Why does every RPG receive so much hate?

i64ever

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Aug 26, 2008
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It seems that every AAA RPG to come out the last 5 years has gotten such hatred on the various forums, Dragon Age 2 only the latest example. Why? Here are some possibilities.

1) Every RPG from the last 5 years has been truly awful
2) Early RPG games were so perfect, the modern ones just can't stand up
3) RPG's are trying to evolve and the fans refuse to accept any change
4) RPG fans want so many different things you just can't make them all happy
5) All the hate comes from evil trolls who should be banned

Personally, I think its 3. Oblivion, DA2 and Fallout 3 all made big changes to the normal RPG formula. All got hit very hard after news of those changes leaked out but before they got released. I agree none of those games enacted those changes perfectly, but we didn't give them a chance. People were furious because those developers dared to change a formula they considered carved in stone.

But that's just my opinion. What do you think?
 

Faladorian

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May 3, 2010
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I like Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Origins is a debatable candidate for best game I've ever played, Fallout 3 was incredibly entertaining (New Vegas is... a different story), Mass Effects 1 and 2 were, in my opinion, amazing...

I think WRPGs made recently are actually the best, if anything.
 

Ice Car

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Jan 30, 2011
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All games get bashed upon all the time.

This is new? Borderlands still gets bashed on today but has legions of followers. Of course, you know about the Fallout Franchise. THIS GAME SUCKS BECAUSE IT HAS GLITCHES AND BUGS FIX PLEASE OR IMMA REFUND MAH GAME LMAO.

It's all stupid, just ignore it.
 

Onyx Oblivion

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Sep 9, 2008
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I dunno. I try playing old RPGs a lot, and the only thing that ages well is usually the story. I don't miss over-complicated D&D rules in WRPGs, and random battles in JRPGs. FF9's combat bored me to tears last month.

And don't get me started on Baldur's Gate and AD&D.
 

DustyDrB

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Jan 19, 2010
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Probably because it's one of the most if not the most ill-defined genre there is.
 

rsvp42

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Jan 15, 2010
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3 or 4, I'd say. People should judge the games on their quality and entertainment value, not on how closely they adhere to some "standard" for RPGs.
 

Zaik

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3.

There's a faction of oddballs that will never consider a fallout game that isn't an isometric turn-based snorefest "to be a real fallout game".

Likewise, there's a group that enjoyed the tedious monotony of having to run 15 minutes from a Mage's Guild or Silt Strider to start doing a quest, then run 15 minutes back, waiting three weeks to be able to sell all of your inventory, and incredibly awful combat in Morrowind. Also apparently Morrowind's brown & brown caves were somehow superior to Oblivion's brown & brown caves because Oblivion's were cut & paste sections while someone wasted a good bit of time designing each brown & brown cave in Morrowind. Rather than have an actual legitimate issue with Oblivion, those are their primary complaints.

Same with DA:O. Some people seem to have liked the stiff, slow, boring combat. They'd rather have all their menus be a total clusterfuck of lists and more lists. They'd prefer not to have a "loot all" button. They'd rather have their dialogue in a list format rather than a circle format, presumably for the same reason the odd indie music movement won't listen to mainstream music because the artists make a few dollars off it.


These are all very loud minorities. The greatest and worst thing about the internet is the total anonymity. I could make 9 more accounts on the escapist with about 20 minutes and post 7 replies that agree with me, and 2 that didn't. Then I could argue with myself. Nobody would be the wiser, assuming I did it properly. It makes me look like there are a lot more people on my side than there actually is. It's a lot of work though.
 

mireko

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Sep 23, 2010
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I think it's difficult to determine where the hate is coming from most of the time, but it's usually from two groups:

1. RPG purists who hate every change to the genre.
-and-
2. People who don't like RPGs and want everything in the genre to change.

It's obviously impossible to please both groups, and any concession to one will piss off the other.

Now that I look at it, that's basically #4 on your list. Oh well.
 

Szayel Aporro Granz

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May 23, 2009
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What is interesting is that even thought FFXIII gets SOOOO much hate I still find it enjoyable, not because I'm a fan boy or because I have some sort of weird obsession with female characters (-.-)

FFXIII may not have been the most in-depth or challenging FF however it was by far the mostly visually stunning one to date.

And yes gameplay is a HUGE part of a game, however I think it made up for that with character development and polt.
 

The Madman

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I loved Mass Effect 2, and I'm one of those grognards who still insist Baldur's Gate 2 was the pinnacle of the genre and remember what names like Ultima, Wizardry, and Heroes once represented.

As for Dragon Age 2, haven't played it yet. And I don't really care for Japanese rpg, so haven't played any recent titles of that genre either.
 

Bags159

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Does oblivion fall under hated RPGs? I love Oblivion. I must have like 30 characters. It has a lot of flaws surely (stiff animations, weird NPC reactions, amazingly observant guards, etc) but it does a lot right IMO.

Although, it's the only single player RPG I've played, so I don't have much comparison.
 

Halo Fanboy

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People are complaining because of simplification and less freedom. Fallout, Dragonage, Mass Effect, Elder Scroll are all moving in this direction.
 

Logic 0

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Well a cookie-cutter explanation I've heard is the character's look very effeminate and have poor fashion sense, the stories are predictable, the combat's confusing and it all feels like a chore.

My opinion on the other-hand is the ultra fan-boys want everything to be the same causing stagnation and alienating everyone else who wants to even try them.
 

gphjr14

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Most never deliver the excitement you see in trailers/cutscenes.

Played and beat FFXII and thats the only I've ever finished (started but never finished VII).
It was fun but I like more hack n slash games like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry. Don't care about the story but enjoy the gameplay.
FFXII wasn't all that exciting to play but the story made me want to finish it.
 

Bags159

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Halo Fanboy said:
People are complaining because of simplification and less freedom. Fallout, Dragonage, Mass Effect, Elder Scroll are all moving in this direction.
Dunno, there's not much in Oblivion that I wanted to do that you can't do.
 

DrWilhelm

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May 5, 2009
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It seems that a lot of RPG fans have rather solid, unwavering and uncompromising opinions on what a good RPG is, and those opinions often vary massively from person to person. Some people yearn for the old isometric/turn-based/pause-and-play games of yesteryear like the Baldurs Gate series and Fallout 1 and 2, while some people enjoy action heavy hack'n'slash games more along the lines of Diablo and Jade Empire. Some people love the do whatever the heck you want, free roamers offered by Bethesda while other people prefer a more directed, plot heavy, linear experience (anyone else feel it's weird how 'linear' has started to feel like a dirty word?).

Combine this with the lack of a clear cut definition for what an RPG actually is, and the extreme tribalism exhitbited by many gamers and internet-goers, plus sprinkle on a (un)healthy portion of the Greater Internet F*ckwad theory, and you wind up with the extreme examples of people pouring hatred onto any game that they percieve deviates (even slghtly) away from their own personal RPG definition.

Really the RPG genre is highly mutable, and is very easy to successfully breed with any number of other genre. This is why so many games that call themselves RPGs often include elements of shooters, puzzlers and whatever, and why many non-rpgs include RPG elements.

To focus on the current Dragon Age 2 madness, the new game has changed some of the things from the original. The art direction and animation has shifted significantly, there is less customisability, aparently the PC version has been dumbed down for the 'console tards'. As I've already aluded to, many people don't like changes, but quite frankly change is always welcome in my book. If I wanted to play a game that played exactly like Dragon Age: Origins, I would just play Dragon Age: Origins. I'm glad that the story has taken a different direction, because as far as I could say, the story from DA1 was pretty satifactorily concluded. As far the console tard comments, the same nonsense was levelled at Origins and it was just as much bullshit then as it likely is now (I haven't played the game yet aside from the demo but I can make educated guesses from previous experience of similar accusations).
 

infohippie

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I think it's because RPGs are slowly turning into action games. Those of us who don't have ADD, and like to be pushed to think during our games are getting annoyed that there are fewer and fewer games for us each year, replaced by games for the boobies/explosions/"duuude!" crowd.