Why Most RPGs Suck

The origin of the modern day RPG is the fantasy role playing games of the past - the original white box of D&D, and all of the other clones or forks that came about from it. The existence of these games occurred at a cross-over point with the tech community, leading to the birth of computer games meant to emulate these sorts of games in a single-player format. This was, after all, the only model at the time.

CRPGs developed in this manner, transferring the raw numbers and stats from these games into a format the computer could work with using only some light RNG. JRPGs developed in term off of these CRPGs, and as a result, tend to remain crunchy even to this day. This leads to a major problem:

CRPGs Fail as RPGs
Role-playing games were meant to allow you go into a game and have a fantasy adventure. They were not meant to be about tactics and resource management - all of that was stuff that got tacked on later, because it was part of the CRPGs, which took that from older games because it was the only thing they could. Establishing a stronghold and managing domains? Having complex social interactions? Researching spells with unique effects? Swinging from chandeliers? These are all things that are almost impossible to replicate outside of the table-top.

On the reverse side to this, you see the narrativist counter, which has taken more hold nowadays. Take a game like DA:I, that has a small CRPG-like shell around it, but is really just about telling a really bad story. This is not an RPG either, as games of this sort rarely give the player a true degree of freedom. Not to mention that most of these game writers are absolute shit, and thus shouldn't be allowed to do this sort of thing to begin with.

This is why Elder Scrolls games sell so well.
From Arena onward, TES games have marketed themselves on putting (You) in the role that you can do shit. You can explore, collect items, make things, make spells, and all of that shit. Daggerfall did a lot of things, and later games have done less - but made up for it by providing modding kit, since they understand their player-base will just make what they want for themselves. It's the same shit as house-ruling in table-top games.

The games don't have to be good, they just have to be the only ones that are doing what they do. Other companies have started trying to do the same shit with this push for open-world games, but have been failing, for one simple reason - it's not about an open-world. It's about being able to feel like you're immersed in it.

Perhaps the best attempt at coming close to what a computer RPG, as modeling the original RPGs, should look like, is Dragon's Dogma. It let you fight great monsters, but also mow down casual shit; it let you do all sorts of cool things, craft items, climb walls, and otherwise truly get into things. But it had a few weak-points - the limited dialogue, very loose story, and the underlying JRPG mechanics ("why the fuck can't I hurt this bandit?" "he's too high level") all bite it on the ass. Not to mention that it didn't have an established fan-base at the time of release.

To another degree is WoW, which at the time managed to come very close to this. It was, like a TES game, not very good. But the huge world and community, combined with ease of access relative to old MMOs, led to it leaving a huge mark. It is also worth nothing that older MMOs promised this sort of thing as well, but often (as with WoW) were unable to deliver an authentic experience, because too many different players had different views of how things should work.

RPGs are not, as a rule, good games. The "great" RPGs like Baldur's Gate and the like are crappy off-shoots of the tabletop games, and simply do not hold up as games. What a good RPG would look like is not hard to imagine: a hypothetical hybrid of Morrowind and Dragon's Dogma, taking the best aspects of each, and providing a game that will truly revolutionize the genre.

The first company that manages to produce this will become rich.

Other urls found in this thread:

hooktube.com/watch?v=sglKS-HfZMw
crpgaddict.blogspot.com/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

It's my sons, he's in 5th Grade. His teacher is sending a letter of recommendation to Harvard.

He's gonna need some connections for it to get there. Might I interest you in some services to ensure the delivery?

Nice essay, but I don't agree with you on the dragon's dogma thing. I don't agree that very loose story is a bad thing either. Loose story is necessary to give the player more control over the video game world, because the essence of roleplaying is creating your own experience as a player and a dungeon master.

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This has been the state of Holla Forums for years. Where have you been?

people don't tend to like to read

he is saging his own thread while replying to shitposts
what else did you expect?

>RPGs suck because D&D was the origin and basis for all of them and because they can't imitate parts of D&D that don't translate well to vidya they fail at being RPGs
its shit

And the reason why TES is incredibly popular and fun is how it lets you easily become the dungeon master of your own game. That is, through extensive modding we create our own game. Haters of TES love to bash the construction set, saying that a game shouldn't rely on mod to be good. But that's absolutely wrong. RPG video games must rely on modding, just like how a tabletop RPG must rely on the dungeon master. Construction set is the dungeon master of TES. An RPG without a dungeon master, which is modding capability, doesn't deserve be called an RPG. I think future TES should aim for a more roguelike experience, the story heavy direction they took with skyrim creates a negative impact on the roleplaying mechanic. An RPG without a dungeon master system such as TES construction set shouldn't be called an RPG.


Holla Forums has an autistic jealously over elder scrolls' success.

Considering modding is only possible on the PC version and that even the most popular mods have only been downloaded a fraction of the total number of copies sold, that claim is completely false.

The thing is that no one actually role plays in WoW or TES.

A lot of people(women and children) role played in WoW.
Only autists(or ecelebs) role play in TES though.

Don't fo4 and skyrim remaster support construction set mods? And I don't think everyone would download the same mod even if it's popular. I only download small mods that change a very few gameplay mechanics for instance.

Most of everything sucks. You have to make effort to find good things in this world.
Also, Dragon's Dogma has a disappointingly tiny world without a whole lot to do. It's good for what it is, though.

You mean self inserts. Roleplaying is configuring your own game, creating a class that suits your playstyle, doing whatever you want, interacting with NPC's, playing dress up with your character, etc.

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Skyrim didn't even launch with mod support
Everyone wouldn't download a basic code patch to fix bugs?


no I meant roleplaying you faggot retard

Well, the reason why it survives this long is now it has it.
I've never downloaded fan made patches either.

What's your definition of roleplaying?

Are you retarded.

This is the problem, RPG systems aren't fit for the purposes of anything other than combat.


Excuse me, OP, that isn't the story that I heard.
hooktube.com/watch?v=sglKS-HfZMw

Oh boy I'm going to watch this whole video to see the argument you're implying.
Fucking summarize if you need an external source to think for you.

No, dumbass. Those are action-RPGs, that's a different genre. If the combat is not menu-driven, it's not a pure RPG.

/tg/, just stay in your shithole and write dyke quests with futa and horsefucking featuring niggers and muds. That's all you're good for.

TES series are fucking shit, played 50 hours total.

Played 300 hours of Fallout
Played 500 hours of Dragon Age (s)
Played 200 hours of DnD Heroes on Xbox.
Played 250 hours (200 high) of Fables.

Played 400 hours of Runescape

TBH my favourite rpg-type anything was Shaolin Monks - Mortal Kombat on Xbox


This is why fighters like MK & SF > RPGs
MKD, MK8, MKX, SF4 let alone the early days SNES platformers etc.

Played about 300 hours of Mage Knights as credentials btw.

All my best m8s are autism grade over TES, I just don't get it.

Go play Chrono Trigger.
It is a pretty good RPG.
That is all that anyone needs.

Every time anybody mentions roleplaying I think of this series.


There is no fucking roleplaying in it.

The real crux of the problem is that the entire concept of role-playing is fundamentally opposed to game design. You see, games are about testing one's skill with a set of rules and limitations. Dungeons and Dragons, on the other hand, is about making shit up and changing the rules constantly to have a random time with your friends. The two things don't mix. Either you make a role-playing experience like D&D that is fundamentally a shitty game, or you make a good game that eschewed all the random garbage and bad mechanics that are iconic of D&D. Choose.

What kind of tables do you play at?

Anyway this whole thread should be saged. Holla Forums has no place talking about RPGs when videogames as a medium have never actually produced one.

Meant

Modding/hacking could make up for a lack of making the game what one would want, but being around such 'communities' is always a different story.

ROMhacking.net is run by SJW faggots.
Nexusmods isn't much different.
Gamebanana gets pissy over n00dz.

Combine this with the fact that modders get their panties in a twist over the mere suggestion of someone editing or reuploading their shit without their pathetic permission makes it so you're stuck with idiots circlejerking over how great their 10-minute contribution to the "scene" was. This of course leads to moronic admins and their moderator lackeys to continue their imbecilic faux-leadership over, "how we want you to play the game bs. how you want to edit it", this makes sure you get b& from online servers if you LARP the wrong way.

This then makes it so once anyone even wants a backup of such things, much like when GameFront went down, which relegates most of these mods to mega-packs on archive.org, you'll have to download it all in bulk once these terrible sites go down & be left with an even more headache-inducing experience whereas you might as well not even fucking bother with it.

Neverwinter Nights did exist. It allowed people to create their own adventures and DM.

this is a good thread
h8rs gonna h8

So why wouldn't I just play tabletop games instead? They have two different purposes and strengths, trying to combine the two just dilutes the both.

I am playing FFXV right now and it doesn't suck. People have changed, not video games. People started judging video games according to their past experience which they see through prisma of nostalgia glasses.
I'd say gaming community became too ferocious to any new idea, while most people new to it embrace everything. This leads to situation when oldfags hate everything, and newfags in gaming communities do the reverse - they love everything.
No middle ground, no sane reasoning of changes made to genre, no sane reasoning on execution in terms of what the game by itself is.
I blame the fact that people aren't embracing new ideas to improve the gamedev to the right direction. In the end neither gamedev industry is interested in making a product to you, because you will sperg out anyway.

And most important thing to note - i am just getting tired of it because i wanted to play video games to relax from my IRL worries, not to get angry or frustrated at how they made every damn day.

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This thread is fascinating, if only to see how many people define RPG differently. No wonder the industry can't turn out a good RPG if the community can't even define, exactly, what the genre is and isn't.

That sort of freedom existed with MOOs a long time ago. More recent examples would be Second Life or VRChat.

No, you don't get it. Industry will never deliver a good RPG because people loving so called "good RPGs" hate what industry produces and will never buy their products.
Instead it gets acquainted with Tumblr, reddit and cuckchan audience that actually buy industry's products and influence view of developers.
Tumblr was huge market for bioware, and bioware turned to tumblr with open arms, even before ESA demanded diversity.
Same will be with every developer eventually.
Buyfags create a demand.

…and this is why I am a fence sitter on the topic of piracy. DRM sucks fucking ass. Losing good games to history (or worse, a bad re-release every decade FUCKING SECRET OF MANA) sucks fucking ass. But you know what? Losing the entire industry to the Tumblr crowd because we aren't willing to shell out our shekels…also sucks fucking ass.
Of course the industry is going to chase the money, we live in a capitalist society.
8ch is going to AGDG the perfect RPG when?

It sucks. You just have shit taste. Go play a better FF or just better JRPGs in general.

Is that why they're now under the proverbial guillotine and one failure away from getting their heads chopped off?

Boy, pandering to tumblr sure paid off for them.

You see, i don't like turn based combat in general. So other FF games don't look so interesting to me. This game however has cool magic crafting mechanic, monster bounties that level up monster hunting rank, fishing and extremely immersive camping system.
I've never seen game more immersive so far, its even better than KCD in that regard, characters cook real food at camps instead of eating shit from inventory.

Its just one example of how developer by embracing new ideas shaped a new kind of a game in the stale series that had 12 titles of turn based combat games.


Reminder that Dragon Age Inquisition was a successful product. In Mass Effect Andromeda the usual EA shit happened, its either EA pushed deadlines to unreasonable point when shit company couldn't deliver the product, or bioware themselves slacked to deliver anything. But normalfags hate glitchy buggy games.
KCD is deemed a masterpiece, but its just as bug ridden as andromeda, its just Kingdom Come Deliverance fans forgive more.

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Aether and BeelzeBox are a good ways into development, Infernis is making decent progress, and Die Totenmaske 2.0 is in the really early stages. As for Uncommon Time-related stuff, there's a finished game waiting for the next stream and at least two other RPGs in development.

Your opinion about superiority of turn based combat for RPGs is utterly outdated.

Fucking what? Come back when you aren't a schizo. And besides that, classic D&D through AD&D second edition was very focused on resource management because Gygax and co. were war gamers and their gameplay preferences informed the design of the game.

He never said they were superior. Just because you hate turn based doesn't make FF15 suddenly good.

Jesus christ leave.

Sorry, I play real RPGs, not watered down non-pseudo RPGs like FF15.
Eat shit and die, cunt.

Yeah because RTwP is so much better…
I mean, it's fucking bearable, but there is just no logical reason to use it over turn based.

Is there nothing shills won't say?

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honest statements

Games exist so you can have fun.
Fight me.

I gotta catch up on the AGDG thread, I'm painfully behind.
So there are "RPGs", "ARPGs", "JRPGs", "CRPGs" and "SRPGs"…am I missing any?

Which is why they announced the number of hours played by all players combined and not units sold or even shipped?

The main complaint about Mass Effect Andromeda from fans was that it was too boring to finish. The developers at Bioware could not identify the problems with Mass Effect 3 or any game after that title. The excuses you make for them are worthless.

Should have put more homosex in there.

Rubber balls and hoops exist so you can have fun. Rules about traveling, staying without the boundaries, and penalties for aggressive contact exist so you can have fun while testing your skill within limitations.

"Having fun with rules imposed"
There. Is that fine now?

Unless you want difficulty for the sake of difficulty, in which case you're best off playing Oblivion.

Unrelated to the thread topic but this is pretty much why things like speedrunning and MvC2 are so fun to watch.

Just finished that video, and while its production values and information is decent, it is heavily slanted towards JRPGs and console gaming in general. He barely gives a nod to the continuing PC CRPG genre and makes it sounds like JRPGs "won" the market. Seriously, he gives all of 10 seconds to acknowledge Baldur's Gate and Fallout at the end of the video. No mention of Bard's Tale, Might & Magic, any Ultima past 3, etc. And the follow up vid is exclusively DQ, so I'm skipping it.
I think you'd get a better historic perspective, at least on the CRPG side, from this blog: crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

No it's not

Honestly, the best possible RPG would be Fallout with Jagged Alliance's 1.13 combat system, on top of an autistic "build a robot" system.

Muh dik

I wish there were more newly-developed fallout-style game, but at lest there is Age of Decadence and Underrail (sort of)

Well, Vince is making a sci-fi game set on a generational ship where everything has to shit, so that's likely to scratch that Fallout itch a little.

Also, there's Fallout of Nevada, that is very much playable now, but I'm waiting for the finalized translation, and another fan game, in an original setting this time, using the FO2 engine.

You roleplay as the pre-made main character, and have a limited amount of choices that affect the world built around him.
It is RPG enough, and more importantly, it is fun

Not really. They usually bash the series coz of its rubbish gameplay and utterly derivative setting/writing.

Is that like Fallout 1.5 Resurrection?

Yup, and supposedly even better than 1.5.

Well the channel is about 16 bit games, mostly on the SNES which had a lot more JRPGs than WRPGs. It was never meant to be a fair or comprehensive history of RPGs during the 80s and 90s, but rather how JRPGs came to be in Japan during the Famicon days. Nonetheless, I will look at you link for a WRPG perspective as well.

Space Station 13 is the best RPG ever made. Prove me wrong.

That's a very fair description of the video and channel, I wasn't bashing it, I just found it…one sided.

It's not really fair to say that CRPG's suck because they started out as stripped down, streamlined, and gimped versions of DnD. As the essay says: CRPG's diverged from their roots and distinguished themselves with new criteria for being good. CRPG's and MMORPG's have actually had a recursive influence on DnD and 4th edition rules have tried to make the game a tabletop version of Everquest or WoW.

I wouldn't be too stoked about your son getting into Harvard because of this essay. The person evaluating the quality of this essay is probably not enough of an expert on RPG's to say that this kid is really an expert about RPG's himself, let alone Harvard material.

how many layers of shilling are you on my dude?

ok

It sucks.
People haven't changed.
The industry changed for the worse.
Smart people have been teaching other people to have standards and to not accept shitty games like FF 15 and to not fall for marketing ploys and to never buy on impulse.
More and more newfags aren't even paying attention to marketing anymore and instead, ask oldfags what is good. You will see this become the norm for most newfags soon.
As foir you being tired of getting angry and fighting, kill yourself. Life is not about relaxing. Relaxing is just a means to recover strength to live. Life is about anger and constant struggle.

Wrong, to an extent. Keeping track of your money, buying enough torches, potions, lengths of rope, paying hirelings, buying the right items and gear for the dungeons you intend to delve. These are common practices in pen and paper RPGs. Part of this resource management plays into the tactics, such as planning ahead and buying items which might be more pricey, but could save your life. Spending a ton of coin on Alchemist Fire and Holy Water could mean life or death. Likewise, what the fuck do you think the Spells-per-day mechanic was all about? You needed to pick your magic carefully and then sparingly use it to survive. Your spells were a resource and managing them tactically was key to success.

Additionally, the freedom to use these things in unexpected ways and in a pinch, even though the item descriptions don't specifically tell you that you can do certain things, is what sets pen and paper far beyond vidya. Yes, swinging from chandeliers and doing cool shit, but also creating a flail out of some rope and holy water, or constructing elaborate traps and snares, instead of getting a simple "you can't use that item right now" response.

These ideas are also why Dragon's Dogma is quite good, because you are managing your items (item weight, preparing the right items, carefully managing money against necessity, etc), but also because it gives you a degree of versatility with some items. Like being able to use the oil vials as throwing items that drench enemies in oil, making them vulnerable to fiery attacks, likewise with water bottles and thunder elements. Casting ice spells that create big chunky ice blocks that you can climb on to reach heights previously unreachable, and several other mechanics that are never directly told to you, but which follow a basic logic. Ice is solid, so you can stand on it and your character can climb on solid things. Water conducts electricity. Oil catches fire, and so on.

But D&D has been a fucking Terrible influence on gaming though. That gay "leveling up" schtick is goddamn everywhere now. I can't even recall that many modern games where they DON'T pull that stupid shit.

I miss the good ol days of fantasy games like Super Metroid, ALttP, and Castlevania 4. Where it was only you, your skill, and the game's challenges. Nothing else. And especially not that grindy "level up" bullshit that passes itself off as """""fun""""" gameplay these days. Ruining modern fantasy games like a plague.

writing a 40 page essay full of shit doesn't make you deserving of praise. The post modern community is filled with your sort of bullshit.

A man can talk for hours and still say nothing.

The idea is to overlay the play through with a level of strategic depth, goes way back to like the choose your own adventure/ending novels, which branch you take after level up/class selection etc. Let's the games challenges be solved in multiple ways, showing the versatility, resilience, replayability of a title.

tl;dr RPGs suck because they are restricted tabletop without the story telling and immersion

I like them, but I agree.

I prefer to think of it as RPG vidya being on-demand premade tabletop modules without the paperwork or That Guy.

while that sounds good in theory all that leveling up and experience points really do is allow or force a player to replace organic skill growth with repetitive tedium. character building is a fantastic idea but the option of fighting the same handful of enemies repeatedly to do so destroys it.

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You've spoken my exact thoughts, I have even posted about the Morrowind/Dragon's Dogma fusion before myself as the games closest representing my tastes. An RPG should be like a collection of Robert E. Howard stories, brimming with violence, adventure and vitality, an experience which understands and implements all the interests and pursuits of masculine dreams

Its not restrictive though, it adds more options and new tiers of accessible skill to incorporate

I never claimed it was, nor did I imply anywhere that restriction is the flaw here.
CHARACTER BUILDING adds that. LEVELING UP does not.

Were you to removing leveling up from Final Fantasy 5, and give all skills a job has at either specific times or as soon as you pick up the crystal shards rather than after acquiring a higher job level, you would not change a god damn thing about the game's depth or customization. All you would do is remove an hour spent hunting down movers or spamming level 5 death at objet d'arts.

The fact that he allowed a brony into his game should tell you what sort of man DM the Pony Rapist Enabler is.
One, he let a brony into his game, one of the worst faggots under both meanings you could let in. Second, he put a character through a rape that the rest of the group allowed with no protest.

This man is host to reddit tier closet rapist company or he surrounds himself with yes-men that he takes pride in controlling emotionally and mentally, and any dissent or moving out of line is punished harshly. This fucker's a communist.

I had a literal sociopath as my first DM. As in "slavery of people I don't like is the future" type, he wasn't a heavy Holla Forums type either, there was something that did not fit about him that disturbed me. There's people who do the game as a way to have some sort of shallow control over people. They exist.

While I'm iffy on the rest of the OP, I do feel the quoted sentence is worth repeating. It's important to delineate the concept of good games and good RGPs. A RPG that can be argued as poor by RPG standards, may succeed as a game based on other design philosophies. On the other hand, a game that is well-done from a RPG perspective might not be appealing to more mainstream or more modern design philosophies.

And now for the ugly truth, that obviously you won't hear from either normalfags (too unaware) or nerds either (too worried with their epeen).

Any videogame with a story is a roleplaying game. Because originally, D&D stood against tabletop games like Risk (same setup) and group pastimes like cards (same peers).
Step one is to realize that the fantasy setting, the inventory and systems or an RPG aren't the roleplaying itself. Step two is to understand that any story has a narrator that you interact with.

Now, of course, in your little heads you're agitating because muh definitions and muh specifications. It's entirely expected for you to miss the point: I wouldn't have to explain it, if it were obvious enough for any videogame baboon to understand it. So let me just leave the final hint for those willing to listen: the crisis of the RPG is precisely caused exactly by this fact that roleplaying is so common, that the only defining trait of cRPGs nd jRPGs have become their gameplay systems - which were just intended to be subpar vehicles for a higher goal. This is called taking a step back and see things from a distance.

I didn't know fawning over morrowind is somehow jealously.

This is why I like dwarf fortress, it does a reallly good job at hiding the number crunching behind a very story like facade.

"If I make a stupid point I can try to refute criticism before anyone makes it by claiming it's an "ugly truth" etc.
You accuse everyone of missing the point while you yourself have missed the point.
You are the stupidest motherfucker in this thread.
Kill yourself.

If we go by this logic movies are role playing games too.
A role playing GAME is not just being told a story, it's being part of it, influencing it with decisions and actions.

You're a pedantic retard. Even if the original definition of an RPG was in contrast to other tabletop games, it has developed a distinct meaning in the context of video games nowadays. Calling any game with a story an RPG is just as stupid as calling any game with a combat system a fighting game.

Inventory and systems are inherent part of roleplaying GAMES. They establishe boundaries and rules. Without rules there is no GAME. There is trap that players overconcentrate on the rules and system becomes only thing that matters, but fro the other side you can't ignore rules.

You are a fucking idiot.

Dragon's Dogma is barely a RPG let alone a defined experience of it.

If you can't talk your ways out of Goblin, it ain't a good RPG.

Why not just play a hack and slash?

k

I enjoy hack and slashing very much as well
I think a video game is to be enjoyed as the ultimate sum of its parts, much like any work of art, and aesthetic in its most nebulous form plays the main role in this, hence my great enjoyment of Morrowind and Dragon's Dogma

Imagine being this stupid and hyping up how good your world view is this much to compensate for the fact that, deep down, you know you have a low IQ.

Morrowind's a horrible hack and slash, its RPG system is okay but the fact there's only one ending hurts.

Dragon's Dogma is a good hack and slash but a bad RPG.

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This was really the only post this thread needed.
Video RPGs started out as a novelty because the tech was at a very early stage and they weren't capable of doing anything that tapletops couldn't do better. But as technology advanced, RPVGs evolved into a beast of all its own, with completely different capabilities and design goals.
The two models are now enormously distinct, apples and oranges completely outside of mutual competition or a common standard. These debate topics are fallacious and founded on anachronism.


I'm not sure that's possible. All FF games are one-dimensional babies' first RPGs, with the possible exception of FF12 and the MMOs.

Hypothetically, if this perfect "hybrid of Morrowind and Dragon's Dogma" becomes the norm for RPGs, what will we call the more linear RPGs that will surely still have a niche market, like how after Doom the term "shooter" was replaced by "shoot-em-up" or "scrolling shooter" to differentiate it from first-person shooters?

If RPGs didn't have resource management then it'd just be you and your friends sitting around and roleplaying out loud. The resource management is where the game part comes into play. The rules provide the context for the roleplaying so that it's not just a constructive fiction writing exercise. If you don't think managing money and gear and stat allocations and stuff were important in tabletop rpgs, you're retarded

No, it's using numbers to abstract concepts. What separates an RPG from an action game is specifically this, action games rely on your skills to press buttons at the right time, RPGs rely on your brain to think through how to best deal with a given situation (at their best,at least). RPGs that suck ass are "press X to win" hallway bore-fests.

Holy shit, I lost it.

Someone had the balls to say it. I love FF6, but I'm not going to pretend it barely passes as an RPG.

HRPG, for Hallway RPG.

The element itself is not restrictive. It is possible to use it to force a player to grind by presenting a wall of numbers that can only be overcome with tedium.
Bloody hell you're thick.


Which has nothing to do with leveling up or experience points, it has to do with character building. You're correlating two separate design elements. Grinding levels to solve problems instead of learning and planning is the opposite of thinking and is something that can be done in virtually every rpg with a leveling system.

Now I want to see a true "dungeon crawl" game, not as in a Diablo style game, as in a game that's all about managing your various equipment and inventory in order to extract the maximum amount of treasure from a dungeon as possible without dying.

An item's value is less about how much damage it can deal and more about how useful it is in comparison to its weight; carrying too much stuff weighs you down. You can take an oil lamp along, but that's heavy. If you're going into a cave with tons of luminescent mushrooms or crystals, you should really just pack a couple torches instead; they're lighter and can be used to light things on fire without breaking them, even though they don't last as long as a lamp. Or you can save up your money and get yourself a nice miner's helmet which can provide ample light for a long time and keeps your hands free. You probably would need to go into a lot of dark caverns to make that worthwhile though. A sword can help you against monsters and of course cut through underbrush, ropes, and other obstructions, but again, heavy. Take a knife instead and you'll be less formidable in a fight, but just as good at slitting throats sneakily, and have more room for other important things. And of course no adventurer worth his salt would EVER be caught dead without a sturdy length of rope. Even something as simple as a crowbar doubles as both a way to open doors and wedge open chests, and a makeshift bludgeoning implement in a pinch.

Hell, I could probably make a text-based version. Maybe I'll try that someday.

The gameplay is great, it's just the damage sponge that makes the combat tedious, and it's very easily modded out.

Morrowind's setting is very original, Skyrim did GoT before GoT came out, and Oblivion's setting is about as derivative as any classic rpg games out there though, with the aesthetics inspired by 1981 Excalibur and LotR.

Wouldn't that just be Ultima Underworld? IIRC you did have to manage all of your supplies in that game down to food, water, and weight

Ah, ok, I see what you are getting at now. Yeah, that element you're complaining about comes from JRPGs, in my opinion. It very much fits Japanese culture, where you often here がんばって over, and over…(and over) again. The idea that if you put enough time and energy into it, even stupid people can win without being clever.
This would very much contrast the other end of the spectrum, a pen and paper RPG where the DM can challenge, adapt, and most importantly, interpret player intention. Until we get AI DMs in our RPGs, we'll always have to "fake" this element with RNGs, leveling systems, etc. It's how we abstract those concepts into what a dumb computer is capable of doing.

Terraria with a weight limit

A lot of the older CRPGs fit this description, more or less. Weight management and calculated risks used to actually be a thing in RPGs. Fallout 4 on the hardest difficultly actually was the first game to remind me of this playstyle in a long, long time. I'm not apologizing for Beth, here, or shilling for Todd

I hate the elder scrolls and bethesda games but still play Skyrim. My version of skyrim is absolutely nothing like the original game at all. Bethesda makes terrible games that can be molded into good games. That is not deserving of praise. Every game should be as moddable as skyrim is. It should be the default.

nah
again, take a look at ff5. the only thing leveling up a character does is increase hp and mp. leveling up a job class unlocks new abilities. remove the job points grinding by either simply giving the player those abilities off the bat or giving them those abilities at specific points and make the damage values not gradually increase as time goes on and you've got a game with incredible character creation but no leveling system.

user I agree but disagree. In fact, Tactical JRPG and SRPG's, in general, are a perfect example of why you are wrong. You see Pen and Paper was originally an imagination of Tabletop war games and the childish fantasy of cops and robbers. The activity attracted a bunch of Blue haired Soyboy beta males who wished to be women. So instead of focusing on the Tactical Combat the PnP RPG community became a bunch of Drag Queens talking about Gender Politics and Larping as women. This is how the "Fantasy" genre was born. PC Roll playing realized that Tactical combat was too challenging for casuals and decided to cater to Soyboy dragqueens and homosexual Aut-Riters. Thus like a faggots bedsheets, WRPG's became covered in shit. JRPG's, on the other hand, was heavily influenced by Dragon Quest which has been consistently Comfy and latter JPRG's returned to the Tactics of War Games. But then there was the day Square merged with Enix and they made Final Fantasy 7. That was when JPRG makers realized there was big money in catering to Blue haired Soyboy beta males who wished to be women and homosexual Aut-Riters.

in other words,
STOP BEING GAY YOU GAY GAMERS!

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Are you really saying that Dragon's Dogma is less like Dungeons and Dragons because higher level enemies are harder to fight? Are we conveniently just ignoring the fact that higher-level enemies in Dungeons and Dragons have higher Fortitude/Will/Reflex saves, spell resistances, higher (or lower, whichever is better depending on your version) AC, etc.?

Dungeons and Dragons follows the exact same formula in that regard. Higher-level shit is harder to hit and damage. How can you possibly use this as an example of something Dragon's Dogma does incorrectly that places it further from Dungeons and Dragons?

they are used to playing with a Pink haired SoyBoy DM would would magically allow them to kill a Dragon by cartwheeling with there magic sword of everlasting sodomy +1. You know because "Fantasy".

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That happens with every thread.
I don't know why, but a lot of faggots will sagebomb new threads unless they're generals or those shitty meme threads like 4AM that nobody outside of the same dozen people uses.
Usually after 15 posts it stops.

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>>>/reddit/

I don't really play much RPG's but I think the Mario RPG's nailed how much "gamey" a RPG should be if it's going to be a video game. If you want your pure number crunching, stick to tabletop or their simulators. You have to involve the player somehow if it's going to be a video game or what's the point at all? Btw, spamming the attack button like most modern RPG's is just as unengaging as going through menus to do anything.

This. Action commands are pretty easy to do and keep the game engaging all the way through, I wonder why it isn't used much

How about actually challenging his opinion instead of being a pissy faggot? Eh?
They why are you here?

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So we need a game with machine learning and/or a community feeding it with more and more ideas what you could do with things? + more tactical combat to make it less gay?

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I'm sure a turn-based minigame combat system similar to Undertale would be fantastic, if it were separated from everything else about that game and made symmetrical, i.e. you attack NPCs the same way they attack you.

Because they got rid of stats.

immersive as fuck

Those creatures destroyed a lot of the soul of the hobby.
Atleast private groups can stay away from this cancer.

nice quadruples

That's what happens when you work for Capcoms cheap ass.

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Gooks ruined RPGs by selling it to gooks and niggers

At Kingdom Come: Deliverance is bringing back RPGs from the claws of subhumans

It's just

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This is the most relevant post in this trainwreck of a thread.

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I don't know why that just makes me laugh.

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You do realize that OD&D and AD&D were resource intensive and design decisions like using the Vancian magic system (in addition to giving the middle finger to Wizards) was to reflect this idea? Resource management has always been baked into Tabletop gaming; CRPG's just had an easier time crunching the numbers.

I think this is the fundamental problem. I play Tabletop, I can have a single campaign that incorporates all these things no problem. The problem comes from how limited designing all these things for a computer actually it. There are games that focus on each thing you mentioned, none that I can think of that put them all together in a great way.

Video Games are great at providing a singular experience and can outshine tabletop when the Developers commit to that idea. Trying to accommodate so many types of gameplay and styles usually results in a game that plays like ass and looks bad.

The flexibility of tabletop rules allows more variety in what can be done which is something computer games have yet to overtake though.

You've hinted on the crux of the issue a little bit, but you haven't directly addressed it.
The obsession with dice is killing rpgs, RNG needs to be ditched entirely for skillgated actual gameplay.
RNG doesn't work without real people to turn it into fun.
It's not hard, but for whatever reason no one tries.

RNG is never acceptable in games tbh.

I don't quite agree with that. Though this is just my own preference after playing games in this framework for so long.

For non-random skillful gameplay to work there needs to be a level of complexity that I don't think you can achieve in a PnP setting.

While an enemy in a beat em up video game can move around and act in a way that requires a lot of memorization and understanding of which attacks can be fit into which openings.
On the other hand removing RNG from an RPG framework of health values and stats it would simply become and preordained affair if you could know exactly how many hits you need to throw out and what it would cost you in resources to execute them. Turning an enemy encounter into a simple "-8 health, -2 ammo, +40xp" exchange.

Unless we can create an entirely new system to base RPGs on or discover an alternative solution within the existing framework then I believe randomness keeps the game interesting in that you still have the agency to make intelligent decisions and direct events toward the outcome of your choice, but it never truly becomes "solved" so to speak. (well unless your campaign was crafted by a total cock that doesn't understand balance)

Why Most "RPG" fans suck
The origin of the modern day RPG is the fantasy role playing games of the past - the original white box of D&D

READIN'S FOR FAGS, FAG.

The origins of RTS games is tabletop wargames what's your point?

Truly the essential element of RPGs.

Maybe this is a good thread to ask, come springtime every year I get this insane hunger for an RPG. I just NEED it. I want that runescape/dragon's dogma/champions of norrath return to arms feeling where I can wander and grind for loot and shit but still have an overarching story. I've tried so hard to get into dragon's dogma but I really need a story to bite into. The gameplay is perfectly and exactly what I'm after but without the story it's like chomping into a ravioli with no filling.

Off the top of my head I've played and enjoyed chronotrigger, all the final fantasy games, the witcher series, bunch of ultimas, the might and magic series, planescape torment, earthbound, bunch of dragon quests, elderscrolls and the earlier pokemon games. I know I can't be running out of good RPGs, there must be more out there I just don't know them. Any platform.

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RPGs suck because they don't respect player skill. They force everyone to play on equal ground and they don't respect our differences.

Profound insight from a genius here.

like communism

Exactly.

It's advanced far beyond that.

The removal of RNG is only from a dice-rolling to do action perceptive, you still need it in order to shake things up and make the player need risk management skills, which is what you're talking about.
It's more about replacing a simple dice roll with something significantly more complex that involves a lot of player agency and skill.

Because if you fail or succeed a dice roll, that creates new options and new content dynamically because it's not set in stone and involves the players, and the DM collectively telling a story.
And the campaign is just the DM's secret plans for the direction of the story that the players can and will fuck up.
Whereas a failure or a success state in a game cannot create options indefinitely unless the game has some sort of "aware" storyteller.
And the campaign is the campaign, and the system is the system, its word is law.

So instead of making the content come from the result of success/failure what I'm suggesting is to nigger rig it by adding more content onto the action of obtaining a success/failure.
While not a solution to just having an AI make content at runtime, it's still going to massively increase replayability, enjoyability, and if done right, immersion, of RPGs simply by adding more game.

I honestly liked SaGa Frontier a lot since it feels like an expansive RPG with a dungeon master that actively fucks with you, like the monster level scaling that gives you worse monsters to fight as your stats go up or the RNG involved in learning new moves, it feels more active in a way. The real problem with these kind of games is that they don't feel alive or don't involve you enough to be comparable to a social wargame, ie Dungeons and Dragons. Unlimited SaGa tried, albeit it bombed since Square Enix is run by retards, especially in their international branches.

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It's actually one of the few good examples of scaling in an RPG.

nah

Do any good RPGs do level scaling over hours played? Like the bad guys are steadily getting stronger and it has nothing to do with you, so it's a soft time limit.

How come they all suck and I haven't had fun in like 15 years then?

I don't think so, maybe there's a JRPG that tries it. The thing is levelling up is linked to time played anyway.

Because you're a jaded nostalgiafag.

The tumblr crowd didn't rise because of piracy. In fact Piracy has no real effect on video games. The fact is that even if everybody on Holla Forums put money into games we wanted to see, we still wouldn't get anything out of it except a niche and small budgeted title made by somebody here.

If you don't buy games you don't get good games. See this in action on the PC market.

Not really actually. Look up the UK study. Piracy doesn't effect game sales and it never will. Interest and player feedback will always rule.