151 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

BlameBot wrote...

I mean new weapons, silly. Everyone knows that you can't just buy guns, you have to find them somewhere. Preferably out of the way. Or in a giant pile of goo.

Oh, right. Because big governments and rich secret organizations can't possibly have access to the best technology available. Yeah, that never happens.

[Parrk]

I'd rather play an action game with liberal use of rpg elements.

I guess I am just coincidentally fortunate that that is the current trajectory of gaming.

I think this is somewhat driven by advances in the gaming systems themselves. I do not think that a lot of studios want to be seen as providing last-gen graphics, because that is the easiest way to lose your reputation as a AAA studio.

Once you build a game with great character models and an intriguing environment, I bet it is difficult to stop there or kick the thing to hell by duct-taping a dice roll system to it.

[SuperMedbh]

The whole looting discussion ties in with the examination of RPG mechanics. Is a mechanic really appropriate for the story the game is trying to tell, or is it simply "the way things have always been done"?

ME1 had a lot of looting, pretty much because it was an RPG and you have looting in RPGs, right? We choose all the outfits for our companions because, well, you always have, right? Does changing that to finding gift upgrades for your friends represent a "dumbing down", or is it an attempt to be a bit more realistic? After all, one can presume that our companions are capable of making their own sartorial decisions.

I think the key is to change out concepts, not simply remove them. The need to accumulate gold/credits in order to get new stuff provides motivation for actions and requires resource management. These are both good things, but can a developer provide them in another way that more closely dovetails with the world they've created? I think we saw glimmers of that in DA2 that weren't fully explored-- in act 2, Hawke is well off and a part owner of a business that needs occasional sidequests to take care of. That business ends up providing resources, as well as motivations (not just for money, but I'll avoid spoilers). I would have like to have seen more of this sort of thing.

[supertouch]

game developers can put the latest technology to use in quality rpgs

[BlameBot]

AlanC9 wrote...

BlameBot wrote...

I mean new weapons, silly. Everyone knows that you can't just buy guns, you have to find them somewhere. Preferably out of the way. Or in a giant pile of goo.

Oh, right. Because big governments and rich secret organizations can't possibly have access to the best technology available. Yeah, that never happens.

Can't see how it does. I mean, if they had access to all the best tech and supplies, they wouldn't possibly send their best agents with last years' tech, would they?

[Lulia]

RPG does stand for Role Playing Game, right?

The whole article seemed to go on about the lack of looting, over simplified armour and upgrades, etc and without these thing it maybe isn't an RPG anymore...

I'd argue that if the focus is the character that we become and how we can interact with the environment rather than items and upgrades etc that it is more an RPG than one where half the playtime is sifting through an inventory to organise our temporary items etc.

I'd trade voice acting and real interactions and relationships and consequences over an exciting bit of loot anyday.

[BlameBot]

SuperMedbh wrote...

The whole looting discussion ties in with the examination of RPG mechanics. Is a mechanic really appropriate for the story the game is trying to tell, or is it simply "the way things have always been done"?

ME1 had a lot of looting, pretty much because it was an RPG and you have looting in RPGs, right? We choose all the outfits for our companions because, well, you always have, right? Does changing that to finding gift upgrades for your friends represent a "dumbing down", or is it an attempt to be a bit more realistic? After all, one can presume that our companions are capable of making their own sartorial decisions.

I think the key is to change out concepts, not simply remove them. The need to accumulate gold/credits in order to get new stuff provides motivation for actions and requires resource management. These are both good things, but can a developer provide them in another way that more closely dovetails with the world they've created? I think we saw glimmers of that in DA2 that weren't fully explored-- in act 2, Hawke is well off and a part owner of a business that needs occasional sidequests to take care of. That business ends up providing resources, as well as motivations (not just for money, but I'll avoid spoilers). I would have like to have seen more of this sort of thing.

''

In ME1 it made sense to get loot, because you were a lone agent basically given a ship and nothing else, and told to go kill stuff. In ME2, looting is pretty much limited to the tech, an occasional weapon, (in strange places) and credits to buy crap from merchants. Which only sort-of made sense. Tech, yes. But looting for what usually amounted to pocket change seemed shallow and forced. The fact that you couldn't buy new weapons was nonsensical, instead you found new weapons in random locales.

It made me giggle a bit when I found my new sniper rifle sitting in a pile of Collector goo. Did someone have an "oops?"

Modifié par BlameBot, 23 mars 2011 - 08:53 .

[Gatt9]

Parrk wrote...

I'd rather play an action game with liberal use of rpg elements.

I guess I am just coincidentally fortunate that that is the current trajectory of gaming.

I think this is somewhat driven by advances in the gaming systems themselves. I do not think that a lot of studios want to be seen as providing last-gen graphics, because that is the easiest way to lose your reputation as a AAA studio.

Once you build a game with great character models and an intriguing environment, I bet it is difficult to stop there or kick the thing to hell by duct-taping a dice roll system to it.

Sadly,  as unpleasant as that is,  that's not anywhere near why things are occuring the way they are.

Developers are at the mercy of publishers because they control the retail channels.  The publishers pick and choose what they'll release,  and make demands for changes.  Publishers aren't interested in a game that sells "Ok",  they want the next Blockbuster.  So if you walk in with a game with the wrong set of buzzwords,  they won't touch it.  Arcanum had it's real time component forced onto it by a publisher,  Sir Tech went under because no one would touch a turn-based Jagged Alliance during the height of the RT craze.  So you make the game the Publishers want you to make,  because they control the retail channel,  and often your company is living on milestone payments.  A sizeable portion of the price you pay for a game is going to a bunch of people who don't actually do anything to make games,  you're paying enourmous overhead for a publisher who did nothing more than ship to a store.  Which increases the number of units for profitability significantly.

Unfortunately,  Firingsquad did an article on this about 2 years ago,  almost none of the publishers are healthy at this point.  One bad year could kill many of them,  because Publishers don't produce anything.  They're a bank,  wholely dependent on the Developers for products to sell.  If those products don't sell,  Publishers have no income of their own,  only expenses.  They can't just ship something,  or take on some other work,  they're not setup to do work.

As gamer fatigue grows,  meaning publishers release the same few games with different graphics over and over en masse,  publishers see lower returns.  There's only so many times you can sell a copy of Doom,  no matter how pretty it is.  Reflexively they gravitate more towards blockbusters in those few fields in order to try to keep the income flowing,  becoming more resistant to risk.  Meaning,  the greater gamer fatigue grows,  the more they gravitate towards sequels with name recognition and gameplay they think will sell regardless of quality.  Which in turn increases gamer fatigue further.

Usually there's a hardware refresh to boost sales through more shiny.  Due to heat dissipation and power issues,  there's no refresh.

So we've hit a wall.  2010 was down all year,  January 2011 was down.  The market is sufficating itself.  That is what is driving things right now.

The whole looting discussion ties in with the examination of RPG mechanics. Is a mechanic really appropriate for the story the game is trying to tell, or is it simply "the way things have always been done"?

ME1 had a lot of looting, pretty much because it was an RPG and you have looting in RPGs, right? We choose all the outfits for our companions because, well, you always have, right? Does changing that to finding gift upgrades for your friends represent a "dumbing down", or is it an attempt to be a bit more realistic? After all, one can presume that our companions are capable of making their own sartorial decisions.

I think the key is to change out concepts, not simply remove them. The need to accumulate gold/credits in order to get new stuff provides motivation for actions and requires resource management. These are both good things, but can a developer provide them in another way that more closely dovetails with the world they've created? I think we saw glimmers of that in DA2 that weren't fully explored-- in act 2, Hawke is well off and a part owner of a business that needs occasional sidequests to take care of. That business ends up providing resources, as well as motivations (not just for money, but I'll avoid spoilers). I would have like to have seen more of this sort of thing.

You approach the reason why looting exists in an RPG.  Why do I want to explore this world if there's no reason to do it?  Why do I want to do Side Quests if it yields no reward?  Looting exists in an RPG because it provides motivation for exploration and going out of your way to do side quests.  If your game features no loot,  and level scales critters,  there's no point.  Leveling does nothing,  there's nothing to get out of doing the side quest,  why bother?  Just keep going on the main story.

Loot is a motivator,  carrot and horse,  keeps the player going.  Without it,  there's no reward to exploring,  and going to do some sidequest like "I want a rare fish!" is pretty pointless.

Modifié par Gatt9, 23 mars 2011 - 09:16 .

[AlanC9]

BlameBot wrote...

In ME1 it made sense to get loot, because you were a lone agent basically given a ship and nothing else, and told to go kill stuff.

Well, it makes sense if you can figure out why they didn't give you any equipment besieds the damn ship. It might have worked if human technology was really backward compared to other Citadel races, but that isn't how they set the world up.

The fact that you couldn't buy new weapons was nonsensical, instead you found new weapons in random locales.

Buying them wouldn't have made any sense either. If you could buy them, why wouldn't Cerberus have already done so?

It made me giggle a bit when I found my new sniper rifle sitting in a pile of Collector goo. Did someone have an "oops?"

Huh? You already had plenty of sniper rifes. It's silly, sure, but the silly thing is Shepard magically learning how to use sniper rifles.

Edit: wasn't the silliest thing, though. The silliest thing was during the IFF mission, when you scan a Cerberus shotgun to get an upgrade. I know Cerberus is organized in cells, but this is ridiculous.

Modifié par AlanC9, 23 mars 2011 - 10:08 .

[SuperMedbh]

Gatt9 wrote...

<snip>  Medbh writes...... The need to accumulate gold/credits in order to get new stuff provides motivation for actions and requires resource management. These are both good things, but can a developer provide them in another way that more closely dovetails with the world they've created? I think we saw glimmers of that in DA2 that weren't fully explored-- in act 2, Hawke is well off and a part owner of a business that needs occasional sidequests to take care of. That business ends up providing resources, as well as motivations (not just for money, but I'll avoid spoilers). I would have like to have seen more of this sort of thing.

You approach the reason why looting exists in an RPG.  Why do I want to explore this world if there's no reason to do it?  Why do I want to do Side Quests if it yields no reward?  Looting exists in an RPG because it provides motivation for exploration and going out of your way to do side quests.  If your game features no loot,  and level scales critters,  there's no point.  Leveling does nothing,  there's nothing to get out of doing the side quest,  why bother?  Just keep going on the main story.

Loot is a motivator,  carrot and horse,  keeps the player going.  Without it,  there's no reward to exploring,  and going to do some sidequest like "I want a rare fish!" is pretty pointless.

I think we agree on the purpose of looting.  But I don't think it's the only carrot out there.  There's other reasons for side quests--  just to take DAO as an example, there's companion quests that make your friends happier (and better fighters) or the various kingdom recruitments that are concerned with Big Things like royal succession or lifting curses with the reward being extra troops at the end of the game.

Sure, those are the big quests, but can't we use that level of creativity in the smaller quests?  Even if a special item or experience to level is the main goal of a quest, why not simply make them completion awards?  We already have grateful NPCs offering trinkets and such to the heros--  why not increase those rewards and make drops less dependent on looking into each and every grain sack in the city?

I'm not saying looting is never justified in narrative terms (a poor character might very well do it all the time), but I think it's become an easy shorthand that replaces many things that would fit better in some game universes.

There's a fair number of RPG conventions like looting, leveling, equipping, etc that certainly have their reasons, but taken outside of the proverbial dungeon crawl seem...odd.  I think that it's possible to change things up a bit with those conventions, without leaving the audience (too) angry because it's not "the way things have always been since the dawn of time in the mid 1990s"

[HyperLimited]

RPGs are definitely NOT dying. They're evolving...

...toward derpdom. Just like everything else these days. 

[2papercuts]

i don't know about graphic wise, but heres how i see it.

the recent "evolutionary" RPGs are more of an evolution of shooters and action games than an actual RPG. Evolution usually is synonimis with progress, and I would say progress for a games genre is to build on what their tone is and add depth to it. These new "RPGs" are adding depth to shooters and action games, and i think are the evolution of those genres.

For RPGs to evolve I would say they would have to add depth to the genre, and a true evolution of the RPG genre would be a very customizable game.

The height of the RPG genre should be a completely customizable, original, and personal story.

Modifié par 2papercuts, 23 mars 2011 - 10:25 .

[Sidney]

SuperMedbh wrote...

The whole looting discussion ties in with the examination of RPG mechanics. Is a mechanic really appropriate for the story the game is trying to tell, or is it simply "the way things have always been done"? .

Well and I think this is important. I've always wanted more non-fantasy and sci-fi settings. There are interesting "real" settings: Wild West, a "Noir" era America, H R Haggard's Africa, the 17thc France of Dumas but you start to toss out a lot of RPG cliches - armor for example is a dead issue in 3 of those 4 settings. There's no race selection and in the real world gender selection might not matter. A lot of the drive in inventory is piddling around with grades of armor and weapons or magical items none of which really matter in most of those settings. The mechanics work, badly, in the dominant settings but they really don't even begin to fit a world outside the very narrow confines most sci-fi games fall into. Heck, Jade Empire stepped out of Medevial Europe and the lack of armor, inventory and such felt 100% natural there.

[Deified Data]

The full weight of the modern WRPG rests on Bethesda's shoulders - if they deliver with Skyrim, then all is not lost.

[ad1dash0lm3s]

They are trying new things to make RPGs evolve it seems like. Hopefully this not super successful RPG will help them to make an incredible RPG in the future!

[Sidney]

SuperMedbh wrote...
There's a fair number of RPG conventions like looting, leveling, equipping, etc that certainly have their reasons, but taken outside of the proverbial dungeon crawl seem...odd.  I think that it's possible to change things up a bit with those conventions, without leaving the audience (too) angry because it's not "the way things have always been since the dawn of time in the mid 1990s"

I'll agree with you again. I'm feeling so congenial today.

Leveling, for example, works in these "extended" stories but what if someone wanted to tell a story that takes place over nothing more than a week in the life of a character?

Does leveling make sense for your character in that scenario. What if you roll your character but he never gains. You have the exact same combat as DAO, you have the exact same stats as DAO but you stay forever locked at one level. Is it even possible for people to entertain that as a "legit" RPG? It seems like the mechanics should serve the game not the game serving the mechanics and a lot of poeople here want the latter effect.

[Sidney]

Deified Data wrote...

The full weight of the modern WRPG rests on Bethesda's shoulders - if they deliver with Skyrim, then all is not lost.

Yeah we're in trouble then. Call me when Bethesda can write a decent story or create a world where I recall my character's name.

[Trapslick]

Korusus wrote...
And every few years we get articles like this claiming RPGs are dead, and along comes a Witcher, or a NWN2, or a Dragon Age: Origins to prove it wrong.

hands down smartest thing posted here. RPGs usually have this "make a great game then try to get more money out of it's sequals"

the fact is, RPGs are a product of passion until they hit top sales, which makes room for the next guy to make a truely amazing game.

The only company i know that stayed with thier roots is blizzard... They constantly make changes to thier games to make thier sales last long enough and enough customer loyalty for a long production process to be worth it.

bioware is a great company, but i think as a whole they don't have the patience and loyalty to thier games to make it in the true RPG market for very long (it is completely evidant however that the ability to make great RPGs is well within thier reach).

in the end bioware, props for an amazing storyline in DAO and an excellent combat system in DA2, i do look forward to more games from you guys in the future, but i think im gonna have to look for my RPG's somewhere else

[Deified Data]

Sidney wrote...

Deified Data wrote...

The full weight of the modern WRPG rests on Bethesda's shoulders - if they deliver with Skyrim, then all is not lost.

Yeah we're in trouble then. Call me when Bethesda can write a decent story or create a world where I recall my character's name.

Hah, if this were Beth's forums I'd argue the point. As it is, I suppose you're entitled to your opinion. Bethesda has never been a dynamo in the story department - it's their ability to immerse the player in their fiction that blows Bioware out of the water. [fanboy]If Thedas is a setting, then Tamriel is a world.[/fanboy]

[Sidney]

Deified Data wrote...
Hah, if this were Beth's forums I'd argue the point. As it is, I suppose you're entitled to your opinion. Bethesda has never been a dynamo in the story department - it's their ability to immerse the player in their fiction that blows Bioware out of the water. [fanboy]If Thedas is a setting, then Tamriel is a world.[/fanboy]

...and I'd agree. What I hate is there is never a reason to do anything in a Bethesda game other than the grindy aspect of it. Bethesda creates settings and Bioware builds plots.

[Deified Data]

Sidney wrote...

Deified Data wrote...
Hah, if this were Beth's forums I'd argue the point. As it is, I suppose you're entitled to your opinion. Bethesda has never been a dynamo in the story department - it's their ability to immerse the player in their fiction that blows Bioware out of the water. [fanboy]If Thedas is a setting, then Tamriel is a world.[/fanboy]

...and I'd agree. What I hate is there is never a reason to do anything in a Bethesda game other than the grindy aspect of it. Bethesda creates settings and Bioware builds plots.

True. The Elder Scrolls is an RPG in the truest sense of the word - when you create a character, you must also create their motivation or you'll be lost. The game will only provide a motivation in the loosest sense - an enemy to be toppled, an artifact to be recovered. Why you want to defeat that enemy or why you want that artifact are questions for the player to answer.

That's not to say that a tight, interesting narrative is an unreasonable thing to expect. Bioware and Bethesda simply have different priorities.

[KnightCommander]

I always thought biowares rpgs were more based in envolving you in a deep story and setting rather than being in a elderscrolls or 2worlds type game witch i love but with DA2 they have got some things right but some clearly wrong the worst being copyed and pasted levels/caves.Please sort out the issues with new dlc and also cameo by wardens or dlc with wardens.

[EternalPink]

So what exactly makes a RPG these days then?

Dawn of War 2 has character development/leveling and looting for armour/weapons but i sure wouldn't call that a RPG

personnally i think you can't define what is solely a RPG now since with MMO's creating multiplayer role play potential (WoW has role play servers) and the easy that certain aspects we'd consider RPGish can be taken to other games ( i.e above example )

Best i've come up with so far is single player story choice/consequence game and i'm sure someone will quickly pick that apart

[Deified Data]

EternalPink wrote...

So what exactly makes a RPG these days then?

Dawn of War 2 has character development/leveling and looting for armour/weapons but i sure wouldn't call that a RPG

personnally i think you can't define what is solely a RPG now since with MMO's creating multiplayer role play potential (WoW has role play servers) and the easy that certain aspects we'd consider RPGish can be taken to other games ( i.e above example )

Best i've come up with so far is single player story choice/consequence game and i'm sure someone will quickly pick that apart

A) A game has RPG elements, whether heavy or light

You enjoyed it

C) You didn't enjoy it

If both A and B are correct, it is an RPG.

Ig both A and C are correct, it's watered-down, sell-out, simplified crap.

[EternalPink]

As i really vaguely recall didnt counter strike have different equippable weapons therefore inventory management ( RPG element ) i'm sure some peeps enjoyed it (only played on college LAN myself and was fun enough compared to say, doing work) so counter strike is a RPG?

I think your A,B,C criteria bit to vague