Don't you sometimes feel that RPG genre is stupid?
- Thread starter Liquidlizard
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No its not stagnating, but has to be done right. A bad RPG is usually due to bad storytelling or bad combat.Liquidlizard said:
You know, I don't think that game design is still in it's infancy or that the games industry struggling to make interactive narrative. I think that the problem is that there is not enough people who are educated on how to understand what games are communicating to them. Game appreciation if you like. This means that the industry doesn't really bother communicating through game design and tries to shoehorn in other media that are seen as being valued by society.VariableGear said:
I like how you mentioned Persona 3, because that does so manythings different from other RPGs, but still sticks to the regular formula. BTW, if the combat is fun enough, doing the same thing over and over isn't annoying.More Fun To Compute said:
For example, I have Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, and the character development is VERY slow (I usualy have to spend four days level grinding before facing a boss) but the combat is so fun that it dosen't get to me.
RPGs are some of the most amazing games out there. The only RPGs that have grindfest in them are MMOs. Take a look at Mass Effect or Fallout 3, although you can grind to get additional levels it is not necessary to enjoy them. Maybe your playing methods are wrong
I do not believe I agree with this. It may not be in its infancy, but video games are still very, very new when compared to other art forms. Only time will tell, but in a thousand years, we will be considered to still be painting on cave walls.More Fun To Compute said:
I also don't think it's that people do not understand what games are communicating so much as developers don't know how to communicate using gameplay. So they just make a little movie instead.
In a thousand years time they will look at video games, TV, cinema and radio and see them all as being in the roughly the same state of infancy. Or maybe not, do we look at Homer's Odyssey and call it the work of primitive infancy?the antithesis said:
If people, especially game reviewers, understood gameplay as well as movies then they would be complaining a lot more and developers would have to change strategy. Do you think it's cheaper and easier to make a high production value cinematic game than a pure gameplay game?
Careful now, or I will whip out my over compensatory Shingen giant sword of the Dusk Flame...UncleUlty said:
I don't know if it's cheaper, but it may be easier in that developers can just crib from film on how to make the cinematics rather than figure out how to make good gameplay that says what they're trying to get across. And this has been going on for a quarter of a century since the NES days and when cut scenes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_scene] were invented (which was apparently was as early as 1985). I remember the cut scenes in Ninja Gaiden (NES) was a big deal for many, but no one, players or developers, noticed that this was not gameplay. And, oddly, tended to have little to do with the gameplay, really. In the last twenty-five years, I think this had just gotten ingrained into the industry so that gameplay became a secondary concern, if that, so that now gameplay design is almost a lost art.More Fun To Compute said:
That's some good investigative journalism right there lol, I probably wouldn't have twigged.Fraser.J.A said:
No, they're not in the slightest. I still love RPGs and especially J-RPGs as much as when I first started playing them when I was 6 or something. Then again this forum seems to take up a lot of the time I used to spend gaming (ironic, a gaming forum is keeping me away from gaming) so maybe I love it more...
I agree that gameplay design is almost a lost art in some ways but that doesn't mean that it's in it's infancy. The idea that the games industry is struggling to bring it to the front just doesn't ring true to me.the antithesis said:
The cut scene is an interesting one. As it started out in Maniac Mansion it was a great way to focus the attention of the player on the next puzzle as well as being entertaining. I like cut scenes for this as they were integrated into the gameplay.
Too few people pick up on that sort of thing though and think that the games part of games isn't really important and, even worse, that games that don't use stock generic gameplay are bad. Graphic adventures have become less and less sophisticated as time goes on as more focus is put on the graphics and story. Did it do the genre any good? The handful of people left making and playing them seem to love them so I guess it did.
I think the name of the genre is stupid. most games you play a role of a character.
but yes I like RPG games alot but the genre is pretty lame. too many terrible asian games, not enough companies like bethesda and bioware me thinks. because its basically up to only these two guys, we're lucky if we get 1 good RPG per year.
luckily FPS games keep getting more and more RPG elements. soon games which call themselves RPG's, and not FPS's, will be obsolete. I think both genre names are already obsolete, many FPS's are third person, many RPG's are first person and shooting things, etc. maybe I just like saying obsolete.
this post is obsolete.
but yes I like RPG games alot but the genre is pretty lame. too many terrible asian games, not enough companies like bethesda and bioware me thinks. because its basically up to only these two guys, we're lucky if we get 1 good RPG per year.
luckily FPS games keep getting more and more RPG elements. soon games which call themselves RPG's, and not FPS's, will be obsolete. I think both genre names are already obsolete, many FPS's are third person, many RPG's are first person and shooting things, etc. maybe I just like saying obsolete.
this post is obsolete.
I have some (self-) education in how games communicate, and that's lead me to believe that the vast majority of video games aren't communicating much anything of note.More Fun To Compute said:
(Since I've mentioned the relationship between RPG video games and pen-and-paper RPGs before, let me add that I feel the same way about the bulk of pen-and-paper games, too. But they seem to be making way more progress right now.)
-- Alex
In RPG's like fallout 3 you do not notice the grind. You generally do not really have to kill anything for a goal such as leveling or otherwise. You kill because it tries to kill you. And leveling just happens. I never try to get exp in fallout 3 it just comes to me as I do things.
You are correct in one way: the JRPG genre is stagnating, and is heading downwards, but as for western RPGs, I can't say that I'm too disappointed what with Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Fable 2, and the promise of Mass Effect 2. Western RPGs are doing quite well right now, but if you look at Square's last couple of offerings, the future does not look too promising for how good FFXIII is going to be.