- [Falcon] Role-playing games
offer limitless possibilities as to becoming a character in a world with an infinite horizon. So how do you screw that up? Hi folks, it's Falcon
and today on Gameranx the 10 mistakes RPG gamers make. Starting off at number 10 screwing up your character build. This is one of the worst
mistakes an RPG gamer can make. Some games have very in
depth character creators and a lot of the time it's
unclear how you should build it. In certain games, the
mage is the best class in others the warrior, and sometimes you make a
character whose role is covered by a party member you get later. Or certain party members don't cover a certain role that you need. I would say this is particularly bad in older RPGs like Baldur's Gate, but it is still a problem that pops up. Games like Pathfinder:
Kingmaker where, well let's say the character
creation is beyond complex and in-depth, these games
basically ask you to build your entire character site on scene and hope that what you're doing is okay, or you just give up and look up character creation guides online. Having to do homework
before you even start a game kind of sucks, but it sucks even more when you get a few hours in and realize the character you made
ain't going to work out. They just suck and you got to go back to
the beginning, start over, and yeah, at that point you
got to pick your poison. Cheating or a couple of
hours of wasted time. We're not even popping off in every game with a
character creator here. Most of the time, your starting stats don't even really make
that big of an impact. But for certain games, if you don't make your character
correctly from the start, it can totally ruin the game for you. And then there's people for whom the character's appearance matters more than anything else in the
game, who will spend hours and hours adjusting the
aesthetic, playing the game for an hour or so, realizing
they don't like it, and then doing it again. Sometimes never actually playing the game. The character creator can
create players like this too. Moving on to number nine, using the wrong healing item in a battle or using a healing item on
somebody who is already dead. So this is a mistake that everybody makes in these kinds of games
and it never feels good. It always sucks when it happens. It's not really the fault
of the game, usually. It mostly happens when you're not paying the closest attention and you press the wrong button in the battle. Like RPGs tend to have a lot
of repetitive actions in them so you're bound to screw
up every once in a while, jamming through all those menus. That's not so bad when you use like. just a weak healing item
instead of a stronger one but things can really fall apart if you're trying to
revive a dead party member with a revive item and you
use a healing item by mistake. In games like Final Fantasy,
where that may take up an entire turn, that could
mean disaster for your party especially if that character was a healer. A lot of the time, if you screw up bringing someone back to life,
it'll lead your entire party into getting wiped out because you screwed up that one input. Not quite as severe but just as annoying are the times where you used the wrong status effect item or spell. Like, sure, If you grew up
with the Final Fantasy games the difference between echo
screens and golden needles and eyedrops is probably
burned into your brains. But when you go into other
series like Dragon Quest and suddenly you need antidotal
herbs and moon war bulbs and do not get me started
with the names that they use for things in the Shin
Megami Tensei series. And it's not even because
I have a lot of complaints it's because I genuinely have, I've played those games for a long time and still don't know him. Every RPG has a different name for status effects and
different items to heal them, and a lot of the time if you don't know the difference,
you're kind of screwed. And number eight is skipping
through all the dialogue and then not knowing
where to go or what to do. We've all been there, right? Sometimes in RPGs dialogue can be, lets, let's say tedious. You just want to get to the
actions to skip that crap. Problem is, they wanted you to
go somewhere and do something and now you don't know
what it's supposed to be. It is a bigger problem in old games but it's not just a problem
in old games either. It still pops up
constantly in newer games. Even ones where quality of life features like quests logs, objective
markers, waypoints, etc. Should make this problem
kind of a thing of the past. A lot of the time, it's not just the fact that you have to go somewhere, it's that they want you to
do something that is unclear or confusing, and in more hardcore games they just don't give you
anything outside of dialogue when you accept a quest and it can turn something
that's already confusing into something basically
totally impossible. And speaking of skipping dialogue, here's another annoying thing that we've all had to deal with, especially if you play a
lot of old school games. When you speed through a
long, boring conversation, but at the end where they ask, do you want me to repeat that? And you hit yes by mistake and you have to mash through
all the dialogue again. Ooh boy, I have done that a lot. Like it just sucks. Probably the most prominent example of this I can think of is the owl at the beginning of Legend
of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I do not know why but I do that pretty
much every single time. That's hardly the only example though, for a while it was a constant problem in RPGs and basically any
game with dialogue boxes. But fortunately it's not something
you see too much anymore. At number seven is selecting
a dialogue option thing. It's going to say one thing but then your character says
something you didn't expect. That's, I mean, it's
extremely frustrating. Especially when it happens
in important moments. Like, in contrast with the
previous point, this sort of thing is kind of a more
modern problem with RPGs. Like, you see it a lot in
Mass Effect and Fallout 4 where they take the old,
more in-depth dialogue system from other RPGs and try to streamline it. Sometimes they streamlined a bit too much and it makes it very difficult to tell what it is your character
will actually say for any given option. You got to know what I'm
talking about by now. A lot of the time, it doesn't matter. And at worst, it's like
a really funny surprise but sometimes when you're
talking to a character or companion or whatever, you want to get on their good side so you select an option
that looks harmless but your character says
something that's like, awful. Way worse than what you thought it would have been from the menu. It's especially bad in Fallout 4 where the previous games
would literally just list out exactly what you would say. While in four, you get only
short phrases that clue you in as to what your
character is going to say. Like for a series where
role-playing is such a big deal, not knowing what your guy is going to say can make it way more
difficult than it needs to be. For people who just roll with things, it's kind of a minor issue, but for people who really
want to play a character that represents them,
it can be frustrating. And number six, hoarding
all your single use items, just never using them. Oh my God, everyone does this. You start getting some
really good single use items like bombs or mass party
healing, stuff like that. You just never use it. You plan to use it, but only for a really hard part where you feel like you're probably going to get stuck. Then you get to a really hard boss and you're like, well, who knows? Maybe there's a harder boss. So you just save it. You get all the way to the final boss and you still don't use it. Just a force of habit at this point. You go through the
entire game with an item. You skip it because in your mind that is an untouchable item. This is a problem that occurs in a lot of games with unlimited or basically unlimited
inventories like Final Fantasy, but even ones with
encumbrance like Skyrim, it can leave you in a total
hoarder mindset with your stuff. It's like, what's the point
of carrying this thing around if you never use it? Probably the most famous
great item along these lines is the Final Fantasy Megalixir. It's an item that fully heals everyone in your party, restores all the MP. You basically totally
turnaround a tough battle if used properly, but how many people actually used it? Well in games that
weren't Final Fantasy 7, games that did not have
that infinite items trick, I didn't use it in any games. I did use it in Final Fantasy 7 with the infinite items trick. Total transparency here, it is 1997. I was like 11 or 12. Who cares? Every RPG has stuff like this, though. Awesome scrolls that could easily take out certain bad guys in
Divinity: Original Sin 2, or special restoratives
in games like Dark Souls. Actually Dark Souls has got to probably be like the worst for this kind of thing. There are so many single use items I just don't touch based on the assumption that they would be handy later, but you're not going to give up that spot so quick for an
item you'll use once, maybe so it just gets lost
in the whole inventory. All this awesome stuff that could be used to make the game a lot easier. Just never used. And number five, forgetting to save before a major choice,
sometimes the choice you make has got consequences that you don't quite expect, or you might've made the wrong choice and now you can't get the best ending. Like it's one mistake that just sucks. You have to save a lot in RPGs for a lot of reasons, but there's always a point
in the game where you forget, or you override a save and something happens
where you really want to go back and redo
something but you can't. This especially sucks when I have, as before, a major choice like deciding the fate
of certain characters or completing quests that will have certain
ramifications later. It's especially annoying
when you don't even know that you're making a major choice. Probably the most infamous
recent example is The Witcher 3. Basically every interaction you have after finding Ciri actually
decides what ending you'll get. If you don't say the right
things and do the right things you might get a bad ending. The game never straight
up tells you any of this, so you might get to the end, get a bad ending and
be like, oh, that's it? Then you realize you can reload a save, say some different things and
get Ciri to the good ending. It's an extreme example, but this sort of thing pops up in
basically any RPG where your choices can have an effect on things. Sometimes they're immediate and sometimes it takes a long time for the consequences of
your decision to play out. But having a save handy is always helpful if you need to redo something,
it's just that some games don't always make that so easy. And number four, missing out on awesome loot by rushing forward and not fully exploring an area. RPGs love loot. There's always a ton scattered
around any given dungeon. And sometimes it's easy to miss it. Some games like to hide
things behind obscure secrets. Sometimes it's just really dense. Hell, sometimes they're just repetitive. So you rush through them and
try to get them over with. In all those examples though,
it becomes a lot more likely that something really good gets passed up on just because you're in a hurry. This actually happens to me a lot. Like when I was playing Skyrim and I wasn't paying the closest attention to my surroundings, I would completely miss an awesome weapon just waiting to get picked up
because it's not in a chest and I walked by it
without even noticing it. Or like, let's say I'm playing an old school RPG with random battles. I get sick of bumping into
an enemy in every few steps. So I just rushed towards the exit, don't bother with chests. That's actually an easy trap to fall for. Games can be long and
RPGs can be really long. So of course we all do
this from time to time but it sucks when you find out you missed Excalibur or whatever because you didn't look around
one little corner for it. And number three, skipping
a boring side quest and not realizing it's
an important side quest where some really important
feature is locked behind it. This is kind of a weird one because it doesn't pop up as often. But when it does, it
is beyond frustrating. RPGs actually love their side quests and many of them give you
dozens of items at a time. For many games, they're not always that
interesting though, so after a while, these kinds
of quests just blend together, and in some games, certain quests become way
more important than others. One recent example I can think of is the Ultra Small Reactor
in Xenoblade Chronicles. This item allows you to do
gem crafting wherever you are instead of forcing you to return to the starting village to do it. It's an incredibly helpful
thing, but you have to unlock it by doing this totally
mundane and tedious quest that a lot of players
probably totally ignored. Another recent example is Yakuza 6, where you can unlock an entire
bar with tons of side quests but only if you play baseball. I'm usually pretty thorough about side quests in Yakuza games so I actually did miss this one the first time through the game. And it was wild when I
figured out that I missed it. I'm sure there's more examples out there. Like those are just the ones that I came up with off the top of my head. It always sucks to find out you missed something
that is helpful or important just because you skipped a side quest. Even like, the worst side quest. And number two, selling
a key item by mistake and forgetting who you sold it to. It's a problem that you see in really hardcore Western RPGs. It's probably like, the worst. You're going around and you're
selling stuff to vendors and by mistake you sell
something important that you need later. You totally forget about it. You continue the game and
you get to the part where you needed the thing and oops, it's not there anymore. It's not just a selling problem, it can also happen to be
dropped in the ground somewhere or traded it off to a party member, or just threw it in a chest somewhere. There's lots of possibilities,
but you're either going to have to hunt all over
to find the thing again or for certain games, you can at least cheat it
back into your inventory. For some games though, that's just not an option. Even in games where you
can't sell key items, there's still the issue
of collection quests and stuff like that. Someone wants a bunch of a certain item. You start getting it, but
you sell some off by mistake. I'd say it's maybe less of
an issue these days, but with the return of really
hardcore PC RPGs, it's an issue that's popping up more and
more depending on the game, and it always sucks when it happens. At number one, spending hours
creating the perfect character in the character editor, but they look weird in the actual game. I alluded to this one in the first one. There are people who
get very picky about it. And it may not necessarily be real. Like I was more putting it on the player in the other point about
the character creators. But this one, we're not talking
about like, picky people. We're talking about ones
where your person looks weird as hell compared to what you made. So yeah, I mean, this one's
gotta be universal, right? You take a ton of time making a character look as cool as possible, you bring them to the actual game and it just doesn't look great. Your skin tone wasn't what you thought it was under different lighting. Your face looks weird and potato-y, some features look weird at
different angles, whatever. It's especially bad when you have everything the way you want it, when they start talking,
their face gets all messed up, or the, like the animations mess up the face or something. I've had that happen before. Developers do want to make
a good first impression so in character creation they make the character model look as good as possible with fancy lighting
and high definition models but it's a level of
fidelity that sometimes doesn't get matched in
the actual game world. So now you're looking at your character with flat lighting and less polygons and they don't look great. Like it's less of an issue
in games like Dark Souls or a lot of CRPGs where
your character's face is covered most of the game anyways, but in dialogue-heavy
games like Mass Effect where there's a cinematic
presentation everything, having your character look wrong compared to what you made especially can really actually affect
the whole experience. It's bad when you screw up
the character's build, sure, but that's an exact science. How your character actually looks? That can be a total mystery. Like I said, sometimes it
can be the player's fault for not really knowing what
like, human face proportions are but a lot of the time, it's the game giving
you the wrong impression of what your character
is going to look like. And it's one of the most annoying mistakes you can make in an RPG. But what do you think? Leave us a comment, let us know. If you like this video, click like. If you're not subscribed,
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