Which difficulty is better for an RPG?

Master strategic players cannot lose against bosses but impulsive Button Mashers can still win with dumb luck? Or Button Mashing players have no chance of winning while strategic players may still need to rely a fair bit on chance?

I'm currently making a game with a Game Maker and I'm planning for the latter choice. Would you say that's better? I mean, Fable tried to go the way of the former(even giving chance to underlevelers) and look how they turned out?

edited 17th May '11 1:18:13 AM by PsychoFreaX

Depends on the game. If it's one of the newer and easier RP Gs (no, that doesn't include Demon's Souls) go for the hardest difficulty. If you're playing one of the older and harder RP Gs, play on the medium difficulty.

I'd go with the former: Leave the Luck Based Missions for the incompetent players, and keep them out of the good players' way.

I generally prefer games that kick your ass if you don't know what you're doing, regardless of genre. Tough love. That's not the same as being unfair, though.

In my opinion....RP Gs should NEVER have button mashing in it's combat.

The best RP Gs have always been the slow strategy focused kinds.

That said, the best kinds of RP Gs are ones where even master strategic players still lose to, and only able to beat after a few tries...

Theres a much greater sense of accomplishment when you save the world and kill the evil God etc. etc.

edited 17th May '11 1:29:21 AM by Signed

Well attack spam, ultima spam and summon spam aren't much diffirent from Button Mashing okay?

edited 17th May '11 1:30:00 AM by PsychoFreaX

RPG s that lets you win by just spamming all your best attacks are poorly designed to begin with...

Which, unfortunately, is the case for several RP Gs nowadays.

edited 17th May '11 1:31:00 AM by Signed

...Ultima spam? That would require you to have enough MP to do such a ridiculous thing in the same place. Or a Game-Breaker that drops MP costs to 1.

@Signed: So...roguelikes?

Well, the latter choice seems best then. If anyone wants the former, Fable's done that. We still need an RPG that pisses button mashers off.

edited 17th May '11 3:25:32 AM by PsychoFreaX

Final Fantasy VI

1) That equip that lets someone cast twice
2) Gogo.

edited 17th May '11 3:33:34 AM by Sabbo

^ The twice cast still gets restricted by MP costs. Besides, not like FFVI was difficult in the first place.

edited 17th May '11 3:40:30 AM by Saigyouji

True.

3)Wear a Gold Hairpin, or whatever that halve-MP use item was.

Just so we're on the same pages: We-re talking about plot-relevant battles here, are we not?

Because I like my grinding being solvable by button mashing. To do otherwise makes it even slower.

But for anything else, requiring actual strategy is fine. Such as giving the bosses an attack pattern with varying weaknesses, etc. Nothing stops a Bolt3 spam like having the occasional monster be healed by thunder.

Or you can just have the computer cheat

Well I did refer to bosses didn't I? And yah you can also stop bolt 3 spam by making bosses have five times stats.

OP: I would prefer the difficulty scales somewhat, starting with the former and eventually reaching the latter around the halfway point onwards, when the player should be familiar with the game. A way to prevent players from getting 'stuck' would be nice too. For instance, keeping funds or EXP after retrying a scenario in a Strategy RPG. You could always turn that feature off in harder difficulties.

IMO, luck should *never* be an important feature, regardless of difficulty. If a given battle requires significant luck to beat, even if you have a proper party configuration and good strategy, than it is poorly designed.

And if a game isn't poorly designed it will end up like Fable. With everyone complaining about it being too easy even if the mechanics are great and all.

: But Fables mechanics where not "extremely good", they was "working quite well", with something lacking to make it difficult.

What kind of false dichotomy is this? Luck should simply never be a factor, period. That has nothing to do with difficulty.

Anyway, bosses should be able to easily kill you the first time around but be significantly easier afterward when you figured out what they do. Or, depending on the pace of the battles and the nature of pre-battle preparation, you might be able to figure it out halfway through the battle and still win. The point is that they should kill you if you're not paying attention to the idiosyncrasies of the fight itself.

This is also opposed to creating some super-strategy that works on everything. If you make them harder just by increasing their stats then all you do is encourage heavy use of stat ups and stat downs on every single fight. And if those don't work then all you're doing is making the player grind. Both are pretty terrible design choices.

edited 17th May '11 6:56:05 AM by Clarste

There were actually a fair bit of strategy that can help you against bosses. More than the majority of other RPG out there. Too bad said strategies are never actually needed.

edited 17th May '11 6:56:02 AM by PsychoFreaX

In all I think Persona 4's difficulty should be the standard. Every enemy is hard the first time you encounter it forcing you to slowly test out it's weaknesses making sure you don't do something stupid like have an Instant Death spell reflected back at you for an instant Game Over. Having groups of different enemies that have different weaknesses so attack all spells wont be the best all the time as well as having enemies that you still have to slug it out to beat.

Well since even action RP Gs have difficulty with this, I'll even have more trouble with an active time battle RPG.