That's just it, they'll totally bring Jacob back. Just because of the "great underused potential" of that character. This time with 50% more saluting.MirrorForTheSun said:
BioWare Trims Mass Effect 3 Squad to Focus on Deeper Relationships
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
Am I the only one losing more and more faith of ME3 for every single news article I read about the game? ME1 was incredible. ME2 was not as great, but still one of the absolute best games of the genre. ME3.. I can't even keep track anymore. It's starting to look like an FPS, but you bring the same people to every mission. Even ME2 was on the border to that, but at least you could mix who you'd bring..
Can't say I liked her, but I disliked Jack even more. Redid the entire suicide mission, with the exception of the final fight, because Jack didn't die the first time around.Swny Nerdgasm said:
Oh goodie, cuz I always hear people complaining about too much variation and choice. I mean, that game that completely gives you the control of everything and lets you do anything, what was it called... Minecraft I think, everybody hates that right?
I never used all of them anyway, but this still annoys me. It's still to early to pass judgment, so I'll wait and see. But they'd better do good, this is their last chance with the hardcore.
I never used all of them anyway, but this still annoys me. It's still to early to pass judgment, so I'll wait and see. But they'd better do good, this is their last chance with the hardcore.
LostProxy said:
If the player's abillity influances it, then it's no longer an RPG.
It's not a matter of me "speaking for all RPG players" it's a matter of me putting down the cold, hard, facts of what defines an RPG, that's the mechanics determining the outcome of the action as opposed to the player's skill. There is no opinion involved, there is nothing subjective about it, it's a very simple pass/fail equasion which can be seen by tracking it down to origins of RPGs.
Now, this is not to say that you can't like more than one type of game. You don't actually have to be either an action gamer or an RPG fan, you can like both. It's simply about the definition, it's not a subjective one. Something is either an RPG or it is not. If your abillity to directly control the game influances the outcome of events then it's not an RPG. It might be a very good game, and it might entertain you greatly, but that doesn't make it an RPG.
The reason why I might seem a bit extreme, is because I have to analyze industry trends, which involves taking the human factor of "OMG, your talking about people and characterizing them in upleasant ways" out of the equasion, in order to explain how businessmen who do that, and who are quite up front about how they think, are making specific desicians. In general people hate sociology because it works, but it tends to be very impersonal and involves dealing with people as groups, not accounting for overlap, exceptions, and other things, largely because when the groups are big enough trends can be charted and the individual no longer matters. When I talk about "the lowest human denominator" and such, I tend to be very careful in the context I put it in, when talking about marketing forces. I am guessing this is why you are upset, but understand you really can't address the situation any other way when yout talking about business desicians, rationally computed audiences, and what things actually are. We like to think everything can be viewed subjectively, but that's not the case, and honestly I think that's one of the problems with people in general is that they don't entirely "get" when things aren't subjective, and when people make desicians based on things like sociology and stereotypes. People are trained to rail against the idea of stereotypes since they are young children, but those same people are manipulated according to them by advertising firms... which make big bucks, because the results speak for themselves. In school we used to have a big joke about how individuality is just another marketing ploy... since advertisers realize that EVERYONE wants to think they are a special, delicate flower, that breaks out of the mould compared to everyone else. Thus that becomes a stereotype and advertisers can thus use that desire for individuality in marketing by promoting products as being for those who embrace their individuality and specialness, while in reality they are just manipulating another mould. This is getting further and furhter afield of the point though.
Right now, when it comes to video games RPGs are very much a pass/fail thing. However it's a big audience so marketers are trying to find a way to mesh it into the more profitable action gaming market, so they can hit both demographics together without having to target one or the other. Simply put they try and get people to accept a differant definition of RPG, hoping that they can convince RPG players that something is not an RPG is one so they will be happy. It's a matter of long term manipulation.
To put things into perspective, this kind of thing started when they began playing with "real time RPGs" like say the "Eye Of The Beholder" series which were star driven, but rather than being turn based you clicked on the weapon icons which were on a timer, while the monsters animated the same way. It led to a lot of debates because it added a "beat the clock" element into the game as opposed to allowing people to carefully plan their moves, but because the player himself had little direct control other than setting the variables through character stats and equipment it passed the test. The next step up was probably the "clicker", the Diablo-style RPG where the player fights by moving the mouse around and clicking on the bad guys. The mouse always being in motion, and the player always doing something besides thinking. This became more debatable as an RPG because the customization and options was fairly limited, you could only access to many abillities at a time for example, and while the actions were resolved statistically, you could say evade enemy attacks by moving the mouse fast enough, which made your defense stats a little less important than they should be. That is where the first SERIOUS divide started, and really where RPGs on computers started to die. Some people who liked this kind of game decided that "yes, this is an RPG, look at the customization, I've got a jillion and a half types of armor... even if they are procedurally generated", actual RPG gamers however stuck to their guns, because why this type of game might be fun to this, they would not label it an RPG because the very abillity to engage in evasion based on the player's abillity to click a mouse meant it failed the litmus test. Once you can bypass the stats... at all, it ceases to be an RPG. This snowballed into later generations of action-RPGs, and allowed the RPG-name to sneak into anything that had customizable content or story (which was always just a trapping). The basic arguement used to defend Borderlands is along the likes of "if Diablo is an RPG, and allows you to avoid things by clicking a mouse, why isn't Borderlands? It lets me avoid attacks and land my own attacks based on my abillity to manipulate the controls". The flawed thinking here is in the assumption that games like Diablo were ever RPGs to begin with. "Action RPG" being by definition an oxymoron.
In no way assume that this means I am saying "Borderlands" or "Diablo" are not fun, or that people who are serious RPGers as well do not find a lot to like there. They are just not, and never will be, RPGs due to the way the mechanics work. "RPG" is just a marketing gimmick. Truthfully the term for something like a "Borderlands" or "Mass Effect" should be something along the lines of "customizable shooter". With Diablo and similar games (which I am very into... I'm tinkering a lot with "Darkspore" at the moment, and we won't even get into "Sacred 2" and some of the time I've put into that) a proper term with be a "click and act" game or just "clicker" going by some of the terms being used from the beginnings of the dialogue about them.
See, having some stats and customization does not mean something is an RPG, it's all about those things being the only factor that matters. When something else intrudes, and it ceases to be a purely intellectual exercise, it's no longer an RPG.
This is not opinion, this is simply how things are, and the point before thos whole rant, is that you can tell that by looking at how RPGs came into being, and what defined them as they came out of the primordial ooze of the human psyche (so to speak). They are what defined them to begin with. Like many things, the issues we see now are all human based, and are generally driven by business and marketing, because as games, RPGs forum a commodity. The value of games other than entertainment to the players, is almost entirely in the abillity of the people who create them to make money off of them, and that drivers the entire issue. The problem being that if you can make $100 million off of action games, and $90 million off of RPGs, greed will dictate they go with the $100 million, of course greed ALSO dictates that the people involved are going to try and contreive ways to get both markets buying the same product so they can make $190 million in profit. When dealing with contridictory concepts like this the businessmen in charge trot out the advertising experts who apply sociology to try and create the market they want to sell to.
I really like this idea, seeing as any given companion had only two or three unique conversations. Unless you porked them. Then maybe five. It's good that Garrus might actually be able to talk to me WHILE calibrating our weapons this time through.
meryatathagres said:I'm not much of a writer anymore, because my mind tends to wander too much, so hope you'll get something from the following. I'm much better discussing things aloud, preferably in a nice bar.Therumancer said:
Nice writeup about history of rpgs. Altho the bias shows thru, It is rather educational to people who weren't playing first edition DnD (the boxes) in their childhood. Storytelling games were developed to give players more freedoms, not less. And most classic DnD and ADnD modules were rather constricting and railroading players, even if there was some nonlinearity.
It'd be interesting to see you expand your history section to include other rulesets and why they existed. Extremely detailed rulessets like HarnMaster and Phoenix Command, even Rolemaster; diceless rules like Amber, etc. Delve deeper into why Storytelling systems gradually (Rein(dot)Hagen didn't just conjure them up from nothing) came to be, and how TSR inability to react to it eventually made them bankrupt. Or how about commentary on modern rpgs, which can abandon rules altogether (or minimize them), and where the DM/GM is no longer a dictator. (ForgeLike)
If like me, you grew up with rpgs (as opposed to crpgs), you are well aware that the more "advanced" (as opposed to casual) players and GMs thought DnD and ADnD1&2 were mainstream shite dumbed down for the masses.WHy is average mean randomness better than linear d20, etc. etc. etc. Sure you could have meaningful and high quality campaigns with DnD (after all, the quality of the DM/GM and players are what mattered most), but why not use a better system that inherently directs people towards creativity instead of "you enter a 10' by 10' room, an orc is guarding a chest"? Your tale about the lever must have come from a campaign with a very very very bad GM.
Ofcource it can be shown abstractly: rpG->rPG->RPG->RPg->Rp. Or in other words, when you call a dungeonhack a roleplaying game, it will evolve towards the weight of the name. (we are all conditioned to think in certain ways by our language)
To me it seems you indeed would be much happier with tactical games than modern roleplaying games. There are also terrific indie crpgs made for old school crpg fans. Sure they don't have the eyecandy, but you can't get all the best of what your vision is, unless you happen to be a billionaire, in which case throw money at a company. I don't see why not, creating a "perfect game" would be as much fun as buying Chelsea.
Well, I think thats enough of my stream. I appreciate your writeups as its nice to read. But I disagree with you heavily on when rpgs really became rpgs; however, I hardly think that is a problem. (mechanistic vs. humanist view and bla bla bla...)
ps. I absolutely love the dialogwheel. For me discovering what my character actually says, and how she reacts, is probably as fulfilling as rolling a natural 20 is to some others. That's one example of preference, and what I view as "real" roleplaying. It's pretty much like the thrills I got from how players reacted to my machinations when I was a GM.
pps. Another thing to perhaps shed light to my mind: I consider Chainmail to be rpg 0.1, DnD+ADnD1&2 going up to perhaps 0.5, and so on.
Well, I didn't want to go off on too many tangents, I do that enough without trying to get too broad. I might go into some of this other stuff at later dates.
One bit I will mention though is that TSR largely ran into it's problems because of bad business deals with Waldenbooks. As I remember from what was being said through the RPGA (when I was a member, and on various forums for them, a lot of people in the industry posted there) the basic situation was that TSR had given Waldenbooks a "buy back clause" in their contract, where basically TSR agreed to buy back unsold material. The problem was that there was no real time frame involved in this buy back agreement as an oversight. Waldenbooks bought TONS of RPG products but was only trickling them out. Despite plans Waldenbooks never started their major RPG sections, and some stores even refused to carry the games due to the bad publicity D&D had received despite there not being any current furor. Other plans like the larger book stores agreeing to let people run games in their stores as a general thing also never transpired since they didn't want huge crowds of nerds loitering. Apparently there was supposed to be a big thing tying Waldenbooks to the RPGA and other RPG associations like Shadowrun's KA GE.
The bottom line is that TSR sold tons of material to Waldenbooks over a fairly long period of time, assuming that despite everything they were selling it, which is why they wanted more. Then Waldenbooks was doing some clearing in their warehouses and basically dropped years worth of accumulated back-stock on TSR and demanded they honor the buy back. That is what pretty much put the bullet in TSR's skull.
Of course that's exagerrating things, since TSR at that time was actually making a pretty substantial amount of money off of their other investments like novels, and computer games. They could have taken the hit, and kept going, but at the time there was this company called "Wizards Of The Coast" that had been making a killing off of Magic The Gathering. What's more the industry was involved in a sort of odd love affair with them, if you read some of the comments in old Dragon Magazines, you'd notice editors and RPG gurus gushing about their press conferances and such which were on a level the industry just didn't expect, and make those involved feel like serious businessmen as opposed to a bunch of nerds with imaginations and word processors. TSR went bankrupt, but largely due to the fact that they decided not to muscle through it due to arrangements with WoTC and figuring "man, imagine what we can do with all that money behind us".... now as some people at the time would have asked "have you ever heard of a game called "Primal Order"?" Unless you are one of those nerds who other nerds bow down to worship as kings, probably not. "Primal Order" was WoTC's big "success" before magic the gathering, a small press RPG very similar to other small press RPGs, created and produced by people who really had no idea how to run an RPG company or IP like that. WoTC taking over TSR lead to a lot of the projects TSR actually expected to get money for being axed. They removed a lot of the campaign settings, cut down on some of the computer game projects (despite all promises we never got a "Planescape 2" despite it's sales), and saw promising games like "Alternity" get their funding cut, lose a few bucks on some of the later supplements (which were really bad due to cuts) and then have everyone transferred onto a "Star Wars" RPG which was at best "ok", truthfully the KoTOR games using the basic engine. This covers a bunch of time, but pretty much give a summary of what happened to TSR and how it kind of got dragged through the gutter after it was bought out. Hasbro buying WoTC didn't help matters much, because really Hasbro wanted "Pokemon", and other brands were at best secondary, it's actually something of a miracle D&D survived under their tender mercies.
A lot of rambling, and it's been a long time so I could have a few things wrong, but that is basically how I remember hearing about it. Back when 3E came out I "famously" went toe to toe with Ryan Dancy on the RPGA forums, even had my own crazy-sized uber thread called "The Powerful Therumancer", this all over the transition to 3E D&D, how it would be handled, and what as going on with some other product lines. I kind of freaked him out by having talked to some people in the industry, but refused to drop names to prevent anyone getting in trouble. Of course scoring points doesn't really mean much, and we all saw what happend, an ironically Dancey himself wound up getting cut, along with a lot of the guys who build 3E D&D.
Basically I didn't go into things like this because it wasn't relevent to the dicussion, and are ancient history. Besides if I start talking about a lot of this stuff, I wind up usually sounding like I'm trying to make myelf a bigger deal than I am (like the above), simply because of how I tried to go about things. I am a lot more laid back nowadays, and will be the first to say that I actually accomplished nothing, except probably POing a lot of people involved in the hobby I cared for, despite my intentions. In retrospect there is absolutly no way, no matter what I said or did, or who I might have talked to in forums, that I was going to be a hero and stop the development and release of 3E D&D. Being right in an absolute sense doesn't actually mean anything, you can be right and still be wrong so to speak.
The overall point here being that other competing RPGs had little to do with TSR's demise, it was all bad business deals, a hope that new management would amount to better funding, and similar types of things. At the time TSR went down, they were producing some pretty succesful computer games, and I think the novels were probably a bigger deal for them publishing wise than the games themselves (which is another whole issue since I think they impacted the games). The biggest financial problem being that TSR was making assumptions based on Waldenbooks having moved all the product they had bought, despite the entire relationship they were hoping for never transpiring.
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Oh and sadly while I can't find a copy of the strip up for free on the 'net at the moment, this is a long post already, but I'll say that Knights Of The Dinner Table's old "Buckets Of Dice" strip kind of summarizes my attitude on diceless role-playing nicely... as another thing you mentioned.
Umm, so you didn't go beyond diceless to ForgeLike and such? I guess its a choice. I'll answer more in depth to your post when I have time and fingers to type a bit more. No doubt you have very good points again.Therumancer said:
Umm, so you didn't go beyond diceless to ForgeLike and such? I guess its a choice. I'll answer more in depth to your post when I have time and fingers to type a bit more. No doubt you have very good points again.Therumancer said:
And here's the rest...
Despite bad business dealings, the fact is that TSR products dropped in sales because they were becoming out of date, even obsolete. Granted, this was the time when many games dropped down as well, but TSR had lost a significant market share, especially to new customers because its game was too rigid, too cumbersome and too damn bad, all in one packet. People could choose GURPS to avoid the rigidness, Shadowrun or Ars Magica for the cumbersomeness, or Rolemaster or RuneQuest for just being much better mechanic systems.
Primal Order was a nice addon, not a complete system. Everway otoh was a rather interesting system by WotC that unfortunately never got the exposure it should've.
Planescape: Torment sold horribly bad, initially about 50.000 copies. Also there was never a plan for a sequel to it in any realistic way. Perhaps few lines on a napkin. Henkel and Avellone were pretty much exhausted after that project. In fact, Avellone probably used all of his then far life built creativity and "soul" into that game (and I'll eat my panties if he ever writes another game as brilliantly). As for Henkel I haven't heard his name much since.
Dunno what you're implying with your invelvement with DnD3. In any case it was the first DnD rulesset that was in any way acceptable to be played by pretty much everyone who hadn't been sticking their head in the old tsr sand (after year or two when the novelty started to wear off, depending how often you held games).
DnD 3,5 was probably the best edition of Dungeons and Dragons ever done, from a gamer point of view, whether you're a mechanist or humanist, minmaxer or storyteller.I'd still like to see you write about other than DnD systems. I mean, I have like 30+ different gamesystems in my basement, made by, i dunno, 8-10 different companies or smth like that. And I've read the rules. I've played and GM'ed most of them. (I've played many more bcs I was in the uni experimental rpg pool, but thats another matter.)
Basically rpgs have evolved into ForgeLike and other similar things, removing GM godhood and routine random factors. See this is where our chasm is... You think of rpgs as what came from tinsolder games then chainmail, which was developed into DnD1, etc. I think those are tactical games. Like I said, ADnD never got further than rpg 0.5 in my world. Even DnD 3,5 is better as tactical boardgame than a rpg, hence I consider it maybe rpg 0.8. I'd like you to address these things about different systems, and whether a system is suited for miniature combat or actually getting into the role of your character. Because good as your arguments are, you're still kinda reducing the rpg character into a piece on a chessboard in the essence. (I'm sure you can see the point.)
Aside from your DnD proximity, I don't really actually see why you would be a bioware fan in the first place. Fallout and Arcanum and Wizardry 8 did many of the things I think you want much better. Is it really just DnD? Did you love DA:O and hate DA2?
What's your opinion on Deus Ex (the original one)? How about Arcanum? Arx Fatalis?
Almost totally out of context, I wish some company would buy the rights to RMSS and convert those rules into an old school hardcore crpg. Cause those rules could use a computer to sort them out, and the detail and specialization options within would blind 99% of the Baldurs Gate lovers.
ps. This is starting to get very nostalgic, like old usenet DnD vs. "enlightened" players of other systems.'
pps. Still haven't commented anything about old school indie crpgs, or some tactical games. Little bit makes me wonder whats the most important to you, flash, nice gameplay, or writing on forums.
Ok I'm not going to go through a reply to all of that because the subject isn't that important to me and some of it I agreed with. However the crux of your argument was based on the definition of RPGs. The only definition I found was thisTherumancer said:
A role-playing game (RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development. Actions taken within the game succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines
That says nothing about what you talked about and this is the definition I hear (though not by these exact words) when people speak of RPGs. If you can point me toward where you gained your definition then maybe we can work forward from that. If it is your definition then it's not exactly an objective approach.
LostProxy said:
Well, if you don't go through all of what I've written then there is no point in me explaining myself further since if this is in response to the post I think it is, I explained in detail the history of role-playing games. Some of it comes from having lived through it (though I'm too old to have been there from the beginning) some of it comes from having access to many original materials which themselves define a role-playing game in their very existance, and demonstrate that RPGs existed before story or character development was ever a factor. I also pointed fingers to things like the original "Wizardry: Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord" which pretty much disproves the assertions of what something needs to have to be an RPG in the scope of computers as well, since that game was an RPG.
I mean if your interested all you have to do is a quick search for "the history of role-playing games". Some of what you'll find is wrong, largely because the people writing it lack access to the actual materials they are talking about. It's sort of like I'm a museum curator on this subject (albiet a pretty small and understocked museum compared to a few) who can point to actual physical evidence on his shelf, who has done research and learned by being there, compared to someone who only did research and might actually be considering people like me as the sources for their own findings simply due to us having the stuff.
http://ptgptb.org/0001/history1.html
Is an okay source and links to others.
Overall though you kind of lose the right to have an opinion on the subject when your own statements basically say you don't care enough about it to actually read what people are telling you. Pretty much any historical run down on RPGs and their origins is going to be as long, or longer, as my rant if its worth anything. In the link above you have a guy name droppong Orson Welles for example, when really I don't think his history as a war gamer is all that relevent, since role-playing games came from that interest, but are distinct from it which is why there is another name for them.
Does this mean they will cut down Diologue of non squadie NPCs? Because I will only get cross if they don't put as much effort into some of the characters as others. I would hate to see squad members with more lines than non squad members which once were. Like in ME2 Liara only had like 10 Diologue options (without the DLC), while bloody Miranda wouldn't shut up about how great she was.
I just hope Tali is in the squad, then she'll have full focus on her part in the game.
I just hope Tali is in the squad, then she'll have full focus on her part in the game.