6) Overly ambitious, pretentious "plots"
One of the first rules of writing is that there are no inherently new plots to be developed. Therefore, a successful writer will either do something a little bit different (adding a twist to an existing story) or do something a little bit better (improve the delivery of a story). Unfortunately, many RPG writers seem to mistake "different" and "better" for "more complex and/or ambiguous." It seems like every RPG these days tries to go balls-to-the-wall with its plot, including numerous seemingly mandatory philosophical references direct from a community college Intro to Philosophy textbook (if not throwing in the whole book altogether and hoping for the best). Most of the time, combined with translation issues, this approach results in a poorly realized plot. Of course, when the general design philosophy of most RPGs is the dangling carrot of slogging through battles to reveal the story, the story had better be pretty damned compelling – and unfortunately, this is seldom the case. (Perhaps even more unfortunately, many RPG players actually think that this complexity for complexity's sake makes for a BETTER story. The writers cannot take all of the blame for this problem, I fear.)
Quick, why was Knights of the Old Republic II noticeably inferior to its predecessor? Too many bugs you say? Well, yeah, but what else? Uninspired combat with waves of generic baddies? True, but what else? That's right: the shambled train wreck of a story that tried to be complex simply for complexity's sake. Star Wars has never had a complex plotline, as it's always been little more than a pseudo-myth ripped straight from the pages of Joseph Campbell. The first KOTOR realized this, and as such provided a plot that was suitable in scale, albeit with one incredibly compelling (yet somewhat foreseeable, if you pick up on all the clues) twist. KOTOR II, on the other hand, made things sound much more complex than they actually were, giving the illusion of a deep plot while in reality delivering very little of note. By doing something different (i.e. adding a twist to the standard Star Wars story) while staying fairly simple, KOTOR crafts a compelling story that accentuates the game rather than taking away from it.
Similarly, Final Fantasy XII's story is nothing to write home about at first glance: a standard story of regency and succession. Its beauty lies in its simplicity, however, as it is streamlined enough to be compelling. Compare that to Final Fantasy VII's "plot" – a horrific monstrosity whose construction is the RPG equivalent of a Jackson Pollack painting, but less coherent – and it is easy to appreciate how much care and effort went into making sure that XII's plot actually makes enough sense to render game world interactions worth undertaking. Again, if you're going to utilize the dangling carrot, make sure that the carrot is tasty. Better yet, make sure it's a carrot, not a genetically modified carrot-like substance with all kinds of unnecessary additives and carcinogens.
Conclusion
Many console-style RPGs suffer from most if not all of these genre-killing problems. Perhaps it is simply due to the fact that, for whatever reason, this style of game is still popular and selling well with the gaming audience. Necessity breeds innovation, and there is apparently no financial necessity for RPG developers to change what they are doing. (As I write this, the DS remake of Dragon Quest V is utterly annihilating its competition on the Japanese game sales charts.) Unfortunately, their stagnation results in a genre that has become bland, rife with problems, and for the most part unappealing to those such as myself who once counted themselves part of the RPG fanbase. The console style role-playing game is anything but, as it has become more of a pseudo-interactive B-movie platform than anything involving actual role-playing. Furthermore, these console-style design sensibilities have infiltrated the once-fertile PC RPG landscape, as evidenced by games such as Oblivion and Mass Effect, making the descendants of classics such as Fallout and Baldur's Gate as desolate and unappealing as their console cousins. It is for these reasons that I have divorced myself from the console RPG fanbase, and can no longer support the direction of the genre that I once held in such high esteem.
4) Random / unavoidable battles
Sure, combat is fun sometimes (depending on the RPG), but being forced to fight enemies every three steps is a bit much, even for an abstraction such as an RPG system. The assumptions behind a random battle system (and to a lesser extent, a respawning system, which for simplicity's sake I will lump together with random battles) are, upon inspection, so ridiculously absurd that you have to wonder why they still exist in the first place.
First, random battles assume that there is an inexhaustible supply of enemies in any given dungeon or region of the world map. No matter how many enemies your party or character slays, there is always an infinite number more ready and waiting to be felled by the character's sword. Though fighting against impossible odds and succeeding is certainly dramatic, it's disheartening to know that no matter how many enemies you defeat, you are never any further along than where you started (unless you defeat the boss and magically leave the dungeon due to the dangling carrot cutscene). There is a definite sense of accomplishment in games such as LUNAR, where there is a finite number of foes in any given dungeon: you can "clear out" the dungeon. If you're going to be forced to be a menial exterminator, you should at least be allowed to complete your task satisfactorily!
Of course, even LUNAR suffered from the second assumption behind random/unavoidable battles: that combat is the only way to resolve conflict. This is primarily the case in console RPGs, but PC RPGs such as Baldur's Gate suffer from the same conceptual flaw in many areas. Combat is required in many areas not because the character's actions necessitate it, but rather because "that's how the game is supposed to be played." What if I want to play a character that is a smooth-talker? Why shouldn't I be able to at least attempt to solve a conflict non-violently? Apparently, it's as simple as the fact that the designers believe that a game should be about fighting your way to the next dangling carrot. Then again, it could be due to the next reason I have come to dislike RPGs:
5) "Grinding"
Though Dragon Quest had its share of this kind of thing, I fully blame Blizzard for the current rash of this RPG design problem. Sure, it is fine for games like Diablo, but true RPGs should not be about fighting battle after repetitive battle in order to amass power and wealth. There should be some driving purpose to the player's actions, whether it be progression of a plotline or whatever other sort of reason – in other words, "role playing." Opportunity for role playing necessitates a context for everything that the character is doing, and grinding or powergaming is not something that should be readily embraced -- again, games like Diablo exist for that kind of thing. It is effectively materialism on a virtual scale: do menial labor in order to be able to acquire that kick-ass sword you've wanted ever since you first saw it for sale in the local merchant's stock.
Of course, this problem is inextricably intertwined with several of the other ones that I have already listed, such as random battles and length, and it is certainly a "chicken or the egg" argument to attempt to determine which causes which. If I need to fight, fine, but there needs to be a good reason for that fighting. Providing a believable context for battle not only adds to the verisimilitude of the game itself (which is of utmost importance in an RPG), but it makes the battles themselves more memorable. Instead of being the dreck of the genre, such memorable battles actually heighten the game due to their scarcity and emphasis upon the player.
2) “Dangling carrot” style progression
Work your way through a dungeon, fight a creature arbitrarily deemed to be a "boss" character, then watch a five minute cinematic that reveals a scant bit more of an overarching narrative. Repeat over and over until the narrative reaches its conclusion. Much like with my issues with RPG length, my beef with this element of traditional RPG design is not with the design itself. I have no problem with a story being revealed bit by bit as the player progresses through the game. Oftentimes, however, these poorly designed dungeons are full of uninspired "puzzles," wave after wave of generic baddies, and exist solely for the purpose of providing the player with something to do, a way to kill time so as to prevent the game from being little more than a third-rate CGI film. I'm not really sure who decided that this console-style approach to RPGs was "fun," but it's little more than dangling a carrot on a string in front of a mule to get him to do menial tasks. In this case, instead of plowing the fields, the menial task is more akin to that of exterminator: clear the dungeon of troublesome pests and be rewarded for the effort with a shiny bit of bland exposition.
3) Enemies that scale to your level
I am not limiting this problem merely to games such as Final Fantasy VIII or Oblivion, in which the enemies literally scale in power in accordance with your own characters' levels (though this is certainly problematic and absurd in its own right). Instead, I am speaking in more general terms about the gameplay balance face-saving convention of dispatching more and more powerful enemies as the game progresses. Routinely fighting rats and common thugs with 20 HP in the early stages of the game is one thing; routinely fighting against elite soldiers and mages that are just as powerful as your epic-level demigod of a character in the late stages of the game is totally unacceptable.
Only very special characters make it to the higher levels of experience. As one 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons supplement stated, a truly epic-level character is pretty much a one in a million individual. For every hired goon that you encounter in late-game random encounters to be of a similarly high level to that of your characters is borderline insulting. It cheapens the player's accomplishments, as well as reeks of developers taking the lazy approach to game balance. Epic-level characters should be doing epic-level things, not merely mowing down artificially-enhanced baddies in the same manner as they did in the game's early hours. Likewise, epic characters wield awesome power – it makes zero sense to deprive the player of the fruits of his or her accomplishments by making all of their opponents equally powerful (and thus immune or highly resistant to the new powers that the player has spent so much time to acquire).
To be fair, tabletop RPGs like D&D suffer from a similar problem, as they too tend to collapse at the higher levels of experience. This issue is not limited to CRPGs in any case, but it's much more apparent and bothersome in the videogame experience.
This article is a bit difficult for me to write. You see, I used to swear by RPGs. During the PlayStation era, pretty much every game I purchased was some form of RPG: Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross, and the like. I even really liked Xenogears (and admittedly still admire it, at least for what it was trying to do if not for how it actually did it). Though I was by no means an RPG addict who would play everything released under the label of RPG, I did have a distinct gaming preference. This taste extended even to the PC, where the "truer" RPGs such as Fallout and Baldur's Gate held sway. My complaint is not so much about that style of game, as it has sadly gone the way of the dodo (due in no small part to the prevalence of console-style design sensibilities – see Oblivion).
No, I am focusing more on the console style or "JRPG" as it has come to be called. For my purposes, I consider a console-style RPG to be a game that involves a set of characters, possibly user-created but not usually, that progress along a fairly linear path toward an end goal. The focus is most often a grand, epic story, punctuated by dungeon crawling, combat, and treasure accumulation (i.e. "phat lewt"). The characters grow in power, usually by gaining arbitrary experience point awards that result in gaining levels. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are the prototype console RPGs, but games such as Knights of the Old Republic and Oblivion also fall squarely within the console-style designation as far as many of their design philosophies are concerned. (They are perhaps "hybrids" more than anything else.)
Though I used to love this style of game, I have since come to believe that the genre is so horribly flawed that it can no longer be considered worthwhile in any sense of the word. I still love some of the older games, but newer entries in the genre seem stale and outdated – stagnant entries in a stagnant genre. Before you label me an old fogey who refuses to "get with the times," I will outline many of the outrageous holdovers of the RPG genre that, for whatever reason, continue to interfere with the its ability to deliver a truly quality experience more than twenty years into the genre's development. Many of these things were forgivable fifteen or even ten years ago; today, they are an embarrassment.
1) Length
Length on its own is not necessarily a bad thing – I enjoy a thoroughly engaging epic quest as much as the next gamer. What I am talking about specifically is an artificial sense of length, most likely intended to make gamers feel that they are getting their full $50-60 worth of gaming goodness. RPGs are perhaps the most nefarious perpetrators of this gaming bloatedness, chock full of repetitive fetch quests, mini-games, and level building that seem to have no other purpose than to provide an “epic” (basically the gaming equivalent of calling something "nice") sense to what would most likely be an otherwise straightforward and unremarkable game.
Game developers take note: a gamer's time is valuable. Despite beliefs to the contrary, many of us do have other things to do, such as spending time with family and friends, doing our jobs, or participating in any number of other hobbies we might have. Artificially lengthening a game merely for the sake of meeting some arbitrary 40-50 hour (or more!) genre mark does not make for a better game. Nine times out of ten, it actually makes the game worse. As Wired.com's Chris Kohler said in one 1UP podcast, every good 50-hour game has an amazing 15-hour game trapped inside. I definitely agree: It is better to have a quality game of 15 hours in length than a 60-hour "epic" that is stretched so painfully thin that it is obvious to even the most casual player.
