80 réponses à ce sujet

[SleeplessInSigil]

I just started playing The Last Remnant recently, and boy, it had been a long time since I played a JRPG (or any PC RPG for that matter with a gamepad, but that's not the point) and it just reminded me, just how much better, and fun, combat is in JRPGs, compared to WRPGs.

TL;DR version: Combat in an RPG should remain turn-based. That's not just an opinion.


Now, Why? Because if you have any kind of meaningful character stats that can influence how you'll fight, other than raw HP and flat damage/absorption, the game engine behind the scenes is still thinking in "turns," no matter how much you try to "fake" it as real-time just to sell to customers who might feel embarrassed or something if they got caught playing anything turn-based.

by combat-influencing stats, I mean things like Attack Chance, Armor class, and Dexterity and so on, that take precedence over visual factors like actual positioning in an RPG, because without those, you'll either have a First-Person Shooter or a 3rd-Person Hack-&-Slash, or something in-between like Fallout 3, which will still end up feeling awkward anyhow since there's still invisible number-crunching going on that may cause you to miss even though you were perfectly lined up and right in the enemy's face, unlike in a proper FPS, and people may not consider that a "true" RPG either (as many have argued in the case against FO3, on this forum and elsewhere.)

Not to mention the lame-looking lag where the actual effects don't keep up with the animation cycle because the turn-based number-crunching hasn't caught up with the visuals (No, that has nothing to do with computer hardware, it's a function of all psuedo-real-time CRPGs with turn-based rules behind the scenes, from Baldur's Gate to Dragon Age.)



Ever since the legendary Baldur's Gate, it's been as if WRPG developers are afraid of being seen as taking a step backwards if they dared to implement the combat system in their game as turn-based.

Temple of Elemental Evil was a great exception, and it works well. It's more thrilling, even challenging, because you have to make each turn count, instead of just watching the AI scripts take over while you keep an eye on the HP & Mana bars to chug a potion every N seconds just so you have something to do before the mandatory encounter (gotta show off all that blood & gore to appease the "mature" wannabes!) will let you get on with the story.

and what does the difficulty setting do? Increase the enemy's HP and their damage. That's it. Achieving nothing except prolonging the snorefest.


So yeah. I hope the combat in Dragon Age 2 will require more planning from us than just making sure we have stocked enough potions and set the correct script. Please!

[Loerwyn]

BUT T3H CASUALZ?!

[Khayness]

Imo every fantasy RPG should implement the combat system of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

As much I love Excel gaming, it actually feels 'being there'.

That doesn't mean you can't have a great plot, world and NPC interactions, stat and inventory system, etc.

[RedHawk89]

Personally I have grown very tired of turned based combat in RPGs. Even when it is done well, such as in games like Chronno Trigger or KOTOR, it still bores me insofar as nothing ever changes. Combat relies solely on your stats, whether or not you've grinded enough to advance to the next part of the story, and whether your party is implementing some sort of monotone strategy thought up the the developer. Square Enix is the worst offender, in my opinion. In a game based on real time combat or some other style, the player's own skill factors in to play. Even a low level can defeat someone stronger if they work at it or get lucky! I find that scenarios like that make a game much more exciting.



I am thrilled that Western RPGs are straying away from this formula. Mass Effect brings 3rd person shooter and action adventure into the mix. Fallout 3 is first person with a unique combat targeting system. Honestly the main thing that makes them RPGs is that they have well written stories, something that it not seen enough in other genres. I know there are plenty of RPG elements, like looting, upgrading weapons, and huge areas to explore, but personally, I am very glad that the lines of genres are blurring. Developers are becoming more creative, mixing mediums together to make the best game that they can.



I don't mind a turn-based game every once in awhile...but honestly, I do think it's getting old. Someone needs to try something different.

[Mecha Tengu]

stupid casual idiots like me need moar PEW PEW to fill my tiny overclocked brain



Turn based would be too much for me to handle. I NEED ACTION RAWR

[Aidoru Kami]

So basically you're saying that no developer should ever attempt to do something different with an RPG's combat mechanics ever?



You have very poor reasoning for believing this, though to each his own, I suppose.



Stats in a real-time world should have a great impact on how you play if they're done right. Pretty simple, really. You hit harder if you increase strength. You move fast if you increase dexterity. You're harder to take down if you increase vitality.



I have no issue with turn-based systems. I love games such as Dragon Age, Fire Emblem, Chaos Rings, and Chrono Trigger... Hell, Knights of the Old Republic is my absolute favorite game of all time.



Overall? I think people need to get the term RPG out of their head. Let's face it-- damn near every game out there that has a determined perspective is an RPG. In fact, it's always been that way. RPG stands for Role Playing Game... implying a game where you take the role of someone. You do that in most games. Perhaps you have more control over it in games that get the term "RPG", though you generally take the role of someone to some extent in most games.



In terms of relevance to the name of its genre, Light's End is the greatest RPG ever made.



Even though the term is mainly applied to games with stats, leveling up, and yes, turn-based combat. Why aren't those games known as Stat-Builders? Not as catchy?



Basically-- there are plenty of inventive ways to implement combat in games, most of which are yet to be discovered. I see no point in choosing to stick with the old.

[scottelite]

I dislike turn based

/

[Noilly Prat]

Here's the thing: I became disillusioned with JRPGs right around the same time that I was discovering stuff like Fallout and Baldur's Gate, and for about seven years, there was no looking back for me.  I almost didn't touch a JRPG in that period of time.

About a year ago, I managed to come back to the JRPG genre with a new attitude, and found a new appreciation for it.  In that time, I've played old classics like Chrono Trigger that I had never played before, replayed old favorites like Lunar, and gotten into stuff I previously was totally unfamiliar with, like the Shin Megami Tensei series.  Just in the past year, I've probably played something like thirteen different JRPGs.

And, though I've experienced a broad variety of different types of turn-based battle systems, and actually really enjoyed some of them, I will always enjoy real time fighting more, and I can see no reason why a turn-based system is inherently better suited to RPGs.  The fact that many WRPGs happen to have their roots in tabletop rules and that turn-based is just how it's always been done in Japan does not mean stat-influenced, strategic fighting necessarily needs a turn-based system to work well.  Furthermore, while there are a handful of JRPGs out there with truly unique battle systems, the majority are essentially doing the same thing that's been done in the genre for years.  Even some Japanese developers have begun to acknowledge this as a problem, some more directly than others.

Combat in a lot of JRPGs for me feels quite disconnected from the rest of the gameplay and story experience.  It's as if the battle system could have just as well been developed by a different team completely independently of the rest of the game.  Or like you're playing a game that consists of running around, picking up items, reading bits of text here and there, and frequently stopping to play a game of cards or chess.  In a game like Dragon Age, the fighting feels better integrated into the full package, at least in my view.

Lastly, while it may be true that western developers have been afraid to try out a turn-based system in recent years, it is also completely true that Japanese developers have been incredibly reluctant to get away from them.  I don't know that this puts the Japanese developers in the right, necessarily.

[TheMufflon]

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

That's not just an opinion. 

Yes, it is just an opinion.

[vometia]

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

Combat in an RPG should remain turn-based. That's not just an opinion.

Er, in what way?  Turn-based combat would be a deal-breaker for me, and I personally thought it made TLR seem extremely gimmicky.

I'm not going to say "it sucks" because it is an entirely subjective matter, but that said it's still something that seems like the RPG equivalent of being forced to use punched cards.  Do not want.

[Moondoggie]

Turn based combat is why JRPG's are going down the toilet. It's an old old gimmick that needs to be destroyed. Very rarely does a game do anything exciting with it anymore.

[RedHawk89]

I have to admit, it's almost as if this thread is a troll, but the OP wrote a heck of a novel...that took time. So I don't know.



When was the last time Square Enix did anything new and interesting?



I'm with Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw when I saw they need to stop making games and try to make digitally animated movies instead.

[SleeplessInSigil]

I see. So far, most of the responses have been in the range of,

"I dislike JRPGs!"
"You're no better! Turn-based is bad too!"
"If I wanted Turn-based I'd play chess. Chess is not cool! This is compooter gamezzz!"
"Trull!"

instead of coming up with an objective argument as to WHY real-time combat would work better. WHY does an "RPG" need to cater to the GTA-playing jock types by pretending to be an action game with slightly more dialog, when we have actual action games to fill that role?


Come now. Can any of you HONESTLY claim that you actually enjoyed the combat in Dragon Age, or Mass Effect 1, or even the Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate? Would you still have said you had FUN playing those combat sequences if they were in some other game that you didn't feel you had to be loyal to and blindly defend every aspect of?

I mean seriously.



RT combat, especially as implemented in Dragon Age, requires NO strategy or skill, or even any input from you at all, other than watching HP/MP bars and disarming the occasional trap.


Let's take: Healing.

In Baldur's Gate and its descendants like Dragon Age, once you've mindlessly clicked on all the buffs from Hotkey #1 to 10, you simply have to press a button as soon as you see that red bar at 25% length. That's it. The action is uninterrupted and the pre-provided scripts carry on beating at the enemy.


Now, in The Last Remnant, say one of your groups is about to die.

There, you have to make a CHOICE. Heal, OR keep attacking. Yes: one turn, one move. That's it. A decision that you will NOT get to take back. That unit might die on the next turn even with a healing anyway so you have to consider whether it'd be worthwhile to let that unit get a last blow in on the enemy before it falls.

Suppose you noticed that one of the key enemy groups is about to die too. It gets even more tense there; You may or may not end up killing the enemy or one of your own key groups may die on the next turn if it doesn't heal itself instead of charging.

Then you also have to take into consideration factors like Deadlocks your other groups are in and any Interference you may get from the other enemy groups, should you decide to help out your dying units with some other friendly group.

Also, once you enter in your orders and start to execute them, it's not like you'll have to sit back with nothing to do but watch the animation until the next turn starts, because you still get to enter manual input to pull off critical hits and counterattacks.


All of that comes together to keep me glued to the screen and interested in the game throughout the combat sequences, instead of being some tedious chore to get over with as in games like Dragon Age where you can't honestly feel any pressing need to take manual control in order to succeed.

Increase the Difficulty, you say huh? PFFFT In a well-designed system Difficulty Sliders should not even exist in the first place!!

Modifié par SleeplessInSigil, 31 janvier 2011 - 03:39 .

[Thunderfox]

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

I see. So far, most of the responses have been in the range of,

"I dislike JRPGs!"
"You're no better! Turn-based is bad too!"
"If I wanted Turn-based I'd play chess. Chess is not cool! This is compooter gamezzz!"
"Trull!"

instead of coming up with an objective argument as to WHY real-time combat would work better. WHY does an "RPG" need to cater to the GTA-playing jock types by pretending to be an action game with slightly more dialog, when we have actual action games to fill that role?


Come now. Can any of you HONESTLY claim that you actually enjoyed the combat in Dragon Age, or Mass Effect 1, or even the Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate? Would you still have said you had FUN playing those combat sequences if they were in some other game that you didn't feel you had to be loyal to and blindly defend every aspect of?

I mean seriously.

Yes.

[Eurypterid]

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

I see. So far, most of the responses have been in the range of,

"I dislike JRPGs!"
"You're no better! Turn-based is bad too!"
"If I wanted Turn-based I'd play chess. Chess is not cool! This is compooter gamezzz!"
"Trull!"

instead of coming up with an objective argument as to WHY real-time combat would work better. WHY does an "RPG" need to cater to the GTA-playing jock types by pretending to be an action game with slightly more dialog, when we have actual action games to fill that role?

Your argument is not bolstered by belittling the tastes and playstyles of others.

SleeplessInSigil wrote...
Come now. Can any of you HONESTLY claim that you actually enjoyed the combat in Dragon Age, or Mass Effect 1, or even the Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate? Would you still have said you had FUN playing those combat sequences if they were in some other game that you didn't feel you had to be loyal to and blindly defend every aspect of?

I mean seriously.

Yes, I did. Every one of them. Just because some people like something different than what you prefer doesn't make them wrong. Different tastes, and all that. As a sode note, I just recently (just before Christmas) played through BG1, BG2, IWD1, and IWD2 again and loved them as much this time as I did the first time I played them.

I like turn based as much as the next TB fan (I'm actually playing through ToEE now), but I certainly don't feel every single RPG should be turn based. As a matter of fact, I'm glad they're not.

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

RT combat, especially as implemented in Dragon Age, requires NO strategy or skill, or even any input from you at all, other than watching HP/MP bars and disarming the occasional trap.


Let's take: Healing.

In Baldur's Gate and its descendants like Dragon Age, once you've mindlessly clicked on all the buffs from Hotkey #1 to 10, you simply have to press a button as soon as you see that red bar at 25% length. That's it. The action is uninterrupted and the pre-provided scripts carry on beating at the enemy.


Now, in The Last Remnant, say one of your groups is about to die.

There, you have to make a CHOICE. Heal, OR keep attacking. Yes: one turn, one move. That's it. A decision that you will NOT get to take back. That unit might die on the next turn even with a healing anyway so you have to consider whether it'd be worthwhile to let that unit get a last blow in on the enemy before it falls.

Suppose you noticed that one of the key enemy groups is about to die too. It gets even more tense there; You may or may not end up killing the enemy or one of your own key groups may die on the next turn if it doesn't heal itself instead of charging.

Then you also have to take into consideration factors like Deadlocks your other groups are in and any Interference you may get from the other enemy groups, should you decide to help out your dying units with some other friendly group.

Also, once you enter in your orders and start to execute them, it's not like you'll have to sit back with nothing to do but watch the animation until the next turn starts, because you still get to enter manual input to pull off critical hits and counterattacks.


All of that comes together to keep me glued to the screen and interested in the game throughout the combat sequences, instead of being some tedious chore to get over with as in games like Dragon Age where you can't honestly feel any pressing need to take manual control in order to succeed.

While I find some of your points are well argued, and I can agree to some extent, for the most part I think you're simplifying things to a great degree in order to artifically bolster your POV. There are plenty of opportunities for tactical and strategic combat in real-time systems like DA:O that make the game interesting and fun as well.

SleeplessInSigil wrote...Increase the Difficulty, you say huh? PFFFT In a well-designed system Difficulty Sliders should not even exist in the first place!!

While I agree that many times an increase in difficulty usually means simply an increase in enemy HPs and damage dealt, that's not always the case. As far as difficulty sliders - why shouldn't they exist? If done in a manner other than noted above, there could be plenty of options for different difficulties that can make the game harder or easier, depending on what one is looking for.

If it's turn based you want, and you can get that in JRPGs, why the need to demand it in WRPGs as well? You can get your fix easily enough in the JRPGs. Why try to force everyone to play that style if it's not what they prefer? Choice is a good thing, and it's already there. No need to make all RPGs conform to the same style.

My 2 cents.

[Noilly Prat]

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

I see. So far, most of the responses have been in the range of,

"I dislike JRPGs!"
"You're no better! Turn-based is bad too!"
"If I wanted Turn-based I'd play chess. Chess is not cool! This is compooter gamezzz!"
"Trull!"

I'm guessing that the second to last one is in reference to my post, as I was the only one to mention chess.  I have no idea why I'm even bothering to construct another reply, when my original post, which I actually, believe it or not, spent some time thinking about before posting, was somehow twisted into this inane misrepresentation, but here goes anyway.

[...] instead of coming up with an objective argument as to WHY real-time combat would work better. WHY does an "RPG" need to cater to the GTA-playing jock types by pretending to be an action game with slightly more dialog, when we have actual action games to fill that role?

Only speaking for myself here, but I did not say that real time combat is better for an RPG.  I did say that I prefer it-- in other words, I admitted that I was voicing an opinion, as opposed to making ridiculous claims and presenting them as objective fact.

What I did say in my previous post was that I don't think you listed any convincing reasons specific to turn-based systems that necessarily make them more suitable for an RPG than real time systems.  Instead of making a thoughtful response to this, you belittled myself and others who took time to respond to this confrontational topic, and then attempted to throw the burden of proof away and on to everyone who disagrees with your opinion.  Sorry, but I'm just not interested in dressing up my opinions in the language of objective science, and especially when you aren't even giving any differing opinions an honest hearing.

Come now. Can any of you HONESTLY claim that you actually enjoyed the combat in Dragon Age, or Mass Effect 1, or even the Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate? Would you still have said you had FUN playing those combat sequences if they were in some other game that you didn't feel you had to be loyal to and blindly defend every aspect of?

I mean seriously.

As others have said, yes.

Incidentally, Baldur's Gate II was my first BioWare game.  Before I played that, I had no idea who BioWare were, nor any reason to blindly defend everything they do.  It was one of my first western and computer RPGs.  At the time that I first played it, as far as I was concerned, "RPG" meant "JRPG with a turn-based battle system," because I had yet to encounter anything different.  Finally, when I first played BGII, I viewed anything Dungeons and Dragons-related at best with indifference, and, at worst, with extreme skepticism bordering on hostility.

Clearly, I had absolutely no reason to like the game out of a misplaced sense of blind loyalty to anything.

As for the rest, I don't feel any particular need to get into specifics at this point, but I put just as much thought, if not more, into my fighting strategies in Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age as I have with any JRPG I've played.  I found both of these games quite challenging at points, and I know I'm not the only one.  My favorite part of the battles in these games was that, no matter how many times I died fighting some lich in BG, I could always see which tactics were and were not working, and adjust my approach accordingly, and I would always do better as a result of this.

My favorite JRPGs have deep and well-balanced battle systems, but by far the hardest JRPGs I've played (Etrian Odyssey, Disgaea, some of the MegaTen games) have gotten their difficulty mostly from artificially overpowering the enemies, limiting my combat abilities arbitrarily and in a manner completely inconsistent with the limitations on enemy abilities, or by spamming cheap instant death spells.

Admittedly, western or real time RPGs are not always innocent of these things, but I want my success or failure in RPG combat to depend on my planning and skills, not on making an unlucky roll or being dealt a bad hand.  I can deal with some small luck factor, but when I have to fight the same boss five times using the same tactics and waiting for my luck to change the next time he tries to instant kill me, it gets tiresome.

Modifié par Noilly Prat, 31 janvier 2011 - 04:45 .

[SleeplessInSigil]

Noilly Prat wrote...

I'm guessing that the second to last one is in reference to my post, as I was the only one to mention chess.  I have no idea why I'm even bothering to construct another reply, when my original post, which I actually, believe it or not, spent some time thinking about before posting, was somehow twisted into this inane misrepresentation, but here goes anyway.

I didn't mean for that to refer to you at all. Sorry if it came off like that  It's just one of the connotations people usually make with TBS from what I've seen.

Eurypterid wrote...

While I agree that many times an increase in difficulty usually means simply an increase in enemy HPs and damage dealt, that's not always the case. As far as difficulty sliders - why shouldn't they exist? If done in a manner other than noted above, there could be plenty of options for different difficulties that can make the game harder or easier, depending on what one is looking for.

You can still have optional levels of challenge without explicitly implementing a handicap system which is what Dragon Age does.

Again, to take The Last Remnant as an example, it requires manual input during the combat animations to successfully execute critical hits and counterattacks. However, there is an option to have those crits occur automatically. Something like this actually caters to different playstyles and preferences better than implementing an artificial stopgap like Difficulty Sliders which simply inflate the enemy's HP and damage power to create the illusion of a harder challenge.

Modifié par SleeplessInSigil, 31 janvier 2011 - 08:30 .

[Noilly Prat]

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

Noilly Prat wrote...

I'm guessing that the second to last one is in reference to my post, as I was the only one to mention chess.  I have no idea why I'm even bothering to construct another reply, when my original post, which I actually, believe it or not, spent some time thinking about before posting, was somehow twisted into this inane misrepresentation, but here goes anyway.

I didn't mean for that to refer to you at all. Sorry if it came off like that  It's just one of the connotations people usually make with TBS from what I've seen.

Okay, in that case disregard what I said there.  Sorry about the confusion.

Speaking of chess... I like turn-based strategy RPGs quite a bit, though this also varies from one game to the next.  I couldn't get into Disgaea, but I enjoy Fire Emblem.  Sometimes, however, I do get the feeling those games are giving the enemies unfair advantages that I'm not getting, and I wish there was a little less of that in strategy RPGs.

Modifié par Noilly Prat, 31 janvier 2011 - 05:12 .

[bussinrounds]

Hey Eurypterid, whats your opinion on ToEE, and what patches have you applied ? I heard it was a very buggy game when it came out, but there have been some nice fixes released since then. Some d&d turn based combat sounds good. I used to love playing Warriors of the Eternal Sun. My favorite sega genesis game ever !



I'm just now getting into pc gaming and have the Baldurs Gates, Icewinds, Fallouts, Planescape, Jade Empire,and Neverwinters installed and ready to go !



I'm starting off with the Big World Project for BG 1 & 2 ! I figured, if i'm just getting into them now, i might as well take advantage of it.

[SalsaDMA]

I think we need to establish some things that are often overlooked.

RPG means Role Playing Game.
This means that a game that lets you asume the Role of one or more characters in a significant way is a RPG. Combat, and the different ways of rules implementing of this to facilitate a way to resolve it, is not inherently RPG. It's just a subset of rules that are used to handle a specific sort of encounters in a meaningfull way. Some 'pen & paper' RPGs does away with combat rules entirely and let everything be down to the 'narrators' (dungeon/game master) interpretation of what effects the players actions will have upon the scenario.

Combat rules, for the sake of combat rules, are in the area of another game type called strategical or tactical games (depending on the scale).

To claim that a specifc subset of rules implementation is 'the correct way' to handle a specific sort of scenarios in RPGs is mindboggling in its disregard for what the genre is actually about.

If you want to play tactical tabletop games in favor of anything else, feel free to do so, but don't claim that it has anything to do with RPGs.

[Eurypterid]

bussinrounds wrote...

Hey Eurypterid, whats your opinion on ToEE, and what patches have you applied ? I heard it was a very buggy game when it came out, but there have been some nice fixes released since then. Some d&d turn based combat sounds good. I used to love playing Warriors of the Eternal Sun. My favorite sega genesis game ever !

With apologies to the OP for digressing:

I installed the Circle of Eight's latest modpack (v. 6.0.0), which adds a ton of bug fixes as well as some low level quests. So far it's great and a ton of fun. Playing a party of 6 and they just made level 2 (I did a lot of running around and talking in Hommlet to get a bunch of quests started).

bussinrounds wrote...
I'm just now getting into pc gaming and have the Baldurs Gates, Icewinds, Fallouts, Planescape, Jade Empire,and Neverwinters installed and ready to go !

I'm starting off with the Big World Project for BG 1 & 2 ! I figured, if i'm just getting into them now, i might as well take advantage of it.

Ah, enjoy. It's an awesome ride.

[Cuthlan]

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

I see. So far, most of the responses have been in the range of,

"I dislike JRPGs!"
"You're no better! Turn-based is bad too!"
"If I wanted Turn-based I'd play chess. Chess is not cool! This is compooter gamezzz!"
"Trull!"

instead of coming up with an objective argument as to WHY real-time combat would work better. WHY does an "RPG" need to cater to the GTA-playing jock types by pretending to be an action game with slightly more dialog, when we have actual action games to fill that role?


Come now. Can any of you HONESTLY claim that you actually enjoyed the combat in Dragon Age, or Mass Effect 1, or even the Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate? Would you still have said you had FUN playing those combat sequences if they were in some other game that you didn't feel you had to be loyal to and blindly defend every aspect of?

I mean seriously.

How's this for an argument;

I like real-time action more.

Aren't opinions wonderful?

Modifié par Cuthlan, 31 janvier 2011 - 05:45 .

[TheMufflon]

SleeplessInSigil wrote...


instead of coming up with an objective argument as to WHY real-time combat would work better.

I'd argue the case, but it would be an exercise in futility. You made it abundantly clear in your very first post that you have little or no conception of the difference between fact and opinion, therefore attempting to reason with you would be pointless.

Modifié par TheMufflon, 31 janvier 2011 - 05:49 .

[Elvis_Mazur]

Oh, well... I think I can't say anything concrete about, but as far as I know, RPGs devs are too busy in other aspects of the game ans thus having small time to check the combat system.

[vometia]

Eurypterid wrote...

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

I see. So far, most of the responses have been in the range of,

"I dislike JRPGs!"
"You're no better! Turn-based is bad too!"
"If I wanted Turn-based I'd play chess. Chess is not cool! This is compooter gamezzz!"
"Trull!"

instead of coming up with an objective argument as to WHY real-time combat would work better. WHY does an "RPG" need to cater to the GTA-playing jock types by pretending to be an action game with slightly more dialog, when we have actual action games to fill that role?

Your argument is not bolstered by belittling the tastes and playstyles of others.

Quite.  I'm afraid it was at that point that I figured it was unlikely to be a productive debate: mocking those who disagree over what is a subjective opinion seldom ends well.