Evolution of RPG’s – Gamers Don’t Want an End?

I remember a day when old RPG games had either a level cap or a definite ending. From Pool of Radiance to Secrets of the Silver Blades to Final Fantasy the game had a final boss or stage and often had some type of level cap. Today, gamers don’t want it to end, they’d rather have the option to wonder around aimlessly or completing minor quests in order to soak up every ounce of money they spent on the title.

linkNow even Bethesda is saying “we’ve learned our lesson” from the whiplash of ending their game title and capping levels. Gamers want to go back and re-try content they missed, they want to run side quests and talk to everyone in the world they want to grind themselves to über powerful levels and become a god in their fantasy world. Can you blame them?

You can’t really blame them for wanting to maximize the content, although it’s slightly more evolved than RPG’s of old. Perhaps it was World of Warcraft and other MMORPG’s that brought us to the stage in life where we all want to squeeze every last RPG dime out of the title. As a kid I wondered the world of Hyrule and covered every tile of graphical color, burned every bush, bombed every stone looking for all the content. However, even Zelda had an end with scrolling credits – you didn’t just land on a platform with your master sword and a dream.

Other titles have used level caps to limit you and draw you into the next release of the game. This was popular in the D&D world because the game is designed to target specific levels of difficulty. They may only allow you to gain level 10 because the enemies are no tougher than level 13, allowing the challenge to be good but not overwhelming. If they allow you to get to level 50 they’d have to design the game so all the enemies grow powerful along with you — that’s not always a desired result.

Final Fantasy is a popular franchise that typically allows you to grow infinitely powerful depending on how much time you want to spend repeat killing the same enemies. Gamers aren’t always into the grind, they just want to grind “enough” to make the challenges a little more do-able.

Today, however, with larger storage capacity, larger development teams and the desire to build more value into your gameplay experience titles have dozens of side quests and sub-plots that are totally optional. The result of so many sub-quests results in a player who is much more powerful at the end of those quests compared to a player who sticks to the narrow path of the main plot. So, games much grow dynamically challenging to keep the fun per dollar high.

Do you like your RPG’s to have a definite end and a high but capped level?

0 thoughts on “Evolution of RPG’s – Gamers Don’t Want an End?”

  1. For me it depends entirely on the nature of the RPG in question. IF it’s something “sandbox-ish” (which not every RPG is) then a level cap seems forced. But if the creators are not just testing/promoting a new toolset, and are looking to create a story arc in which the player can participate, then for a degree of satisfaction there should be a conclusion of some sort. It’s still usually in the hands of the player, in that they don’t HAVE to do the end portion (yet) if they don’t want to. I went months without doing the final 4-6 “main story arc” hours of Oblivion before finally finishing it, and even though that particular game lets you continue afterward, any leftover side quests (of which there were few since I’d done almost all of them already) were anti-climactic by comparison. I mean, after you’ve saved the known world from unspeakable evil, who cares if you find the slaughterfish scales for the guy down the street?

    And when it’s a hybrid adventure/RPG like the Knights Of The Old Republic series, or Jade Empire, it would make little or no sense to continue playing after the game’s ending, as your character has “fulfilled their mission/destiny/goal”, as it were.

    But then, I’m one of the heretics who thought there was too much that happened after The One Ring was destroyed, so what do I know? ‘:P

  2. For me it depends entirely on the nature of the RPG in question. IF it’s something “sandbox-ish” (which not every RPG is) then a level cap seems forced. But if the creators are not just testing/promoting a new toolset, and are looking to create a story arc in which the player can participate, then for a degree of satisfaction there should be a conclusion of some sort. It’s still usually in the hands of the player, in that they don’t HAVE to do the end portion (yet) if they don’t want to. I went months without doing the final 4-6 “main story arc” hours of Oblivion before finally finishing it, and even though that particular game lets you continue afterward, any leftover side quests (of which there were few since I’d done almost all of them already) were anti-climactic by comparison. I mean, after you’ve saved the known world from unspeakable evil, who cares if you find the slaughterfish scales for the guy down the street?

    And when it’s a hybrid adventure/RPG like the Knights Of The Old Republic series, or Jade Empire, it would make little or no sense to continue playing after the game’s ending, as your character has “fulfilled their mission/destiny/goal”, as it were.

    But then, I’m one of the heretics who thought there was too much that happened after The One Ring was destroyed, so what do I know? ‘:P

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360

Yoichi Wada of Square Enix has let the cat out of the bag. The cat is Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 and it will be simultaneously released with the PlayStation 3 version. This may be an end to an exclusive era for Sony as all their big brands jump to non-exclusion.

This is probably a result of gamers slow adoption of the PlayStation 3 hardware for various issues, one being cost. Personally I think Sony’s move to say “no price cut” in our near future is a grand mistake. It is well understood that they want profitability over quantity but you’re losing your exclusives to a broader audience.

Each generation of consoles brings new industry trends and, for now, exclusive games from third party developers is too risky when you look at overall cost to produce a block buster title like Final Fantasy XIII. Consider the sales of GTA IV, although they were in the millions, imagine how low it would have been if they only released on the PS3. They’d might have actually lost money on the game.

Square Enix can see the writing on the wall, that writing says “ship on as many mediums as possible.” Gamers are split between consoles with a huge segment on Wii and Xbox 360, if you can at least ship on one of those consoles along with the PS3 you’ll do better financially.

(Thanks, Kotaku)

Episode 229: Jonah Versus PaulEpisode 229: Jonah Versus Paul

It’s another brief episode as frictions rise between New Yorkers Jonah Falcon and Paul S. Nowak, while Washington State native Jordan Lund looks on. This week’s gaming flashback in the Nintendo 64’s The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, as well as the following news items:

  • GameStop pulls PC copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution off the shelves
  • Penny Arcade Adventures returns
  • Epic Mickey 2 leaked
  • Electronic Arts rewords controversial Origin EULA

This week’s Question of the Week: Are you interested in Epic Mickey 2?