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.
Now 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?
Xbox 360‘s been seeing success in Europe, but nothing compares to the success they’ve seen since the recent price cuts. Sales for the 360 are up 214% which is pushing them past the two-to-one sales ratio against the more expensive PlayStation 3.
@Nintendo announces XL version of Nintendo 3DS: No surprises there. It’s kind of a given that they make new versions of their handhelds after it has been proven very profitable for them.
@New users must now pass “review process” to unlock full Diablo III: All this makes me wonder is, how much higher would the number of sales be if there hadn’t been all this stupid DRM on the game? Don’t know why they feel the need to punish their customers. It seems that only Valve knows that the way to being a loved company is by being loyal to its customers.
@Valve and Cartoon Network collaboration hints at Team Fortress 2 show: After I’ve seen what can be done with the “Meet” shorts, I can say that I’m interested to see what they come up with.
@QOTW: Nope, not really. Apart from making sure I have proper lighting and heating/cooling, I don’t do anything special.
Jonah, no rush on Mission Impossible. I can come up with other weird NES games 🙂
@Nintendo announces XL version of Nintendo 3DS
I’m curious if this has to do with the pixel size as well. When the console was announced (display size and resolution) I crunched some numbers to find out the view distance to fully use that resolution. It came up as about 8 inches. That’s too close.
A bigger screen would also mean a bigger view distance.
@Dev claims Microsoft killed XBLA version of Stranger’s Wrath
This is so odd. What’s it to MSFT if the game gets distributed or not on XBLA? Normally a publisher would not care that much as long as some quality standards are met.
I mean it’s not like they’re worried about shelf space, we’re talking about a digital distribution channel.
@New users must now pass “review process” to unlock full Diablo III
*clears throat* Ahem!
Bwa ha ha ha ha 😀 😀 😀
And I thought that online DRM was the worst thing that could happen to a single player game. Boy, was I wrong!
And if this doesn’t ramp up piracy, then I don’t know what will.
@Valve and Cartoon Network collaboration hints at Team Fortress 2 show
Dunno … they’ll have to move outside of the game in order to make it happen.
We’ll see.
@steel battalion poor reviews:
well to be fair the problem doesn’t seem to be its complexity its that as per usual with kinect it just doesn’t interpret your commands correctly 75% of the time.
and hey ubisoft press conference had more than watchdogs ….rayman legends looks amazing. =p
What is this place? Why am I writing this? Who are you people? Must…save…Skyrim. VAMPIRES ARE EVERYWHERE!!! THE DAWNGUA OK I am back in the real world now.
@3DS XL
Enjoy not having any games to play in greater resolution. Good point made by Paul: it’s not the size that matter’s. It’s the way you use it.I bought a DSi because it was a massive improvement over the original DS in terms of hardware and software. 3DS XL is just a bigger brick with bigger screens. A premium brick is still a brick.
@Oddworld: Strangers Wraith
I loved the game. It was a very interesting twist on a first person shooter. An adventure FPS with an interesting story and fun gameplay. As far as I remember, EA killed it by not advertising it. When it came out there was not a single mention of the game in media. And you had FIFA 2006 adverts posted on every bus, wall and toilet roll in London. Thanks a lot, EA.
@Diablo 3:
Que Blizzard: “No you can’t play the game offline. No, you can’t play it online either. Just give us your money, sit down and shutup. We made the game. We decide who deserves to play it and you clearly don’t unless we perform a full criminal record check and ensure that your credit card is American Express Mega Gold Platinum X”
To follow up a point made last week, just out of quriosity, if you have an opportunity to customize your game(i.e. create a character or change his name) do you personalize them and give them your name (or nickname) and your likeness? Or do you leave default settings? I tend to try and represent myself as much as I can in an MMO or Skyrim, but usually leave default settings in games where they are definitive of the series. All of my Zelda characters are called Link and my main Mass Effect character is the front cover Shepherd as he is on every media advert on the planet.