The Future of RPGS - - According to Urquhart and Muzyka

At the moment, they are more concerned by staying in business (that is keeping to work) than their customers'base.

These guys are seasoned professionals so they know how to do it.

The developpment costs of these features will go much cheaper than keeping on improving the current directions (especially that of continuity between each episode of a saga)

After that, players will play what they are given to play. This is as simple. And if some of them happen to no longer play, most of the times, it wont be because they can resist the urge of buying the game, but simply because they can no longer afford buying the game.
In the last case, those ex players are of no interest for any video games studio.

I don't have much against the idea. My problem is that this is the first thing they mention when talking about the future of RPGs. If something so trivial is what they're thinking of in terms of the future - then I can only hope they don't influence the industry with their creatively bankrupt ideas.

It sounds like something an EA exec would come up with - and definitely not something I would expect from the head of Obsidian or the Bio doc.

I guess it explains a lot, though.

Personally, I see the future in more & more MMOPG elements being added to SP games …

- Crafting
- customization
- player generated content
- housing
- social interaction with NPCs

"Ghosting", by the way, is actually an almost "ancient" game feature : Jut look at the "Bones" files in the Nethack/Amulet Of Yendor game … Maybe other Rogue-likes have that implemented, too ?

I'm actually surprised that no developer ever tried to implement this feature …

As long as endless mobrespawn grinding doesn't get an essential part of all RPGs, I don't care if other stuff gets added.

Wow, you guys sound like a bunch of grumpy old men who will never understand the next generation!

That said, I agree 100%. Not only are the ideas espoused really unattractive, they're not even new.

"We guys" are the generation who actually buy our games, as opposed to stealing them via the internet

Derpety, derp.. Bioware didn't even include weather or day/night cycles in their latest games, neither do they care for NPC A.I (NPC schedules etc) or that the player should be able to interact with the environments (try to swim or climb in Dragon age or ME, or any of their games for that matter..).

They're the last people who should talk about the future of RPG's because they're clueless, they still do the same games as they did 15 years ago, but with updated graphics and sound. A.I is still on the same level as in BG (in ME1 your companions couldnt even open doors,lol), world interaction is still the same (can't swim, can't jump etc). Day/night and weather cycles are now removed (they had those in BG, for those that remember), they're taking a half step forward, 1 step backward..

And yes, i'm an grumpy old man, too bad Bioware arent grumpy old men as well, then we'd probably have some pretty good games coming from them

Originally Posted by screeg
Wow, you guys sound like a bunch of grumpy old men who will never understand the next generation!
:

Well, nothing indicates that they design the future of RPGs for the next generation.They look for money and money might be well be more to be taken from 28 to 65+ years old rather than 15 to 28 years old.

I think their idea of the future is simply them latching on to the biggest trend in the world right now - social media. It's easy to see social media is huge right now and worming it's way into many different aspects of life, so it's natural for people like these guys to try and work that trend into their games and thinking that is the future. They really aren't looking beyond current trends right now, they're just riding the social media wave.

Originally Posted by screeg
Wow, you guys sound like a bunch of grumpy old men who will never understand the next generation!

Biower, pls keep facebook out of ma RPGs, k? thx, bye

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Personally, I see the future in more & more MMOPG elements being added to SP games …

- Crafting
- customization
- player generated content
- housing
- social interaction with NPCs

"Ghosting", by the way, is actually an almost "ancient" game feature : Jut look at the "Bones" files in the Nethack/Amulet Of Yendor game … Maybe other Rogue-likes have that implemented, too ?

I'm actually surprised that no developer ever tried to implement this feature …

Most of those actually predate mmorpgs and originally came from SP rpgs. The only one that does come from mmorpgs is (I think) crafting.

Originally Posted by guenthar
Most of those actually predate mmorpgs and originally came from SP rpgs. The only one that does come from mmorpgs is (I think) crafting.

nah, jRPGs have had crafting for many years (in fact, many are actually based on crafting), it just hasn't been done in western RPGs.

Originally Posted by wolfing
nah, jRPGs have had crafting for many years (in fact, many are actually based on crafting), it just hasn't been done in western RPGs.

Other then you know TES games.

Crafting was in Ultima VII back in 1992.

Originally Posted by Myrkrel
Crafting was in Ultima VII back in 1992.

This is true, I remember making bread….was done much better then a lot of games too.

A fishing pole in in Ultima Underworld in '92 as well.

Here's the video for anyone who is too lazy to read that wall of text and instinctively drew conclusions from the quoted part (as I did).
While their points are not as simplistic as merging the genres or bringing silly Facebook features to games * I can honestly say that I've seen more creative thinking and impressive design(/gameplay) ideas on Kickstarter than I did in what you'd expect to be an insightful talk.

PS. I realise that their numerous mentions of monetizing and the sole example outside BW/OBS being Skyrim and its financial success is a great signpost of what their focus was but then again with RPGs being the main topic they could have stuck with actual game design.

*I'd argue that by Urquhart's definition a lot of the (non-news focused) discussions taking place on our forums or in threads like Maylander's "Just finished.." would fall under the stuff they envision as the future.

The online part is strong in this one , i wonder if in the future it will be possible to have single , offline play without having to interact with any damn human.