Any hope for RPG's ?

[Light 086]

Just because some people post and complain about something they want in the game doesn't mean everyone in the gaming community wants the same thing. I for one am not a fan of turn based combat, but I never posted saying that I didn't want it. The fact that game developers always appeal to the majority seems to support my claim, and they do this so they can make the most amount of cash.

 

[Tiswas]

Pokemon is a Turn Based RPG with a kinda eh plot (You are a kid, collect these animals, fight them to death, beat gyms, pwn evil company, become champ) and is faily linear.

But look how popular and awesome that is.

The problem with RPGs is that people don't even know what they want anymore. Most things turn based or Japan are compared with Final Fantasy (which even in it's hey-day wasn't as great as Dragon Quest or Suikoden) or now Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age or Fallout. (Look at Nier. It's got an awesome plot, great chars and kinda fun combat. But that died to death quickly.)

 

[StormShaun]

Skyrim, thats enough to kill every other RPG this year....

 

[King Ramen Noodle]

i think the whole industry is just producing bad quality over all, not really one feature that kills a RPG. Example FF13 "wait your turn" gauge, "yellow brick road" world, Clothes designed by a Japanese rock band, and just bad overall. but then i look at FF10. one of my personal favorites despite the fact its turn based and Started the "yellow brick road" for Final fantasy and the clothes are also out there. so really i think its just that The overall Quality of RPGs have declined not so much one defining feature that ruins RPG's. but if there was one it would have to be Story. I know that its inevitable that the game will go into "must save the world" story mode at some point but a lot of game writers believe that's good enough for a story and don't bother fleshing it out. or if they do its kinda Bland or like "I've been here before" feeling. There is a lot that goes into a game, you can't just point to a few bad things can define the whole game. maybe as a whole we should stop asking for repeats of good games and start asking for new stuff. "oh hey Squemix nice job on FF10 but i would like something completely different now okay? thanks k bye"

 

[Serioli]

Remember also that it is very difficult to invent the 'perfect RPG' if there is no such thing as a 'perfect RPGer'.

TT players, DMs moreso, will know there are very different players who all want different things. It can be hard enough meeting the needs of your group of:

Storyteller (Not too concerned about mechanics just wants to experience a good story)

Specialist (I want to be a fighter/stealth/magic based character and have parts of the story that revolve around my specialty)

Butt-kicker (I want to kill and destroy, often in cool/interesting/gory ways)

Method Actor (I want to create/be a character with an interesting backstory and focus on the world and NPC actions and reactions to my character)

Tactician (Interested in thinking their way around a problem and coming up with the most interesting/economical solution, the plan and execution is often more intersting than the end result)

Power Gamer (Combine rules, stats, items etc into the most efficient method of executing my play style/desires)

made worse when you multiply your audience by millions.

 

[Jessta]

While I can't say I have played a really good rpg in a while I really enjoy rpgs, to me an rpg is like a book, you have to be able to sit back relax and let yourself get absorbed into the game. This is why quick action button mashing doesn't work so well in rpgs, because when you start having to jump around for what your doing to constantly it becomes hard to truly let yourself get absorbed by the game.
I play RPGs when I'm alone and shooters when I'm with friends because its harder to bring a group into a good story than it is to go it alone.
(honestly recently I've had trouble identifying what you would call an RPG, does Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep count as an RPG? I would think so because the story pulled me in and put me in the game world...)

 

[manythings]

So in essence your idea of a great game is one you spend most of your time just not playing the game and just searching for your next ability? I played DnD for a while and really enjoyed it, that's what pen and paper is good for and it works really well. Transferring all that stuff bogs everything down in irrelevancies.

A whole party of people can manage twelve inventories and a nineteens skills and eight and three-quarter crafts as part of a team effort to build and contribute. That is satisfying and works, everyone has their function. All that in a game is just making more and more time you don't actually spend playing the game.

When a game is stopping me from playing it I have to wonder what is christ's name they think they are doing at the developers.

Did you play these games? sure you can micromanage every character in the party or you can just have them level up automatically, following preset preferences. Hell, you could even do that for your own character if you were more about the narrative and less about the RPG. As for the inventories.. I like doing that, that is an important part of the game.

You say irrelevancies, I say Depth, choice, and re-playability :- Which is pretty much the definition of RPG... no?

Story adds replayability, character arcs and changing circumstances add replayability, how many types of hat I can wear just adds hours of searching my inventory again and again and again so I can take either "the stupid looking hat that I can't stand looking at but has a great bonus" vs. "jaunty cap that looks pretty slick and gives my character a bit of flair but is actively wasting an inventory slot". It's false choice.

I played NWN 1+2, I played Baldur's gate 1+2 but every time people say a thing adds depth it's a thing that just hurled me straight out of the game and into a number crunch. Every time a game breaks immersion to make me put on a new pair of shoes n+1 to replace my old pair of shoes n I'm not a character in a world, I'm a guy moving a fake guy.

 

[iseko]

Play the elder scroll series. Love it!! That and almost any RPG bioware has made. There has never been an rpg of bioware that I hated. Which doesn't mean they were all solid bars of gold offcourse.

 

[somonels]

When did the last good RPG come out? In 2007, that's when.

 

[briankoontz]

The industry has a severe lack of creativity which affects all high-budget games.

Take the term "Role-playing game" - this does not in any way imply a game where one plays as a serial killer, yet all high-budget RPGs feature this.

The homogenization of the industry is near total. Even graphical style is remarkably similar across games, interface is similar, controls are similar. While this makes a new game easy to familiarize oneself with it also makes it unmemorable and unexciting.

The sheer boringness of modern high-budget games, including Dragon Age, has led to an exodus of players away from games with 100 person production teams, super intuitive control schemes, great graphics etc. toward retro games, casual games, and low budget knockoff games which are no more creative but at least less expensive.

The industry for now can get away with this nonsense because the market of gamers is growing, so while the market for retro/casual games is exploding the market for boring monotonous smooth-flowing eye candy is doing just fine, and will likely be fine for the forseeable future.

But eventually there will be a crash. The reason will be clear - a lack of creativity and innovation in the high-budget games industry.

 

[Xaositect]

No, not really. You see the RPG genre has been infected by the kind of retard fan that sucks someone like Biowares cock incessently, even when they make an RPG thats practically nothing but TPS combat. You know the kind, the ones who write "cool story bro" or post gifs when anyone criticises any game made by the developer thats attached to the dick in their mouths.

They are the real "roaring minority".

Sadly at the moment I think the overall quality of gaming for anyone with an adequate amount of braincells is clearly in decline. Its bound to happen when "how much will it sell" is the prime factor in game development and pandering to the lowest of the lowest common denominators, rather than "what can we make and can we make it the best we possibly can".

 

[Continuity]

Story adds replayability, character arcs and changing circumstances add replayability, how many types of hat I can wear just adds hours of searching my inventory again and again and again so I can take either "the stupid looking hat that I can't stand looking at but has a great bonus" vs. "jaunty cap that looks pretty slick and gives my character a bit of flair but is actively wasting an inventory slot". It's false choice.

I played NWN 1+2, I played Baldur's gate 1+2 but every time people say a thing adds depth it's a thing that just hurled me straight out of the game and into a number crunch. Every time a game breaks immersion to make me put on a new pair of shoes n+1 to replace my old pair of shoes n I'm not a character in a world, I'm a guy moving a fake guy.

RPG has many pillars, one of those is loot, I understand that some people can find it immersion breaking but then that can only be down to your own play style (i.e you don't actually have to collect everyone's trousers yahtzee). Extend your suspension of disbelief and your roleplaying to the items, ok so your thief is carrying 3 or 4 weapons - maybe hes just real paranoid and likes to be prepaired - maybe he likes to use the right tool for the right job - maybe he just has a dagger fixation. But then of course you don't actually have to carry crap around with you, thats a player choice.


Sure there is some requirement to haul loot out of dungeons but thats all part of the game: March off into the unknown, kill the monsters and bad guys, bring back the loot and be wealthy heros. That is the basic underpinning premiss of AD&D, sure you can build pretty much anything you can imagine on top of that, but ultimately that is the game.

This is basically the heart of my problem with your approach to RPGs. Diablo 2 is widely recognized as one of the definitive RPGs of the last decade, but according to your definition, it isn't an RPG. At the same time, you're telling me that some JRPGs aren't RPGs. What's going on here?

Im saying JRPGS are a seperate category altogether and I don't think their current name is entirely approapriate. I don't think Diablo 2 is an RPG despite what it is 'widely recognized' as.

i have to agree, Diablo 2 isn't an RPG, its sophisticated hack n'slash but not an RPG. In fact diablo is almost its own genre.
Divine divinity on the other hand is an RPG, and superficially the combat mechanic is very similar, its all the other stuff that tips the balance to make it an RPG, like dynamic and situational dialogue, and multiple options of resolving quests.

 

[scorptatious]

I'm currently playing through FF13 at the moment, and it doesn't cover the first two request made by RPG fans. In my opinion, I'm actually having fun with it. It isn't nearly as bad as so many people make it out to be. That's not to say I don't enjoy RPG's that are turn based and allow you to go anywhere,I just like to have a little variety in my RPG's.

Also, what's wrong with RPG's that aren't turn based? Do you guys remember games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasys 4-9? They all had the ATB system and they were all generally well-recieved.

Also, aren't most RPG's generally railroaded? Sure they can allow you to roam across a large map and tackle different quests, but most of the time, you have to go where you're supposed to go in order to get anywhere at all.

It just seems like a lot of RPG fans, (bar ones who actually make valid points about certain games.) just seem to be a bit spoiled and unappreciative.