What you love/hate about various genres

[Raging Justice]

Pretty self explanatory thread

What prompted me to create this topic is that I've been a fan of jrpgs for years. Lately though, I'm started to absolutely despise them. Why? RNG bullshit. This seems to be the only genre where you simply have to accept that certain things will always be out of your control whether you like it or not, because of RNG a.k.a. random luck. You want that special, unique, powerful weapon? Good luck reloading your game for four hours killing the same monster over and over again that has a 2% chance of dropping it. Did you have a perfect strategy for winning a certain fight? Aw, too bad the game randomly decided for you to miss that critical attack you needed to end the fight...or decided for some enemy to just get a lucky critical hit on your protagonist, killing him and thus prompting a game over.

It's the same reason I never enjoyed tabletop rpgs like my friends did when I was younger. Just sick of every damn thing relying on a random dice roll. Your highly trained warrior misses his attack like a rookie. Why? Because you rolled a 2 on the dice. Give me a fucking break.

A game should reward skill and strategy, not make you Lady Luck's bitch.

[marurun]

As someone who has played an RPG with very little pseudo-randomness in it (encounters were random, combat damage was not), I can tell you it was not an improved experience. Besides, the more memorable RPGs often have cheese tactics you can employ or the ability to build broken characters. That’s a kind of skill.

[o.pwuaioc]

It's the same reason I never enjoyed tabletop rpgs like my friends did when I was younger. Just sick of every damn thing relying on a random dice roll. Your highly trained warrior misses his attack like a rookie. Why? Because you rolled a 2 on the dice. Give me a fucking break.

This is a problem with the game, not random luck. Of course luck exists in any scenario, so it's not a bad thing to employ. But there should be a limit to it.

Dunno what game you're talking about per se, but e.g. if a level 10 warrior engages in combat with a level 1 warrior, there should be a bottom limit to how low the dice can be. In this case, perhaps it's 3 rolls, highest roll determines the result. If it's three 1s in a row, then yeah, that's really unlucky, but it can be explained in the real world as e.g. slipping on something, an unfortunate muscle spasm, or just choking, as experts do all the time.

People aren't machines and aren't determined solely on numerical data, so why should their characters be?

[Limewater]

Sid Meier gave a pretty famour keynote address at GDC 2010 where he discussed randomness and player psychology.

I think this is the whole talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY7aRJE-oOY

TL;DR: Players believe that RNG in games is working correctly when it favors them. When it doesn't it's broken.

Personally, I would never try to 100% a JRPG, and I don't believe that they are typically designed with that possibility in mind, especially in games with configurable parties. The crazy ultimate 1%-drop-change armor is hardly ever actually needed to complete the game.

St. Peter's just upset Kentucky in the NCAA tournament. Nobody saw that coming.

[Limewater]

Follow up:

I just sat down to play a little Minecraft Dungeons with my son. We did this last Saturday morning and had fun.

So we added me to the game and I entered the PIN I had set up for the profile I had created for myself. Then it asks me for the password for my microsoft account, which I only ever created so that I could set up this damn profile in the first place.

I'm not going to make my seven-year-old sit and wait while I dig through and try to figure out what e-mail address I created to make this stupid profile and then try to remember the password I had to make up on the spot and will almost certainly result in me having to reset my password.

This whole thing is just incredibly terrible. I just want to be able to play a video game I bought on a console that I bought with my son, who I did not buy, but I do love.

Instead, I'm complaining on here. What a bunch of garbage.

[StuntDouble]

Follow up:

I just sat down to play a little Minecraft Dungeons with my son. We did this last Saturday morning and had fun.

So we added me to the game and I entered the PIN I had set up for the profile I had created for myself. Then it asks me for the password for my microsoft account, which I only ever created so that I could set up this damn profile in the first place.

I'm not going to make my seven-year-old sit and wait while I dig through and try to figure out what e-mail address I created to make this stupid profile and then try to remember the password I had to make up on the spot and will almost certainly result in me having to reset my password.

This whole thing is just incredibly terrible. I just want to be able to play a video game I bought on a console that I bought with my son, who I did not buy, but I do love.

Instead, I'm complaining on here. What a bunch of garbage.

I was all set to purchase Doom Eternal on Switch a few months ago up until I saw that I would need to create a Bethesda account. That was enough to change my mind.

[opa]

Survival horror- I'm okay with limited inventory but the older games where a grenade launcher and a cigarette lighter take up the same amount of inventory is bull crap.

[Ack]

But how will I light up my massive green herb then?

[opa]

You may need to lay off the herb. You're seeing giant spiders, dude.

[Syndicate]

...Metroidvanias, I really enjoy the exploration and the way progress is made. By the end of the game you're generally feeling like there's nothing you can't do. Well short of the level appropriate threats and by then it's a matter of putting all of your tools together to push through. Looking at Shmups, I really like the driving action, the games are intense and once you're proficient it's like a beautiful dance and imo just awesome to see and experience...the problem is the amount of time it takes to get that good at the game. Unfortunately, this often serves as a barrier to entry for many, myself included as I can only think of a handful that I've finished but I still love the genre and keep coming back for more punishment