difficult settings. FPS games give me a weapon of lethality at the start, pit me against lethal enemies, and there's a lot less silly saving of stablehands and more of saving the world.

With mmos at least it all comes down to the bottom line, especially if it's a subscription based busyness model.  They want you to play because you pay.  And the longer you play the more you pay.  I guess eventually the industry will start making a broader range of games with varying ideals and philosophies and eventually all of us will manage to find a game that suits us like a well tailored suit.  Until then, we're either going to have to put up with it or not bother and just do something else.

You can always stop gaming and do what I do, pursue sinful pleasures of the flesh

Well, it's a pretty big difference between RPG's and MMORPG's.

If you're talking strictly MMO's, I would agree with you. It seems many a developer has fallen into the trap to start new players off by killing tiny rabbits to eventually work your way up to killing... larger rabbits.

RPG's on the other hand; I've found have started to do away with some of that and have been much smarter in their progression steps. I think Mass Affect is a really good example of this; while you certainly do progress in weapons, armor and skill throughout the game, you're still pretty tough when you start off.

But do keep in mind that RPG's have traditionally been about player development, it's what many fans expect. You take your character and build him/her up how you would like, so by their very own nature they are not pop-and-go type games, like a FPS might be for example.

Shhhhh.........be berry, berry quite. I'm hunting wabbits.

Well there is a game coming out called Too Human.  It's an Action/RPG where you take the role of a very powerful god i believe.  You can advance your char by gathering loot and mixing and matching weapon styles from what I've heard.  If you have an Xbox 360 I'd suggest you download the demo (It's free) and try it out, it's supposidly very good.

Originally posted by Mylon

I've been wanting a good RPG (or MMORPG) to play for a good long time now, but I have not yet found one that can keep me entertained. Yet, it's so very easy to hop into an FPS game, get a few kills, and get my rocks off. Why is this? The tutorial phase.

In RPGs, so often you start off the little whelp that can barely wield a sword that runs tons of small and petty errands and eventually become the hero that saves the world (or in MMORPGs, the guy that slew the monster that was just minding it's own business in its own cave). Saving little Johnny from the goblin kidnappers gets awfully boring after a while.

Contrast this to FPS games where (typically), you're given a rifle from the get go, a tool of instant lethality and have to fight for survival every step of the way in one frantic scrap to save, well, the world. You don't have to work your way up to wield Excalibur, you get it at the start and the game is more about using it than "earning" it. Well, more arcady shooters still have the giant gun you don't get into well into the game, but for the most part they're glitz and glamor, the basic gun still does the job quite well.

Back to RPGs, I start off killing goblins, orcs, small time bandits, and whatever else. Often these starter creatures pose little to no challenge, as a kind of way to ween someone's teeth and get them used to the game. Only, I got used to the game 20 hours ago, but I'm still doing the same boring crap.

In short, RPGs need to cut out this forced tutorial stuff. Many people might say that the real game begins at max level. Yeah, well if that's the case, why did I have to pay $50 _and_ play for 300+ hours before I could play the real game? I'll have put it down well before I hit that marker and learned to avoid similar games. Many people might say that the grind up to max level is required to learn how to play a character at max level. I call bull. I could learn how to play a max level character in a couple of hours, master it after perhaps a week of solid playing. And there are plenty of people that can point out some max level people and accuse them of still not knowing how to play, so that argument is pretty moot.

In short, I'm tired of killing rabbits. Let me skip right to the important stuff and experience the game at my own pace, not at the slow metered pace of whatever grinding treadmill that starts at 1 mile per hour and works its way up to the more difficult settings. FPS games give me a weapon of lethality at the start, pit me against lethal enemies, and there's a lot less silly saving of stablehands and more of saving the world.

Try Guild Wars.  For PvP, there is nearly zero itemization or level grind.  You can freely create max level toons of any class combo with any gear you've unlocked.  Unlocking these things is fairly easy and can be done through only PvP'ing.  For PvE, the grinds in these two areas is still nearly nil.  Getting to 20 is really just a formality, especially in the later campaigns.

The only thing to note about Guild Wars is that its emphasis is different.  Its PvP is almost entirely Arena PvP, though they do it much better than anybody else.  For PvE, it primarily takes the shape of instanced, story-based missions.  I actually prefer these to the usual bullshit you see in MMORPG's.

I do get your point, though.  FPS's deliver far better story experiences than MMORPG's, to be quite frank.  I'd take any game in the Jedi Knight series over SWG.

WoW is the perfect example of this. Boars at level 1 and Shadow Boars at level 70. major /yawn.

Originally posted by abbaba

WoW is the perfect example of this. Boars at level 1 and Shadow Boars at level 70. major /yawn.

They are called Shard-Hide Boars, thank you very much, and yeah, you're totally right.  I do think WoW has more variety while leveling than any other fantasy MMORPG's, though.  They do have plenty of the same-old, same-old shit, but they mix it up a bit with odd or interesting groups of enemy.  Those are pretty rare, though, and they even tend to overuse those.  For instance, I did think it was pretty cool to see the fighting with the demons when I first entered Outland.  By the time I hit 70, though, demons in general just became another kind of filler enemy.  May as well have just been boars.