Ass-backwards Design

Hello. It's been a while.

    I have been thinking some things that i want to share with you. Indulge me for a second. If i were to lay out the difficulty curve of a game and how this curve is achieved in relation to the player character's power, the logical way to put it would be that the player's power relation with the game starts out with the player being more powerful than the challenges they face, then the challenges slowly catch up to them until the game overtakes the player character in power, calling for the player to make up the deficit with their skill (should the game ever reach that point. Some games never make the player face something that can overpower them.). That all makes sense thus far, right? Am i making sense? I think i am making sense. If i truly am making sense then riddle me this: why the fuck do RPG games do it backwards?

    In an RPG game the player character's power only grows . Of course, the enemies' power grows in accordance to the difficulty curve i laid out above to achieve the same effect, but let's focus on the first part. How curious that RPGs fundamentally go against this very simple rule and how curious that they manage to achieve the same effect by doing the exact opposite as a basis. This whole thought actually was born from watching a playthrough of Like a Dragon 7 (or Yakuza 7) and thinking about its real-time mechanics. I had actually criticized the idea of a real-time gimmick in Project Moon's Library of Ruina, but in LAD 7 i am very happy with them! Which on further inspection, is really curious as well!

    The more i mature as a creator and the more i learn and am humbled by the marvellous design of other designers, the more i begin to believe this statement as a fundamental truth of design: it does not matter what it is you design. It has the potential to be good. No matter what it is. Which surely sounds fallacious, right? There must be some taboos or some no-nos when it comes to design, but the harder i try to find those taboos, the more games i find that commit them and stick the landing. Game Design is a marvel and anything truly might be possible, as long as the designer is prepared to turn it into an enjoyable, interesting or thought-provoking experience. Even actively hostile design can be used as context to frame a work of art or as a method of transmitting messages to the player in a more subtle way. Demon Soul's difficulty and hostile world were seen as a major design flaw with the game when it came out and now the Soulslikebornesekiro series is heralded as a collection of masterful works of art which manage to speak to the player emotionally through that very same hostile design.

    All of this talk about topsy-turvy design is making me want to try my hand at making some truly bizarre games. What about an RPG where the player only gets weaker as the game progresses?

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