Terror_K wrote...
I didn't say that AD&D 3.5 wasn't an RPG, that was just --as AlanC9 said-- a throwaway line. I just personally don't like the changes made to D&D in 3.5, and 4 was even worse. Seems now that it's AD&D for dummies, or as I prefer to call it ADDAD&D. Yes, despite my claims that they are separate entities, it's interesting to see P&P RPGs also getting dumbed down, but that's another matter.
It wasn't a throwaway line. AD&D 2.0 had the failing that it had become too bogged down in rules, to the point that defining a character was an extremely extended process to the point of ultra-micromanagement, and further worsened this through the extensive collection of extra material. The magic set was something like 4 or 5 books with hundreds of pages each, the magic items set was equivalent. Getting together a game, especially with casually known people, was an effort in insanity, because who owned what book and made what choices from books someone else may not have had...
2.0 offered a truly massive amount of customization, but it did so at the high cost of playability. Just too many rules, too many source books.
3.x actually did streamline this, and added extra benefits, such as prestige classes so that your level 12 fighter had something to look forward to, and feats to more closely mimic people's imagined heroic actions. Unfortunately, this became broken eventually too, but that's no different than any preceding system (Kensai in 2.0 was a raging nightmare).
The fact is, CRPGs are a different kettle of fish than P&P RPGs. Yes, they were inspired by them, but after that they took on a life of their own. The gaming industry doesn't look to the P&P or real world RPGs when determining whether a cRPG is one. There are too many different factors between the two of them. They're like apples and oranges: yes, they're both fruit, but they're not exactly classified the same.
They're not, they're inseperable. They both aspire to the very same goal. The only difference is that the computer can abstract away things found in PnP like die rolls and consulting tables. There's no difference between them, no factors to affect them. It's the exact same framework for both, the exact same end goal. The approach is a little different, but that's just because the computer can handle problems more efficiently than a human can.
Yes but most of stuff the cRPG luddites worship about cRPG's is the junk people put in games because they couldn't replicate the PnP effect. As technology gets better they don't have to fill in with garbage (inventory, looting, raftloads of worthless stats) and can focus back in on what RPG's do well - allow a player to experience and be a part of a story - the games will get more streamlined to focus on story and not on the need to have game mechanisms slapping you in the face all the time.
That would be because those things are relatively necessary to have an RPG, most especially the stats. Once you get rid of them, there's no difference between a Shooter/Action-Adventure game and what you end up with.
Quick! What's the difference between Gears of War and Mass Effect 2.
You get to talk to people to hear the story in ME2. That's it. Other than that, they're identical. Instead of a cutscene to tell you what your mission is, you get to have a cutscene with occasional pauses while you choose your dialogue, then you go do the mission anyways, no matter what stance you took in dialogue. Mass Effect 2 and Oblivion being big offenders.
That's what happens when you take the "garbage" out of an RPG. You get Gears of War or Tomb Raider. Which means it's no longer an RPG.
Further, the game you're describing is available right now, today, they are Adventure games. All story, no stats. No nasty RPG mechanics to slap you in the face, nothing but interacting with the world and getting story.
BioWare aren't making the game to be what best suits it any more; they're making the game to appeal to those who are scared or put off by these factors getting even remotely in the way by removing them.
It's a recent fad, I'm not sure what started it, I suspect it was Final Fantasy 7.
Somewhere along the lines in the last few years, being an "RPG'er" became some kind of badge people wanted to wear. Given RPG sales figures, the only one high enough to cause this event was FF7, everything else prior to the last few years only sold a couple million units. MMORPGs are a possibility too, but that's going to take me some time to consider. Anyways...
Some people decided they wanted the badge, which was fine, except they actually hate RPGs. They don't want to be bothered figuring out what AC is, or Damage reduction, or stats. They just want to be RPG'ers, and they equate dialogue to playing an RPG. I suppose it's an easy mistake to make, as very few other games make an effort to implement a real story with real interactions. Regardless, they think dialogue means it's an RPG, and they think everything else is "Just stupid old stuff". Problem accelerated when Oblivion sold 4 million units, more than any preceding single player RPG in a long time. Bethseda insisted it was an RPG, despite the fact that most of it's mechanics made it much closer to an Action-Adventure game. It also benefited significantly from riding the tide from Grand Theft Auto's making open world a new fad. Take Lunatic here, who doesn't want to be bothered learning anything to play an RPG, Fallout 3's boards had many similiar people who steadfastly insisted that there's no reason for them to have to learn RPG mechanics to play RPGs, that they should just play like every other game (Read shooters).
So hence we get Fallout 3, Fable 3, and Mass Effect 2. Why bother spending a year implementing and balancing RPG mechanics when you can just make an Shooter or Action-Adventure game and push it out the door much faster? Sell it to people who hate RPG's but want to think they're RPGers?
If you look back at gaming history, this is nothing new, and it does not end well. Wing Commander 3 launched dozens of FMV "Me too!", Doom did it too, so did Warcraft 2, Everquest, and now this. Each time one or two sell well, the rest fail badly, and then we lose a half-dozen studios. Every time some game sells unexpectedly well, it gains alot of gaming-popularity, bunch of studios "Me too" it, and then they die.
As for linear, Gun I, Gun II, Gun III sound familiar? I mean ME1 was linear and inevitable as anything and functionally all RPG's work this way playing the higher level = better weapons dance. I seem to recall dutifully marching through a ton of +1 swords in BG and then seeing lots of +2 and then +3 and so on.
It's character progression, loot is actually just as much of it as leveling is. Would be more meaningfull if some studio would just implement loot like the "Deck of Many Things" or the "Mirror of Lifetrapping", but they aren't motivated to do it.
Theirlack of motivation does not mean RPGs work the way you describe though. RPGs are actually meant to have alot more than just +X longsword. There's supposed to be many items with unusual effects like the two examples above. Developers just never seem to implement the other ideas.
Experience points are ALWAYS arbitrary. Why is a Hurlock worth 15 and a spider 12 or whatever. The arbitrary is just parsed at a lower level and your XP becomes even more arbitrary based on your willingness to slaughter things for no reason - sure I killed Jarvia but let me go exterminate everything in that other room becaise I want XP. Again, why is killing something worth XP anyways? It makes combat an end rather than a means to an end. If you want to argue that skills should be tied to use ala TES you might have a point but when I can trade slaughtering Orcs for better lockpick skills I don't ever want to hear about XP meaning anything.
Actually it isn't arbitrary. The point value is a representation of the general difficulty of defeating critter X. Simplified, it's a relation between it's chance of hitting you, how hard it hits you, any special abilities it might have, how hard it is to be hit, and how many hits it'll take to kill it. It's not a random number someone just picked out, it's actually an equation that pretty well relates the difficulty of the critter.
Why is killing something worth experience? Because the general theory is: You get better with practice and use, and combat is use. Hence gaining experience representing getting better.
It's always been the system's weakness that combat experience can lead to non-combat improvements. The alternative is actually worse. It's completely unmanagable in PnP, way too much to track. On the computer, it's exploitable. Just bunnyhop all over the place instead of walking and improve jump, just stand in town and cast fireball on a tree over and over and improve your ability to shoot monsters. The alternative is just as weak as the existing system.
Pick your poison, which nonsense is less annoying to you.
While "we" others also want good customation, we don't want statical gameplay become our point of role-playing game. Meaning too much statical gameplay has negative affect to role-playing, while more customation may be fine, statical gameplay may shifts the focus of the game from role-playing to "powerplaying". It's the difference when customation helps players role-playing and when statical number playing becomes point of the game, like distraction from actual role-playing
With all due respect, it sounds like your problem is that you do not like that some people play a Min-Max style, rather than having an actual issue with the system. It's a playstyle, there's rules-lawyers, RP-lawyers, Min-Maxers, Munchkins, just because some people play in a style is no reason to eliminate it. Especially when the alternative just gets us an Action-Adventure or a Shooter game instead of an RPG.
Modifié par Gatt9, 24 février 2011 - 10:02 .
Though 4.0 is made of even bigger fail. Honestly I can play/run any of the editions I prefer basic-2e myself, but pathfinder has done some good things with 3.5.
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