Seven Deadly Sins of RPGs

[Formalhaut]

Has 'fetch quests' been done yet? If not, that should be up there. I actually quite liked Lightning Returns, but the sheer number of fetch quests was tiring...

[Loony BoB]

These aren't dealbreakers for me AT ALL and I can think of exceptions to a lot of them, but these are the ones that irk me. Possibly not the worst seven things ever but seven that popped into my head right now, and that's good enough, right?

- Kiddy Heroes. I'm talking 12 and under. A ten year old saving the world is not realistic. And even if they're 13-16, they still shouldn't be able to outmuscle a 25-30 year old.

- No traversable world map. I WANT MY TRAVERSABLE WORLD MAP. I'm not here to be told I can only travel upon a persistently uneventful, bland road that goes from one place directly to another. That's not realistic at all. This is an RPG, and I should have the ability to experience the travels and whatnot as well as the towns and dungeons.

- Only three characters. I hate it when there are less than six characters, really.

- Absolutely No Comedic Moments. I mean, come on. We're here to have fun!

- Time Travel. Unfortunately this is incredibly common in RPGs.

- Silent Protagonist. If everyone else can talk, I want my lead character to be able to talk, too.

- Fighting Sidequests. For all the defending I do for FFXIII, it still irks me that the one thing I could do aside from fight was ... oh, fight.

[Colonel Angus]

A lot of good ones. One I'd like to mention is "hidden things that would be impossible to find w/o an FAQ/game guide". I just mentioned the hidden boxes in SMRPG to Shion & realized that I wouldn't've known about them myself in the first place if it weren't for GamePro. Maybe you come across one accidentally? But really, who wants to jump all over the place just to find a random item.

[Formalhaut]

- Fighting Sidequests. For all the defending I do for FFXIII, it still irks me that the one thing I could do aside from fight was ... oh, fight.

This isn't so bad for me, personally, as long as there were other things as well to do. I mean, Final Fantasy XII's main sidequest was the hunting quests, and I really liked them.

[Skyblade]

- Fighting Sidequests. For all the defending I do for FFXIII, it still irks me that the one thing I could do aside from fight was ... oh, fight.

This isn't so bad for me, personally, as long as there were other things as well to do. I mean, Final Fantasy XII's main sidequest was the hunting quests, and I really liked them.

I liked the hunts that had story, puzzles (the white flan in the sewers), and things like that. The ones which were just "go here and kill" I found incredibly boring.

FFXIII made it so much worse, because the closest you got to any depth to the hunts was things like the Tonberry killing the Eternal Cie'th (which was admittedly awesome). A fifteen second cutscene and then just more random killing.

[Mercen-X]

A dearth of mini-games.

[blackmage_nuke]

Large roster with small parties. (eg Chrono Cross)

[VeloZer0]

Large roster with small parties. (eg Chrono Cross)

To take that further large rosters with battle mechanics that actively dissuade you from using certain characters together.

[Gzussaves]

1) Timed storylines (yep immediately going after Lightning returns) I like to run around for hours doing stupid stuff, grinding for no real reason.. exploring every corner that im not supposed to.. If im going to get a game over in 20 hours give or take because i want to run around.. sorry i just cant

2. Achievements that you can only figure out with a guide (kind of counts as two parts) a. You know what the achievement is but you have no clue whatsoever it is talking about or how to do it, or b. It is hidden and after completing the game it is still there

I cant think of much else right now that hasnt been covered

[Pumpkin]

I generally don't like timed storylines but I think Majora's Mask did this excellently

[metagloria]

- No traversable world map. I WANT MY TRAVERSABLE WORLD MAP.

- Only three characters. I hate it when there are less than six characters, really.

- Silent Protagonist. If everyone else can talk, I want my lead character to be able to talk, too.

*nods vigorously*

Time travel, though, I don't know. I don't see this as overdone, per se, but it can certainly be cheesy if used improperly. I'd like to see a game do it really in-depth, where you can sort of freely shift through time and change/recreate events (Chrono 3???)

[Mercen-X]

- Silent Protagonist.

How the hell can everyone else understand my character if he doesn't talk? Are they telepathic? And why do they call him a "silent protagonist" and yet they give him "lines of selectable dialogue"?

[Wolf Kanno]

Backloading the gameplay - This is probably my number one pet peeve out of the whole bunch, I can forgive and grumble less about the other six but this just bugs me to no end and it is easily the single worst gameplay design that Square ever introduced into the genre. Basically, this means that the bulk of the gameplay is available in the last part of the game instead of being evenly placed throughout the game, I'm talking about leaving all the sidequests to be opened up when its time to go to the final dungeon BS or in the case of games like FFX and XIII where the gameplay sucks until the game finally starts to open up all the elements of the gameplay or finally throws enemies worthy of the battle system at you in the 11th hour. No, I don't care how awesome you think your story is and no I don't want the gameplay to be dumbed down so the people who are only here for the plot can play the game without grinding. smurf you I spent money to play a game, not watch you fap about trying to be Steven Spielberg.

Loot Systems - I've seen these done well, and I've seen these done terribly but either way I just don't like them cause I never feel like the designers give it a proper balance to make me less aware of it. I like it conceptually but it I hate having to grind for loot/money and every loot system I've seen always has an unequal supply/demand element whereas typical money drops are generally more balanced depending on the game. The other annoying thing about loot systems is they allow designers to implement...

Fetch Quests - This one is a two parter! There is the obvious MMO Fetch Quest which are the lazy designers means of making a sidequest that balloons gameplay time without having any fun value to it. Listen MMO can get away with this cause they have the social element to make them less annoying but I don't have the time to sit around and collect 16 Rabbit tails for little Suzy's fur coat, Little Suzy is a selfish biotch and I hope PETA pours paint on it when its done. The other side of this is the old game design version of it of which the Mana series is a bit susceptible as are SRPGs where the plot demand me to stop what I'm doing in the plot to travel around the globe to collect four McGuffins so I can finally move onto the more interesting parts of the story. No this isn't compelling writing, this is padding plain and simple. Sometimes this can be done decently but it is also prone to being done poorly as well. Just say no...

Oversexualized fetish bait females - Most prevalent in JRPGs though Western games are just as bad, but JRPGs tend to take this to creepy fetishistic levels. Like having the jailbate characters like Rikku have a eerie cutscene of her changing out of an outfit which mainly focuses on her ass, or Vanille having an orgasm every time she uses her summon. Besides sexulaizing chicks that are partially illegal in most developed nations you also just get the chainmail bikinis or the jiggle physics (I'm looking at you Xenoblade) or the fact that some characters costumes look like they were pulled out of a lingerie store. It is starting to get to the point where I can't take your games seriously anymore or it gets distracting cause I'm seeing so much skin. When your female cast looks and dresses like the same archetypes seen on porn sites, maybe you need to take the team out and get them laid so they can comeback and actually create some characters that hold a semblance of reality.

Trivializing Shops/Equipment - Any game that has tried to remove shops as important elements, or heaven help us, remove the value of equipment in combat is always a broken game. I've yet to really see a game that removes or trivializes shops and equipment and not be a lousy game for some reason or other. Hell any game where your stats are 90% more important than your gear is always a warning sign to me that this game is going to fall into some really unbalanced territory. Besides I like customizing my character with gear and I actually enjoy the town/shop design of RPGs.

Linear Dungeon Design - Again, something I've rarely seen done well. I prefer a bit more substance in my dungeon design, hell I'll take bad platforming or obnoxious puzzles over a dungeon that is just a straight shot. This is largely cause I feel dungeons need more variety beyond graphics and because its rare for a battle system to be so awesome that it can be the sole form of gameplay entertainment.

Telling me how to feel - I hate games that try to egg me on to what I should be feeling. Don't build up something that I know will be bad and expect me to be bothered by it. This was a prime complaint against XIII where I never felt anything for Cocoon, the game is acting like we need to save it but I honestly kept asking why bother? As a writer and world designer, I should be introduced to an awesome world I come to care about, not be thrown into the fold and told that "hey go save the world cause its the right thing to do" I don't roll like that and I am not someone who is spurned on by emotion so trying to appeal to my sense of humanity with no effort of making me feel attached is going to work.

[Sephiroth]

- No Random Battles/Visible Enemies in too narrow areas.
I am a random battler. Visible enemies are okay, sometimes also in narrow areas but not so often as in Final Fantasy XIII. It would have been way better and seemed like you could run around more if you couldn't see the enemy blocking your path and this gives it a totally different feeling. Though I don't think of it as that bad now but it definitely is one of the things I would change.
- Too much action-based combat & less usable characters
I do like and have Action RPGs but I don't want it to be reduced to that heavily. Lightning Returns made it good but I want more characters too control. Or just have a normal battle system like in Atelier or the older Final Fantasys. It can be very well dynamic as in the new ones but I also want to control my team. And I meant really control in their turn with commands and not only Optima Shifts.
- Less Sidequests or just no variety, same goes for shops, NPCs and other options
This makes an RPG lively.
- No Overworld Map
I love that feature.

[The Space Pope]

None of these are dealbreakers, at least by themselves, but they can really drag down the overall enjoyment of a game.

- RPGs that claim to require ''strategy' when they really mean "use the newest spell/item/weapon once in this very specific situation, then forget it ever existed".

- The illusion of choice. I don't care how many times a dialogue tree branches; if it all leads back to the same choice, then what's the point?

- Enemies that level with you. I don't mind scaling enemies, helps keep things fresh, but don't have them level up right with me or even worse, ahead of me. In theory, it could work brilliantly, but I've never seen it done in practice.

- troutty battle music. If I have to listen to a song 632564 times, you better make it good.

- I don't like stories where everything has to be so black and white. But on the flip side, I dislike when a story is *too* ambiguous. There's got to be some sort of balance, you know?

- Slow loading times when loading menus and/or random encounters (like the PS ports of Chrono Trigger and FF4)

- Some games go overboard with the fanservice. The sexual aspect doesn't (usually) bother me, but fanservice is often used in place of a coherent plot and character development (FF10-2, anyone?).