Where are RPGs going, and how do you feel about it?

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It would be interesting to check demographics against opinions.

I've got 3 young girls and a bored wife. Immersion in a game is pretty well nonexistent in my house. Since immersion is supposed to be one of the big selling points of nu-CRPG, I gain no benefit. 99% of the time, my gaming is done after the Wild Dogs go to bed, when I'm good-n-tired and not terribly active. Since engrossing, blood-pumping action is supposed to be one of the big selling points of nu-CRPG button mashers, I actually lose ground. Since all my money goes to feeding the Wild Dogs, my rig (and graphics card) is 4 years old. Yep, another nu-CRPG selling point right down the toilet...
 
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"It would be interesting to check demographics against opinions"

Yes, it's kind of like all the console hype--'consoles are the future'--like everyone in the gaming world is able and willing to buy each latest installment of each platform as it comes out--or like there aren't just as many or more households with PC's.

Not bashing consoles in any way--gaming is gaming to me. Just that we've had years of the 'pc gaming is dying' stuff and all kinds of attempts to manipulate people into buying into new and advanced tech so that, primarily, other people can make money.

End result--games are still buggy, people who can still buy them, and many people continue to play on older systems and can't profit from any of them. Especially if you think in terms of the world market. All the shiny immersion and easy GUI's in the world won't make a game play on an under-spec system.

That's where the indies come in, I think. If there's going to be 'traditional' rpgs as we think of them, that's probably where they will be.
 
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Also, a little note, Gothic (1 that is) can only be played using a keyboard, so mouse-using skills doesn't really have anything to do with it.
I'm afraid you're mistaken, Maylander. I always used the mouse to maneuver around in Gothic. In fact, it was the first game I ever played where the mouse was used that way (Of course, it's used in combination with the keyboard). You can remap functions to the mouse buttons too. It never occur to me that some players only used the keyboard, though. Well, keyboard or mouse, the point's still the same.
 
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That is in Gothic 2. In Gothic 1, there is no way to avoid keyboard combat, as mousebuttons can't be asigned to any actions. You can still use the mouse as camera, but that's about it.
 
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It's time for a Knightrider RPG... and I feel good about it.

I second that emotion!

As far as where RPGs are going, and all that, I will quote REM along those similar lines - It's the end of the (rpg) world as we know it, and I feel fine!

Things change as time progresses. We arent the same people we were ten years ago. Not only electronics and such change with the advancement of tech, everything, even music genres change. Jazz today is different from 40's jazz. Metal today is different from 80's metal. Movies today are different from 80's movies. RPGs will be more streamlined, more mass-market appealing, quicker to pick up and play, better looking. Just like everything else, for better or worse, it's what the world calls progress.

I feel the same as Jaz when everything said and done, I aint sweatin it. There's so many rpg games that I havent played, and there's bound to be some good ones coming out, even if sporadically.
 
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Now I'm going to have REM on my mind for the rest of the week. :p
 
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That is in Gothic 2. In Gothic 1, there is no way to avoid keyboard combat, as mousebuttons can't be asigned to any actions. You can still use the mouse as camera, but that's about it.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Yeah, you can use the keyboard combinations if you want. But if you never tried using the mouse to maneuver around and fight (in combination with the keyboard, of course), you missed out.

EDIT: I was wrong about remapping keys to the mouse. You can only use the standard mouse functions. But they don't need to be remapped, anyway. You just hold down the left mouse button and press forward to attack.
 
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There will always be niche developers, and I try to support them as much as possible, but mainstream is heading far away from where I'd like it to be!! I'm SO Old Skule!! :)
 
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Well, I've recently retro gaming magazines (two of them) in a big newspaper-and-magazines shop. I think I'll buy them.

I suddenly feel old.
 
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There will always be niche developers, and I try to support them as much as possible, but mainstream is heading far away from where I'd like it to be!! I'm SO Old Skule!! :)

It is interesting, but your comment makes me think of several PSP vs. DS debates I've been involved with recently. There are a large number of people who fundamentally believe that the same game given better graphics, even at the price of long load times and loss of an 'always-on' map, is a better game. That is an easily debatable point, as it involves trade-offs.

However, they tend to extend that to judge inferior games with superior graphics as superior games ... and that is where the problem starts.
 
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Thanks. When I'm in the "writing flow", I'm just writing, and when I can't think of a word, I try to quickly invent kind of a "workaround". ;)
 
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Thanks. When I'm in the "writing flow", I'm just writing, and when I can't think of a word, I try to quickly invent kind of a "workaround". ;)

I actually thought that your term was good that it worked for all audiences.
 
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For me it's hard to forsee where exactely rpgs are going. Over the last few years there was a tendency to produce a lot of fast food rpgs, but I guess that could change again. There is certainly a shift to "merge" the avatar and the player, as there is a general inclination to produce 1st person games. But this has to do with the new graphical possibilities and is also just a trend that can change anytime. So in terms of gameplay, I don't think anyone can really say for sure where we are heading.

When it comes to setting I can only welcome change (hence my joke about the knightrider rpg - although a "talk to your watch" skill is long overdue). I think there is no other genre that is so damn incestuous than the rpg genre. Honestly, I don't need all ten fingers to count the rpgs that did not fell into the traditional fantasy genre. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I dislike fantasy, but traditional high fantasy is getting rather dull. I think, that this kind of incest is one of the major barriers that keeps the genre from becoming more popular.

What I don't think is that rpgs are a genre that is uninteresting for most players. I firmly believe that the "most people don't like all the numbers" argument is such a damn myth - created by game developers whose gaming experience is limited to Sonic, the whatever... Obviously those "numbers" don't keep millions of players to play MMORPGs which work more with numbers than most single player rpgs.

I also doubt that RPGs are not profitable enough.
In fact rpgs can be a very profitable genre if you're playing your cards right. First of all, I think, you need a strong product. In the last few years however we saw a lot of crap coming out... If you have a strong product then the company should support it. I feel that this is one of the major mistakes of most companies. Rpgs are usually played for a rather long time and I think that players are willing to pay for additional content and expansions IF they are worth it. Bioware and their Premium Modules come to mind (in this context I have to say that I think Bioware could have gotten a lot more money out of NWN if they had launched their Premium Modules programm earlier and invested some more in it).
 
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... I think there is no other genre that is so damn incestuous than the rpg genre. .
I agree. In fact, you can extend this further and say this crosses genres and is terribly derivative to the point of plagiarism sometimes. Example: In Titan Quest, there is a Rogue skill available called 'Flash Powder'. It mimics a blinding powder being thrown that produces a few moments of stun lock/blindness. In Wizardry 8, there is a substance called 'Flash Powder' that IS a blinding thrown powder that produces the same effect. This is about as incestuous as you can get. Which leads to your next point:


What I don't think is that rpgs are a genre that is uninteresting for most players.
...I also doubt that RPGs are not profitable enough.
Taking this further, I think it's the rpg aspect of a lot of newer games that draws players.

RPG elements are constantly being scavenged and incorporated into other games--haven't played Dark Messiah but from descriptions I'm thinking this is the 'New Breed'--a game that incorporates the most prominent conventions of several genres.

In a way, this is encouraging rather than depressing. It ought to prompt developers to focus on the attractions of the genre rather than the supposed 'geek' syndrome. Where would Diablo2 and all it's numerous progeny be without number-crunching character builds?
 
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As roleplayers grow more demanding, rpg's are getting fewer and fewer to meet the demands. Instead of releasing a game each year or each second year it takes 4-5 years to develop a game good enough to impress the public.
 
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In addition to those elements already mentioned (Accessibility, Player Skill, Simulation etc.) I also see a trend towards size. As algorithms for generating landscape, vegetation, dungeons etc. become increasingly sophisticated, game worlds are becoming ever larger, and the hand crafted world is becoming a thing of the past. The problem with a large world is that it also requires a large quantity of objects for the player to interact with, or it starts feeling very empty. As a result, we're also seeing a trend towards such things as randomly generated chests, random merchant inventories, and more generic NPCs.

To make up for the lack of hand placed and scripted content (which becomes incredibly time consuming for huge worlds) developers are focusing increasingly on AI and attempting to create that living breathing world simulation referred to in the original post. I don't necessarily see this as a positive trend.

Many people probably remember the much ballyhooed Oblivion demo in which a woman couldn't sleep because her dog was barking so she shot a fireball at it. Bethesda assured us that unscripted events like this would be taking place randomly all throughout the world. In the end, Radiant AI turned out to be little more than a gimmick, but what if they had succeeded in implementing this feature as promised? It would be impossible to write dialog for all the major and minor changes the AI could make to the environment. NPCs would be running around buying and selling items, stealing from each other, fighting each other etc, but they wouldn't be able to communicate an awareness of what they are doing, or react realistically to the changes in their surroundings. Such a simulation might be interesting to watch, but due to the primitive state of current technology, I would rather play a well scripted, hand crafted game with coherent characters and storylines rather than suffer through the whims of an as yet primeval AI technology.
 
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