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this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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'RPG' when all that means is 'levelling and loot mechanics'. Those just break verisimilitude for me for no actual benefit. I can't really buy into fantasy of somebody (especially with a somewhat established backstory of excellence) to start out as an incompetent buffoon and then in a span of a week become the greatest at everything ever. Such games also often have really poor mechanics elsewhere, often by making the game combat-heavy and not giving you a particular diversity of options when in combat (for example, BG1 and 2 martials largely just get 'hit enemy' and, maybe, 'use equipment').
This criticism applies to looter-shooters and to souls-likes. The former are at least almost always bad shooters which are made addictive via their RPG mechanics, and the latter usually have a rather one-note gameplay of dodging things by rolling, which not only feels dull but also looks very silly and breaks verisimilitude for me. This criticism does NOT apply to Disco Elysium. I also had fun with New Vegas, which made me realise that I do like narrative parts of games, as Fallout games in general have very subpar gameplay.
'Live service'.
'Multiplayer' - I don't really care for multiplayer. Not a very competitive person. And I can entertain myself in challenging ways by picking up a math textbook and solving problems presented there, or finding problems from math olympiads and solving those. (I know, I have not yet posted the solutions in the other relevant thread - I have been too busy; I have 3 problems' solutions ready and written on paper, the geometry problem I have solved in my mind but have not written the solution yet, and the remaining problem I am yet to produce a detailed solution for.)
'Open world' - usually just means that a lot of the time one has to waste on traversing boring environments.
RPG elements feels like a meaningless way to sell your game. Like, the most popular games in the world have these things, aren't they shooter elements now? Who are you selling to that doesn't understand persistent equipment progression?
Levelling and equipment progression, especially vial loot are not really specifically shooter mechanics, or, at least, I wouldn't say that. Plenty of shooters - at the very least the 'boomer' ones - do not have those, thankfully.
RPG elements seem to be an addictive hook for many people. I think that in most cases they are a very shallow addition to a game - you basically just 'progress' for the gameplay to largely stay the same, or, worse, for the gameplay to become even more and more one-note.
The case of 'basically no progression' happens in games where you will mostly, if not always, be in places where your level and your equipment are guaranteed or near-guaranteed to be appropriate. You will deal with encounters in roughly the same ways, all the time, and the complexity of your choices will largely stay the same since some point where you get your crucial tools for dealing with them. The name of some of your tools might change, but that's kind of it.
The case of 'regressive progression' happens when either some of the tools that you have become strong enough to dominate encounters, and, perhaps, with the other tools becoming too weak. This makes it so that your choice of tools becomes simpler and simpler as the game progresses.
Oh, yeah, one of the things that also breaks verisimilitude for me rather often is health, and this also affects tabletop RPGs for me. Characters gaining health with levels very often means that they can somehow deal with situations that I don't think experience can help you this much. The classic case would be D&D characters with their roughly linear health growth, and how two characters of different levels falling from the same height would very likely get different results. Or consider how burning and bleeding are basically non-factors in BG3 (and, in at least the case of burning ground, - in DOS2) at higher levels. Massive health growth with levels very often just hurts my enjoyment of things.
I do like these RPG elements in at least some cases, though. At the very least in XCOM and similar games, where that progression is actually meaningful, because you can, and will likely lose experienced soldiers, making it so that you do not always 'progress' in the sense of RPG mechanics, but also go back to your weaker state.
I played diablo 3 or 4 recently (whatever is on the switch). The core gameplay is ok, but the fact that every 30 minutes you need to spend tinkering/minmaxing with your infinite loot pile of random shit is kind of annoying, plus the controls for that menu are shit.
I don't really understand the draw of those games, beyond just basic addictive RPG elements. The gameplay seems to just devolve into a spam of one or two AoE abilities.