Darklands too.

I consider leveling in wide sense, e.g. Spehre Grid in FF X falls into definition of leveling for me, just like Ultima Online's skill leveling. Dtgreene explains what exactly he means exactly in post #27.

Most people would definetely consider a "leveling system" to be when you collect XP and when you have enough to "level up" and your stats increase, or you're given points to increase stats.

Neither. I would prefer Wizardry 8 kind of level to enemies relationship.

If you are low level, you will not see high level enemies at all. When your level is high enough, you see Different high level enemies IN ADDITION to the low level enemies. Not just a different skin with better stats, but very different enemies that acted and use different skill set.

That way you still think your hard work in leveling your characters has value, and the enemies you encounter is not always the boring same weak stuff.

indeed, "non combat" focused characters are often penalized in many RPG, because of ennemy scaling first, and also because the game completely lacks of scripted goals/quests that take their own kind of gameplay into account at all. (like some quests with areas you just cant stealth in at all, nor talk your way off either but then you are obviously too weak to face the brute force of the opposition)

reminds me of this !

The Draugr are training...

Can you think of such real-life examples? What would be the traits making them RPGs (and not simply e.g. tactical turn-based tactical/strategy games with a fantasy setting)? I am not quite sure what you mean by "turn-based battle system with no tactical elements", because isn't that pretty much what those turn-based battles in RPGs are, tactical mini-games?

I've mentioned it many times before how I roughly categorize games to main genres based on how the player is supposed to tackle the obstacles that the game throws at them (because without obstacles, a game isn't really a game in my books, but merely a virtual tour or an interactive storybook; there has to be something impeding my progress in a game).

An action game expects me to handle the obstacles mostly with my reflexes and eye-hand coordination. A point'n'click adventure usually expects me to solve some kind of puzzles set into the gameworld. A strategy/tactical game expects me to use my tactical thinking to overcome the obstacles (battles),

A CRPG, on the other hand, expects me to rely on the different skills of my player character(s) to overcome to problems. Big part of that is how I develop those skills throughout the game. I'm not even sure how such a game would work without that development part, how do I, as a player, become better in that game? I'd feel that a game which relies on your player character's stats, but those stats wouldn't improve or change throughout the game nor you would face more powerful enemies later on, would be an oddly static and uninteresting "RPG". A bit like an action FPS game where you face only the same imps as enemies from the beginning to the end, and you'd only have the weapon(s) you have in the very beginning.

I have played FF5 a long time ago, but I don't quite remember how the job system worked... However, do you mean that your player characters don't come more powerful with the new abilities they gain? Would the game still throw harder enemies at you later in the game, and if so, how are you supposed to cope with harder enemies, if your player characters don't get more powerful?

For some reason your modified examples are from the console side, which I am less familiar with. Anyway, that could be one way, ie. your ability to become more powerful depends on your ability to find better equipment. So your ability to proceed in the game, facing more powerful opponents, depends solely on your ability to find better equipment,

How would that be a better system, though? Isn't it merely an existing RPG, but you just remove some gameplay elements that it currently has?

Also, let's take some RPGs where you becoming "more powerful" goes beyond mere combat, like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls games etc. You become more skilled also in bartering, negotiation etc., which also help coping with the obstacles the game(world) throws at you. How would you replace that with the equipment system? You get some equipment which makes you a better talker or a more charismatic leader in Fallout games?

I am still not convinced that your examples, where you merely remove gameplay elements from existing RPGs, somehow makes them better and more interesting games.

For instance, an action-RPG I lately finished, TES: Arena, gave me both options for combat: either I could try to find better weapons (that also don't break as easily), and/or I could also develop my generic fighting skills which makes even my bare fists lethal weapons. So I could develop my fighting skills in two ways. At some points of the game it made sense to depend on my fists because the early weapons broke up so easily, and fists worked against all enemies (while with melee weapons, some weapon materials were ineffective against certain enemies; fists always worked and never broke down, but on the flip side they would also deal less damage per hit).

Your proposal for changing that apparently was that fist-fighting should have never been a viable fighting option in Arena, at least against any advanced enemies? I should have only been able to depend on finding more powerful weapons, and try to prevent them from breaking?

A few things:

By lacking tactical elements, I mean that the game does not track positioning of units. In other words, there's no grid, and positioning is not part of the strategy. (There might be some notion of front and back rows, however.)

The game would still throw harder enemies at you later in the game, and the way to cope is by coming up with better strategies to deal with such enemies. Alternatively, the abilities that you learn would provide more methods of tackling the enemies you encounter. Remember, non-RPGs without growth systems throw harder enemies at the player later in the game, so why can't RPGs without growth systems do so?

In the SaGa 2 example, the ability to proceed in the game isn't just dependent on finding better equipment, but also on what equipment you decide to equip. (Note that robots in SaGa 2 get to ignore body slot limitations, so wearing 2 suits of armor is allowed. Also, note that the actual game provides races other than robots, which have different growth rules.)

In the TES: Arena case, I should point out that leveling in that game is fairly standard; it really doesn't do anything interesting. You kill enemies, gain experience, and get stronger, and it doesn't matter (for growth purposes) if you use fists or something else. In particular, there is no choice to develop your fist skills; they improve at the same rate even if you never use fists.

Also, you mention games where you develop non-combat skills; I sort of consider them to be beyond the scope of this discussion. Not every RPG has that feature, and such encounters could be replaced with dialogue trees or other menus. (Also, I think improving non-combat skills through combat is a little silly, and in games where raising one skill makes all others harder to raise (including most skill point systems), is bad design because you can screw up your character if, for example, you ignore combat skills but run into a mandatory fight.)

Gothic did it right.

Different baddies in different parts of the open world. Stumble into the wrong part too early and you're toast.

I prefer no leveling system.

leveled content makes a lot of sense the more non-linear you are, but I've been playing skyrim recently and I've had my head smacked by the leveling a little bit. sucked for a while where I'd hit the level tier for deathlords, but because I went neither battlemage nor pure mage this time, they were one-shotting my ass.

BioWare's games were always really good at this. they'd be non-leveled but all types of enemies were present at all parts of the game. you'd have battles you'd barely survive early on, and then just being mowing down enemies later on in the game before running into a battle you'd barely survive then too.

In Oblivion the enemies scale to your level, but by creating your own class and choosing which skills will level you up you can play the game without gaining any levels - which I tried and enjoyed. However it is better to have real progress than either of these options.

Ok, the traditional JRPG combat style (albeit e.g. Phantasie III had a similar system too). While it has less tactical elements compared to many other turn-based RPGs, I feel they still need tactical thinking, just of a different kind. Take for instance fighting the Ruby Weapon in Final Fantasy 7, you really had to plan a good tactic to beat it, by learning by its reactions and how the fight will continue.

If you (as a player) become better in the game mostly through learning the better strategies and tactics to beat the obstacles, then I consider it more like a strategy or tactical game, not a RPG really.

Those non-RPGs depend on you (the human player) becoming better in some other way. Take any FPS game, there are usually two different things that are supposed to help you with beating the better and better enemies and harder fights the game throws at you:

1. Finding better weapons.
2. Becoming a better first person shooter, ie. learning the controls properly. learning how the enemies move and react, and maybe honing your eye&hand coordination for the game.

Depends on the game which is more important. but usually both are required (albeit in e.g. Serious Sam you could certainly get quite far with a mere revolver).

Ok, but what makes that a RPG then? Isn't it more like some sort of puzzle game where you have to find out which equipment you should wear for which problem in order to proceed in the game? A bit like Lost Vikings was about learning which viking you should use in which situation, and in which kind of combination?

Note, I haven't played SaGa 2, so I just have to make a mental image of how you describe how it would work (if any development of skills was removed from the game).

Yes, it was a pretty standard "skill development system", ie. you receive skill points when you reach a new level, and you can decide which skills you improve with them. This was changed in e.g. Daggerfall where it mattered more to your development what exactly you were doing. it is a more realistic approach I suppose, but I feel that's beside the point of this discussion.

However, I am unsure if Arena would have become a better game if that skill improvement system was abolished altogether. In fact I feel then it would have been simply an action game with a fantasy setting and a crappy combat system. The only way you could have fought the harder enemies would have been through finding or buying better weapons, armor and spells? Also, for spells you would have had the same max spell points in use, so your capability to use spells would have remained the same throughout the game?

I disagree. To me a RPG which is not only about combat is pretty much the holy grail of RPGs. Combat should be only one subset of it, but most RPGs concentrate on combat because it is easier that way, you don't have to come up with alternative "solutions" to different encounters, like brute-force fighting, or sneaking (and maybe a critical backstab), or even negotiating your way through it.

Replacing the negotiation part with just a dialog tree (which is the same for all players, irrespective of the skills they have) is another example of lazy development. If there is simply a certain dialogue tree you should follow to "win" the conversation, I don't really consider it as an RPG either, it is more like some kind of memorization game, maybe a puzzle game. Like the dialogue at the end of Wing Commander 4.

The dialogue is more relevant to a RPG if you have skills, affiliations etc. that can affect that dialogue. If you are a dumb brute, maybe you don't even have the option to negotiate your way out.

As e.g. Daggerfall shows, you can make a system where you develop skills by using them.

A RPG which requires you to have a certain skill, e.g. a mandatory physical fight that you can't avoid, is just a mark of bad design. The developers were simply lazy giving you alternative ways to roleplay through that encounter.

When we discussed about the tactical aspects of RPG combat, to me roguelikes like Nethack and ADOM are maybe the purest form of CRPG. There the effect of your skills, how you develop and use them, is pretty much maximized. While you can use some tactics to overcome harder battles, e.g. make sure the enemies come at you in a line so that you can zap a lighting at everyone in the line at the same time, it is less profound than in most CRPGs with turnbased tactical combat. In the purest form in those roguelikes, you fight by simply constantly bumping into the enemy, and it is your combat skills and your equipment, and a bit of luck in a form of rolls, that decide whether you win or lose the fight. Nor can you turn the fight into your favor by trying to use your action gaming skills, like you can do somewhat in e.g. TES games.

Honestly i prefer without scalling enemies, for me the point of the rpg's is to level up until you're stronger to take on enemies that before were harder. The problem is the balance, i was playing Risen (i think?) and there was some enemies that were way too strong for me, i mean, ok, that is what i want but not less than 1 hour into the game...

For me the worst leveling up system was on Lost Odyssey, it had this dumb system where it limits your level for each area.What does this means? Well, imagine that you're in the area Mines, here you can only level up until 20, no matter how much you grind you will always be level 20 until you beat the boss of that area and move on.

I think I'll describe how SaGa 2 (released in the US as Final Fantasy Legend 2) works in terms of its growth system, or rather, growth systems. Note that this game is linear with very little in the way of non-combat abilities, with only one optional treasure-filled dungeon.

First, each character has 8 ability slots which, depending on race, may be filled by an item or spell. Every usable item has a durability count that is visible to the player (for example, Long Sword starts with 50 uses, while Book of Cure has 30). Items can't be repaired, but the majority can be bought, so you can buy a replacement if an item runs low or out of uses. Skills also have use counts, but unlike items, skills recover when you go to the inn. (Note that inn prices are based on lost HP, so if you have someone with a healing skill, you might has well use it before going to the inn.) Also, note that armor has body slot restrictions: You can't equip two suits of armor or two helmets on the same character.

Second, there are 4 races, and you select 4 characters from those races. All combinations are allowed, including parties like 4 Robots and 4 Monsters. Unlike most games, the choice of race has a major impact on the character's growth; in fact, each race has completely different rules for stat growth! Here is how it works out:

Human: All 8 ability slots are reserved for items. After each battle, if the last action was associated with a stat, there is a chance the stat will permanently increase 1 point. It is easier to gain stats against powerful enemies and hard if the stat is already high to begin with.

Esper (Mutant in English FFL2): Gains stats as a human, but more slowly. Initially, one ability slot is filled with a skill, but after battle, it is possible for more skills to be learned, to a maximum of 4. If 4 skills are already known, or if the esper's ability list is full (because you filled it up with itmes, for example), any new skills replace the last one on the list. Learning more powerful skills requires fighting stronger enemies.

Robot: Has 7 slots for equipment (the 8th is permanently filled with the passive skill OPa/Po which grants immunity to most status effects). The robot, as I mentioned before, gains stats solely from equipment. (For example, each equipped a Long Sword boosts Strength by 4 points.) Robots can ignore body slot restrictions, so equipping two suits of armor or two helmets is possible, but stat gains from such equipment are not the same as what humans get. When equipped or unequipped, durability is halved, but going to the inn restores a robot's equipments' durability to half the normal maximum (so 25 for Long Sword, for example). It turns out that one of the best setups is to equip a lot of agility-based weapons, giving a robot with high AGI who can act first (until an integer overflow bug crops up), reliably hit, deal tons of damage (but only to one enemy at a time), and reliably dodge enemy attacks.

Monster: Can't use equipment. Monsters get skills (including things like Nail and Tusk) based of their form. After battle, enemy monsters sometimes drop meat, which will cause a monster to change form, gaining an entirely new set of stats and skills. (Note that it *is* possible for a monster to get weaker this way, so be careful.)