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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 08, 2011
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Vestin: I think terms like "consolization" and "dumbing down" are often used irresponsibly, without any thought given to what they are actually supposed to mean. While I'm quite into retrogaming (which is why I'm here), my infrequent brushes with newer titles have almost always been filling me with awe. As in: "Ooooh, that's so pretty ! How did graphics get so beautiful in 20 years *_* ?", "Wow, this interface actually ISN'T a pain in the ass to use !", etc.

Starcraft 2 was supposed to be ruined because of (out of many things) MBS - the ability to select multiple buildings at the same time. It was said that this makes it easier to manage unit production and as such - is dumbing the game down for the casual crowd. Fast-forward to today - I'm watching the GSL ;P.

What is it exactly that is needed to avoid all the catastrophic terms from the 60's and the 70's (like "mass culture") ? In cRPGs - isometric view, turn-based combat, an enormous character sheet ? Is that all ? Is Might and Magic: Heroes 6 suddenly a cRPG ? Do we need something like Diablo 3, only in turns and with more numbers ? How about roguelikes - they have everything except the isometric perspective.
How exactly is a good modern cRPG supposed to be played like ?

You could argue that the genres are quite artificial qualifications and that all the elements scattered into different kinds of games. Now, the question is - which of them would you like to see and why ?
The Starcraft 2 thing brings up a good point in regard to "dumbing down". IMO, "dumbed down" doesn't mean able to select multiple buildings at a time. Dumbing down would be: "We realized many players couldn't cope with having so many different buildings for things like unit production, tech advances, and such, so we've made it now to where every faction has only one building available! By building more, you can produce anything you want from each one, but we realized things like "Barracks", "Tank Factory" and "Power Plants" were just outdated, needless differences that got in the way of enjoyment of the game, so now you can produce everything in the game from a Command Center alone! We just totally modernized the RTS gaming scene!"

I'm not a Starcraft player and haven't played SC2 so the above is totally made up, but do you see what I mean?
Posted July 09, 2011
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mlc82: I'm not a Starcraft player and haven't played SC2 so the above is totally made up, but do you see what I mean?
Sure. You mean that while some concerns are overreactions, some can be legitimate.

What I would like to see are examples of actual oversimplifications and suggestions on how they could've been avoided.
Posted July 09, 2011
I misread the original question and instead wrote why I think RPGs get so much attention as classic games. But I feel like posting it anyway.
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swizzle66: I think I have noticed what you are talking about. part of it, I believe, is that RPGs tend to have more immersive worlds which allows players to kind of get to know the game better. They also usually provide much more play time. This makes people more attached to this genre over say, a FPS that you can beat and be done with in a day, even if it is a good game
This is probably the heart of RPG appeal. The most widely hailed RPGs aren't simple hack and slash like Bard's Tale or M&M6. They're heavy on story, characters, and decisions, like Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate, Ultima, Final Fantasy 7, and so on. They also tend to emphasize exploration more than most genres, which makes well-crafted worlds even more memorable. Adventure games have similar strengths.

Compare to a generic shooter. People would remember unusual battles or challenging bosses. After enough of those, only the unique encounters still stand out. Since RPGs traditionally emphasized story over technology, the story had to be good to make a good RPG. A shooter could get by entirely on the strength of its gameplay and visuals. When the visuals become outdated, a shooter without other strengths will quickly fade from memory.

A strategy game like Master of Orion can produce memorable moments as well. But if the core mechanics aren't deep and solid, or the presentation is too sterile, there won't be many of them compared to a great RPG or adventure. In addition, games without storylines are easier to retread with polished sequels. Who wants to play HOMM1 with HOMM 2, 3, and whichever of the sequels fit your gameplay expectations? Who needs Civ 1 with Civ 5 around? Or the original Europa Universalis? Some people, but not most. Sequels that recreate and polish the original game with the exact same premise hurt the original's status as a classic. But part 1 of a story-driven RPG or adventure can stand on its own even if the gameplay and presentation lag behind the sequels.
Posted July 09, 2011
There are three reasons I enjoy RPGs more than any other genre:

1. While almost every game allows you to play as someone else, RPGs and some strategy games are the only ones who allow you some input into who that someone else is supposed to be like. Personally, I've always liked roleplaying, though I couldn't find a stable group and the theatre troupe I once joined had way too much drama and theatrics for my taste (actors take themselves way too seriously sometimes, even bad amateur ones).

2. I like being able to know the mechanics behind a game, and again, RPGs and strategy games are the only one who provide the data needed for that (and it makes me sad that many RPGs today are moving away from that, seemingly because numbers scare casual players away).

3. RPGs usually provide deeper interactions with the rest of the gameworld, therefore making you care more when you've just saved the world for the 354th time. Good RPGs usually manage to make me feel something for at least some of its NPCs.

Ultimately, however, this is what I find fun. It's not anymore complex than other games though it does require a slightly different set of skills. In fact I'd argue that RPGs are usually much less complicated than hardcore strategy games or flight simulators for instance.

RPGs are not objectively any better than action-adventure games or FPSs.
Video Games are about having fun in whatever way you enjoy. Enjoying roleplaying and tactical combat is not better somehow than enjoying tricky jumps or precision shooting or scary atmospheres or whatever else.
Posted July 09, 2011
Hello,

RPGs were fun in their days. Much of the fun came from your own imagination. You made up to be the honorable knight or treacherous sorcerer and roleplayed your character through the course of the game. That is rpg. Not combat, not itemization not overrated romancing. Its nice to have the opportunity to have a romance or two in a game but some popular Rpgs from Bioware just overdo it. Games from Bioware are more Romancing playing games then Roleplaying games. But the BG series and Masseffect are mostly regarded as the best roleplaying experiences available. I think they are very good games, but personally i find them boring.

In the past you imagined most parts of the game. Nowadays this imagination is destroyed by shiny grafics und astonishing landscapes on your fat flat screen on 2400 x 1200 pixels. Now wonder that there is no place for imagination anymore. Without your brain involved in the experience beyond consuming the shiny grafics your 'imersion' is not as deep and intense as it was, when you had to imagine most things for yourself. Try to read a good book and then watch the film. Which experience was 'deeper'?

But you can roleplay every game out there. You can play a tactical wargame like Men of war and roleplay your hero avatar through the course of the war. You can play GTA4 as a pizza deliverer doing his job all day long. You can play world of warcraft and roleplay the insane end-of-the-world-preacher, preaching his teachings all day long in Ogrimmar or Storm wind, until every player has him on his ignorelist. Every game out there has the potential for a fantastic roleplaying game. Its up to you and your imagination.

To Topic: Old rpgs are overrated by nostalgica. When i play old rpgs i enjoyed in the past, i find the disgusting and boring nowadays. Gaming evolved and we as players evolved with them. Its hard to play something that looks like a access data base manager and has the userfriendliness of a readied landmine.

Have some nice dreams.
Post edited July 09, 2011 by torqual76
Posted July 09, 2011
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mlc82: I think it's more irritation of the trend over the last several years to take what was once a sort of "niche" game genre (with very dedicated fans who liked complex, heavily stat dependent games) and blending them with railroaded action/adventure games, usually including some stats/perks and npc interaction but taking out most of the complexity, character design choices, and heavily tactical, stat based combat (as opposed to "twitch reflex" player skill based gameplay) while still insisting on labelling such games "RPGs". Seeing once-classic cRPG series being taken this route is just maddening (Fallout being a great example).
If I could write coherently, probably my opinion would look like this ^^

But, to add my two cents, I'd like to say that I don't think that's inherently a bad thing. I was born with console games (SNES) and played very few cRPGs when I was a kid (Icewind Dale 1&2), so for a long time, until I got somewhat into PC gaming, RPG was for me equal to JRPG. Mostly linear, story-driven, and with a lot of stats and item management. And for better or worse, JRPGs haven't really changed their basic formula since then.
The real change is obviously in WRPGs because it's getting harder and harder to define what a (modern) WRPG is, with so many games borrowing different aspects of the genre. Stats management? Check. Item/equipment management? Check. Class selection? Check. NPC interaction? Check.
The only feature that hasn't been taken (if I remember correctly, I may be wrong here) is dialogue trees. But still, not every RPG has it. Not even every WRPG has it, so it's hard to take it as a defining feature of the genre.
I know it might not make much sense (maybe it really doesn't) but I think the problem is that the definition of "pure RPG" is somehow outdated. The only game that would fit is Dragon Age: Origins (as far as I remember), and that was intended to be as "retro" as possible.
Still, I think that if implemented well, the infamous "RPG elements" could greatly improve most of the other genres, so I'm trying to be positive ^^

Hope that didn't turn out as incomprehensible gibberish
Posted July 09, 2011
I mostly agree with Vestin's posts on the topic. An RPG is just that: a Role Playing Experience. Whether or not there are stats, real time or turn based combat (or any at all), or dice rolling in any form is totally irrelevant. As long as the game is having you play the role of a character, or group of characters, and making decisions that define their personalities and/or that eventually affect the outcome, then it is an RPG.

Having said all that, I have been disappointed with recent computer RPGs. I like arcane and obtuse rules systems (AD&D 2nd edition certainly qualifies in my book). I like learning the ins and outs of those systems in order to exploit them. I enjoy steep learning curves that punish players for not taking the time to plan out their actions and character builds. However, these are not qualities that sell games to a mass market.

Edit:
Yeah, Bonobo_Power, mlc82 pretty much summed up much of my opinion. I read his post, but forgot to mention it in my post. Thanks for reminding me, inadvertent as it may have been. :)
Post edited July 09, 2011 by Krypsyn
Posted July 09, 2011
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torqual76: Try to read a good book and then watch the film. Which experience was 'deeper'?
Neither. Some things are better written, some are better viewed as a movie. Complex and meaningful actions, tightly packed in a sliver of time are a lot easier expressed through animation than many consecutive complex sentences. Likewise - in a movie you can overlook someone or something at lot easier, only noticing it later, while in a book the nouns and verbs can hardly be hidden...
Different media. Don't judge their worth based on some elitist preconceptions.

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torqual76: Gaming evolved and we as players evolved with them. Its hard to play something that looks like a access data base manager and has the userfriendliness of a readied landmine.
Oh, but there's so much left to your imagination, isn't there ? A bunch of pixels that you have to assign meaning to, instead of a 3D render of something, given on a silver platter ;).

Besides - what you said is either inconsistent, pessimistic or self-critical. You claim that RPGs were fun once but they aren't anymore, yet nowadays you get everything nicer... which undermines its value, because it, presumably, kills imagination.
Does that mean that there are no good RPGs, neither retro nor modern ?
Posted July 09, 2011
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torqual76: Hello,

RPGs were fun in their days. Much of the fun came from your own imagination. You made up to be the honorable knight or treacherous sorcerer and roleplayed your character through the course of the game. That is rpg. Not combat, not itemization not overrated romancing. Its nice to have the opportunity to have a romance or two in a game but some popular Rpgs from Bioware just overdo it. Games from Bioware are more Romancing playing games then Roleplaying games. But the BG series and Masseffect are mostly regarded as the best roleplaying experiences available. I think they are very good games, but personally i find them boring.

In the past you imagined most parts of the game. Nowadays this imagination is destroyed by shiny grafics und astonishing landscapes on your fat flat screen on 2400 x 1200 pixels. Now wonder that there is no place for imagination anymore. Without your brain involved in the experience beyond consuming the shiny grafics your 'imersion' is not as deep and intense as it was, when you had to imagine most things for yourself. Try to read a good book and then watch the film. Which experience was 'deeper'?

But you can roleplay every game out there. You can play a tactical wargame like Men of war and roleplay your hero avatar through the course of the war. You can play GTA4 as a pizza deliverer doing his job all day long. You can play world of warcraft and roleplay the insane end-of-the-world-preacher, preaching his teachings all day long in Ogrimmar or Storm wind, until every player has him on his ignorelist. Every game out there has the potential for a fantastic roleplaying game. Its up to you and your imagination.

To Topic: Old rpgs are overrated by nostalgica. When i play old rpgs i enjoyed in the past, i find the disgusting and boring nowadays. Gaming evolved and we as players evolved with them. Its hard to play something that looks like a access data base manager and has the userfriendliness of a readied landmine.

Have some nice dreams.
Personally, the only way I can answer that is to be glad I'm not as jaded as you are, and that I'm still able to have fun with games instead of finding everything boring.

I'm still enjoying RPGs today, both old and new, though as I've explained the new ones often don't satisfy my expectations quite as much as the older ones.
And no, old RPGs aren't overrated by nostalgia, at least not for me. I replay my favourites (the Fallouts , Baldur's Gates and Co) every once in a while and like them.
Thanks to GOG I also played through old games I hadn't tried before like Betrayal at Krondor or the Realms of Arkania series and liked most of them.

Finally, imagination is nice and all, but I fail to see how good 3d graphics and shiny effects make it harder to use. I also find that having the game support some roleplaying through choices & consequences make roleplaying more rewarding.

Also, frankly I wouldn't have any fun roleplaying a pizza deliverer in GTA (if I wanted to do that I'd just get a job delivering pizza in New York, at least I'd get paid for it) or a mad prophet in WoW (purposefully annoying other people is not my idea of fun, but I know some disagree).
Posted July 09, 2011
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torqual76: But you can roleplay every game out there ... Every game out there has the potential for a fantastic roleplaying game. Its up to you and your imagination.
No it isn't. Role-playing does not simply mean make-believe. An RPG (whether computer or pen-and-paper) involves playing a role, but not necessarily one you get to fully define for yourself; it has a defined world, complete with rules and limitations that you have agreed to play within. In your examples you are deliberately contradicting the agreed scenarios; in GTA you are a mobster, in WoW an adventurer, and nothing you can do will change this.

Role-playing involves working within the options provided for affecting the scenario, which will include things like determining your character's development, influencing the events of the main storyline, and so forth. As an example, if you are playing a Star Wars RPG and are given the option of turning to the Dark Side making that choice will have a significant effect on the game scenario; if you are given no such option and merely pretend that you have turned you have gone too far because you are contradicting the agreed rules.
Posted July 09, 2011
I've always thought one the interesting things about the rpg genre is that it ultimately means different things to different people, and there's a lot of different ways to build a rpg.

For example, should it be party based or solo? If party based, how many characters? Three or four, six, or maybe even eight?

Should it be story and character driven, mostly hack and slash, and/or an old school dungeon crawl?

Should it be an isometric/top down perspective game or first person (either with wizardry style tile dungeons or Elder Scrolls style)?

Honestly, the list could go on almost forever. Personally, I enjoy a number of different rpg styles, and I'm glad to have variety and choices.
Posted July 09, 2011
Maybe because a bigger percentage of RPG fans are grumpy old elitist guys with a background of table top gaming who were already rolling dice when all you youngsters and upstarts were still shitting in your diapers and only nerds had access to computers and all that. Nowadays everyone can claim to like so called RPGs and beat them without ever having read a rulebook! Bah! ;)
Posted July 09, 2011
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Leroux: Maybe because a bigger percentage of RPG fans are grumpy old elitist guys with a background of table top gaming who were already rolling dice when all you youngsters and upstarts were still shitting in your diapers and only nerds had access to computers and all that. Nowadays everyone can claim to like so called RPGs and beat them without ever having read a rulebook! Bah! ;)
I'm a 21 year old kid who got into playing video games in a big way thanks to Baldur's Gate and I play 3e and 3.53 D&D and I hate all the trends taking place now in games.... does that make me a grumpy young elitist??? :)
Posted July 09, 2011
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mlc82: Zelda was a great action adventure game, but I have no idea why anyone would want to call it a role playing game. Nothing wrong with action adventure games.
I'd never call Zelda an RPG (and find it annoying when someone does). And I doubt a Planescape action adventure would work out either. A Planescape point-and-click adventure on the otherhand...

It's just that too often I see people look at some game and, even when they acknowledge it as a good non-RPG game, often suggest it's a lesser game overall because it's not a full RPG game. This happened to Mass Effect 2. It wasn't as much of an RPG as Mass Effect 1 was (which wasn't that much of an RPG either) but its overall improvements outweighed the cut RPG features, so it ended up being the better game. Some people thought Mass Effect 2 was the worse game though because it was the worse RPG.

If Oblivion was advertised as an action adventure from the very beginning, with no attempt to tie it with the RPG genre ever, would as many people have complained about it being a bad RPG?

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mlc82: The Starcraft 2 thing brings up a good point in regard to "dumbing down". IMO, "dumbed down" doesn't mean able to select multiple buildings at a time. Dumbing down would be: "We realized many players couldn't cope with having so many different buildings for things like unit production, tech advances, and such, so we've made it now to where every faction has only one building available! By building more, you can produce anything you want from each one, but we realized things like "Barracks", "Tank Factory" and "Power Plants" were just outdated, needless differences that got in the way of enjoyment of the game, so now you can produce everything in the game from a Command Center alone! We just totally modernized the RTS gaming scene!"
Actually, shifting focus away from base building and resource gathering would be quite novel and interesting. World in Conflict and the Ground Control games had no buildings!
Post edited July 09, 2011 by Aaron86
Posted July 09, 2011
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Leroux: Maybe because a bigger percentage of RPG fans are grumpy old elitist guys with a background of table top gaming who were already rolling dice when all you youngsters and upstarts were still shitting in your diapers and only nerds had access to computers and all that. Nowadays everyone can claim to like so called RPGs and beat them without ever having read a rulebook! Bah! ;)
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Dhuraal: I'm a 21 year old kid who got into playing video games in a big way thanks to Baldur's Gate and I play 3e and 3.53 D&D and I hate all the trends taking place now in games.... does that make me a grumpy young elitist??? :)
I'm afraid it does. :P
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General discussion (archive)RPG Fetishism(50 posts)(50 posts)
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