/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5377613]

>The term “RPG” has somehow been misunderstood by many of today’s games; they think that increasing your stats is roleplaying. Originally you inhabited the role of another character in an RPG. I mean, game systems where you defeat enemies and collect gold do help sustain players’ interest and ambition, but I feel something is being missed here.
>The main policy for RPGs should be how to make the player feel like he has become the hero of the game. We could make things more realistic, but in doing so, we might lose half the appeal of the game. Being games, there are some things you just can’t do away with. I want to make RPGs that let players experience new things different from their everyday life.

Do you agree with him?

[Anonymous No.5377621]

Until technology progresses to have actual artificial intelligence which can sufficiently simulate a DM who is capable of responding to whatever whacked-out bonkers shit a player thinks to do, roleplaying as he defines it is impossible in video games.

[Anonymous No.5377723]

>>5377613
I think I get what he is trying to say but he could have did a bit better a job explaining himself. What people see as RPG mechanics actually kind of ruined gaming. So many games adopted some form of RPG mechanics for their games largely to pad out the game and make people feel like they are achieving things the more time they put into it. Think the term used for this is called skinner box. A good example of what I am trying to get at is Call of Duty games multiplayer. The idea behind the leveling is to constantly get XP to rank up and then prestige. At least the ones I played used to also have plenty of stuff to constantly be unlocking. It used to mostly be RPG that had these things but then I would say most games adopted at least some form of these mechanics even if used to a smaller degree than the COD example I gave.

I wouldn't be surprised if what he is getting at is something along the lines of TES, especially Skyrim since it is praised so much, where you are seen and told you are the hero of the game. The thing about that is you are told you are but that doesn't necessarily mean you will or should feel that you are the hero. Most games do what Skyrim does. I don't know if I ever played a single game where you can truly get that feel that you become the hero of the game world. It takes more than just telling the player it. I think the games mechanics and design would have to even reflect such a concept for it to be realized. Something just about no publisher/developer is ever going to truly be willing to do.

Before the first Fable game released a lot of the hype and marketing for the game promised by Peter Molyneux actually sounded a lot like what I described.

[Anonymous No.5377735]

>>5377621
First post is best post
Video games are horribly limited in scope even still. We're in 2019 and we still can't get the whole "you know, hair doesn't just phase through solid matter" down pat

Video games are always going to be clunky as Hell if we want to reflect any level of reality. Poster here is right, until you get DM AI as cruel and creative as players, there's just no point

[Anonymous No.5377748]

>>5377723
>I wouldn't be surprised if what he is getting at is something along the lines of TES
Well he said that in the late eighties.

[Anonymous No.5377753]

>>5377748
Well in that case isn't it pointless to even discuss this since gaming since then has changed a whole lot?

[Anonymous No.5377758]

>>5377735
>We're in 2019 and we still can't get the whole "you know, hair doesn't just phase through solid matter" down pat

I don't think you will ever see clipping removed from games. It would be one of the most difficult things to perfect about a game since they would need to make sure nothing in the game world clips through objects just like in reality. You will see a lot of other things perfected before you ever see clipping eliminated from games.

[Anonymous No.5377796]

>>5377621
This is a huge part of why I don't understand WRPG lunatics who swear up and down that JRPGs are shit because they have "no choices." Anybody coming from a background of tabletop gaming to WRPGs would feel exactly how a WRPG player feels going to JRPGs.

[Anonymous No.5377817]

>>5377613
And this is a Japanese developer saying this? JRPGs don't make you "feel like the hero" any more than other games. You're just playing as Cloud or Squall or Mario.

[Anonymous No.5377835]

>>5377613
>>The main policy for RPGs should be how to make the player feel like he has become the hero of the game
Seems like there's a divide in how JRPGs and WRPGs approach this.
The latter are centered heavily around dialogue choices influencing how the game progresses, making you define that character. The former seem more about making you immerse yourself into an essentially predefined character. Except they are sometimes mute and you are given some dialogue choices to not pre-define them too much, but for the most part they are their own characters.

[Anonymous No.5377851]

>>5377817
>>5377796
It is a question of how much detail do you think is needed to achieve that. Clearly, jrpgs managed to do that with not as much detail as wrpgs. It means wrpgs offer more freedom (not as much as a tabletop game) but that doesn't mean jrpgs don't success into making you feel your are inside some tale or story.

[Anonymous No.5378108]

>>5377613
He's right about the Dragon Quest series but not RPGs as a whole.

[Anonymous No.5378114]

>>5377796
I grew up playing D&D before I had really any video games. I preferred Final Fantasy over Dragon Warrior when I played them and liked both more than Wizardry or Bard's Tale at the time. However it was Rogue that really caught me and always felt much more like playing a tabletop game. Eventually many years later on discovering Nethack it was like a revelation.

[Anonymous No.5378172]

The only WRPGs I like are basically lite-MMOs like Neverwinter or Diablo 2 so I don't get where this roleplay trash is coming from. And yes I did play Daggerfall, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate and while I reckon they had excellent writing, at no point I felt like I was making meaningful decisions and the combat felt more like a chore I had to avoid rather than enjoyable.
The only games that truly felt like a roleplay experience were MUDs

[Anonymous No.5378178]

>>5378172
*Neverwitner Nights
Fixed

[Anonymous No.5378378]

I mean, technically RPG's were also played around a table with dice and pen & paper

[Anonymous No.5378416]

>>5378172
TFW they forget anime tiddies mods exist.

[Anonymous No.5378438]

>>5377723
>" He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, “abusive” — a common diagnosis among those who get hooked on the games, but a surprising one from a game designer..."
>" “Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like hoarding,” he said, “the need to make progress with points or collect things. You sit there saying yeah-yeah-yeah and then you wake up and say, What the hell was I doing? You can call that kind of game fun, but only if you call compulsive gambling fun.” "

[Anonymous No.5378802]

>>5378378
The same as playing it at a desk with digital dice digital pen/paper

[Anonymous No.5378864]

>>5378172
>Baldur's Gate
>excellent writing

it's literally a saturday morning cartoon with blood

[Anonymous No.5378871]

Well in western RPG's usually have tons of customization options where you can totally change how you play the game, putting more emphasis on the RolePlaying aspect, while JRPG's are usually just long anime where you can change the characters names.

[Anonymous No.5378907]

>>5378864
Come to think of it - that's kinda the point of this game. I guess it's one of the reasons why BG2 is so fondly remembered - it knows what it is. It's a fun, tropey adventure and nothing else.

[Anonymous No.5379124]

>>5377613
He is right, the problem is that now any time a game has some sort of arbitrary stat increasing system in place it is automatically labeled as an rpg or having rpg elements. It also doesn't help that now fucking everything has it for some reason, what do you call them those perk trees.

[Anonymous No.5379291]

>>5377613
You constantly have to explain Zelda, Terranigma and even Metroid fans that their game is not an RPG. It's annoying.

[Anonymous No.5379703]

>>5378802
no it's not. Tabletop is a social experience, video games are not

[Anonymous No.5379707]

>>5379291
Okay yeah with Zelda and Metroid you're correct, but how is Terranigma not an RPG?

[Anonymous No.5379795]

No, but mostly because he's a hypocrite.

He's right in the sense that the RPG term is widely misused and misunderstood, but everything else he says can be perfectly applied to his games, which are all about increasing stats, defeating enemies and collect gold, not to mention that DQ's stories and characters are all incredibly mundane and so fossilized into the blandest hero's journey clichès it's really hard to find any enjoyment unless you're a little kid, and the mechanics aren't any different either, though on the bright side, they are also not as horrible as something like FF.

Either way, it's not like there is one single problem with RPGs, there are many, outside of idiots who consider any videogame with a stat system an RPG (which technically speaking would make 99.9% of the medium an RPG), there's many problems stemming from what designers and directors think it can be classified as RPG and what players think it can be classified as RPG.
Still, you can identify two main currents in this whole mess, which generally encapsule a lot of common subcomplaints or ideas about RPGs.

The first one is made up of people like Horii, who want RPGs as a mean to tell a story and take the role of a predefined character assigned to you, to which you might or might not have a variable degree of player input and shape the game world and your character in substantial ways, these people prefer a more cinematic, narrative focused experience with a strong main quest, often linear but not necessarily.

The second one is made up of people like Garriot, who see videogame RPGs as a way to create a complex simulation of a virtual world you can inhabit and actively interact with to meaningful extents, this kind of people are more focused on the simulation aspects and the "worldbuilding" aspect ad in how believable and interactive the virtual world is, narrative should be focused on the lore and the main quest should not be as all encompassing as the other model.
>>>

[Anonymous No.5379797]

>>5379795
Both of these models sacrifice something for the sake of one aspect of roleplaying they believe is vital.

Horii's model aims at making you live as another person and perhaps try to make you empathize more with the character you're playing as than Garriot's model, which allows a more direct and personal interaction.
The problem with this model is that you're sacrificing a lot of other role playing technicalities, and limiting the player input of a roleplaying game is a capital sin when RPGs are all about player inputs to begin with, experiencing new things is cool and dandy but a good GM should know that there's a lot of people who don't care about his shitty donut steel OG fiction and are more in it for the adventure itself and playing like they want to play, not be chained into some prebaked role with no freedom of choice other than play some other game.

The other model, which we'll call Garriot's model, aims at making you shape and mould your ideal role as close as possible by simulating a world down to its most minute particulars like baking bread, which in theory allows great roleplaying potential, but in practice results into straying away from actual roleplaying into the pure simulation territory, hence forsaking the fundamental of RPGs, which is abstraction.
The problem with this model is exemplified perfectly into the Bethesda CRPG model that tends to stray further and further from the necessary need of abstraction in both rules and mechanics for a half assed and misguided need of mechanical realism and "CHOICES THAT (DO NOT) MATTER" that create monstruous dissonances in gameplay and half assed narrative that makes you believe four "different" routes to get to the same exact end results mean you're roleplaying.

There's a lot more problems to explore but these are, in my opinion, the main problems from which everything else stems from, these are the main schools of thought for RPG design that usually encompass most of their respective problems.

[Anonymous No.5380458]

>>5377613
>games can think and understand or misunderstand
Don't agree. And I think we can all agree that's retarded. b-b-but he meant blah blah blah. Even then it's retarded. Time has proven that.

[Anonymous No.5380541]

>>5378378
It's Larping the most accurate RPG experience?

[Anonymous No.5380935]

>>5377613
The purpose of stats in RPGs is to disconnect the skill of the player as a video game player from the in-game skills of the character that the player is playing as.

Without stats, a player with good gaming ability is able to jump into the game and make the character "good" at what he does without an in-game progression.

Having stats doesn't make it an RPG but if the character is being tested in some way as part of the gameplay, whether by enemies or needing to perform various difficult tasks, I think stats are unavoidable.

[Anonymous No.5380991]

>>5380935
So you're saying that stats don't make it an RPG, but also that stats make it an RPG.

[Anonymous No.5381104]

>>5377613
well, i agree half of this. his frustrations seems to stem on the notion that players only care about stat grinding despite it making up one of the important aspects of RPGs to set a distinction to players and the character they're playing.

what players really miss the point of RPGs is that they tend to forget that they need to act like the character they're playing as well, ergo roleplaying rather than being the sole hero of the story. RPGs are generally a team effort than
a solo act. unless the character they made or a predefined character given to them is naturally erratic, i don't think any choices they made would make much sense for their character, thus ruins the sense of roleplay within the game itself by going meta. A good DM that drives the story through player input is also vital as to not make the game pointless even when input was given.