RPG leveling up?.

One thing I don't get about RPG are the levelling up skills. Can you mess RPG games up that much that later on you cant defeat a boss because you levelled up wrong. In most RPG where you have to level up I always have to re start the game or think I have to re start the game because I am levelling up wrong. Can you actualy level up wrong in RPG games with skill points?.

Unless you are severely underleveled or your spec is totally wrong it might be impossible

Not these days. Many RPGs welcome experimentation in your skill-building. Levels don't really come into play except for acquiring new skills. If you're trying to use skills that don't make sense for your character that might be a problem, but that rarely happens unless it's a poorly optimized game.

it's pretty hard to screw up levelling in an rpg so bad that it's quite simply impossible to continue... what can happen is you waste points naively on useless stats for the wrong character and have to grind a little more

There really is no wrong way to level up, especially since a lot of rpgs will let you use your nonviolent skills to defeat a boss without even fighting, such as talking your way out of a situation. as far as combat goes, I really think it just depends on your playstyle, and the reason many people can't defeat certain bosses or challenges is because they might gain points for skills that they are unsure how to use or might not want later on, but there really is no wrong way to level up in most rpgs as long as the game is leveled and developed well

As Waffleboy mentioned.... Theres no wrong way to level up.....not so much that the you cannot complete the game...... However there many instances where you can have the wrong set of skills that makes playing the game so tedious that you won't want to continue..... However that purely depends on your threshold for resisting tedium...... Dark Souls anyone ? ;)

oh..... There are side quests and optional activities that you will absolutely have no way of completing if you don't have the right set of skills..... Which is kinda of a big deal....

RPG has to have weak skills in a character build.

I don't want an overpowered character good at everything. I even like those games with useless abilities like +1 defense, awesome!

^Atleast you're honest^

There not really a way you can poorly level up. More that the games was made for many other than you and this leads to the problem you character was made so that he/she can not deal with a require problem. t is up to the devoplers to make sure that does not happen.

You can overlevel and cheese your way through RPG but you change cheese your way through any game.

you could **** yourself over in Oblivion pretty good with the level scaling if you insisted on upgrading non-combat skills like stealth, lock-picking, etc to make a rogue without bothering to upgrade the a martial talent...then you find yourself getting torn apart by the enemies in combat because of the level scaling. Happened to me on my first run, but I managed to finish the game on the strength of alchemy alone...i ran past most things, and when I had to kill something i just poisoned it and then went invisible until the poison ran out, then repeat. Not fun at all, but I made it through.

Most rpgs won't stress tactics outside of the harder settings, knowing that some people just want story or a place to learn the mechanics without penalty. Most rpgs nowadays offer respecs anyway, so you can always re-assign level points later if you realize you've made a mistake.

@Ish_basic

"Not fun at all, but I made it through."

Pretty much describes every RPG ever ! :)

Actually this brings up a theory about RPGs That I discovered a while back....

RPGs are one of the genres people can keep playing even when they are no longer fun. Why is that, are you less like to leave a game if it lets you create a character ? Does this create some sort responsibility or Obligation ?

Or is it something else entirely.....

I remember hearing about one recently that was supposed to be really hard.

... or some people actually find them to be fun.

@Senor_Kami: don't get him started. It'll save your sanity

@Senor_Kami

Maybe... But its not enough for a game to fun overall.

Each tiny lil bit, even on its own should be well designed.

As has already been mentioned, this is a difficult thing to do in -most- modern RPGs or ARPGs but it depends entirely on how the leveling system is designed and other factors.

Here are some factors that make this less likely to happen:

• "Open world" RPGs
  • If the game is truly open world, then it's unlikely that you'll get locked into a boss battle that you can't simply just leave until you are better prepared for it. Although it's quite possible in the "Souls" games to walk into a fight you are grossly ill-prepared for, the games will almost always give you the option of simply leaving until you stand a better chance. Also, since they are ARPGs and not dependent on dice rolls or random change the way a traditional RPG might be, if you are sufficiently skilled and have enough patience you can beat virtually any boss in the game regardless of your character or equipment.
• Overall "toughness" increase with level
  • Some games increase a few base level stats that effect things like health, strength, defense, mana, etc regardless of which skills you pick when upgrading. This helps keep the player from upgrading themselves into a corner.
• Games where using a skill increases its level, rather than an arbitrary skill point assignment
  • This increases the likelihood that you'll level your character by using practical survival skills that work. However, in an open world game it's no guarantee because you can spend your days picking every lock in town instead of questing or fighting and end up in a bad situation anyway.

Here are some factors that make it -more- likely to happen in a game:

• Monster toughness that is scaled by your level.
  • As mentioned earlier, games like Oblivion increase the toughness of your enemies based on your character's level but not necessarily combat skill. This can result in you being attacked by tougher monsters (pretty much everywhere) because you leveled by increasing non-combat skills. Generally speaking I prefer it when games do not use this. It's frequently employed in games where the developer doesn't want to restrict the player's movement in the game world early on so the game world's difficulty scales with you (Oblivion, Skyrim) as opposed to games where the difficulty of monsters within the game world is fixed and if they kick your ass then you should rethink where you wander at your current level (the "Souls" games).
• "Classic" style RPGs
  • RPGs modeled after old-school computer RPGs tend to be a lot less forgiving in their design. Games like Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2 both require a fair amount of thought to go into your character design.
• Linear progression or no random encounters
  • Open world games let you backtrack and simply take another path until you're ready for this one, but other games might lock you into a path with no option other than to press forward. Final Fantasy games pass 10 could get like this, but they generally allowed you to farm fights until you were ready for a boss. Note that being underleveled for a particular boss battle is just as bad and can happen in linear progression games.
• Poorly designed skill systems
  • Games where skills are not created to be of equal value within the game world created will allow you to spend points in skills that might end up being useless to you.

Here are some games where something like this has happened to me or happened to others:

Deus Ex: HR - The original version of the game could hose your pretty badly if you didn't balance out your non-combat skills with some combat skills (a common mistake people would make if they were going for a no-kill playthrough). When you would reach a major boss battle, your non-combat skills were pretty much useless so you better at least have -some- idea of how to use an assault rifle or have entered the battle with the right equipment to stand a chance. In the "Director's Cut" of the game, they rebalanced the boss fights so you stand a much better chance of beating them even if your focus was around non-combat skills (much like Deus Ex 1 and 2 used to do).

Alpha Protocol - Imagine Deus Ex, but as a Tom Clancy spy novel. Not perfect, but if that premise sounds interesting to you then this was a -really- cool game to play through. Its biggest issue in design, however, was a skill system that wasn't well balanced, a semi-linear progression model, and bosses on whom certain skills and tactics that you spent points on might be completely useless. If you spent all your points on stealth, you might encounter a boss battle where you simply can't use stealth at which point your character may as well have no skills at all. Your "shotgun" skill is held in the same regard as your pistol or rifle skill, but a shotgun is useless against a boss who it's impossible to move close to.

Witcher 2 - A very old-school RPG and pretty unforgiving, I got to the end boss battle a bit underleveled and underprepared which has made it very challenging. Since I can't backtrack from that point, my only option is to power through it with my weak character or revert back to an earlier save when I still had the option to leave.

-Byshop

talking out of your a$$ really arn't you?

Generally speaking, if a game's enjoyable, chances are it's well designed. I get what you're saying, that a game should be well designed, but if someone enjoys a game then you can't really fault them for that.

@turtlethetaffer:

That sucks. Why can't people like good things. Like me ! :(

@Lulu_Lulu: they just have a different view of what "good" means. What's good to one person might not be so great for another. It's how it's always been.

@mastermetal777:

And thats another thing. Whats with the lack of specificity ? What makes it so good exactly ?

@Lulu_Lulu: because it's satisfying to watch a character grow the way you want them in an RPG? That's the best way I can tell it. And besides, it's all subjective. If you don't like it, that's fine. Plenty of people do, and that's why it exists in the first place.

@mastermetal777: @mastermetal777:

You dont find it weird how RPG Elements overlap with skinnerian conditioning techniques? Mind you the concept of conditioning has got little to do with fun and enjoyment. The goal is to get people to keep playing whether they are enjoying them selves or not.

And with that said. I like watching my character grow too. Like batman, where progress is more mechanical and practical. Why do people prefer the boring "making numbers go up" way ?

Breaks my heart !!! :(

@Lulu_Lulu: It's more than numbers nowadays. It's all about skills progression alongside the stats. People want the numbers because it's a good indicator of progress in games where the mechanics involved are based around simple controls rather than the more intricate ones. The skills attained are what makes the progress. The numbers are there to show you what that progress does. It's not conditioning. Batman has a leveling and experience system too, lest we forget, so it does have a pseudo-RPG like system there.

@mastermetal777

Its not that simple...... The numbers and mechanics are inversly proportional to one another...... the more emphasis there is numbers the more the mechanics suffer, and vice versa..... the most one can do is strike a balance between the two..... Which kinda seems like a "please everyone" kinda of tactic, unfortunately those who aren't squarely within that balance threshold will be dissapointed, people like me will bitch and whine that skill is not important enough, others will whine about the numbers being useless (usually after grinding for hours).

Not to mention the community has been very vocal against adding RPG Elements to other games.

And lastly, although Batman has an XP system, its most definately not about making numbers go up, the only attribute of thats even close to resembling that kind of design is His Armour, everything is mechanical.

@Lulu_Lulu: Because some folks think RPGs are well designed. Because the good ones are

@turtlethetaffer:

Usually because gameplay isn't a factor.

Why are people even arguing with Lulu_Lulu? He will argue day and night about how bad RPG's are and will not relent. It's like beating a dead horse with a shoe.

To answer skipper's question though, most games, when developed right, can be beat even if you do not build a character optimally. Less effective builds may make certain areas in a game more challenging, but generally not impossible. I do see a lot of RPG's these days design their games in such a way you can redistribute skill points (or whatever they may call them) in case you dislike your choices.

Dragon Age Origins does that. It even gives you a "beat the game/get fucked over" choice near the end, where one of the most powerful characters leaves, never to come back, unless you say the right thing, leaving you with you pants down against the final boss.

Good RPGs never leave you in a position where you can't beat the game because of bad leveling. It might be a bit harder, but you should be able to carry on even with a handicap.

@Lulu_Lulu: it's a bigger factor than you give it credit for.

@mastermetal777:

Peoples preference to mas effect 1 over its sequels seems to suggest other wise.

You underestimate the power of conditioning.

@Lulu_Lulu: considered they're a small number in the vast majority who love 2 over all the others, it's a moot point.

@mastermetal777:

Comr on man. You know how I feel about majority opinion. Besides the select few who do prefer ME 1 are right... Mass Effect 1 is the better RPG. The sequels, however, are just better games over all.

No need to restart the game again and again. You're either fighting enemies above your level or giving up because of challenge. That said, some games do punish you for messing up your character but very few games do that and nothing that you can't fix during gameplay later on.

Plenty will punish you for making bad leveling decisions (focusing too little for instance) but none that I can think of will make it impossible to complete by leveling "wrong".

@XIntoTheBlue:

I never said RPGs are bad ...

@Lulu_Lulu: No, you just imply that the basic mechanics of an RPG are bad regardless of where they're being used, and criticize and berate every single RPG being discussed. Hence why people say you believe RPGs are bad.

@mastermetal777:

What mechanics ? Its just numbers.

And the bottom line is I never said RPG is bad. Hell I dont even think that.

@Lulu_Lulu: Yeah, because you're so completely obsessed with the numbers that you fail to see the skill involved in actually killing enemies and using tactics because numbers aren't as important as you make it seem.

It is the pageants of gears, The players need some for the players to affect their character role in the game play. The stats and abilities are the best way to do this. It suck when they make the start worthless.

There are some poor Table top RPG and most of them are just narrate, roll, narrate.

You can become over level in RPG but you can cheese your way through any game.

@mastermetal777:

Thats where optimization strategies come into play. The best tactic is to grt bigger numberd than whatever it is you're trying yo beat. This is almost always tge case in non combat scenarios like persuading NPCs and picking locks and anything with a stat check. The exceptions where this isn't the case is when they use die rolls and RNGs.

If the numbers aren't important then remove them. The game will be better for it.

@Lulu_Lulu: The numbers exist because some people want a representation of their increase in power. And either way, it completely depends on the game. Some games require it due to the large amount of complex systems at play (something which many people like), and others don't due to their deliberate simplicity (again, something which many people like). You can't just force all games to do it one way. That's how stagnation happens.

@mastermetal777:

And thats pefectly okay..... you just cant call Iit a balanced andchallanging game after that.

Theres nothing wrong with this type of design if the reason you play it is purely for that false sense of progression. We all like making progress. No matter how abstract it is.

@Lulu_Lulu: it's not unbalanced when there's a legitimate reason to utilize your skills in tandem with the micromanaging of the numbers because some foes don't care about how much cold resistance you have. They'll just launch fire instead as a counter.

@mastermetal777:

Then get fire resistance too....

They are the same thing, you see tfet all tge time in RPGs, ice. Fire, lightning, dark, holy, wind, etc.... they are all just different types of damages and theres no skillfull way around it. Just increase your resistances to whatever it is you dont want to damage you.

People actually believe this is depth.... its kinda sad really.

@Lulu_Lulu: its deep because you have to consider all your other abilities at the same time. Building a character like that requires a lot of depth in order for it to be challenging. As a counter case in point, Diablo 3 actually requires very little in terms of character customization. All you end up doing is hacking and slashing your whole way through without regards to STATS. I'm learning that the hard way. And that's just going through the first five acts and dying only twice on Expert difficulty. I hope the end game is better than that. That's not depth or complexity. It's just get better stuff and wail on things, which, while fun, is ultimately shallow as hell. That, or I'm better at the game than I thought.

@mastermetal777

Nope, that just makes it more complex...... If it was truly deep then there would be no optimized Strategies........ Mind you Diablo's gameplay is literally just attacking repetitively to build up your super move, use it then repeat the process all over again....... Its even worse than Dark Souls.

I have to ask ..... Do you really struggle with these games ? I just grind hard and bam.... Overpowered.... Its tedious but it works.