Great thoughts! I'm soldiering through the back-half of Megami Tensei II right now so I'm stewing a lot on RPG difficulty and what "levels" I personally like engaging with these games on. Thanks for putting this all together and laying it out so clearly.
really good read!! this is really interesting to me because i HATE leveling. in fact, i wrote my own article about it (https://nongmotrash.net/writing/game-design/1/), and i was kinda thrown for a loop reading the first few paragraphs which mention many of the exact same points, just with the opposite conclusion. i think this just reveals a lot about what type of player i am.... i lie on the absolute far left on the graph, and i do not even want the possibility of accidentally sliding towards the right and muddying the waters.
Thanks for the comment! Your article is thoughtful and insightful as well. Most of your points hit home for me personally, as a player, and a decade ago I probably would have wholeheartedly agreed with what you wrote. Because I recognize that grinding my way out of problems isn't fulfilling to me as a player either, I adjust my playstyle to eliminate that option. I tend to play RPGs with a "No Running, No Grinding" playstyle for this reason. This largely solves the problems with vertical scaling for me, as a player. I don't care if that makes the game easy or hard as long as I feel like I'm optimizing within constraints based on my own skill level.
But after listening to how others think about RPGs, I feel that this way of thinking is the exception and not the norm. Many people just like the dopamine hit of getting better stuff and seeing the numbers go up. Others want a certain level of challenge, but eventually get frustrated with trying to solve a problem and just want to opt out. I think these are valid ways to experience an RPG and I don't expect everybody to enjoy the game less when grinding. For this reason, I see absolute horizontal scaling as one great direction to take an RPG and not the ideal that RPGs should move towards in general. I can get behind restricting a game to any subsection of the grid as long as you are doing it with intent and you know what kind of game you want to make.
That being said, I also think many people haven't thought about what they enjoy as much as we have and don't realize that they would get more satisfaction out of solving problems with strategy. For that reason (and others), I think the left side of the grid is a wildly unexplored design space. I'd love to see more games in that space, including yours if you end up completing it. Or at least, as long as it doesn't end up taking the form of an Omori mod; I'm too much of a pansy to play horror games. :P
If I were to design an RPG (assuming I don't go for pure horizontal scaling), I'd think of the scaling less as directly vertical or horizontal and more of a 2D inverted pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid (the start of the game), the player would have few options. As they progress, they'd get some options that obsolete earlier options in terms of raw stats, but each time they do, the array of available options would expand as well. Each layer of the pyramid wouldn't *completely* obsolete the previous layers, so stuff from previous layers would occasionally pop back up when it hits the right niche. The emphasis on horizontal scaling would increase as the game goes on while still giving the player some direct upgrades for those dopamine hits. This likely wouldn't work for all types of progression though.
that "inverted pyramid" idea is honestly really smart, i could totally see that working wonderfully as kinda the best of both worlds. i swear that one of these days i will ACTUALLY make an rpg to put these ideas to the test......... just give me a few more years, heheh.
Love the post! The diagram of the 9 different slots of difficulty is a really good way to picture it.
Hope this isn't weird but I enjoyed both of your posts so much that I made my own response to it on my blog, weighing my thoughts on the topic: https://blueberrylemonade.pika.page/posts/do-rpgs-benefit-from-grinding
I think overall I still view leveling as somewhat of a crutch for the game designer, and I'd love to see games experiment more with reducing the reliance on leveling.
Thanks Kyle! :) I've been a bit busy this week, so I delayed reading or responding until I could give your article the attention it deserves.
Love the post! I like the journey from your original gut reaction about grinding to understanding what it offers, but still wanting to see more games experiment with grindless gameplay. It mirrors my own journey in a lot of ways. While I'd label grinding less as a "crutch" and more as a "tool" for the game designer, it's a tool that RPG designers have applied to darn near every RPG out there. "When all you have is a hammer" and all that.
Have you played a lot of RPGs that force the player to grind? In my experience, they've been few and far between (especially after, say, the NES era), but maybe I just haven't played the big-name series that expect it from the player. I find that if a modern designer wants to prevent me wondering "whether I’m wasting my time trying the battle again when I’d be better off wasting my time running in circles in Scorpion Desert", they typically do it by building up a certain level of trust that trying the battle multiple times *won't* be a waste of time. One can enforce that trust by removing grinding altogether, but the subtle methods work too. In games where I trust the designer, I'm willing to spend a while working towards a truly satisfying solution even if I could just grind to the point where victory is mathematically assured.
Your Tower of Modula game looks interesting. I'll definitely try it out once I get a bit more time. :) I'll reply by your contact e-mail as well in case you aren't subscribed to comments here.
Firstly, I'll admit that my post is a little clumsily worded. I kind of conflate "grinding", "having random encounters", "having a level system", and "having a level system that gives automatic stat upgrades" all together into one big topic, even though games all handle those things differently.
As someone who's a slightly more casual player, I don't think I'm the best person to ask for which games "require" grinding, but the two games that jump to my mind where I felt like my progress was impeded are Octopath Traveler 2, Shin Megami Tensei V, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. These are games where I feel like some amount of "grinding", or accepting the fact that you need to be a higher level, is expected.
For Octopath I think the frustration is less the amount of grinding and more the fact that it relies on random encounters. Octopath tries to solve the issue using something similar to the Metal Slimes in DQ, rare enemies called Caits and Octopuffs that will give you huge rewards when killed. It's not a solution I'm a big fan of, because it still requires you running around to a trigger a bunch of random encounters in the hopes that it'll spawn but you're looking for. It's a bit too luck-based, which eats up your time. In Octopath's defense, they reward you for bonuses for beating encounters without taking damage or within 1 turn.
Like you said, I think modern designers are better about this pretty much across the board than the NES/SNES era.
As I mentioned in the post, there's something comforting to me about roguelite games like Slay the Spire where I don't have to worry about any type of "grinding" at all, I can more fully blame my losses on my strategy. (the trade-off is that a player might blame their loss on bad luck)
I agree that the more I trust the game, the more I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt or feel that I should switch up my strategy. That's also probably a good argument for why games should let you re-spec your stats or your skill tree, so that you don't feel like you're completely trapped with 1 party build.
Great thoughts! I'm soldiering through the back-half of Megami Tensei II right now so I'm stewing a lot on RPG difficulty and what "levels" I personally like engaging with these games on. Thanks for putting this all together and laying it out so clearly.
ReplyDeleteThanks! :) Funnily enough, I spent two days on this comment box and two hours on the post itself, so I'm glad that you left a comment. :P
DeleteNever played Shin Megami Tensei before, but given its fame I'm sure I'll try it out eventually.
really good read!!
ReplyDeletethis is really interesting to me because i HATE leveling. in fact, i wrote my own article about it (https://nongmotrash.net/writing/game-design/1/), and i was kinda thrown for a loop reading the first few paragraphs which mention many of the exact same points, just with the opposite conclusion.
i think this just reveals a lot about what type of player i am.... i lie on the absolute far left on the graph, and i do not even want the possibility of accidentally sliding towards the right and muddying the waters.
Thanks for the comment! Your article is thoughtful and insightful as well. Most of your points hit home for me personally, as a player, and a decade ago I probably would have wholeheartedly agreed with what you wrote. Because I recognize that grinding my way out of problems isn't fulfilling to me as a player either, I adjust my playstyle to eliminate that option. I tend to play RPGs with a "No Running, No Grinding" playstyle for this reason. This largely solves the problems with vertical scaling for me, as a player. I don't care if that makes the game easy or hard as long as I feel like I'm optimizing within constraints based on my own skill level.
DeleteBut after listening to how others think about RPGs, I feel that this way of thinking is the exception and not the norm. Many people just like the dopamine hit of getting better stuff and seeing the numbers go up. Others want a certain level of challenge, but eventually get frustrated with trying to solve a problem and just want to opt out. I think these are valid ways to experience an RPG and I don't expect everybody to enjoy the game less when grinding. For this reason, I see absolute horizontal scaling as one great direction to take an RPG and not the ideal that RPGs should move towards in general. I can get behind restricting a game to any subsection of the grid as long as you are doing it with intent and you know what kind of game you want to make.
That being said, I also think many people haven't thought about what they enjoy as much as we have and don't realize that they would get more satisfaction out of solving problems with strategy. For that reason (and others), I think the left side of the grid is a wildly unexplored design space. I'd love to see more games in that space, including yours if you end up completing it. Or at least, as long as it doesn't end up taking the form of an Omori mod; I'm too much of a pansy to play horror games. :P
If I were to design an RPG (assuming I don't go for pure horizontal scaling), I'd think of the scaling less as directly vertical or horizontal and more of a 2D inverted pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid (the start of the game), the player would have few options. As they progress, they'd get some options that obsolete earlier options in terms of raw stats, but each time they do, the array of available options would expand as well. Each layer of the pyramid wouldn't *completely* obsolete the previous layers, so stuff from previous layers would occasionally pop back up when it hits the right niche. The emphasis on horizontal scaling would increase as the game goes on while still giving the player some direct upgrades for those dopamine hits. This likely wouldn't work for all types of progression though.
that "inverted pyramid" idea is honestly really smart, i could totally see that working wonderfully as kinda the best of both worlds.
Deletei swear that one of these days i will ACTUALLY make an rpg to put these ideas to the test......... just give me a few more years, heheh.
Love the post! The diagram of the 9 different slots of difficulty is a really good way to picture it.
DeleteHope this isn't weird but I enjoyed both of your posts so much that I made my own response to it on my blog, weighing my thoughts on the topic: https://blueberrylemonade.pika.page/posts/do-rpgs-benefit-from-grinding
I think overall I still view leveling as somewhat of a crutch for the game designer, and I'd love to see games experiment more with reducing the reliance on leveling.
Thanks Kyle! :) I've been a bit busy this week, so I delayed reading or responding until I could give your article the attention it deserves.
DeleteLove the post! I like the journey from your original gut reaction about grinding to understanding what it offers, but still wanting to see more games experiment with grindless gameplay. It mirrors my own journey in a lot of ways. While I'd label grinding less as a "crutch" and more as a "tool" for the game designer, it's a tool that RPG designers have applied to darn near every RPG out there. "When all you have is a hammer" and all that.
Have you played a lot of RPGs that force the player to grind? In my experience, they've been few and far between (especially after, say, the NES era), but maybe I just haven't played the big-name series that expect it from the player. I find that if a modern designer wants to prevent me wondering "whether I’m wasting my time trying the battle again when I’d be better off wasting my time running in circles in Scorpion Desert", they typically do it by building up a certain level of trust that trying the battle multiple times *won't* be a waste of time. One can enforce that trust by removing grinding altogether, but the subtle methods work too. In games where I trust the designer, I'm willing to spend a while working towards a truly satisfying solution even if I could just grind to the point where victory is mathematically assured.
Your Tower of Modula game looks interesting. I'll definitely try it out once I get a bit more time. :) I'll reply by your contact e-mail as well in case you aren't subscribed to comments here.
Thanks for checking it out!
DeleteFirstly, I'll admit that my post is a little clumsily worded. I kind of conflate "grinding", "having random encounters", "having a level system", and "having a level system that gives automatic stat upgrades" all together into one big topic, even though games all handle those things differently.
As someone who's a slightly more casual player, I don't think I'm the best person to ask for which games "require" grinding, but the two games that jump to my mind where I felt like my progress was impeded are Octopath Traveler 2, Shin Megami Tensei V, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. These are games where I feel like some amount of "grinding", or accepting the fact that you need to be a higher level, is expected.
For Octopath I think the frustration is less the amount of grinding and more the fact that it relies on random encounters. Octopath tries to solve the issue using something similar to the Metal Slimes in DQ, rare enemies called Caits and Octopuffs that will give you huge rewards when killed. It's not a solution I'm a big fan of, because it still requires you running around to a trigger a bunch of random encounters in the hopes that it'll spawn but you're looking for. It's a bit too luck-based, which eats up your time. In Octopath's defense, they reward you for bonuses for beating encounters without taking damage or within 1 turn.
Like you said, I think modern designers are better about this pretty much across the board than the NES/SNES era.
As I mentioned in the post, there's something comforting to me about roguelite games like Slay the Spire where I don't have to worry about any type of "grinding" at all, I can more fully blame my losses on my strategy. (the trade-off is that a player might blame their loss on bad luck)
I agree that the more I trust the game, the more I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt or feel that I should switch up my strategy. That's also probably a good argument for why games should let you re-spec your stats or your skill tree, so that you don't feel like you're completely trapped with 1 party build.
Thanks for the kind words!