I think it's fair to say that dtgreene has been the target of rep abuse for some time now. Some person or persons unknown seem to target her regardless of the topic or content of her posts. It's essentially bullying and I believe the intent is to either getting her to shut up regarding whatever it is the bullies dislikes (probably her liberal political leanings or her feminism), or make this place so unpleasant for her that she decides to leaves this forum. There are several people on this forum that are subject to this kind of treatment and it is one of the reasons why I think this crappy rep system should be removed from this forum post haste.

I have. In a couple of different ones actually. If you use common sense, you'll be fine most of the time.

Lol ok, sounds like you were ganked in the first town. My reaction would probably have been the same :P

Pretty much this.

Also, considering that JRPGs have a massive gameplay disconnect where you randomly get pulled from the overworld into an alternate dimension to fight an enemy, it's no surprise that towns are also completely separate from the overworld and from the battle system.

In WRPGs you are always playing the game. If you can press a button and swing your sword in the wild, of course you can press the same button and do the same thing inside a town, unless it would be illogical to do so like in the case blotunga stated.

Agreed. Posts should speak for themselves, not on the behalf of anonymous bullies.

I tend to prefer the WRPG style but even then the less "safer" spaces have factors that put a check on certain activity. The town law enforcement will arrest you or attack you in certain games like the Elder Scrolls games for attacking civilians or stealing so it makes the setting a bit more believable. The town law enforcement also can help you when you are under attack like in Baldur's Gate when an assassin tries to kill you in the first chapter and at the town near the mines.

Also, the main city in Planescape: Torment was a combination of danger zone and safe space. If you attacked random civilians, the Lady of Pain will punish you.

I agree. I particularly liked this in Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. The plot of that game has you run all over the map, fight combat encounters that come back-to-back, chase certain characters etc. However, there are also moments of calm, where the characters unwind by having dinner, going fishing or enjoying the sunset. This serves as a welcome change in pace, and also to advance the plot or develop the main characters.

Towns have a similar function. I generally dislike games that consist of 100% combat. There have to be safe zones where I can take a break by talking to the characters, going shopping for equipment, learning some lore or just enjoying the peaceful scenery. And then I can go back into the fray (dungeon and other hostile areas). It adds to the experience, and isn't very difficult to implement.

I agree with you that she's only playing into the hands of the bullies. On previous occasions when she has made it clear that something has bothered her, it only fanned the flames. My point was that even fairly harmless and neutral posts of hers frequently gets downvoted—this fits into the pattern. Though it is possible that people seriously disagreed with what she's posted here without actually bothering to post a reply, the frequency with which it happens to her—and not to me or other users less inclined to enter political debates—is to me a rather clear indicator that there are people that target her specifically, not the content of her posts.

Anyway, back on topic, I like towns that mix dangerous and safe areas. Certain backalleys, mansions or perhaps the sewers could contain enemies, making combat avoidable, but also leaving one with the feeling that there are dangers lurking in the shadows.

I prefer a hybrid of the two. Towns should generally be safe spaces because they represent order, but people have their own agendas and allowing some to be hostile makes the setting more interesting to me.

That game is most likely Din's Curse, but you can make the towns safe spaces by going to the settings.

No, I am not going to report for simple disagreement; I save my reports for posts that are *really bad* (like one post that contained an image containing transphobic and ableist language along with a picture of my avatar, indicating that the post was a nasty personal attack on me). Since the recent moderation started, I have only reported that one post.

In this case, I was reporting not a post, but rather the abuse of the reputation system.

Here's the thing: Even in JRPGs that lack the disconnect between combat and non-combat, there's still the whole fact that towns are completely separate from the rest of the game. In fact, as I pointed out, this happens even in Japanese roguelikes (like the Mystery Dungeon series and games like the Izuna series).

When a town mixes dangerous and safe areas, I could argue that the dangerous areas are really dungeons; in fact, you see this happening in some of the Final Fantasy games (5, 6, and 7 all do this at some point, though in different ways (FF7 Midgar is so big it contains multiple town and multiple dungeon areas IIRC).)

I wonder what you will say about Might and Magic III-V in this regard. All towns have monsters in them, so towns aren't safe at all.

I also agree that Midgar, consists from several towns and dungeons, e. g. Reactor 1, Reactor 5, Sewers, Sector 5 Slum, Train Graveyard, Shinra HQ are all dungeons, while Sector 7, Wall Market and Sector 5 hub are clearly towns.

Those games behave like WRPGs in this respect, as do MM2 and (from what I have seen from videos) MM1.

Of course, it is worth noting that, in MM3-5, the towns do become safe once you kill all the enemies (and, if necessary, trigger an event that disables monster respawns in the city).

Bard's Tale towns are also unsafe; in fact, in Bard's Tale 1 and 2 (especially 1), it is quite possible for a town encounter to wipe out an entire fledgling party.

The Ultima series is a bit different, but even those games allow you to steal and murder innocent townspeople, which generally doesn't apply to JRPGs (never mind the fact that many JRPGs allow you to take items from people's houses without anybody complaining).

Yeah I don't like the game limiting my options just because I stepped inside a town. Have you ever played a RPG and the DM told you "I didn't expect you to start combat here, because this is a town. Put your dices aside, you're not using them now"? Even if the DM doesn't want you to initiate combat inside the city, there are better ways of doing that, by making the player less likely to wish starting a battle.
You're free to pull your sword out in Gothic, but if you're inside a camp and a guard sees you, he will get his weapon and order you to unequip yours. Now you're free to ignore his threat, which will result in a battle agains't him, or obbey him.
In Fallout 2 something similar happens in a city, if they see you holding a weapon while you explore the streets, they will threat you, even if it's not you but some follower that is being an exhibicionist, trying to look cool.
You think twice before causing trouble, because you see people trying to keep law and order in that place.
It's not a place where anarchy reigns, if you act by impulse, there might be some nasty consequences.
Many games just flatout forbid you of starting any conflict, creating an invisible barrier between you and the inhabitants of a town, this is unrealistic and a bad design imo.
No video game will ever have limitless options, and that's okay. It's also okay if a game wants to bring a more realistic experience than other. Gamers have differing tastes, and this market is big enough. Even for niche titles, like Hatoful Boyfriend, which will make people question your sanity if they find out what you're playing hahah.
But it's just a preference, I can still have a great time with jRPGs, even if I don't enjoy some of their features, that became a tradition for the genre.

From a realism standpoint, this argument might make sense.

From a gameplay standpoint, however, there are good reasons not to allow resting at arbitrary points. Consider that one has to implement the option to rest, which requires specific effort on the part of the game developers. Also, if you can just rest anywhere, the whole issue of having to conserve your spells (or other resource that is restored by resting) becomes moot, as one can just rest after every battle.

Personally, I think it makes more sense, from a gameplay perspective, to take one of two approaches instead of rest anywhere:
1. Allow resting only at inns and save points. This could even be made into an automatic full restore when you reach a town or a save point, making it unnecessary to locate an inn and wait for the resting animation to finish. This choice works well if the game is designed around having to conserve your resources.
2. After every battle, automatically restore the party's resources fully. This allows the developer to make each combat a challenge that is expected to utilize all of the player's resources, and allows the player to freely use spells and special attacks in every battle.

Either approach is better than rest anywhere IMO, as it becomes clear what sort of gameplay is expected.

If you want a halfway approach, make some resources recover after battle and others recover only in town; this creates a distinction between abilities you can use in every battle (but not every round in every battle) and abilities that you save for emergencies.

(Note: A game with save everywhere could still have spots that act like save points, refilling your resources; however, such games should also have some emergency escape feature like the "Mr. Wizard" feature from Might and Magic 3-5.)

The way I see it, from a JRPG perspective, it isn't the game limiting your options, but more like the game not even implementing the option in the first place. Attacking an arbitrary person in a JRPG doesn't make sense, as such people don't even have stats, so there is no way that the game could handle it. I could compare it to, say, casting spells in chess; the game has no rules that would allow such a thing to be done. If a player wanted to do that, there are no rules that say what should happen; it's just not part of the game.

One other thing: Simulating reality is not always the best decision from a game design perspective. Yes, it may be realistic if the PC has to eat, drink, and go to the bathroom, but unless the game is designed and balanced around such features, it just isn't fun for the player to worry about such things. There's also annoyances like Baldur's Gate's "you must gather your party before venturing forth" mechanic (which only applies to normal exits and not those with scripts); it's just not fun to have to wait for your entire party to catch up to leave an area. (One other note: In JRPGs, your party is always together; hence this issue does not ever arise.) A similar issue is the range limit on trading items; sure, it's realistic, but it's annoying, and makes inventory management more of a chore than it should be. (I note that, for both of these cases, the broken pathfinding, combined with the fact that you are *forced* to use it (you can't just control your characters directly with the keyboard), these problems are actually even worse than they should be.)