A Fine Line: Making RPGs Accessible

The latest entry to 1UP’s RPG Blog examines the growing trend of role-playing games being made “more accessible” in order to appeal to a wider audience, and how gamers can help reverse the trend by having more patience when learning a game’s mechanics. Several JRPGs are referenced, though Mass Effect 2 comes up for a bit as well:

By their very nature though, RPGs are less accessible than the average action game or shooter. An RPG with an overly simple combat system risks being seen as shallow or even being branded as an “action game.” Witness Mass Effect 2, which inspired much debate among genre enthusiasts as to whether or not it’s actually an RPG (I maintain that it is, albeit of a different sort).

Basically, designing an RPG is hard. The more complex the mechanics get, the more care the designers have to take to ease in players without alienating them with overly lengthy tutorials. There are plenty of ways that designers can help themselves though, starting with designing a clean, easy-to-use interface that makes all the numbers as transparent as possible.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I don’t want the numbers to be transparent. At the very least, there should be an option where I can enable a chat log-like list of all the mathematical computations going on behind the scenes. Having to make decisions about developing my character is nearly impossible if I don’t understand the scope of what each option does.