like thinking abt it my favorite type of game protag for games where you can make your own guy is the one that already has some hooks built into the characterization... like either you have a backstory vaguely outlined (like kotor2 exile always blowing up malacor V, durge always being durge, bhaalspawn always coming from candlekeep and being bhaalspawn) or some recent event having a deeply personal effect on the pc (watcher getting their powers, courier 6 getting shot in the head, the pc accidentally fits the nerevarine prophecy, Areelu kidnaps the pc). Like having that little extra something elevates the story and allows for more coherence bc the writers have those hooks to draw together whatever the game is trying to say and what story it can tell. imo

Gearing Systems in RPGs and MMOs

So, after seeing some annoying complaints about a system I liked, I've decided to write a bit about how I feel about gearing systems in RPGs and MMOs. This might get a bit rambly.

To start with, I'm going to give an apparently unpopular opinion: I don't really like the way a lot of RPGs seem to handle player equipment. So many games try very hard to give the player a sense of progression through having their gear replaced every few levels. As many RPGs can trace their lineage back to Dungeons and Dragons, this sort of makes sense. D+D expects the player characters to start with hand-me-down mundane gear, upgrade to badass gear, then start to acquire magical items, and eventually find legendary equipment. It's not inherently a bad system, since you really can feel how powerful you're getting when you end up with a flaming magic sword after starting with a kitchen fork. But it's so exaggerated and overused in so many games that it's starting to grate on me quite a bit.

Here's the problem with how the system is used: in Dungeons and Dragons, a good DM will make you wait for your upgrades. Each boost to your power level will be felt. You don't go from a rusty sword to a magical flaming sword without noticing the effect. A mithril shirt will make previously challenging fights a breeze. But in so many RPGs, and particularly a lot of MMOs, there are so many mini-tiers that it's often not worth upgrading unless you get the items for free.

To give an example, let's use a game I actually like: Final Fantasy XIV. There's often at least one new piece of gear for a slot every 2-3 levels. Early on, you'll want every upgrade you can get, at least until your slots are filled. But after you hit about lv15 or lv20, it stops being cost-effective to keep yourself upgraded. Even gear from NPC vendors (usually the cheapest option) starts to cost thousands of gil per item. Earlier this week, I did a few dungeon runs with my lv62 class and ended up with 25k gil. I then bought half of a full set of gear for my lv30 crafting class and was left with under 500 gil. After selling the old gear, I had about a thousand on hand. Because of this huge money sink for gear, I usually allow my average gear level to sink as I level up, only using dungeon gear to upgrade until a class hits lv50 (when the base game's endgame gear becomes available, which uses a different currency that I have too much of).

This sort of over-complexity is even in single-player games, which I assume is based on the Diablo model. I have never played the Diablo games, but from what I understand the Borderlands series tends to do a similar thing with its loot. You'll get these named, special weapons from quests at one level, but within 3-5 levels those guns are utterly useless as anything other than vendor trash. Meanwhile, even the white/common guns that enemies drop will be better in that they at least hurt the enemies you fight.

This is all really frustrating to someone like me, who isn't interested in busting out a spreadsheet every thirty minutes to see which piece of gear will get me that +2% boost that I need. I understand the desire to use progression as a way to hook the player, but I don't want to be frustrated at needing to sell gear given to me by a character I like because "Rusty Mithril Axe" is five times better. (It doesn't help that, especially in MMOs, pre-endgame gear so often has really lame-sounding adjectives in the titles. It's not an Iron Sword, it's a "Mud-stained" Iron Sword.)

I could go more into what I dislike about this kind of progression, but I may have already lingered on that for too long. Instead, I'll give some examples of better progression ideas. Ones that I feel are less annoying to play and far more satisfying than the systems I mentioned above.

To start with, the system that made me start thinking of this topic: the gear upgrade system in Secret World Legends. While both versions of the game have flaws (and still haven't finished the Tokyo storyline that we were promised years ago...), the gear system of the reboot does not deserve the disdain I've seen for it. The original game, The Secret World, had a very standard MMO gear progression: you got random drops sometimes, dungeons had slightly better gear for their level, and you always had to be swapping out gear because nothing remained useful for long. SWL, on the other hand, keeps the random drops while adding a great twist: you use the otherwise vendor trash-y gear to upgrade your equipped gear. For instance, I have a Blood Magic Tome and a few spare weapons I don't use. I spend some anima shards (earned from quests and enemy kills) to consume those spare weapons to make my Tome more powerful. When a piece of gear hits max level, you can combine it with another item of the same type (also max level) to increase its rarity. You can do this until you hit max rarity. So unless you come across an item with a bonus effect you want to swap out for, you never have to hunt down new gear. You power up your weapon and talismans as you go. It's still a grind, like any MMO, but one that doesn't require luck and spreadsheets.

Going off that, there are a few other MMOs that dabbled with this idea, but either dropped it or didn't go far enough for my tastes. Lord of the Rings Online has a "Legendary Item" system, but it's a massive grind and time sink that is far more complex than it needs to be. Maybe it has improved since I last played, but the "Imbuing" system I read about in patch notes once only applied to the current expansion or later. It doesn't help that your legendary weapons really didn't feel that... legendary. You could carry 6-10 legendary items at a time (based on cash shop purchases), and you could only get the materials to upgrade legendary weapons from breaking down other legendaries. Which meant that every other monster you fought had a legendary weapon lodged in them. It'd be like if Bilbo or Frodo had Sting... and Sting 2. And Sting 3. And Sting Mk4. But not 5, because he broke that down for legendary fragments to make String Prime glow in the dark better. It was a cool idea that really fit with the setting, but fell apart under the weight of MMO gear mechanics. It felt like more of the same, only pretending not to be.

Another one that feels like a misstep to me is Final Fantasy XIV's relic system. Basically, each class can get a "Relic Weapon", an item that has a story behind it and must be reforged in a long quest chain. Except, because of the gear treadmill and power creep, it's actually pretty damn weak even for its own content. You have to do 4-5 very long quest chains to make it worth using, and it still becomes underpowered the moment a new patch comes out. Due to the obscene amount of effort to do each phase of the quest, a lot of players just ignore the whole system. Now, if the relic weapon were the only weapon after a certain part of the game, maybe that idea could work. But as things are, no one wants to do hours of questing to upgrade a single item when they could just pay some gil to a crafter or do a raid. And it's really too late to make the relic a mandatory system, because it would just piss off the people who skipped the relic at first.

Since the last two were more about systems that could have been cool, I'll mention a subsystem that I feel works well: gear modifcations. Whether it's Materia (FF7/FF14), Essence Gems (Jade Empire), or weapon mods (a lot of shooters), it always allows for a sense of progression and modifcation that doesn't cheapen the gear you're using from a story standpoint or (usually) get too complex and number-crunchy. It's easy to tell whether a +1 or +2 materia is better, and if you want to shuffle around which slots get which materia, you can. Given the choice between a game that gives me dozens of guns or dozens of scopes as loot, I'd probably go with the latter even if the overall system works the same way. In general, such a system gives more value to each piece of main gear (in story and gameplay terms) due to the multitude of mods you can add. For instance, Horizon: Zero Dawn mostly has 3 tiers of each weapon (aside from a few uniques), but you're constantly getting modifications you can slot into them.

Overall, here's my big point: It's fine to want to have gear progression as part of your RPG/MMO. It serves as a useful motivation to keep playing the game, to try to get the best setup possible. But when you flood the player with gear upgrades, after a certain point they will get overwhelmed or stop caring. In some types of games, this could easily be a death sentence. So, as a general rule, I'd strongly suggest RPG creators to space out the progression better, allowing the player to enjoy each tier before they move on to the next. This could even help with game longevity, as players feel more compelled to improve their equipment when they have a solid goal. (This is why most MMOs' endgame gearing is so addictive to some people: the goals are much more clear.)

Personally, I'd go a bit further. I want to see a true legendary item system in a game someday. It can be a single player game, if that makes it easier. I want to have a game where, instead of looting gradually better swords from each new enemy, I get something like Glamdring in the first third of the game. Maybe it's a new weapon that needs to be powered up, or an old weapon that has "gone to sleep" from disuse. But, as the item is used, it becomes more powerful and I can add new powers to it. (The closest I've seen to a system like this, aside from the ones I mentioned above, is the Neverwinter Nights module "Kingmaker". In that mod, your talking sword will get a new ability that you choose whenever you level up.) A lot of RPGs have a sort of power fantasy element, like how Dragon Age Inquisition lets you build a pseudo-nation from scratch. For me, my power fantasy would be the creation of this sort of legendary item. It would become a legacy of sorts, and in a game focused on this sort of system you could even have an epilogue where the legendary item is passed on to a new hero. (Like how Gandalf and Thorin found the elven blades in the troll den, and how Bilbo gave Sting to Frodo.)

At any rate, that's my personal opinion on RPG/MMO gearing. I doubt games will change much anytime soon, but I wanted to get some of it down while I was thinking about it. After seeing people complain that the gearing system in The Secret World was "so much better" than Secret World Legends, despite the former being so bland and annoying... I had to get down some of the issues I have with how people seem to think RPGs should look. But, going off what I've seen, I'm fairly certain I'm in the minority. So I'll probably continue my descent into focusing on story-based games and playing games I mostly dislike in order to get to the story.

Anyway, I hope anyone who got this far found something interesting in my ramblings. I didn't expect to write so much, so hopefully it's not as boring as some of the systems I decided to call out.