As an ambitious RPG gamer, I’ve often came to the conclusion that something’s off. You’re fighting your way through a dungeon, loot some chests, fullfill some side quests to get the rewards and start to get stronger and stronger equipments and therefore stats to challenge even harder enemies. However, at some point you want to revisit one of the first places just to chill there .. and all the enemies are just .. meh. Of course, that’s how it is, but in my opinion not how it should be.

Let me explain it this way: I want to create a game where getting +20 Strength is a bonus, a real progression, not the requirement to have the chance to even challenge stronger enemies. When both you and the enemy have +5 Health compared to the last fight, you didn’t made any real progress since then. That’s something that bothers me alot about games like Diablo that takes it to its extreme. As a player, I’d feel cheated.

Moreover, there’s a term called mudflation. To explain that here’s an example: Back when you start your journey, you fight a monster and get loot worth of 10 gold. 2 hours later, you made some progress and can now fight stronger monster that drop loot worth 50 gold. Let’s say you have to spend 2 minutes to fight each of them, it’s obvious which one’s worse efficient-wise. The progress you made at the beginning starts to get smaller and smaller the further you progress through the game. “Oh, you saved 100 gold from the first hour? Sweet, now you get double that amount within 2 minutes slaying this high end monster.” Meaning it’s not only an issue of increasing numbers, but also of spend effort and time that gets worth less and less.

I want to create a game with visible progress, so just removing all stats and only relying on the player getting better game skills by playing the game isn’t an option for me. However, I can’t think of a system without said mudflation – even Dark Souls that relies heavily on the player’s skill had to add some stats that you can’t just ignore as a player, otherwise you won’t be able to kill the end bosses within reasonable time.

Does anyone know a solution for that? I want the players to actually know they’ve made some progress (so just cosmetics as rewards isn’t a solution either), but they shouldn’t feel cheated.