Critical design flaws

[Meeplelard]

Ok, I got another one, this might tie-in with my earlier "lack of documentation" point, but still feel it needs being brought up.  Also applies primarily to SRPGs:

-Lack of Projections.

Due to the nature of SRPGs, having damage projections, accuracy, etc. of your attacks is pretty huge.  Games like FFT and FE benefit greatly from just knowing how viable your attacks will be on a planning level.  Then we have games like Disgaea where they don't tell you anything, so you don't even know if you're attack will kill or not.  Yes, randomized damage makes it a little harder to do, but just a general ballpark figure at least lets you get an idea of how much you're doing.  This makes fights less "Hail Mary big move in hopes to kill!" and actually lets you go "ok, he won't die, so I'll designate this character to heal this turn."


Additionally, more general one here, Scan spells/features that are useless, or a game completely lacking them.

Having to fight enemies entirely on Trial/Error just for basic factors like elemental weaknesses and what not is stupid.  If you have a Scan spell or equivalent in the game, it should be effective, and at least tell you HP, and elemental weaknesses, etc.  FF4's "Peep never hits bosses, as well as a lot of randoms!" thing can go rot.  Having a few specific enemies immune to it isn't so bad, but having it as a consistent feature just mitigates the actual point of it.  I know Monster Encyclopedias exist in most versions of FF4, but why should I have to use an expendable item just to gauge enemy stats when I have a spell that's suppose to do the same thing? 
And games that lack it entirely need a booting.  I've yet to see a game ruined by giving you a few basic tools like this to help you figure out what to do, and the reverse can be frustrating.

[hinode]

In the vein of super's point on forced 'exploration' sidequests, Dragon Quest 5 and 6 had these really annoying towns where you were required to talk to every single townsperson at least once to progress with the plot. This was tolerable for me on the first run just because I like talking to NPCs in RPGs, but on replays it's just tedious and kills the game's momentum.

This is 99.9% personal bias speaking, but Saga Frontier's Tanzer really pissed me off on Emelia's quest. The game pushes you to activate the Rune Quest early on, since you got the Freedom rune already in the first plot dungeon. Sounds reasonable as a starting point in such a largely non-linear game, right? But if you forget the details about how the Rune Quest/Tanzer work, it's all too easy to go activate the Rune Quest right away, then go back to Koorong because you forgot to buy some key equipment, then, try to go back elsewhere and... whoops! Congratulations, you're stuck with zero development characters and no decent MT to kill the slimes. Have fun! Oh, and you might be stuck with Fei-on too, if you haven't recruited enough PCs yet. -_-

I'll second Meeple on the lack of damage projections in SRPGs. The easy SRWs can sorta get away with it just by not being necessary 99% of the time and in-game saves existing for the remainder, but you really shouldn't *have* to resort to in-game saves to cover up for design failure like that. The hard SRWs by contrast just sound dull to play, either you resort to very specific gamebreaking strategies or you soft reset constantly just to gather the data necessary for efficient micromanaging.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Notably, Disgaea series finally caught on and added Damage Projections.

[superaielman]

In the vein of super's point on forced 'exploration' sidequests, Dragon Quest 5 and 6 had these really annoying towns where you were required to talk to every single townsperson at least once to progress with the plot. This was tolerable for me on the first run just because I like talking to NPCs in RPGs, but on replays it's just tedious and kills the game's momentum.

DW7 did this same shit. There were so many bad design choices in the game that you could have a whole thread devoted to it's problems and still not fully cover how frustrating that game was.

[Meeplelard]

Reminded of another one!  this isn't one that comes up often, but I've seen it and its really stupid no matter how you slice it:

-Rare Item Drops Required To Finish Quests-

Offenders: FF4DS

First off, lets make one thing clear:
Rare Drops (and Steals) from enemies in RPGs are always annoying.  I don't think anyone argues this.  At the same time, though, they're rarely relevant, more just a nice bonus you get for being lucky or persistent.  So as annoying as getting, say, the Adamant Armor in FF4, GooKingSword in BoF3, etc. are, the game sort of assumes you WON'T get them, and is legitimately fair without them, so you tend to either get them as a trophy or pure dumb luck that lets you crush the game.  As a result, I won't hold this as a "critical design flaw" unless the game is balanced around getting this gear (which I can't think of any games offhand that function this way, so not gonna call it out.)

ANYWAY...

So, a game has a quest or a side quest, that nets you a decent reward at the end; nothing amazing, but something you'd aim for.  You're doing everything...then suddenly the game says "You need this object."  Only way to get said object?  Through a rare drop from a random encounter.

How stupid this is partially depends on the rate of the random drop.  If this was, say, FF6 for example, it'd be 1/8 chance and thus be more acceptable (granted, the enemy in question matters too.  If we were talking about something like the Brachosaur, disregarding his difficulty, I'd give the game the finger, because 1/8 drop on a 1/16 Enemy = Go die in a ditch.)

FF4DS' Rainbow jelly is the biggest offender here.  Just to continue the Namingway Quest, which I might add has been very reasonable to this point (at worst, it'd require backtracking to nab an item at a town), requires you to get a 0.4% Drop from an enemy.  Oh, there's an skill that doubles the drop rate to 0.8%! ...gotten in the VERY LAST ROOM OF THE FINAL DUNGEON, so you either do the entire final dungeon twice or NG+ that shit, and your rate is still sub 1%...
Oh, there's an alternative...and that's a 1% chance from Flan Princesses.  I'm really loving these odds.


I know a few other games have stuff like this but not nearly as bad as FF4dS.  Nier I know did this, but handled it so much better, and mostly for quests that meant a lot less.  FF4DS, it stops you from getting a number of Augments just because of this bullshit.

[Fenrir]

I don't see why you would be OCD about finishing every sidequest but not about getting every piece of weapon/armor in the game. Unless the sidequests have amazing plots, or unlock the 100% your dick is immense Suikoden ending.

Stupid drop required to finish the game: Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories

[Grefter]

I have to agree with Fen, I don't really see a significant difference between two kinds of optional content.  Presumably your example unlocks significantly more than a single item.

What you are describing though isn't something I consider a "critical" design flaw.  The design here is a pretty standard drop quest, this is bread and butter MMO quest design, which while tending to be on the boring side they are a functional quest design that tend to give slight variation on normal expected time to finish compared to normal just kill 10 monsterdudes.

Poor balance of functional mechanics isn't really screwing up design though, it is balance rather than design.

[Random Consonant]

Pretty much agreed. Nothing prevents a player from ignoring sidequests outside of pure bloodyminded stubborness, and as much as I like to rag on FF4, that is not something I would hold up as a critical flaw with the game despite the design there being especially bad.

[Idun]

Or, how about inability to begin certain sidequests without entering or exiting a specific locale/dungeon area. Should you not randomly (without FAQing) enter an area or chat with a non-specific NPC without any indicators on how to begin said sidequest, you're screwed.  The decision to progress plot reveals that you'll never be able initiate a now "old quest." How do I know this? Missing quest numbers and slumming in the few available local cities to chitchat with everyone. Re: The Last Remnant. I love questing, but give me a break. There are a few boss characters + equipment that'll easily pass over you. I also do not enjoy FAQing much. Console version also suffers from pretty bad rendering lag. I'm not sure if this is a hardware issue or not. AI is standard attack+response - re: apparently unable to make different decisions.

Now that I'm playing ToV, I must say that the battle system is pretty rigid: movement, fluidity, pauses in-between attacks. It's early-game, so perhaps execution rates expedite later on.

[VySaika]

I think Meep's point, and I'd agree with him on this, is that a sidequest chain that was completely reasonable until the final step suddenly requiring a drop of absurd rarity is annoying as hell. The whole "completely fine UNTIL the stupid" part always makes the stupid signifigantly more offensive to me.

[Grefter]

Stupid things are stupid, but they aren't always stupid because of a design point that is universally or even nearly the majority of the time poorly implemented or only redeemable with great amounts of effort and specific design decisions to work around.

I am not arguing that it isn't stupid, I am saying that thing being described isn't a "critical design flaw" it is a poorly balanced stock standard gathering quest that is used in stuff all over the place.  Yes they are boring, but there is a reason they are used everywhere, it is kind of the exact counter of a design flaw in that it is a perfectly functional normal bit of design and they managed to fuck it up by messing up the numbers for it so drastically.

[Meeplelard]

Not sure how this one got left off but...

-Main Character Dies = Game Over (in non-SRPGS)

Look, I like FF13 a fair amount, but the fact that one character dies = Game over is stupid.  FF13-2 proved you CAN make the system work without that mechanic by simply letting you change the party leader mid-battle (a feature that should have been in FF13 to begin with but I digress.)  Yes, games will make fail-safes, but they're hardly foolproof.  So while Persona 4 will have characters defending the main character from lethal hits...it only Extends to ST attacks, enemy whips out an MT move that nails Souji and kills him?  Ooops game over, just because of hax.  And there's no excuse in these games often.
Don't get me started on Okage, which is by far the worst offender.  Lacks any sort of Gameplay excuse like FF13 (which, frankly, is because of ANOTHER poor decision on FF13's part), or P4's fail safes, yet still has this mechanic.

I let SRPGs get a by on this because the nature of SRPG structure allows you to work around it.  If you know your main is a liability, you can plan ahead and avoid him/her getting killed through positioning and what not. 

ARPGs...mostly lack examples, outside of Radiata Stories offhand, so "N/A" there I guess.   Though really, games that have some sort of genuine Movement/Positioning feature that can be used at will, and thus allow you to get your Main to safety or plan around the enemies position, etc. I'm a lot more lenient on.


The one game I feel did the "main dies = game over" thing right and isn't an SRPG is VP1, two reasons why:

A. Plot reasons.  Granted, you shouldn't always integrate plot into gameplay, but it at least explains why they did it.
B. More importantly, Lenneth's Death is not an immediate game over.  Giving that leniency to finish the battle or revive Lenneth makes such a huge difference in how the mechanic goes from "Bad" to "largely trivial"

[Fenrir]

It's less bad if you can choose the stats/skills of the main character too, and make him/her a tank.
But this does limit options and can potentially dramatically screw over newcomers to the genre.

[superaielman]

The only time I really consider MC death=game over to be acceptable design is in a game with permadeath. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

It didn't bother me in, say, Vandal Hearts or Shining Force despite those games lacking permadeath, but that's the SRPG thing there... it tends to be extremely reasonable to be expected to keep someone alive in an SRPG, unless they start in a really stupid position or have stupid AI. (Which is a separate sin some SRPGs commit, of course!)

[Meeplelard]

Yeah, I specified non-SRPGs because that's kind of expected in these games, and I play with that in mind, and its not uncommon for "game over if x character dies" missions.

I suppose expectations come into play here.  SRPGs, you kind of go in expecting that Main Death = Game Over, and play to that, while in Standard RPGs, you immediately assume Full Team Death = Game Over, so one character dying and you getting a Game Over just comes off as a bad design decision.

Naturally, in games without Permadeath, I just prefer, SRPG or otherwise, there not to be "Main Character Dies = Game Over" (or do what FFT and VP1 did, and have a Grace Period before that kicks in), just willing to not consider it a flaw in SRPGs.

[superaielman]

One that is fresh on my mind:

Pointless backtracking/filler dungeons. (VP2, Suikoden series, FF4)

If you're going to have a world map, dungeons, and towns where you need to go back and fourth from several times, you need to have a means of teleportation or fast movement. That doesn't mean teleport you and then make you do a worthless dungeon a billion times, it means teleport you to where you need to go. Suikoden gives you Viki and the blinking mirror... eventually. Before that, there is a lot of wandering back and forth to your castle.  All five games in the series do this to an extent, but the first three are all bad about it. VP2's chapter 3 has nothing but failing marks here (I can't believe it put a fucking dungeon between a safe spot and the hardest dungeon in the game. Fuck the palace of the venerated dragon).  FF4 does this with the caves before the lunar ruins.

This also applies to towns. Don't make me walk several minutes just to have to talk to a key figure in a town and have to do it over and over and over. Sol Falena in S5 is bad about this.
Lolis are also amazingly awful. Fuck off Japan.

[Meeplelard]

Tangentially related to the point I made before, mostly because of FF13 having it:

-Forced AI Alllies in non-Active Battle Systems.

Offenders: Dragon Quest 4 NES, Persona 3 (or so I'm told)

Ok, so having an occasional PC with forced AI works as a quirk, if a negative one, for that character, so characters like Umaro or Lucia need not apply, especially if the character is not forced or a temp (now, you could argue Lucia overstays her welcome, but that's a different story!).  Likewise, in games like FF13 or just about any ARPG with allies, its sort of a necessary evil, though ideally they should give you some form of micromanaging option (like the SoM/SD3 Ring Menu on AI Partners for example), or mid-battle character swapping (...yet again, FF13's poor design decision that FF13-2 fixed kicks in here)...

But in a standard turn based game, where there's nothing but menus?  There's no excuse.  I don't care how good the AI is, there should always be some way to control your characters.  In Dragon Quest 4, you control all the characters you're using...only for the 2nd half to force them on AI unless you use Game Genie (which is not a good enough rebutle); from my understanding, Persona 3 is the same except lacks the "control the characters beforehand" feature.  Both games also got remakes/rereleases which DO let you manually control the PCs.

There's no reason to force AI on your allied units in pure turn based systems; it detracts from strategy, and even if the AI is good, its rarely going to know exactly what you want to do at a given moment.


As a branch off from the above, No/Limited Control over targeting is similarly dumb.  FF:4HoL is the obvious offender here, being both a modern game AND complete lack of targetting control; you're at the AI's mercy.

So yes, I can tell my White Mage to cast a Healing spell, that's fine...wait, she cast it on the WRONG LOW HP PC, thereby screwing me over?  No, fuck you game.  That's not strategy, that's just dumb uncontrollable bullshit that has no excuse in a modern game (...or an old game; when Final Fantasy 1 has it, you have no excuse)

[Fenrir]

How could I forget:

Level scaling!

Worst offender: Oblivion

The point of level scaling is to always make the game challenging, never too easy or too hard. The problem is that it makes all the challenge feel artificial, and cheapens the sense of progression.

Worse, you might get punished for levelling non combat related skills, or for levelling at all. In Oblivion, getting a level in lockpicking might give every bandit super-extra-mithril armor. In FF8, grinding at the beginning supposedly makes the game harder, while doing a LLG makes it easier (I don't actually know the FF8 mechanics well. Come on.)
Some SaGa games have random enemies scale but not bosses. This means you can play an entire dungeon then get steamrolled by the boss. (This happened a few times to me in Romancing SaGa 3)

I don't think I've seen a game really use it well. It can be used well in small doses (it's kind of a necessery evil in strategy games with random battles like FFT).

[Grefter]

Most of Bioware's new stuff does it to a degree actually, all the Mass Effect games enemies scale to be about your level in power (in my opinion they scale slower than player power though).  Baldur's Gate 2 (and I believe 1?) does it to a degree as well, it does it in the small doses way though in that it is a few small changes just to the number or type of enemies spawn and it plateaus fairly quickly for most places (I think level 14 or so gets you all but the most obscure spawns).

Not sure how well you consider that to work, but in my opinion it does.  The trick is to make it more loose and to still have some degree of fixed encounters rather than to do it in strict level bands like Bethesda stuff tends to do or as Mass Effect does it have player power be the thing with more flex to it rather than the enemies (Primarily the point that I think causes player power to outpace the enemy scaling with your level is gear, especially so in ME2 and 3 since player gear drops are largely tied to their level in ME1, but that is where shops come into play in ME1). 

It is really just a single tool to that end and using it is your singular patch to slap on things and go JOB DONE is sloppy and doesn't work so well.  Especially in games with non-combat skills like you noted.  The answer to that in Oblivion is that gear strength counts for so much over player strength, so killing the bandit with that awesome breastplate (probably by standing on a rock and shooting them with a pea shooter) will do more to bring you up to speed than grinding out combat skills would.  Of course Oblivion piles the fact that most of the enemies you are likely to fight in the core story will only drop weapons (various Daedra) or enemies you fun into wandering around will just be animals that drop meat.  So instead to gear up the most efficient thing to do is farming specific quick travel points to beat up nameless meaningless bandits.

The reasons it is so egregious in Oblivion goes beyond the terribleness of the level scaling for all that it is an absolutely terrible implementation of it (Remember 10/10 Game of the Year guys).

[Meeplelard]

I'm gonna have to say that conceptually, level scaling isn't really a bad idea, just at the same time, it needs to be executed properly.  I look at level scaling and in some cases I can say "yeah, I can see why they did this."  Whether it works or not is a different argument.

FLIPSIDE, FF8 is a fine case of how not to do it if you ask me.  The way FF8 handles it, it comes off as laziness so they can have one enemy act as 3 in terms of Spells, Steals and Drops; make one set of stats that uses Level as some sort of adjustment factor, then 3 different tables for all 3 sections, and now one enemy can act as three.  I guess it saves space, maybe, but that's really the only reason I can think of why they did that.

The problem with FF8 isn't just "enemies get stronger"; its also that FF8 levels are so ridiculously pointless on the PC end.  I don't think level factors into damage algorithms at all like in FF6/7, and your base stat growth rates are really damned low if you aren't using Bonus'.  How strong your PCs are is literally hinged on "How are your junctions?"  The way FF8's leveling works makes it that leveling really IS a bad thing unless you are getting enemy levels up for specific loot/spells/etc.  It doesn't compliment the game at all, and from where I'm sitting, strikes me that FF8 would have benefited more from just ditching levels entirely, and instead just go "You level up through equipping better junctions", and just have standard "enemies get stronger as you progress through the game."

Of course, FF8 is easy enough that the "Level up too much = you die" factor doesn't kick in TOO much if you discover ONE of the many "kill this game for free" methods...most will at least stumble upon either Summoning GFs or Limit spams. 


Oh, to branch from that?  FF8 does have GFs leveling up and there's no consequences.  If they wanted to keep levels for that, i'd be fine, since it'd be a way to make GFs grow independent from the Magic stat; I believe FF10 had a system kind of like that for Aeons, where the Aeon stats were either based upon Yuna's stats, or some value dependent on how many fights you fought, and chose whatever value was higher?

[Fenrir]

I don't know, I haven't really seen a game that wouldn't have been better without it. (Though I've seen games where it's there and has no large impact)

I thought ME2/3 were exceptions before, but not anymore. Level scaling isn't really noticeable here because
- They're action games with guns striking multiple times and no damage numbers... Noticing damage differences is extremely hard, and skill matters more than stats.
- Levels don't matter too much; so level scaling doesn't matter too much either.
Dig a little and you'll find that at the beginning of ME3, killing an enemy takes 8 shots with a level 1 blank Shepard, and 10 shots with an imported from ME2 higher level Shepard. That's stupid.

In ME2, you can do any sidequest in any order and can always expect roughly the same difficulty. (All the challenge is in the main missions / dlc anyway) Just pick any place and go.
In the FF6 world of ruin, you can still tackle sidequests in any order, and they all have varying challenges. You pretty much immediately have access to the ominous magic tower but can't reach the top and its secrets until much later (unless you're good). This aspect was a lot more gratifying in FF6 IMO (for all that the world of ruin had other issues)


The way I see it, there are two kinds of level scaling, assuming the enemy gets X amount of power every level:
- The player team gets less than X amount of power. (But he could get some skills or equipment to compensate) This is bad because the player could get in a worse situation just by levelling up, if he doesn't min/max.
- The player team gets Y power, which is more than X amount of power. Then remove level scaling, make every level give the team Y-X power and you get the same result.

I don't really see doing it in small doses accomplishing much of anything. What's the point of having a slightly underleveled guy have the exact same experience than a slightly overleveled guy?

(By the way I said FFT and TO pretty much needed level scaling but scratch that. Much better things could have been done honestly, most of those random battles are terrible/needless paddling)

[hinode]

I don't think Saga Frontier could've worked without level scaling. You have different character stories pushing you towards doing the various dungeons/sidequests in different orders, either that or there's just no guidance at all and you're 100% on your own (sup Lute). Assigning fixed levels to every dungeon would've forced any player not willing to spend hours reading up on a faq/strategy guide to basically keep trying random dungeons until they find one suitable for their current stats so as to not die horribly on the first random encounter, which needless to say would've been extremely lame.

I'd also cite the TO remake as a game that clearly benefits from level-scaling, at least in the postgame. For the main storyline it doesn't really come up since most battles have a fixed level pre-world, but they unlock the first time you use WORLD and make the game more interesting. You can go and play the story routes you didn't take originally and recruit the story PCs you didn't get initially while keeping all of your existing PCs and items and fight enemies that'll match your levels so they still put up roughly the same level of fight and keep giving good experience. Bear in mind that max level is 50 in TOr even though you'll probably finish the main story somewhere between L20-L25, so there's plenty of characte progression left in the postgame.

Alternatively, you can switch Denam over to an unused class and drop your existing team for all the story PCs who join with unique classes sitting at L1 and level them up while redoing the game from beginning, getting a chance to use all those fancy lategame classes without needing to grind in random battles until they're caught up with your initial crew.

[Grefter]

Ignoring the plot disconnect (which I think is where your issue is there for varying level Shep?), gameplay wise?  I don't mind it being easier for the guy who hasn't necessarily played ME2.  Also an imported Shep has way more breadth of choice for how to handle the enemies, so even with it taking more shots you will still probably kill them quicker because you will be using powers that hit harder and can be used far more often.

For what it is worth in ME2 and 3 the damage scale has a very slow incline.  If they threw those same mobs at you at the end game you wouldn't be 1 shotting them with that basic pistol anyway (unless you like maxed your passive stuff and headshot them).  The level scaling is really there to stop the game turn into mowing down dudes by the hundred (Because that would be the next thing to do with scaling is if you aren't scaling the opponents to scale the number of opponents).

I will leave you with two thoughts I guess.  First is that table top RPGs do the exact same thing (anything from templates to Challenge Rating), so it is fairly widely utilized (albeit modern) RPG thing.  Secondly if you strip out the scaling on the player side you do gut a lot of that player progression thing that honestly a lot of people do play their RPGs for.  Filling up those bars is actually an effective design choice regardless of what we think of it.