289 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sylvius, questions;

If I role-play, even an infinitesimal amount for an infinitesimal period in any game, can't that be considered role playing, and thus I am playing a role playing game?

You'd be roleplaying in those moments.  That doesn't make the thing you're playing a roleplaying game.  What you're describing is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.

Second, who or what institution maintains and defends the definitions of what is, and what constitutes, a Role Playing Game (RPG)?

Other than me, I don't know of one.

 

If it's going to exist, it has to start somewhere.

[Seraphim24]

RPG means literally role playing game.

 

For me it is the addition of RP or immersion, or just kind of you know flavor to the structure of a "game" like pong or something.

 

Some games that have more action oriented roots and stuff or reflex based are like Pac Man and stuff because there isn't really immersion. Zelda is something that is action oriented video game but starts to have a more substantial universe and stuff simultaneously.

 

RPGs like Guild Wars which combine sort of action dodging with immersion qualify as distinct RPGs as far as I'm concerned, though they are technically turn based on some level I think. Even if they sort of weren't, they wouldn't suddenly not be RPGs.

[Sylvius the Mad]

It sounds a lot to me like you're saying you want to sway opinion of what people like. Something you said wasn't possible.

I want them to understand their own preferences better, and the details of what they're doing, so they can see how these games conflict with their preferences.

 

I'm trying to trigger cognitive dissonance.

It doesn't improve the gameplay for me because I feel like I'm now writing too much of the story myself. When I play a RPG I typically want to be in control of my character, unless a game makes an interesting in-game mechanic out of controlling the universe.

I would argue that this is merely a consequence of playing your character.  You're just not inventing limitations for your character.

 

Necessary conclusions and unnecessary conclusions are very different things.

Plus, the game can turn around and shut it down at any time at which point I now have to change my character to fit the story. It's more enjoyable to work within what I'm shown.

Mass Effect doesn't give us enough with which to work.  We need to invent some things or we'll be paralyzed with indecision at the start of the game.

 

Does Shepard follow orders?  Any answer you have is something you made up.

Because Insanity is the difficulty that claims it's meant to challenge the player to their fullest abilities. If Insanity disabled pause to aim only for that difficulty then yes, it would count.

Why does design intent matter?

MP doesn't take away resources in this case. It's a separate team with a separate budget.

Given the nature of budgets, there's an incentive for those teams to share resources, which means there's an incentive to develop shareable resources.

 

Real-time combat is shareable.  The tactical pause isn't.

There are enemies that will try to rush you more, but it is possible to stay at the longer ranges. The only thing you don't get are the super long ranges of ME1, which I wouldn't mind seeing come back in some form. That allowed for long range sniping and then once you got inside the base, CQC cover based shooting.

 

I think that getting the player to switch up tactics from time to time is actually a fairly good thing to do. It helps keep the gameplay fresh, and doesn't actually remove a particular style. Having a variety of enemies that need to be tackled in different ways is just good game design in almost any genre that has enemies, in my opinion.

Sort of.

 

First of all, I don't think ME does what you describe at all.

 

Second, I don't like when there's only one way to defeat an encounter or type of enemy.  Given the gameplay options available, if only one of them works, that's too video gamey for me.  I would like there to be multiple ways to deal with most enemies.  It is beneficial that they not all be beatable with the same tactic, but I'd rather not see a rock-paper-scissors approach to encounter design.

 

When I was a kid, there were clear distinctions among arcade games (usually played on cabinets), video games (usually played on the Atari 2600), and computer games (usually played on computers - likely an Apple II or Commodore).  Arcade games rewarded repetition and memorization.  Video games challenged the player's skill.  Computer games were the cerebral ones that rewarded strategy and a full understanding of their rules.  I didn't like the video games.  I never have.  I don't want to see those features appear in RPGs.

So I am going to refuse to get into any discussion about the ending but I still have to ask: Did you have the Extended Cut DLC installed that altered the ending?

No.  I intentionally avoided it, because the complaints had arisen with the vanilla ending.  I wanted to see the one that inspired so much anger.

 

It was fine.

[Obsidian Gryphon]

I'd definitely be in favor of an evolution like the one you're suggesting, OP. To use yet another game as an example, I liked the way Tomb Raider implemented cover for gunplay and stealth. (I never played Rise of the TR, I'm referring to the initial next-gen refresh.) Laura automatically moved appropriately and sought cover as environment and circumstance dictated. It's hard to describe if you haven't played it, but absolutely fluid and natural in play.

 

I'll advocate for this kind of cover. It is very fluid and easy. It's still there in RotTR. Lara automatically ducks for cover the moment you place her against an object; wall, barrel, stone, etc. She can lean out to take a look or fire from that spot and she can shift quickly when the need arises to move elsewhere.

 

ME style coverage is extremely annoying because it glues you to the surface when you want to quickly move somewhere else or glues you unnecessarily when you don't want it to. Because it's the only way you can crouch, there isn't much choice.

[Eelectrica]

Genres don't have definitions so much as histories. Games that call themselves Role Playing Games tend to be based off other games that called themselves RPGs. Eventually you can trace the lineage back to actual tabletop RPGs where the term sort of makes more sense. There are plenty of games which include the same mechanics as archetypal RPGs yet don't call themselves RPGs because they come from a different lineage. 

 

The Wing Commander series are sci-fi space shooters. 3 and 4 had full on Mass Effect like paraphrased dialogue choices and branching narratives, yet they aren't RPGs because they grew out of flight shooters, they just arrived at a similar destination. Likewise Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls and Diablo are all RPGs and all omit mechanics the others consider core, and none have mechanics unique to RPGs - but they all have a similar history if you trace it back. 

 

That is to say, it's always been kind of pointless, yet people normally know what you are talking about anyway. 

loved those Wing Commander games back in the day. OSI had a couple of great IP's with Wing Commander and the Ultima series.
 But yes I wouldn't consider the Wing Commander games RPG's being how generally straight forward they were. I mean they occasionally gave 2 missions where we could pick one or the other.

The Ultima's were as we had a lot more character development as well as a large world to explore. Still amazes me what they managed to do give the lack of storage space at the time and having to ship the games on floppies.

[Spectr61]

You'd be roleplaying in those moments.  That doesn't make the thing you're playing a roleplaying game.  What you're describing is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.

Other than me, I don't know of one.
 
If it's going to exist, it has to start somewhere.

Ever read Cervantes?

[Cyonan]

I want them to understand their own preferences better, and the details of what they're doing, so they can see how these games conflict with their preferences.

 

I'm trying to trigger cognitive dissonance.

 

Most people aren't all that bothered by cognitive dissonance, as evidenced by the fact that there's not a ton of complaining about it.

 

Unless you want to make claims of you understanding their preferences better than they do.

 

I would argue that this is merely a consequence of playing your character.  You're just not inventing limitations for your character.

 

Necessary conclusions and unnecessary conclusions are very different things.

 

Mass Effect doesn't give us enough with which to work.  We need to invent some things or we'll be paralyzed with indecision at the start of the game.

 

Does Shepard follow orders?  Any answer you have is something you made up.

 

When I play a game for roleplaying, i'm generally doing so because I want to define my own character. I don't want to define the universe, however. When I want to write a character in a universe that i'm defining the rules of then I write my own stories in my own universe.

 

If I have to define the universe in order to make a character choice make sense and then later on the game decides to clarify that universe rule on me and it goes against what I defined earlier, then it makes less sense and bothers me more than if I had shrugged it off as "gameplay mechanics overruling lore".

 

Mass Effect actually isn't a game I play really for roleplaying because Shep only has 2 real personalities to choose from and the dialogue options are too limiting to try that. It feels closer to a pre-defined character like Geralt, which means I play the games for reasons other than roleplaying. Despite both being called RPGs at some point, Mass Effect and The Witcher were never really games which wanted to let you roleplay with as much freedom as a video game can offer.

 

Why does design intent matter?

 

I never mentioned design intent. That's what the game claims that Insanity is for, and difficulty levels make logical sense to have in the first place. Everybody has a different level of skill and if you balanced the game around mine then a lot of people wouldn't be able to finish it because I've been playing shooters all my life and am above average at them.

 

I play the highest difficulty because I consider myself skilled at shooters. I expected to be challenged by the game without me making up additional rules as to what I can and can't do. I can play Half-Life using nothing but a crowbar just for the hell of it, but the hard difficulty should still remain difficult to me using all the weapons at my disposal.

 

Given the nature of budgets, there's an incentive for those teams to share resources, which means there's an incentive to develop shareable resources.

 

Real-time combat is shareable.  The tactical pause isn't.

 

The MP simply took resources they needed from SP. Real time combat was always going to be the more developed feature, and Mass Effect 2 was clear evidence of the direction they were taking the series in.

 

If MP didn't exist the only thing that would have been impacted in SP is war assets, only because they were specifically linked to MP.

 

Sort of.

 

First of all, I don't think ME does what you describe at all.

 

Second, I don't like when there's only one way to defeat an encounter or type of enemy.  Given the gameplay options available, if only one of them works, that's too video gamey for me.  I would like there to be multiple ways to deal with most enemies.  It is beneficial that they not all be beatable with the same tactic, but I'd rather not see a rock-paper-scissors approach to encounter design.

 

When I was a kid, there were clear distinctions among arcade games (usually played on cabinets), video games (usually played on the Atari 2600), and computer games (usually played on computers - likely an Apple II or Commodore).  Arcade games rewarded repetition and memorization.  Video games challenged the player's skill.  Computer games were the cerebral ones that rewarded strategy and a full understanding of their rules.  I didn't like the video games.  I never have.  I don't want to see those features appear in RPGs.

 

It's usually not a case of "only one way" but rather "what works best". When it comes to Guardians in Mass Effect 3 there are 3 main ways of dealing with them: Flank them, shoot through the eye slot, or take a piercing weapon. All 3 work, but using piercing weapons is by far the most effective way of dealing with them.

 

However what I'm talking about is the actual map design. In ME1 there was long range combat before entering one of the copy paste pirate bases on the planets, and then inside the base itself was a much more enclosed space. The two scenarios encouraged different approaches, even though you could use a shotgun outside the base or a sniper rifle inside the base.

 

It's not the 80s anymore no matter how much you want to go back to them. Times change and so do terms. Even when I was a kid in the 90s, we didn't use those definitions. Arcade Games were anything played on an arcade machine that took quarters(or some other coin). Video Games were something we played on consoles or computers, and computer games were just video games played on a computer.

 

I'm afraid the only thing I can tell you on that is "deal with it", because you're certainly not going to be changing how a significant number of gamers are using specific terms. I'm still going to call RPGs games while using my definition of it, and games played on consoles or a computer will still be called a video game. I honestly don't give a damn about your definition of the term.

 

I'm also curious as to how much you know about the marketing campaign of Mass Effect, because right now it seems like you're the one who is lying. The game's marketing always pushed the ideas an immersive universe where your choices matter and not RPG. It seems like it's your fault for assuming that BioWare only made RPGs.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Most people aren't all that bothered by cognitive dissonance, as evidenced by the fact that there's not a ton of complaining about it.

Irrational people aren't predictable, though, so I can't make any plans that involve them.

I typically don't even think of them as people.

When I play a game for roleplaying, i'm generally doing so because I want to define my own character. I don't want to define the universe, however. When I want to write a character in a universe that i'm defining the rules of then I write my own stories in my own universe.

If I have to define the universe in order to make a character choice make sense and then later on the game decides to clarify that universe rule on me and it goes against what I defined earlier, then it makes less sense and bothers me more than if I had shrugged it off as "gameplay mechanics overruling lore".

Both bother me immensely.

Also, I don't typically define the details of the universe. What I do is avoid the obvious though not definitively supported conclusions to which you leap.

I draw conclusions about the world only when reason demands it, not when reason allows it.

Mass Effect actually isn't a game I play really for roleplaying because Shep only has 2 real personalities to choose from and the dialogue options are too limiting to try that.

I don't think anyone could.

I completely agree with your Geralt comparison. I have hardly played the Witcher games, though, because they have action combat that is mandatory (unlike ME). If I could tolerate action combat, I would have played them just to see how CDPR handled roleplaying with a pre-written character.

But I can't tolerate action combat. I'm still surprised I made it through Jade Empire.

I never mentioned design intent. That's what the game claims that Insanity is for, and difficulty levels make logical sense to have in the first place. Everybody has a different level of skill and if you balanced the game around mine then a lot of people wouldn't be able to finish it because I've been playing shooters all my life and am above average at them.

The difficulty settings do that regardless of whether they were meant to. So do gameplay options like pause-to-aim. I fail to see the difference.

The MP simply took resources they needed from SP. Real time combat was always going to be the more developed feature, and Mass Effect 2 was clear evidence of the direction they were taking the series in.

For ME, sure, but in DAI the devs said explicitly during development that they used the MP to balance the combat for the SP, even though the SP can be played in a very different way.

If MP didn't exist the only thing that would have been impacted in SP is war assets, only because they were specifically linked to MP.

I question whether those charging weapons would exist without MP.

It's usually not a case of "only one way" but rather "what works best". When it comes to Guardians in Mass Effect 3 there are 3 main ways of dealing with them: Flank them, shoot through the eye slot, or take a piercing weapon. All 3 work, but using piercing weapons is by far the most effective way of dealing with them.

Okay, about that specific example, I tended to shoot them through the eye slot or just use powers on them.

What constituted a piercing weapon? I tend to learn the mechanics of a game from reading the documentation (ideally before I play it), but the ME games haven't been particularly well documented. I don't think I knew that was an option.

I hate to learn by doing. I would much rather learn by reading.

It's not the 80s anymore no matter how much you want to go back to them. Times change and so do terms. Even when I was a kid in the 90s, we didn't use those definitions. Arcade Games were anything played on an arcade machine that took quarters(or some other coin). Video Games were something we played on consoles or computers, and computer games were just video games played on a computer.

I was just trying to explain my complaint about something being too video gamey. Comments like that are often met with incredulity that anyone could complain about a video game feeling like a video game. I was trying to preempt those responses by explaining how that video gamey feeling is caused by a narrow range of gameplay design.

I was not asking you to change your terminology (as you could see from my not having done it).

I'm also curious as to how much you know about the marketing campaign of Mass Effect, because right now it seems like you're the one who is lying. The game's marketing always pushed the ideas an immersive universe where your choices matter and not RPG. It seems like it's your fault for assuming that BioWare only made RPGs.

I didn't follow the first game at all. It was announced as an XBox exclusive, so I dismissed it (because I didn't have a console, nor did I want one).

After it was released, they announced a PC port, which I jumped at because I tended to really like BioWare's games. I didn't really know anything about the game, and was really caught off guard by the voiced protagonist. I hadn't expected that.

But aside from the voice+paraphrase system (which I was heartened to see wasn't going to be in the upcoming DAO - which I'd been following since 2004), I quite liked Mass Effect.

I did follow the development of ME2, during which Christina Norman acknowledged that the shooter gameplay in ME hadn't been good (I disagreed), and that to improve it the developers had "turned off the RPG systems" so they could make the "shooter systems" work first, and then add the "RPG systems" back in once that was done.

So even during the development of ME2 they were talking about it in terms of being an RPG. Though then they announced the interrupt system that I knew would be awful, not because of the QTE aspect (which I do hate), but because of the imprecise nature of the information available to the player. At one point I said on the forum, "I demand certainty," to which Casey Hudson replied, "No."

It was then I knew the series was heading in a direction I didn't like. I played ME2 to confirm that, and then immediately uninstalled and stopped caring.

It was only the furor around the ME3 endings that got my attention again. I hadn't even heard about them, but then I met an EA employee at a focus group in Vancouver and he jumped to the defense of ME3 before anyone had even mentioned it (the focus group was run by Toyota - it had nothing to do with games). Some time later, after I'd already completed my first DAI playthrough, I gave ME3 a try. It's even less of an RPG than ME2 was.

[RoboticWater]

Irrational people aren't predictable, though, so I can't make any plans that involve them.

I typically don't even think of them as people.

Everyone is irrational, so ignoring that population would make your plans pointless. Luckily, most people are irrational in predictable ways (it's the reason we can call psychology a science), so all we need to do is build our plans around that irrational behavior.

There's a wonderful book about the concept called Predictably Irrational that I recommend anyone read if they want to know more.
 

That definition is incoherent.  Anyone who understands it can only use it disingenuously.

How do you know EA understands it? And if they do understand it, why should their marketing department bear the burden of using your definition? It may hurt their sales if they don't try to sell their products using the same language as their consumers, and incidentally, their consumers use RPG in a different way than you. EA's marketing department has no obligation to your taxonomy crusade.
 

And I don't concede the point about intent.

Lie
-a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive
At this point you're just fighting a dictionary. They can be "wrong," but they're not lying.
 

BioWare is widely known as one of the top AAA RPG developers.  If they make games that don't resemble RPGs, that will make those non-RPG games be perceived as RPGs.

Sure, if you're blind and incompetent. Take a few looks at Mass Effect's gameplay, and you can easily tell that it doesn't fit your definition of RPG. BioWare has no obligation to make RPGs; it's down to the consumer to realize that what BioWare made isn't one and adjust their perceptions accordingly.
 
Again, if someone accidentally misconstrues Mass Effect for your kind of RPG, they can just return it.
 

It's not BioWare's brand identity I'm worried about.  It's the identity of RPGs.

It may be unfortunate that the colloquial definition of RPG has changed over the years because RPG developers have shifted their design approaches, but that doesn't prove false advertising. Nor does it give you any right to expect BioWare alter their game design to pander specifically to you. No one, not BioWare, not EA, not even I have any obligation to use your definition of RPG.
 

Players seek out games they can play in a way they will enjoy.  Players avoid games in which they cannot.  Some players will use positive criteria.  Some players will use negative criteria.
 
I don't expect casual lurkers to read these arguments in detail.  I expect them only to identify the presence of dissent.

And what does the "presence of dissent" do? No one's going to rally behind the "true definition of RPG." They might have rallied behind the decline of the CRPG, but that battle was lost long ago. 

[Cyonan]

Both bother me immensely.

Also, I don't typically define the details of the universe. What I do is avoid the obvious though not definitively supported conclusions to which you leap.

I draw conclusions about the world only when reason demands it, not when reason allows it

 

but then something like Garrus comes up in ME2 and you have to figure out why your Medi-Gel that's been amazing in-combat suddenly can't fix a rocket to the face after it fixed multiple(sometimes at the same time) rockets to the face in the first game. Basically every time somebody gets badly hurt you now have to explain why you aren't just giving them the super combat Medi-Gel.

 

My approach allows for less overall inconsistencies by explaining one away as "gameplay mechanics. Not canon use of the item".

 

For ME, sure, but in DAI the devs said explicitly during development that they used the MP to balance the combat for the SP, even though the SP can be played in a very different way.

 

Which means exactly that: Balance of combat was tested in the MP. That doesn't mean anything got shifted towards MP, because you would still have to test the combat balance regardless. The MP was merely a useful testing tool for them because it was pure combat.

 

SP being able to be played in a different way has no major relevance to the balance, because it would be the same in a game like Dragon Age. It was not needed to play in every way possible to determine that Spirit Blade needed a nerf.

 

I question whether those charging weapons would exist without MP.

 

Unless you have actual evidence that leads to this questioning, then this is irrelevant.

 

Okay, about that specific example, I tended to shoot them through the eye slot or just use powers on them.

What constituted a piercing weapon? I tend to learn the mechanics of a game from reading the documentation (ideally before I play it), but the ME games haven't been particularly well documented. I don't think I knew that was an option.

I hate to learn by doing. I would much rather learn by reading.

 

Piercing weapons were weapons which were capable of shooting through things like cover or Guardian shields. It's a term used by the MP community, but I believe in-game it's called Penetration. There's mods that let most guns do this.

 

I was not asking you to change your terminology (as you could see from my not having done it).

 

Given your crusade about the definition of the term RPG and the fact that you are trying to convince others to change their terminology, consider it a preemptive comment =P

 

It also applies to your crusade about RPG. Sometimes definitions change, you don't get to be the one to decide what definition the industry commonly uses.

 

I didn't follow the first game at all. It was announced as an XBox exclusive, so I dismissed it (because I didn't have a console, nor did I want one).

After it was released, they announced a PC port, which I jumped at because I tended to really like BioWare's games. I didn't really know anything about the game, and was really caught off guard by the voiced protagonist. I hadn't expected that.

But aside from the voice+paraphrase system (which I was heartened to see wasn't going to be in the upcoming DAO - which I'd been following since 2004), I quite liked Mass Effect.

I did follow the development of ME2, during which Christina Norman acknowledged that the shooter gameplay in ME hadn't been good (I disagreed), and that to improve it the developers had "turned off the RPG systems" so they could make the "shooter systems" work first, and then add the "RPG systems" back in once that was done.

So even during the development of ME2 they were talking about it in terms of being an RPG. Though then they announced the interrupt system that I knew would be awful, not because of the QTE aspect (which I do hate), but because of the imprecise nature of the information available to the player. At one point I said on the forum, "I demand certainty," to which Casey Hudson replied, "No."

It was then I knew the series was heading in a direction I didn't like. I played ME2 to confirm that, and then immediately uninstalled and stopped caring.

It was only the furor around the ME3 endings that got my attention again. I hadn't even heard about them, but then I met an EA employee at a focus group in Vancouver and he jumped to the defense of ME3 before anyone had even mentioned it (the focus group was run by Toyota - it had nothing to do with games). Some time later, after I'd already completed my first DAI playthrough, I gave ME3 a try. It's even less of an RPG than ME2 was.

 

In the case of the first game, it was entirely your fault then. You did zero research into the game and expected BioWare to only ever make your idea of a RPG. ME3 was also your fault, but by then you seem to have known what you were getting into.

 

Sometimes a company changes things up a bit. Blizzard went from the company that makes RTS games to the developer of the most successful MMO of all time. There was no mass confusing MMOs for Real Time Strategy games because the Blizzard logo was on it.

 

Mentioning RPG systems isn't saying your game is a RPG but rather only "partially RPG"(using it in that context is very common practice in the industry. BioWare isn't responsible if you don't keep up with that). Since you don't believe that is possible, that should have been a red flag to you.

 

As much as I think the interrupt system could use a lot of work, I would agree with Casey's responsive. You don't give into a single forum user just because they showed up and started demanding that you cater to them. That's generally a terrible way to make games.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Everyone is irrational, so ignoring that population would make your plans pointless. Luckily, most people are irrational in predictable ways (it's the reason we can call psychology a science), so all we need to do is build our plans around that irrational behavior.

The unscientific nature of psychology was the reason Karl Popper wrote about falsification.

Psychology is the thing that made neuroscience necessary. Now that we have neuroscience, psychology serves no purpose.

There's a wonderful book about the concept called Predictably Irrational that I recommend anyone read if they want to know more.

I will definitely look into that. I've been asking people for resources on this topic for years.

How do you know EA understands it?

I don't. It's possible (even likely) they're unaware they're spouting nonsense.

And if they do understand it, why should their marketing department bear the burden of using your definition? It may hurt their sales if they don't try to sell their products using the same language as their consumers, and incidentally, their consumers use RPG in a different way than you. EA's marketing department has no obligation to your taxonomy crusade.

I don't think I've made any normative claims to that effect.

Lie
-a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive
At this point you're just fighting a dictionary. They can be "wrong," but they're not lying.

I don't think that's meaningfully different from making false claims regardless of whether they're true. Ignorance shouldn't save EA here.

Sure, if you're blind and incompetent. Take a few looks at Mass Effect's gameplay, and you can easily tell that it doesn't fit your definition of RPG. BioWare has no obligation to make RPGs; it's down to the consumer to realize that what BioWare made isn't one and adjust their perceptions accordingly.

RPG gameplay happens inside the player's head. You can't watch it.

It may be unfortunate that the colloquial definition of RPG has changed over the years because RPG developers have shifted their design approaches, but that doesn't prove false advertising. Nor does it give you any right to expect BioWare alter their game design to pander specifically to you. No one, not BioWare, not EA, not even I have any obligation to use your definition of RPG.

All true.

I also have no obligation to use yours.

And what does the "presence of dissent" do? No one's going to rally behind the "true definition of RPG." They might have rallied behind the decline of the CRPG, but that battle was lost long ago.

Academic research on the topic suggests that the buying decisions of casual fans are driven in part by the opinions of hardcore fans.

[grailseeker91]

I'm fine with hard cover sticking around, but would like to see some evolutions to the mechanics as well. Being able to naturally crouch/go prone for the oh shoot situations can add tempo and permit more variety in both player and AI opportunities. One of the biggest things I routinely see mentioned is how herp a derp the AI is, but I feel like some of this is a symptom of mechanic limitations meant for "balance"  purposes. I would love to see more firefights that are not run to point x put my back to the wall move to point y and repeat (yes I know about RHA and softcover and I do use them this was meant to be an example of the generic formula. 

 

The one thing I would beg Bioware though to do if they keep the traditional cover system (again I'm okay with this) is for the love of whatever you consider holy, please please DO NOT REPEAT THE OMNI-BUTTON!. My biggest complaint was the take cover/no vault/ no run/  no revive a teammate/ no...uh...player down

[RoboticWater]

The unscientific nature of psychology was the reason Karl Popper wrote about falsification.

You're ignoring the plethora of Psychological experiments that found themselves on a falsifiable hypotheses.
 

Psychology is the thing that made neuroscience necessary. Now that we have neuroscience, psychology serves no purpose

But Neurology hasn't advanced to the point where it can accurately predict what an individual or even a body of people might do in any given scenario. I myself would love to see the day were we can see brains plainly as the computers they are, but there are too many confounding variables at the moment.

However, we do still need to predict behavior. Representatives must predict the actions of their constituencies before passing legislation, businessmen must predict markets and consumer reactions, and game developers need to know what their players want to play. We can't dismiss irrationality, because everyone is going to be irrational, so we have to work around it. This is where psychology comes into play.

Using both experimental and observational methodology, psychologists can determine what an average person (or demographic) is likely to do in any situation with a relatively high degree of accuracy. That research may not be 100% generalizable nor perfect if/then's, but it's better than nothing. I don't know how you've been predicting the actions of gamers, but I can assure you that your predictions are in some way based in psychology.

 

I will definitely look into that. I've been asking people for resources on this topic for years.

I would also look into methodology behind public policy and marketing. There's also this paper regarding the validity of Psychology.
 

I don't. It's possible (even likely) they're unaware they're spouting nonsense.
I don't think I've made any normative claims to that effect.
I don't think that's meaningfully different from making false claims regardless of whether they're true. Ignorance shouldn't save EA here.

According to your logic intent does matter, because otherwise you would be using the term "lying" incorrectly, and we can't have that. It doesn't matter that the core of the argument is elsewhere, I just have to nitpick your choice of words.

That said, ignorance is the difference between being wrong, which can happen to anyone, and false marketing, which is a legitimate (and potentially legal) issue. But that doesn't matter either because marketing isn't founded on ideology; it exists to facilitate communications between producers and consumers. EA is just trying to speak the same language as the customers, i.e. they're being completely reactionary. If you want to affect change, work with the consumer base, and EA will follow. I don't actually believe that you'll be able to change the entire consumer base, but that's where your problem lies.
 

RPG gameplay happens inside the player's head. You can't watch it.

But you can easily watch for the conditions that allow it or disallow it. You can watch for large dialog trees, non-combat progression, and freedom on interaction. On the other hand, you can also see that the game has a voiced protagonist, skill-based combat, and cinematics. I don't know how anyone could go through Mass Effect's marketing material and come back believing that it's your kind of RPG.

But it's still irrelevant, because anyone disappointed with a game's features can just stop playing it, return it, and move onto other games.
 

All true.

Great, then you admit that "this is an RPG feature, so it needs to be in Mass Effect" is no basis for an argument.
 

I also have no obligation to use yours.

No, but I generally find that it's easier to make a convincing argument when you make an effort to conform to your audience's conventions. Or at the very least, accept their conventions to have a more meaningful discussion.
 

Academic research on the topic suggests that the buying decisions of casual fans are driven in part by the opinions of hardcore fans.

Psychological research I suspect. Regardless, you're no fan of Mass Effect. How would your fringe opinions affect and significant portion of Mass Effect's demographic any more than it would GTA?

[AlanC9]

But yes I wouldn't consider the Wing Commander games RPG's being how generally straight forward they were. I mean they occasionally gave 2 missions where we could pick one or the other.
The Ultima's were as we had a lot more character development as well as a large world to explore. Still amazes me what they managed to do give the lack of storage space at the time and having to ship the games on floppies.

Well, if choices are the metric for RPG-ness than most of the classic early RPGs fail. They did offer at least some exploration, though you'd also find that in adventure games.

The way we decide what is and what isn't an RPG seems to change depending on what games we need to see being ruled to be RPGs.

[capn233]

I'll advocate for this kind of cover. It is very fluid and easy. It's still there in RotTR. Lara automatically ducks for cover the moment you place her against an object; wall, barrel, stone, etc. She can lean out to take a look or fire from that spot and she can shift quickly when the need arises to move elsewhere.

 

ME style coverage is extremely annoying because it glues you to the surface when you want to quickly move somewhere else or glues you unnecessarily when you don't want it to. Because it's the only way you can crouch, there isn't much choice.

 

Hmmm.  Haven't played the Tomb Raider games so I might be missing something about how it is implemented there, but I found auto-duck for cover in ME1 annoying though. 

 

I would like them to keep cover docking on a button so I can get close to objects without ducking into cover.  Ideally (since I am on PC), would have the option to bind cover, run and use all on separate keys without having to modify bin or ini files directly.

[RoboticWater]

Hmmm.  Haven't played the Tomb Raider games so I might be missing something about how it is implemented there, but I found auto-duck for cover in ME1 annoying though. 

 

I would like them to keep cover docking on a button so I can get close to objects without ducking into cover.  Ideally (since I am on PC), would have the option to bind cover, run and use all on separate keys without having to modify bin or ini files directly.

Having played the Tomb Raider games, I don't think auto-cover would do Mass Effect any good. The benefit of fluidity can ooften come at a cost of clunkiness, i.e, Laura doesn't get into cover quite when I want her to or doesn't leave quickly enough. It works well enough in Tomb Raider because you're encouraged to parkour everywhere and avoid bullets by agility rather than caution.

 

I don't think adding a button to the whole equation would do anything other than make cover more reliable.

[Sylvius the Mad]

but then something like Garrus comes up in ME2 and you have to figure out why your Medi-Gel that's been amazing in-combat suddenly can't fix a rocket to the face after it fixed multiple(sometimes at the same time) rockets to the face in the first game. Basically every time somebody gets badly hurt you now have to explain why you aren't just giving them the super combat Medi-Gel.

My approach allows for less overall inconsistencies by explaining one away as "gameplay mechanics. Not canon use of the item".

If I had to accept the inconsistency, I would dismiss the cutscene version and accept the one described by the mechanics.

Which means exactly that: Balance of combat was tested in the MP. That doesn't mean anything got shifted towards MP, because you would still have to test the combat balance regardless. The MP was merely a useful testing tool for them because it was pure combat.

SP being able to be played in a different way has no major relevance to the balance, because it would be the same in a game like Dragon Age. It was not needed to play in every way possible to determine that Spirit Blade needed a nerf.

Sure, but how about how time passes differently when Flask of Lightning is active depending which character is currently being controlled (thus dramatically altering the effectiveness of the ability)?

It's more complicated than just what does each ability do.

Piercing weapons were weapons which were capable of shooting through things like cover or Guardian shields. It's a term used by the MP community, but I believe in-game it's called Penetration. There's mods that let most guns do this.

Thanks.

The game needed better documentation.

It also applies to your crusade about RPG. Sometimes definitions change, you don't get to be the one to decide what definition the industry commonly uses.

But the idea that used to be described by the term - I need a way to refer to that. If they co-opt the existing phrase, that leaves behind a lexical gap.

Moreover, by using the term in the old way, I'm drawing attention to whay the new game doesn't do, rather than letting the marketers focus on what it does do.

Opportunity costs matter.

In the case of the first game, it was entirely your fault then. You did zero research into the game and expected BioWare to only ever make your idea of a RPG. ME3 was also your fault, but by then you seem to have known what you were getting into.

ME1 isn't a terrible game, overall. It's just really difficult to roleplay on the first playthrough. With ME3, I didn't ever expect to like it.

Let me tell an analogous story. I was at a restaurant recently, and on the dessert menu I saw a peanut butter & jelly cheesecake. That sounded like a terrible idea, but it had made it onto the menu, so maybe it wasn't as bad as it sounded. I wanted to find out, so I ordered it.

It was awful, which answered my question. After two bites, I sent it back and asked for my bill. Shortly thereafter, the manager appeared asking me whether there was anything he could do for me given that I obviously hadn't liked the dessert. He offered me another dessert, free, and other things when I declined the dessert. I just wanted to pay and leave, because I was done, but he insisted that I at least acknowledge his efforts to mitigate my disappointment.

Except I wasn't disappointed. I hadn't expected to like the cheesecake. I felt pretty good about having accurately predicted how bad it was. I explained this to him, and he just didn't get it. I still don't know why.

Sometimes a company changes things up a bit. Blizzard went from the company that makes RTS games to the developer of the most successful MMO of all time. There was no mass confusing MMOs for Real Time Strategy games because the Blizzard logo was on it.

That was a significant departure, not a gradual migration.

Mentioning RPG systems isn't saying your game is a RPG but rather only "partially RPG"(using it in that context is very common practice in the industry. BioWare isn't responsible if you don't keep up with that). Since you don't believe that is possible, that should have been a red flag to you.

It was. That ME2 was worse wasn't a surprise. It was a surprise how much worse it was.

As much as I think the interrupt system could use a lot of work, I would agree with Casey's responsive. You don't give into a single forum user just because they showed up and started demanding that you cater to them. That's generally a terrible way to make games.

Casey expanded that the opacity of the interrupts, and how they could surprise the player with their consequences, was actually an intended feature.

I still don't understand how that's a good thing.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Well, if choices are the metric for RPG-ness than most of the classic early RPGs fail. They did offer at least some exploration, though you'd also find that in adventure games.

The way we decide what is and what isn't an RPG seems to change depending on what games we need to see being ruled to be RPGs.

Any definition of RPG needs to encompass tabletop RPGs.

[Cyonan]

Sure, but how about how time passes differently when Flask of Lightning is active depending which character is currently being controlled (thus dramatically altering the effectiveness of the ability)?

It's more complicated than just what does each ability do.

 

An ability that can slow down time, assuming it does it equally for everything while active, wouldn't have much of a major balance change in an environment where you can pause the game at will.

 

The game needed better documentation.

 

No argument here.

 

As somebody who did a lot of the datamining and testing of the game's mechanics on the MP forums, I can tell you that there are a lot of places in the game where the mechanics are either not documented, or documented incorrectly.

 

But the idea that used to be described by the term - I need a way to refer to that. If they co-opt the existing phrase, that leaves behind a lexical gap.

Moreover, by using the term in the old way, I'm drawing attention to whay the new game doesn't do, rather than letting the marketers focus on what it does do.

Opportunity costs matter.

 

When I talk about my love of certain FPS games, particularly those of the 90s, I simply refer to them as "old school FPS". When talking about RPGs I've also seen and commonly used "old school RPG" to describe the older RPG games. They aren't perfect definitions, but you aren't going to get one anyway.

 

From what I've seen you aren't using the term in any universally agreed upon old way. Even as far back as 1987 have games like Final Fantasy been classified as a RPG, which don't hit a number of your requirements for RPG. Even before video games were big into RPGs, you had people like the ones playing D&D who were the power gamers that simply wanted to "win" the campaign who hold different definitions of the term RPG from you.

 

There have always been people who call RPGs games which is something you don't agree with. This is evidenced by the fact that, you know, the term itself is calling RPGs a game.

 

ME1 isn't a terrible game, overall. It's just really difficult to roleplay on the first playthrough. With ME3, I didn't ever expect to like it.

Let me tell an analogous story. I was at a restaurant recently, and on the dessert menu I saw a peanut butter & jelly cheesecake. That sounded like a terrible idea, but it had made it onto the menu, so maybe it wasn't as bad as it sounded. I wanted to find out, so I ordered it.

It was awful, which answered my question. After two bites, I sent it back and asked for my bill. Shortly thereafter, the manager appeared asking me whether there was anything he could do for me given that I obviously hadn't liked the dessert. He offered me another dessert, free, and other things when I declined the dessert. I just wanted to pay and leave, because I was done, but he insisted that I at least acknowledge his efforts to mitigate my disappointment.

Except I wasn't disappointed. I hadn't expected to like the cheesecake. I felt pretty good about having accurately predicted how bad it was. I explained this to him, and he just didn't get it. I still don't know why.

 

Your story doesn't equate because your actions haven't been the same.

 

It would be like if you didn't think the cheesecake would be good and upon discovering that it wasn't to your tastes you started telling other people about how it wasn't "Pure cheesecake" and tried to get enough people behind you to "increase the PR cost of not making it pure cheesecake".

 

This isn't a case of you playing something and going "well, this isn't for me". It's a case of you playing something, not liking it, demanding that the developer change it to your liking, and then later on trying to "increase the PR cost" of them not making the game you wanted.

 

That was a significant departure, not a gradual migration.

 

Well since you don't think Mass Effect is a RPG, I would say that going from RPG to CBS is as big of a departure as RTS to MMO.

 

Especially since the Orc SP campaign of Warcraft 3 was just screaming "We want to make a MMO" based on its mechanics.

 

Casey expanded that the opacity of the interrupts, and how they could surprise the player with their consequences, was actually an intended feature.

I still don't understand how that's a good thing.

 

It might be a good thing to others, it might be a terrible thing to others. That's not actually relevant to what I'm saying.

 

The point is that upon seeing something you don't like you demanded that the developer change it to suit you personally. A developer should never give into the demands of a single forum poster doing that because it open the door for more people to come along and demand that you do everything that they personally want.

 

No one of us is so special that we deserve that kind of treatment.

[Draining Dragon]

Cyonan, Robotic, and Sylvius are still going?

wew lad

[Cyonan]

Cyonan, Robotic, and Sylvius are still going?

wew lad

 

Gotta do something in between getting trolled by Warframe drop rates =P

[Sylvius the Mad]

An ability that can slow down time, assuming it does it equally for everything while active, wouldn't have much of a major balance change in an environment where you can pause the game at will.

That wouldn't be much of an ability at all.

The ability in question slows time for one character only, but the duration is determined by the controlled character. So, if the ability is used by the controlled character, everything else appears to slow to 1/8 speed for 8 seconds. But, if the ability is used by an uncontrolled character, that character's speed is increased by 8x for 8 seconds.

The latter is obviously far more powerful, and it all depends which is the currently selected character.

When I talk about my love of certain FPS games, particularly those of the 90s, I simply refer to them as "old school FPS". When talking about RPGs I've also seen and commonly used "old school RPG" to describe the older RPG games. They aren't perfect definitions, but you aren't going to get one anyway.

Using a different label for the two groups doesn't adequately convey that features have been lost in the transition from old to new.

From what I've seen you aren't using the term in any universally agreed upon old way. Even as far back as 1987 have games like Final Fantasy been classified as a RPG, which don't hit a number of your requirements for RPG. Even before video games were big into RPGs, you had people like the ones playing D&D who were the power gamers that simply wanted to "win" the campaign who hold different definitions of the term RPG from you.

Winning the campaign is very different from winning D&D.

And JRPGs never had any real claim to the RPG label. JRPGs arose from the Japanese tradition of interactive novels. They bore little resemblance to RPGs. They told a fairly linear story, often with set characters, and all the player really had to do was win battles to advance.

Western CRPGs tended to let you create your own character, and then drop you into the game world with little or no guidance. If there was a story, you had to go find it. I'm talking about Bard's Tale and Bard's Tale 2, Questron 1&2, Ultima 1-3, the early Might & Magic games, Phantasie... the list is long. I would argue that Baldur's Gate broadly followed that design as well.

There have always been people who call RPGs games which is something you don't agree with. This is evidenced by the fact that, you know, the term itself is calling RPGs a game.

Labels aren't necessarily descriptive. They're just labels. We could label the genres A, B, and C, and they would be as useful as long as we had definitions for them.

Your story doesn't equate because your actions haven't been the same.

It would be like if you didn't think the cheesecake would be good and upon discovering that it wasn't to your tastes you started telling other people about how it wasn't "Pure cheesecake" and tried to get enough people behind you to "increase the PR cost of not making it pure cheesecake".

If I cared deeply about cheesecake, that's exactly what I would do.

This isn't a case of you playing something and going "well, this isn't for me". It's a case of you playing something, not liking it, demanding that the developer change it to your liking, and then later on trying to "increase the PR cost" of them not making the game you wanted.

I demand nothing. I just want to ensure that the consumer base is aware of what these games aren't, and I do so in the hopes that they will become that thing.

Well since you don't think Mass Effect is a RPG, I would say that going from RPG to CBS is as big of a departure as RTS to MMO.

But as you point out, the world doesn't cmshare my opinion. The world may well perceive Mass Effect as an RPG, and that's a problem for me. Eventually it won't be possible to describe the product I want using language the public understands. Orwell warned us about this.

It might be a good thing to others, it might be a terrible thing to others. That's not actually relevant to what I'm saying.

The point is that upon seeing something you don't like you demanded that the developer change it to suit you personally. A developer should never give into the demands of a single forum poster doing that because it open the door for more people to come along and demand that you do everything that they personally want.

No one of us is so special that we deserve that kind of treatment.

I was trying to promote the idea that it's not possible to make an in-character choice if you don't know what you're choosing (except by accident).

Roleplaying demands certainty.

[Seraphim24]

And JRPGs never had any real claim to the RPG label. JRPGs arose from the Japanese tradition of interactive novels. They bore little resemblance to RPGs. They told a fairly linear story, often with set characters, and all the player really had to do was win battles to advance.

 

You misspelled Dragon Age 2 there. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Cyonan, Robotic, and Sylvius are still going?

wew lad

I'm waiting for the full release of the FO4 GECK so I can finally play FO4.

[Sylvius the Mad]

You misspelled Dragon Age 2 there.

DA2 and the Mass Effect games are, in many respects, JRPGs rather than western RPGs.