LogFAQs > #943119786

The Paper Mario argument comes from the idea that the game is disincentivizing you from at all engaging with its combat system - rather different.

Leveling and number boosting can work in more straightforward RPGs where numbers are literally the whole game, but in ARPGs there's a level of player engagement that just has those numbers draped over a much more involved experience. So you need to be very careful in balancing how those two conflicting ideas - "leveling up" your own skill as a player and literally leveling up your avatar strength - intersect.

Gear systems of this nature have historically proven to be the absolute worst implementation of this that more often than not come off as a gross, grindy (and potentially exploitative) system stapled to a game that would have been stronger without any of it. Like, you could literally take the exact same structure shown in that screenshot and plug it into literally any setting. There's nothing remotely "Avengers" about such a system - to the contrary, it actually conflicts with the setting and its characters! I just can't be excited for something that was so clearly developed by a corporate playbook with no apparent interest in actually making a game about its source material.

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