Oh, my bad... stage left is... this way... is it? :bolt:



It hits, that's what's annoying about it. It hits you in your face when you go online, when you walk outside and see a billboard, when you get a bleeping message to your phone that reads, "PREMIUM DLC WHEN YOU KISS OUR FEET!" It even hits in the games you've already purchased, trying to shove more stuff that costs stuff in your face. There's nothing more annoying for a completionist than to have a quest marker in the quest log that you have to pay to play to get rid of! THEY KNOW THIS! That's why they do it!*rawr*

Even without EA dictating, if they don't too much, BioWare have made some shockingly bad decisions with their IPs IMHO. And for that reason... as the Dragons in the Den say... I'm out. Thanks but no thanks BW! You lost me at shoddy DLC, "accessible" (your own definition) and "awesome happens". lol ^_^

I'm certainly tires of seeing the "streamlining" *dumbing down* of the roleplaying genre. It seems like if your a company who actually did manage to become popular through the somewhat less marketable genre you are now tailoring your games to everyone but your initial audience, companies such as Bioware, and even Bethesda as well (though I do have hopes for Skyrim). What are counting as role-playing games aren't even recognizable to me, let along some of them are winning awards - http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=mass+effect+2+rpg+of+the+year&cp=20&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&aq=0&aqi=&aql=&oq=mass+effect+2+rpg+of&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=3d41c23107087b73

I just don't like the direction that the "major" roleplaying development teams are going. That isn't to say that there aren't people who know how to craft truly complex and rewarding experiences in this day and age, it is just becoming fewer and further between. I thought the article was really spot on, and shared many of the views and concerns that have been on my mind these last 5 years or so. Just my opinion.

I'm slow. School and these forums eat into my gaming time and I seem to have a lot of fun... running around gameworlds and just making sure I checked every nook and cranny for loot. Anyway, I've always been one to stretch my games, it seems. I'm 33 hours into Demon's Souls, have been playing for almost two weeks, and still have three of the five gameworld levels left to go through. When I first got Oblivion, it was non-stop playing for two months, a week-long break, then non-stop playing for another two months (best possible choice for my first PS3 game). I got 100 hours out of Final Fantasy XII, 100 hours out of Dragon Quest VIII, and too many hours out of Civilization games to count. I still play Oblivion a bit every now and then as there's still actually quite a bit of stuff I haven't done. I spent at least a couple weeks playing KotOR. I shouldn't even try to count what I put into Baldur's Gate II several years ago.

This, well put.

Gotta say, other than "well, the story was a bit weaker than the first one" and "planet scanning was actually worse than playing Amazing Bouncing Buggy", I'm not getting the hate for ME2. As I said in the last thread, I thought alot of it's "RPG"-ness (in the dialogue/etc) was stronger than the first game. :shrug:

But, then, I've played so many different games callled "RPGs" in the past 30 years, that little things like the combat system being "actiony" or there being little inventory...... no big deal. I've seen that before, it's nothing new.




It's been a busy few decades.


And it all seems fine to me. :shrug:

Costs, most likely. Big companies make fewer at a time, and smaller companies often can't afford to make them at all. Smaller developers need to seek out a publisher to cover their expenses, and publishers are less likely to risk their cash on something that's not the most popular genre. Indie developers are out there making non-blockbuster games, but many people don't even know they exist; they can't afford much marketing, and people often connect cost and quality and figure if it's cheap, it must be bad.

It is fine, it is. One would just need to look at all the games released over the years and not only the treasured memories. Then one can realise that this discussion is totally not new, and that it never will get old either.

(BTW, did you really miss out on Fallout 2? If so, remedy that, immediately! ^_^)

I can't be bothered to read through an entire thread, but I think RPG designers (and fans) need to learn to distinguish between complexity and depth. Not many people want to fill out a huge spreadsheet of stats about how good their character is at incredibly specific skills. It doesn't aid roleplaying. Maybe Fable 3 was over-simplified, but I'd rather play it than spend the first half hour of Oblivion trying to decide if I want to be slightly better at lockpicking or speech, a choice which has no real noticable effect in the rest of the game. RPGs are not being dumbed down, they're just getting rid of all the stupid overhangs from the 8-bit days when choices were made because of lack of technology, and have somehow become traditions.

I would disagree and say that it does aid role-playing and is one of the reason we play RPGs. To micromanage stats, inventories etc. Anything less is boring to some of us.

So wouldn't it be better to make them have a noticable effect rather than just cutting it out?

Well, they are trying to introduce and make these games appealing to a broader audience. I swear if I had ran into Fallout 2 before I had the patience to learn the concept of RPGs, I would have tossed it out onto the street. Many of these players are coming from First Person Shooters, and a much more generic and simple game type. This, in my opinion, is the real challenge for companies. Do they appease their die-hard fans, or try to attract new fans? Of course, the obvious solution is try 'n do both, but this would come to be a much larger challenge than one would think. Look at it this way: A new player is introduced to Morrowind and Oblivion. For the most part, your typical gamer that doesn't know the title well will find Morrowind unattractive due to some of its complexity. While Oblivion will be more simple and easier to follow, while still coming to the table with an overall fun game, but many of the veteran Bethesda fans didn't find Oblivion as appealing, but I believe we can all agree that regardless of it being less complex than Morrowind, it was an enjoyable game.

That said, my beef with Bioware isn't really Bioware, it's EA and how they rule things in their kingdom. I think Bioware would be best off (and safer off) getting away from them ASAP.

As with Skyrim, I have no doubt Bethesda will make the game as good as it is in the gameplay trailer, as they have no overlord to truly adhere to besides the ever-faithful customers. Of course, I may be showing a bit of biased really devoted fan-ism here, but they never have made me feel the game wasn't of par quality before, and I have no reason to now. They always come through, and as far as I can tell Skyrim will kick some ass in the RPG world. I think RPGs are growing if anything. They are blending in a bit with other genres of games, but they are growing in size.

In the previous thread on this topic (which was locked) I mentioned that I didn't want RPGs to be dumbed-down and it was misconstrued as meaning that I didn't think anyone other than hardcoe RPGers could be intelligent enough to play a substantial RPG. Well, no, that was totally not what I meant by dumbed-down. All I'm saying is, I feel like games are being rushed these days to make as much profit as possible and as quickly as possible. When features in a previous game are bad, then yes, remove them from the sequel or improve them. But in order to rush the sequel out, many games lately are removing some good features that were in the original game as well to cut back on development time. I think it's great that genres are merging, and technology is improving and there are so many games out there that most gamers on all platforms have many games to choose from and enjoy. But I just feel like the money-making aspect is becoming the major focus rather than the pride that comes from knowing that you've made a quality game. And DLC is also feeding this new greed model. Please don't get me wrong, money and profit need to be made or these companies won't be able to make more games, but don't rush a buggy, glitchy, and graphically inferior game to market to make money quickly with the mentality that you'll release a couple patches later to fix bugs and gameplay problems that you already knew existed but didn't want to fix because it would push back the release date. As consumers who are pumping quite a bit of money into this industry, don't we have the right to demand quality from these game developers? I feel any game that comes out now and is toted by the game developer as being an RPG really is an RPG. It's the developer's definition and opinion. All of them can be enjoyable but some time needs to be put into creating a top quality game without cutting corners. That is what I meant by games being dumbed-down. It had nothing to do with the intellect of any of the various types of gamers out there and more to do with the sub-standard game sequels we're getting in order for a game to be pumped out in less than a year.

What a great discussion.

Reading alot of these comments I think alot of feel people (including me) feel cheated as a consumer as games are dumbed down. I think dumbed down is probably not the best term, because really, it is an overall lack of quality. And I do not think this is limited to just RPGs, though they have been feeling the brunt of this lately.

I know others have said this, but I really i think this is a problem w/ the gaming industry itself. Development cycles geared around churning out the next sequel to make X amount of revenue.

There are huge titles that do and do it consistently. Infamously the COD series, but i'll include games like Guitar Hero, Madden, the Skate series etc. From a business standpoint these titles are a GOLD mine.

This has become kinda of the industry standard, so many genres, including RPGs are forced to conform in order to compete.

And I think it is that cycle which causes the dropping quality of many games and the dumbing down of RPGs.

RPG's already have died. RPG's were tabletop games, were you actually molded and shaped the game to your liking.

So why then are they dead if WotC and the likes are doing well, I did DM a session of 4th edition D&D Planescape a week ago, and plan to do that again this weekend? ^_^

I'm kind of jumping in here, but I couldn't help but disagree with this. Tabletop RPGs certainly started the genre, but just because they have evolved into video games doesn't mean they've died. It sounds to me like your comment is founded on nostalgia. It's true that modern (video game) RPGs aren't quite as customizable as their tabletop brethren, simply because the players aren't the ones in control to the same extent. In a video game you have to play within the developer's parameters, whereas in a traditional RPG the dungeon master or what have you controls how the game plays out. It's quite possible that the developer of a game will allow for a large amount of customization, and that events will impact the game itself. Look at Bioware's games.

The industry has more or less moved on from paper and plastic to an electronic medium, but that doesn't make the games any less of an RPG. In both versions you play a game where you take on a role of someone else, and make choices as you play. I don't see the difference.*

*It should be noted that I'm not a fan of tabletop RPGs. But hopefully you'll understand what I'm getting at.

EDIT: And as for the original question: RPG's are most definitely evolving. Whether or not you like the way they're going, they are evolving into something else. Not dying.

Yes, it would be great if programmers had the time to make every single little stat have a noticeable effect, but let's be realistic here, budgets and time constraints simply don't allow that to happen, so it's better to cut it out than just waste time. I'm all for inventories and having personality traits and stuff, but failing a speech check because your speech skill is 59 instead of 60 doesn't aid immersion, it completely tears you out of the experience. If stat sheets are so great, shall we just cut out the gameplay altogether and have 'battle checks' and 'exploration checks' as well?

Well, yes they are evolving but not necessarily in the right direction. The old school RPG has now become a rarity. I think the strategy genre has become the last bastian of what we tend to recognise as games primarily aimed for the pc audience. Simply because a mouse and a keyboard are just more compatible with that genre but anyway I digress.

I think it becomes obvious when a rpg is designed with consoles in mind. For example the UI tends to be bigger and simpler, the close ups of faces are often much bigger also, the backgrounds are blurred out with post processing effects to emulate movies because they arent designed for the pc gamer who sits less than 20inches away from his screen they are designed to be viewed across a room from a sofa. Small fiddly menus dont lend themselves well to big widescreen tvs so they are omitted, streamlined if you like.
The games are also usually fairly short because it will probably be played on a TV that obviously has a primary use of programme viewing and a game which occupies more than 20hours is just going to get in the way in an average family home. Unlike a dedicated pc monitor which only has one use (normally) All our modern gadgets are designed with speed, ease of use, to occupy less time and games are merely following a general trend.

Do I think it's a good thing? Not really, I'd like to see both options catered for. The rpg that can be picked up, have fun with for a few short hours and happily discarded but also the rpg that will need some serious time involved and incorporate many things which just wont appeal to the person who likes the first type of game, convoluted skill trees and intricate inventory management. I am not saying that a console player doesnt like intricacy or is satisfied with short fast rpgs, just that the games available tend to be that way because of the nature of the medium its going to be played on. And of course the medium which nets the most profit is the one that will be catered for.
Just some thoughts,
R

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/03/24/bioware-wanted-quot-a-more-viable-future-for-the-franchise-quot-with-dragon-age-ii.aspx

This right here proves the ignorance that is Bioware. Bioware's version of an RPG will die unless leadership changes are made or EA gets the (Censored) off of Bioware's back.

not likely happen, bioware is an employee now, of EA and Lucasarts, they will have to conform regardless,
even if certain bioware staff wanted to change direction they would have to quit and start a new company

That pretty much means that Bioware's RPG's will die or they will go out of business because nobody wants to buy their product. I don't think EA or Bioware have a choice they have to make changes to how they make RPG's or nobody's going to buy them. I certainly won't buy any future RPG's from Bioware if changes aren't made. Unless they make changes to their games ME3 will be my last Bioware game.

same for me with me3 but I don't think they'll die or become less popular. I think they'll become more popular if anything, just not to my liking.

I dont think table top RPGs are dead. The 'Choose your own adventure RPG book' is pretty much dead though.

I'll buy their product. I'm loving DA2 so far.

I know this is a little late in the thread to reply to this, but I just want to respond to your first point. I'm only 18 so I can't really remember the 90s but you mentioned everyone played RPGs then. A lot less people played video games then, I can remember even in the early 00s a lot of people would look at you weird if you mentioned video games. Now almost everyone I know plays video games, to an extent. I can't relate to the hardcoe crowd too much because I have so little time to play, but it seems like there are still good rpgs out there, they just don't get made as quick as cod or something like a sports game. I could go on about this for awhile, but even buggy, unpolished rpgs (looking at you Two Worlds) are better than what we had before. Daggerfall has tonnes of game-breaking bugs, but people still hail it as the pinnacle of rpgs. I personally found the game to be really dull with nothing really special about it, but the amount of choices is one thing I can't deny is amazing. From what I remember about older rpgs is they required a lot of grinding, it seems like a lot of this so called "dumbing down" is just reducing the grinding and boring filler content. Anyways my point is that, it seems like rpgs are just getting more streamlined, and for someone like me who still wants to game but doesn't have a lot of time its pretty nice.

Can someone please tell me why DA2 is bad though? I'm really enjoying it so far.