LE Turn It Back Into A RPG

[smogy]

You people realize that Daggerfall was different than Arena, then Morrowind changed up abit, then Oblivion, then Skyrim. They are all different gameplay styles.

 

Personally, I really loved Morrowind. I never did get to finish it, nor Oblivion, and my computer crashed along with every mod and save I had... left me pretty much not wanting to play. Right now I'm only borrowing this computer to play Skyrim, and gotta give it back on the 27th, and then who knows when I'm going to be able to play.

 

The thing I'm pissy about is the huge decrease in fantasy critters than it used to be.

While I always put the "real animal" mod on, I might all the interesting critters there used to be... seems to be a lot of humanoids (giants, trolls etc, though I know that fits in with the Nordic theme) but the "deer", "bears", "elk" etc all could have been different things that would be in THAT world.

 

I miss also having the "dictionary" that Morrowind had, with all the terms, people, history and etc. I also enjoyed the journal, saying what days I did important events as well as creating my own, though the quest management in Skyrim is really awesome. I just wish to have that dictionary once more, though I know there's wikis for it, but I don't want to tab out. Haha.

 

Oblivion has been less liking on my menu. It got a bit, drab for me at points. Though at the same time, I still enjoyed it.

Daggerfall and Arena are their own special charms and so HUGE. I never really played much, and I really wish to one day run through as much as that vast land as I could. I realize it was so vast because they repeated a lot of graphics and it wasn't all terribly unique, but hey.

 

I think I got a bit off topic but...

 

It still feels WRPG. Not as much as Morrowind, but a new flavor. It's hard getting used to it... but honestly, JRPGs evolved as well... and are all different in some sort of aspect. Everything used to be Turn Based or Tatics, and now there's all sorts of new add-ons.

 

 

... that being said, where are my Giant Snakes?

 

I agree with you on both the animals and the dictionary points. It seems reasonable that the strangeness of creatures would be an something that is not relegated to Morrowind alone, its not earth, and Morrowind borders on Skyrim. Though maybe a bit harsh my conclusion is that they got lazy or unimaginative in the creature design department, the ones they have are good, but they could be better..

 

As to the journal, I hate it. I want to have a proper journal, one that includes directions to quest objectives and the dialogue of the NPCs telling me what I'm ding. What is with the going backwards Bethesda?

[shadowxi304]

I must say, i hate the fact that bethesda got rid of attribute leveling that basically helps the character adapt and such, i hate the new leveling system where you just choose between leveling magicka, health, or stamina once, i thought that was kinda bogus and a bit lazy on that subject

[maboru]

Bethesda seems to be going after the Battlefield/Call of Duty players, quite successfully apparently - 3.4 million Skyrim copies sold in the first two days. That's second only to the Modern Warfare 3 release and orders of magnitude above any previous Beth game so I imagine their market research team will be getting a big something extra in their Christmas Bonus checks this year! More power to them, they are a corporation and corporations don't last long in this world if they don't bring in the big bucks. The days of a lone kid sitting in his room and producing a game on his Apple ][ or the husband and wife team hashing one out over the kitchen table are long gone, production costs for game development now rival that of Hollywood movie productions. Traditional RPGs have become a thing of the past and we traditional RPGers simply must adjust ( or keep going back to our old games made new again thanks to modders! ). Pity, the costs of producing new games leaves little room for a niche market.

 

That said Beth has done an admirable job straddling the fences between FPS, Adventure and RPG and kudos to them for that. The one thing that I would advise them on is to move away from porting console games to PC and go back to porting PC games to console. The latest marketing projections indicate that console sales are slipping while computer game sales are rising and are expected to regain the total sales lead in the next two years (thanks mostly to social gaming and smart phone apps perhaps.)

 

Anyway...I see from many other mod requests on this forum that there is considerable interest expressed in modifying the leveling and character creation system presently in place. Perhaps Beth will take this into consideration for FO4 and take a page from the 'olden dayes' RPGs that offered pre-generated characters for those who don't want to be bothered by the character generation process while still offering the Full Monty for those that do.

 

In the mean time it won't be long now until the CK waves the starting flag so "Modders, start your engines...!"

[Link6746]

Honestly it's not that I want the RPG to be taken out... What I want is for all of the parts that make it an RPG to be present and accounted for, but hidden to the player until they check their stats. I want for instance for each skill point to slightly increase the associated stat (magicka, health, stamina) by a certain amount per skill point based on the skill itself (ideally in between level ups to make it seamless). I want perks to be chosen each level not based on the player thinking "Hmm what would be the most powerful", but instead on how they played the game between the previous and current level ups.

 

I'd like Magic to be a useful choice in gameplay, vampires not to be completely useless. I'd like an interface that isn't completely borked and so fourth wall shattering it requires

the person who invented it to be slapped with a dead fish. I'd like an unarmed skill or the like... I'd like not to be killed in 1 hit by a skeever (true story) because I chose to increase magicka every level (this in and of itself is borked. Why do you only get increases to stats at a level up, why do you have to make an all or nothing choice with them).

 

I really want the full RPG backend, but I'd like it to be kept behind view.

 

And if you're not going to keep it behind view, you should at least make it's portrayal believable like in Gothic II. I shouldn't be going to menus to increase things. I should either get them naturally or be trained by experts in them. I see no point why an RPG has to be obvious in that it is governed by arbitrary stats. I see plenty that those stats have to exist in many cases (for instance, it was the words "f*** attributes" that got skyrim into a such a mess balance wise, and the fact that there wasn't a good system to replace those in place that let it stay that way.)

 

The stats should exist (or be simulated), should affect things, and so on.

 

But above all they should never show themselves up front so they can slap you in the face and say "You're in a game!"

[sirspikey]

I agree, Skyrim feels more like an adventure game then a RPG, I had more feel for my chars in Dragon Age then in Skyrim

[Shantih]

Yes when enemies can kill you in 3 hits, that people think its still a full on 'rpg', is where I draw the line.

 

Maybe the generation of people will get worse... You have your COD Kiddies nowadays, and at some point every single gamer out there might not take RPG as seriously...

 

I don't see how the damage enemies cause has any bearing on the game qualifying as an RPG or not.

 

In Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven there were some monsters who could kill your characters in one shot and this game was old school.

 

Of course it all depends on what you call an RPG or better yet a CRPG.

 

IMO game mechanics don't make an RPG, it's the story and the different possibilities that are available to you that make the difference. For instance, Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven was all about levelling characters and finishing quests. The same could be said about Diablo. These games weren't about making choices as much as going through quests.

 

What I'm getting at is that the border between CRPGs and adventure games is not that clearly defined (it never was).

 

I agree, Skyrim feels more like an adventure game then a RPG, I had more feel for my chars in Dragon Age then in Skyrim

 

The freedom Skyrim offers comes with a price. If you're going to roleplay this game then you will have to think about your character concept and get invested into the game. If for you the game is all about going through quests and levelling up then the RP elements are limited to the few choices you have to make at certain points and that's pretty much it. I'm not judging, the game is what you make of it and as long as you're having fun it's fine. What I want to point out is the fact that if some players don't want to RP this game it doesn't mean that other players won't.

 

There are many different ways to enjoy this game -and the same can't be said about linear, more restrictive games like Dragon Age. While these games may make it easier for you to get to play one role (the Grey Warden in DAO or Geralt in the Witcher) they take away your freedom to play any other roles. Skyrim (and FNV for that matter) allow you to play whatever character you want. They even allow you to completely disregard the main quest and still enjoy the game. IMO only true RPGs allow you that sort of freedom.

 

Bethesda seems to be going after the Battlefield/Call of Duty players, quite successfully apparently - 3.4 million Skyrim copies sold in the first two days. That's second only to the Modern Warfare 3 release and orders of magnitude above any previous Beth game so I imagine their market research team will be getting a big something extra in their Christmas Bonus checks this year! More power to them, they are a corporation and corporations don't last long in this world if they don't bring in the big bucks. The days of a lone kid sitting in his room and producing a game on his Apple ][ or the husband and wife team hashing one out over the kitchen table are long gone, production costs for game development now rival that of Hollywood movie productions. Traditional RPGs have become a thing of the past and we traditional RPGers simply must adjust ( or keep going back to our old games made new again thanks to modders! ). Pity, the costs of producing new games leaves little room for a niche market.

 

That said Beth has done an admirable job straddling the fences between FPS, Adventure and RPG and kudos to them for that. The one thing that I would advise them on is to move away from porting console games to PC and go back to porting PC games to console. The latest marketing projections indicate that console sales are slipping while computer game sales are rising and are expected to regain the total sales lead in the next two years (thanks mostly to social gaming and smart phone apps perhaps.)

 

Anyway...I see from many other mod requests on this forum that there is considerable interest expressed in modifying the leveling and character creation system presently in place. Perhaps Beth will take this into consideration for FO4 and take a page from the 'olden dayes' RPGs that offered pre-generated characters for those who don't want to be bothered by the character generation process while still offering the Full Monty for those that do.

 

In the mean time it won't be long now until the CK waves the starting flag so "Modders, start your engines...!"

 

The Elder Scrolls is also highly popular among more casual gamers. I have a number of real life friends who aren't that much into games and they're going to be playing Skyrim a lot because it is The Elder Scrolls V and because they have fond memories of playing Morrowind and Oblivion ten and five years ago.

 

I wholeheartedly agree on the point that Bethesda should make PC games and port them to console instead of doing the opposite. We've been plagued with ported games in the past few years and it's really annoying... Especially when games on the console don't look anything like they look on a fairly decent PC (Skyrim being a good example of that). I do understand the appeal of consoles for more casual gamers and the current popularity of consoles forces us to acknowledge that hardcore PC gamers are a minority, a vocal minority but a minority nevertheless.

 

In the meantime we have to live with dumbed down versions that we inherit from consoles -and that includes the awful UI.

 

As far as "turning it back into an RPG" I don't think that the problem can possibly be fixed by bringing stats back into the game. Roleplaying Skyrim is more a question of whether or not you're willing to use your imagination to get invested in the game so you actually play a role rather than playing at keeping track of the distribution of stat points and the way skills increase.

[maboru]

Shanith, you're right, I'd almost forgotten about the original CRPGs! Back in the day CRPGs were all "Party" based. You didn't just create a character you created a party of characters, anywhere from 4 - 8 depending on the game. Games like the old Apple and early PC Dungeons and Dragons franchise, Wizardry, Might and Magic etc. where you couldn't even play through without a pad of graph paper and a note book (paper and pen not PC!), and we didn't consider that immersion breaking. As I recall the first deviation from that was the Ultima series (by Lord British and Origin) where you created a single character and throughout the game picked up your companions (ahh, Iogo how I miss thee!) [Heck, Ultima VII got tired of the old DOS restraints and even created a new operating system (Voodoo I seem to recall) that required players to create a boot floppy and start their computers with that, almost entirely circumventing Microsoft so they could actually add animation and voice files!] How times have changed, there's no way you could sell that in this age!

 

I'm not sure I agree with your last statement though. I see "real life" as a role playing game where if you don't concentrate on your real life "stats" (various educational opportunities, requirements to make rank in the military or get job promotions in the work force) you'll find your "gameplay" experience rather limiting. (Of course in real life no one can 'beat the game' because we all know that we finish with the same 'end game' no matter what we do!) Bringing the best stats to the game requires great imagination and planning, to me at least.

 

As you say though everyone brings their own expectations and sense of enjoyment to any game and there is no wrong way to play as long as one is still able to satisfy their sense of enjoyment through the games mechanics. No game producer can create a game that will be 100% right for everyone but Beth has earned great success by realizing this and creating the most moddable games out there so that other (non-paid!) individuals can tweak their games for them in various ways to bring the most amount of enjoyment to the most amount people.

 

You just can't beat that business model!

[Shantih]

Interesting post and I hope you won't mind but I'm only quoting this part because it's interesting in the light of what I have posted above.

 

(Of course in real life no one can 'beat the game' because we all know that we finish with the same 'end game' no matter what we do!) Bringing the best stats to the game requires great imagination and planning, to me at least.

 

It's interesting that you're speaking about "beating the game" because that's what we do in computer games and adventure games but it is a concept that is entirely alien to RPGs (especially pen and paper RPGs).

 

The most important thing in an RPG is to play a role and have fun (the game part), it's never about "winning" in fact ask any pen and paper players and they will probably tell you that some failures are more memorable than most victories.

 

You can't beat the game and that is a huge difference. If we consider that Skyrim can be beaten then we're seeing it as an adventure game or at the very least as a CRPG -with a stress on the C as it is definitely a computer RPG and not a pen and paper RPG.

 

Here is what Gary Gygax said about RPGs and winning:

 

"The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience. There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things."

 

The cooperative element aside, I think that what is meant is that it's the journey that matters not actually getting to the end of the journey. The fun you have playing the game is probably more important than actually beating the game.

[maboru]

I was was actually waxing philosophical on the 'game of life', that we all eventually die no matter what we do. Other than that I couldn't agree with you more. I've been playing Oblivion for five years now and have never gotten around to 'beating the game', not even sure how at this point because I simply immerse myself in the environment and continue to add quest mods to further my involvement (my current play through I haven't even enabled the Oblivion Gates!). Same with Morrowind and FONV. I did 'beat' FO3 but that was only because I could continue to play afterwords and see the effects of the choices I'd made, but I still continue to play it with the additional quest mods. I've also re-started all the games many times with different characters and different companions and continue to have a ball with them. That's why I'm so exited about Skyrim, the vanilla game is so incredible that I can't even imagine to what great lengths the modders will be able to take it from here.

[Shantih]

I think it's going to be incredible, especially if the toolset supports the making of lip files so voicing dialogue won't be such a hassle anymore.