I'm not certain what you're saying here, to be completely honest.
Anyone expressing antipathy towards a game, whether having moral or simple liking connotations, means nothing whenever that person accepts to buy the following product that has got the same premises. It's the same thing as choosing a statement and negating it with a subsequent factual choice.
You say people are viewing things through rose-tinted glasses then view Baldur's Gate through the lense of modern games. You have to view Baldur's Gate by its peers at the time and it was innovative, progressive. Traits the modern Bioware lack.
I can't say how innovative (or not) BG was, but I'd still call ME3 innovative. It managed to be an RPG/TPS hybrid with such good TPS gameplay that it could still be fun without a campaign backing it up. Companion characters felt more autonomous than they had ever been in previous BioWare titles now that they moved about the ship, talked with each other, and formed their own relationships. Even the import function, when it worked (Tuchanka), had interesting effects on the story. If not innovative, then BioWare still have the fairly unique ability to create a decent cinematic RPG. The Witcher is the only franchise that's managed to come close, and I can only imagine that the extra competition will force both developers to hone their craft.
Has a recent BIoWare game redefined what it means to be an RPG with some fantastic innovative feature? No, but I actually can't think of any recent RPG that did that. Many say that the Witcher 3 did it with all its well written sudequests, but that's not really innovative as it is having enough time and energy to make a bunch of well written sidequests. As time goes on, it'll be more and more difficult to be innovative because so much will have already been invented.
The only major areas of RPG that still has room for innovation are the dialog mechanics. I think there are ways to make them far more engaging than they are now. Of course, I can't really blame BIoWare for not innovating here because no one, not even indies have managed to do that.
Nickel and diming is also dubious. You literally had to pay to get the true ending to Dragon Age Inquisition.
This thread has me convinced that the gaming community genuinely believes that developers are plant-like creatures who survive on air.
"Don't care about profit! Just care about making a good game!" Yup. Don't care about food on your plate, you made a good game, that's your reward. Yup.
Huh?
If you're one of those people that think Trespasser was literally DA:I's ending.
This thread has me convinced that the gaming community genuinely believes that developers are plant-like creatures who survive on air.
From which posts that had been written have you drawn this conclusion?
Huh?
Not any more than you had to pay to get BG2's ending. But expansion packs are somehow more OK than DLC, for reasons?
It's a personal preference thing. Just as the complete rules of a tabletop RPG are available to the player, I'd like the complete rules of a CRPG to be available to the player.Why not? Approach it from the perspective of a scientist - we have a set of assumptions about what the natural laws of our universe are - until they're disproven, at which point we reform our beliefs about what those natural laws actually are. The first time we're exposed to something that violates our theories, we're not immediately gifted with an understanding of what caused the violation or how to fix it.
Similarly, your character could have a set of beliefs about the natural laws of the setting. When something breaks those laws, your character will observe it, even if he can't explain why, in that context.
I guess this just strikes me as a natural consequence of your positions regarding the silent protagonist - it's acceptable/encouraged to fill in the game's gaps with your own narrative (Ex: role-playing a coward)- so there's no reason for us to believe that we have to know all the laws of the setting or that those laws even need to be consistent - maybe the character inhabits an inconsistent universe. Much like how you don't require the game to tell you that you can role-play a coward, it isn't necessary for the game to document an inconsistent universe for that to be the setting of the game.
From which posts that had been written have you drawn this conclusion?
Any post that blindly demonizes developers making or trying to make a profit.
Edit: perhaps 'demonize' is putting a bit too harsh. But the posts that lead me to that conclusion were summed up on my original post: any post that can be summed up as "Don't care about profit! Just care about making a good game!"
I can't demonstrate that people can think for themselves, either, so I fail to see the difference.The differences are impossible to remove entirely without a massive breakthrough in technology. This is not simply my opinion, it's objective fact. A computer can't 100% replace the other Humans in a pen and paper game, nor can it get "close enough that it makes no difference". This is due to the fact that a computer can only ever follow instructions, but can't think for itself. It means a computer is technically 100% predictable. Yes, even RNG isn't truly random.
Until we started seeing voiced protagonists, I think they were doing pretty well.Until that's dealt with, the mechanics need to change to fit the medium.
I'm not judging a video game. I'm judging an RPG.I'm never not going to look at gameplay mechanics when judging a video game
And I like that it can, but that difference is a personal preference so there's no point discussing it.I'm saying I don't like that it can happen through no fault of the player/character.
That's a good point. I need to start complaining about documentation more.But it's left ambiguous which means you're free to interpret it how you want.
That it's not documented is a documentation issue, not a lore/gameplay one. You're the one choosing for it to be a lore/gameplay problem.
I think they should be aware of them in detail. I generally play them as if they are.A character would be aware of them as a concept, but not in detail.
They know that a sword hurts when it hits them. They don't know it did 6 points of damage to their health pool of 12 HP.
They wouldn't know that a nat 20 is a critical success while a nat 1 is a critical failure, only that around 5% of the time they do something they either succeed or fail spectacularly.
It's a personal preference thing. Just as the complete rules of a tabletop RPG are available to the player, I'd like the complete rules of a CRPG to be available to the player.
But from the perspective of all the rest of you, who think these are games, how can you play a game without knowing the rules of that game? You can't play chess effectively without knowing the rules of chess. You can't play basketball effectively without knowing the rules if basketball. You can't play blackjack effectively without knowing the rules of blackjack.
Why is this "game" different?
If you look at a game like Dark Souls - a huge aspect of the popularity is having no idea of what's going to happen during gameplay - you don't know what enemies or traps you're going to encounter or what they're strengths/weaknesses they have until you're knee deep in death. I'm guessing for a lot of players any gameplay system is the same way; different enemies have different strengths/weaknesses. You'll have a basic idea of how the rules interact - but if a game has a knock-down mechanic, you won't know an enemy is immune to knock-downs until you encounter them. Asymmetrical mechanics, to some extent, are kinda the same deal.
It's a personal preference thing. Just as the complete rules of a tabletop RPG are available to the player, I'd like the complete rules of a CRPG to be available to the player.
But from the perspective of all the rest of you, who think these are games, how can you play a game without knowing the rules of that game? You can't play chess effectively without knowing the rules of chess. You can't play basketball effectively without knowing the rules if basketball. You can't play blackjack effectively without knowing the rules of blackjack.
Why is this "game" different?
I bet that the vast majority of Basketball players (professional or otherwise) haven't actually read the official NBA rule book. They don't need to know all the various technicalities of the sport in order to play because all they need to know are the basic functional movements (dribbling, passing, etc.) and relevant in-court rules (travelling, out of bounds, etc.). Hell, for the kind of specificity you want, you'd expect every basketball player to understand how the mechanics of muscle mass affect agility, but that's completely unnecessary (and likely well over the dead of the average player). The players only need to worry about the basics to win a game.
Same goes for videogames. Once the player knows the basic input mechanics (shooting, navigating dialog, etc.) and a basic understanding of their own abilities, then they should be able to play the game quite effectively. They don't need to know how enemy health and damage output is calculated to survive an encounter, nor do enemies need to have symmetric abilities to be fair opponents.
It's also important to distinguish between competitions and games. Competitions like basketball and chess work because players have equal access to the rule set. The fun is derived from determining who is the better contender within those parameters. In games, however, players can draw enjoyment from discovering the rules for themselves.
I can't demonstrate that people can think for themselves, either, so I fail to see the difference.
CRPGs are just a different version of the Brain in a Vat problem that we live every day.
It's already proven that a CPU and a brain don't work the same way. If you can see that or not is irrelevant.
Until we started seeing voiced protagonists, I think they were doing pretty well
My criticisms have nothing to do with voiced protagonists.
There will never not be room to improve. My favourite game of all time is Half-Life 1, and I can come up with criticisms for that game too.
So I point out where I think games can do better. Just like how you point out how you think games can be more like your definition of a RPG.
I'm not judging a video game. I'm judging an RPG.
I'm judging a video game that is a RPG using my definition of RPG which doesn't preclude it from being a video game as well.
I think they should be aware of them in detail. I generally play them as if they are.
A character in-game shouldn't be aware of something that is out of game, which includes things like the actual numbers and the dice rolls and the fact that they're a character being controlled by somebody. Unless of course the game rules state that characters are aware of such things.
Any character going on about those things in D&D/Pathfinder should generally be viewed as mentally insane by the majority of NPCs and other PCs. Which could make for an interesting character similar to Red Mage from the webcomic 8 Bit Theatre.
Huh?
I stopped paying attention long ago 
Not any more than you had to pay to get BG2's ending. But expansion packs are somehow more OK than DLC, for reasons?
Yeah, that is something I never fully understand either.
Same goes for videogames. Once the player knows the basic input mechanics (shooting, navigating dialog, etc.) and a basic understanding of their own abilities, then they should be able to play the game quite effectively. They don't need to know how enemy health and damage output is calculated to survive an encounter, nor do enemies need to have symmetric abilities to be fair opponents.
It's also worth noting this isn't just limited to the skill based games.
I remember as a kid playing through games like Dark Sun which is based on the AD&D1 ruleset. I literally just clicked stuff at random to figure out what it did. To this day I have no idea what healing spell I was using or how much it was healing for, just that if I used the ability with that icon it would heal my party members. Hell, I didn't even know what the stats did. I just of just assigned stuff at random based on what looked cool to a 6 year old me.
I managed to actually beat the game doing that =P
It's also worth noting this isn't just limited to the skill based games.
I remember as a kid playing through games like Dark Sun which is based on the AD&D1 ruleset. I literally just clicked stuff at random to figure out what it did. To this day I have no idea what healing spell I was using or how much it was healing for, just that if I used the ability with that icon it would heal my party members. Hell, I didn't even know what the stats did. I just of just assigned stuff at random based on what looked cool to a 6 year old me.
I managed to actually beat the game doing that =P
Ah, the old "that looks cool," method to roleplaying.
Not any more than you had to pay to get BG2's ending. But expansion packs are somehow more OK than DLC, for reasons?
Yeah, I think they are more ok. Or rather I have a heuristic that usually expansion pack trumps DLC in a quality. It shouldn't matter, both are just an extra content for a game, a difference being just a method of distribution after all. However, I do believe that it changes incentives for both publishers and makers. Roughly put, costs and marginal cost of making and distributing a physical copy exceed digital so considerably that the former method rewards making fewer but more extensive products per game. This tends to lead into a content I prefer, even if as a format I greatly favor digital over physical in games (I don't buy physical copies anymore, and wouldn't go back to old days, even if I had the chance).
This is not exclusive to games, but happily the situation is far less pronounced in games than in many other mediums. As an example if a novel is only released digitally and not published, it tends to be a hard signal that nobody has any faith in it or willing to bet their buck into a product.
I have no big data on the issue, and it's merely my observation and deduction of games which have I bought over the years. It's not definitely some law of nature nor causality, more like a social pattern , which is true more often than it is false (like in Bioware's case Tales of the Sword Coast was waste of money then and it is now, but I'd be willing to pay a stand-alone game price for Throne of Bhaal. Lair of the Shadow Broker was the same high quality as Throne of Bhaal, but The Mark of Assassin has been only DLC wherein I seriously contemplated on saying no to the whole quest and skip the DLC I had just bought).
I can't say how innovative (or not) BG was, but I'd still call ME3 innovative. It managed to be an RPG/TPS hybrid with such good TPS gameplay that it could still be fun without a campaign backing it up. Companion characters felt more autonomous than they had ever been in previous BioWare titles now that they moved about the ship, talked with each other, and formed their own relationships. Even the import function, when it worked (Tuchanka), had interesting effects on the story. If not innovative, then BioWare still have the fairly unique ability to create a decent cinematic RPG. The Witcher is the only franchise that's managed to come close, and I can only imagine that the extra competition will force both developers to hone their craft.
Has a recent BIoWare game redefined what it means to be an RPG with some fantastic innovative feature? No, but I actually can't think of any recent RPG that did that. Many say that the Witcher 3 did it with all its well written sudequests, but that's not really innovative as it is having enough time and energy to make a bunch of well written sidequests. As time goes on, it'll be more and more difficult to be innovative because so much will have already been invented.
The only major areas of RPG that still has room for innovation are the dialog mechanics. I think there are ways to make them far more engaging than they are now. Of course, I can't really blame BIoWare for not innovating here because no one, not even indies have managed to do that.
ME3 was very much not innovative. Bioware haven't innovated in a long time. When BG came out there really wasn't anything like it out there in the market. ME3 was an iteration on ME2, which was an iteration of ME1 which in turn was an iteration of Jade Empire and KoTOR before that. I'm not knocking ME3, I like ME3 a lot, ending aside, it's just that ME3 wasn't ground breaking, it wasn't genre defining in a way that Baldur's Gate was. I would like MEA to be ground breaking, a game that drives the genre forward.
Your rightly point out that a major area for improvement is the dialogue mechanics and Bioware are guilty of keeping the same tried, tested and frankly stale system in place far too long. Their entire binaric approach to dialogue has long since past its sell by date and needs throwing out of the window in favour of a more realistic system. Games like The Witcher 3 have shown how to add layers of moral ambiguity to the dialogue and morality of the protagonist. So is it too much to ask that Bioware innovate on this side of things rather than simply stick to their comfort zone and churn out another clone of its predecessor?
They don't need to work the same way to produce similar outcomes when viewed from the outside.It's already proven that a CPU and a brain don't work the same way. If you can see that or not is irrelevant.
But mine do. The silent dialogue more closely resembled real world conversations than the voice dialogue does. By voicing the PC, BioWare managed to make their CPU behaviour less human-like.My criticisms have nothing to do with voiced protagonists.
Of course you can. I can do the same with games I like.There will never not be room to improve. My favourite game of all time is Half-Life 1, and I can come up with criticisms for that game too.
Those numbers have a direct in-game effect. What evidence do we have that they don't exist in the game?A character in-game shouldn't be aware of something that is out of game, which includes things like the actual numbers and the dice rolls and the fact that they're a character being controlled by somebody. Unless of course the game rules state that characters are aware of such things.
I hate doing that. It's wasted time.In games, however, players can draw enjoyment from discovering the rules for themselves.
That doesn't sound fun at all. Is it even possiible to play that game without metagaming?If you look at a game like Dark Souls - a huge aspect of the popularity is having no idea of what's going to happen during gameplay - you don't know what enemies or traps you're going to encounter or what they're strengths/weaknesses they have until you're knee deep in death.
That doesn't sound fun at all. Is it even possiible to play that game without metagaming?
Why would we need to metagame? Again, let's apply this standard to real life: people observe physical phenomena they can't immediately explain all the time. It doesn't stop them from living their lives. Maybe your character believes he can shield bash every enemy by the laws of physics - until he comes across one he can't.
I understand if you just don't find that fun. But it's not exactly out of line with any of the silent protagonist concepts you've outlined. If we can headcanon a cowardly protagonist into Dragon Age: Origins with all the exertion that requires, then we can simply have our protagonist assume certain physical laws are true, which may or may not be violated in practice.
ME3 was very much not innovative. Bioware haven't innovated in a long time. When BG came out there really wasn't anything like it out there in the market. ME3 was an iteration on ME2, which was an iteration of ME1 which in turn was an iteration of Jade Empire and KoTOR before that. I'm not knocking ME3, I like ME3 a lot, ending aside, it's just that ME3 wasn't ground breaking, it wasn't genre defining in a way that Baldur's Gate was. I would like MEA to be ground breaking, a game that drives the genre forward.
Calling Mass Effect just an iteration on jade Empire is entirely reductionist. Yeah, the cinematic RPG isn't a new concept, but an RPG/TPS hybrid? That's pretty original. While that genre might not be completely new, BioWare's incredibly competent rendering of that genre was. That's not even mentioning mechanics like the power wheel and the smaller innovations I brought up earlier.
I don't think it's fair to criticize any developer for not being genre defining. BioWare are RPG developers, and they can only define that genre so many times before the groundbreaking ideas start running thin. I dare you to name a developer that actually lives up to this standard, because all the RPG I've played lately have just been iterations on a previous formula. Some of them even iterate well enough that I might call some of their mechanics innovative, and Mass Effect is one of them.
Your rightly point out that a major area for improvement is the dialogue mechanics and Bioware are guilty of keeping the same tried, tested and frankly stale system in place far too long. Their entire binaric approach to dialogue has long since past its sell by date and needs throwing out of the window in favour of a more realistic system. Games like The Witcher 3 have shown how to add layers of moral ambiguity to the dialogue and morality of the protagonist. So is it too much to ask that Bioware innovate on this side of things rather than simply stick to their comfort zone and churn out another clone of its predecessor?
Dragon Age hasn't had binary morality since its inception. In fact, binary morality wasn't a standard of BioWare's RPG until they added it into KoTOR. It's persistence within Mass Effect is mainly just an oversight in my mind.
The Witcher just befitted from a more defined protagonist, which isn't a new concept either. Geralt had very good writing behind him, but I don't see how that makes CDPR more groundbreaking than BioWare.
I hate doing that. It's wasted time.
Actually, I'd imagine that it takes less time to note specific mechanics as you go than it does to look through and internalize an entire RPG rule set.
Regarding asymmetrical mechanics, how could we explain, in-game, the wildly different hit point totals that the PC and NPCs have?
Sylvius, you're the king of making up nonsense to explain incongruities with NPC dialog, so how about you tell me?
I'd rather just see that written down somewhere.
Fine, but that doesn't make the game impossible to play otherwise.
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