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MIXING RPG ASPECTS INTO YOUR RPG
Posts
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
LockeZ
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CloseWritten by Tycho on Penny Arcade's blog last week:
There are several different ideas that come together to create traditional RPGs. One of them is progression. The idea that your power increases over time not merely because the player gets better, but also because the character gets better. Because of this, the character's skill can somehow make up for deficiencies in the player's skill - but that's not why it's included in games other than RPGs. The reason that designers include this trait in action games and adventure games and puzzle games and fighting games is because, as Tycho says, it's addictive. You like being rewarded. You like seeing a little progress bar go up every time you do well, and then after a while, DING!, you are now an Apprentice Sub-Journeyman Bejeweller!
But Tycho is correct when he implies that turn-based, strategic, plan-out-what-you-do-before-you-do-it combat is something that has lost its mass market appeal. He calls it micro-managing, which is diminutive but perhaps accurate. People don't want to think about what they're doing as they play a game. They don't want to have to stop each round and figure out whether sleep or paralyze would be more effective. They don't want to stop ever, they want to be doing something at all times, and if they cease killing zombies for even one second, even if what they're doing during that one second is deciding how to kill zombies, they lose their patience and feel that the game is too slow. Get rid of the inventory, get rid of the equipment screen, get rid of customization. Games decide those things for you now, because deciding things isn't exciting. Doing things is exciting.
That's how gamers are today. And yeah, you guessed it: as is pretty much always the case in every topic and every post I make, I'm pissed off. I happen to really, really like Final Fantasy Tactics. And, you know, RPG gameplay in general.
What do you think are the reasons that people have become so intolerant of depth and strategy in combat? Is instant gratification important to you personally, or do you find your victories more meaningful when you have to stop and actually try to figure out how to get them? Do you want battles where you have five skills you can use, or thirty? Or three hundred? Or just one, with every battle turned into a series of "Press A to continue" prompts? Do you think there are other reasons why the former aspect of RPGs is so much more widely used in modern games than the latter aspect?
Don't limit this discussion to turn-based or even menu-based combat - the entire reason action RPGs exist is because of this debate, so it's very much fair game to consider them.
RPG as a genre is practically a sauce, now: it's something you stew other genres in, imparting an addictive progression arc in terms of equipment or capability. Mass Effect couldn't be a more perfect example. But the flavor was too strong, they determined, too piquant, and ME2 was the result. Most people seemed to prefer the taste. The thing that people are never trying to impart from the conception of an RPG is micro-managerial combat. I say this as someone who likes that and would start a foundation to preserve it. That's what Dragon Age is about, essentially. They have a challenge ahead of them; generally speaking, people don't make games like this anymore, not at this tier of development, and there is a reason.
There are several different ideas that come together to create traditional RPGs. One of them is progression. The idea that your power increases over time not merely because the player gets better, but also because the character gets better. Because of this, the character's skill can somehow make up for deficiencies in the player's skill - but that's not why it's included in games other than RPGs. The reason that designers include this trait in action games and adventure games and puzzle games and fighting games is because, as Tycho says, it's addictive. You like being rewarded. You like seeing a little progress bar go up every time you do well, and then after a while, DING!, you are now an Apprentice Sub-Journeyman Bejeweller!
But Tycho is correct when he implies that turn-based, strategic, plan-out-what-you-do-before-you-do-it combat is something that has lost its mass market appeal. He calls it micro-managing, which is diminutive but perhaps accurate. People don't want to think about what they're doing as they play a game. They don't want to have to stop each round and figure out whether sleep or paralyze would be more effective. They don't want to stop ever, they want to be doing something at all times, and if they cease killing zombies for even one second, even if what they're doing during that one second is deciding how to kill zombies, they lose their patience and feel that the game is too slow. Get rid of the inventory, get rid of the equipment screen, get rid of customization. Games decide those things for you now, because deciding things isn't exciting. Doing things is exciting.
That's how gamers are today. And yeah, you guessed it: as is pretty much always the case in every topic and every post I make, I'm pissed off. I happen to really, really like Final Fantasy Tactics. And, you know, RPG gameplay in general.
What do you think are the reasons that people have become so intolerant of depth and strategy in combat? Is instant gratification important to you personally, or do you find your victories more meaningful when you have to stop and actually try to figure out how to get them? Do you want battles where you have five skills you can use, or thirty? Or three hundred? Or just one, with every battle turned into a series of "Press A to continue" prompts? Do you think there are other reasons why the former aspect of RPGs is so much more widely used in modern games than the latter aspect?
Don't limit this discussion to turn-based or even menu-based combat - the entire reason action RPGs exist is because of this debate, so it's very much fair game to consider them.
Shinan
4314
It has a lot to do with the move toward real-time battles. Many RPGs still keep the old "real time with pause" but the games are more and more tailored so you can win without using them. (see Mass Effect. How many people actually used the pause menu? And how many people who used the pause menu used it for something that wasn't changing your active weapon?)
I think it has to do with the fact that you have to manually pause, which is different from how regular turn based games works. So how often is too often to pause? Can you calculate when people are hit? How much is this micromanagement. Godsdammit I died because I forgot to pause and change this weapon.
So in the move to make RPGs have the excitement of real-time they have to minimize the amount of skills and buttons you can use.
RPGs are also very often party-based. But controlling a party in real time is a real hassle. So games now make them AI. And although AI is alright these days it often means that your buddies are pretty useless. (compare again in Mass Effect the amount of enemies Shepard killed to whatever the buddies you brought with you killed. Of course again you have to make sure the player has some game to play and doesn't only watch other people shoot at each other (see codblops))
Alright so those are the whys. What do I personally think about this? Well I guess it sucks. But on the other hand I can see all the points I made in the why section. But the fact is I like turn-based battles, especially party-based tactical combat. But I'll also be honest and say that I don't really need it in my RPG. I love playing tactical games but often when playing tactical games I play the games rather than roleplaying them. In a game like Silent Storm I don't think about the personality of the characters but I look at their weapons and their locations and I have a good time maneouvering these guys into positions to deal a bit of massive death. In fact in these games I get annoyed when there's a game over because the squad leader (player) died, to me he was nothing more than another soldier that happened to be custom.
But that is sort of my RPG-approach. In an RPG I don't really need the battle system to be deep as long as the RPG system is deep. Nine times out of ten I'll be a lot happier if I can talk my way out of a fight though if the fight happens I like to have a lot of tactical options. Options that rarely present themselves because battles tend to be sort of scripted. If my mission is to get rid of person x there'll probably be no chance for me to climb up a rooftop and shoot the target in the head without some kind of direct confrontation with hundreds of mooks first.
It's the Bad GM approach. "I draw my gun and shoot him" "You can't do that. He has an invisible force shield and now all the security guards appear. Roll for initiative."
Though not an RPG this annoys me the most in GTA4 that I've been playing lately. I get a target to kill but I always have to spend some time in a cut-scene before I can get to the killin' and when the cutscene is over the target runs out of the room and is replaced by a bunch of mooks. What I'd really like to do from the beginning is just lie down on a rooftop somewhere and assassinate the bugger.
I think it has to do with the fact that you have to manually pause, which is different from how regular turn based games works. So how often is too often to pause? Can you calculate when people are hit? How much is this micromanagement. Godsdammit I died because I forgot to pause and change this weapon.
So in the move to make RPGs have the excitement of real-time they have to minimize the amount of skills and buttons you can use.
RPGs are also very often party-based. But controlling a party in real time is a real hassle. So games now make them AI. And although AI is alright these days it often means that your buddies are pretty useless. (compare again in Mass Effect the amount of enemies Shepard killed to whatever the buddies you brought with you killed. Of course again you have to make sure the player has some game to play and doesn't only watch other people shoot at each other (see codblops))
Alright so those are the whys. What do I personally think about this? Well I guess it sucks. But on the other hand I can see all the points I made in the why section. But the fact is I like turn-based battles, especially party-based tactical combat. But I'll also be honest and say that I don't really need it in my RPG. I love playing tactical games but often when playing tactical games I play the games rather than roleplaying them. In a game like Silent Storm I don't think about the personality of the characters but I look at their weapons and their locations and I have a good time maneouvering these guys into positions to deal a bit of massive death. In fact in these games I get annoyed when there's a game over because the squad leader (player) died, to me he was nothing more than another soldier that happened to be custom.
But that is sort of my RPG-approach. In an RPG I don't really need the battle system to be deep as long as the RPG system is deep. Nine times out of ten I'll be a lot happier if I can talk my way out of a fight though if the fight happens I like to have a lot of tactical options. Options that rarely present themselves because battles tend to be sort of scripted. If my mission is to get rid of person x there'll probably be no chance for me to climb up a rooftop and shoot the target in the head without some kind of direct confrontation with hundreds of mooks first.
It's the Bad GM approach. "I draw my gun and shoot him" "You can't do that. He has an invisible force shield and now all the security guards appear. Roll for initiative."
Though not an RPG this annoys me the most in GTA4 that I've been playing lately. I get a target to kill but I always have to spend some time in a cut-scene before I can get to the killin' and when the cutscene is over the target runs out of the room and is replaced by a bunch of mooks. What I'd really like to do from the beginning is just lie down on a rooftop somewhere and assassinate the bugger.
That's how gamers are today. And yeah, you guessed it: as is pretty much always the case in every topic and every post I make, I'm pissed off. I happen to really, really like Final Fantasy Tactics. And, you know, RPG game play in general.
Tactics was amazing the depth of thought you had to put into was exciting, i understand where you are coming from i enjoyed those games immensely. The majority of people anymore have attention spans much to short to appreciate what those kind of games have to offer.
That might be a possible reason why sites like these exist(for at least some people), people may not find what they want in the market, so they just make it themselves.
Slightly off-topic but I think it needs to be said, that's a complete distortion of the original concept of RPG. RPG = Roleplaying game. I see games being called RPGs just because the characters in it have stats, gain levels, etc.
About the topic itself, I can't really tell because I don't play many mainstream games nowadays. I wouldn't know "what people want".
About the topic itself, I can't really tell because I don't play many mainstream games nowadays. I wouldn't know "what people want".
Jericho
52
author=Cosmic_SeaThat's how gamers are today. And yeah, you guessed it: as is pretty much always the case in every topic and every post I make, I'm pissed off. I happen to really, really like Final Fantasy Tactics. And, you know, RPG game play in general.
Tactics was amazing the depth of thought you had to put into was exciting, i understand where you are coming from i enjoyed those games immensely. The majority of people anymore have attention spans much to short to appreciate what those kind of games have to offer.
"unlock calculator" is not the height of strategy.
calunio, it is not really a distortion at all. You play a role in nearly every video game. what would you have them be called? D&D based games? that is essentially what they are and why they are referred to as role playing games.
I think the term Role Playing Game tends to be more to do with that your advantages/disadvantages in RPGs are derived from the role-you're-playing's attributes rather than say, strategic thinking (even though there's some, yeah - and RTS has some things in common with RPG gameplay) or FPS-shooting proficiency; it's hands-off.(something I've heard referred to as avatar skill vs player skill).
Crystalgate
694
I'm not so sure if it really depends on the gamers. I suspect this has more to do with the developers and the market.
First off, there are different strategies you can try when selling. You can make a niche game. This appeals to less people, but the advantage is that you have fewer other games to compete with. You can also try to appeal to more people. The broader the audience, the less potential customers you have, but the more other games your game has to appeal to.
Nowadays, the recipe the big companies uses is high budget games that has to sell a lot of copies. This means they want to appeal to as many as possible. I don't think the RPG market is exactly a niche market, but it's still not as broad as say "RPG plus FPS". As a consequence, we get less games that are tailored for the RPG fans alone.
Another problem is that the vast majority of RPGs don't have much dept to combat at all. You have maybe more than 50 different skills between the characters, but combat boils down to offense, offense, offense, heal (offense used to be attack even) with most strategies being useless due to poor design. Heck, at some time I used to play Contra and I noticed that game had more thought put into it than a lot of RPGs I've played.
The only advantage turn based games have (not limited to RPGs, see the Civilization series and games inspired from it) is that you have time to think. If you design a game that way, it's important that there actually are things to think about. Problem is, the RPG genre has for a long time produced games which gives you the time to think, but doesn't really have much to think about. It should come to no surprise that people start to look for enjoyment elsewhere.
First off, there are different strategies you can try when selling. You can make a niche game. This appeals to less people, but the advantage is that you have fewer other games to compete with. You can also try to appeal to more people. The broader the audience, the less potential customers you have, but the more other games your game has to appeal to.
Nowadays, the recipe the big companies uses is high budget games that has to sell a lot of copies. This means they want to appeal to as many as possible. I don't think the RPG market is exactly a niche market, but it's still not as broad as say "RPG plus FPS". As a consequence, we get less games that are tailored for the RPG fans alone.
Another problem is that the vast majority of RPGs don't have much dept to combat at all. You have maybe more than 50 different skills between the characters, but combat boils down to offense, offense, offense, heal (offense used to be attack even) with most strategies being useless due to poor design. Heck, at some time I used to play Contra and I noticed that game had more thought put into it than a lot of RPGs I've played.
The only advantage turn based games have (not limited to RPGs, see the Civilization series and games inspired from it) is that you have time to think. If you design a game that way, it's important that there actually are things to think about. Problem is, the RPG genre has for a long time produced games which gives you the time to think, but doesn't really have much to think about. It should come to no surprise that people start to look for enjoyment elsewhere.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=calunio
Slightly off-topic but I think it needs to be said, that's a complete distortion of the original concept of RPG. RPG = Roleplaying game. I see games being called RPGs just because the characters in it have stats, gain levels, etc.
There's another topic if you want to talk about roleplay. This topic is about gameplay. Sorry.
author=Crystalgate
Another problem is that the vast majority of RPGs don't have much depth to combat at all. ... The only advantage turn based games have (not limited to RPGs, see the Civilization series and games inspired from it) is that you have time to think. If you design a game that way, it's important that there actually are things to think about. Problem is, the RPG genre has for a long time produced games which gives you the time to think, but doesn't really have much to think about. It should come to no surprise that people start to look for enjoyment elsewhere.
Yes, I agree with this absolutely. It seems like even traditional RPG designers are trying to appeal to the majority of players that dislike tactics and micromanagement, and prefer easy, casual games. But because of what you said, it doesn't work. Menu-based combat, especially if it's also turn-based, is inherently less thrilling than real-time combat - it intentionally sacrifices this thrill for the sake of allowing a greater depth. But when RPG designers decide to remove the depth, or make the game easily beatable without the player understanding the depth, they're essentially getting the worst of both worlds. They've sacrificed the excitement and gained nothing.
The "sell a lot of copies" mentality is obviously true, but what bothers me is that they always combine RPG-style power progression with a first-person shooter, and never combine RPG-style strategic depth with a first-person shooter. And in fact, as the topic title was meant to imply, even RPGs are lacking in RPG-style strategic depth these days.
I'll also note that games like World of Warcraft prove that it's very possible to have deep strategic combat even in real-time. Regardless of your personal rages against various aspects of WoW, its battle system is definitely complex enough to not become stale until after you reach max level. And that's not simply due to the multi-billion-dollar budget - even at release, its combat was deep and engaging enough to keep millions of people interested for hundreds of hours. A single-player game only has to keep you interested for a tiny fraction as long, but designers don't even try.
Shinan
4314
author=LockeZ
I'll also note that games like World of Warcraft prove that it's very possible to have deep strategic combat even in real-time. Regardless of your personal rages against various aspects of WoW, its battle system is definitely complex enough to not become stale until after you reach max level. And that's not simply due to the multi-billion-dollar budget - even at release, its combat was deep and engaging enough to keep millions of people interested for hundreds of hours. A single-player game only has to keep you interested for a tiny fraction as long, but designers don't even try.
On the other hand WoW is also a single-character game where a lot of the excitement comes from grouping with other single-characters to be awesome together. (I don't actually know I've never played WoW or any other MMO) When controlling a single character (as opposed to a party). The Diablo games are probably the same way (In this case I've actually played some Diablo 2), where there's plenty of options available for the skilled player combined with all those hotkeys and whatnot.
If we're talking tactical games one of the advantages of party-based turn-based games is the maneouvering. Something that I find hard to do in real-time games because of the franticness of it where I just don't have what it takes to react in time. I mean there was some tactical game (most likely Jagged Alliance 2 or Silent Storm) where I was firing back and forth behind cover at a group of enemies but one of my team sneaked around and took them in the back. That kind of stuff hardly ever happens in any kind of real-time games. Mostly because of the pace and franticness of the real-time, which means that more often than not you just clump your guys together.
author=LockeZ
Menu-based combat, especially if it's also turn-based, is inherently less thrilling than real-time combat - it intentionally sacrifices this thrill for the sake of allowing a greater depth. But when RPG designers decide to remove the depth, or make the game easily beatable without the player understanding the depth, they're essentially getting the worst of both worlds. They've sacrificed the excitement and gained nothing.
Maybe I just don't play shitty games but ... you make it sound like there aren't any good ones at all. I've heard of a few high-profile examples of trying to include strategy but failing, and big companies pushing shitty games, but these long blocks of ranting are making it sound like you're just making bitter rants about the game industry and fluff games. Let's not encompass generic churned-out-for-profits devoid-of-quality games into our collective psyche, okay? It's just not productive to rant about the "sell lots of copies! mindset" on a community designed around exactly the opposite of that. We barely need to discuss the pitfalls of designing around selling a million copies because none of us will; personally, game design & theory should be discussion relevant to the design and theory of OUR games.
Unless it's a discussion about how you're going to storm the ranks of the gaming world and right these wrongs. Right? ... RIGHT?!
Crystalgate
694
author=LockeZ
The "sell a lot of copies" mentality is obviously true, but what bothers me is that they always combine RPG-style power progression with a first-person shooter, and never combine RPG-style strategic depth with a first-person shooter. And in fact, as the topic title was meant to imply, even RPGs are lacking in RPG-style strategic depth these days.
What does RPG-style strategic depth mean? If you say FPS with a lot of strategic depth, I can make a mental picture of how it may look like, but is that what you mean?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Versalia
It's just not productive to rant about the "sell lots of copies! mindset" on a community designed around exactly the opposite of that. We barely need to discuss the pitfalls of designing around selling a million copies because none of us will; personally, game design & theory should be discussion relevant to the design and theory of OUR games.
I don't really think it's a matter of a mindset of selling games, though. That's a tangential issue; the core of what bothers me isn't the mindset of the big game companies, but rather the mindset of players, and the resulting assumption - often subconsciously, even by amateur designers - that making your games this way actually makes them objectively better games.
author=Crystalgate
What does RPG-style strategic depth mean? If you say FPS with a lot of strategic depth, I can make a mental picture of how it may look like, but is that what you mean?
Yeah, essentially. I don't think I can give a good example, because I can't think of any. But I guess... imagine an FPS where you can choose which of nine different classes you want to play as, and instead of 4-10 different weapons that mostly just have different amounts of power/speed/accuracy, you have 20-30 weapons per class, some of which are traps or healing abilities or status effects or elemental attacks or have cooldowns or have areas of effect or different ranges and blah blah etc etc. And during combat, for maximum effectiveness, you have to keep switching between them and pick a different weapon each time you fire a shot, like you do in an RPG, instead of the typical FPS method where you just pick a favorite weapon to use.
I don't even like shooters, but I would play the fucking hell out of that game.
DFalcon
2141
author=Crystalgate
What does RPG-style strategic depth mean? If you say FPS with a lot of strategic depth, I can make a mental picture of how it may look like, but is that what you mean?
I think the only thing potentially separating RPG-style from generic turn-based strategic depth is the concept that your principle actors are a few relatively non-disposable units. Otherwise, go wild - there are a lot of great turn-based mechanics to get inspiration from.
author=LockeZ
I don't even like shooters, but I would play the fucking hell out of that game.
There might be more FPS games up your alley than you think (unless you just don't like aiming with cross-hairs and clicking). Do keep in mind that "elements" are more along the lines of things like "armor piercing" and area of effect equates to frag grenade or RPG. The 20-30 weapons per class is kind of ridiculous though, because even in traditional RPGs most weapons are just copypasta of another one except it has +1 more attack value.
But when you start getting into objective-based gameplay you start worrying about squad composition and how to best employ the Blackhawk or Abrams. I'm definitely looking forward to Battlefield 3, at least.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
In my analogy, I was equating FPS weapons to RPG skills, not to RPG weapons.
author=LockeZ
In my analogy, I was equating FPS weapons to RPG skills, not to RPG weapons.
These days most FPS roll with about two primary weapons, a grenade weapon, and some kind of special device or something. The strategy tends to lay more in how you use them and less so about which. Just the nature of a single-player RPG makes them dramatically less strategic than facing human opponents in online FPS games. I don't really see how somebody can describe them as lacking in depth... Sure, a lot of people play them that way but they're not very competitive at them either.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Well I would never play a PVP mode in any game. I'm thinking of single-player mode in FPS games.
But whatever, the point stands that they do not have RPG-style strategic depth. Which is what I enjoy.
But whatever, the point stands that they do not have RPG-style strategic depth. Which is what I enjoy.
Shinan
4314
Actually in the FPS market there is a whole subgenre that is all about tactical (and a bit of strategic) depth. The tactical shooter. Of course it to goes for the action RPG approach of only having one character you can control while the rest is covered by the AI. Which limits actual tactics a wee bit. (but again like in WoW or something you can often go co-op, which can increase the excitement with the right people)
As for huge amounts of skills there often is more choice in tactical FPSes. I mean take a game like SWAT4. In the equipment selection screen before a mission you can pick between lethal and non-lethal bullets. And different items that will help you along (those camera-things under the door, lockpicks etc) and what kind of grenades you're going to use (flashbang? smoke? teargas? how many of each?). Most FPSes (though I can't remember if SWAT4 had this) also have a healing kit that you can use. Combine all these things and you get a lot more variety than there is in your average jRPG's skillset.
Of course there's still the problem with AI companions. Though in SWAT4 you basically have to micromanage every single thing they do.
With all these questions though. I have to ask what is RPG-style strategic depth. Most of my examples are from games in other genres though most of them had a bit of RPG elements to them but they usually weren't very RPGish. I can look at my RPG-playing backlog but to be honest most games didn't have that great a depth to them. (Though I didn't start playing RPGs until 1997 or so (with Baldur's Gate, Fallout and Final Fantasy 7), and the decline might already have happened then, I do remember talk that the Infinity Engine dumbed down RPGs massively)
As for huge amounts of skills there often is more choice in tactical FPSes. I mean take a game like SWAT4. In the equipment selection screen before a mission you can pick between lethal and non-lethal bullets. And different items that will help you along (those camera-things under the door, lockpicks etc) and what kind of grenades you're going to use (flashbang? smoke? teargas? how many of each?). Most FPSes (though I can't remember if SWAT4 had this) also have a healing kit that you can use. Combine all these things and you get a lot more variety than there is in your average jRPG's skillset.
Of course there's still the problem with AI companions. Though in SWAT4 you basically have to micromanage every single thing they do.
With all these questions though. I have to ask what is RPG-style strategic depth. Most of my examples are from games in other genres though most of them had a bit of RPG elements to them but they usually weren't very RPGish. I can look at my RPG-playing backlog but to be honest most games didn't have that great a depth to them. (Though I didn't start playing RPGs until 1997 or so (with Baldur's Gate, Fallout and Final Fantasy 7), and the decline might already have happened then, I do remember talk that the Infinity Engine dumbed down RPGs massively)
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I - I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to describe in order to explain how RPG combat works - I would think you guys would have... played some RPGs at some point in your lives?
Okay. You know those games where you're in the middle of fighting a boss, and your fire spell inflicts a damage-over-time effect, and then the boss counters with an area magic spell that only one of your characters is immune to, so you heal the other three with an area healing spell, and then dualcast Shell on two of them, but not the third because he has an attack that gets stronger when his HP is low, and then you cast a lightning spell because using fire again would be a waste while the boss is still taking damage from the first fire spell, but you didn't notice that the boss had used WallChange and now absorbs lightning, and he counter-attacks by draining your mage's MP down to 0, so you have your monk use his Chakra ability that you never usually use because it's awful but it does heal the entire party's MP a little bit, and then one of your other characters starts charging up for a strong physical attack but the boss kills him before he finishes, but you had cast Reraise on that character so he manages to pull the attack off anyway, and now Shell wore off but you wait to recast it until the cooldown for Doublecast has worn off, and in the meantime the boss uses an area attack again and kills 3 of your 4 party members, causing the last one to go into Enrage mode and gain double attack power, so you summon Phoenix which revives your party and almost kills the boss, and then you have three members low on HP so you use the monk's Sacrifice ability to kill him off and fully heal the other two, and then since the boss is low on HP you use your other three characters's strongest attacks with no regard to survival and you finally win? And that was only part of one of the game's 40 different boss battles? And as a reward you get a bracelet that raises vitality by 6, raises agility by 12, and makes you 25% resistant to paralyze status?
Those games are called RPGs. They tend to have a fair amount more complexity and depth involving in choosing what to do than most other types of single-player games.
Okay. You know those games where you're in the middle of fighting a boss, and your fire spell inflicts a damage-over-time effect, and then the boss counters with an area magic spell that only one of your characters is immune to, so you heal the other three with an area healing spell, and then dualcast Shell on two of them, but not the third because he has an attack that gets stronger when his HP is low, and then you cast a lightning spell because using fire again would be a waste while the boss is still taking damage from the first fire spell, but you didn't notice that the boss had used WallChange and now absorbs lightning, and he counter-attacks by draining your mage's MP down to 0, so you have your monk use his Chakra ability that you never usually use because it's awful but it does heal the entire party's MP a little bit, and then one of your other characters starts charging up for a strong physical attack but the boss kills him before he finishes, but you had cast Reraise on that character so he manages to pull the attack off anyway, and now Shell wore off but you wait to recast it until the cooldown for Doublecast has worn off, and in the meantime the boss uses an area attack again and kills 3 of your 4 party members, causing the last one to go into Enrage mode and gain double attack power, so you summon Phoenix which revives your party and almost kills the boss, and then you have three members low on HP so you use the monk's Sacrifice ability to kill him off and fully heal the other two, and then since the boss is low on HP you use your other three characters's strongest attacks with no regard to survival and you finally win? And that was only part of one of the game's 40 different boss battles? And as a reward you get a bracelet that raises vitality by 6, raises agility by 12, and makes you 25% resistant to paralyze status?
Those games are called RPGs. They tend to have a fair amount more complexity and depth involving in choosing what to do than most other types of single-player games.
