I'm interested in gathering some opinions about RPGs out of personal curiosity:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGRGMWNsWTN3MERIRG1vVjdDaGt2T0E6MQ
Also, mainly, I'm trying to get a feeling for the features offered by google docs' survey feature compared to other options.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
Submit
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http://lostfacts.net/boards
He never hit the brakes and he was shifting gears
It's a little tricky to answer the last question. I love Chrono Trigger and FFVI as much as I love KoToR and Fallout 3, but at this point they might as well be entirely different genres (at least the Bethesda games).
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Ocarinakid
Survey is now dead, I'll post the data I collected from this and other boards in a bit.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
Here are the results:
I put this survey on multiple boards, CE, RI, PotD, and a few others. I managed to get 214 responses. Not all numbers will add up to 214, as it appears that a nonresponse was acceptable for some items, definitely the first, maybe others.
52% (111) preferred JRPGs or ERPGs, while 26% (55) preferred WRPGs. 48 did not respond to this question.
For the rest, I’ll list the number of respondents per category, SD=strongly disagree, D=disagree, N=neither agree nor disagree, A=agree, and SA=strongly agree
I like linear RPGs
SD: 18
D: 41
N: 79
A: 64
SA: 11
I enjoy level grinding
SD: 23
D: 62
N: 58
A: 56
SA: 13
A strong story is important for a good RPG experience
SD: 1
D: 3
N: 15
A: 70
SA: 124
I prefer RPGs with open worlds
SD: 3
D: 13
N: 59
A: 84
SA: 53
I prefer my RPGs to have many different statistics to keep track of
SD: 6
D: 31
N: 80
A: 65
SA: 30
It is important for RPGs to have good music
SD: 3
D: 9
N: 24
A: 79
SA: 97
I play RPGs mostly for the story
SD: 5
D: 32
N: 56
A: 77
SA: 43
I play RPGs mostly for the gameplay
SD: 3
D: 19
N: 50
A: 107
SA: 32
I prefer action RPGs to turn-based RPGs
SD: 16
D: 36
N: 77
A: 55
SA: 28
The RPGs released today are better than the RPGs of the past
SD: 30
D: 49
N: 99
A: 26
SA: 9
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
I'm surprised people like level grinding.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
JRPG vs WRPG is such a tough decision. I ended up going with my favorite RPG and just picking that one (Tales of Symphonia =P)
Edit: And I'm glad the results showed how difficult a decision it was, or at least that people are more or less even on it.
Grinding can be fun...sometimes, depending on how it's done. If the battle system is good, I usually don't mind.
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
Ugh, grinding is the worst part of an RPG. You should be able to hit every enemy in an area once and be up to par on where you need to be. Having to go back and forth and collect more baddies is something you should only need to do if you're looking for extra gold or items.
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SIGNATURE
The way leveling up works in most games, where you can complete the same challenges over and over again and keeping getting experience points (even if they get less and less valuable over time, since you require more and more for each experience level), is neither fun nor realistic. Better would be for each unique challenge to have an experience reward, and for experience to accumulate in such a way that in general, challenges would bring you up to a minimum experience level rather than adding to your experience linearly. Thus, beating a kobold after a dragon would give no experience, but you'd still end up at the same level as if you'd beaten the kobold first.
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"As for me, I can neither drum nor trumpet, nor tell jokes, nor fart amusingly at parties, nor play the harp."
At the risk of starting a Thing, I also generalized from my favorite RPG, and went with Mass Effect.
Now unquestioningly, the video game I have devoted the greatest part of my life to is Morrowind (well, or Age of Kings but we needn't get into that now), but Mass Effect is so much tighter. And you know what Mass Effect specifically disallows? Grinding. You know what else it eschews? Open-worldness. It is an odd situation. I prefer open-worldness in theory, in the same sense that I prefer elaborate, beautiful-but-wordy authors like Joan Didion or (to stay in-genre) Ursula Leguin to reading the Internet, which is plentiful but not beautiful.
Anyway for JRPG I went with Chrono Trigger which also asks remarkably little in terms of grinding and pretends to open-worldliness but doesn't have it. So I dunno.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
Relevant to the question of linearity vs. open worlds is Barry Schwartz, who argues that considering lots of choices is counterproductive to happiness. To me, this makes a degree of intuitive sense: decision-making is a pain.
http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/0060005696
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bschwar1
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"As for me, I can neither drum nor trumpet, nor tell jokes, nor fart amusingly at parties, nor play the harp."