RPG Genre - Why does story rank so high?

[Xilef]

Obviously there should be a balance of features in any game, but I keep reading RPG fans touting that only a good story matters, the gameplay can be non-engaging, terrible, boring or have an odd difficulty curve and none of that would matter if the writer wrote a lovely story underneath the crap.

This is the one reason why I picked up writing, because straight away it was story that came up most important in an RPG game with all my surveys, very disheartening to hear where I am more of a gameplay over anything person, it's caused me to take some alternative decisions in my life just to pick up writing for my project, of which I am grateful, but does it matter if the game is a lot of fun?

I think ATB and random encounters are brilliant and I value good game design in a game over a good story, a story can be made into a book or a film, only a game has the immersion and it's gameplay that puts you into the game world.

As a result, I have had to work to get a killer story for the genre fans and keep the gameplay and story on-par with each other.

Since when did game design come second in games?

 

[coyotecraft]

Because the story is the main attraction. Normally. I mean, it's in the title. It's usually Legend this or Saga that. Could you imagine, "The Active Time Battles: Random Encounters" or maybe "The Menu Scrolls".

 

[Xilef]

Because the story is the main attraction. Normally. I mean, it's in the title. It's usually Legend this or Saga that. Could you imagine, "The Active Time Battles: Random Encounters" or maybe "The Menu Scrolls".

It's very rarely in the titles and if story is the main attraction, why not write a book or make a film? Surely the player's involvement is the reason why it's a game and not a film?

Too many RPG game creators focus on writing an excellent story but leave no room for player involvement or actual game in the role-playing-game, it annoys me when I'm having to sit and read dialogue boxes of two characters talking to each other, if it's such a fantastic story then it should be carried through gameplay not traditional story telling techniques that are from the legacy of cinema-film productions.

I get the feeling of awe from a great story, but I only get to that point if the game is actually any good.

On the subject of titles, I am seeing a heck of a lot of 'Chronicles of an Echoing Tale - The Shadow of a Subtitle' appearing, doesn't do much to sell the game.

 

[Toams]

In my opinion, you REALLY need all four to set a decent experience.

However, I chose gameplay because a game without solid gameplay is boring no matter how compelling the story, great the music and awesome the graphics.
This pertains to certain game genres though. Point'n'click games for example have (imo at least) dull gameplay, but they can be cool because of the graphics/music/story combination.

For some people story is all there is to it, but I think this is really about personal taste.
I myself expect something from when I start up a game. -I expect to be able to play a game.
If I wanted a good story, I'd have a better chance just reading a book.
If I wanted good graphics, I'd go watch a movie, or browse a graphic designer's portfolio.
If I wanted good audio, I'd listen to some music.
Interactive gameplay is something offered only in computer games. (I say interactive to remove tabletop games from the equation)

However, games offer the possibility of a combination of all those, which is AWESOME.

 

[Ellie]

I think for a lot of people RPGs are a way of creating a book, novel, etc, but with some graphics to go alongside. A lot of the RPG Maker games I've played have been more like graphical novels than actual games. If your question is why people do that, then it's as futile as asking why people would write graphical novels when they can just write novels.

Really the genre is actually two conflating genres and I think a distinction should be made especially by the game creators, as to whether their game is a puzzling, thought provoking action RPG where you have to think about battles and whatnot, or whether it is more of an interactive novel. I think most games here would actually better fit the interactive novel genre.

 

[Byron]

Story for RPGs is a BIG thing since the idea of an RPG is a role playing game, you take the role of the character in his/her story. However I do agree with you. The story isn't the be all end all of game making. A game must have an engaging story yes, but the story is only as good as the environment around it. If the controls are stiff and hard to use that will detract from gameplay value, but it isn't as important as the other two.
I think if there was a heierachy I would lable it thusly: Story and Graphics > Gameplay > Music.
Either way they are all equal.
I'll expand on this when I get home.

 

[Xhukari]

I'd actually say Gameplay. Any and all genres, gameplay gameplay gameplay. You can have a good game with a bad story, you really struggle to have a good game with bad gameplay. The closest is the like of Heavy Rain and such, which have such split opinions on.

For me, games cannot hold my interest until the end without good gameplay; I have played many, but not even half-finished any Final Fantasy game for this reason. And I include a lot of people consider some of the best FF; 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9. I enjoy many RPG elements, and for me, it is the developing and fine-tuning or a character that makes the RPG, not the story. I enjoyed games like Fable TLC and Crimson Shroud for these reasons.

 

[coyotecraft]

Too many RPG game creators focus on writing an excellent story but leave no room for player involvement or actual game in the role-playing-game, it annoys me when I'm having to sit and read dialogue boxes of two characters talking to each other, if it's such a fantastic story then it should be carried through gameplay not traditional story telling techniques that are from the legacy of cinema-film productions.

Are you're thinking of games like Ys I or Legend of Zelda? Where you play as a silent protagonist and the player is only clued in to whats going on and where to go next by talking to NPCs.

That doesn't really work when you have a party of characters who all have their own voices. This is where people use cutscenes and dialog boxes. In these RPGs you aren't role-playing as a single character, you're in control of a team of characters. Although the story might focus on a individual character at times, player involvement is going to be limited because it's the characters' story not the player's. You can't really use gameplay to show an ally turn traitor who meets secretly with with the enemy while the others sleep. Especially if you want to keep it suspenseful and keep the traitor's identity a secret; the only way you're going to accomplish that is with dialog that reveals it's one of the party memebers. You can use player involvement afterwards with a decision to split up the party. Create a sense of anxiety, when the player knows one of the characters can't be trusted and will have consequences for whoever is paired with the traitor.
Imo, you can't have fantastic story without character dynamics. And you can't have character dynamics without dialog and cutscenes to show the character's motivation, resolve, growth, and personality that the player will understand, relate, and become attached to.
But yeah, in the amature rpg maker community, there are a lot of boring scenes you have to button smash through while the sprites just stand still. A lot of the time the scenes are unnecessary. Like flashbacks of events that just happened or history lesson introductions that have no bearing to the story or don't become relevant until late in the game when the player is sure to have forgotten it.

 

[Xilef]

Are you're thinking of games like Ys I or Legend of Zelda? Where you play as a silent protagonist and the player is only clued in to whats going on and where to go next by talking to NPCs.

That doesn't really work when you have a party of characters who all have their own voices. This is where people use cutscenes and dialog boxes. In these RPGs you aren't role-playing as a single character, you're in control of a team of characters. Although the story might focus on a individual character at times, player involvement is going to be limited because it's the characters' story not the player's. You can't really use gameplay to show an ally turn traitor who meets secretly with with the enemy while the others sleep. Especially if you want to keep it suspenseful and keep the traitor's identity a secret; the only way you're going to accomplish that is with dialog that reveals it's one of the party memebers. You can use player involvement afterwards with a decision to split up the party. Create a sense of anxiety, when the player knows one of the characters can't be trusted and will have consequences for whoever is paired with the traitor.
Imo, you can't have fantastic story without character dynamics. And you can't have character dynamics without dialog and cutscenes to show the character's motivation, resolve, growth, and personality that the player will understand, relate, and become attached to.
But yeah, in the amature rpg maker community, there are a lot of boring scenes you have to button smash through while the sprites just stand still. A lot of the time the scenes are unnecessary. Like flashbacks of events that just happened or history lesson introductions that have no bearing to the story or don't become relevant until late in the game when the player is sure to have forgotten it.

I was thinking more of RPG maker games than Zelda or "ys i"(what?)

And I'm talking of reducing cut scenes to two dialogue boxes and more animation, so all the waffle is delivered in short bursts, or deliver shocking surprises in battle form, the traitor could be speculated by various party members every now and then, maybe the player wakes up alone and sees a shadowy figure but all the team deny it if you talk to them individually and then later a battle initiates where the traitor is surprise revealed, could be versus a different boss or something, keeps the player involved in the game rather than sitting back, doing some heavy reading

 

[So fist]

but I keep reading RPG fans touting that only a good story matters

Because most players equate a good experience to a good story even if the narrative had absolutely nothing to do with it. We do this because the rpg subgenre reminds us of all the conventions that we see in movies and books we read, and when the product brings enjoyment we say to ourselves, "I like that story" even if it was a cacophonous shamefilled sleazy pot boiler like Farcry 3.

We look fondly back on Final Fantasy 7 and say to ourselves I enjoyed that story, even though we didn't really actually care about any character or had any emotional investment other than the euphoria of fun and achievement. The reality is we liked the music of Final Fantasy 7, the look of it, the fact that we were teenagers when we played it, the self insertion fantasy it's largely empty shell characters provided. I don't even remember the story. I remember the music and the hours of grinding to power up materia and hanging around with my friends passing the controller around.

What is important about narrative is thematic and tonal consistency. Achieve those and even the most basic of storytelling is successful. Notice I didn't say good or brilliant, but successful. Stories are measured by an audience in terms of whether they successfully fulfill expectations for entertainment. The Mass Effect series was a good example of success and failure in regards to this principle. The first two games set up and delivered stories that were tonally and thematically consistent as products that shared consistent values. In both games you had to form a rag tag band of misfits to take on a monolithic enemy that seeked to destroy the beautiful pluristic diversity of the universe. Then suddenly in the third game to save the universe all options require you to destroy what you and your character thought you were fighting to protect, our uniqueness. The simple optimism of the first two games are completely burnt to a cinder by the nihilistic mess that was the third game's ending. Why was it so awful? Because we were not set up for it by the prior games and the third game while tonally dark was not enough set up to change the player's expectation for the ending. This would be like having Return of the Jedi end with Luke killing Vader and then joining Palpatine to kill all his friends in the rebellion. The audience would feel betrayed and they should because they spent two friggin movies trying to root for this farmboy.

It's not so much that you should be thinking as a game writer how do I write a great story. Rather it's about what kind of story am I going to tell and who will it be for. Zelda 3: A Link to the Past is a game designed for kids and innocent teenagers. As such in certain ways it is sterilized. Zelda is kidnapped by an evil wizard but at no time is she herself in actual peril of being victimized by those green knights with the swords or even the evil wizard. The land is overrun by monsters, but the villagers are safe in the village. There is clear delineation between safe areas and unsafe areas. This is design and storytelling for kids who still want adults to lead them by the hand. For it's targetted audience it's innocence and paternal safety is a success, because it sticks to those thematic principles and fullfills the expectations it sets up.

 

[cheetahxing]

Awesome Ideas in this thread. my 2 cents: I'd say that story helps to carry players past "flaws" in the rpg design (mostly that grinding takes a long time). It's much easier to kill 1,000 boars when you know it's all that's stopping you from taking down the baddie or gathering a mcguffin. I have no idea why more RPGs don't rip off the auto win stuff from Earthbound. That would make grinding less of a chore.

 

[Bladezuez]

I happen to prefer the gameplay but at the same time if the story isn't engaging then the gameplay can get tedious. Also if the music isn't setting the theme just right, if it doesn't "fit", then that can also throw my mood off of the game. just my two cents worth.

 

[coyotecraft]

I was browsing some game sites and apparently "RPG" is now synonymous with MMO. I had to dig through a couple pages before I found one that was single-player; even that one felt like I was playing a MMO.
MMOs and browser based rpgs have a different story structure compared to other rpgs. It's like the difference between a comic series and a book series. One is in it for the long run, the other is a limited experience.
A series of quests Vs one grand adventure.

I'm going to say that story would rank lower for those types of games. I know people can really get into the lore, but I think those players are using it to make their own stories.

 

[BlueScope]

RPGs simply refer to the in-depth management of mostly a few, sometimes only one character(s), which means their equipment, their stats, their actions in the provided world, and so on. As the word 'character' already gives away, there's a personality component as well, and as such, an RPG will most likely (but not always) include large descriptions of character background, be it the one(s) you play or others, but even if your character is a complete tool, interacting with other character's storylines will create a unique story component.
Note that 'story' doesn't have to mean written-down or even predetermined happenings, but can also be player-created events such as very memorizeable encounters between players in MMORPGs. That kind of story will only be visible and interesting to those involved and those they tell about it, but that might mean it's even stronger, as you interact with the game in a very that is very unique.

The reason that RPGs seem to be MMOs these days is that most commercial game designers nowadays seem to strive for the biggest monetary outcome, and somehow, if you got 'MMO' somewhere in the description, that automatically goes with a large amount of people buying purposeless items in your ingame store (I'm looking at TF2, RO2, and the likes). It seems to take too much money to produce large, unique and traverseable worlds in today's standards to be sold as a one-time payment game, apparently...
The story in those kind of games is less apparent, because it's harder to implement for inconsistently exchanging players and non-directable player flow. Creating small quests, or even just a general concepts for the player to follow (see DayZ) is much easier and is capable of creating more unique experiences (see explanation above).


Despite all of that, gameplay is more important for a game because that directly and objectively affects your experience with the game. Story is subjective, maybe one person likes to be the godslayer, another is offended by the religious background, a third sees the drama between those two extremes, but all of them play the game by the same means (with some exceptions). You will hate to play a game with terrible controls, even if it has a great story. Of course there are tolerances here, but that doesn't change the circumstance that most people glance over storyline weaknesses, while they are annoyed by shitty controls every moment playing the game. With RPGs being usually a very time-consuming genre, that is a harsh thing to mess up...

 

[Ellie]

Dude the story of FFVII is so long and indepth (regardless of whether it's any good or not). There is definitely enough there for the story to be what draws me back and back playing over and over again. Each area has a reason for being there, each character has an explored backstory, and there are sidequests and easter eggs which add more and more to it.

 

[Perihelion]

I think for a lot of people RPGs are a way of creating a book, novel, etc, but with some graphics to go alongside. A lot of the RPG Maker games I've played have been more like graphical novels than actual games. If your question is why people do that, then it's as futile as asking why people would write graphical novels when they can just write novels.

Really the genre is actually two conflating genres and I think a distinction should be made especially by the game creators, as to whether their game is a puzzling, thought provoking action RPG where you have to think about battles and whatnot, or whether it is more of an interactive novel. I think most games here would actually better fit the interactive novel genre.

I think a big reason for it is that people don't read books by nobodies. As an indie, you have a much better chance of reaching an audience through a halfway decent game than through self-publishing a halfway decent novel. Then again, I hear that self-publishing thing on Amazon has been doing pretty well, but I don't know too much about it.

I completely agree with Sophist that games offer a different experience than reading a book. The atmosphere you can create with graphics and music can elicit a type of emotional response you can't get from a book, and the interactivity can make you feel more invested in it, which I think is why a lot of games with honestly mediocre stories are hailed as so successful. (Of course, another part of that is that the standard for storytelling in games is so low.) My fond memories of playing FF7 are related to the atmosphere and feeling of the game, not the story or characters or gameplay. Also, I pledged $80 to the Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter, and not just because I expect the writing to be good. I mean, I wouldn't pay $80 for a book. But the mood and aesthetic of the setting are very unique and very powerful. It's not just a good story I'm after but also that feeling of wonder and immersion you can only get from an audiovisual medium. So I don't even really care if the gameplay is mediocre.

On the other hand, I love Dragon Age and definitely play it for the gameplay, although the good writing is a big bonus. So I think it depends on the type of RPG as well. jRPGs have almost universally bad gameplay in my opinion, so if I play them, there's generally another reason. Indie RPGs in particular tend to have terrible gameplay for whatever reason, so the story is what sets them apart from each other.

 

[moog]

jRPGs have almost universally bad gameplay in my opinion, so if I play them, there's generally another reason.

Hopefully you mean recent or JRPGs that have the cliche standard, as there are a TON of jrpgs with generally good gameplay. Anime Based JRPGs are usually the worst offenders.

 

[moog]

Dude the story of FFVII is so long and indepth (regardless of whether it's any good or not). There is definitely enough there for the story to be what draws me back and back playing over and over again. Each area has a reason for being there, each character has an explored backstory, and there are sidequests and easter eggs which add more and more to it.

also this, and VI was sort of the same. honestly imo, the STORY was more in depth than the actual gameplay and it kept bringing me back. I do agree with soph that the music is quite possibly one of the better reasons of drawing us in to the game; with no voice acting, the only thing creating an atmosphere besides the lego graphics is the great sound track. If FFVII's ost had bombed, I am fairly certain no one would care about the game nearly as much.

Also, and this is a bit off topic but Uematsu is a lazy fucker. FF fans tend to enjoy the games also because of the familiarity with soundtracks. He reuses a ton of motifs and themes but is widely praised for it. V, VI and VII are the worst offenders of this.

 

[Perihelion]

jRPGs have almost universally bad gameplay in my opinion, so if I play them, there's generally another reason.

Hopefully you mean recent or JRPGs that have the cliche standard, as there are a TON of jrpgs with generally good gameplay. Anime Based JRPGs are usually the worst offenders.

I actually find recent jRPG gameplay to be much better all around than that of the classics of the SNES/PSX era, which have mostly aged very poorly. Say what you will about the writing, but FFX-2, FF12, FF13-2, etc. are way, way more fun for a modern gamer than FF6 or FF7.

 

[moog]

7 maybe but gameplay wise I still feel VI hasnt aged poorly. and that isnt a LOL FF6 LOVER thing, I really mean it. The game has limitless ways to customize your characters, and a great real time battle system which still holds up ok. Why do you think those games have been ported so much? For newer games yes but also because the playability was so high. FFX-2 had the same, and to an extent so did 13-2. again, so did 12, but was more action rpg/mmo based. Could you pick out some reasons why you like those games better? Honestly SE likes to rename things but tends not to change much.