Why would I want to pause playing New Vegas and waste seconds or even minutes time and again on some undoubtfully trivial and very trite minigame? If I want a break from New Vegas, I'm damn well able to pause the game myself. Why should the game force it upon me time and again?

No, I'd rather all "mandatory" minigames went away. I've never understood why they're in RPGs anyway. RPG means playing the role of your character, which means that success or failure should depend on the skills of your character rather than on your personal skills.

Using FO3 as an example, I'm fairly good at hacking and fairly careful when lockpicking, which means I never get locked out of a computer and I very rarely breake lockpicks. This reduces the minigames to being nothing but unavoidable time-wasters that accomplish ABSOLUTELY NOTHING but preventing me from getting to the fun parts. However, let's consider the case that I have fine motor control issues. If so then extreme accuracy might be difficult and lockpicking difficult locks (where it seems like a few degrees make the difference between broken lockpick and open lock) would therefore be extremely hard, regardless of how high my character's lockpick skill is. Is that really sensible to anyone?

Honestly, when I play games, I play them because I like them. I haven't yet run across a single minigame I liked in any game whatsoever. They're always merely an annoyance you have to get through to get back to the game. I suppose I'll have to accept that I'll never understand why game devs keep pestering me with them, but I sure would love to see them stop, or at least be given the option to not have to waste my time playing a minigame so ridiculously stupid and trivial that a chimp would be offended by it.

Yes, the devs could simply up the challenge but then we're back to my example before, where it's the player's skill rather than the character's skill that determines the outcome, and at that point it's very debatable if the game isn't simply transformed into a sandbox adventure game rather than an RPG.


So why should people be burdened by the annoyance of dying from time to time? Shouldn't god-mode be mandatory as well? If people want to die when fighting an enemy then they can choose to do so but shouldn't they have the freedom of choice?

To answer your question, hell [censored] no! RPGs aren't adventure games.

Edit:
No choice in the way you're describing them. RPGs are all about having choices but it's also about your choices having consequences. That means that prior choices made must restrict your choices in the future. Choices made at character creation and level-up must restrict the choices you make later on. Full freedom throughout means no consequences of any choices you make.

To answer your question, hell [censored] no! RPGs aren't adventure games.

no offence, but I′m happy you don′t make games, the manual would be as thick as the bible.

Hey dont cry because you cant do the minigames. RPGs can use that, it feels more real. Lockpicking is not hard one bit just learn what to do. if you dont want these minor things in the game then dont play it cause i for one love them. Get the game on pc im sure u can get a mod that makes it so minigames dont pop up

RPGs can be anything you want. Cause in fallout i sure had alot of ADVENTURE's a game where you travel some place and discover new things on an epic story can be a adventure game. RPGs take just about every concept of gaming and put it into one, well like fallout and stuff anyways. Some RPGs like the ones you find online (WoW, RoM, PW) those games are also RPGs and defenatly contain adventures.

RPGs can be anything you want. Cause in fallout i sure had alot of ADVENTURE's a game where you travel some place and discover new things on an epic story can be a adventure game. RPGs take just about every concept of gaming and put it into one, well like fallout and stuff anyways. Some RPGs like the ones you find online (WoW, RoM, PW) those games are also RPGs and defenatly contain adventures.

That's the first clue that the term "RPG" is perversely overused. An adventure game (as I know them) is one that presents the player with almost an interactive dream. Minigames like the lockpick screen in Oblivion fit just fine in them, as the object of the game is to experience the world as an inhabitant.

RPG's (as I have always seen them) are games that present you with the inhabitants themselves, [and IMO, are best suited to third person view]. An RPG typically outlines the named PC's (the inhabitant's) personal strengths and weaknesses, and endeavors to ask the player, "what would this person do, in a given situation?", In this case a minigame that allows the player to pick a lock seems quite inappropriate to me. (what if the PC has no hands?)
*While never the case in Fallout 3, RPG's as a whole, do not restrict players to only human characters. The Player could be running an alien PC with powerful arms that can bend iron pipes, but not allow them to intricately pick locks. :shrug: (This is why weighted percentages work well with RPG's; they depict a plausible probability for a given PC to succeed).

Why would I want to pause playing New Vegas and waste seconds or even minutes time and again on some undoubtfully trivial and very trite minigame? If I want a break from New Vegas, I'm damn well able to pause the game myself. Why should the game force it upon me time and again?

No, I'd rather all "mandatory" minigames went away. I've never understood why they're in RPGs anyway. RPG means playing the role of your character, which means that success or failure should depend on the skills of your character rather than on your personal skills.

Using FO3 as an example, I'm fairly good at hacking and fairly careful when lockpicking, which means I never get locked out of a computer and I very rarely breake lockpicks. This reduces the minigames to being nothing but unavoidable time-wasters that accomplish ABSOLUTELY NOTHING but preventing me from getting to the fun parts. However, let's consider the case that I have fine motor control issues. If so then extreme accuracy might be difficult and lockpicking difficult locks (where it seems like a few degrees make the difference between broken lockpick and open lock) would therefore be extremely hard, regardless of how high my character's lockpick skill is. Is that really sensible to anyone?

Honestly, when I play games, I play them because I like them. I haven't yet run across a single minigame I liked in any game whatsoever. They're always merely an annoyance you have to get through to get back to the game. I suppose I'll have to accept that I'll never understand why game devs keep pestering me with them, but I sure would love to see them stop, or at least be given the option to not have to waste my time playing a minigame so ridiculously stupid and trivial that a chimp would be offended by it.

Yes, the devs could simply up the challenge but then we're back to my example before, where it's the player's skill rather than the character's skill that determines the outcome, and at that point it's very debatable if the game isn't simply transformed into a sandbox adventure game rather than an RPG.


So why should people be burdened by the annoyance of dying from time to time? Shouldn't god-mode be mandatory as well? If people want to die when fighting an enemy then they can choose to do so but shouldn't they have the freedom of choice?

To answer your question, hell [censored] no! RPGs aren't adventure games.

Edit:
No choice in the way you're describing them. RPGs are all about having choices but it's also about your choices having consequences. That means that prior choices made must restrict your choices in the future. Choices made at character creation and level-up must restrict the choices you make later on. Full freedom throughout means no consequences of any choices you make.

Your argument is stupid. "RPG means playing the role of your character" If you're playing the role of your character why would you not do as he does? According to your argument things like eating, traveling, or even combat should just be automated just because its your characters skill that matters. Playing an RPG is about immersion, and what better way to immerse yourself in the world by having to picklocks with a bobbypin (among other things), it would break the immersion completely for me if i just clicked a button and it did it for me. You're also saying that it is "trivial", but that is just your opinion (as well as everything I'v said is mine). Some people may find the combat trivial and just want to play for the story and the iteraction of the characters, so should it just be automated? Better yet why dont we just watch a movie of the character we want instead of roleplaying with them, it would get rid of all the "trivial" aspects of the game

I think you are missing the point (I could be mistaken though, hard to tell).

What those of us in favor of removal of the mini-games are saying is that in order for the Role portion of Role Playing Game to mean anything, the character him/her self must be the one who is making the actual attempt at any activity and thus the chance of success or failure thereof must be solely dependent on the character's current degree of skill at the activity in question.

If the player him/her self gets to be the sole determinant of success or failure at any given activity, then there is literally no point in increasing the character's skills since they no longer matter. FO3 made a feeble attempt at making character skill matter via the use of thresholds, but pretty much everyone agrees that that was crappy design and should not be repeated.

I am not saying the player should feel removed from the experience, but rather that the player's personal skill should be removed therefrom so that the character's skill determines the outcome, as it is meant to.

well no offence here but i highly dout there is gonna be aliens running around the wastelands.

Ok well lets just say there wasnt mini games. This is me going into a top secret base. As i enter the base i find a locked door. But its ok cause my lockpicking skill is high enough to by pass an atempt at picking the lock. I travel further in and find a laptop. Its ok im smart enough to by pass the passcode.

So in 5 sec i just by passed 2 things. Wow, no skill at all. An RPG should not be a movie were you sit back and relax while you character does as he wish. Just beacause you have a high lock pick skill does not mean you should auto pick somthing. If you want to auto by pass mini games go play a game like W.O.W aint no picking locks there. Or you can stop being a lazy person and actualy play the game the way it should be played.

Hey dont cry because you cant do the minigames. RPGs can use that, it feels more real. Lockpicking is not hard one bit just learn what to do. if you dont want these minor things in the game then dont play it cause i for one love them. Get the game on pc im sure u can get a mod that makes it so minigames dont pop up

Your argument is stupid. "RPG means playing the role of your character" If you're playing the role of your character why would you not do as he does? According to your argument things like eating, traveling, or even combat should just be automated just because its your characters skill that matters. Playing an RPG is about immersion, and what better way to immerse yourself in the world by having to picklocks with a bobbypin (among other things), it would break the immersion completely for me if i just clicked a button and it did it for me. You're also saying that it is "trivial", but that is just your opinion (as well as everything I'v said is mine). Some people may find the combat trivial and just want to play for the story and the iteraction of the characters, so should it just be automated? Better yet why dont we just watch a movie of the character we want instead of roleplaying with them, it would get rid of all the "trivial" aspects of the game

Ok well lets just say there wasnt mini games. This is me going into a top secret base. As i enter the base i find a locked door. But its ok cause my lockpicking skill is high enough to by pass an atempt at picking the lock. I travel further in and find a laptop. Its ok im smart enough to by pass the passcode. So in 5 sec i just by passed 2 things. Wow, no skill at all. An RPG should not be a movie were you sit back and relax while you character does as he wish. Just beacause you have a high lock pick skill does not mean you should auto pick somthing. If you want to auto by pass mini games go play a game like W.O.W aint no picking locks there. Or you can stop being a lazy person and actualy play the game the way it should be played.

Ok well lets just say there wasnt mini games. This is me going into a top secret base. As i enter the base i find a locked door. But its ok cause my lockpicking skill is high enough to by pass an atempt at picking the lock. I travel further in and find a laptop. Its ok im smart enough to by pass the passcode. So in 5 sec i just by passed 2 things. Wow, no skill at all. An RPG should not be a movie were you sit back and relax while you character does as he wish. Just beacause you have a high lock pick skill does not mean you should auto pick somthing. If you want to auto by pass mini games go play a game like W.O.W aint no picking locks there. Or you can stop being a lazy person and actualy play the game the way it should be played.

You may want to reread Black Spiders post. Black Spider were able to play the minigames, but disliked the fact that people with fine motor control issues would be unable to succeed in picking a Very Easy lock even if they had 100 Lockpicking.


As I noted earlier, the minigames are major immersion breakers: They *magically* freeze time while you pick the lock or hack the computer at your leisure. Where is the thrill that someone might walk in on you? Worse, they substitute player skill for character skill. As Black Spider noted earlier, if I had fine motor control issues, I would be unable to win the lockpicking minigame. If I'm not good at finding patterns, I would be unable to win the hacking minigame. In essense this would make it a waste of skill points to build Lockpicking or Science.


If you had not placed points in lockpicking, you would not get into the top secret base. If you had not placed points in security, you would not have hacked the terminal. So, yes, there is skill there. Character skill. And I do find it hillarious that you call other gamers lazy because they want to play the game in a different manner than you do

Personally the way I view mini-games in games is that they are ok in the likes of action and or adventure games where it's more a case of player skill possibly defined by the 'characters' skill set in what you can or can't do.
But RPG's are about Character skills over player skills in that if your character is a supposid master at doing something then they should be able to do it well regardless of whether or not the actual player doesn't have the required skills or mindset to be able to do it well. Take the hacking minigame in Fallout 3 for example, some people just couldn't figure out the required word to be able to hack the computer terminals even if their character had 100 skill in Science which should have meant that even an easy terminal should have been a mere cakewalk.

Basically I think that mini-games have NO place at all in RPG's because they detract from or even negate the character skills that should be the MAINSTAY of the RPG completely.

For those who like the mini-games, sorry but I don't think you should be able to 'cheat' your way through them because you happen to be good/stonking at them yourself even if your character is a complete neophyte at what the min-game is for as that completely negates one of the main idealologies behind a RPG, in that you have created a character who SHOULD have STRENGTHS and WEAKNESSES as in they should be good at somethings and completely naff at other things.

Fallout ain't a RPG. It's a cRPG for chrissake! Are the true Role Playing Games forgotten now, or too much kids are playing this kind of games these days?

And the best part of the game FREEDOM to do whatever you please, including minigames. But as i said in my last [post a autopick button would solve all the problems. Auto-pick relize on character skill while picking for real relize on player skill.

Fallout is considered a RPG game only because you take the role of a wander in the wastelands. But truly Fallout 3 and New Vegas take on the role of almost all geners of games.

Puzzler- Minigames like lockpicking, Poker, Hacking, etc.
Adventure- Giant area to explore and learn new things
Action- Fighting with wepons and lots of death
Strategy- Go about how you assualt an area however you want
RPG- Join the role of a person after the bombs fell

And the best part of the game FREEDOM to do whatever you please, including minigames. But as i said in my last [post a autopick button would solve all the problems. Auto-pick relize on character skill while picking for real relize on player skill.

To be pedantic about the Role aspect, looked at one way it could be argued that ALL games are RPG's or cRPG's as the case may be, in that you 'play' the role of the central character in them, be it a FPS like Halo, an Adventure game like Monkey Island, a Strategy Game like Civilization etc etc. Although most games these days could be said to spread across several genres of gaming admitadly.

Also what I was trying to get at or point out is that in cRPG's or RPG's the character skill should matter more than the players skill at something. If you are for example trying to pick a lock and it's via a mini-game it generall doesn't matter if your character is either mince or a maestro at it, if you as a player could do said mini-game with your eyes closed which I think kind of defeats the purpose of having character skills for such things.
One possible way round that would be for the character skill to allow greater leeway in the player skill or lack thereof, which to give an example with lockpicking again. With a very low character skill the 'sweet spot' for picking a lock would have to be hit exactly or you don't pick the lock, with a higher character skill you get a range next to the 'sweet spot' where it would allow you to pick it as if you had hit the 'sweet spot' exactly.

With regards to your mention about either the mini-game or autopick/hack button, the problem with that is that those who can do the mini-games with their eyes closed don't have to worry about 'wasting' skill points or at least as many skill points in the relevant skills as those who either prefer or have to rely on the characters skill to get past the mini-game.

I'm not trying to get at anyone with this, I'm trying to point out/show why I think that mini-games should not be part of games which are cRPG's.