Question about RPGs

[orochii]

He says majority of RPGs that he has seen are alike. With the turn by turn battles, the eras, the lifestyles of the characters, and even the plots.

There are a lot of RPGs just on the AAA market. Turn battles? There are Action RPGs, Platformer RPGs, RPGs pretty much can combine with any other genre either for battle mechanics or whatever. The eras? Make him play Live a Live x'D, or Paladin's Quest, or FFXIII... Character's lifestyles, I disagree with that. Actually nowadays there's a lot of improvement in the character development/characterization/backstory creation, and one of the "improvements" in that aspect is the variety. And the plots, well, most of time concludes on you saving the world, but the same goes for almost any other game. There's this thing where you have to consider that your main objective is something trascendental.

I think your father has played like three RPGs, or maybe not played any. But that's me making poorly elaborated conclusions.

Salut,

OZ

 

[Traveling Bard]

The same could be said *pauses and looks around* about first-person shooters, which evidently is the bee knees these days. Same concepts just with quirks and depth specific to each title. Unless they are clones of other titles, of course haha did you know that in the 90s every fps game that came out was a "doom-clone" and nowadays they are "call of duty-clones". People still buy them though. All about timing and being slightly different.

I guess what you're father is saying is that he is tired of the cliches' that you have in the rpg genre and I honestly can't blame him. I love the classics, lufia 2, earthbound, chrono trigger, ff3(or 6 oO?), etc but most of those titles include the guy most likely getting the girl and possibly sacrificing himself to save the world from the "higher power" while fighting along his rag tag group of buddies that he found along the way. Give or take. There is a book out there for writing stories, I believe it's called The Hero with 1,000 Faces by Joseph Cambell. Gives an outline of a universal path that most heroes' journeys follow. Very good read if you're thinking about writing rpgs.

Personally, what I shoot to do in writing rpgs is to take something cliche' then add quirks and depth to make it interesting. An interesting game will get played and people will pay for it....if it's worth it. So when designing your own game remember that God is in the details and to always shoot to be engaging and interesting. 

Hope your father finds some titles that he'll like that'll renew his confidence in the genre...I suggest Stella Deus(tactics game, deep story), Final Fantasy X(amazing...just amazing), Suikoden 2(108 different characters, moving story, and fun tactical battles on the side), Dragon Age Origins(bioware...enough said), Earthbound(seriously play this), Mass Effect(I left this on the table once, my brother picked it up and popped it in for the heck of it...two weeks later he had bought and beaten the rest of the series...just saying, he loved it), Last Remnant(interesting battle system, main character is a little 'weak' but solid gameplay keeps bringing me back), and Skyrim(I hear they have support groups for this game...) Anyway, good luck to you in your game and your father in his gaming

 

[Housekeeping]

Most Jrpgs are bildungsroman, which is what most people who use rpgmaker would consider the "classic" rpg (as opposed to Western rpgs, which focus more on world-building and giving the players options to interact with NPCs and the environment).  Jrpg's don't HAVE to be a bildungsroman, though.  Valkyrie Profile, for instance, doesn't start with a young boy from the provinces that sets out on an adventure.  When writing a Jrpg in the traditional sense, you only have the following restrictions:

1) Your characters must progress statistically.  To do this, there has to be a steady flow of enemies in order for your characters to progress.

2) There has to be a final boss; absence of this would rob the players of a purpose to stat/equipment progression.

3) Because of points one and two, characters have to solve problems with violence.  This can be curtailed by making the characters regretful or initially unwilling, but, at the end of the day, you'll have to hit an attack button in order to progress the game.  Or, I suppose you could make a gimmicky game that involves hugging enemies or something, so point three is questionable.

Other than these things, an rpg doesn't HAVE to do anything, so you have a lot of room in this space to craft a story.  Too, an rpg can even break these rules, but once they start doing that, they start turning into games that feel different than traditional rpgs.  For example, you can keep character stat progression intact by building stats via racing and using the money to buy car parts--but this would be seen as including rpg elements in a racing game.  So, the idea of a battle system is one of the distinguishing features of an rpg, but now I'm just repeating myself. 

Anyway, if you want to prove to your dad that a good game can come from rpgmaker, have him play a game that you feel is well-written and emotionally resonant (if he has the time).  Yume Nikki is a good free example of a game with artistic merit, but you might want to look for a more "traditional" jrpg (in structure, not plot) since that seems to be his major beef.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

There are a lot of RPGs just on the AAA market. Turn battles? There are Action RPGs, Platformer RPGs, RPGs pretty much can combine with any other genre either for battle mechanics or whatever. The eras? Make him play Live a Live x'D, or Paladin's Quest, or FFXIII... Character's lifestyles, I disagree with that. Actually nowadays there's a lot of improvement in the character development/characterization/backstory creation, and one of the "improvements" in that aspect is the variety. And the plots, well, most of time concludes on you saving the world, but the same goes for almost any other game. There's this thing where you have to consider that your main objective is something trascendental.

I think your father has played like three RPGs, or maybe not played any. But that's me making poorly elaborated conclusions.

Salut,

OZ

that, or his father only knows turn based RPGs and haven't encountered the other RPGs...