Stats and using your characters skills / abilities / stats to solve problems. Talk your way out of fights, spotting things, hearing things, climbing, charming or whatever. While you decide where your character will go. The character decide how you can handle a situation or how it can play out. Oh and its the character that do the combat... So it should not be twitch based (unless hit/miss and so on also depends on your character's ability and not just how good you are at pressing MB1)

And skyrim will be a arpg.

For me Skyrim is mainly a WBHS (wenches' boobs hunting simulator).

This. Why can't it be an AARPG????

You could say action RPG, but all action is doing is replacing the word "real time". thats the only difference, that the game takes into account the players reflex/skill in manipulating the aiming etc. mixed with the avatars skill.

What about something like http://www.imperial-library.info/content/trial-vivec?
I'd consider that a RPG session even though there were no stats and probably very few rules.

there could be action without an adventure though. so just saying action RPG takes the adventure part out of it.

However, whenever I hear RPG I automatically think action and adventure. Though I think there are some role playing games that don't have action and adventure in them. isn't animal crossing considered an RPG?

No, because action is just representing 'real time' opposed to turn based. An RPG is an adventure, so saying adventure is redundant. Animal Crossing is a social simulation.

you're redundant.... :meh:

but ok. I understand that now, so then just calling it an Action RPG would be perfectly fine. Thats my answer! thanks Xarnac. :happy:

So in other words it's already classified accurately by Bethesda as being Action/RPG.

I have yet to find a computer game which matches my own personal concept of an RPG, primarily because NPC AI cannot handle freeform interaction and there are no non-scripted consequences to my actions.

So to me Skyrim is a graphical adventure game. A damn fine adventure game to be sure, and getting better all the time. But still a limited adventure game all the same.

Yeah, were probably a 100 years or so from a perfect artificial representation of reality(think ST holo-deck) so I'll take the next best thing.

yaaaaaa?

I'm just helping the OP wormy.

Saying that stats make an RPG implies that stats define an RPG. At least, most people would infer that that is what it implies. What you are saying, apparently, is that stats are an inseparable component of an RPG. It may be that stats are an inseparable component of an RPG, but they are not enough to identify a game as an RPG. At best, as I think you would agree, you can recognize a game as a non-RPG by its lack of stats. However, stats cannot be used to distinguish a non-RPG from an RPG when both games incorporate stats.

In Magician Lord and in Street Fighter 2, your characters have a health stat that functions the same as the health stat in any RPG. Your characters also have damage stats representing their power, although these stats are displayed only indirectly by the harm you inflict on your opponents' health. In Age of Wonders, all units, including your leader and your heroes, have the following stats: Attack, Defense, Damage, Resistance, Hits, and Movement. Those stats represent difference or progression no more than RPG stats represent difference or progression. They are a unit's attributes and reflect a unit's abilities.

The OP is talking about identifying Skyrim as an AA, as an RPG, or as some hybrid AA/RPG. If constant stats make a game an RPG, then any game with constant stats would be an RPG. As can be seen with Magician Lord, Street Fighter 2, and Age of Wonders, having constant stats does not make a game an RPG. Therefore, Skyrim having constant stats doesn't make it an RPG.

Ghastly game design IMO. All that is is a fictional life simulator. Deal breaker for me; I'd quit the series despite the great tools.

Stats make an RPG, I already explained myself.

Yes you did, and I proved your statement false.

No, you didnt. You brought up games that Im not talking about. Im not talking about what makes this game or that game. Im talking about what makes an RPG and thats stats. What other games have in common with RPGs is irrelevant, Im talking about RPGs only. And stats make them. If I said stats were exclusive to RPGs, then I'd be wrong, but I didnt.

I know and i was just making sure it was clear to everyone reading this thread that is the answer.

I would say the same.

One can have stats in a non-RPG, they define the unit's abilities; One must have stats in an RPG for the same reason. Non RPGs (like Myth2 for example) have the units advance in ability (and attain a greater value to the player), but the individual units are never called upon to make moral choices (or any choices), and they don't have a background or personality that affects those choices. All RPGs do (or they aren't really RPGs). No stats, no background, no character; no 'role' (as opposed to a class), no RPG ~just an action adventure at best.

I [personally] define an RPG's quality based on the game's level of intelligent (seeming) reaction to the PC, and anticipation of the player's thoughts. The story can be utter cliché or a masterpiece, and still be a decent RPG ~though the better story usually makes it more compelling for the presence of it. The graphics... can be state of the art, ASCII or http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/adom1.jpg; Game-wise it effects nothing IMO. Though I do appreciate skilled art.

Stats make an RPG means just that. Without the stats, you have no RPG.

That's a catch 22.

? If you have no stats, its no RPG. Thats not a catch 22.

You can play a role without stats. That's what it boils down too in the end.

No you cant, because what defines that role is stats. Otherwise everyone is playing the same role, like an action game.

I would argue that they are modeling combat, just by a different approach. The traditional P&P way was to model actions statistically. You wouldn't have to worry about positions, vectors, size, or weight, because it was all handled with dice and probability. Since computers are so much better at crunching large amounts of numerical data than humans, it makes it possible to simulate combat based on actual positions and physical interactions. There are probably a lot more 'stats' being run in the non-statistical method, you just don't see them (cause it would be ridiculous).