The RPG Essentials Survey

[Depression Moon]

Essential
RNG Mechanics #1 here. I think RPGs are classified because they have a heavy emphasis on stat progression.
NPCs
Character NPCs- I find that these two are in every RPG ever, but now I'm questioning if anyone other than the two people in the town in Dragon's Crown are NPCs because the other characters are just regulated to cutscenes.
Functional Towns - I think these can be found in just about all RPGs as well, but I did recall FFVIII allowing you to call a shop anywhere though that was late in the game and I could imagine a game having that through its entirety, but I feel that it would lessen the experience some. Merchants would be an acceptable replacement like in RE4.

These are the three I think absolutely make an RPG. There have been debates if the Legend of Zelda series is one and I can't agree that it is one to the fullest because it doesn't have all three of these. The one it's missing from this is RNG mechanics.
I wanted to put quests in here because I think an RPG should have something for you to do outside of the main game, but all the types of quests listed are not necessarily the ones that have to or should be in.

Non-Essential

Resource Management 8
Turned Based Combat 7
Action Combat 5
Story Towns 5
Fetch Quests 3
Hunt Quests 6
Dungeon Quests 9
Guild Quests 5
Equipment based Customization 7
Stat-based customization 6
Skill customization 7


Irrelevant

Random Encounters 5
Seamless Encounters 8
On-Screen Encounters 8
Solo Party 5
A.I. Party 5
Multiplayer Party 5
Full Party 10
Mini Games 7
Traversable World Maps 9
Gameboard Map 5
Seamless Map 9
Menu-Based Map 5
Job Class System 8
Character Classes 7
Item crafting 5
World-driven plots 2
Story-driven plots 9
Character-driven plots 9
Choice System 7
Puzzle Dungeons 5
Puzzles in Dungeons 7
Atmospheric Dungeons 7