RPGs also often feature divergent stories based on player choice, as well as often including random events. These divergent choices compound the testing required, requiring teams to playthrough the game multiple times to cover every area of the game. They can cause small dialog changes, cause different characters to appear, or change entire areas, among many other possibilities. These require thorough testing from functional and linguistic teams to ensure every option has been accounted for. Story choices often have a large impact upon how the rest of the game unfolds and ensuring that your teams account for this must be a priority. Story and gameplay choices like these also create more variables which will further increase the testing effort.
Random events don’t have quite the same effect. They don’t necessarily increase the number of variables your teams have to deal with, but they do introduce an unpredictable element that can be difficult to test due to the inconsistent nature. These random events can range from NPC dialogue to world events and require focus from both functional and linguistic teams.
Taking the time to test for all these issues is incredibly important for the title, publisher, and developer because a bug-ridden game reflects poorly upon everyone involved. It’s not hard to find major RPGs with major bugs, largely due to the size of these games and the number of variables they include. This is exactly why RPGs are also the perfect place to display your testing prowess, player focus, and RPG pedigree. RPGs with solid releases are instantly more impressive to players and easily garner more positive attention in player discussions and press coverage. You can find examples of beloved RPGs that are full of bugs, but they’re few and far between.
The important part is taking the time to do these checks. Rushing through your testing at the end of development will both take far longer and have a negative effect on your resources and employees. Avoiding crunch, as much as possible, is always a positive and not leaving any checks till the last minute will improve the overall quality of the project. Taking time for these checks will also markedly improve your linguistic quality across all support languages. Making sure that every version of the game matches linguistically isn’t just good for RPGs, it’s critical for any genre.
In summary, the biggest challenges with testing RPGs are the depth of the content and the number of variables. While a first-person shooter might have a single player character, 30 weapons, a few items, and a couple of abilities, an RPG will have multiple player characters, hundreds of possible weapons, a long list of items, and a variety of abilities which can differ based on more variables. This number of variables, and how each function with one another, compounds the amount of testing required and dramatically increases the number of testing hours needed to guarantee a successful release. RPG developers must therefore ensure considerations about the testing effort and testing strategies are factored into the development cycle as early as possible, including engagement with third party testing partners.