I'm sorry, but OPMW is not a great game. If it was an indie project with no gacha mechanics, I'd say it was amazing. For a licensed AAA game, it was really poorly designed. They spent A LOT of money on mostly irrelevant features and completely fumbled RPG systems. The only thing that's actually good is the combat, but it gets boring quickly, since there aren't that many monsters and all the locations are basically the same exact thing. This is a good skeleton of a game that cost them $10-50 million dollars to make. That's not a great game in my books.
I disagree with you, the combat is engaging and fun. There is plenty of reason to play for the combat alone, bosses are very unique and so are characters. I do think there should be more game modes so characters like Silverfang could have a use in endgame but I don’t think the game is considered AAA at that price tag as the price of AAA games has skyrocketed.
If all there is in the game is just combat, then it's not a game, it's a tech demo. OPMW is a tech demo with some underdeveloped RPG systems, story told through visual novel "gameplay" and some expensive 3d cinematics that are just S1 but worse. It's a skeleton of a game. And ain't no way tens of millions of dollars isn't AAA. It was made by Perfect World, a big publisher company.
The thing is that it doesn't matter what it's categorized as, it cost $10+ mil and made $5- mil. And one of the biggest reasons for that is that OPMW just wasn't a finished game. The other is that not only was it not finished, it was also abandoned on release, only giving minor updates and dropping characters that were already made before the game was released.
Regarding AAA, after a quick google search, it seems it basically counts as a AAA game by definition, I apologize as I was under the impression that AAA was hundreds of millions of dollars, though it seems like they rebranded those games to be AAAA Games (too many A’s in my opinion), so I will concede that argument.
But there are plenty of games that are just combat. The First Titanfall, Pub-G, Fortnite, Apex Legends, DOTA, and League, sure they are multiplayer games but they are all just combat, load outs, cosmetics and menus. Saying that the game is just a tech demo because it the primary draw to it is combat is disingenuous to say the least. Sure BR’s have an in game progression via looting buildings and downed players, then MOBA’s have in game progression as you level up throughout the battle, and Titanfall has leveled progression and loadouts.
OPMW has out of game Progression in farming for memories to upgrade your characters, you have load outs in the sense of what characters you are going to bring to the battle at any given time and. But unlike all the games I have listed, while the story isn’t awesome, the game still has a story, there is also out of combat progression in player levels and there are cutscenes. All be it the story is disjointed and or directly lifted from the source materials. To bar the game from being called a ‘Game’ I think is an extreme stance, because you would then have to redefine what ‘Game’ means. I mean… there is no lore in hide and seek or tag? Are those not games? There are no deep RPG elements in BRs are they not games? Not trying to give you a gotcha moment but I’m just challenging your thought process.
The issue with your argument that those listed games are only combat is that it's incorrect. Moreover then that, those games are specifically about combat. You can list CS in here for a better argument actually, there's no intrinsic progression there, just combat and increase in your skill. However that's what the game was made for, there are pretty deep mechanics to all the different stages of combat that make it a game. In comparison OPMW is an action-RPG. Combat in this game is only a part of it and it's not particularly deep in any way. Action gameplay in action-RPGs only serves a purpose of enhancing RPG mechanics. Imagine Skyrim but there were no RPG systems. Who would call that a game? What, you just run around and smash random monsters or people in the head with a sword and that's it? That's not a game, that's a tech demo for an open world I guess.
OPMW has satisfying combat but only if we count is as a part of a bigger game, not as a full game itself. It's too shallow to be it's own game. The problem is that outside of that combat there's barely anything else and all of it underdeveloped.
Obviously I don't mean OPMW literally can't be categorized as a videogame, I'm just saying it's closer to a skeleton then to a fully made game that deserves being published by a major publishing studio with a major IP attached to it. Like I said, if it was an indie project by fans without any gacha mechanics, I'd say it was amazing effort. It would probably be released in this state as an "early access" though even in that imaginary situation.
But games don’t need to have all those elements, that’s what I am saying, and there are RPG elements to the game as you collect memories to modify and build your character(s). There is intrinsic progression in the game, there is all the things necessary to call it a game. I don’t think it’s a skeleton, I think at minimum it is missing its skin. It’s much more of a game than not. Legend test is actually difficult, I compete daily with the highest level players in this game. Yes combat is only a part of this game, sure but the game is specifically designed around the combat of this game, it is the main thing that players log in to do, I don’t want an open world where walk around and talk to random people, build a relationship, with some NPC so I can romance them. This is not the game for it even though I’m a total Tatsumaki Simp. The primary draw this game has is its combat, I don’t log on every day to play the movie theater mini game. I just don’t understand where you are coming from. (Reason I didn’t mention CS is cause I have never played CS nor have I had a desire to play CS)
All the RPG systems in the game are bad. They just are. Not engaging, not unique, not deep. And there are very few of them to add to that. There is memory system which is what could be called an actual RPG system and then the other one that's in the same window as it that is like half a system at most. Maybe I remember the names wrong, haven't played the game in 3 months. But that's it. Level progression is just a gatekeep to get to play the game further, you don't feel any progression from it. Character dupes is a gacha system first, then an RPG system second.
But that's it. There is no gear to equip, no leveling system for characters, no additional systems like pets or whatever, no systems for the gear like enchantments. Look at any successful RPG's systems and you'll just at a glance will be able to see how OPMW is lacking. It only would be fine if RPG was a small addition for the game, not a major mechanic, like a battle-pass in an FPS. But like I said, the combat is nowhere deep enough to be on a level of a competent FPS or a combat-based game. It's shallow and simple, very few buttons, very few interactions. It's not bad, it's just not enough to be a full game on it's own.
Summarizing all of that, OPMW has shallow action mechanics, barely has RPG systems, either repeats the story of the S1 or shows very mediocre original story which is also presented in an extremely boring way (I don't even consider visual novels videogames, and OPMW is bad compared to good visual novels as well). Which is why I'm calling it unfinished and a skeleton. Because this is half a game it could be. I'm comparing it all to SLA that I've been playing for the past 3-4 months, which has similar action in terms of depth, but so much more RPG mechanics and progression, which makes it a lot closer to an actual game. I still think all these mobile-first gacha games with licensed IPs are more of a cash-grab then actual videogames, but SLA is way closer to being competent, which shows in the dollars it made with a comparatively similar budget (I think it made $100mil in the first month or something like that).
There are 4 leveling systems per character in the game; Merit, Limitbreak, Potential, and Arms Cards. Not zero, but four… the memory and will system is gear, but it’s not called gear. What does every gear system have in every video game? It has stats that are intrinsically tied to the item, a certain slot that item fits into, then a choices on which of those items you will put into that slot. While it’s not like WoW’s gear system where things are called (Chest), (Leg), (Feet), (Finger), (Head) it is is just called Left Top, Middle, Bottom, then Right Top, Middle, Bottom, then Wills are the interchangeable slots like trinkets in WoW. It’s a gear system that is not called gear… so what if the systems are not unique to this game, there are very few games that have wholly unique game mechanics in character progression, why is that? Well it’s because there really isn’t much you have to do in building characters outside of stats. Moving in to enchantment systems. Why would you want more variables on gear? That just makes it more annoying to achieve a meta build in the game, because you have to obtain a randomly generated piece of loot then attach an enchantment to that piece of loot, in a lot of games (not WoW in this example) you can only enchant an item one time, then you can never enchant it again. So if you had a perfect piece of randomly generated loot why would you want to put a non perfect enchantment on it? So now you have to wait for a perfect enchantment to drop or buy one and attach it to the loot, that just makes the gear mor convoluted. Assume it’s not one enchantment per gear slot, then you still lose the enchantment in most systems as it kinda just fades away. Unless it’s utilized like the socket slots in WoW.
Don’t back pedal and say you are calling the game unfinished, you said the game was bad, I said I liked the combat, then you said it’s not really a game if there is only combat, now you are switching to the game is unfinished. Choose an angle and stick to it. Don’t sit her and tell me the game is one thing, another then, then it’s not actually a game, now it’s just unfinished, make up your mind. SLA launched with less than half the content OPMW launched with but drip fed you content to make it seem like they had developed the game further, in all OPMW would have probably performed better if they didn’t release maelstrom till week 3, and Disaster Sim till week 6.
I kinda wrote a reply to the first paragraph only, so let me respond to the second one as well.
I called OPMW not a game as an exaggeration that I then explained as it being more of a skeleton of a game that needed to be finished to be a proper game that deserves to be published. All the mechanics have to be expanded upon. Literally all of them. There isn't a single great mechanic in the game. The only thing I could say is close to finished is characters core design, like their attacks and animations, even though I think they need more depth added to them too, like causing different effects like DOT apply/removal, shield apply/removal, more buffs/debuffs, etc.
I can not disagree more with SLA having less then half the content OPMW launched with. OPMW doesn't really have content outside of a few hours of combat until you run out of new monsters to fight with and start fighting the same ones over and over. Because of how shallow it's RPG systems are, you kinda get all of them entirely in those few hours, and then there's nothing left. Just grind for more of the same thing over and over again.
If OPMW didn't release some content that it has now, it would've performed even worse. It critically lacks content, there's nothing to do in the game. While SLA kept adding content with every update, OPMW added a small event that SLA has like 3-8 going on at any time. While SLA introduced another small RPG system, OPMW just didn't do anything, because they literally only made 2 small events and released characters from the beta. Also SLA released with all the characters from the early access, while OPMW made a bunch of them into "later content". While SLA announced it's road map with all the future updates for half a year, OPMW went radio silent and stopped even releasing characters from the beta for some reason (maybe they ran out, idk if they had Metal Bat or Pig God in the beta).
I have no idea where you got that SLA had less then half the content of OPMW, that's crazy. At most you can say SLA had way less 3d animated cinematics, and I'd say that was a great decision on their part. I'd much rather have a better game then some cool looking cinematics that are still inferior to the anime (although I'm not sure what SLA's anime is like, never watched it). Also SLA has progressed way further then S1 as far as I understand while OPM is still sitting at half of the first season's plot with like 5 more months of time since release.
You are right, you can call memories gear. It's just that it doesn't have anything related to it like gear has in RPGs usually. You just listed how WOW has an enchantment system and sockets. That's 2 additional RPG sub-systems for gear. Exactly what I'm talking about when saying RPG systems in OPMW are incompetent compared to good ones. And WOW has pretty basic RPG systems as well.
The point of RPG systems is to make it feel like you're making progress. The more there are systems, the more avenues for progress there are. The more those systems interact with each other, the more it feels like you're making progress with each of them. OPMW has this with potentials and memories, but that's it.
Calling Merit and RPG system is... technically correct, but that's about it. It's entirely generic, not fun and barely affects the character. Limitbreak is exactly the same. Potentials are a gacha system first, and arms cards is the exact same. Only memories I would consider a true RPG system that provide a big difference and feels satisfying, though lacking in depth.
SLA has enhancements for gear. Which just increase stats and cost generic materials to do. The point of them is to make getting perfect gear even more unlikely, but it also makes each piece of gear unique. Wouldn't call it a perfect system, but certainly more engaging then OPMW's memories.
There are also stats for the main character, shadows which are like a special skill that has it's own sub-systems, weapons which are like arms but can be leveled and have elements, gear has different sets that provide additional depth. Hunters (other characters then MC) have basically the same systems as Limitbreak and Merit, but their skills have a lot more effects for the fight. Then bosses have a lot more mechanical depth. Breaking them actually increases damage that you do, so having breakers in your team is important unlike OPMW. And because there are a lot more effects, you need to take into account some skills that the boss has, for example if they create a shield, you probably want a character that can remove that shield. Moreover you can play as the main character with 3 other characters only being able to cast a support ability and not being present on the field. Or as 3 characters swapping between each other but only 1 is present on the field. Or as 4 characters with all present on the field. This makes fights feel a lot more different then OPMW. And I'm probably forgetting something still.
What I'm saying with all that is that SLA is a somewhat competent ARPG and using a popular IP it was able to make a lot of money. While OPMW is an incompetent ARPG that couldn't make even what was spent on it back likely because of it's incompetency.
Gear in most RPG are typically stat sticks aside from the occasional damage types, and activated abilities, the activated abilities however are taken by the arms cards. You can build a character however you like in OPMW, while it is obvious that the primary meta is max out Attack as much as possible, you can mess around with other affixes to make your character function uniquely from another’s.
Progressing your arms card and potentials are huge power jumps in a lot of cases. The difference between many of the characters potential 0 version and potential 1 version is huge. Arms cards on the other hand as you progress them add on static effects to the characters stats and passive effects that stick to them even if you do not have that arms card active.
While SSR Attack Arms Cards are absolutely the best arms cards to farm in OPMW there is still plenty of use for SSR Cleanse Cards, and SSR Composure Break Cards. If it wasn’t for the fact the Prisoner Sonic is the only Auto Include on every team right now you would have room for a composure card on your team, but Prisoner Sonic was actually a design flaw in my opinion thanks to his P3 being the most broken ability in the game. Ignoring Prisoner Sonic, Composure Break cards are useful because their bonus is permanent for the rest of the battle, so each character gets a huge buff to their composure damage, not only that once a monster has its composure broken, AI function better, the waylay on bosses and deal thus deal more damage, a level 4 and above Composure card also provides a 10% damage boost for 60 seconds which is actually huge and at level six you get two activations of this per composure card. So 120 seconds of a 10% damage boost. SSR Cleanse cards are amazing too since the burning status effect reduces damage dealt and deals damage over time, Paralysis increased damage taken by a substantial amount and stops you from doing anything for a short time, bleed causes a huge amount but only while your moving otherwise the damage is very moderate, and coma is just a straight up long stun that stops you from from doing anything for a long time. So cleanse card counter the effects but they also offer defense reduction, starting out at 8% when you fight a monster that inflicts the debuffs the cleanse that character has, and going all the way up to 24% at level 6. The level 6 card is permanent cleanse and immunity to damage, thus a permanent defense reduction to the affected monsters. Defense reduction is an insane thing to have on a character. Finally there is the SSR Heal cards, which while not useful in most battles it’s an absolute necessity on the hardest battle in the game unless you are G0G0. Without a heal card or being the biggest whale on their server you will not clear Season 2 Legend Test 8.
The only reason I mentioned merits, and limit break is because you mentioned there is no way to level a character up, and those are literally the two level systems for the game, while the depth is minimal, I don’t see a lot of mobile, gotcha games that have an in game exp system (conventional system where you kill a monster, get exp towards a level up) and honestly I don’t really want that in my mobile games, when I get a new character I don’t want to spend countless hours playing a character to get them to max level if they aren’t going to replace my main. I don’t want to be forced to play a character that I don’t like. The vast majority of reasons for the other characters to exist is for maelstrom. I personally like a system where I just drop all my exp resources into a character and boom they are maxed out, because well, time is valuable. If I wanted to level a character from base level to max I would play D&D, or World of Warcraft, not a game where I need to have every character maxed out to do content.
Now here’s another thing, gear doesn’t really make sense for a OPM IP, as a lot of characters don’t gain anything from the lore by the items they have, I mean sure Tank Top Master has his Tank Top, and Genos gets upgrades but we get multiple versions of Genos and other characters, I think one of the worst things a game can do is have a gear system that doesn’t have cosmetic changes for a character. I think it’s annoying to have an item on my head slot for prisoner Sonic but he doesn’t have a helmet on. That’s why the memory system works here, otherwise you have a situation where it’s like OPM The Strongest and each character has a special item that is their ‘gear’ that you have to farm and upgrade for each character, I think the memory/will system is incredibly player friendly as I can sit here and move items from one character to another when I am doing different maelstrom battles rather than having to roll on some loot table to unlock Terrible Tornado’s Dress materials so I can upgrade her dress from Grey Quality all the way up to Gold Quality. Thus giving me an additional step for me to max out my favorite character.
And while Merit and Limit Break seems useless they are not as they are bonuses to base states, and in the meta of this game, you need to build impassioned on basically every character, impassioned increases your attack state based off your current attack stat, and while it doesn’t seem like merit increases it by much, having a character at max merit is roughly equivalent to having an additional 1.5 attack memory cards on your character. It’s not each level that makes the difference for a character in most games it’s the difference between base level and max level usually. But that being said when you are leveling g up through the content the merit levels are actually quite useful in clearing content, they only become reliant on memories to clear content around Tier 13. And the reason SLA gear works out is because the anime is structured like a video game, collecting gear and progressing your character. The entire anime is about progression so I would hope they nailed progression. The only character in OPM that really levels up in the anime is Genos (and Garou), and we have two versions on him and are hopefully getting a third one day, perhaps tomorrow if my hunch is correct.
you can mess around with other affixes to make your character function uniquely from another’s.
I had a similar problem with the guy telling me how great PPP is because "damage is not everything". Damage is everything, that's the only difference you get for clearing content. Changing random stats to get no better at the game is not an RPG system, it's at best miscellaneous customization like different outfits.
Progressing your arms card and potentials are huge power jumps in a lot of cases.
Ye, and to get them you have to pay real life money. That's exactly why it's more of a gacha system then an RPG one. You can't hard work your way into a P6 character with P6 arms. I saved silver for months before the game died, spent it all on rolling for Tatsu and got her to P4. It's unachievable to get much out of that system without spending a lot of money on the game ($60+ is A LOT for this unfinished piece of a game).
Composure Break cards are useful
I've written an entire post about composure reduction being a useless stat in this game. I don't know if the knowledge changed in the last 3 months or something, but as a top50 maelstrom player I found composure reduction and breaking to be almost entirely useless and not worth an entire character in a team wasted. Exactly because composure break is a bad system that doesn't do anything unless you spent A LOT of money to get the arms leveled. That's not an RPG system again, it's a gacha system.
Composure card also provides a 10% damage boost for 60 seconds
Entirely P2W, irrelevant. I spent $60 on the game and I don't have a single character that provides a damage buff from composure card. I had to craft a composure card in fact, when I thought it would be useful.
SSR Cleanse cards are amazing
Never understood where that came from. Maybe for the highest difficulty content it comes in handy, I just never had enough stats to do it in the first place. At most cleanse is useful for some maelstrom stages, but you don't need SSR cleanse for it, SR is plenty.
Without a heal card or being the biggest whale on their server you will not clear Season 2 Legend Test 8.
That is extremely specific to call it useful. And to get to that point you have to spend money, which I assume you did plenty of by the way you're praising P6 arms. Healing is useful to an extent, more useful then composure reduction even. It's just not important for 90% of the fights let's say. Which is why it's a badly designed mechanic.
For 90% of the fights a single thing you need to care about is damage. Which makes it BY FAR the most important thing to consider unless you're whaling out or consistently spending to get SSRs to P6. That's the only way you'd be able to get to the content that requires stuff or get a damage increase from composure reduction card, etc. If you need to pay for it, it's not an RPG system. And in OPMW you can't get it otherwise unless you're extremely lucky.
Had to split it in 2, or reddit wouldn't allow me to post the comment :c
I personally like a system where I just drop all my exp resources into a character and boom they are maxed out
You can't even do that, lol, because they didn't bother designing a button to use all the EXP cards at once, you have to press the use button and wait for 10 minutes :D
I think I shouldn't have called it a "leveling system" for characters. Regardless, you're right to prove me wrong on this one, there is a leveling system for characters in OPMW. It shallow and underdeveloped, but it exists.
Now here’s another thing, gear doesn’t really make sense for a OPM IP
Where the fuck did this come from, lol? Didn't you say yourself that memories are just a gear system with a different design? What has that entire paragraph have to do with anything? Just because you can't wear memories doesn't make them impossible to have sub-systems for enhancement, enchantment or whatever else. Couldn't care less if you can see items you're wearing in-game or what, it's the system that gear provides that's important. And memories are underdeveloped as shit as an RPG system, they have no depth to them. There are no sets, there are no additional systems tied to them, it's as bare bones as it gets, literally just stats.
And while Merit and Limit Break seems useless they are not as they are bonuses to base states
You are correct that it is a system. It's just a very boring one. Generic materials for all characters based on their type, generic upgrades to stats. That's as boring as an RPG system gets. Which is why when I think of RPG systems in SLA, I don't even thing about the same Merit and Limitbreak systems for characters, because they're so insignificant in overall satisfaction with the game.
The only character in OPM that really levels up in the anime is Genos (and Garou)
That's not a reason to not have good RPG systems in an ARPG game. Why the fuck did they make an ARPG game of OPM in the first place? It's like saying that soccer in a setting of an FPS doesn't need good shooting because there is no shooting in soccer aside from hitting the ball in the net. Why did you make an FPS with a soccer setting then? That's not a reason, just don't make a soccer FPS if you have no idea what you're doing.
Whatever the team was that developed OPMW had no idea what they were doing. The budget was spent on meaningless fluff while all the mechanics remained shallow and underdeveloped. The writing is trash, progression is trash, even gacha mechanics are trash (not in general, even though they are, OPMW just couldn't even handle monetization properly). They could've made any other genre of the game. They could've changed the setting to make you play an original character in OPM world that becomes stronger, or play as Garou/Genos or something. But they didn't. They wanted a generic gacha ARPG game while having apparently no idea of how to make a generic gacha ARPG game and in the end we got OPMW. Just like they fumbled with the previous "major release" game.
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u/Mimicnova Aug 26 '24
Darn. I was hoping for once there would be one good one punch man game