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Japanese game designers, such as the creators of the Final Fantasy series, were inspired by D&D (having been avid players themselves) and they leaned pretty har

Japanese game designers, such as the creators of the Final Fantasy series, were inspired by D&D (having been avid players themselves) and they leaned pretty hard into the class-based, experience-based, level-based, and HP-based mechanical systems. While western RPG designers might have abandoned such ideas in the late 80s / early 90s the arrival of JRPGs for Nintendo consoles, translated into English, brought up a whole new generation of players who loved these more mechanically rich systems. By the late 90s D&D experienced a major revival with the release of Baldur’s Gate. I believe the popularity of JRPGs among western gamers went a long way to prove that there was a market for these D&D-style games. So it may have been the case, as you said, that game designers and players (in the west) lost interest in these games but it was only a temporary dip. Even if TSR had disappeared without fanfare the JRPG market had already been established, so this style of gameplay was not in any danger of disappearing.

djur 2y ago
Non-level systems showed up in JRPGs and CRPGs, too. Just like in tabletop, they carved out a decent foothold without ever completely defeating level systems. If anything, you'd think that more flexible systems would be more attractive on a computer, but people just seem to like levels and classes.
- chongli 2y ago
  I think the issue with computer (and console) RPGs is that they tend to have a very rigid goal state which leads players to want to optimize. Game systems that are more open-ended on the character development front can then suffer from “first order optimal” strategies: players experiment a bit until they find one thing that works well and then never deviate from it. Class-based systems, on the other hand, at least break up the FOO strategies into a few separate lanes which give players multiple opportunities to try different things. I think in general, open-ended systems suffer when they present the player with too many options all at once and it’s hard to design an open-ended system which doesn’t do this. When players are overwhelmed with options they tend to go into “analysis paralysis” mode which can be a frustrating enough experience that they prefer to use a FOO strategy over revisiting that zone of complexity and confusion.

djur 2y ago

Non-level systems showed up in JRPGs and CRPGs, too. Just like in tabletop, they carved out a decent foothold without ever completely defeating level systems. If anything, you'd think that more flexible systems would be more attractive on a computer, but people just seem to like levels and classes.

chongli 2y ago
I think the issue with computer (and console) RPGs is that they tend to have a very rigid goal state which leads players to want to optimize. Game systems that are more open-ended on the character development front can then suffer from “first order optimal” strategies: players experiment a bit until they find one thing that works well and then never deviate from it. Class-based systems, on the other hand, at least break up the FOO strategies into a few separate lanes which give players multiple opportunities to try different things. I think in general, open-ended systems suffer when they present the player with too many options all at once and it’s hard to design an open-ended system which doesn’t do this. When players are overwhelmed with options they tend to go into “analysis paralysis” mode which can be a frustrating enough experience that they prefer to use a FOO strategy over revisiting that zone of complexity and confusion.