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Role Playing (Games)

IGN on the State of the CRPG 130

Posted by Zonk from the hack-slash-rinse-repeat dept.
Via the ffwd linklog, IGN has a feature up discussing the current state of the CRPG. From the article: "Most people tend to associate RPGs with sword-swinging maidens in chainmail bikinis and doddering old white-bearded mages in robes spattered with owl poop. While the high fantasy setting is certainly the stock background for most RPGs, an RPG is defined not by its content but by its manner of presentation. To be a true RPG, a game must contain three elements. First, it should offer up an interactive story in which the player takes a vital part. Second, RPGs must allow for character growth that's driven by a player's choices or actions. Finally, RPGs must be built upon a system of rules and statistics that are used to resolve the events that take place in the world."
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IGN on the State of the CRPG

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  • Second, RPGs must allow for character growth that's driven by a player's choices or actions.

    Growth is a common element of RPGs, but it's hardly a necessary one. Many interactive fiction games have no character growth whatsoever, and they certainly qualify as "rolepalying game."

    • Re:Growth not essential (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @05:09PM (#13088810)
      Nowadays "RPG" seems to mean "with stats that increase as you kill monsters". That means they'd dispute whether interactive fiction without stats quialifies as an RPG even though you play a role.

      OTOH roleplaying is a term that comes from pre-computer limitations, almost all computer games involve playing a role these days and the involved simulations clearly surpass what the GM settled with a d20 back then.
      • > OTOH roleplaying is a term that comes from pre-
        > computer limitations, almost all computer
        > games involve playing a role these days and the
        > involved simulations clearly surpass what the
        > GM settled with a d20 back then.

        Eh? I have yet to see a computer game that surpassed the mind's eye when playing pen-n-paper D&D in the mid '70's.

        The most advanced modern games still barely tackle 1% of what you can do with a real human GM (or DM as we called 'em.)

        And we won't even get into the idi

    • Re:Growth not essential (Score:5, Insightful)

      by damiangerous ( 218679 ) <1ndt7174ekq80001@sneakemail.com> on Sunday July 17, 2005 @05:32PM (#13088931)
      Perhaps you could technically call it role playing in the sense that you are "playing a role", but not in any meaningful sense. I would argue that without growth, you are little more than an actor in a stage play. Sure it's satisfying in its own way but it's definitely not what we would consider role playing in this context.
      • I would argue that without growth, you are little more than an actor in a stage play.

        I would argue that without meaningful decisions, you're just an actor. The amazingly linear plots of some CRPGs strike me as a better thing to get rid of than flat characters.

        • Indeed, but it's not an either/or situation, it's the same thing. If your character never grows or changes then every decision is equally as meaningless as those linear CRPGs.
          • Depends on your definition of growth, many games give you new abilities as the game progresses but usually "growth" means "stats" and "experience points". Zero growth with absolutely no improvements is pretty boring because it likely means the gameplay is the same from the beginning to the end. But most people define growth in RPGs as "level up".
      • D&D has many facets. Players role play their characters, players level their characters and work to increase their stats, etc... the first one makes D&D a roleplaying game, but CRPG creators have for years latched on to the second and called *that* roleplaying.

        It's done a real disserve to the genre and dashed many expectations from the paper rpg crowd. Leveling dungeon crawls or stat-building adventure games are great in their own right, but they're not RPGs.

        • Re:Growth not essential (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Golias ( 176380 )
          Agreed!

          I found it rather mortifying that none of the 3 criteria that these jokers included in their definition of a "true" RPG included actual role-play.

          "Interactive stories" are almost always completely linear, or at best contain a few possible forks, in which you are just choosing one of several trains to hop on to.

          "Character growth" is just an illusion. At the high levels of any RPG, you are fighting monsters which are exactly as challenging, relative to your character stats, so the only "growth" tha

      • Re:Growth not essential (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Grab ( 126025 )
        Who says the "growth" has to be the character you're playing? "Growth" can as easily be applied to *your* abilities.

        The key to role-playing is using your own imagination, not the imagination stat of your character! If every encounter amounts to "I charge the group of 2/5/50 Orcs" or "I fire a lightning bolt at the group of 2/5/50 Orcs", welcome to Snore City. OTOH if you have the option of "I sneak behind that pillar and push it on top of them", or "I use my lightning bolt to take out the roof member ab
      • Growth doesn't mean stats. I'd say awareness of the world, its social niuances etc. is much more important, but it happens ON YOU, not on the stats of the character...
    • Well, an RPG is a Role Playing Game. What does that mean? This means that you take a fictional character, and you define his actions.

      What? Don't you take the role of Mario and define his actions by pressing buttons in Super Mario 64?

      RPGs such as D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) came out long before any video games, and when RPGs such as Final Fantasy came out, the name stuck, and games such as Super Mario Brothers came out, the genre RPG just didn't seem to fit.

      Super Mario 64 really is and RPG, th

    • Second, RPGs must allow for character growth that's driven by a player's choices or actions.

      From TFA:
      Nearly every decision players made had the potential to lead their character down the path of good or the path of evil. Those changes would be reflected in the story sequences and the reactions of other characters in the game. Discovering that the game was not only aware of the choices you'd made but would judge you by them was an amazing first for gamers.

      The funny thing is that although the article sai

  • Poor Final Fantasy... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @05:06PM (#13088785)
    Well, at least one mainstream "publication" that excludes japanese stat-based interactive movies from the computer RPG genre.

    What I don't see is a reason for computer RPGs to use any stats the user can see. Stats were just a crutch for pen&paper RPGs since you couldn't do a proper simulation. Computers take away the need for user-accessible stats and calculations. And seriously, in real life noone says they have "coding skill level 31" or something, they know they are a good coder or they think they are. Some might protest but it fits much better with the role-playing spirit if you have as little information about the simulation mechanics as possible.

    No mention of Nethack, though...

    • Re:Poor Final Fantasy... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by C0rinthian ( 770164 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @05:29PM (#13088916)
      It would be interesting to see this in action in an MMORPG. Stats and levels are completely hidden, and the only knowledge of a characters ability is indirect. (I.E. - I can kill these rabbits twice as fast as last week, lets try something harder) The same would go for mobs and NPC's. You don't know how tough someone is until you take them on. Throw this into a PvP game, and it would be very interesting. No more "I'm lvl 60 and he's lvl 55. I'm gonna win" mentality.

      heck, I'd play it in a heartbeat.
      • heck, I'd play it in a heartbeat.

        which is also about how long the game would last, until people get away from the current mindset of watching the numbers. For the most part, people playing the current crop of MMORPG's would be just as happy watching a spreadsheet of formulas being slowly incremented, with the occasional loud DING and some whizbang graphics...

      • That would require a much greater visual representation of characters than we've had in any game, ever.

        If you meet someone in real life, you generally know how they'll match up with you - the tone of their muscles, weapons they're carrying, etc. Sure there are some surprises, but for the sake of argument, let's just assume you can get a good idea of what the deal is.

        In games these days, usually you've got generic representations of the majority of items, skills, physical attributes, etc. of each character
      • This would violate one of the principles of computer game design, namely that the player should notice his own progression all the time, and that the player should be able to observe that he has an effect on the game world with every action he takes.

        When I have killed 50 rabbits, if I know I need to kill 10 more rabbits before being able to take on boss rabbit, I am driven to seek out those rabbits. If I don't know that, I will probably be bored with the game because I have no idea how much longer I need

        • "When I have killed 50 rabbits, if I know I need to kill 10 more rabbits before being able to take on boss rabbit, I am driven to seek out those rabbits. If I don't know that, I will probably be bored with the game because I have no idea how much longer I need to continue killing rabbits before I am finally able to proceed. Especially MMOGs will be very boring without stats. "

          I think that is the entire point. If your game is so dull that showing a spreadsheet is the only way to make people play it... well

      • It would be interesting to see this in action in an MMORPG. Stats and levels are completely hidden, and the only knowledge of a characters ability is indirect. (I.E. - I can kill these rabbits twice as fast as last week, lets try something harder) The same would go for mobs and NPC's. You don't know how tough someone is until you take them on. Throw this into a PvP game, and it would be very interesting. No more "I'm lvl 60 and he's lvl 55. I'm gonna win" mentality.

        heck, I'd play it in a heartbeat.

        RV [roma-victor.com]

    • "Computers take away the need for user-accessible stats and calculations. And seriously, in real life noone says they have "coding skill level 31" or something, they know they are a good coder or they think they are. Some might protest but it fits much better with the role-playing spirit if you have as little information about the simulation mechanics as possible."

      I wholeheartedly disagree. For one thing, without presenting the player with stats and rules, they have no idea what determines success or fai

      • However, check the following sequence (imagine you're playing this, using some mouse interface):-

        You swing your sword at Ogre's head.
        Ogre parries the sword with his shield.
        Ogre swings axe at you.
        You parry with your shield.
        There is a loud crunchy noise, your avatar goes "argh", and the avatar's arm hangs loosely at its side.
        You swing your sword at Ogre's head again. Your avatar's sword-arm is much harder to control now.
        Ogre catches your blade on its shield, then hammers its axe on the centre of the blade.
    • I disagree. Stats facilitate interesting combat. Without stats, it's difficult to create strategies. If you run at an enemy and swing your sword, you won't have any feedback at all regarding how effectively you are fighting. You won't know if the enemy has resistance to slashing damage, or has high health regeneration, or anything. Without any kind of feedback, you're basically crossing your fingers every time you do anything.

      Now, if you're arguing that there should be feedback, but that it should be
      • In the MMORPG context, there will be stats somewhere in your system even if you obfuscate them (hard to code a database entry "Pollus is a wizard of mediocre skill except when it comes to casting Create Foozle"), and your players *will* discover the numericals basis for any information you pass to them. Look at Ultima Online, it tried to be opaque on most of the mechanics and ended up being target of some of the most sophisticated reverse engineering yet seen to that point.

        Different strokes for different

        • If the feedback is inconsistent, i.e. has a certain tolerance (e.g. once it will tell you "severe damage" at 9 HP, once at 12 and if you're unlucky it'll say that for 3) and can be misjudged by a character, reverse engineering without taking apart the binaries becomes a lot harder.
          • Yes, and if you throw out the stats entirely and make results completely random ("You deal Onyxia a massive blow with your [Fishing Pole]! She keels over, dead!") it will be harder still to reverse engineer. It will also kill your game almost as quickly as giving players the impression that they have no control over your mind-numbingly opaque system (and somebody is going to figure it out, anyhow -- it only takes one site to publish the results of 1000 repeated trials and then you're booched, to use the P
      • I don't think anyone said anything about no feedback. Without stats, feedback is even more important. The feedback simply needs to be presented differently. (Preferrably in context with the game world) This is what would make or break a game with this design. Done correctly, it could be amazing.
    • Like GTA:SA? Every so often it annoyed me that I couldnt see my exact stamina level, but in general I felt that the visual approximate gauges gave it a much smoother feel than a raw stat rpg (and yes, GTA:SA is a rpg, all other aspects aside).
    • > And seriously, in real life noone says they
      > have "coding skill level 31" or something,

      In real life, you aren't bound by "class balancing", either; a genius can run rings around a dope. A smart guy may also be big and strong -- he doesn't have to be weak to "balance out".

      Furthermore, the best swordsman who ever lived probably would be lucky to win 99 out of 100 bouts against a healthy man who just picked up a sword for the first time.

      And he'd die to 5 such guys all at once. And we won't even ge
      • Throw out traditional class restrictions. If you want to be a fighter, fight alot. If you want to be a healer, heal people. Give it an advancement system of diminishing returns, so that the better you are the harder to advance. Also have decay present, so the longer you go without picking up that sword, you lose your skill.

        Get the balance between growth and decay right and it's almost a self balancing system. The greatest swordsman in the game will need to put in enough effort to maintain that level t
        • You're roughly describing the attribute system of Ultima Online and Asheron's Call...
        • > Also have decay present, so the longer you go
          > without picking up that sword, you lose your skill.

          I loathe decay of skills systems. I worked for it -- it isn't "fun" to lose it because some buffoon game designer sees the need for a "drawback".

          If you have a skills-based system, I'd much rather see a Star Wars Galaxies method where you consciously give up this or that skill rather than have to practice skills you want to keep constantly like you're some idiot chimpanzee jumping thru hoops. No than
      • Some RPG systems do have "the great equalizer" and all your "level" (usually these games have no levels) does is make you shoot more accurately and maybe fight better after an equal amount of damage. IOW, in those games a total "newbie" (i.e. beginner character) can gun down a legendary hero provided he can shoot well enough and the hero isn't quicker to draw. Fantasy games have a much more pronounced gap between low and high level characters, often making high level chars almost invincible when encounterin
    • A shareware game did that 10 years ago - Nahlakh [proudft.com]

      Your sword skill started out "terrrible" and as you fought it progressed to "horrible" and then "poor" etc. etc. until finally you were "awesome".

      This was pretty cool but had drawbacks, i.e. it isn't obvious if "terrible" is better than "horrible" etc.
    • And seriously, in real life noone says they have "coding skill level 31" But they do have PHD's, diplomas, BSC, City and Guilds, MCraP's etc....

    • What I don't see is a reason for computer RPGs to use any stats the user can see. Stats were just a crutch for pen&paper RPGs since you couldn't do a proper simulation.

      Players of RPGs, particularly computerized ones, since those are more about killing monsters than in-character social interaction, tend to like to min-max and find the best ways to optimize their combat effectiveness. Is the "Glowing Sword of Smiting" you just found better than the "Mithril Mace" you're currently wielding? If the sta

      • Let the player compare items, depending on his ability to identify items and a random number he's able to tell what advantages item A has over item B with small advantages more easily overlooked than large ones (i.e. he'll always notice that a "cruddy sword" is worse at dealing damage than a "masterly claymore" but telling the difference between "masterly claymore" and "masterly bastard sword" might be a bit harder). Misjudgements are part of the experience so you might not want to throw away your old weapo

  • Single player CRPGs are dead (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chainsaw Karate ( 869210 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @05:44PM (#13088988)
    Now everybody and their mom is only making MMORPGs. Don't expect to ever play an excellent RPG like Fallout or Planescape: Torment again. Check out the list of upcoming PC RPGs at http://www.rpgamer.com/games/upcoming.html [rpgamer.com] There are 35 listed, and maybe 4 or 5 of them are not MMORPGs. It's much easier to drop you in a world infested with stupid 14 year olds than it is to create decent AI and interesting situations to put players in.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The single-player CRPG is not dead; I personally much prefer an interactive story wherein I play the hero(es) over a massively immersive, alternate world wherein 90% of the entities I encounter are collectively the heroes. I imagine a simple distinction between those people who "merely" want to experience a unique world and those of us who are more interested in involved plotlines and character development.

        I think it goes much beyond that. In single-player games, they can let you feel like the super-h

    • Re:Single player CRPGs are dead (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sparr0 ( 451780 ) <sparr0@gmail.com> on Sunday July 17, 2005 @07:02PM (#13089453) Homepage Journal
      I disagree.
      The most content-ful RPG in recent memory has been GTA:SA. Hundreds of hours of branching storyline. The linear central story doesnt even encompass 1/4 of the game. Progress can be made in a dozen different directions (including the much-debated girlfriends).
      Looking back, Morrowind was also an amazing single player RPG. Oblivion [elderscrolls.com] is going to blow the mediocre CRPG competition away; I've already set aside a thousand hours of free time (about what I spent on Morrowind) to waste on it.

      • Re:Single player CRPGs are dead (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Anybody who calls Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas an RPG deserves a big fat smack on the head. Everybody knows Halo 2 was the best RPG ever.
      • now if only the content of the GTA series wasn't massively offensive and disgusting, i, an rpg-enjoyer, might actually try it.

        now, i don't really mind playing the "bad guys" but in this specific case, it turns my stomach.

        but we all have our own individual tastes.
    • >There are 35 listed, and maybe 4 or 5 of them are not MMORPGs.

      Huh. Sounds like an open market then.
  • - an article about RPG should have so many abbreviations that it has everybody who doesn't following this stuff regularly reading the Slashdot blurb goes something like "WTF?"
  • I think that the article put too much emphasis on two aspects of an RPG, an interactive story and moral choices that affect the plot. When I'm playing an RPG, I'm going to spend most of my time doing one thing: combat (I'm not counting walking). Even in a D&D based game like Knights of the Old Republic, with heavy emphasis on storyline and light side/dark side choices, I spend twice as much time fighting as talking. In RPGs like World of Warcraft or Diablo, I'm spending dozens of times as much time f
    • I don't even know where to begin. Lets start this way: stat based combat does NOT equal an RPG. Stat based combat is the shitty filler that bad RPGs used to fill in their dull and uninteresting stories.

      The ultimate RPG would be a simulator of a world. The world might be nonsense, like D&D with Dragons and and magic, but within the 'rules' you accept, the world would be completely coherent. It wouldn't have stats or numbers, at least not any that the player would see. There would be a story, and t
      • The problem is that Diablo is a hell of a lot easier to build then Torment.

        Yep...all they had to do was add a graphical layer to Rogue/Angband ;)

      • basically, what you're saying is that interactive fiction = ideal "rpg".

        the problem with that is, that in the last 20 years or so, the gameplay , namely combat has been the focus of games. and to deviate from that is to make your "game" less of a game and more interactive fiction.

        IF might be fun once in a while but the real meat of games is in the repititive actions, e.g. comabt. if that part of a game does not hold a persons interest, then the rest ultimately doesn't matter, even if you just play through
    • There are plenty of games with combat nowadays. RTS, FPS, action-adventure, you name it. In fact, you're hard pressed to find a game without combat nowadays.

      So no offense, but using that to define an RPG is the kind of thing that makes me wish marketting people were lined up and shot.

      RPG used to mean something. Now it's just a dilluted buzzword slapped onto the box, just because it's fashionable. It's been eroded and dilluted to the point of being meaningless.

      Even Daikatana sported "RPG elements" on the

  • What about non-linearity? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alan_dershowitz ( 586542 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @07:58PM (#13089751)
    The author mentions Final Fantasy in a way that implies that Final Fantasy is a role-playing game. I wonder if that's really the case. Personally one of the most important characteristics I would attribute to RPGs is non-linearity (at least to an extent.) Final Fantasy compared to older RPGs, especially if you go way back, is like riding on a rail ride at Disneyland.

    I'm not necessarily saying that's bad, but it's qualitatively different from a non-linear system of exploration and leveling, where you can do most things out of order. The Legend of Zelda: A link to the past is more RPG than Final Fantasy, you can do the levels in whatever order you want, get or reject weapons, etc. It may be easiest to do it in a certain order, but the experience is far more personal, and you can tailor the difficulty of the game based on what order you do things, which is more like, um, role playing, where you are in charge.

    The article never mentions this explicitly, but based on the MMORPG stuff and moral accountability and repercussions in the games, they seem to be treating it like it's a nice thing to have, but not necessary. Personally I see the lack of it in many games to be a regression, or at least the designers wanted to make a different kind of game that at least traditionally an RPG was like.
    • I think there needs to be a new term and definition for various games. Final Fantasy is an RPG, as you take a particular (if linear) role in the game. Other games which give you a name and a mission/role obviously meet the definition as well. But other games that have no linearity, or defined inital charachter/role/mission should be called a Charachter Simulation Game (CSG) or more generically, an Alternate Enviroment, or Massively Multiplayer Alternate Enviroment. (AE, and MMAE, respectively) For the m
    • I think there needs to be a new term and definition for various games. Final Fantasy is an RPG, as you take a particular (if linear) role in the game. Other games which give you a name and a mission/role obviously meet the definition as well. But other games that have no linearity, or defined inital charachter/role/mission should be called a Charachter Simulation Game (CSG) or more generically, an Alternate Enviroment, or Massively Multiplayer Alternate Enviroment. (AE, and MMAE, respectively) For the mo
    • Er...it's been a while since I played it, but as I recall getting into one dungeon in A Link To the Past required the things you got in the previous dungeon. True, you could wander the overworld freely, but you can't move that huge boulder that's blocking the path up the mountainside until you get the armlets from the desert temple, which you get into by getting the rush boots in the previous temple, etc. (I'm getting the details wrong, but you get the idea.) Heck, there's even a semi-canonical order of
      • Quantitatively it's much less linear, since you ask. You have to have some linearity in a game or there's no goal of course.

        It's been a while, but I do recall that if you get the bow and arrow and the power gloves, you can do almost anything in the game, even if it's harder.

        I'm thinking of linearity in the sense that really works itself out nice in the MMORPGs. You form up into a guild, then problems periodically present itself. You run around and try to accomplish the mission. Some of the missions won't

  • For real CRPG (Score:3, Interesting)

    by toddhunter ( 659837 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @08:20PM (#13089867)
    Look no further then Ultimas 6 and 7. Even 9 had it's moments (Looking over bucanneers den for the first time for example).
    The thing that got to me about these games was the immersion factor. That is you didn't have to spend time worrying about the quest, you could just run around and make bread for a little while if you wished. Generally most things you tried because you *wanted* to do (like make a sword) worked.
    In my opinion nothing since has gone close to what you could do in these games. (If I'm wrong, please let me know so I can play it!). Morrowwind? Meh, it tried hard, but was still a step backward from what was achieved all those years ago!
    • The problem with Morrowind is simply that it's boring. I can look at it and be incredibly impressed by Bethesda's achievement. But I can't have any damn fun playing the thing.
      • I have to completely agree.
        Which makes me sad why it was hailed as so revolutionary and ground-breaking in it's open-endedness....because it was compared to all the other games of recent times, but it is nothing compared to the enjoyment you could have tooling around in games made by Origin and the like quite some time ago
    • Divine Divinity is quite similar in look and feel to the old Ultimas, from what I can gather. I'd avoid Beyond Divinity though. Either of the Gothics are solid RPGs that put people off becuase they couldn't get past the learning curve and the unique controls. Imagine Morrowind with dynamic NPCs and a slightly better combat system (once you got used to the controls..) The real problem you're going to have is that it's almost impossible to improve upon nostalgia.

    • Look no further then Ultimas 6 and 7.

      Agreed, Ultima VII is the best CRPG ever, amen. Very deep plot, nicely open-ended, no artificial restrictions on what the heck to do. Generally speaking, things work.

      Though I have to say I've so far also kind of enjoyed Ultima VIII - too much action, doesn't look too Ultimaish to me, but still, great music, great atmosphere and great writing.

      Even 9 had it's moments

      Feh... yeah, me killing Iolo because the guy told so outrageously blatant lies about him..

  • Swords overrated (Score:3, Insightful)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @09:36PM (#13090202)
    Can someone name 1 CRPG where the final greatest most superior weapon in the game is NOT a sword. Exactly. CRPGs all have the same design concept. Different characters, missions, but the same shit.

    That's why MMORPG will take over all of RPGs in the future. It gives you that variety flavor.

    • Re:Swords overrated (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @10:02PM (#13090349)
      Fallout.
    • Perhaps something from the Diablo series, if you consider them RPGs? There were a bunch of uber-weapons that weren't swords.

      I think Shadowhearts for the PS2 might count, as the main character is a hand to hand melee fighter.

      Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle would probably count, as the best weapon in that game was the Swordstrike drop (just like the spell) that you could get in Moonshade by using Vibrate on one of the mages. It had insane damage, was ranged/AOE (I think), and had unlimited uses with no re
      • > Perhaps something from the Diablo series, if
        > you consider them RPGs? There were a bunch of
        > uber-weapons that weren't swords.

        Yes, but all weapons had "gold" and "yellow" versions. And if you were a barbarian and not dual-wielding 2-handed swords, you were definitely "role playing". (I always thought the barb should be able to specialize in dual-wielding 2-handers of any single type, like large hammers. Why limit it only to 2-handed swords?)

    • Both the System Shock series and the Thief series didn't have swords as the most powerful weapons. (Heck, for Thief, the most powerful weapon was your brain. Not the character's brain. Yours.)

      I realize that a lot of people view these as FPSes of sorts, but they do meet IGN's definition of RPGs.

      • Er... I thought of this the instant I hit the submit button, but technically Thief doesn't really have much in the way of traditional character ability development. Your character does have to collect valuables so that you can be more successful in subsequent missions, though.

    • Sentinel Worlds 1 Future Magic.
      The top weapon in that game is a gun of some kind (most probobly the Neutron Gun acording to the documentation)

      And that game definatly qualifies as an RPG.
    • Um...I hate to say this, but most MMOs are derivative also. Here's a shocking revelation: Most of EVERYTHING is derivative. TV, Film, Anime, Musical Theater, Racing, Puzzle, RPG, Tactical, name-your-favorite-genre Video Games. Alternate Reality Games are going through a big wave of derivative games, and the genre is only 3 years old.

      Luckily, we have a market that craves originality, energy and creativity. New stuff that turns the concept on it's head will thrive, and huge successes go on to spawn the
    • Planescape: Torment. You can avoid most fights in the game if you use the correct dialogue choices. You also get more experience points by avoiding the fight than you do for killing everyone.
    • Do you even know what "grinding" is? Variety my ass, MMOs are repetitive dreck.
    • Any Front Mission game. There is a great end weapon of every class (machine gun, shotgun, knuckles, baton, missile, bazooka, etc.), and at least in 3 and 4 (the 2 release in the US), there is no sword class.
    • Take a look at the classic Ultima games. In Ultima IV the end game sequence was about reading a book. Oh, and in Ultima VII I seem to remember the Hoe of Destruction was one of the most, if not the most, powerful weapons.

      • The Black Sword is debatably the best weapon in U7; 25 damage, fire fields, and insta-kill (if Arcadion wants to). The original poster was referring to the "final weapon" of the game; The Black Sword is a "final" weapon in a sense... there really isn't any other "final" weapons in the game. Still, The Black Sword is only in the expansion...

        Hoe of Destruction is only slightly behind (20 damage). But the really leet weaponry is up ahead: Firedoom staff (20 + kaboooooom), Triple crossbows (28 + lots of dead

    • Ultima VII.

      The most damaging weapon in the game is a Glass Sword, which instantly kills anything you hit with, but I don't think they count as the "final greatest most superior weapon" because they break after one use. They're quite common. There's no Mysterious Legendary Plot to find them.

      But other weapons in the high damage range of that game aren't swords: there's Death Scythes, cannons, Firedoom Staffs (look at all those pretty fireballs!), powder kegs (let's do the Guy Fawkes thing again!), and a f

    • "Can someone name 1 CRPG where the final greatest most superior weapon in the game is NOT a sword."

      - Fallout and Fallout 2,

      - Restricted Area (I finished it with a Flamethrower),

      - Shenmue (martial arts all the way),

      - Jade Empire (you need martial arts until the end, plus as "ultimate weapons" go, the dual axes do more damage than the sword. Or you can use a naginata for range. Or you can morph into a jade golem. Or whatever.)

      - Deus Ex (personally I would count it as a FPS, but then everyone seems to thi

  • I would like to take a moment to correct this post (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "To be a true RPG, a game must contain three elements."


    Yes, and they are:
    1. Fire
    2. Ice
    3. Lightning

  • The most important thing is that it's FUN. Does it matter if Final Fantasy VII is just an interactive novel with stats and not really RPG? Does it matter if Diablo is just a hack-and-slash fest with stats and not really an RPG? I don't really care, neither does most gamers. I just know that I've had way more FUN with Final Fantasy VII and Diablo than some supposedly "open-ended, non-linear" RPGs like Daggerfall or Morrowind, which is just BOOOORING. I don't care.
    • Well it's not 'supposedly.' It IS "open-ended, non-linear." You just didn't enjoy it. Which is fine. I happened to enjoy a roleplaying game that didn't tell me what to do, for a change. Not that I didn't enjoy Final Fantasy or Diablo, because I did. But Daggerfall, Morrowind, et al. were very cool.
    • Here's why it matters: because "FUN" means different things to different people. You can't just say "game X is FUN". Fun by what criteria? For whose tastes?

      Most people aren't generic players of anything published. Some like a story, some don't. (E.g., me, I thought the tons of text in Planescape Torment were a great story, whereas my father thinks that _any_ text or conversation is too much blabber instead of getting to the fighting part.) Some like lots of combat, some don't. Etc.

      That's why we have those

  • interesting RPG on the horizon (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Clover_Kicker ( 20761 ) <clover_kicker@yahoo.com> on Monday July 18, 2005 @07:24AM (#13092452)
    An indie developer has a cool RPG concept in beta - Mount and Blade [taleworlds.com].

    He's mostly working on the combat engine and has very little plot, but the skeleton of the game is downloadable and very playable. It's kind of like Diablo right now, not plot but lots of enemies to slaughter.

    This is the first combat engine I've seen that makes effective use of mounted troops - playing a mounted character is a lot of fun.

    A review here [the-underdogs.org].

    Don't bother to download if you can't live without Half Life 2 quality graphics.

    PS - not affiliated with those guys, but this is a cool game

  • Why no mention of Shenmue? Yeah, the story was pretty scripted, but there were no statistics, and the story's pacing was completely player-controlled.

    You got better at moves by practicing them, and yes, you could see a status for how good you were at a move, but it was just a bar chart, and you'd know when you mastered it (as I think anybody into martial arts would).

    So Ryo's combat skill comes from two things: time spent practicing (to get better at martial arts) and the player's skill and executing moves

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