This is absurd logic.... An audience (fan-base) should be formed based on the elements of the genre in question, because they like the elements... Not the elements of the genre in question being altered to suite random whims of an ultimately apathetic majority.

If a game isn't for you, it isn't for you. That's all there is to it. Believing a game or god-forbid, a genre should be completely altered to better suite the tastes of specific individuals outside of it's original fan-base is insanity and frankly insensitive to said fan-base.

I enjoyed ME2 and DA2 (to a lesser extent). I can't deny though feeling like something, and I don't even necessarily know what that something is, but something, was missing. It was the something that drew me into games like Fallout 2 and BG2. It was the something that has caused me to love RPGs since I was old enough to read. It's like theres an old-school soul that older RPGs had that new ones just don't... They almost feel soulless.

When I think about it the idea of being "stream-lined" for consolization it does seem like a very plausible explanation.

Back when BG2 and Fallout 2 were made you never heard people saying [censored] like (The graphics svck!, How come I can't fight in real time!, waaah this, waaah that) the games were made according to a vision and they appealed to those who appreciated said vision. If those two classics had been tweaked here, nipped there, tucked here, to appeal to a "wider" audience I doubt they'd be the classics many still remember fondly today.

On another note

I wish we could get some serious hardcoe RPG devs with old-school sensibilities as much as the next RPG lover, the sad truth though is that in order to recoup expenses for making a "AAA" game as the industry likes to call it and still turning a profit is to add appeal to the masses (hoo-ray - Read Sarcasm)...

The only way we could get RPGs done in the vein of old-school classics is if they had significantly reduced development costs, and that means significantly reduced resources (though not necessarily over-all quality - based on opinion of course). Problem is... That's not gonna happen cause your not gonna find a business content to simply exist in symbiosis with it's established fan-base, companies suffer from an ever-increasing hunger to grow and improve profitability and THAT is what ultimately kills the old-school RPG.

Greed.

Yes lets all pretend to be surprised.

So good points are made on all sides, but I think the bottom line has to be 'is it an RPG'.

My first RPG's were Dungeon Master and then Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon they are what I call RPG's. Morrowind and Oblivion are RPG's no problem, ME1/2 are not IMHO, they are 3d person shooters like 'Tomb raider', etc. I've played DA:O2 and it's not an RPG its been uninstalled and returned. I've just reinstalled Oblivion and spent the first 60 minutes running around a dungeon, juggling inventory, setting up my character, nothing to do with a story at all - its pure RPG. I want to role play - if I want a good story I'll read a book - I want to run around in armour, casting spells and chopping up monsters, that I can't do, there are laws against that kind of thing in the UK.

I'm an 'old' hardcoe gamer that likes RPG's and I WANT RPG's not console ports. Now this might sound silly and pretentious (which I am not) but I'm old enough to have alot of disposable income to spend, I would want me as a customer, I'm not worried about the price of the latest ATI/NVida or n-core cpu, I'm only interested in playing the best games in the time I have between work and family. I played Bioware Baldur's Gate first time around, I certainly won't be playing DA:O3.. or anything else from Bioware unless they change their stance on their games. As an example BlueByte dumbed down the Settlers series for a couple of versions, these did not sell well at all - the last versions brought back many of the removed features.

I think as one of the commenters said, games will go dumber and dumber untill they stop selling and someone reinvents the genre.but by then many customers will have long since gone. Anyway I'm off to the Inn!!

Tell me something I don't know. I agree ME is an awesome game but not an RPG. (hint were always Commander Shepard). It has some RPG ideas like skill allocating and multiple paths but thats about it.

ASG - Allocating Skill Games is what ME and DAO and such should be called. Or if someone has a better description or acronym.

I seriously don't know, as I don't play so many RPG's (actually I don't play many anykind of games nowadays), but in the case of Bioware the RPG elements seem to be dying (may have something to do with EA?).
ME2 and DA2 are not so good as RPG's, but good as action games.

Alot of you seem to be forgeting they have to appeal to a wider audience to make money so we can continue to play the games we like. that means the "hardcoe fan" has to just deal with it.

Fans can have good ideas but when it comes to having to get more customers then the fans will have bad ideas because the fans only think of themselfs not the bigger picture.

Alot of the skills in most RPG's are redundant

Theres also differnt forms of RPG and alot of you are only focusing on the kind that the TES series is. and only sticking to and using TES as the standard. Its wrong to do this because of the differnt forms of RPG.

Edit
Dragon age/MAss effect plays more like KOTOR. But KOTOR is an RPG...

Wrong to an extent:
Il2 series, now with Cliff of Dovers
DCS serie
RoF....

All are excellent sims

Its hard time for specialized developers, take flight sims example: IL2 will die cause oleg Maddox quit, DCS if the one that will probably survive longest cause their product complement Military contract, and the civilian sim issued directly from military declassified infos, RoF depend much on the to be realeased DC and a visual extension of the AI and player LOS beyond the 2.5 KM.

But in the other hand even having an arcade mode a-la-hawx, and many config to simplify from flight model to system managements, DCS is directed at flight sim entusiasts as you can report a lot of ex to actual real pilots, even pilots and maintainance crew in the A10 case.

But its not the same for RPG. RPG inicially was for assuming a role you can t assume in life in a fantary world, so it had slung on his back a pletora of kin to normal life features meant to mirror life constraint.
But from a decade from now it has become a generic s****load word excusing lazy producers, wanna be developers and inescrupulous marketeers to call anycrap a RPG, from action game to racing simulations up to RTS with 1st person view integrated.
So the origins of the true RPG are diluted in a muddy soup, with not-able-to-stand-failure and i-want-my-i-win-button cryer adding to the soup and the genre is slipping the river down to the point where people that don t like RPG are able to play them, because they are open sand box FPS, or simply become ACTION game travested in RPG for the horde in a diabolic fashion.

Yes pure RPG can die and probably will at some point, the same way isometric strategic games died for RTS, RPG can die for ACTIONGAMES.

its sad but true to the point, SKYRIM is a RPG with advanced ACTION GAME cancer that already metastased to all its part.

So the combat system & perspective of ME1/2 make them "not RPGs" - ignoring things like character classes, quests, dialogue choices, stats & level gain, etc?


(How about Fallout 3? Large parts of the basic game are similar to Oblivion. But you're shooting a gun & can view the character in 3rd person. )

I don't have to 'deal with it' this 'hardcoe fan' has voted with his wallet and feet - Bioware have lost a dedicated fan. Apple is a company that knows that having a dedicated fan base is a lot more important than trying to sell a substandard mass market product to a anonymous mass market!

This is why arguing with a "harcore" this or that is impossible. Naturaly have elitest opinions on what this or that is and who or that is.

You are shooting.

Its modern/furtureistic

You have agun

Its not like this RPG or that RPG

It has a wider fan base.

etc etc

Edit.
Im not saying deal with it but there is always give and take. Gaming is a business now. Its a cold hard fact. They need to earn money. How do they earn money? Get more customers. How do they get more customers. They make a good product that catters to a wider community while keepiing as many of the original customers happy.

RPG are about taking roles and playing them. Being different characters other than yourself. Imagination.
Not so much about numbers and statistics, but they do help a great deal make a nice complex and detailed character sheet. But not what makes an RPG an RPG. Skill allocating, stats ,and level gain are just tools to fine tune the RPG, not the RPG itself.

i wouldnt worry about it. Mass effect and elder scrolls are different from other kinds of rpg's anyway when they r more action then wuts normal for an rpg. some may be dumbing down but at the same time other games r smarterning up. look at cal of duty for instance. depending on how well u play u level up. u take contracts. you earn perks. u try to use attachments to ur weapons to balance them out. and all this stuff u must learn. many games r taking on rpg elements. i would not worry if i were u. u will always have complicated rpg's and elder scrolls isn't dumbing down much. i got all IV of the main series and they r all pretty similar. skyrim will lose some things but that will force u to find other ways to do things. and mass effect btw is a modern title anyway. it came out in like 07 or so. so i mean... its not like its was an old school rpg or anything

So basicly the tools in Dragon age and Mass Effect. And alot of other games.

The game industry / market has gotten too large. Budgets have gotten too big (esp now with everything being HD, "realistic", etc).

To sell a game that costs that much to make, you can't build it for a "niche" audience. You have to make it mass market if you're going to make your money back.


So, yeah.... you'll get your made-for-the-fanatics games. But from small developers, and with small resources.



(I've noticed it among console RPGs.... most JRPGs these days are being made for the Nintendo DS & Sony PSP. Because the budget required to make a good PS3/X360 game means you need to sell millions of copies to break even. And alot of those wacky games just won't do that, even in Japan. Heck, Dragon Quest is a HUGE series in Japan. People taking off from work, ditching school, and standing in lines wrapped around blocks to buy the new editions. And DQ9 was made for the Nintendo DS.)

Never said that the combat system... doesn't make them an RPG, infact I never said why I don't think they are RPG's but I will now

I thnk ME1/2 are not RPG's in the true sense, because of the dialog restrictions, the narrow skills set, limited inventory, weapons choices, lack of side quests to name but a few.

You missed the point of what I was saying, by focussing on just one item in a list. The person I was quoting said that ME1 & 2 weren't RPGs because they were "third person shooters like Tomb Raider".

(Which, as far as I know, doesn't have anything from that list I gave. The Tomb Raider games I've seen were linear, puzzle/platformer action games. Nearly nothing in common with ME1&2.)

Pretty much how I see it.

Leveling, perks, classes came along to help organize all the things we can do and how we would rate our progression into what were doing. The basis of Rping is something you can find in the fanfiction section of the forums. The *tools* mentioned are used to put it into a game format.

Kirayln - Sorry I do that sometimes. :icecream: Ammends?

I totally agree that some game develpoers such as EA will purely make games with strict deadline and get the game out no matter what. I don't know if any one here has played FIFA11 but that game on career mode was a joke! And to be honest that is reflected across many of EA games. The reason being they have deadlines. For example FIFA football is a yearly release, a new version comes out each year without fail, and i'm sorry, but 1 year is simply not long enough to make a game these days, so they release it anyway, with game breaking bugs. I know this isn't an RPG in the familiar sense, but this leads me on to ME2. I thought the game was great personally, but i hadn't played ME1. The game isn't designed to be an on going franchise. It is designed to have a trilogy out and sold and done in the same time it takes for 1 Elder Scrolls game. Thats the difference right there.

Although i do think ME2 is an RPG, it cant be compared with an RPG such ESIV. The "free roaming" aspect just isn't there, yet it is packaged in a way where you believe you can explore the whole galaxy, but when you get to a city it is all just background, you can't go anywhere. They are limited and act out more like a movie. I think there will be a line deviding RPG's in the coming years, and we will still get the real deal on one side of it.

As long as we have developers such as Bethesda who pride themselves on the experience they create for people rather than making money we will have great RPG's. I honestly believe that Bethesda have the attitude where they want to look back on the body of work they have created and say "ok, so we havn't made the money that EA or Bioware have made but hey, we have made some truely great, unforgetable games that have stood the test of time, now can somebody move all these awards out of the way so i can put my feet up!"

Simply not true, there dozen of examples if not hundreds, and that sell soo much more than watered down for any idiot crap.

np




True, but isn't that also a carry-over from the pen-and-paper RPGs that the computer ones grew from? D&D had leveling, proficiencies/feats/etc, classes....

Thanks to the OP for the link to a very good article

I agree with gamerant's quote of:



I think that was where i got disappointed with ME2 that they took away some of the roleplaying aspects I enjoyed from the first one and focussed on improving combat.

They also say regarding Skyrim:



So I got the impression they are hoping Bethesda continues to provide the closest experience to the original D&D style RPG's where you get to craft your character rather than be forced to play as the designers wanted - and that's been my impression of Skyrim with the removal of classes - it looks like I can be much freer to play the character I want

Ah when I meant game format i meant both video games and P&P, I was thinking how people would RP through stories and then went to P&P. I'm not sure which came first however or were they starting around the same time?

RPG seems to be a grey area these days. I wonder, how would you folks define it? Are we basing these types of games on a pre-technology setting where we sat around a dungeon master, rolled the dice and managed our character with pad and pencil? Should it be based on medieval/renaissance-style clothing, architecture, weaponry and chivalrous combat with elements of magic and fantastical creatures, in a world where you have a customizable character whose skills and stats improve with experience? I'm a bit old school and this was my idea of an RPG. But there are questing style games out there that have modern or futuristic weaponry and settings, where you can still customize your character somewhat and improve stats and skills with experience and have a progressing storyline. Would these also be considered RPGs? I have my opinions on what games I'd put in this category and what games I would slot somewhere else, but it's just my opinion and doesn't mean my definition is the correct one. I think what many old-school or hardcoe RPGers seem to be upset about is that the definition of RPG is changing from what it used to be and is merging with other genres so were getting a mesh of Action/Adventure/RPG/FPS/Strategy/Etc. games coming out. I think that this is both good and bad. I think we should all keep an open mind when it comes to games. Many development houses now are taking the best elements of these genres to create some really fantastic and fun games. However, I would still love to see some more open-world TES types of games every now and then. I know TES series does not define what an RPG is but you have to admit they are certainly a major contributor.

ME1/2 have more dialog choices than any standard RPG I have seen other than KOTOR. Morrowind/Oblivion I was kinda quided on rails.

ME1 had alot of skill choices. ME2 was "stream lined" and the got rid of the "redundant" skills.

ME1 had alot of inventory and weapon choices. ME2 Not so much of inventopry but you had it and can still customize to your style you are playing for.

Weapons choices. for ME1 Shotgun/Pistol/AR/sniper/grenades/melee/Biotics IE magic. ME2 Shotgun/Pistol/AR/sniper/Heavy weapon/Biotics/melee. TES Axe/mace/bow/sword/magic 2 handed weapons same choices. All of them have multiple and differnt versions of each.

Mass effect had alot of side quests. I spent over 100 hours doing them alone with the main quest. ME2 not as much time around 80 hours

Dragon age has the same weapons choices as TES same inventory options same armor types theres alot of side quests diolog choices are still more than most of the conventional RPG games out there.

I fail lto see your argument

Good gods, people were always complaining like this, and always will be. This issue only gets more attention now because gaming itself has grown. Look beyond the bloody beaten path of mainstream gaming and find yourself something without a huge name. Academagia, Eschalon, games from Spiderweb. Just look and you will find.

As for games "not being RPGs any more", I'll just quote the definition again: A computer role-playing game is a game utilising player-driven development of a persistent character or characters, defined through statistics, via making consequential choices.
As long as this applies, it's a CRPG. ME2 and Dragon Age 2 are as much this as were their predecessors. The mechanics behind might change, be less complex, but those games stay CRPGs.

CRPGs that are purely RPGs are few in number, anyway. Arcanum and Fallout are the only "big" names I can think of now, actually.

You fail to see a argument because there isn't one, its just an opinion and its just my opinion at that. I do agree with much of what you have said above, maybe I'm being too picky, concentrating on the 'feel' of the games over the content. Possibly DA:O2 was such a shocker to me, that I may be protesting too much. I shall go to the Inn(Malt Shovels in Altrincham) tonight and see what quests are available.