I swear when I first saw the title( I don't know if there's a topic description, it doesn't show it on an iPhone) I thought to myself "role-playing game versus rocket-propelled grenade." :facepalm: Its too early for me....

To be honest, I get my proper roleplaying fix from regular sessions with my PnP RPG group, so I'm okay with newer roleplaying games, as long as the core gameplay is solid. I think classic roleplaying kind of spoils you on the limits that games have though, but that's to be expected.

I just want to have fun. If I have to freeform it, to rolling dice, to shooting people FPS style as long as I can be pulled into a character or make a character and get pulled into the experience of said character and have fun. I don't care. Your mileage may vary though, not everyone has the same things that immerse them into characters.

I push the attack button, but it is the skill of the characters that determines the outcome of the attack. Is the attack blocked or dodged? Does the PC hit or miss, or critically miss and hit themselves or drop the weapon? Is the character so skilled that they can slay all who stand before them regardless of the fast twitch mouse skills of the player?




I push the directional movement buttons, but the speed and efficiency of that movement is dependent on the characters stats. Slower characters cannot move as fast, injured characters cannot move as fast, more agile character can get places others can’t




When talking to NPCs, my choices (should be) limited to information that my character has knowledge of and not be expanded to everything I, as the player, knows.




Now you’re just being silly.




Are you referring to how you completely missed the point? Yeah I got that.


Also, because it was asked. I do, in real life, have a decent lockpicking skill, which has absolutley no impact on the lockpicking game in Oblivion as it is nothing like the real thing. That said I still prefer to rely on character skill than player skill.

I much prefer RPGs...Rpgs are rather, meh.

Usually I tend to associate the capitalization of the words R,P,G with any type of Roleplaying game table top like D&D or Video Games like Oblivion. RPG games are my holy grail, I'm really good at them and it's my best video game type that I'm good at.

The essence of character based stat driven RPGs is fundamentally rejected by real time interaction. What can be done to marry these two? Both of them will have to make sacrifices in order to meet in the middle somewhere.

In a traditional Action game the character's abilities are usually static and therefor no matter how long you play you can only jump so high or run so fast. In a traditional RPG character abilities are determined by player choice and they change (usually increasing) the longer you play. If Action = Player skill and RPG = Character skill then the perfect marriage of the two would be player skill limited by character skill.

Yes, the OB lock picking mini-game was horrible, too easy for some or (like me) too hard for others. Problem with anyone complaining that it removes the character's skill check intrinsic to character based RPGs is that it was optional. Bethesda provided you with the skill check option and if you didn't use it that is your fault. I used it always but not because I wanted a character skill check to do all of my lock picking for me, it was because I was horrible at the mini-game. If I was good at it I would have been happy to be limited to the level of lock I could attempt according to my skill level. FO3 made that change from Oblivion so Bethesda is well aware and attempted to rectify. Can't ask more than that really.

Bethesda IS trying to make this marriage work and they have yet to nail it but are on the right path with the use it to level it concept. They may have gotten closer in Skyrim then they ever have but it may be decades before we see perfection.

I think that RPGs and Rpgs can work at the same time with a few minor adjustments.

Let's take the Lockpick game from Oblivion. It made the Hard locks more complicated than the Easy locks, I think it would be better to have all the locks in the game use all five pins for players with low lock pick skill and reduce the number of pins as skill goes up. After all as you get better at something it should get easier.

When aiming a firearm, in say Fallout 3, instead of getting a nice little crosshair to aim with how about a circle. When fired the bullet will hit somewhere in the circle, the higher the weapon skill then the smaller the circle. This would require some player skill in pointing the character in the right direction, but not totally dismiss the skill level of the character.


Again with the lock picking - I feel that the Fallout 3 version is actually worse than Oblivion as it puts artificial limits on what locks you can even attempt (Hard, Very Hard..), offers little incentive to use the skill check (even at 100 Lockpick the "Force" option still has relativley low chance of success) and even penalizes you for not playing the mini game (unsuccesful attempts jam the lock so that it can never be picked again rather than letting you fail and try again, perhaps after gaining more skill).

:facepalm: You do realise that this comment was basically a big joke on how so many people want most things to be dependant on character skill? But anyway...

Aiming a bow requires player skill, aiming spells requires player skill, yet no one complains about those in Oblivion. If you want everything to be dependent on character skill, there is always D&D. And don't tell me the usual "In Morrowind, your spells/arrows/darts/meele weapons could miss it's targets, depending on character skill" because I don't feel immersed when standing RIGHT IN FRONT of a mudcrab, swinging my sword at its face, and failing to hit it. There are limits.

You are the one that completely missed the point :confused: