RPGs - The Fun Spreadsheet
Recently I’ve been playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (after getting a cheap deal on Amazon), and the battle system has just blown me away. The mini-game attacks, the way levelling up works, and all the subtle interactions between the types of enemies and the types of attack. It’s fun, and it’s one of the rare games these days that I can’t stop playing.
But Paper Mario got me thinking about the other RPGs out there, and where all the fun was. If you think about it, your average jRPG is like an easy game theory puzzle. Forget the prisoner’s dilemma, in games like Final Fantasy you just worry about attacking or defending, or perhaps which method of attack to use. Your attacks don’t take any skill to implement, you simply choose the option and it happens. Why is this fun?
It’s gambling. That’s where the fun is. If the player knew everything in these battles, such as the enemy’s HP, whether or not the attack would be a success, whose turn was next, and so on, the choices would become obvious, and it wouldn’t be fun at all. Instead, it’s all a guessing game in which the player puts their bet either on Attack or Defend, and then watches the outcome to see if they’ve made the right decision.
This is not exactly how Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door works. Your attacks are more successful if you have good timing and you can see which special attacks enemies can use on you from the start. There’s less of a bet here, and more need of skill, even if that skill is just pressing a button or releasing the joystick at the right time.
RPGs, or at least Japanese RPGs ask the player to gamble on their actions, and give the player options to better their wagers through the manipulation of statistics. The fun in Final Fantasy is to try to make a perfect warrior through the acquisition of higher stats, better weapons, bigger spells, and better tricks. The player attempts to better their odds in games of chance in which the odds are continually stacked against them. Enemies continue to get stronger and meaner, and so the player adds their stats to make themselves stronger as well.
My wish is for RPGs to experiment more with their statistics. I want a game in which the main object is to manipulate the system in your favor in each battle. I want a game that incorporates gambling-style risk and reward, but not in a silly “let’s just put in an attack with a roulette wheel” sense.
And on the other hand, I’m having lots of fun with Paper Mario, which straight-up tosses most of the statistic-based play to the side in order to experiment with other gameplay mechanics.
Oh, and while I’m on the subject, let me say a few words about random encounters. Paper Mario presents the player with a set number of enemies for each level that you can either rush into to fight or try to avoid. This is a great system because it gives the designers more control over how the character levels up. Random encounters give the player loopholes in the game, such as being able to run in a circle outside of a town for hours on end until the player reaches level 1000.
I should clarify, but I’ll leave that for a later rant.