What do you love and hate about RPGs?

[Barry Admin]

I love the scope and expanse of them, although I also hate it in a way as I usually give up and get bored right before the end. A big thing for me is definitely the progression, I've always found this exciting since I was a kid, reading fantasy novels like The Hobbit and the Dragonlance Saga, and being really excited by ordinary characters turning into super bastards. Carving out your own build is wonderful.

Definitely enjoy indepth systems as I always love pulling things apart and learning how they work, and how I can most efficiently use them.

Not so keen on having to talk to so many NPC fucks, who all stand around gormesly, usually waiting for some sap like me to do their god damn fetch quests for them.

[Kelvin]

It obviously depends on the game, but generally speaking, I don't actually enjoy the gameplay of RPGs all that much, just the stories and the mindlessness of it all. Most recently I played Xenoblade 2, and it's honestly not that much fun to play 80% of the time. I just liked the narrative (for its many faults), and the fact it was an easy game to grind through with podcasts on in the background.

It's just an inherently repetitive and slow moving genre, but it takes so long to finish a game, you end up getting attached to the world and charachters, like gaming's equivilant of Stockholm Syndrome.

[Bhazor]

I mostly play RPGs for the combat. Definitely prefer older school tactical rpgs. Divinity Original Sin 1 + 2 being two of the best games of the last 5 years and I think Dragon Age Origins and Inquistion are pretty solid so long as you play on the Hardcore friendly fire setting. Action RPGs like Diablo just bore the arse off me after about 3 hours. At which point you'll usually hit on the winning combo of skills that you'll be mashing for the remaining 70 hours. Proper action action RPGs are kind of a mixed bag. They can be good if theres equal care in both parts (the better Tales Of games, the better Metroidvanias) but more often than not action is the distant second priority (Witcher Series).

The only RPGs I've played where the writing or story has been the main drive are KOTOR 2 Planescape Torment and Tyranny AKA the Chris Avellone games, Witcher 3 and Anachranox.

[Twed]

I hate being made to wait. Dialogue with pauses, screens that I can't just skip through. I'm a fast reader, and RPGs in particular like to assume you're completely gormless and love to have you hanging around looking at nothing.

[Zetetic]

Seeing how someone else thinks that people work, through the lens of interacting with a world they've made.

Which I guess could apply to lots of games - but RPGs have to find an interesting balance of mechanics and choose-your-own-adventure, and you're generally getting more and more powerful in how you can change that world.

More honestly, maybe it's more of the latter - the feeling of getting to remake these worlds.

[Hecate]

Action RPGs like Diablo just bore the arse off me after about 3 hours.

You have to push through that, you can't be cutting your losses after 3 hours.
That's like trying out meditation and giving up after an hour because your bum hurts and you keep thinking about biscuits.
Most decent ARPGs don't start to click until you're at least 10 hours in.

I've enjoyed stuff like dragon age and risen in the past but I just can't be bothered nowadays, boil it down to the essentials, give me fun combat, loot, easily skippable dialogue, throw in some procedural generation and a load of difficulty levels and I'm happy to click away like a zombie.

[Mister Six]

I love immersing myself in a massive, interactive world, letting it fill up my mind, imagining what these characters get up to when I'm not on the screen, seeing how my actions shape their life and mine. It's silly, I know, but I like to get "in character" in the games, closing doors behind me to stop guards peering in even when I know that the AI doesn't accommodate it.

I especially like it when games are sprawling and non-linear, and don't feel the need to push me around too much. For that reason, Fallout 2 remains my favourite-ever RPG, even though the combat is atrocious. It's also why the recent crop of Kickstarter RPGs - or at least the ones I've played - haven't quite done it for me. The new Torment, for example, has great characters and tons of ways to interact with the world, but you're basically pushed through a series of linear sections with no going back, so if you didn't get that one object necessary to progress an NPC's story/skillset, you're buggered. It's also too small to be able to dig into every supporting cast member - you basically have to find a team you're comfortable with and stick with them for the game if you want to see their character arcs through.

Conversely, you've got something like Fallout 4, that's sprawling and packed with incident, but also very shallow in its writing, with minimal dialogue and linear quests. A huge disappointment, as Fallout: New Vegas was the closest a proper 3D RPG has ever come to giving me that old-school buzz.