hehe, After my 2nd play of fallout 2 whenever I played it again, I would invest heaviliy in outdoors skill, and perform an "accelerated start" which consisted of going directly to get the helicopter plans and advanced power armor. It was difficult but not impossible to survie the trip but well worth it, considering the major boost it provided.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

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Original post by RuneLancer
I''ve just realized something. This thread raises a very good point.

RPGs are too hard and too long!

Let''s face it, nobody wants to play a game where you have to spend 20-30 hours to get to the end of and, GASP!, risk missing stuff if you''re not careful (which is obviously a flaw in the game; the player should be able to get everything in one sitting and should have unlimited chances at getting what they''ve missed).

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Back then RPG games are the longest game. It usually required about 10 hours of gameplay while other games could be beaten for 2-3 hours. That''s why I like RPG because there is so much content in the game, rather than jump-and-kill Mario-style games.

Now, they extend RPG to 70 hours, and the 2-3 hours action games now take 10 hours to beat it. If this continues, RPGs in the future will have 140 hours of gameplay, and an FPS will have 70 hours of gameplay, and a Tetris will have 10 hours. By then, nobody will ever beat a game.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
I don''t see any reason why the story would be compromised by making certain items inaccessible after a certain amount of time or sequence of events. I hold that any good RPG will have a degree of globe-trotting in it, and if you can walk the earth, then you should be able to find treasure there.

The problem with this system, of course, is that you wind up with a situation like the one in Fallout. I can start up a game of Fallout, and within about two months of game-time I can have Power Armor, a Turbo Plasma Rifle, and a .223 pistol. That''s because I know where these things are, and who gives them to me.

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I never play Fallout, but to have a design where players can grab powerful items in early game is bad. Zelda for NES kind of have the same thing, you can basically enter any dungeon and grab the item as long as you can stay alive. But they direct you to where you should go next in OoT, and some dungeons are inaccessible without items that you acquire in the previous dungeons. So you must go in that order.

RPGs are getting longer? Or am I flowing backwards through time?

I remember when I actually had stuff to do over the summer: beat an RPG. Now, I consider it a weekend project... I remember people bragging about finishing FF8 with 6 hours on their clock (more or less, the record last time I checked) and about 2 months of loading, reloading, failing fights because of low stats, and more reloading. To the point where "6 hours" is longer than the more reasonable "25 hours" the average first-time player will take. Or "50 hours" the first time you try to find everything.

Now? I got through FF9 last weekend. Got most of the stuff in the game, too, and my clock reads "23:46". That''s pretty depressing...

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
I don''t see any reason why the story would be compromised by making certain items inaccessible after a certain amount of time or sequence of events. I hold that any good RPG will have a degree of globe-trotting in it, and if you can walk the earth, then you should be able to find treasure there.

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I was saying the story may be compromised by requiring that you can always get the PUSD by the end of the game. That is, it''s never inaccessible no matter what you did.

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The problem with this system, of course, is that you wind up with a situation like the one in Fallout. I can start up a game of Fallout, and within about two months of game-time I can have Power Armor, a Turbo Plasma Rifle, and a .223 pistol. That''s because I know where these things are, and who gives them to me.

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That''s more a problem of how events are set up in that game. I''ve never tried the accelerated start, but really, the Brotherhood shouldn''t be offering you the Navarro quest yet, and you''ve really no other business at Navarro (your tribe isn''t even captured yet).

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alnite
[ ...games were shorter... ]

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Yeah, those old games were fun even though you had to go through the same stages every time. They were fun even though you couldn''t save, and they had to be shorter because you couldn''t save. Originally, it seemed "RPG" meant "You can save". And FF1 was loads of fun even though it was shorter and had only a few "secrets" (Xcaliber, Nuke/Fade, Masamune). I don''t know much about the industry, but could it be possible to make shorter games, sell for less, but make more of them?

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Original post by tieTYT
Alright, here''s yet another thing that bugs me about modern RPGs. They seem to always have at least one part where something is hidden, and that something is the best of it''s type (the best sword, the best armor) and to get it you have to do some secret thing that you would never think to do and if you don''t do it at a specific time, you can never go back and do it again. I hate this.

Let''s not fool ourselves, RPGs like FF don''t have good replay value. If you''re playing for 30 hours and you realize that not only did you miss the coolest thing in the game, but you''ll have to start over again to get it, that is a bad design. All this does is encourage someone to use a strategy guide from start to finish in fear of missing something.

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I think they do it that way to keep the people who publish the strategy guide books (like Brady Games)in business.

<I forgot my user/login =oP>

PRH99 is thinking exactly what I''m thinking. It''s mainly to sell guides. A good system to me is something that you can backtrack for the most part. Final Fantasy III is a good example. Save that of not getting Shadow for the World of Ruin, pretty much all of the significant secrets that you miss in the start show up in the second world, but they provide little benifit anymore. You''re somewhat guided along by the difficulty of the creatures in all the areas. Mind you, the latter half of the game isn''t as story driven after you get the airship. Losing out on good treasures because you didn''t happen to notice that the wall was actually an illusion, or you just happen to be digging somewhere is BS. Ultima IV shows the best example of a good clue system that I could find. Everything you find in the game, you have to search a tile, but somewhere in the game world there''s a clue as to where it is.

As for the guy talking about super weapons, I agree with ya there. Final Fantasy X got pretty easy after getting a few of those. The first boss battle was better than the series of last boss battles. At least the first boss took more than one hit =oP.

FFX-2 has the New Game Plus feature - meaning that missing one item doesn''t mean you have to start completely from scratch (though you do still have to do essential plot, relevant side-quests and enough levelling). Certainly, from my point of view, the frustrating thing about trying for perfection in FFs wasn''t having to replay the plot to get something I''d missed, but having to completely trash 30-50 hours of play (at least) because I didn''t pick the one indistinguishable bit of wall to try interacting with...

Hidden items etc should be signposted somehow, and, where possible, you should never be given the choice between abandoning 30+ hours of side-quests and levelling up but getting the PUSD and abandoning the PUSD but keeping all the other loot and capabilities you gained throughout.

Zelda: Ocarina''s gold spiders are reasonable - they signal their presence if you get close (you can hear them...) and the map tells you where there are still some left. (plus the world is small enough that you can feasibly go everywhere in a relatively short time) - some of the hidden holes need a rumble pack to find (or a guide, or lots of patience and some luck) but still signal their presence if you do have one (and the batteries still work). The PUSD equivalent (biggoron''s sword) requires an item-trading quest, but, once you find the first item, you always know where to go to trade it...

Oh, and a historical note - Civilisation and XCOM: UFO both came out around the same time as DOOM, and UFO took around 80 hours to complete; Civilisation I never bothered to clock, but I was having single turns take around an hour in the late game...

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Original post by Way Walker
I was saying the story may be compromised by requiring that you can always get the PUSD by the end of the game. That is, it''s never inaccessible no matter what you did.

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If getting the PUSD ruins the game, then why not leave it out entirely? And if you can get it at one point in the game, then anyone with a FAQ will get it anyway. Why not make it possible to beat the game without it, and then run around tying up the loose ends afterward? It''s always a fun challenge to beat a game with less than optimal equipment, but once you''ve done it, it would be a shame to be unable to take the PUSD for a spin without going all the way back through the game.

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Original post by Way Walker
Doesn''t this cheapen the story telling nature of RPG''s?

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Why would it? The story doesn''t usually revolve around the secrets of the game. If they did, it wouldn''t be a secret.

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I wasn''t talking about the story of how Bob is going to save the world, I''m talking about the story of how Sir Frank''s sword got its power and why Bob would want to look for such an old POS. Now, if the game supposedly has a strong story (not that I''ve seen many lately) making sure Sir Frank''s sword is still available may require weakening the plot. In a story based game (as RPG''s typically are) this is a serious problem.

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I''ve never played an RPG where the strongest weapon had a story to it. In FFX, is there a story for why you have to dodge 100 lightning bolts in order to get the strongest weapon? Or why you need to win 100 games of blitzball or whatever? I''ve never really heard of "item development". I highly doubt it would affect the story greatly to make the strongest weapons available at any time.