Genres and Semantics

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Actually I made it like 5 or 6 years to post on 4/v/. I'm flattered, though.

No you fucking didn't

This so much.

Guess that means time crisis is a shoot em up.

This is called a social life or farming RPG. Note how the focus of the game is advancing the capabilities and reputation of the player, placing it firmly within RPG paradigms. This sets it apart from sims for instance, where the goal is to simulate some real life process.

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its simple

If you say so. Look I even had its file extension capitalized because I used to use Paint. Haha, I'm so embarrassed.

Wew though

I'd say any game that claims to be metrodvania that isn't Castlevania after SOTN should be called metroid-like. I mean, let me put some examples: Ori and the Blind Forest, Guacamelee, Shantae, and even Cave Story are metroid-like, because they don't share enough similitude with Castlevania SOTN or the DS ones to be called like that.
The reason I'm adamant about it is that there isn't a single game that is anything like Igavanias, and it's frustrating that I want to play something similar, only to get more and more fucking metroid copies.

Wasn't my thread. Getting real sick of quality discussions getting wiped by scorched earth deletion though.

It was getting too off topic so I deleted it
t. OP

I agree except Cave Story doesn't play like Metroid at all. Stop confusing the missile upgrade homage to direct gameplay parallels. Cave Story is a fairly linear game that makes very little use of the ability-based progression that is the key feature of Metroid-like games.

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quads of truth.

I do admit there's barely any backtracking, but there is, I think you can backtrack some areas to get items, like the first cave in the game to upgrade the polar star, isn't it? I guess it isn't metroid-like at all, but how'd you call it, then? Specially when I doubt there's anything else like it.

Isn't it a platformer?

Well, it's clearly some kind of open-world run 'n' gun (of which Metroid also belongs), but it isn't really in Metroid's distinct little sub-genre.

Ayo hol up

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You don't need a light gun for rail shooting.

And likewise there's no reason you can't aim in a 3D scrolling shooter with a light gun. Sin and Punishment 2's genre is a little complicated though.

b8

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Great post. I've felt that same frustration. I love Metroid, but what I REALLY want more of is games like AoS and OoE, not Metroid ripoffs.

And just as well, you don't need rails for light gun (or equivalent) shooting.

Action RPG is a broad term encompassing all RPGs with a real-time combat rather than turn-based. It can be anything from Secret of Mana to Dark Souls.
When talking about the specific genre of Diablo/Titan Quest/Grim Dawn/Path of Exile, the proper term is hack'n'slash, even though they are technically also ARPGs.

Really rustles my jimmies when people call this a hack and slash.

Why not call them the same genres Metroid is labeled under? Platformer and Action-Adventure.

I thought the first Gauntlet invented the term.

This is known as a Run or Rape game, or abbreviated to RoR. It is not an action platformer.

This is called a shit game modded to death to be as further away from the original as possible.

Why are your graphics so shit?

I'm running this on a laptop

How would you define the term "Role-Playing Game?" Why do some people say JRPGs aren't real RPGs because they don't offer many choices, yet they have no problem with games like Albion or Betrayal at Krondor being called an RPG?

Wheres your desktop?

It's from 2004. I'm poor.

Nice flag, but at this point it's mostly just a convention. When normalfags say RPG, they mostly think of games like Skyrim and when they say JRPG they think of games like Final Fantasy.

Oh and there is also the term CRPG which is mostly used for old PC RPGs like Ultima and Might and Magic. I also heard people refer to Gothic 1 as a CRPG. I also heard the term SRPG or TRPG for games like Final Fantasy Tactics. Let's also not forget ARPG and Diabloclone tags. Finally there is also MMORPG, for games like WoW, so yeah RPG has a lot of prefixes.

Ah okay. So long as you can play shit on low anyhow.

I'm pretty used to playing medium to low.

that's a cute Karen

It's a slutty karen, her knickers are showing.

People getting retarded about JRPGs not being RPGs rustle my jimmies pretty badly, and while I can understand where the tabletop crowd is coming from they are going about describing it wrong. JRPGs are RPGs, this is a fact, the main problem is that from a table-top RPG perspective they are a really shitty dumbed down one to the point that it's almost unrecognizable, but yes, it still remains an RPG. Here's a thought experiment for table-top fags who bitch about this, you have a DM who wants to start playing a game with three people who have never played anything similar to a table top RPG. In order to ease them in, he explains what basic stats do and for the sake of at least getting the basics down allows them to pick some premade characters he designed to teach them mechanics. He has also written a campaign that has only two possible endings, they either die along the way and their journey ends, or they reach the end of a castle/dungeon/planet whatever for this particular game. Along the way, they will get to make small choices about how they use stats or what items or skills they want to use, but overall they have very little control over their character's choices nor the events of the preset campaign. They finish the preset campaign and have a swell time. Now, did these three people play a RPG? Or did they not?
Spoilers, they did play an RPG, just a really dumbed down one with very little freedom. However you'll notice that normalfags eat that shit up, and why electronic RPGs are exponentially more popular then table top.

If you want to start getting into "are Action-RPGs really RPGs that's a completely separate question.

I disagree, I think the reason why they are so popular, is because, with electronic singleplayer RPGs, you don't have to go to a place and play a game for 2-4 hours with either complete strangers or your friends, instead you can play it whenever you like it, however much you like it, you don't have change your schedule to accommodate the other players and DM, you don't have to drive there or take the buss, you don't even need to socialize. Yes a computer is a shitty, dumb and naive DM that will railroad your game most of the times, but for most normalfags that is ok, and it's better than the alternative.

he was cute as a teenager

While partially true, that applies to all vidya and not just RPGs in particular, so it isn't very useful. Another factor that I think is important is that, yes, while you have far more freedom in a table top RPG, how many of those were memorable out of dozens/hundreds of sessions? How many were just awful or meh? A preset campaign allows you to play it safe in regards to the quality, memorability without any risk of your part, and while your input is still required to finish the campaign, it's possible to put all the responsibility on on well-written the scenario is instead of you or your DMs random improv.

Well games like Dwarf Fortress are extremely random but due to the detail of the game and how stupid things turn out, you usually have fun even if things are going completely to shit. I've never played tabletop though so I don't know what the experience is like.

Oh I by no means think that randomness is bad or table top RPGs would be fucked hard in the ass. Dice rolls are important for making everything much less straight forward. What is bad is random DMs personal ability to randomly come up with satisfying memorable scenarios consistently and change details on the fly in regards to events. This is different from randomness in an RNG sense to one rather in a "humans are unreliable" sense.

I've never really encountered an entirely incompetent gm/dm, so games are usually pretty memorable. Players are insane and generally can't be railroaded very well so everything tends to turn out really unique. Unless they just murder everyone until they die but I've never been that guy and those people aren't cut out for roleplaying anyway.

You only see a chaos terminator caber tossed to his death once

So shit relies on the DM? I can see that potentially being awful.

That's exactly it, potentially. There are amazing DMs and there are not so amazing DMs. Because of how open say, DnD is, players can create characters from scratch, and the DM needs to through scenarios at them following the established rules of the game (in this case DnD creatures, themes, areas etc). So each individual session the people who have characters are making choices as to what to fight, how to fight it, what their goal at the moment is, what the long term whatever is, and the DM needs to reflexively act on this while (hopefully) keeping some vague notion of his original campaign idea alive.

ONE OF THESE GAMES IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS

Problem with rougelike was the fact it became used in advertisements. I have no fucking idea why but people use it to promote their games, like Open-world.
But also:
Bravo you turned genre from a point where it was too watered down to where it won't be useful to use.

It's actually incredibly useful, because most games involve playing a role in some way, shape, or form. Video games have become a much more convenient form of entertainment for the vast majority of the target audience of tabletop RPGs.

Isn't Dungeons of Dredmore also a roguelike? Or is the odd one out Nethack for using an ASCII interface?

tiles == not roguelike

All of those use tiles.

??????????????????

Game mechanics trump graphics or lack of. DCSS or Castle of the Winds are clearly roguelikes for example.

DCSS wasn't made graphically, it was casuals who picked it up and added tilesets.

Well I guess Age of Mythology is not RTS because you can place buildings without grid.

RPG, for me, is generally a game where you can level up stats, allocate points, play around with different gear and have decisions that impact the story.

Platypus is a ducklike

t. indie dev merchant

those games are rail shooters, the camera is on a rail and you always follow it, you just move around it. they aren't really shoot 'em ups and the creators wouldn't even call them shoot 'em ups. fuatsugi specifically called panzer dragoon a rail shooter.

Congratulations you made a statement yourself and later you shit talked a sentence you said.

When you dumb down a RPG hard enough it becomes a fucking linear story. Thats the actual fucking antithesis of RPGs. You are completely wrong on every level you mongoloid cock worshipper.

don't click

You realize you could have stopped this by simply saying what is the difference between ducks and platypus?
Just make sure difference is bigger than tilefags one.

Age has hit him like a train.

Fair enough. But both are shit genres that I don't play.

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Oh yea, don't post the replies countering his arguments or anything. Just post the one saying that SotN is shit, instead of any of the ones addressing the "this genre doesn't exist" retardation.

Both the replies where actually backing the guy up.

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Metroidvania refers to the kind of map structure present in both Metroid and Castlevania. You can lean more to the Metroid side, or more to the Castlevania side. both are valid.

But you don't move forward as if on a rail in those games.

Developers aren't the final word in genres. The pretentious faggots at Retro Studies try to act like the Prime games aren't first-person shooters but it doesn't make them correct just because they made the games.

No. Some guy on a imageboard with his own definition that no one else agrees with is the final word, obviously.

Do you have an actual argument besides fallacies?

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If most people say the genre is one thing, what authority do you have to declare that incorrect?

Cold, hard logic. Appeals to authority are shit.

You don't have authority, nigga. Mob rule beats your nothing.

wew

yeah consensus is most important in genre. nobody uses scrolling shooter but people know what rail shooters are.

You apparently don't seeing as you keep conflating House of the Dead with Star Fox. Anyone ever explain to you that using sloppy language results in sloppy thoughts? Here we are on a Mongolian haberdasher forum and you seem to prefer having deliberately confusing, obfuscated discussion just so you can feel good about belonging to the status quo.

Super Meat Boy and Earthworm Jim are both considered platformers, while they are clearly very different games. There's room for variation within a genre.

house of the dead is a light gun game, star fox is a rail shooter
they're both sort of rail shooters, but when you say one people know what you're talking about, and when you say the other, people know what you're talking about. its why you dont call ocarina of time a platformer even though you can and (struggle) justify it

(17)
keep digging

Also, that's not even true of every game in this particular subgenre. Time Crisis had the cover mechanic.

I'd consider them both rail shooters. House of the Dead is a first person rail shooter (or light gun game), while Starfox is a third person rail shooter. That's all.

even virtua cop made it a matter of timing by hitting the enemy before the reticle turns red. It's about prioritization when it comes to avoiding getting hit.

Yes, that's correct, I have made quite a few more arguments in this thread than you have. Are you embarrassed that you're so bad at supporting your argument?

I'll just call it a light gun game, this way people know exactly what I'm talking about and call rail shooters (star fox, space harrier, rez) what they are, rail shooter. I think you should too so people can actually understand what you're talking about

(18) and nobody is convinced of anything except that you're a retard

There were more than two replies to him. I know, because I was in that fucking thread.

Your entire argument is "I say it should be this way". You're trying to impose your personal definitions on something that is decided entirely by mob consensus, when the mob has already decided against you. You may as well go argue that Resident Evil isn't horror because it isn't scary to you.

don't tell him to stop, this is really funny how hung up he is

The problem is you call Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition as being part of the light gun game genre and it really doesn't have very descriptive power.

Light gun shooter is a shaky term these days, since the actual light gun technology isn't really in use anymore. House of the Dead on the Wii didn't use a light gun. Is it still a light gun shooter? I don't know.

re4 isn't a light gun game, the wii doesn't have a light gun. it uses infrared pointer controls. this is a retarded statement and we're nearing (20)

light gun game with wii controls is the correct way to describe it

Can platypuses (platypusi?) be domesticated? Are they usually rabid?

Conduit was hilarious. I remember holding the remote with certain buttons down and just shaking it because it turned the pump action shotgun into an automatic shotgun, albeit a very inaccurate one. Then of course you go on multiplayer and there's the inevitably guy who cut his disk to get an infinite ammo, no reloads, machine gun rocket launcher because that works for some reason.

I always had this question.Are those 3 divided on how their dimension and depth works differently from each game or they are united on the same 'survival building' genre? or A.K.A. survive,build brown bricks,die,repeat.

-T. Peppy Hare

Terraria isn't really a survival game, though. You've basically posted a spectrum of games. Terraria is an action-platformer with a rebuildable world, but with no real survival mechanics. Don't Starve is a game focused on survival, but the terrain can't be reshaped, and there's no movement aside from horizontal. Minecraft is like a blend of the two: it's got survival mechanics, but doesn't put as much emphasis on it as Don't Starve, while it's also got the destructible world and action platforming that Terraria has, albeit in full 3D and at a different perspective.

I've never understood why JPRG fans cling to the wild mis-classification of their genre like this. It's really weird.

A completely linear story with tactical battles in between 20 minute long cut scenes and corridor progression does not an RPG make. It's not that JRPGs don't offer many choices… It's that they offer no choices where it matters. Your character is predefined. Your characters actions are predefined. Their relationships are predefined. The core of an RPG isn't leveling up (though meaningful character building and progression IS something severely lacking in JRPGS) and it's not hackneyed plot. It's playing a role. Creating a character and exploring a world or situation with that character. That is the core of what an RPG is, and they are so few and far between in the bastard genre that they are aberrations not definitions of it. JRPGs oddly enough started off more in this vein but nips are terrified of having freedom for some reason so they slowly creeped closer and closer towards treadmill worlds with pinhole plots.

The DM you describe is a bad DM. That is not how you ease people into RPGs (unless they're JRPG fags I guess?). You ease new players in by having them design their own character and shaving off rule systems that aren't necessary. Any DM who runs a campaign with "two possible endings" is Will Wheaton levels of shit. Any DM running a campaign where players are only allowed small choices over what items to use with little control over their characters actions is doing a fucking awful job of teaching people what an RPG is about. You have either never played a P&P RPG, or you've played with exclusively bad people.

Those people you describe did not play an RPG. They sat around while the DM told them a story and let them roll dice. I doubt you can understand the difference…

There are plenty of real RPGs that limit, sometimes greatly, your character creation and roleplay choices. Not to mention that your GM or fellow players might veto your individual choices.

The levels of modding here are so high that it's blurred the line between Oblivion and Skyrim.

Are you fucking kidding me
1 sentence in and my brain cannot handle this blatant falsehood and utter retardation.

Building and base building, as well as a destructible, manipulable environment and resource gathering are all mechanics, but they're not the core. The core is action platforming against a variety of bosses and raid events. There is a very clear "win state" (beating the final boss), and a linear path to get to that win state (beat all the other bosses, alien invasion happens, destroy all the alien monoliths, final boss shows up). The "mine" and "craft" parts are there to serve and enhance the action/platformer elements, not the other way around. Additionally, survival is very easy assuming you aren't an idiot and challenge bosses and areas that are out of your league; the starter area is very safe, and you only start getting challenging enemies once you go looking for them.

Surviving in Minecraft is so laughably easy that I'm not even going to consider it a survival game anymore. And beating the Ender Dragon is so boring that I won't count that as a main feature either. No, Minecraft is more of a Lego Set kind of game, where part of the appeal is having to earn said Legos by finding them in the world or making primitive infrastructure to build them. It's about what you can make. And of course there's the many, many, many minigames but whatever. Let's be honest here, Minecraft may have started and defined a new genre, but they did NOT do it best.

This is a game where SURVIVAL takes center stage. If you get careless, there's a very high probability you're going to die. Literally everything you do is to stave off something that's trying to kill you, be it hunger, madness, cold winter, hot summer, or the many, many roving monsters. Additionally, you have to have backup plans, since your base can be devastated by certain monsters and wildfires. You also have to prepare for the changing seasons. Winter can be harsh because plants stop growing and you can't venture away from your campfire without warm clothing or you start freezing to death, but the real killer is summer, when food rots more quickly, you start taking overheating damage (which is much harder to prevent than freezing), and your base may randomly start catching on fire. Honestly I think it takes it a little TOO far with the "everything you've worked for can be randomly destroyed" thing. But you can turn wildfires off if you're a weenie like me I guess. Anyway, you really can't get into a really comfortable "I am not going to randomly die if I get careless" situation until REALLY late in the game with Don't Starve, and by that point you should be looking for bosses and challenging Adventure Mode (where you have to survive on specially seeded maps with harsh conditions such as long winters, hostile monster spawners everywhere, or a neverending night). This is the "win state", and even then, you're still having to constantly think about survival BEFORE looking for the teleportato pieces to move on to the next world.

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In other words, not a game at all. A game is a set of rules and goals to test the player's skill. You can certainly make a game out of a set of Legos, but that doesn't make the objects or set of mechanics a game in and of themselves. It's the difference between tossing a rubber ball and hoop and the game of basketball.

Stop this shit.

Platypodes.

Proof that God is real, and he hates us.

Well, wouldn't you if an offspring of your creation killed it's sibling over a trivial matter?

Why did you make them violent then?

Free will is a shitty thing, isn't it?

No one vetos your choices in an RPG. They react to them.
And there's a big difference to limiting you character creation choices and not giving you any input in your character at all. D&D for example won't let you play a space marine. Call of Cthulhu wont let you play a level 40 cyberdemon (not core rules anyway). But None of them say "here is your character, he's a poor country boy who only uses swords. His best friend is this girl who you will fall in love with. The big baddie attacks your village and you run away and hide until it's over. Then you creep back in and find your murdered mother. You feel sad. You then leave and enter the forest. (pause for momentary player interaction as a goblin attacks) Ok now we got through that ordeal of choices, let me tell you what your character does next…"

RPGs aren't about having complete unfettered freedom. As I said previously, they are about creating a character and exploring a world or situation with that character.

Nice logical fallacy.

So JRPGs are just really dumbed down RPGs since they cover half the important bits. you also make it sound like stats and dice rolls aren't fundamentally important to a table-top game. Unless you want to describe to me a table-top RPG with no stats, rolls, skills, or level ups.

I think that was the point of the thread. Just because something has elements of one thing doesn't mean it is that thing. We use genres as broad strokes descriptions of certain ways games feel and play and how they are designed.

this genre is called "darksoulselike of undertalevania"

"true rpg" autism is the most concentrated form

RPG mechanics don't make a RPG when the choice and consequence don't exist.

What game is that on the right?

Saying JRPGs are RPGs because they cover half the important bits is like saying a slice of bread is a grilled cheese sandwich because it has half the important ingredients. They're not the important bits, they're the necessary bits. If you don't have all of them you ain't an RPG.

I only make it sound like stats and dice rolls aren't important because you lack the reading comprehension or intellectual honesty to engage with either of the points I made in both posts you quoted. Picking out the times I insult you and responding to a single sentence with what essentially amounts to "nuh-uh" doesn't quite cut it.

I never said or implied RPGs don't need dice rolls or stats. They are the logic of the world you play in. Which is why I said something along the lines of:
"RPGs aren't about having complete unfettered freedom."
This is the kind of shit I expect from someone who thinks a good DM is someone who railroads an adventure to a predefined outcome or death and only allows the players minor choices about what items they use. RPGs without stats or dice are just people playing pretend. Without the random elements and limitations it's not a game. It loses the G and becomes RP. JRPGS, on the other hand are missing the R.

pure autism

Out of curiosity, do Gothic and Risen count as RPGs?

Except they do? Making decisions isn't integral to playing a role. The thing that defines playing a role is that the abilities and knowledge of the role you're playing largely determine the outcome of what happens. If you're going by a literal definition of "role play", then being able to make story-affecting decisions is a bonus, not a necessity. The purest form of role play is acting out a completely scripted character.

Final Fantasy VII Speed Square minigame.

I have some retarded idea set in your mind that role playing having set for you and you just follow it. Which is the absolute opposite of what an RPG should be.
webm related

I was pretty sure the odd one out was Spelunky for being a platformer

That's completely subjective and entirely dependent on if you think RPGs should strive to be as close to their PnP counterparts as possible.

Did you miss where I said
Tell me where the logic is flawed. Playing a role is about pretending to be someone else. Therefore, the purest form of roleplay is acting out a scripted character, because, once you introduce your own decision making, you're no longer entirely that character. You're mostly that character, but with a little bit of yourself injected into it. I'm not saying RPGs should strive to be entirely scripted out, but, if we're arguing what it means to be a role-playing game, just on the basis of how much role-playing is occurring, then being able to influence the story is a feature that's tangentially related to the act of role-playing, rather than a feature essential to it.

Taken from the very first RPG written:

If players aren't given the option to select the role they're going to play, you've taken away one of the fundamental aspects of an RPG. Being placed on established rails right off the bat is anti-roleplaying.

fugg, my autism is showing
You*

Is a theater actor a roleplayer?

Is a film or tv actor?

Should film actors be allowed to change the script of their character, and if so, how much?

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oh fuck

So Wizardry isn't an RPG according to you?

wizardry isn't an rpg. in fact, nothing is.

It's the best definition we've got, right here:
a Role-Playing Game can be described in entirely mechanical, objective terms.
"Role-Playing" is about what technical options the player is presented with; Final Fantasy allows you to select classes with different abilities for your party, FF2 has proficiencies. SOTN and it's type get in because you can select different weapons and abilities to suit the situation at hand, but Super Metroid is a stretch because its growth is far more mechanically linear and lacks options. The ability to control the characterization of your characters is a natural component of the table-top RPG, but it isn't necessarily a part of the definition of RPGs in general.
Going back to table top games, the "Game" part of Role-Playing Games is all the stat blocks and "number crunch"; It's what separates Kids running around on a playground making stuff up on the spot from a game of DnD.

The same Wizardry with some of the earliest examples of multiple endings or the one that practically invented the concept of a true ending?

And for posterity's sake, yes, this is a very broad description. Under it, the Battlefield games are RPGs. But that's the thing with trying to pigeon hole games into genres that hinge on singular traits; Battlefield 2142 is an RPG, just like how Contra is a third person shooter. Yeah, they technically fall under those definitions, but they're not the first term you would use to describe either.
Games are typically a collection of a bunch of different mechanics, while genres supposedly hinge on single mechanics; it's a situation with an infinite potential for semantic arguments. It's why so often people reach for "thing"-like, these days–as much as sounds obnoxious, when used correctly it provides a more nuanced description of a game than trying to classify it as one of the traditional genres, which we've established aren't well defined.