Either staying the same or/and just adding crap...

I don't buy much of them any more.

I doo like the realistic graphics and water though..

I love rehashed characters from a previous game.

Gaming has been a business for a long time 30+ years.

Interestingly enough some of us don't want a 'good' product, we want the 'best' product, and when I'm paying there's no give and take. IMHO DA:O2 was substandare clap trap, I got a refund, I haven't had to make do wth anything. Even though I do agree with the your sentiment 'They make a good product that caters to a wider community while keepiing as many of the original customers happy.' it is easy said than done, and is the goal of most businesses in the world, anyone with the secret can make a lot of money.

But there is always a market, take Ferrari they make a small number of expensive cars - they make money, Ford make a large number of nodescript mass market cars - they make money. Bioware have gone from the Ferraris of the RPG wordl to the Fords (sorry for any Ford owners, but I would have a Ferrari over a Ford anyday). Did Bioware become famous for making Mass market games? Nope they didn't.

Why have to redefine an already muddled genre just because they are the trend of the recent generation. No denying that lots of people find dice rolls, spreadsheets and rule sets incredibly tedious. It's like redefining chess for the mainstream. Some things can be RPG-ish (far removed from the boring aspect) and can be a great success.

I don't like this either it is or it isn't approach to RPGs because it's becoming a buzzword at this point.

I've been playing "Guild Wars" since last summer, and I think the upcoming Guild Wars 2 has a lot of potential. GW was founded to get away from many of the conventions and cliches of World of Warcraft, and GW 2 will have a persistent world instead of resetting every time a player leaves an area. Griefing, stealing from other players, player-killing are prevented in both the first GW games and the upcoming sequel. Though you could make the arguement that GW doesn't have enough roleplaying in it to qualify as an RPG in the same way as single-player RPGs, I think it shows an evolution over the years.

*rolls his dice and consults random chart full of nope.avi*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvdf5n-zI14

I believe the article is missing one key fact about Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2. EA is the main reason why those games like Mass Effect 2 got striped of most of their RPG mechanics or in DA2's case Gameplay mechanics. Still both are decent games but they are nowhere near as good as they should be, although I'll give an exception for ME2 however that game barely qualifies as an RPG (Exp at the end of the mission WTF, and where's my random loot oh wait that got streamlined too). Streamlining is bad, there is more to life then money and Publishers need to realize that. Oblivion is still the best game that I've ever played and that games been out what 5 years and is better then 99% of the games out there and or games that have been released since then. I'd say 100% but I don't want the Morrowind fans poking me with a spear.

Also RPG's don't need Romances, BGS and softworks don't get tricked into putting that feature in Skyrim. Focus on Gameplay, please focus on gameplay and less Bugs/Glitches.

I think it's very simple.

RPG's aren't dying
Bioware is giving them a bad name but that's because of EA
Skyrim will give the rest of the industry notice on how you make an RPG and what an RPG truly is.
Hopefully more people follow what BGS did with Skyrim. 5 and a half years of development and if Fallout 3 wasn't made it probably would be closer to 4 years. Great masterpieces aren't made over night, in 1 year or in 2 years for that matter. Great RPG's need 3 years of development minimum and hopefully the industry takes notice of what Skyrim does. Is Skyrim Streamlining heck no. You still have the core elements of the previous games but all BGS is doing is tweaking some things like the combat, adding in a new leveling system which was needed badly, and duelwielding. I wouldn't worry about the article. FPS's will always get more money but gamers like myself truly know what the GOAT or GOAT's are and they aren't FPS's like Black Ops.

I think GW2 will be more of a put-the-RP-back-in-MMORPG kind of game than The Old Republic, which puts this on its banner, rolls around in that banner, strips and then streaks through every piece of game journalism.

Meh...I still loved ME2 (maybe more than the original one in fact) so I actually don't feel RPGs are losing it RPGing elements. Besides for a game to be an RPG it simply needs to be able to make you RP and ME makes me RP as Shepard, I don't feel i'm not him by having less armors :shrug:

I like Mass Effect 2 as well and I don't mind having Custom Armor but I really don't like the fact that I don't gain Exp when I kill an enemy. The Elder Scrolls is different that's more of a progression then anything and it works fine for the game but ME2 didn't need to get rid of it. I understand why they did it I mean Insanity would get you tons of exp but still I hate the fact that they did it. Also I really don't like having 6 different weapons out of all the weapons. Bioware could've put in more guns, I mean Borderlands has what 9 million guns. Bioware easily could've put in 100 different weapons.

I know what I look for in RPGs, and the stuff BioWare is now churning out doesn't resemble it at all. Therefore I shan't be buying it or calling it anything but action adventure. BioWare have taken their IPs and made them 'accessible' (which in their media spin came to mean something everyone can play and like, and if you didn't agree you were somehow... wrong. lol That's funny I think.) and left room for masses of DLC and added content and under EA's yoke BioWare's image - at least to the fans of their RPG classics using licensed IPs - has taken a massive blow.

That's BioWare's problem... doesn't affect the great genre that is Role-Playing Games. Dunno why people seem to think that because BioWare are dikeing around with their own IPs that this will have some amazing or detrimental impact on the genre. -_-

RPGs* aren't dying or evolving, really. It depends on how you look at it.

Now, the RPGs that I like are dying. The last one was Fallout: New Vegas, and Obsidian really seems like the last best hope for me. Then again, there are some people who don't really like "oldschool" mechanics, and prefer to have hybrid RPGs.

*when I talk about RPGs, I mean CRPGs (vidya gaems), not PnP. I don't play those.

Again, just like the :huh: reaction I had to the people saying "It's not an RPG because it doesn't have a huge inventory system", I have a similar reaction to saying "It's not an RPG, it doesn't have random loot drops".


Yes, many RPGs have random loot. But it doesn't follow that random loot = RPG.

That's just one way to do it.


(Also, XP at the end of a mission? Takes me back to my pen-and-paper RPG days. The GM would usually only give XP at either the end of a game session, or at the end of a "chapter" - you know, a good break between sections. You didn't get XP whenever you killed an Orc, you got it when the GM gave it to you. :shrug:)

I like when people talk about the games getting dumbed down they make it seem like only intellectuals are capable of playing a hardcoe RPG. Lol, I'm pretty sure even preteen kids are able to play most "hardcoe" RPG. I known I did when I was younger.

I'm not sure if someone has mentioned but I think state of the gaming industry has the biggest impact on the evolution / de-evolution of the genre. These companies are pouring in alot of money into these games, they need to sell more copies, they need to expand their audience to do this. So the games get tweaked to have mass appeal. Simple as that, yet it pretty much makes hardcoe RPGers suffer.

Keep in mind that they will probably GAIN more fans by broadening the games appeal of the game. Sure, they also lose some fans, but even people who are disappointed in dumbed down sequel will likely still play it. (I'll use myself and DA2 as an example.)

IMO, we will have to look for smaller game developers to for a truly "hardcoe" RPG. A company that can go out on a limb and take risks, like developing a game that is really only for a small segment of the gaming audience.

I just think the larger companies can be hesitant to gamble on a truly hardcoe RPG.

Well, all games are dying All games that aren't made by Bethesda or obsidian are dying :wink_smile:

This "Bioware doesn't make RPGs anymore" movement irks me.

For Mass Effect I completly disagree, but I can see the reasoning. For Dragon Age 2, I just don't see any reason behind what was said...

I've played lots of RPGs over the years, in many different styles. I will say that, at some point, I got tired of having lots of extra micromanagement and/or crap to keep track of. (But, then, lots of micromanagement is one of the things that I avoid the most in computer games. Never really got far in the SimCity games, get tired of RTS's when the number of units gets too large, etc)




I never finished the original Baldur's Gate, for instance. As I recall, it was a partially because of the massive proliferation of quests that built up (I'd go to some village in pursuit of one sidequest, and just talking to people there would add a dozen more. It got overwhelming) and a sudden difficulty spike (I guess I annoyed someone, or got enough reputation, but at some point every map I entered would have a group of nasty dudes firing barrages of magic arrows. Just got slaughtered over, and over, and over.) So.... too high difficulty plus waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many constantly increasing options. I just gave up.

Not wanting to repeat the endless tediousness of all the "filler" combats in Dragon Age is why I never played that one a second time, too (even though it's plot & character interactions really made me want to).



Edit: the Mass Effect games always strike me as great RPGs. Because of all the dialogue/story/characters/choices. It's not just straight combat like some "RPG"s.

This is the kind of thing that made marketing DA:2 as a new kind of revolutionary RPG easier for BioWare and EA. During the whole build-up in interviews and press releases the focus was on how making it 'accessible' was a necessity. "Players don't want this and that..." (We say because we're not developing or promoting this and that) "... players want this and THIS!" (We say because this is what we're trying to sell.) "Redefining the genre..." (Marketing a totally different game as belonging to that genre...)

It was like, somehow gaming elements in a lot of THE MOST SUCCESSFUL RPGs IN GAMING HISTORY (of which BioWare's extensive library is a part)... simply didn't have a place any more. That somehow sales of those games was a fluke and "... how could we have missed this? We should totally have been doing it this way all along. Obviously we've been doing it wrong all these years. Buy it, buy it, buy it..." Tony Blair had weaker spin-doctors.


The BioWare are 'revolutionising' the genre movement irks me. lol Heh ha. IMHO Seems like a they're making a totally different type of game.... why don't they just admit it and call it what it is? Action/Adventure... uh... movement. :confused:

Well, the ADD / soundbite / text / tweet generation does seem to have alot less patience for stuff that takes more than 5 minutes. Now, whether they're leading the media (TV, movies, News, games) in that direction, or the other way around..... that's a hard question. It's probably a combination of the two feeding off each other.

It really is about a shift in what the term 'RPG' means. In the past, the role that you play was defined by the skills you choose, or your 'numbers'. Modern day games almost seem to have been directly influenced by TES, Morrowind in particular, where you can choose your path - they all just pursue it in different ways.

To say that TES games should be 'hardcoe RPGs' is really just missing the point. They strayed from the pattern of that long ago - they never really had the 'stat-based' RPG as their main goal. They have always had the freedom, which is what Skyrim is pretty much tuning to perfection now.

But I will agree that stat-based ones are dying - simply because of market changes. You know how everyone flames Morrowind for the hit/miss combat system? And how damn easy top-down dungeon crawlers are to make (just look at desktop dungeons)?

So in conclusion, RPGs are fine, in fact they're doing better than ever. But stat-RPGs, which are still as good a layout to some people as the new ones, are dying.

Sadly it seems that way doesn't it. Most flight games nowadays confine you to a small height 2D plane without much area. Being able to go for minutes on end in any direction was amazing. The closest I've felt like that in a game in a long time was sailing in Zelda: Wind Waker.

Edit:
All the advanced controls too... I can't believe I played that game when I was like 12.

RPGs becoming user-friendly =/= the death of RPGs.

Maybe it's just me, but too much of DnD style dice rolls are a huge turn-off for me when it comes to RPGs. It's the only thing I dislike about Morrowind really. And I say that because when I swing my sword I expect it to hit the thing, not just go "woosh".

To me, role-playing games are just that: Me playing a role which (hopefully) is somewhat determined by my choices. All the mathematics of stats and the like don't make or break an RPG to me, although I do prefer to have them.

I don't really like perk systems though, as I think they don't make sense.

Yeah that could have been handled better, but it really is no different from trying to pick a lock and hearing 'click' and having a message telling you you're not skilled enough to pick it. Or launching an arrow and having it sail wide.

With the sword you're not skilled enough to hit whatever is in front you with its own skills and stats in agility or whatever. In real life when you swing a sword, there's a chance your opponent will duck or dodge and you'll miss. That you don;t see it in the game doesn't mean it ain't happening. Gamers complaining they're not getting swing and hit combat in an RPG, expecting... a... Action/Adventure game... is probably down to the way it was implemented and presented in-game, as the face of RPGs changed from top-down isometric to fully realised characters on screen giving it their all.

I mean, devs could have every sword hit, hit, but just do next to no damage... to quench those complaints, instead having the "whoosh". No need to implement a "hit a button and something awesome happens" style of play. Ha ha. ^_^

I wasn't talking about making games more accessible, I was stating that even the most "hardcoe" RPGs aren't very complicated and that most preteen kids would be able to figure them out and enjoy them.

I emphasized my point by saying that when I was between 10-12, I was playing "hardcoe" RPGs and enjoying myself just fine.

My point: They don't have to make it accessible for people to enjoy it.

My other point: People like to think that because they're a RPG player they are some how "above" and "different" than your typical gamer. This makes me chuckle. It is all gaming people. This isn't rocket science.

Just thought I'd point that out since you seem to have misunderstood what i said.

Right, and I really don't expect every swing to hit, especially not against a bone lord or ash vampire.

...But a rat? I think I'm skilled enough to spear it even if I've never handled a sword before. Same goes for mud crabs.

Basically enemies that would be easy to kill in real life should be easy to kill in game. Not so much with humans and on though.

I didn't. lol I understood what you said, and highlighted the fact that BioWare/EA in marketing their 'revolutionary" RPG used that stigma attached to 'hardcoe RPGs' to great effect. As you say, there are misconceptions about the complexity of "hardcoe RPGs" - they're not difficult to play, or clunky, or even complicated. In telling people they're making RPGs more "accessible" BioWare/EA found the impetus for their marketing spin, because so many people go around touting RPGs as being the grand daddy of intricate, baffling complexity when it comes to gaming. ^_^

It was like, "Look, now anyone can like and play them now! We did it! We've revolutionised the genre!" (By making a game that doesn't quite belong in it.)


Aye. Killing them easily, or just doing away with the early grind against pointless creatures would be a good call. Not sure I've read of any warriors in history who honed their talents killing small woodland creatures and vermin. Or of any concentrated attacks by vermin and small woodland creatures on pretty much anyone in the vicinity, come to that. Rats don't usually barrel towards you when they see you, hopping up to bite you, and standing their ground exchanging blows. Heh. Eee I lol'd.