[quote name='3-26' timestamp='1297544633' post='17164734']
If you look at common aspects between roleplaying games it's pretty simple: statistics of some sort that determine the characters' skill and power, and "downtime" which allows you to talk to NPCs or buy things from a store. These two aspects are present in Ultima 1, and they're present in Skyrim. Both are RPGs, so quit your whining.

I'm talking about video games here, so don't harangue me on PnP stuff.
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How exactly is the OP "whining". He was just pointing out things he was concerned about. He didn't sound like he was whining to me.

The Op may not have been that bad DarNoor, but its not like he exactly went out of his way to let the other side have their own opinion either through the thread.

I never said everything is subjective. I said the definition of a genre is subjective. Anything contrived by a person at some point is subjective. It doesn't become inherent or universally applicable to everything ever created and every person on the planet just because a sufficiently large number of people adhere to those subjective criteria.



It depends on your subjective definition of RPG. If your definition is that being able to create a role other than yourself and choose to act in accordance with that, through any means, makes it an RPG, then yes, it is. If you have different criteria that the game ends up not having, then no, for you, it's not.

I'm not going to force my own criteria on you. If you don't want to label it an RPG then you are free not to. But that doesn't mean I can't roleplay in it by my own standards.



If they deliver what they've stated to date in any respect, it will be an RPG by my standards. That's all I'm saying.

If the OP can't see that there is plenty of Roleplaying elements already a part of Skyrim then let he/she leave. Its their loss. I, for one, can already see the elements that can make this game great. I've already planned out my civilian

This. if you need the game telling you how to roleplay, you aren't doing it right.

RPG's are about choices. What direction to go, what things to buy, what skills to learn, and in what way you should solve quests. Some quests will be pretty straightforward, amounting to basically point and click ACTION operations. So where the roleplaying will be is in the options provided by the Developer of each quest. A good dev will provide more than one way to solve a quest so you CAN make choices. All of that takes thinking and planning, and can't very well be randomized even by the Radiant Story engine. It will do some amazing things, but to get the at REAL heart of roleplaying, we will need some good writers building quests that can be accomplished in a number of ways that are all challenging in their own right.

They need to keep in mind that even if you start a plotline for a quest, not every plot should go according to the idea you are told initially, things change, things go sideways without warning, and then you're in a whole new situation. They need to write some of those kinds of "change scenarios" to touch on those kinds of surprise situations so everything doesn't FEEL planned. You could call that "planned" unplann-edness, hahahaha ... tell the player one thing should happen and then make something entirely new result from an unforeseen event coming between the quest and the player's intentions to perform it. Then when he makes choices, they will feel more desperate because they are happening right in the moment.

I remember my first run through Neverwinter Nights 2, when I felt that they had accomplished real roleplaying for the first time, it was near the beginning and I got into a situation I never saw coming, off track from the script, and then had to make several choices I didn't want to have to make because someone was going to lose, and it would be my fault either way. Wow, I really sweated over that one, and I never stop feeling that they had done it, they had given me real roleplaying for the first time in a loooooong time.

So in short, in conclusion, gives us more choices in some of the quests you offer our characters, and make them TOUGH choices, and then we will feel like we are roleplaying. If you just inundate us with Radiant Story randomosity, we'll just feel like Skyrim is an action-fantasy game. Its up to the Quest writers.

I seriously hope they've took nothing onboard from Fable, the first one was an O.K game, but just went downhill from there.

Check the reviews of Fable 3, it got average or less than average, and I consider it an abomination to the name of RPG, I trust in Bethesda's talent, and I doubt they will want to dumb down/simplify a game to appease to the average gamer in the way Fable did.

I'd probably be confident in saying that at the moment, Lionhead is in trouble, aswel as Microsoft owned Rare, when was the last game those companies made that was critically acclaimed?

Look at what activision has done to Guitar hero, and COD, games companies seem to think that people enjoy eating the same crap every year, which obviously they dont. That is what I love about Bethesda, they spend time between games in a series, years infact between a TES game.

Imagine all the people.

Roleplaying for today.

Aahaaahaaaaaaaa

Couldn′t have said it better. Besides all the overhauling that is being done regarding npc interaction leads to a more immersive and realistic experience

Prototype, Red Faction, and Borderlands had virtually no NPC interaction, other than people to either kill, not kill, or give quests. GTA4 only went one or two steps further by giving you the choice of actually talking to SOME NPCs. You can't talk to every NPC, like in TES games, but you can talk to SOME. Fable is a terrible example, because if you shake hands with someone long enough, then go dig up some obscure item in the wilderness for them, they will become your friend and love you forever? How is this a good example of interaction? Dragon Age 2 didn't have any NPC interaction other than quest givers/shop owners/team mates. Most NPCs would say a little snippet, but that was about it. Conversations with your team mates were decent, but ten people in the whole game world? Come on. Even other RPG giants grant very little NPC interaction. I played FFXIII for over twelve hours, and I didn't interact with any NPCs that I wasn't supposed to kill.

TES has never supported itself as being a "moral choice" game type. The original Fable picked that as it's handle in the hopes that it would make it a "Morrowind killer," and it failed miserably by being short an unsatisfying. To me, moral choices shouldn't be limited to, "do I fart at this person, or do I do a little stupid dance for them?" GTA is a great game series for moral choices. "Do I pay the hoker for six, and leave, or pay the hoker for six, then run her over and get my money back?"

How can you modify your character besides stats? You can chose different types of armor, clothing, weapons, magic, etc. You can chose to go around slaughtering every Orc you find, while giving gold to Dunmer just for the hell of it. You could sleep every day for eight hours, or go the ENTIRE GAME without sleeping. For your examples, Incarna just seems to be a glorified dress up game. APB seems to be based on what Oblivion did. Fable has continued to dumb down the "modification" of your character through each incarnation, forcing you to become taller if you become more skilled. How does shooting a gun more make me taller? What if I want to be short, but be a crack sniper? Fable says no way.

Heck, if that isn't enough customization for you, get the PC version and download the construction set. What other developer GIVES AWAY it's source code FOR FREE? Bethesda knows they can't please all the people all the time, so they give people the opportunity to please themselves. What more could you ask for?

Comparing TES to other RPGs is akin to comparing some woodshop [censored]/bong made by a high school burnout to the work of Michelangelo. Bethesda puts so much work into producing a quality product that is steeped in lore, and opportunity. I can't think of any other company that goes to such lengths to please their consumers, who turn around and challenge their products MONTHS before it comes out.

/rant.

You could raise all skills and attributes to 100 in both Morrowind and Oblivion, it was far easier in Morrowind because it was no limits on training sessions just the work of getting to the master trainers. I never bothered doing it.

A level 30 character in Fallout 3 was superhuman because he had so much health he could take multiple hits with the rocket launcher. Have him max repair, lockpicing and science did not make him superhuman it just gave more possibilities.
Maxing all the combat skills did make you more powerful because you was able to use more weapons effetely, sniper rifle at long range, switch to plasma rifle for VAT shots and then Gatling laser for close range was more effective than just using sniper rifle, Lincolns repeater and a Chinese assault rifle but not twice as lethal.

Fallout 3 system made this possible as you did not have to use the weapon just assign skill points. Then small guns was 90 I started putting points into big guns and later energy weapons. This does not work in TES as you has to use the weapon type to get good in it.

Granted Oblivion was worse than Morrowind for rolleplaying as it have fewer factions and no sides you can take like the houses. More a question of play style and decisions

Well I was going to say Id and Arkane :laugh:

The Skill Point system was hardly the reason. It was bad design. They had a ludicrous amount of skill point perks and skill point books throughout the wasteland. In Fallout 1 and 2 you had to dedicate your points to a few skills. In fact I never even came close to maxing out all of my skills in those two games, even when I hit level 40 in Fallout 2.

No game can get away with completely separating player skill with character skill.

Say I'm playing Baldurs Gate 2, and my character is a big dumb half-orc barbarian. He's a complete idiot with a single digit intelligence and wisdom scores. Why then, are his tactics and leadership so good when he's fighting a group of Drow or Mind Flayers? It's because I, the player, am good at tactics and can direct the team in a manner that my barbarian wouldn't be capable of.

There is a term for this ~coined here as far as I know. That term is the "claw factor", and it refers to the similarity of an RPG player character with the little claw in the http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/kyoto_plush_claw_game.jpg. A common gambling game in malls and arcades. Like with RPG's the player can choose the task or target and the time, but it is left to the ability of the claw to accomplish the desired effect; (in this case snatching a toy). Some claws are better than others at this. The idea is that the player manipulates persons, things and events in the game world (IE.behind the glass) using only the ability of the PC, and different PC's can have different abilities.

I know all this stupid stuff there adding like being able to do jobs for villagers and stuff
HOW IS THAT GONNA HELP ME ROLEPLAY AT ALL!
All the fun of roleplaying is picking my characters begining stats


.../ sarcasm

http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/29/stupid_thread.gif

Stats define the "area" of play. Imagine (very abstract idea coming up)... Imagine that an RPG (the entire game) were like a painting or drawing...
Like this one here >> http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/RPG-1.gif

Now imagine the PC's are like a mask or filter... through them you can only see what they themselves are capable of revealing to you.
The PC's reveal only a portion of what the game potentially entails, and on a per life basis. One PC will reveal what another will never find; and no PC can (or at least should never) ever see the entire thing. It should be too big for any one PC to understand (or be skilled in) all of it.

Exactly Gizmo. This is why after 6 years of playing Fallout 2 the game still amazes me. The picture is large. With Fallout 3 and Oblivion you see nearly the whole picture.

This is also why I believe that judging the quality of an RPG (ideally) cannot be done by playing it only once or with only one character.

You do realize that Roleplaying literally means "To play another role". So basically live another life in another world doesn't have anything to do with artifical skills, but what the game world offers in the terms of things you can do. Skills are only stuff that measure how good we are at some of the things we can do in-game. Skyrim will be the single most epic RPG ever created, I'm sure of it.

Jesus, wait till we actually see some of the game, you guys are making huge assumptions.

The problem isn't that you can "role play", you don't even need a computer game for that. The problem is that TES games are increasingly not caring what you do, and that is a slap in the face to the role player.

The NPC's, both enemies and friends, should react in long-lasting, perhaps even permanent, ways. Those choices should begin with what race you play, and when it mattered, what class you played. Some NPC's should refuse to doing business with you except under exceptional circumstances, just because you are playing as a Nord. Some NPC's should be friendly, until they find out you are a member of the Mages guild, etc.

The best role playing experiences are the ones where you realize that your choices have impacted the world. The first time you run across a NPC who likes you because you helped his relative, etc.

In short, the game world should react - both negatively and positively - to who you are, and what you have done. Otherwise, you might as well just skip the computer game, and sit in a chair thinking about a game.

Isn't this happening? We can show up at a friends house in the middle of the night, and he'll offer us a bed instead of telling us to get out. Npc ai looks as if it will be getting less robot like. They have lives of their own, jobs, homes they live in, they eat...they'll feel more alive. That's how things have been moving. Morrowind npcs had homes that some didn't even bother visiting. Oblivion had npcs that moved around, but it felt rather robotic. I can easily see Skyrim having at the least advanced robotic ncps, they may even feel organinc with children running around.

How cool would it be to wander into town in the middle of the night, find a friends house, enter and get offered a bed, and as you're setting into the spare room a little guy walks in with big sparkling eyes of amazement at your armor and weapons. You could tell the kid stories of what you've done in the past, and watch him be simply amazed at how cool you are.

That might be streching things, but what I'm trying to say is ai will react more to what we do. They said they really were working hard on that this time around, and I don't really have a reason not to believe them yet.

How does that work (exactly)?
You mention another's life (or do you mention another ~second life). You mention skills as being artificial, then mention 'things you can do', and "stuff that measure how good we are" (in game).

If you mean another's life... then I agree. It is a role ~like Hamlet, or even like each character in Voltron, or any character in a novel... Or even one where you decide much of the character yourself.
With this sort of other's life, you would want to know what that other spent their time learning (and how good they are at it).

If instead, you mean a second (virtual) life ~of your own... as in "I get to be a wizard", then I agree that you don't need much in the way of stats & skills, but I don't see that as a role playing game... There is no role. I see that as an action adventure akin to super mario (he can run, jump, and shoot fireballs too).

Has anyone here watch mynameisnotlilly's "lets play" Fallout? He plays Lilly, He plays her as an evil software engineer, and plays to her [extrapolated] goals and intents, the decisions he takes in game are based on her [assumed] attitudes.

Edit: link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yxwKnq5C48