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Discussion Paper Mario and the Kensuke Tanabe conundrum

Before I get to my point, I will say I am by all means a fan of the first two games of the series. I think they are better than all installments that came after them, and even though Super Paper Mario, Color Splash, and The Origami King are far from bad, I feel they fall considerably short from the quality seen in the N64 and GameCube entries. Therefore, I am firmly among those who hope the IP will eventually return to its RPG roots.

With that being said, although I do agree with people who say Tanabe knows what he is doing with the franchise, I also think that - from a game design standpoint - it is absolutely shocking that we have had three straight Paper Mario games where battles are both excessively convoluted and pointless from a progression standpoint. I had fun with Color Splash and The Origami King, don't get me wrong. But when a large slice of the gameplay (that is, battles) is pretty much pointless, that means your game has a serious design problem, I think.
 
They need to stop reinventing the wheel with the battle system. The first two games had a system that worked well, had progression, and was engaging and rewarding. Every Paper Mario game since then has been criticised for how it handles battles. Yet Tanabe and team seem content to dig their heels in and not rectify the issues that are consistently raised by players (both in the West and in Japan) over multiple games now. This failing is entirely on them.

Regarding characters, I recall that Miyamoto tried to rein things in after Super Paper Mario. But it's speculated that the mandate is not quite as strict as Tanabe claims and that he's basically taken it too literally. I think this theory is quite likely given that many other Mario games since Sticker Star have featured original characters with issue. It's doubtful Miyamoto is imposing an extreme mandate on just the Paper Mario series out of spite, or something silly like that.

IMO the series' identity needs a total reboot at this point. They should either make 'Paper Luigi'. or just start from scratch with an entirely unrelated Mario RPG series. 'Paper Mario' now means wildly different things to different people, so there's always going to be a portion of the fanbase that's deeply unhappy with every new instalment.
 
Axe said:
They need to stop reinventing the wheel with the battle system.
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They need to ditch the battle system entirely. Either make the series a proper RPG again or fully embrace the new direction and make it purely an action adventure game. Tacking on these poorly designed, quasi-RPG battle systems for seemingly no reason other than that the series used to be an RPG is the last thing still holding the new games back. They've mostly fixed the other issues.
 
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2...ty_to_change_the_combat_system_in_every_entry
“Striving to find new and innovative systems is the foundation of the philosophy my team and I are following when developing games. As such, I think it’s a necessity that the combat system changes in every game.
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I can’t find the other blurb about the series creator/writer(?) talking about the need to change as well. This was an interview either after TYD or before SPM. But they mirror some of the same sentiments. Regardless don’t hold your breath if you want the battle system to remain the same or go back. Me personally I absolutely enjoyed the puzzle combat so curious what the next one is.
 
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I am all for going crazy with the battle system, as long as they actually give you motivation to engage in those battles. What boggles the mind is that the solution to that problem doesn't need to be anything revolutionary. The good-old leveling system would suffice.

Rin-go said:
I battled in TOK to fill up on confetti or get some money, which I spent a lot of.
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Fair enough, but I assume most of that was related to side-content, right? I am making that assumption because I was able to go through the entire game without engaging in too many non-mandatory battles.

If that's the case, then that's kind of part of the problem. If a player is not looking to do side content, then battles are pretty much meaningless.
 
TheDok said:
Define success. The Sticker Star trilogy is 2/3 for commercial success and 1/3 for critical success. Comparatively the RPG trilogy is 3/3 on both counts and achieved greater relative success on worse performing hardware (N64-NGC-Wii vs 3DS-Wii U-Switch)
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outside of Color Splash, the PM and TTYD are the weakest selling games. "relative to hardware" is some Polygon nonsense

mario_kart_overlapping_line_chart.jpg
 
I think i'm OK with Paper Mario in it's current state, the real problem is that with Mario + Luigi gone and Paper Mario filling a different niche, a vacuum has occurred. People like traditional Mario RPG games and they aren't getting them. While I don't think this has to be fulfilled via Paper Mario, I would hope they eventually fill the gap in some form or another.
 
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Robin said:
I think it's OK that Paper Mario is just fine in it's current state, the real problem is that with Mario + Luigi gone and Paper Mario filling a different niche, a vacuum has occurred. People like traditional Mario RPG games and they aren't getting them. While I don't think this has to be fulfilled via Paper Mario, I would hope they eventually fill the gap in some form or another.
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Compile Heart Presents

Super Princess RPG
 
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dyle said:
dyle said:
outside of Color Splash, the PM and TTYD are the weakest selling games. "relative to hardware" is some Polygon nonsense
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mario_kart_overlapping_line_chart.jpg
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How is sales relative to hardware success a bogus statistic exactly? Some idiot journalist misusing it isn't indicative of anything.

The 64 sold 32m units, GC at 21m, and the Wii at 101m. Compare that to the 3DS hardware at 76m, Wii U at 14m, and Switch at 103m+. If you run the attach rate number it's a noticable drop-off post-SPM:
ubstlu4c8cz41.png

TOK's attach rate is right at 3%, and will only fall over time.

Hocot8 said:
As someone who despises sticker star it is so disrespectful to call Color Splash and TOK a part of the "Sticker Star trilogy" lmfao. /lh
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It's the entry that established the formula both CS and TOK are heavily derived from. Don't see an issue with the term. Maybe "action-adventure trilogy" would be more apt. It's just shorthand.
 
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TheDok said:
How is sales relative to hardware success a bogus statistic exactly? Some idiot journalist misusing it isn't indicative of anything.

The 64 sold 32m units, GC at 21m, and the Wii at 101m. Compare that to the 3DS hardware at 76m, Wii U at 14m, and Switch at 103m+. If you run the attach rate number it's a noticable drop-off post-SPM:
ubstlu4c8cz41.png

TOK's attach rate is right at 3%, and will only fall over time.


It's the entry that established the formula both CS and TOK are heavily derived from. Don't see an issue with the term. Maybe "action-adventure trilogy" would be more apt. It's just shorthand.
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Attach rate is arbitrary after a certain point because you are assuming the market demand for a product follows the trajectory of units available on that platform, when the audience of said game likely are the early adopters and disproportionately represented by early sales. Mario Kart 8 on Wii U has a higher attach rate than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but no one would consider Mario Kart 8 Deluxe a relative disappointment by any stretch, would they?
 
I tend to agree that the problem isn't the series governing rules on characters, at least not anymore. There's plenty of character variety even within just Odyssey they could pull from for the RPGs. And to be honest, when I look back at TTYD and SPM, as much as I love the games, I can see why some of the characters wouldn't cut it in the Mario world anymore.
 
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A big part of the problem with modern Paper Mario is that, while IS/Tanabe clearly don't seem to want to do traditional RPG combat, they've utterly failed 3 times in a row now to actually provide a compelling replacement for it. If they actually had good ideas for new battle systems, one would have expected them to actually manifest by now. Instead, they just come off as stubbornly refusing to return to the proven system of the first two games.

Much has already been said about how Nintendo's new stricter brand management for Mario seems too strict for RPGs, and how seemingly only EPD is allowed to be creative with Mario character design anymore, but it does bear repeating because Mario RPGs were hit especially bad by this. When an RPG is struggling to introduce named characters, you have a problem.
WestEgg said:
Super Paper Mario has mostly entirely original NPCs rather than modified stock characters, is a complete departure gameplay wise (it’s an action platformer with very mild RPG elements, arguably the most experimental the series has ever been), and plays heavily into the gimmick of 2D vs 3D, which while not explicitly leaning on the paper motif, it has long ago broken the fourth wall on the flatness aspect of the characters and entirely abandoned the “this is just representative of story book illustrations” style of the first two games (and even TTYD starts to do this as well). Basically it’s weird to say SPM is closer to the originals than the new games when it does basically everything people criticize the new games for, the only thing really missing is they haven’t given Mario the white outline yet.
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Super Paper Mario, while much different from the first two games, still manages to capture their soul in a way that Sticker Star onward completely lack. The original NPCs are part of what helps with that because they still maintained the same variety in character design that has been lost by the switch to mostly standard Mario designs. The gameplay is experimental and certainly doesn't work great at times, but there's no core mechanics that work anywhere near as badly as the standard battle systems in the following games.

Also, the thing with the paper stuff is that it's basically completely taken over the series. Sure, the first few entries had meta jokes and mechanics that played off the flat "paper" aesthetic, but they still had story and world building that existed independent from that. In the newer games, everything is explicitly literally paper (except when it isn't, to draw contrast, but the less said about "things", the better, nothing good has come from their inclusion), all of the characters are aware of this, and the story revolves around this paper-ness. Super Paper Mario had the 2D-3D flip gimmick, but it's not really explicitly connected to paper and the story is it's own thing about an omnicidal maniac who's trying to break the universe by forcing Bowser and Peach to marry. Paper as aesthetic and mechanics is fine, the problem is the newer games don't really have an identity outside of "is paper".
Hocot8 said:
As someone who despises sticker star it is so disrespectful to call Color Splash and TOK a part of the "Sticker Star trilogy" lmfao. /lh
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Color Splash and Sticker Star are bad for broadly similar reasons and are pretty deeply similar games, so I don't see why you wouldn't group them together. Origami King is a bit different, but still clearly more from the Sticker Star lineage than anything else.
 
TheDok said:
Pokemaniac said:
Color Splash and Sticker Star are bad for broadly similar reasons and are pretty deeply similar games, so I don't see why you wouldn't group them together. Origami King is a bit different, but still clearly more from the Sticker Star lineage than anything else.
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It's the entry that established the formula both CS and TOK are heavily derived from. Don't see an issue with the term. Maybe "action-adventure trilogy" would be more apt. It's just shorthand.
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Like I said, I was being light-hearted. I was just joking.
 
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I think one of the things that would have made Sticker Star a better experience (for me anyway) is if you could have a more permanent form of attacking like the first two games.

Keep your regular jump and hammer as permanent and instead of badges you have the stickers. In order to help balance the game so you rely on stickers would be to get rid of the upgrades Mario acquires like the super and ultra boots/hammer and increase enemy difficulty as you further progress in the game. Stickers take over for badges and help increase your attack and defense (glitter stickers and the shell stickers) as well as recovering your health, but if you want to save them for a troublesome boss or encounter you still have your regular attacks that you always keep. You can keep the limited actions that you have in a turn forcing you to strategize how you approach certain enemies and figure out which enemy to take out first.

I also would have liked to see Kersti become a full-fledged partner who participated in battles.
 
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TheDok said:
How is sales relative to hardware success a bogus statistic exactly?
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how is it not? if it wasn't, then NIntendo would have never continued the series because it was a failure beforehand. this isn't how things work, it's not how Nintendo works. you're grasping at straws because it's the only way to make a game you don't like look like a failure
 
bellydrum said:
How are battles in TOK pointless
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Haven't people gone over this many times at this point?

You gain nothing useful out of fighting and the battles themselves are very slow and tedious, the combat system doesn't mesh well with the rest of the game and it seems like it only exists to be different for the sake of being different. They had an idea and they went with it but it isn't well-considered.

Since the game is so easy and coins are plenty, there really is no good reason to fight anything. If I'm being extremely generous towards TOK, I will say that the battles are a slight improvement over those in SS and CS but that was rock bottom and there was nowhere to go but up.
 
If they don't want to make an RPG then they should stop making turn-based battle systems that mostly just waste your time

It's like they keep giving these games turn-based combat because "well, that's what Paper Mario is supposed to have" but then they decide not to bother with game design makes sense for a turn-based game to have
 
VDenter said:
Haven't people gone over this many times at this point?

You gain nothing useful out of fighting and the battles themselves are very slow and tedious, the combat system doesn't mesh well with the rest of the game and it seems like it only exists to be different for the sake of being different. They had an idea and they went with it but it isn't well-considered.

Since the game is so easy and coins are plenty, there really is no good reason to fight anything. If I'm being extremely generous towards TOK, I will say that the battles are a slight improvement over those in SS and CS but that was rock bottom and there was nowhere to go but up.
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The only argument towards battles being pointless you gave is that you get nothing useful. That's not true. You get coins and confetti out of battles. You use coins to buy more (and better!) weapons. Some weapons are only available in a certain shop later in the game and cost a lot of money. This is the use of battles: to get coins and confetti when you're low on them.

It can be slow and tedious, you can think it doesn't mesh well, and you can feel like it's different just for the sake of being different. But they have use.
 
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What if they made a Dragon Quest game where instead of getting EXP, leveling up, and learning new abilities and buying equipment to get better stats, the only thing you get from battle is Gold, which is mainly used to buy disposable swords, which are the only thing that matters in battle. You'd use up your swords in battle and have to buy more, with nothing to show for it besides getting Gold, which you don't need for much beyond buying more swords.

Nobody would make that Dragon Quest game because it would be stupid and it's not hard to design a better game than that. That's where Paper Mario is at.
 
RochHoch said:
What if they made a Dragon Quest game where instead of getting EXP, leveling up, and learning new abilities and buying equipment to get better stats, the only thing you get from battle is Gold, which is mainly used to buy disposable swords, which are the only thing that matters in battle. You'd use up your swords in battle and have to buy more, with nothing to show for it besides getting Gold, which you don't need for much beyond buying more swords.

Nobody would make that Dragon Quest game because it would be stupid and it's not hard to design a better game than that. That's where Paper Mario is at.
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It seems pretty clear that the lack of level/EXP-style progression is intentional, and to be honest is indicative of a bit of a trend for first-party Nintendo games: they don't seem to want you to do something because it makes a number go up, they want you to do it because it's fun.

Take BOTW, for instance. Most similar games have more RPG mechanics. Maybe your character gains levels, or maybe your equipment does, or maybe even your abilities do, whatever. Usually something gains levels. But not in BOTW. Sure, you can upgrade your clothes, you get a few new abilities, and you can get better weapons. But you don't fight enemies to do this - well, except the weapons - so you could argue that fighting enemies is largely pointless outside of occasionally getting new weapons. Hell, some people even have argued that! But for many people, they still did fight enemies, and the reason is because it's fun. (Okay, maybe you have to grind a bit to get all the monster parts for clothing upgrades, but that's very much not going to be the majority of fights for the majority of players.)

The problem is that - to me, at least, but also seemingly to quite a few others - the non-boss combat in Origami King just isn't all that fun. But it also wouldn't be fun if they just tacked on RPG mechanics like level and EXP. To be honest, I'm not against them mixing it up each game, it just didn't really land for me this time. But even then that's okay, because the rest of the game was so good that I was willing to look past the not-particularly-good combat.
 
I find the "Paper Mario lost its soul" takes weird when The Origami King and hell Color Splash (I will fight to the death that giving the Koopalings some much needed voice lines was genuinely needed after like years of them just...existing) are full to the brim with soul. They are incredibly creative games that are just as funny and emotional as the first two even if they don't follow are more "serious" story.
 
fact check: false

iwata and other executives stopped paper mario from being an rpg series because they already have the mario and luigi series and sales didnt support having two jrpg series

now that alphadream is out of business and the mario and luigi series is pretty much dead, nintendo is open to paper mario being an rpg series again, especially given all of the fan feedback

they will remake paper mario for swtich and if it sells well the next new paper mario game can be an rpg again

screenshot this post
 
bellydrum said:
How are battles in TOK pointless
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Maybe it is a case of different strokes for different folks, but let's look at the rewards we get from battling:

Coins - I don't think the fact they buy more powerful weapons makes them meaningful, because you are falling into the same trap that existed in Sticker Star; in other words, you are battling so you can get items that will allow you to.... do more battling. If you stop engaging in battles you don't need those weapons at all and can pretty much ignore an essential component of gameplay. It is very different from an RPG where you are battling so you can get stronger to deal with more powerful foes. In addition, coins acquired in the overworld and from mandatory battles were more than enough to allow me to finish the main campaign. Because of that, and also due to the convoluted battle system, non-mandatory encounters to me were more of an annoyance than something that was actually fun and rewarding.

Confetti - Personally, my experience here was similar to what I said about coins. The confetti I earned in the overworld and from mandatory encounters was more than enough to get me to the end of the game, rendering getting them from non-mandatory combats pretty pointless.

If I had gone for full completion, I sure would have needed more coins and confetti, which would give more meaning to battles. But then we bump into two problems. First, given (to my tastes) battles were excessively convoluted (and I am someone who loves puzzles!), the idea of stocking up on coins and confetti wasn't appealing. Second, and here's the main problem, like I mentioned before, if a major gameplay component of a game can be ignored completely (in other words, it's pointless), I think said game has a big design problem.
 
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hologram said:
It seems pretty clear that the lack of level/EXP-style progression is intentional, and to be honest is indicative of a bit of a trend for first-party Nintendo games: they don't seem to want you to do something because it makes a number go up, they want you to do it because it's fun.
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This is such a bizarre outlook for them to have when Pokemon exists. Series is nothing but making numbers go up, and those games sell 10 million copies without even blinking.

There's Fire Emblem and Xenoblade too, but since none of these are Mario, I guess that's why they'd be exempt from this trend?
 
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xaszatm said:
I find the "Paper Mario lost its soul" takes weird when The Origami King and hell Color Splash (I will fight to the death that giving the Koopalings some much needed voice lines was genuinely needed after like years of them just...existing) are full to the brim with soul. They are incredibly creative games that are just as funny and emotional as the first two even if they don't follow are more "serious" story.
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Color Splash and Origami King are not necessarily soulless (Sticker Star absolutely is, though), but they're so different from the first three games as to be an entirely separate entity.

Also Color Splash committed the unforgivable sin of barely letting Bowser talk.
 
VDenter said:
Haven't people gone over this many times at this point?

You gain nothing useful out of fighting and the battles themselves are very slow and tedious, the combat system doesn't mesh well with the rest of the game and it seems like it only exists to be different for the sake of being different. They had an idea and they went with it but it isn't well-considered.

Since the game is so easy and coins are plenty, there really is no good reason to fight anything. If I'm being extremely generous towards TOK, I will say that the battles are a slight improvement over those in SS and CS but that was rock bottom and there was nowhere to go but up.
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Earthbounder said:
Before I get to my point, I will say I am by all means a fan of the first two games of the series. I think they are better than all installments that came after them, and even though Super Paper Mario, Color Splash, and The Origami King are far from bad, I feel they fall considerably short from the quality seen in the N64 and GameCube entries. Therefore, I am firmly among those who hope the IP will eventually return to its RPG roots.

With that being said, although I do agree with people who say Tanabe knows what he is doing with the franchise, I also think that - from a game design standpoint - it is absolutely shocking that we have had three straight Paper Mario games where battles are both excessively convoluted and pointless from a progression standpoint. I had fun with Color Splash and The Origami King, don't get me wrong. But when a large slice of the gameplay (that is, battles) is pretty much pointless, that means your game has a serious design problem, I think.
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Let’s think of this differently, what’s the point of battles in a Zelda game?
 
Supreme Bum 01 said:
fact check: false

iwata and other executives stopped paper mario from being an rpg series because they already have the mario and luigi series and sales didnt support having two jrpg series
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I’m not sure if serious but no it wasn’t Iwata or Miyamoto or other executives. It was actually the team who did TTYD that changed it from an RPG into SPM. Fro. There history basically writes itself
Supreme Bum 01 said:
now that alphadream is out of business and the mario and luigi series is pretty much dead, nintendo is open to paper mario being an rpg series again, especially given all of the fan feedback
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From which fans exactly? You have a better chance of the SE guy wanting his final game being SMRPG2 then PM changing back.
Supreme Bum 01 said:
they will remake paper mario for swtich and if it sells well the next new paper mario game can be an rpg again

screenshot this post
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If they remake PM and it sells well then it sells well; and PM will still continue to aggravate those who want it to be an RPG again.
 
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RochHoch said:
What if they made a Dragon Quest game where instead of getting EXP, leveling up, and learning new abilities and buying equipment to get better stats, the only thing you get from battle is Gold, which is mainly used to buy disposable swords, which are the only thing that matters in battle. You'd use up your swords in battle and have to buy more, with nothing to show for it besides getting Gold, which you don't need for much beyond buying more swords.

Nobody would make that Dragon Quest game because it would be stupid and it's not hard to design a better game than that. That's where Paper Mario is at.
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you make it sound more interesting than you think. a game where your stats are determined by your equipment over your base stats? I think some games have already done that. probably western ones like Skyrim
 
I really dislike the Souless label.

Sticker Star really wasn’t a Souless game, fans universally disliked it and had some justified criticism, yes.

But that’s not what souless means.
 
Earthbounder said:
Maybe it is a case of different strokes for different folks, but let's look at the rewards we get from battling:

Coins - I don't think the fact they buy more powerful weapons makes them meaningful, because you are falling into the same trap that existed in Sticker Star; in other words, you are battling so you can get items that will allow you to.... do more battling. If you stop engaging in battles you don't need those weapons at all and can pretty much ignore an essential component of gameplay. It is very different from an RPG where you are battling so you can get stronger to deal with more powerful foes. In addition, coins acquired in the overworld and from mandatory battles were more than enough to allow me to finish the main campaign. Because of that, and also due to the convoluted battle system, non-mandatory encounters to me were more of an annoyance than something that was actually fun and rewarding.

Confetti - Personally, my experience here was similar to what I said about coins. The confetti I earned in the overworld and from mandatory encounters was more than enough to get me to the end of the game, rendering getting them from non-mandatory combats pretty pointless.

If I had gone for full completion, I sure would have needed more coins and confetti, which would give more meaning to battles. But then we bump into two problems. First, given (to my tastes) battles were excessively convoluted (and I am someone who loves puzzles!), the idea of stocking up on coins and confetti wasn't appealing. Second, and here's the main problem, like I mentioned before, if a major gameplay component of a game can be ignored completely (in other words, it's pointless), I think said game has a big design problem.
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You didn’t like the boss battles? Those were some sweet puzzles.
 
WestEgg said:
Let’s think of this differently, what’s the point of battles in a Zelda game?
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Funnily, I was just thinking how this argument reminds me of debates over the battles in Breath of the Wild, which some claim are pointless because of the whole weapon-breaking mechanic. Claims with which I disagree, by the way!

But anyway, to stay on topic and sort of answer your question, I see the point you are trying to make. In Zelda games, battles against regular enemies mostly offer no rewards that are necessary to complete the game, and because of that they could be avoided altogether. But, at least in my mind, the comparison does not work because these are two very different genres.

Zelda is an adventure with action-based battles, so if monsters are standing in your way (blocking a path, stopping you from climbing, making a tricky area even more dangerous to navigate, etc) you can quickly dispose of them in multiple ways. Battles may not be necessary, but they are a fun quick way to get rid of annoyances or threats.

Origami King is an RPG where taking down enemies involves a long process: a transition to another screen, the solving of a puzzle, and then a few turns of battling. All of that so an enemy disappears. It's a lot of work for too little. And since enemies pose no threat, unlike what happens in Zelda, for instance, the game creates a situation where it is easier to just ignore those battles, and players can get away with it without any sort of repercussion. You don't become underleveled, you won't run out of health, the path ahead won't be more treacherous, etc.

And this leads me to my main problem with the games that followed Super Paper Mario. Their structure is in a weird middle ground between action-exploration and RPG. They don't embrace either genre completely. They are not 100% action-exploration because they have turn-based battles, but they are not 100% RPGs because they have no leveling up. Because of that they hit a lot of design problems. I feel Origami King would have been much better if it had an action approach to battles, like Super Paper Mario, because its writing, world, and settings are absolutely incredible. But its battles (save for the boss encounters)... they just hold it back.

Clix said:
You didn’t like the boss battles? Those were some sweet puzzles.
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I loved them! They were awesome! My problem is with the non-mandatory battles, which proportionally are the majority of the encounters.
 
RochHoch said:
What if they made a Dragon Quest game where instead of getting EXP, leveling up, and learning new abilities and buying equipment to get better stats, the only thing you get from battle is Gold, which is mainly used to buy disposable swords, which are the only thing that matters in battle. You'd use up your swords in battle and have to buy more, with nothing to show for it besides getting Gold, which you don't need for much beyond buying more swords.

Nobody would make that Dragon Quest game because it would be stupid and it's not hard to design a better game than that. That's where Paper Mario is at.
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I think that "Ok, every time you battle someone in Dragon Quest get new EXP, levels, abilities and gold. Is this really necessary? Can we streamline the reward of a battle by giving the player just some gold?" is a fascinating question, which inevitably leads to a deconstruction of the JRPG genre. Whether the end results are good in practice... that's a whole other business, but this is incredibly interesting from an intellectual/game design studying point of view.

It is also something common in Lovedelic works. Taro Kudo, director of Sticker Star and Color Splash and writer of Origami King, worked on the PS1 game Moon, which was literally built around the question "What if we make a Dragon Quest where you don't fight monsters but you help people", and the end result was a de-facto adventure game, even though it was marketed as an "anti-RPG". Tanabe and Kudo then worked together on the Tingle games for DS, which have a lot in common with later Paper Mario entries.

Iwata:
You purposely threw out the basic RPG structure?

Tanabe:
Yes. We decided to make it so that players would face stronger opponents by throwing out the whole concept of experience points and levels in favour of gradually gathering stronger stickers. I had actually been thinking for a long time that I wanted to get rid of the RPG experience points. In Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, which Kudo-san and I worked on together, the player-character relationship didn’t develop at all. We adopted a system whereby they solved everything with money. This time, we decided to do everything with stickers. We decided on a system whereby in battle, instead of attack commands you fight by using the stickers you have gathered in the field or bought in town.
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So playing with the rules of "what makes a JRPG a JRPG?" is something the Paper Mario team seems very interested in. I agree that the end result is flawed, but I can say the experiment itself isn't worth it.

Personally, I think they should embrace the fact that this whole experiment leads to an adventure game (as was already proved by Moon!), so they should stop including battles altogether, or switch to quicky real-time battles (like the ones with the Paper Macho enemies), which would give them less focus.

EDIT: I agree with @Earthbounder, who posted more or less at the same time as me
Earthbounder said:
Origami King is an RPG where taking down enemies involves a long process: a transition to another screen, the solving of a puzzle, and then a few turns of battling. All of that so an enemy disappears. It's a lot of work for too little. And since enemies pose no threat, unlike what happens in Zelda, for instance, the game creates a situation where it is easier to just ignore those battles, and players can get away with it without any sort of repercussion. You don't become underleveled, you won't run out of health, the path ahead won't be more treacherous, etc.

And this leads me to my main problem with the games that followed Super Paper Mario. Their structure is in a weird middle ground between action-exploration and RPG. They don't embrace either genre completely. They are not 100% action-exploration because they have turn-based battles, but they are not 100% RPGs because they have no leveling up. Because of that they hit a lot of design problems. I feel Origami King would have been much better if it had an action approach to battles, like Super Paper Mario, because its writing, world, and settings are absolutely incredible. But its battles... they just hold it back.
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I think the fact that modern Paper Mario games are neither JRPGs nor adventure games comes from the fact that Tanabe, Kudo and IntSys are developing those games with the "let's deconstruct the JRPG genre!" mindset. They are starting from a JRPG template, then proceeding to remove some elements and accidentally coming up with an adventure game. Again, I find this extremely fascinating. But the end result would be better if they decided to make an adventure game from the start.
 
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Phosphorescent Skeleton said:
Isn't that just Monster Hunter?
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yea, MH also counts. in any case, a DQ spin off that had a heavy focus on equipment sounds cool. they could also make it more like Elder Scrolls, I guess. and since it's a spin off, they don't have to make it so risky. DQ was partially inspired by other D&D-esque games like Ultima, so why not make "D&D DQ"
 
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RochHoch said:
If they don't want to make an RPG then they should stop making turn-based battle systems that mostly just waste your time

It's like they keep giving these games turn-based combat because "well, that's what Paper Mario is supposed to have" but then they decide not to bother with game design makes sense for a turn-based game to have
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I'm going to be honest, I do think a lot of my enjoyment of TOK was because I just do not see TOK as a RPG. It's a puzzle game with some turn based elements. It's why the main meat of the "standard battles" is the rotation mode and not the actual fight. Enemies were there to be fought just because there were more puzzles to solve.
 
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The problem with the XP argument is that it shows one of the fatal flaws of video games: XP is just an abstraction of progression, it isn't the be all end all.

When people say they don't like that there's no XP, what they're really saying is they don't like the lack of progression. In actuality, XP isn't an inherently good system, it's pretty unimaginative, but that unimaginative aspect makes it very tried-and-true and honestly it works for most games out there.

But honestly I can't say I find XP all that exciting by itself. Especially in slower turn-based games where you never really get the sense that without XP you'd be less successful, since you usually challenge enemies in the order the game entails. A lot of what makes games like Final Fantasy 7 or Final Fantasy 8 have great leveling systems is actually about the amount of choice you have behind the leveling system, the XP is just there to facilitate an abstraction of progress.

Ironically, the original Paper Mario understood this very well. That game gets surprisingly different depending on which of the 3 values you level up. Not only that, but the most "choice"-based system you had in the game wasn't even linked to the leveling system much behind certain requirements; badges were almost totally detached.
 
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Zeal543 said:
I dunno what nintendo has against mario rpgs tbh, I doubt they'd make a new mario RPG series when they left M&L to die and scrubbed modern paper mario
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They don’t really have anything against Mario RPGs. AlphaDream killed themselves by failing to keep up & taking a risky venture. And, the original creators were the ones who setup the change in SPM that has been followed since.
 
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I like what you said about fighting an uphill battle OP.

Like, I can feel it when I play the game. The devs fighting the restrictions they placed on themselves or Nintendo did. You can feel “this would’ve made so much more sense as an RPG mechanic but we can’t do that” or “this character would’ve stood out way more with a unique design but we can’t do that” pouring out of the game, as good as Origami King is.

It’s just sad to me and I never got why people play dumb about it sometimes
 
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Zeal543 said:
I dunno what nintendo has against mario rpgs tbh, I doubt they'd make a new mario RPG series when they left M&L to die and scrubbed modern paper mario
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Nintendo has two things they didn’t have when paper Mario was an RPG - Xenoblade and a popular Fire Emblem. And now Pokémon is on home consoles.

They may view those as good enough and want paper Mario to experiment I guess. I mean you already have people complaining about the JRPG deluge on switch.
 
Phendrift said:
Nintendo has two things they didn’t have when paper Mario was an RPG - Xenoblade and a popular Fire Emblem. And now Pokémon is on home consoles.

They may view those as good enough and want paper Mario to experiment I guess. I mean you already have people complaining about the JRPG deluge on switch.
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this is a great point. why make a Mario spinoff abstruse and inaccessible when the RPG market is being so thoroughly addressed
 
I think someone at Nintendo has to want to make an rpg-ass Mario game. With Tanabe desiring to move away from the rpg-ness and AlphaDream dead, no one at Nintendo gives a enough of a shit to make a Msrio RPG
 
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