To you.
@lakus - one of my favorite DAO characters was a dwarf commoner who never made it to the landsmeet. I'll spare you the details, but once she'd put Bhelen on Orzammar's throne (thus securing a future for her sister and mother), she bailed on the warden gig and ran off to join the Legion of the Dead.
My Aeducan had nothing left. He killed Behlen (avenging himself, his father, and other brother), put Harrowmont on the throne, ensured his son had a future in House Harrowmont, and put Alistair on the throne. He was the extraneous one. Not like most of my other Wardens, who had someone to come back to, or who simply weren't ready to die.
I like to see something like the M203. Did you ever use one when you were in the military? Very good weapon
Why only the followers? How about banter with crewmembers as well from start to finish?
I like ME2.
My personal favorite is to remake the whole trilogy. If not, make another version of ME3 since the one that was released was for new players.
Perhaps, but I don't care for a lot of ME3 mechanics with respect to mechanics that were actually new or changed. ME2 mechanics only needed mild tweaks, not a lot of rule of cool additions that homogenized the classes. Taking out range modifiers is one of the few things I can think of offhand that actually improved something (although it is unclear if simply changing some of them might have been better). Outside of the already listed movement changes to make the game seem faster.
What I think disqualifies Half-Life is that it has mechanics which specifically undermine roleplaying, such as the action combat.I find there's usually 3 groups of people:
1. People who say "A RPG is any game where you play a role"
2. People who try to attach RPG to the mechanics of things like dice rolls and stats that you typically find in RPGs
3. People who take the first one but try to extend it out a bit to talk about player choice and dialogue systems
The first one makes any game a RPG, the second one lets turn based strategy games like XCOM easily fit into the definition, and the third one is better but XCOM provides just enough customization of soldiers that I can usually sneak it in there unless they involve dialogue systems since it's lacking one of those.
I would say it's not because there are no in-game systems to actively support roleplaying.
If XCOM is a RPG because you can headcanon stuff between soldiers, then I would like to put in my vote for Half-Life as the greatest RPG of all time because I can headcanon what Gordon Freeman is thinking.
At that point the definition of RPG becomes so broad that it's useless as a definition for games and we should just stop using it entirely.
I wouldn't be happy with always, either.Sometimes, sure. The question is whether the universe should always handle the mission if the PC doesn't. I'm not happy with the "always" part of that.
I'm not sure what you mean by mistake here.But you are asking for it to not be a mistake to refuse to pursue a task like catching Saren. Can you codify this in a way that isn't preserving the player from making mistakes?
Saren and Benezia aren't independent sources, so that's basically one person's testimony.Which Saren and Benezia say they believe. And visions. And the beacon, which was a thing Saren took incredible risks to get his hand on. A risk which blew up in his face, as it happens.
What? No. Saren's plan just takes longer. Why? Why wouldn't it? Within the playthrough, we don't have any reason to expect the plan to take a specific amount of time. For you to know that Saren's plan is waiting for you, you need to metagame.So, Shepard believes that Saren and Benezia are lying and the Council is right, but is arguing with the Council because reasons, and then will fly off to do nothing about Saren, and then God saves the galaxy from Shepard's incompetence by delaying Saren just enough for Shepard to stumble into the truth?
That he doesn't say it doesn't mean he doesn't believe it. I don't understand why you feel the need to hold Shepard's remarks to be 100% honest 100% of the time.If you want to say that Shepard should have been allowed to disagree with Anderson and everybody else and side with the council as a matter of RP, I can see it, but that didn't happen.
There's no need for that.And that still doesn't explain why Shepard and the Council should be preserved from their own stupidity.
The problem is that you're manufacturing incoherence by metagaming.It's not our job to keep the game world credible. It's the designers'. If I have to worry about preserving the integrity of the game-world, I'm not playing my character anymore.
Why do you need the game world to be identical across multiple playthroughs?I want to be able to make mistakes, and be punished when I do make them.
How does that break immersion? If you're in-character, what can break that?I said "break immersion" not "break world."
I did. I thought he was an idiot. Which had the knock-on effect of diminishing my opinion of Alliance leadership generally.You're arguing out of both sides of your mouth here. You say you can't role play unless you can absolutely predict what comes out of your character's mouth but give no regard to the affect that role playing 90% of ME1 to "catch Saren" before reaching the conduit can be ruined by merely "stumbling into the Armstrong Cluster" on your way to Ilos because then, all of sudden, Hackett tells you that clearing a few geth outposts is more important than catching Saren... and he won't accept you just turning down that particular mission. Another example, if you happen to unlock an allignment quest, just as you're heading to Ilos (and I DID have this happen to me without any glitching), then you have Hackett telling you that saving a few "drugged-up" scientists or negotiating terms with a merc leader is critically important. Now, I know you can turn down the beseiged scientists quest (which I did), but I don't think you can turn down the renegade one. You can tell Hackett that you still feel it's a bad idea, but he comes back with giving you the assignment anyways. Irregardless, the whole situation makes Hackett look like a real fool by even asking you to do those things in a stolen ship... and hence, you might have trouble respecting him in the following two games.
The cinematics and voice acting have added nothing to the roleplaying in these games. That you can still do it doesn't mean you couldn't do it better given more information about your lines and a wider range of options.Sure, just as I suggested to you about predicting the dialogue - I can play through once and get a good idea about what the "script" is and avoid making that same "mistake" on my second playthrough (by arranging to stumble into the Armstrong cluster earlier in the game or doing some serious metagaming to make sure I don't unlock the allignment quests at the wrong moment in the game). The difference between you and I, it seems, is that I am quite willing to make that sort of adaptation, I still feel like I am role playing, and I still enjoy the game; and, as a result, I still am willing to call it a form of RPG. You, on the other hand, seem to insist that the developer change what they do (including asking them to eliminate cinematics and voice acting) just to fit your very precise (i.e. narrow) definition of an RPG.
When I replay a game, I replay it. That means I discover all the parts again from an in-character perspective. If something in one playthrough is incompatible with something in a different playthrough, who cares?
I very much agree with this sentiment, but I think we might be a shrinking demographic :/
We're the roleplayers. If we don't speak up in defense of our playstyle, no one else will.I very much agree with this sentiment, but I think we might be a shrinking demographic :/
No I am saying that IF and i stress the word IF you take ANY character and make choices for the character based on their role/personality that isn't motivated by your own goals or what is 'best' in terms of game play you are role playing. Most FPS allow you to role play if you so choose but they are not designed mechanically to role play. MMOs are in the same boat, these games allow people to Role play but the game's mechanics are not designed to role play. In fact all the mechanics that people use to role play have primary functions not for role playing and the most important tool Chat isn't designed to facilitate role playing it is designed to facilitate communication which AGAIN is a SEPARATE feature of role playing. Yes role playing is communication but not all communication is role playing. Cats are mammals not all mammals are cats. The ability to role play isn't limited to games that are specifically designed for such a purpose. Time and time again you will hear strategy game players talk about role playing their nation. They pick a underlying 'personality' for their nation and play the game based on not what makes the best sense mechanically but rather what makes sense for the nation's player prescribed goals and outlook. They are role playing but not playing an RPG.
cRPGs are games that are specifically designed to give the player some agency of choice but this level of agency has ALWAYS been limited. In western RPGs the way to hide this limit on agency was to give the player LOTs of agency up front to hide the lack of it on the back end. This is why western RPGs have a firm grounding in character creation. And no this vast open ended character creation isn't tied to pen and paper rpgs the original tradition of these RPGs going back to D&D was that you had again little agency in the character especially with race and role. Every dwarf is a fighter, every elf a fighter/mage, every halfling a thief. So again we see at the very beginings of RPGs extreme limits on agency at least compared to today. The jRPG took a separate but equally valid approach to RPGs they said screw it we know agency is limited we know that if we try to open up agency in the front end we will have to sacrifice other aspects of the game in other areas so we just wont give the player lots of agency much like D&D originally approached things. This allowed them to tell better narratives than a traditional wRPG. Almost every early wRPG is nothing more than a very lose narrative to tie one encounter to the next. And to keep the player interested they used progression in the exact way an MMO does with raid gear. The 'grind' in early wRPGs is specifically designed to be a timesink because there wasn't really any narrative to tell so just grid new gear and levels so you can kill the boss. jRPGs originally weren't much of a grind and there was a bit more narrative to things. But again we are speaking in general terms not every game falls exactly into these loose categories. The irony i see is that the grind later became a stable of the jrpg as both development schools learned from each other.
Just because you don't like a style of RPG doesn't mean it isn't an RPG it is simply an RPG style you don't like. And don't misconstrue what i am saying either or proscribe a bias that isn't there. I pretty much hate jRPGs I think Final Fantasy is the only one I recall enjoying and I mean the First one with white mage and black mage. I didn't like being on rails for the narrative the loss of agency was problematic for me at the time. It wasn't until Kotor that I appreciate the strong narrative story telling an RPG could give. The fully voiced NPCs the star wars fantasy all worked to tell a very narrow on rails story very similar to a jRPG but with more of a western approach to character development. But again we gave up agency to tell the story our background is all the same we are a fallen knight, no bothan spy for you.
Agency =/= role playing many pen and paper rpgs have a introductory set with pre-made characters in them, again showing how character generation ISN'T role playing. I am not saying people's preference for their RPGs is wrong it is in fact 100% right for them but so is the exact opposite position because this is a subjective issue. I am saying stop the elitist BS your preferred style of RPG isn't the only "true" rpg. Ask for more agency all you want just stop caging the conversation is agency = role playing because that is false. Hell games by design limit agency to create conflict and risk for without these elements you really don't have a game.
Hmm, so basicly you're saying that a lot of games can be role played, even if they were not designed to be RPG game. Or didn't get the label.
I too avoid jRPGs, but don't know why call them RPG in the first place if they have predetermined PC, without any infulence from the players side. Almost as a Diablo-like game with turned base combat and better cinematic story telling. How can it be role played if everything is set in stone. It's like ME3 with full auto dialog, it becames an shooting game with cinematic story telling with modable weapons, and a few selectable skills. I'm playing the soldier but can't really role play it, or i'm already role playing it becase i play the soldier? But that just sounds dull.
Anyhow i like RPGs where i have agency so i can make decisions which has smaller or larger consequences because i assume the role of commander Shepard and i can do whatever the hell i want (within the limitation of the game of course). Because of the PC's voice actors it somehow felt more alive and more cinematic, but at the same time a little more distant, than KOTOR's or DA:O's main character, because in there i felt more in controll and felt like more of my character.
How does that break immersion? If you're in-character, what can break that?
If you're metagaming, you're not in-character, and you broke your own immersion.
I did. I thought he was an idiot. Which had the knock-on effect of diminishing my opinion of Alliance leadership generally.
The cinematics and voice acting have added nothing to the roleplaying in these games. That you can still do it doesn't mean you couldn't do it better given more information about your lines and a wider range of options.
The least they could do is let us turn off the damn voice. That would be something.
Predictably, you're speaking out both sides of your mouth again... and I'm not going to bother with you further. If not exactly knowing what you're character is going to say breaks your immersion, then not having a logical consequence for not doing the main mission in a timely way breaks mine. What's fair for the goose is fair for the gander... my personal experience/opinion is equally valid to yours. As I said, the big difference is that I can adapt and still enjoy the game. It seems that you can't... your loss.
You can demand that Bioware regress to making the old typed-text RPGs all day long... I don't think they're going to do it because there are just too many people like me who like the voice acting and the cinematics. As long as voice-acting and cinematics sell games, I feel pretty safe that they'll make enough of them to keep me going. If they also want to make some of your style, they can. I just won't be buying those. I have no problem with them inserting an option to turn off individual channels of sound... BTW, on my version of ME3, you can separately turn down the Dialogue Volume and 0% effectively turns it off. You might want to check it out.
I want it to be an rpg but people don't seem to have patience for full breed rpg games these days it's all about shooting getting loot and more shooting 
I'm fine as long as I can make choices that have actual consequences, be attached to well written characters, and have fun with the gameplay. I just want it to be good.
How can you tell, within a single playthrough, whether there wasn't a logical consequence associated with a delay?Predictably, you're speaking out both sides of your mouth again... and I'm not going to bother with you further. If not exactly knowing what you're character is going to say breaks your immersion, then not having a logical consequence for not doing the main mission in a timely way breaks mine.
What I would want to do is turn off the PC voice and the subtitles. This would allow me to treat the paraphrases on the wheel as if they were the full text, because the actual line would never be known to me.I have no problem with them inserting an option to turn off individual channels of sound... BTW, on my version of ME3, you can separately turn down the Dialogue Volume and 0% effectively turns it off. You might want to check it out.
Yes. I'm asking for exactly that level of editorial control over the character or characters for whom I'm expected to make decisions.
I don't see how else to make decisions that are based on a coherent character design.
If that's true, then how do you account for the fact that the dialogue (performed by a VA) and animations (created by the animators) are already pre-recorded? As a player, all I'm doing in dialogue scenes is choosing which version of the pre-recorded scene is played. That sounds more like an editor role to me.
Is this how you make RL decisions? Try things at random and see what works?
And what I'm saying is that story / game structures that provide more agency / wider access to content provide me with a greater set of RP opportunities. I was able to glean much more RP value from ME1 than the sequels.
Sometimes, sure. The question is whether the universe should always handle the mission if the PC doesn't. I'm not happy with the "always" part of that.
How can you tell, within a single playthrough, whether there wasn't a logical consequence associated with a delay?
I assert that you can't. You can only see that lack of consequences across multiple playthroughs (where you can compare ourcomes), but that's metagaming.
Stop doing that, and the problem goes away.
What I would want to do is turn off the PC voice and the subtitles. This would allow me to treat the paraphrases on the wheel as if they were the full text, because the actual line would never be known to me.
With the current controls, though, that would mean I wouldn't know what the NPCs were saying either, because their sound would also be turned down and their subtitles would also be disabled.
My first playthrough... I have no idea that I can actually do all the side quests after stealing the Normandy until I "stumble" into the Armstrong cluster on the way from the Citadel to Ilos (a mere mis-click).... all of a sudden, much to my surprise, I'm into an argument with Hackett and no real way to turn down the mission or tell him that I'll postpone it until after I take down Saren. THAT is NOT metagaming and is almost an identical issue as your claims that not being able to predict your character's dialogue breaks your immersion. The only difference is that I'm one putting the issue out there to support a little less player agency (i.e. a little bit of pacing) in that case might have been a good thing). I now "metagame" to avoid making that mistake again... and I'm OK with it being as it is.
Where I entered this argument was just stating the ME1 also did some pacing on the front end (i.e. that clusters like the Maroon Sea, for example, only open up after you do either Feros or Styx Theta, which only opens up after you've done Noveria). That is, the game ME1 was not devoid of using pacing techniques similar to those used in ME3. ME3 really just had fewer side missions overall and some of the ones that were there were just so well connected to the main story that people didn't generally consider them to be side missions.
If you leave the subtitles on and the volume turned down... you have no voice, just typed-text for both the PC and the NPCs (the equivalent of no voice-acting). If you really don't want to play a game as others write it for you... write your own. Turn the subtitles off as well and dub in your own dialogue for both PC and NPCs.
ME2 has two Vanilla pistols; both are fairly poor compared to the powers used by dependent classes. The other weapons also are frightfully represented in Vanilla, with Shotguns being an exception.
ME2 had four ranks of a power tops; less than either ME1 or ME3.
ME2 Adept is worse than Engn or Sentinel for playing the game on Insanity.
ME2 runs out of dialogue quickly, unless one is involved in a Romance. ME3 has something from everyone from start to finish, I believe.
ME2 clips had to search for after a fire fight before moving to a new area; ruined immersion for moving quickly to the next zone. ME3; never encountered a lack of ammo.
1. Disagree. The Predator has ok armor dps but high ammo capacity such that it is practically impossible to run out unless you miss all the time or try to use it to do everything. Carnifex has a low ammo capacity because it has some of the highest armor DPS you can get from a weapon in the game. The Avenger is mediocre in vanilla, the Mantis's ammo capacity is a little too low. The point in comparison to powers makes no sense since powers and weapons are supposed to be complimentary.
2. Doesn't really matter when there isn't a real choice between evolutions in ME3, and in ME1 there were only 3 ranks for any power anyway.
3. Sentinel is overpowered in ME2 because Tech Armor was not supposed to reset squadmate cooldown in the released version of the game. Take that away and Sentinel is just durable with low damage output and no ability to create combos itself. With that oversight and the Stasis glitch it is a top tier class. Adept is at least as good as Engineer on Insanity when it is played correctly. It is the only class that can self combo, and lest we forget it has 4 different powers that can put targets into ragdoll for 100% weapon damage bonus.
ME2 Adept mostly gets flak because they expected a win button type class like ME1 Adept, and to an extent ME3 Adept. ME1 Adept and ME3 Adept (and to an extent other classes especially in ME3) are not interesting because they turned into button mashing classes where you just throw out powers willy nilly and either ragdoll everyone or just detonate a trillion combos. It doesn't matter what defense layer the target has, it doesn't matter if they are clustered or not, it doesn't really even matter which power you use when.
The sad thing is that ME2 Adept is probably the best designed character in the trilogy even if it is unfairly criticized as a weak class.
4. I'm willing to concede this even if I don't necessarily believe ME3 really has much if any more unique and interesting companion dialogue w/o DLC. I am not as interested in arguing dialogue as mechanics.
5. I assumed this was going to end up being an argument about the amount of clips. The highest difficulty of the game should in fact penalize players for missing shots, using the wrong tool for the wrong job, and not using all their skills effectively. If someone wants to role-play an Adept who only uses guns, then they need to suffer the consequences. Same with someone who wants to run a Soldier without firing a shot. The biggest ammo problem I see in ME2 is Mantis spare ammo, not anything specific to "casters" or the other weapons.
I don't get why an RPG needs to be defined in one specific way in order to be an RPG. There are plenty of genres with sub genres attached but they still fall under the same umbrella.
i.e. An action horror movie is still a horror movie.
And I agree that ME2 implemented the time constraint much better than ME1. Almost everything Shepard does in that game makes sense from a story perspective. Building your crew, making sure their minds are right for the mission, getting the tools needed to complete the mission, consequences for not acting immediately once the time was right. However, my experience with ME1 wasn't soiled because of their sloppy story structure. My issue with it was fixed by simply head cannoning that the side missions are things he stumbled on while on his way to the leads and since I don't do a lot of side content, I never felt as though I was wasting time. But I can get why it isn't ideal. It shouldn't be up to the player to make the story make sense. ME1 would have worked better if we were given only one of the leads, and after completing it, told that they need to spend time investigating it on the back end while Shepard is free to search for any more clues. This will give the player time to complete any side missions they may want to do before the Council or Anderson call them back for the next lead. Throwing three full leads at the player was just stupid but not entirely immersion breaking.
I'll never understand the complaints about Voiced PCs. You've never had the control to say whatever you wanted.
1. Disagree. The Predator has ok armor dps but high ammo capacity such that it is practically impossible to run out unless you miss all the time or try to use it to do everything. Carnifex has a low ammo capacity because it has some of the highest armor DPS you can get from a weapon in the game. The Avenger is mediocre in vanilla, the Mantis's ammo capacity is a little too low. The point in comparison to powers makes no sense since powers and weapons are supposed to be complimentary.
2. Doesn't really matter when there isn't a real choice between evolutions in ME3, and in ME1 there were only 3 ranks for any power anyway.
3. Sentinel is overpowered in ME2 because Tech Armor was not supposed to reset squadmate cooldown in the released version of the game. Take that away and Sentinel is just durable with low damage output and no ability to create combos itself. With that oversight and the Stasis glitch it is a top tier class. Adept is at least as good as Engineer on Insanity when it is played correctly. It is the only class that can self combo, and lest we forget it has 4 different powers that can put targets into ragdoll for 100% weapon damage bonus.
ME2 Adept mostly gets flak because they expected a win button type class like ME1 Adept, and to an extent ME3 Adept. ME1 Adept and ME3 Adept (and to an extent other classes especially in ME3) are not interesting because they turned into button mashing classes where you just throw out powers willy nilly and either ragdoll everyone or just detonate a trillion combos. It doesn't matter what defense layer the target has, it doesn't matter if they are clustered or not, it doesn't really even matter which power you use when.
The sad thing is that ME2 Adept is probably the best designed character in the trilogy even if it is unfairly criticized as a weak class.
4. I'm willing to concede this even if I don't necessarily believe ME3 really has much if any more unique and interesting companion dialogue w/o DLC. I am not as interested in arguing dialogue as mechanics.
5. I assumed this was going to end up being an argument about the amount of clips. The highest difficulty of the game should in fact penalize players for missing shots, using the wrong tool for the wrong job, and not using all their skills effectively. If someone wants to role-play an Adept who only uses guns, then they need to suffer the consequences. Same with someone who wants to run a Soldier without firing a shot. The biggest ammo problem I see in ME2 is Mantis spare ammo, not anything specific to "casters" or the other weapons.
Retour en haut