A
Anonymous01/21/26, 09:11No.3913148Lack of challenge kills rpg genre
>boot up cool rpg
>First few hours seem really easy
>It's okay, this is still the intro phase!
>Next 10 hours are about the same difficulty (aka piss easy)
>It'll pick up soon at the halfway mark! for sure! I tell myself
>Half way through and it's getting easier than at the start since I know the mechanics and my toons are beefy
>Finally die once to a random boss
>Ok now it's gonna get tough!
>Kill the boss second try easily
>Drop the rpg
I've had this happen with almost a dozen RPGs and jrpgs that I ended up dropping after about 15-30 hours of playtime....
Is this normal? I don't like feeling like a game is basically playing itself, without much effort or sweat on my part. It's not satisfying seeing my characters overpowered against incompetent NPCs....
99
Replies
A
Anon01/21/26, 12:25No.3913195
>Is this normal?
Yes. The genre is just like that. It's limited and grindable by design and not a single one has a genuinely balanced, well designed and solidly challenging campaign that takes good advantage of a set of thought out mechanics. It really is generally bad because it caters to people who care above all about the fantasy of "going on an advantage with a bunch of people, making decisions and growing more powerful", even if the actual gameplay is cheeseable as fuck.If you want an actually compelling turn based game play a proper tactical game like Advance Wars.
A
Anon01/21/26, 13:05No.3913209
Yeah I feel like these games are all made with the assumption that the player is a casual just stumbling through the game with no real thought put into build or strategy so if you are actively taking an interest in the game's systems they'll become a cakewalk as the optimization/skill ceiling gets higher. And if there are difficulty settings they'll probably just reduce the damage enemies take and increase the damage they do, which isn't a good way to increase challenge.
A
Anon01/21/26, 13:22No.3913218
I don't understand the obsession autists have with difficulty. If the game is fun I'll play it. Too much difficulty will even make it a chore. I understand if the game is so easy that there's literally no reason to engage with the mechanics and systems but the majority of games aren't like that. I can only think of DQXI as an example and even that has Draconian settings to make the game harder.
A
Anon01/21/26, 13:54No.3913235
if you want a psychoanalysis go hire a professional.
A
Anon01/21/26, 14:14No.3913243
Jarpiggers dont like challenge, they want an anime where you have to press a button for the next dialogueYou see when they even get a hint of future challenge, they freak out and immediately search for ways to break the game before they even start - grinding in the starting area for hours, looking up cheese strats like playing cards or hitting your own party members - all to avoid the off chance an enemy might not die in one hit later on. Then of course they bitch the game is brokenNot because it allowed them to do this, but because they felt forced to do this in order to avoid the potential difficulty. They are mad at any game that presents the threat of challenge, on principle.
A
Anon01/21/26, 15:12No.3913272
This game was so bad it made me furious
A
Anon01/21/26, 17:15No.3913360
Difficulty means less choices. Rpg's are all about choices. These are not compatible.
All difficult games are arcade like in nature and thus there is only one/two correct way to play them to beat the challenge. Rpg's are all about building your character or focus ons tory if you are playing a jrpg.
You can check out underrail for how great difficulty is. It is just pure boredom while recycling the same discord meta.
Or you can check out the 80's, where most rpg's were just a check of "did you select the correct skill at the beginning of the game.".
Non diablo arpg's of course aren't part of this since they are just action games anyway.
A
Anon01/21/26, 17:20No.3913365
>let player save wherever they want to
>now have the freedom and the excuse to make individual encounters more challenging instead of offloading the "challenge" to time wasting shit
>player can now retry the actual gameplay more quickly and engage with the game mechanics properly for a greater percentage of the game's run length
Pokemon solved the problem ages ago. It's honestly a wonder that more RPGs still love to cling to dumb save systems that limit the kinds of challenge you can impose.
A
Anon01/21/26, 17:29No.3913371
if you want challenge, grind battlepasses for a real time multiplayer game like Counter Strikerpgs are extremely easy, every action is paused for you and enemies act predictable.
A
Anon01/21/26, 18:29No.3913408
Bot thread.
A
Anon01/21/26, 21:52No.3913496
At the end of the day difficultyfags only complain about lack of difficulty in games because they don't get their big dick elitism badge for beating a game others can't beat. They can dress it up however they like but that is always the core. Nobody actually likes the difficulty in Souls games for example, what they actually enjoy is the idea that they've beaten something others could not beat. In a way it's almost like difficultyfags are playing single player games but in a mentally multiplayer way. They can't enjoy something purely for what it is. It NEEDS to be something they are better at than others for them to enjoy it.
A
Anon01/21/26, 23:04No.3913512
Not grinding and relying on items and skills instead seems to salvage a lot of the challenge in JRPGs. JRPGs usually have low level strats built into them and it's up to you to figure them out. Or just just grind and click through dialog and battle windows like a zombie. Whatever is more enjoyable for you. Sometimes signing the optimal places to grind is fun too.It might be cool if devs included optional level caps for each area wherein Random encounters would just stop when you hit the level before the level which makes that areas boss a breeze.I don't think global enemy level scaling is the answer. But maybe it could work if It only kicks in at a set level and they cap it at five levels below the main character for mobs and rewards scale too, so some satisfaction can still be gained from grinding.
A
Anon01/21/26, 23:56No.3913534
Jrpgs are just visual novels with minigames
The fact you can triviliaze any challenge by grinding should be an obvious hint.
Play western crpgs like the pathfinder games if you want constant challenge.
A
Anon01/22/26, 00:47No.3913552
It's funny how addicted a vapid anon can get to a bit when he gets some attention from it. He'll keep doing it far past its expiration date, desperate for that initial rush, just repeating the same thing over and over for months or even years.
A
Anon01/22/26, 03:06No.3913600
Working Designs was right along.
A
Anon01/23/26, 06:27No.3914252
>picrel
>there is a mod that fixes the dogshit localization
>but using it means i can't use the difficulty rebalance mod that makes the game less snorefest and magic stops sucking because both uses same files
A
Anon01/25/26, 19:35No.3915469
This is why jrpgs are for children and it's very hard to numb yourself enough as an adult to tolerate them. It's not just grinding, it's easy grinding. Random encounters in jrpgs are like baby puzzles that you have to solve 1,000 times with nearly zero variation.
A
Anon01/25/26, 19:44No.3915476
I will never understand the mindset of losers, literal losers who become upset when they are not losing.
If games are overly difficult it removes player choice of how to play. You chose the strongest party members and equipment. Someone else might want to play with only members they like or magic only or whatever else.
The entire benefit of having RPG mechanics is giving control of the difficulty to the player instead of having som arbitrarily fixed version determined by people who spent years playing the game they are setting the difficulty of.
A
Anon01/25/26, 22:03No.3915579
pretty much the standard since the 90s, these games all badly need difficulty options but rarely have them
A
Anon01/26/26, 21:14No.3915965
>he's still trying to get attention
lmao