What do you think of this trend of making everything a RPG? I think it’s a excuse to make games with shit gameplay.
C’mon, do you think developers intentionally sabotage their own games? People do things because they think it’s the best course of action. It’s hard for people to bear the cognitive dissonance of intentionally doing something they don’t think is the best option.
It’s much simpler to say that they have a different set of values, that they look at it a different way.
On a base level it feels good to grow stronger. It feels good to find something easier than you did before. You can do this through legitimately getting better at the game and more consistent at executing, or you can do this through stats increasing. The brain registers these things in similar ways.
On the marketing end, adding hamster wheels to games makes them last longer. Players get a sunk cost in the games. You have regular reward scheduling. Simple stuff.
Beyond that, it kind of makes an intuitive sense to most people. You want your game to be more complex? Add more functions. You can’t really add new mechanics, so add bonuses that players invest into. Look at all the online multiplayer games like Call of Duty where you grind for things, and have loadouts of mostly identical weapons. RPG mechanics can be attached to anything, so they are attached to everything. Don’t know when to dole out new abilities? Make it an RPG, let experience points sort it out. Don’t want to overwhelm players with having tons of abilities from the start? Same thing. It’s progression and tutorialization in one package.
It doesn’t fit in everything, it’s kinda lame to grind to trivialize games, but people think it’s cool, and it appeals to some base human desires in a way.
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