Randomness in RPGs

CrazyCrab · 2014-07-24T06:06:58+0900

Hi everyone, recently a friend of mine made me play Fallout 2 and as much as I'm having fun, one element is somewhat ruining the experience for me. I know that it's a characteristic of most old western RPGs, but I just cant get over it. It's how random everything is. One turn I can shoot the enemy for 65 dmg using my SMG. The next turn I hit for 12. An enemy has +- 80 hp at this point. At the beginning of the game I had 31% chance to hit a scorpion with a spear. I missed 11 times in a row and almost died during the tutorial. With a high Stealing skill, I can pickpocket small items really easily and I almost never fail. The one time I failed I was machine gunned for something like 65 damage and given that I have like 50 hp this meant an instant reload and a couple of minutes wasted. Those things annoy me. I can understand when there is some chance, it makes the game a but more exciting I suppose, but when you miss 11 times in a row you know that there's something wrong. At the same time the friend that recommended me the game absolutely loves it. He also loves Warhammer though, so he really doesn't mind randomness in general. When we talk about it he says that without randomness the game is too predictable and just boring. What do you think? Should RPGs be this random? Is there a ''limit'' on how random it should be, for ex. by giving you +accuracy whenever you miss? Should it always be a clear number and just be reduced when there are things that make you miss etc? Thanks!

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Started by CrazyCrab Jul 23, 2014, 09:06 PM 41 posts Page 3 of 3 View original ↗

whitesphere

#41 Jul 28, 2014, 11:24 AM Source

I like some degree of randomness, but I am not a big fan of "powerful item ONLY accessible via rare item drops" since those can require grinding for hours just to get the one item.

And I'm not a big fan of bosses where victory pretty much relies on the mercy of the RNG.

But to some degree, a bit of randomness can help prevent the game from feeling repetitive.