I've actually always wondered about the word "RPG". That is "Role-Playing Game", right? Well, isn't every single game by telltale, for instance, a game where you play a role?
I totally get it for Tabletop RPGs. You're becoming a character you invented. To some extent, the videogame version of tabletop RPGs (WoW and the like) make sense to me as well.
But the rest? Apparently what makes a RPG is that you have turn-based battles, level grinding and stuff like that. Which I don't get at all. Maybe someone could explain to me the terminology here. Why is it a RPG if I have to fight randomly when trying to get someplace, and 90% of the time playing isn't advancing the story, but fighting the same enemies over and over again until I'm strong enough to advance the story?
I definitely like action/adventure games like Zelda more. This being said, I liked the Paper Mario games and the Mario RPG ones, but I felt like there was a lot less level grinding in these.
I also like FF12 more because the fights weren't turn-based.
I wouldn't have a problem with Telltale making RPGs, but I don't know if that's the direction they want to take.
I've actually always wondered about the word "RPG". That is "Role-Playing Game", right? Well, isn't every single game by telltale, for instance, a game where you play a role?
I totally get it for Tabletop RPGs. You're becoming a character you invented. To some extent, the videogame version of tabletop RPGs (WoW and the like) make sense to me as well.
But the rest? Apparently what makes a RPG is that you have turn-based battles, level grinding and stuff like that. Which I don't get at all. Maybe someone could explain to me the terminology here. Why is it a RPG if I have to fight randomly when trying to get someplace, and 90% of the time playing isn't advancing the story, but fighting the same enemies over and over again until I'm strong enough to advance the story?
If you want to get into that, what makes an adventure game an adventure game? You have to have items and use them on other items in order to have an adventure? You have to have long winding dialogue trees in order to have an adventure?
If you want to get into that, what makes an adventure game an adventure game? You have to have items and use them on other items in order to have an adventure? You have to have long winding dialogue trees in order to have an adventure?
Yeah, actually I used to call stuff like Zelda "adventure games". For me, basically, an adventure game was a game with a story, an adventure in it. RPGs being a sub-category of adventure games, and "point-and-click adventure games" being their own sub-category too.
I'm fine using the words that are the "right ones", I was just wondering how it came to be. There is actually less roleplaying in FF games than there is in point-and click games. Because in point and click games you need to think like the main character, therefore you roleplay. In FF games the story is more linear and you get cutscenes whenever the characters are "in character", otherwise they're interchangeable.
I think an RPG is "traditionally" defined by the ability to assume a role of a character that you design or customise in some way. Whether it be facial features, clothes, abilities/skills, race, etc. According to what I was told earlier, anyway.
Hum, so it wouldn't be about playing the role of an existing character as much as... "creating" that role, in a way? Is that what you mean?
I guess that makes sense, although you don't really customise them very much in FF12. I remember being annoyed that all characters could do everything, you could buy the whole grid for some of them. Specialising them by sacrificing something for something else would have been so much more fun.
Then my answer is the only types of RPGs I like are those akin to The Elder Scrolls. Real-time combat. I just can't stand turn-based-ness. This is also why I could not get into Knights of the Old Republic or any MMO title for that matter.
The Kotors are in realtime. However there is a turn-system under it, which you can ignore if you never press space bar .
(They allow it, in Baldur's Gate, you're dead meat)
The Kotors are in realtime. However there is a turn-system under it, which you can ignore if you never press space bar .
(They allow it, in Baldur's Gate, you're dead meat)
It's not the same. I played 10 minutes of KOTOR after excitedly buying it from Steam because of all the hype it had got and was severely disappointed. $10 I'll never see again. At least I didn't get it brand new.....but if I did I could have sold it again.....
We don't mention that game around here. It was a major let down. I understand that the hype machine will build things up a bit but what I was sold was only a fraction of what I was advertised. They billed it as Elder Scrolls but with consequences for your actions and an ever progressing world and I ended up buying a demo for that game. I know it's sour grapes but I feel it's an over-hyped and over-rated game. It broke no new ground and didn't bring any new mechanics to the gaming world. It was retreading the same ground after promising new and original.
Once again as I said sour grapes but it really bugs me.
The terminology is what it is for historical reasons, not because it makes sense today. Adventure games are called adventure games because the whole genre was spawned by a game called "Adventure". If Crowther and Woods had instead decided to call their cave-crawl "Expedition", we'd be referring to Telltale's products as point-and-click expedition games. Role-Playing Games were originally an offshoot of miniatures wargaming, which puts each player at the head of an entire army; in that context, the idea that you're playing the role of a single character was one of the new form's chief distinguishing features.
The terminology is what it is for historical reasons, not because it makes sense today. Adventure games are called adventure games because the whole genre was spawned by a game called "Adventure". If Crowther and Woods had instead decided to call their cave-crawl "Expedition", we'd be referring to Telltale's products as point-and-click expedition games. Role-Playing Games were originally an offshoot of miniatures wargaming, which puts each player at the head of an entire army; in that context, the idea that you're playing the role of a single character was one of the new form's chief distinguishing features.
I thought it was because they were derived from tabletop RPGs, which are also heavily based on a stat system and in which you really are role-playing as your character.
Right. I didn't mean that computer RPGs evolved directly from miniatures wargames. Rather, computer RPGs started as an attempt to imitate the mechanics of tabletop RPGs, and tabletop RPGs started as a development from miniatures games.
Heck, even today, the most popular computer RPG in existence is directly based on a wargame: Warcraft.
Actually that makes sense. I had looked up the history of D&D one time and I had read that their was a version of D&D that was around even before the books. They played a tabletop game that was then laid down years later as D&D. It would make sense that it evolved from miniature wargames because if you can't spatially keep track of a character, combat becomes very muddled.
We don't mention that game around here. It was a major let down. I understand that the hype machine will build things up a bit but what I was sold was only a fraction of what I was advertised. They billed it as Elder Scrolls but with consequences for your actions and an ever progressing world and I ended up buying a demo for that game. I know it's sour grapes but I feel it's an over-hyped and over-rated game. It broke no new ground and didn't bring any new mechanics to the gaming world. It was retreading the same ground after promising new and original.
Once again as I said sour grapes but it really bugs me.
If you actually had to buy a demo, you got ripped off.
anyways, Demos aren't really a good way to judge a game. I remember the Demo for Rayman 2, which was a lot wonkier than the actual full game.
If you actually had to buy a demo, you got ripped off.
anyways, Demos aren't really a good way to judge a game. I remember the Demo for Rayman 2, which was a lot wonkier than the actual full game.
It wasn't that I played a demo for the game. I was making a reference to the fact that what I was playing in the actual game was a demo compared to what was advertised.
Heck, even today, the most popular computer RPG in existence is directly based on a wargame: Warcraft.
I think I remember reading that Warcraft came about because Games Workshop had asked Blizzard do make a game based on Fantasy Warhammer, but then pulled out close to the end. Rather than scrap a perfectly good game, Blizzard tweaked it about and released it under the name Warcraft.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Also I'm detecting a lot of hate for RPGs in this topic? Why? Some are perfectly good games. Yes, even the JRPGs with their androgynous angsty leads.
I think I remember reading that Warcraft came about because Games Workshop had asked Blizzard do make a game based on Fantasy Warhammer, but then pulled out close to the end. Rather than scrap a perfectly good game, Blizzard tweaked it about and released it under the name Warcraft.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I thought it was Blizzard that asked Games Workshop.
My problems with RPGs are that the fights take too long due to being turn based and having an animation before and after every time of them, and you need to fight way, way too much. You're not advancing the story and fighting along the way as part of the story, you're actually interrupting the story, going to fight again and again to level up, then going back to the story.
Including when the story involves matters that are "extremely urgent" and you end up spending a week in real time leveling up enough to keep going.
That, and as far as the FF ones go, well they're just way too long. I stop caring for the story after a few weeks of playing, and then the process of either having to start again from the start, or having to pick up when I don't remember where I am, what happened before and what I'm supposed to do next, are too daunting and I just never play it again. So I never know how the story ends or anything like that, but that's okay because I usually stopped caring about the story a long time ago, since it makes up 1% of the playing time.
And that's unfortunate because the stories usually seem very interesting. I think I might want to buy the FF games if they were novels. At least I imagine there wouldn't be ten chapters of "You use fireball. The enemy takes 10 damage. The enemy uses cure and heals 10 damage. You use slash. The enemy takes 15 damage. The enemy uses universe collapse. Your fighter is dead." and so on, for each line where something is actually happening.
More story, less fight, and less animations before and after a fight, and I'll be much happier with RPGs. And I dislike how you can't avoid the enemy. The best you can do is run away, so you still get the pre- and post-fight animations.
90% of the point of an RPG is the combat. The combat is strategic and fun, whether it's completely turn-based, active turn-based, or real-time, you have to think on your feet about what skills to use in what situations, and your incentive for wanting to do more combat is that your character becomes more powerful by doing so, and everyone wants to be more powerful.
The only RPGs that I've been able to complete were the Knights of the Old Republic games. Both games were pretty fun and I didn't even mind semi-turn based combat because it was pretty intuitive. Though, I did spend a really long time finishing each game (about a week) when most games take me about three days to complete, max.
Heck, even today, the most popular computer RPG in existence is directly based on a wargame: Warcraft.
Okay, even aside from the fact that it's reputable that MMORPG's are "true" RPG's, what?
Warcraft is an RTS. Sure, they made a (non-digital)game of it later, but the computer game was there first.
And, it resembles Diablo (their hack&slash) more than it does Warcraft itself.
Hmmm, I believe there was I point I was trying to make, but I can't quite recall it.
To all people hating RPG's; go play Baldur's Gate II. Or Planescape: Torment (most dialogue heavy game ever though). Or if you can't handle turn-based the more recent Alpha Protocol.
My problems with RPGs are that the fights take too long due to being turn based and having an animation before and after every time of them, and you need to fight way, way too much. You're not advancing the story and fighting along the way as part of the story, you're actually interrupting the story, going to fight again and again to level up, then going back to the story.
Including when the story involves matters that are "extremely urgent" and you end up spending a week in real time leveling up enough to keep going.
That, and as far as the FF ones go, well they're just way too long. I stop caring for the story after a few weeks of playing, and then the process of either having to start again from the start, or having to pick up when I don't remember where I am, what happened before and what I'm supposed to do next, are too daunting and I just never play it again. So I never know how the story ends or anything like that, but that's okay because I usually stopped caring about the story a long time ago, since it makes up 1% of the playing time.
And that's unfortunate because the stories usually seem very interesting. I think I might want to buy the FF games if they were novels. At least I imagine there wouldn't be ten chapters of "You use fireball. The enemy takes 10 damage. The enemy uses cure and heals 10 damage. You use slash. The enemy takes 15 damage. The enemy uses universe collapse. Your fighter is dead." and so on, for each line where something is actually happening.
More story, less fight, and less animations before and after a fight, and I'll be much happier with RPGs. And I dislike how you can't avoid the enemy. The best you can do is run away, so you still get the pre- and post-fight animations.
In most cases the original turn-based combat is becoming less and less popular in JRPGs. The most recent Final Fantasy's, XII and XIII as extremely controversial as they are for it(Fans don't take well to change, apparently), are a lot more fast paced than its predecessors. You're still selecting commands from a list, however it's done in real time. If you sit there on the menu without moving, then you'll die.
Random battles have near enough died out too, for the better I believe. Consequently, you can run around the enemy on the screen in most cases, if you don't wish to battle.
WRPG's on the other hand never had turn based battle to begin with really, it was always more micromanagement like that from an RTS except on a much smaller scale, and you don't even go into another 'screen' for the battle. Battles flow quickly from one to the next as you traverse through the dungeon. Storys are never quite as deep as JRPG's, however you get a certain amount of choice in what you do next, which can impact the story to an extent.
I think if you tried the genre again playing it's most recent additions, you could probably like them much more, as the genre has evolved, despite popular belief.
Okay, even aside from the fact that it's reputable that MMORPG's are "true" RPG's, what?
Warcraft is an RTS. Sure, they made a (non-digital)game of it later, but the computer game was there first.
And, it resembles Diablo (their hack&slash) more than it does Warcraft itself.
What's with the scare quotes? Why wouldn't an MMORPG be a true RPG? The combat is highly tactical, involving the use of tons of skills in a semi-realtime environment, as well as extensive gear system, skill progression, leveling up via experience, and tons and tons of NPCs.
I think if you tried the genre again playing it's most recent additions, you could probably like them much more, as the genre has evolved, despite popular belief.
Actually, I have played FFXII and I did like it better, but it was still much too long for me. I stopped after 100 hours or so, and I wasn't even trying to do the side quests or anything.
Still, looks to me like these are the exceptions. We'll see if they become the new rule, I guess.
Actually, I have played FFXII and I did like it better, but it was still much too long for me. I stopped after 100 hours or so, and I wasn't even trying to do the side quests or anything.
Still, looks to me like these are the exceptions. We'll see if they become the new rule, I guess.
Not really. The only fairly recent console based games which still have turn-based combat are Lost Odyssey and Persona 4, and even they aren't that new, they came out in 2007. Excluding any remakes of old games, that is. With that, in terms of JRPGs there's still a massive list, within the last year there has been Resonance of Fate, Star Ocean 4, White Knight Chronicles and Tales of Vesperia. Then for WRPGs there has been Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins. However, if the game being too long is a problem, then maybe RPGs aren't for you. Although admittedly Final Fantasy XII is one of the longer rpg's out there. The majority of them last for 30-60hours.
Okay, even aside from the fact that it's reputable that MMORPG's are "true" RPG's, what?
Warcraft is an RTS. Sure, they made a (non-digital)game of it later, but the computer game was there first.
So RTS games don't count as wargames? Okay. I tend to think of "wargame" as a broad category containing anything where you're controlling an entire side in a war, including sub-categories like miniatures games, war-themed board games like Risk and Diplomacy, and computer strategy games both realtime and turn-based. Likewise, I think of RPG as a broad category containing sub-groups like tabletop RPGs, LARPs, CRPGs, MMORPGs. But the way I classify things in my head may or may not match up to the way the rest of the world thinks of them, especially where it concerns the RTS genre, in which my knowledge is pretty out-of-date. (I just recently started playing Red Alert. The first one.) I think I'm on firmer ground with the RPG sub-groups, though, because those all have the words "role playing" somewhere in their name.
There's a tabletop Warcraft game? I didn't know. Can't say I'm surprised, though. There's probably a Warcraft CCG and Warcraft pogs and stuff.
What's with the scare quotes? Why wouldn't an MMORPG be a true RPG? The combat is highly tactical, involving the use of tons of skills in a semi-realtime environment, as well as extensive gear system, skill progression, leveling up via experience, and tons and tons of NPCs.
The lack of proper story, choice and consequences etc. MMORPG's are generally pure grinding and runs, I would even consider a Hack&Slash like Diablo or Dungeon Siege more RPG than any MMORPG.
The Old Republic is supposed to try to invogorate the MMORPG sector with plot and consequences and such, but I am skeptical.
I would more think about the board miniature games yeah. I thought you might have thought the wargame was before the RTS, hence the term.
Seeing how you didn't even knew there was a wargame... nevermind.
@ Avistew: Try Alpha Protocol (more RPG than shooter) or Mass Effect II (more shooter than RPG).
The lack of proper story, choice and consequences etc. MMORPG's are generally pure grinding and runs, I would even consider a Hack&Slash like Diablo or Dungeon Siege more RPG than any MMORPG.
The Old Republic is supposed to try to invogorate the MMORPG sector with plot and consequences and such, but I am skeptical.
I would more think about the board miniature games yeah. I thought you might have thought the wargame was before the RTS, hence the term.
Seeing how you didn't even knew there was a wargame... nevermind.
@ Avistew: Try Alpha Protocol (more RPG than shooter) or Mass Effect II (more shooter than RPG).
Diablo has infinitely less character customization, and infinitely less combat strategy, and barely has a storyline at all. An MMO typically has at least one major overarching storyline happening at any point, plus hundreds and hundreds of pages of quest description storyline spanning multiple continents. How is Diablo more of an RPG than a typical MMORPG?
Comments
Uh, no.
NO LEVELING THOUGH unless funny in some way
"Better than Lord of the Rings"
-- Ron's Mom.
I totally get it for Tabletop RPGs. You're becoming a character you invented. To some extent, the videogame version of tabletop RPGs (WoW and the like) make sense to me as well.
But the rest? Apparently what makes a RPG is that you have turn-based battles, level grinding and stuff like that. Which I don't get at all. Maybe someone could explain to me the terminology here. Why is it a RPG if I have to fight randomly when trying to get someplace, and 90% of the time playing isn't advancing the story, but fighting the same enemies over and over again until I'm strong enough to advance the story?
I definitely like action/adventure games like Zelda more. This being said, I liked the Paper Mario games and the Mario RPG ones, but I felt like there was a lot less level grinding in these.
I also like FF12 more because the fights weren't turn-based.
I wouldn't have a problem with Telltale making RPGs, but I don't know if that's the direction they want to take.
If you want to get into that, what makes an adventure game an adventure game? You have to have items and use them on other items in order to have an adventure? You have to have long winding dialogue trees in order to have an adventure?
Yeah, actually I used to call stuff like Zelda "adventure games". For me, basically, an adventure game was a game with a story, an adventure in it. RPGs being a sub-category of adventure games, and "point-and-click adventure games" being their own sub-category too.
I'm fine using the words that are the "right ones", I was just wondering how it came to be. There is actually less roleplaying in FF games than there is in point-and click games. Because in point and click games you need to think like the main character, therefore you roleplay. In FF games the story is more linear and you get cutscenes whenever the characters are "in character", otherwise they're interchangeable.
Wait, what? I thought we were talking about rocket-propelled grenades!
I guess that makes sense, although you don't really customise them very much in FF12. I remember being annoyed that all characters could do everything, you could buy the whole grid for some of them. Specialising them by sacrificing something for something else would have been so much more fun.
(They allow it, in Baldur's Gate, you're dead meat)
It's not the same. I played 10 minutes of KOTOR after excitedly buying it from Steam because of all the hype it had got and was severely disappointed. $10 I'll never see again. At least I didn't get it brand new.....but if I did I could have sold it again.....
Don't let Yare hear you talking like that.
We don't mention that game around here. It was a major let down. I understand that the hype machine will build things up a bit but what I was sold was only a fraction of what I was advertised. They billed it as Elder Scrolls but with consequences for your actions and an ever progressing world and I ended up buying a demo for that game. I know it's sour grapes but I feel it's an over-hyped and over-rated game. It broke no new ground and didn't bring any new mechanics to the gaming world. It was retreading the same ground after promising new and original.
Once again as I said sour grapes but it really bugs me.
Thanks! That's interesting.
Heck, even today, the most popular computer RPG in existence is directly based on a wargame: Warcraft.
If you actually had to buy a demo, you got ripped off.
anyways, Demos aren't really a good way to judge a game. I remember the Demo for Rayman 2, which was a lot wonkier than the actual full game.
It wasn't that I played a demo for the game. I was making a reference to the fact that what I was playing in the actual game was a demo compared to what was advertised.
I think I remember reading that Warcraft came about because Games Workshop had asked Blizzard do make a game based on Fantasy Warhammer, but then pulled out close to the end. Rather than scrap a perfectly good game, Blizzard tweaked it about and released it under the name Warcraft.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Also I'm detecting a lot of hate for RPGs in this topic? Why? Some are perfectly good games. Yes, even the JRPGs with their androgynous angsty leads.
I thought it was Blizzard that asked Games Workshop.
<_<
>_>
What do you mean we're already there?
Including when the story involves matters that are "extremely urgent" and you end up spending a week in real time leveling up enough to keep going.
That, and as far as the FF ones go, well they're just way too long. I stop caring for the story after a few weeks of playing, and then the process of either having to start again from the start, or having to pick up when I don't remember where I am, what happened before and what I'm supposed to do next, are too daunting and I just never play it again. So I never know how the story ends or anything like that, but that's okay because I usually stopped caring about the story a long time ago, since it makes up 1% of the playing time.
And that's unfortunate because the stories usually seem very interesting. I think I might want to buy the FF games if they were novels. At least I imagine there wouldn't be ten chapters of "You use fireball. The enemy takes 10 damage. The enemy uses cure and heals 10 damage. You use slash. The enemy takes 15 damage. The enemy uses universe collapse. Your fighter is dead." and so on, for each line where something is actually happening.
More story, less fight, and less animations before and after a fight, and I'll be much happier with RPGs. And I dislike how you can't avoid the enemy. The best you can do is run away, so you still get the pre- and post-fight animations.
Warcraft is an RTS. Sure, they made a (non-digital)game of it later, but the computer game was there first.
And, it resembles Diablo (their hack&slash) more than it does Warcraft itself.
Hmmm, I believe there was I point I was trying to make, but I can't quite recall it.
To all people hating RPG's; go play Baldur's Gate II. Or Planescape: Torment (most dialogue heavy game ever though). Or if you can't handle turn-based the more recent Alpha Protocol.
Random battles have near enough died out too, for the better I believe. Consequently, you can run around the enemy on the screen in most cases, if you don't wish to battle.
WRPG's on the other hand never had turn based battle to begin with really, it was always more micromanagement like that from an RTS except on a much smaller scale, and you don't even go into another 'screen' for the battle. Battles flow quickly from one to the next as you traverse through the dungeon. Storys are never quite as deep as JRPG's, however you get a certain amount of choice in what you do next, which can impact the story to an extent.
I think if you tried the genre again playing it's most recent additions, you could probably like them much more, as the genre has evolved, despite popular belief.
What's with the scare quotes? Why wouldn't an MMORPG be a true RPG? The combat is highly tactical, involving the use of tons of skills in a semi-realtime environment, as well as extensive gear system, skill progression, leveling up via experience, and tons and tons of NPCs.
Actually, I have played FFXII and I did like it better, but it was still much too long for me. I stopped after 100 hours or so, and I wasn't even trying to do the side quests or anything.
Still, looks to me like these are the exceptions. We'll see if they become the new rule, I guess.
So RTS games don't count as wargames? Okay. I tend to think of "wargame" as a broad category containing anything where you're controlling an entire side in a war, including sub-categories like miniatures games, war-themed board games like Risk and Diplomacy, and computer strategy games both realtime and turn-based. Likewise, I think of RPG as a broad category containing sub-groups like tabletop RPGs, LARPs, CRPGs, MMORPGs. But the way I classify things in my head may or may not match up to the way the rest of the world thinks of them, especially where it concerns the RTS genre, in which my knowledge is pretty out-of-date. (I just recently started playing Red Alert. The first one.) I think I'm on firmer ground with the RPG sub-groups, though, because those all have the words "role playing" somewhere in their name.
There's a tabletop Warcraft game? I didn't know. Can't say I'm surprised, though. There's probably a Warcraft CCG and Warcraft pogs and stuff.
Considering the Sierra origins of that series, I doubt it will happen. Still, there's always the Coles' upcoming School for Heroes.
The Old Republic is supposed to try to invogorate the MMORPG sector with plot and consequences and such, but I am skeptical. I would more think about the board miniature games yeah. I thought you might have thought the wargame was before the RTS, hence the term.
Seeing how you didn't even knew there was a wargame... nevermind.
@ Avistew: Try Alpha Protocol (more RPG than shooter) or Mass Effect II (more shooter than RPG).
Diablo has infinitely less character customization, and infinitely less combat strategy, and barely has a storyline at all. An MMO typically has at least one major overarching storyline happening at any point, plus hundreds and hundreds of pages of quest description storyline spanning multiple continents. How is Diablo more of an RPG than a typical MMORPG?