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What sided dice the game uses is irrelevant, you need the stats and ruleset to have an RPG. Otherwise all you have is a story-driven game. A "Choose your own adventure" game isn't an RPG. By that logic Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, It Came From The Desert, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, etc. would all be RPGs, but they're not. If you can name me a story-based CRPG that doesn't have a statistical form of character progression in some form and a rulset behind it and is still classed as an RPG I'd like to hear it. [/quote]
For the final time, no you do no need stats or rulesets. That is not what a "role-playing" game is. If I were to play a Wizard in Dungeons and Dragons with no combat, it would still be a role-playing game. Why? Because I can choose his background, I can choose his personality, I can choose whether he is good, evil, driven by selfish or selfless desires. I can decide if he was the son of a king or a bastard child forced to live on the streets. I can do all these different things without combat. If my dungeon master said from now on we were just going to skip combat and cut out all dice rolls, as long as we have character-interaction, divergent choices, and motivations then it is an RPG. Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, etc make absolutely no provisions for this. The more a game defines a character for you, the less choice you have and the farther it is from an RPG.
That is what role-playings is. Look up the term if you have to or recall your own experiences. Heavy Rain is not an RPG because of the degree to which it limits your options; you are given a heavily pre-defined character whom you have little control of. It certainly incorporates heavy RPG elements, but it's not quite there. Explain how d20 (or any rule system) has anything to do with actual role-playing.
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And yet before Baldur's Gate game along there were dozens upon dozens of CRPGs out there which didn't even have any of these elements, including the SSI AD&D titles. And yet these are RPGs. [/quote]
No character choice, no RPG. Following your logic, Borderlands is an RPG because it involves some statistical progression. CRPG's named themselves such because it sells better. I don't deny that alot of role-playing games feature statistical based combat, but taking the statistics without the actual roleplay doesn't an RPG make.
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Again, a common misconception, considering there have been so many RPGs that
don't have these aspects and so many games that have that aren't RPGs. For something to be defined by attributes every example of it must have those attributes.[/quote]
Marketing something as an RPG does not make it an RPG. Warcraft III allows you to level up, yet it's no more an RPG than Halo. I would even argue that combat-heavy focused tabletops like Gurps aren't entirely role-playing games which is fine. They may be considered "pen and paper" but it's designed specifically for power-gaming.
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Only compared to Baldur's Gate, NWN, DAO, etc. You can't call ME1 "dumbed down" when comparing it to games that have nothing to do with it and are going for a different style entirely. That's like calling God of War "dumbed down" compared to Dragon Age when they aren't even in the same club or trying to do the same things.
ME is not a pure RPG and never tried to be. And ME1 may reduce this element to two things (you said only lock-picking, but there's also computer hacking), but that's still a case of it being present compared to ME2's zero things. [/quote]
If you are going to call Mass Effect "an RPG first" and if Bioware is going to market their game as an RPG, then I'm going to compare it to RPG's. God of War and Dragon Age don't pretend to be the same thing and don't market to the same crowd. Bioware commonly refer to themselves as "award-winning RPG makers". Your claims that Mass Effect is a separate series are lost. First and foremost, if you're playing a game like Mass Effect for combat, then this already speaks for itself. Second, is that Bioware could easily divert their time and resources to make more old school RPG's like Baldur's Gate if outcry was large enough. Tell me, should I make a call to arms telling all Bioware fans that Mass Effect is dumbed down and should be abandoned? And finally, as your claims, Mass Effect 2 is not a pure RPG and never tried to be. It's a TPS with RPG elements, much like Mass Effect 1. Bioware simply redistributed their weight to focus on the TPS a little more.
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Because to me how ME1compares to Baldur's Gate or any other CRPG before it is irrelevant. The gap only seems smaller because you're comparing it on a grander scale with something that doesn't really fit. Mass Effect isn't
Baldur's Gate, isn't trying to be Baldur's Gate and has little to do with Baldur's Gate, and the same goes for any other BioWare RPG. Baldur's Gate is Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect is Mass Effect. ME1 may be miles off being a strong RPG compared to Baldur's Gate, but it never intended to be, and if it had it would be a completely different kettle of fish and wouldn't even work in the same manner, thus failing to achieve what it set out to. All I'm asking is for some consistency and a common balance within the IP and between the games themselves, not between ME and all of BioWare's previous titles. [/quote]
Mass Effect 2 never intended to be a purist RPG either. You want consistency between those two games. Some want a consistency in the RPG mechanics of all Bioware games. Some people like statistical progression (as you do). Bioware used to deliver this and they have stopped recently with games like Mass Effect. Your claims are void when Bioware abandons the entire old-school system for watered down gameplay.
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Mass Effect 2: Half the Talents <--- Completely diluted. [/quote]
Do you understand the concept of "illusion of depth" as I've been trying to explain to you? You seem to have fallen for it completely. Mass Effect's mechanics are not deep. When I choose my assault rifle for 174 damage, I use it the exact same way as my 172 assault rifle. Mass Effect 2 stripped away this illusion completely and said "it was pointless". Talents are exactly the same way. 1% pistol damage did not change my playstyle at all. It did not make me feel a sense of progression, ergo it was useless and filler to create gaps between abilities like "Marksman, Advanced Marksman, etc."
Mass Effect 2 cut the crap and just left you to choose those improved abilities. A good stats based system makes you feel like your style/focus matters. Choosing fireball in Dragon Age, using a 2H, going into stealth, all change my playstyle. Once I choose my class in Mass Effect 1 and 2, my playstyle is essentially defined (barring player choice/stupidity). The only exception are possibly the specialty classes which are extremely obscure, to start with.
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As I said, XP should be a reward based on effort, not just a meaningless pre-defined number thrown at you no matter how you completed the task. [/quote]
And yet the emphasis you put on XP is astounding. Do you also go around killing helpless peasants at level 1 when you role-play? I personally never look at my XP bar in Mass Effect. I don't see how you view this as being a defining quality of an RPG. "Meaningless pre-defined numbers" is what Mass Effect lived for. 1% pistol damage (yet again).
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And the examples I gave do alter things. Of course they're means to the same end to a degree, since you
are after all trying to achieve a single purpose. The point is how you get there and what else it effects alter, not the actual path. [/quote]
So what did you affect in Mass Effect 1 that you did not affect in Mass Effect 2? As I said, no matter how I get a garage pass, whether through Opold or Lorik Quinn, it leads to exactly the same goal with very little variation. Certainly I could change (extremely) minor details along the way, much like your example of Feros proves. Killing or sparing the colonists feels largely meaningless, designed to hand out paragon/renegade points. But this is equivalent to the minor choices you come across in Mass Effect 2 like whether or not to heal the Batarian in Mordin's recruitment mission. That is to say: good for flavor, but largely pointless.
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Let me put it this way: the examples SSV Enterprise gave are like opening two doors that lead to the same room. The Noveria example is more like opening several doors that lead to different corridors that each eventually lead to the same room. In SSV's examples each door just results in the same thing, with the only difference being the way I came in. In my example each corridor is of different length, involves a different puzzle to solve, and in
turn branches off in a few more corridors before getting to the final room. [/quote]
Only example you really offered for this was Benezia's sequence on Noveria. How many corridors precisely are you imagining when you choose to kill or incapacitate the colonists on Feros?
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Good roleplaying games have always had this, and in the case of P&P RPGs things often hinge on you and your party trying to come up with various solutions to a puzzle or problem, and being rewarded more for doing it smart and efficiently. ME1had some of this, but save for a few rare exceptions ME2 doesn't. Most of the ones it does are loyalty missions and not really part of the main story. And none of them compare to Noveria (which even I will admit was ME1's only truly diverse roleplaying area). [/quote]
And this I actually agree with. Alot. It's why I regard Deus Ex and Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind as probably being the closest in spirit to how party mechanics work because they allow some very diverse (and unexpected) solutions to most puzzles.
But I still think your point is lost. Mass Effect offering one instance of this is something to be mourned, not praised. As you said, Feros and Virmire really are almost entirely meaningless. The manner in which you reach Benezia is the only truly unique situation ( I count 3 different solutions). You say "Well, Mass Effect 2 did it worse than Mass Effect 1." I say "Well, Mass Effect 1 did a terrible job to start with." It's not something you forgive because the original did it 'slightly' better. To be blunt, eating crap is still eating crap hence why I don't give points to either game on this.
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You may still consider it one, but it wouldn't actually be classed as one. As I said before, it would basically be an story-driven adventure game, akin to a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. [/quote]
No, it would be a role-playing game. Three questions to ask
1) Can I establish my character's personality?
2) Can I establish and employ his background in a meaningful way?
3) Can my choices and motivations impact the world around me?
If you answered 'yes' to all three of these, then you are role-playing regardless of the mechanics. Mass Effect dilutes this by pre-defining several major aspects of your character's background and voice. Whether or not something is a role-playing game can be subjective, certainly when answering these questions. But your notion that statistics has anything to do with actual role-play is a false one. Explain to me how I am role-playing in Warcraft III or Borderlands.
Modifié par Il Divo, 23 juillet 2010 - 06:44 .
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