Why RPG video games suck

There are lots of F2P online games out there. The F2P business model is proving to be more profitable than the subscription model. Most subscription games even evolve into F2P at some point.

If you are looking for a really good MMORPG that is F2P, I'd suggest Aion. Great gameplay, good PvP...if you want to do it...and stunning graphics.

 

It's not about 'repetition', it's about growth. It's a progressive scale where you will encounter, increasingly more dangerous, threats. How you are able to deal with those threats are a matter of experience and skill...not some predetermined, mythical nonsense.

It's based on skill+experience. It's the classic paradigm of the growth mindset vs the fixed mindset. Are you born with talent to save Denerim, or did you work hard to hone your craft to save Denerim?

God has ruined you.

 

The problem is the "skill" isn't the actual abilities of the player, it's just the "level" of the character - so "harder" battles aren't really any "harder" for the player once you've reached a high enough level. It's just a matter of stats - whoever has high enough stats is more or less guaranteed to win, whoever doesn't loses. It's just about repeating, repeating, repeating, and doesn't require any real skill on the part of the player, because it's all stat determined.

It really isn't - there's very little "skill", because growth doesn't require skill, just repeating the same battles over and over again.

Of course I'm sure there are RPG games which are exceptions, however the 'mainstream' RPG format isn't really about actually growth or skill - it's more about giving the illusion of 'growth' than anything else. Doing the same repetitive tasks/moves over and over doesn't require "skill". A game where you actively engage in combat (such as a FPS game) is about skill.

And I'm not sure what religion's got to do with it.

 

I have played the previous one, and if this is more or less the same game but with better graphics, then that's what I'm going by. If people enjoy it, fine - however the hype is totally undeserved, because it's very commercial and generic, with the graphics being the only truly stand-out feature. It'd be like if I heard people constantly saying that Nickelback was the greatest rock band ever because "they're so HOT", if you like Nickelback there's nothing wrong with that, but they're very commercial and there are much, much more talented musicians than that. I'm not a very avid gamer, but even I could never understand the hype about this game, unless "graphics" is the only thing people care about when playing a game.

 

That doesn't mean they're "good". It just means some people don't have great taste.

I've never played WoW, but since it's one of those "leveling" games, not to mention a pay-to-play game, I would never bother with it.

I've played Mass Effect - it is decent, but not spectacular. Plot and characters are pretty generic and uninteresting, and the game itself is pretty simple and unchallenging.'

The entire GTA series is abysmal, and probably the most overrated game series of all time - it basically pays for good reviews, since most of the review websites which fawn over these games are also running paid adverts for GTA. It's basically Farmville with guns and good graphics - the actual gameplay is extremely simple and uninteresting, and repetitive - the game's only appeal is the violence.

As far as games "being better than reality" - well I'd hate to be the person who lives in that reality.

 

This thread is about "RPG" games, but I think it's important to understand that there are two major types of "RPG" games...the single player type game and the online or MMO type game.

With this distinction in mind, I will say that I agree, for the most part, with your viewpoint...if you are talking about single player type games. The part you are missing is the story of those games. One of my favorite single player RPG's is the KOTOR series. It was all about the story and the game forced you to make moral and ethical choices during the course of the game that affected the ultimate outcome...especially in KOTOR 1.

Now, if you are talking about MMO style RPG's I don't agree with your viewpoint because there is so much more content and much of it requires you to work with...and against...other real people. Some MMO's, for sure, have a "grind" component but the better ones...Guild Wars 2, for instance...don't. And when you consider PvP (player v player) then your ability to use the skills you've gained in an effective and adaptable manner will determine if you or your group live or die at the hands of another person/group.

I used to play single player RPG's, but I've become bored with playing against the computer. For me, it's much more fun playing with...and against...real people.

 

Skill is a result of hard work and experience. People aren't born with skills, they learn them. And in regards to video games, skill is just the ability to manipulate the programming code and game mechanics. RPG's deal with this in an elegant way by forcing the player to invest a certain amount of time into the game before they are able to dominate it's outcome. The newer RPG's go to great lengths to give the illusion that there is no repetition. Which is a tip of the cap to the game designers.

But games that are entirely based on 'skill' are unapproachable to some gamers, and yet require just as much of a time investment to acquire the skills for the game as an RPG does to acquire it's 'virtual' skills to win the game.

I remember an old NES football game where I could recover an onside kick anytime I wanted. Is that skill? It's just a manipulation of the game's programming. A necessary time investment, in this case, engages the gamer more than a 'skill' set would.

In the real world, repetitive tasks are how skills are acquired. RPG's just are a simulation of that process. And also make it an approachable process for people who are more interested in escapism than learning how to manipulate some programming code.

Of course you wouldn't. Why would you?

 

The battles are the same in some games because the developers think that level scaling sells .
I made a post earlier in this thread explaining what RPGs is all about , to put it simple if your clicking skills matter more than your character's you are not playing a RPG but something else.

 

Don't know what to tell you brother. You could try the Borderlands series, there's no real grinding for xp that I've found as the quest structure keeps you either at level or over level of the area you're in.

 

Anyone else play Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, if so, what did you think? I bought it because my favorite author R.A. Salvatore penned the story and dialog.

 

I'm currently playing Faxanadu for the NES. Great game so far.

 

Speaking as a tabletop RPG-er...I have to say that I blame video games for destroying tabletop RPG's!

 

I think the developers of KoA:R represent what is wrong in today's gaming industry :
1. Took huge ass loan from a state (New Hampshire or Delaware , don't remember right now)
2. Development cost went so high that the game had to sell 3m copies to break even
3. Made a game that simply doesn't cut between JRPGs and WRPGs, it is a bad mix of both and neither
4. Went bankrupt and now they are at the courts with their sponsors

Game wise combat was fun but i find it generally meh

 

For me it was too much of a good thing. It just got old and repetitive. Each area was kool and fun to explore, but there was sooooo much dialog and countless quests that it just became a jumbled disconnected mess.

 

WoW used to be that good for me, but then came the changes upon changes upon still more changes. Now it's a weird dumbed down affair with that dungeon queue, which has emptied most of the game world of players, plus Cataclysmic changes to the world itself that have made it a lot harder to survive in contested and enemy territories (they've added guards and so on), so that the game has long ceased to be fun for me. The icing on the cake has to be what they did to Brill.. What a bunch of crap.

I like to compare Blizz's constant meddling in that game to what George Lucas has done to the original Star Wars films with his mucking around with modern effects.

 

I think you're right. I'm young enough that table top gaming was replaced console and PC games by the time I got to college. Of course, it probably didn't help that the one college I attended while living on campus was a Lutheran college..

 

I do like many of the improvements, but I do miss the old days. I started playing a couple days after WOW came out... I do miss the pre-BG raids... the sense of community was much more back then.

 

Agreed, I played EverQuest back in the day and having to interact with the community made it more cohesive, I love the dungeon finder, don't get me wrong but it allows for behavior that would have never been tolerated previously.

 

I think our experiences were a bit different. I never focused on high-level content, was never in a good guild with a top-level character. I came instead to love exploring the game world, hunting the other faction in contested as well as enemy territory (thus I ALWAYS played on PVP and RP-PVP servers) and bumping into cool people on my own faction. Now? Everyone "grinds" through the game. I suppose the players changed before the game did and the game changed in response to them, meaning I maybe can't blame just Blizzard. Either way, though, the game is dead to me.

 

I agree that most RPGs at some point become about the grind or become repetitive. Even Skyrim which I love or loved since I don't play it much anymore had issues that I'm not sure how game developers can overcome. If you give people complete control over their environment to prevent the game becoming linear than it seems there will always be ways around playing the game the way it was meant to be played. For instance there are several ways in which you can level your skill sets in Skyrim by doing repetitive things like crafting daggers over and over again so you can have dragon armor much sooner then the game intended you to.

One issue that I have with the RPG world today is the balance between single player and MMOs. MMO’s have several issues with game play that can literally destroy a game. For instance GW had potential but once it got to the point where you were standing in a town waiting for a Monk to show up to start a quest and fail an hour into it only to have everyone blame the Monk and leave there was no point playing anymore. It became a complete waste of time.

Single player games like the Elderscroll series are great because you can do and have things that you can’t in MMOs but in today’s world “if you’re not playing online you’re just playing with yourself.”

If the next installment of the elderscrolls series went half way and created a game that would allow for up to four people to share a world together I think it would be a game changer so-to-speak. They could steal an idea from Diablo and make it so that depending on the number of people playing together the “bad guys” would get stronger or weaker. That way you could still play solo and not be dependent on playing with other people and also prevent the game being too easy playing with other people.

The other thing that would make the game type more enjoyable is to create instance based areas that would randomly generate different items and bosses and never in the same places. Not sure how difficult that is but one of the main problems with these games is you find yourself going to the same places to kill the same people in search for items. If they created enough randoms based on the instanced areas of the world it would literally mean people would find completely different items in the same areas or in areas that other people didn’t find anything. Perhaps people could then play the game without having to focus on trying to find certain things in the same places over and over again. And make crafting a choice not a necessity.

 

Are you aware of the Elder Scrolls Online, which is under development now? That will in fact bring all of Tamriel together, and it will even have all players populating one world I hope I won't be too disappointed by the conversion to MMO - Oblivion and Skyrim have spoiled me a bit in terms of game mechanics.

 

Have you tried Dragon's Dogma, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, Dark Souls or Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga? Each breaks from the tradition of the now standard RPG format in one way or another. Dark Souls I hear is brutally hard... reviews say you will die, many times, but that the challenge is what sets the game apart from other RPG's. I played Divinity II, it has its flaws, but it reminded me of the old school RPG's in that it does not hold your hand. Most modern RPG's will hold your hand all the way through a quest... in Divinity II if you are not paying attention you will miss something critical and be stumped as to what to do. I relied on online game-guides to get me through the game. But I remember playing old Final Fantasy games and being totally stumped from time to time... back before the Internet.