Skyrim - 5 Five Ways to Make the Next Elder Scrolls Game Better @ Forbes

ChienAboyeur said:

What is a character here? If it means the personality, the background of the avatar, his past, his family etc then it is not the focus of a RPG as traditionalists would see it.
A background is only a base to relate a specific avatar to the role he wants to fill in.
Certain aspects of his personality/past etc give a background to understand how certain constraints of the role are more easily accepted or are rejected by the avatar.
This is how it works in RPG.
The role is central in RPG. The rest is satellites that relate to constraints brought by the role.

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Well, for me the character is the sum of all that and I consider myself a traditionalist. But a traditionalist in the sense of Pen & Paper role playing. I don't know what kind of traditionalist are you referring to. In cRPG those things are not always present, they are not present, for example, in Skyrim, but they are on other games - Mass Effect, for example, has a very well described central character. As far as the personality goes, it is our choice which path do we choose, but without it , it wouldn't even be our character.

ChienAboyeur said:

I already answered to that point.

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Anyway, this is still just arguing for the sake of arguing, and even if I, sometimes, indulge in that kind of behavior, it gets old pretty soon. I really don't care what you think about Skyrim and RPGs in general, it's your opinion, I have mine, even though you argue like your opinion is fact. I still would like to know a few examples of games which you consider role playing games. And no, you didn't answer that. It was a non-answer...

i was really impressed with Skyrim. At least in the biginning. Then around level 20 i quit. It's too shallow for me. Much better than oblivion but far away from Morrowind.
I don't think class system or stats can save it for me. Just better story telling and more active world.
But that is my humble opinion.

MigRib said:

Anyway, this is still just arguing for the sake of arguing, and even if I, sometimes, indulge in that kind of behavior, it gets old pretty soon. I really don't care what you think about Skyrim and RPGs in general, it's your opinion, I have mine, even though you argue like your opinion is fact. I still would like to know a few examples of games which you consider role playing games. And no, you didn't answer that. It was a non-answer…

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Opinions are opinions. The opinion stuff is often used to dismiss one over another.

But opinions can be factually based as they might not be.

It could be your opinion that Louis XV is not dead while it could be my opinion he is dead.

And it is a matter of fact that Skyrim has no role included in it. It is an observation that none has managed to repell so far. Support your previous claim with quotes and you will get me to answer to that point. Up to now, it is your unfactually based opinion even though you would like me to treat it as it was a factually based opinion.

From this observation, some will get a logical deduction that skyrim can not be a RPG as it has no role in it while some will purport that RPGs do not have to include roles to be RPGs.

That is indeed the way it is.

Of course, does not change the substance of what RPGs are.

And yes, I answered to the question but you did not like the answer so you will keep claiming I did not answer to it.

MigRib said:

Well, for me the character is the sum of all that and I consider myself a traditionalist. But a traditionalist in the sense of Pen & Paper role playing. I don't know what kind of traditionalist are you referring to. In cRPG those things are not always present, they are not present, for example, in Skyrim, but they are on other games - Mass Effect, for example, has a very well described central character. As far as the personality goes, it is our choice which path do we choose, but without it , it wouldn't even be our character.

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Once again, when it comes to P&P RPG, health sector RPG, training field RPG, the tradition is the same as the definition of RPG is the same.

In RPG, the role is central and the rest like the background of the character gives density and platform to explain how the character relates to the role he has chosen.

If something, Mass Effect is a character driven game. Keeping deducting things on how RPGs are from games that are not RPGs is destined to provide false conclusions, if not by luck.

MigRib said:

Maybe I mentioned something about GTA, though I wasn't thinking about San Andreas. I played that one some years ago, but don't even remember it. If I mentioned GTA it would have been GTA IV. About the stats… Ok, it's true that in those sectors there are no stats, but in P&P there are usually stats (not always). Stats aren't a requisite, but there are other things in Call of Duty besides that one. The only choices you have in a FPS are which target you will kill first. It is a choice, but not the kind of choice I associate with playing the role of a character (paintball is a game, but has no role playing.) I agree stats are not required, but disagree that RPG is always the same. The role playing done in training or health has other object's which aren't having fun or entertaining the players. Video games and pen & paper are made for entertainment. The theory might be the same, but the practical application is not the same.

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Speaking of no answer...

So basically, I asked something about San Andreas. You wrote that you already answered to that one. When told that I could not find your answer, you said that maybe you mentioned something about GTA, that you played San Andreas but barely remember it, that if GTA, it should GTA 4, are you effing kidding me?

It does not remove the question: what about San Andreas?

As to RPG used in other fields than entertainment, once again, the value of this reminder is to show the oddity of the computer field: while the definition is transversal for all three fields (health RPG, training field RPG, P&P RPG), it is only when it comes to the computer field that the general definition is demanded by players to be dismissed.

Dont look at stuff like pratical application or other things or claimed purpose, it is pointless.

ChienAboyeur said:

It does not remove the question: what about San Andreas?

As to RPG used in other fields than entertainment, once again, the value of this reminder is to show the oddity of the computer field: while the definition is transversal for all three fields (health RPG, training field RPG, P&P RPG), it is only when it comes to the computer field that the general definition is demanded by players to be dismissed.

Dont look at stuff like pratical application or other things or claimed purpose, it is pointless.

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The only real pointless thing is this argument. For you, an opinion is what I say, but what you say is a fact based opinion. Why? Do you know me? Do you know where I got my "facts"? My experience? Whatever? No. As I don't know anything about you, and your theories. I just know that you claim that everything you say is fact, what others "claim" are stupid opinions changed by the game companies labeling. Do you have a doctorate on the Role Playing Sciences? I don't, and I don't think that even exists, but if it does, I congratulate you, and from now on I will approve everything you write on account of your academic endeavours.
Or is it an experience thing? Well, I played role playing games (the pen & paper variant) since I was 14. I was almost always a game master, after a couple of years of playing. And I played them for a long, long time. I'm 37 now, and I am not playing pen & paper role playing games anymore for about two years. At least in their pen & paper form. I suppose this experience still qualifies me as someone who knows what a role playing game is.
I even wasted my time reading about role playing theory because in other forums (Pen & Paper sites) there were people with your attitude, analysing word by word whatever everyone else wrote, and then decomposing everything on the light of the GNS RPG Theory (which is something that I would rather call "crap"). So, these guys belonged to a kind of support group for nerds that always played D&D, rolling dice and not role playing at all, until, after decades, they decided they were tired and suddenly discovered indie role playing. They studied the Complete Works of Ron Edwards, Esquire (even the glossary of therms took about five hours to read it through), and suddenly they were blabbering around about crappy theories which were based on psychological and sociological therms (by the way, my academic background is Social Sciences). And they had all their facts together! Oh, yes sir, they did! And they dismissed everybody else as ignorant fucks... Well, I even had to read about that kind of theory, and I can tell you again, theory is theory, practical matters are an entirely other thing. In this case most of the theory is not applicable. That is why, after much debate, all those sages that argued with me about RPG Theory and how it made them discover the wonderful world of Indie P&P RPG have already returned to their games of "roll playing D&D". Theory is nice, but if you are talking about entertainment, it's just hot air. But I digress, this is just about P&P.
I also played games (which I consider RPGs) on computer since a long time ago. The early days of cRPGS. Before those, I was playing graphic adventures or strategy games. I was never one to go for games which test your manual dexterity, I rather explore the story and so on. I agree that it's not the same thing as P&P (again and again I'm repeating this). But think of it like this, if you will (I know, you won't): cRPGs are like an adaptation of a book to the movies. Usually the book is better, most book readers will say that. But some movie adaptations are very good on their own, even if the book surpasses it (I would say that sometimes I consider the film to be better than the book, and 'Shining' is one those). Why? Maybe because cinema "speaks" a very different language from books. It is not supposed to be the same, hence they are "adaptations", they were "adapted", from one mean to the other. And they change, even when the story stays the same. Literature will always be considered the greater art between this two, I guess. Also, pen & paper will always be the origin of role playing in the entertainment area, and cRPGs will be their "children", their "adaptations" (in the past the developers even adapted rules like d20 or GURPS or Vampire). In the adaptation one looses an important part of the role playing experience: there's no group of people (unless you are playing an MMORPG, which is something I also tried very briefly so I will not comment on that), and the computer game can never surpass this, though someone might find a way to make cRPGs better in the future than they are now. I'm not saying they are bad now, mind you, but there's still a lot to be done. Anyway, the term RPG is being misused in the video game industry, but most other terms are being misused just because nowadays you rarely find a game which is labeled as just one thing. Most games are action/ adventure/ strategy/ RPG/ indie whatever. Multi-labeling might be creating the effect of characterizing wrongly some games just for marketing effects. But when a game is labeled as just one thing (like an RPG, of FPS), I usually agree with the label. It is the case of Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, the Mass Effect trilogy, Dragon Age, The Witcher. These ones are usually labeled as RPG, although sometimes, some stores label some of them as action RPGs. And yes thy are role playing games, and this is also not an opinion, it is a FACT. Deal with it. Or don't. I couldn't care less.
I also tried role playing in a training course. During that experience, which was kind of brief, but was long enough to understand the principle of the thing. I discovered that maybe, theoretically, all RPGs are the same thing. But, in practice, they are not the same. Never. Whatever you say, playing a role in a training course with the professional objective of learning if you have the skills to, e.g., deal with customers, it is not the same as creating your own character and play it in a fictional world which is being presented to you by the game master (or a machine). There's no game master in training RPG. They may be entertaining when compared to other training courses (of course they are), but that's just a side effect. I never used RPG in psychology, but I studied it a long time ago in college, and from what I remember it's just another technique to make people talk about stuff that are troubling them. Nothing to do with entertainment RPG, no matter what you say.
And yes, opinions might be based on facts, or they might come out of thin air. Louis XIV is dead, he couldn't be alive by now, nobody lives that long, not even le Roi Soleil. But I'm basing my opinions on facts. You dismissed them as BS, but what makes you approval so important? I'm spelling it now: absolutely nothing, as far as I know. Or are you going to reveal yourself to be the mastermind behind every cRPG made until today? Well, that would make all you claims about cRPGs respectable, fact-based opinions. But I guess that's not the case, so your opinions are based in facts too, of course. But those are facts you twisted, submitting then to a set of ideas about the subject and some kind of theory (I suppose you have a theory, it might by your own, or it might be borrowed from someone else, but it sounds like you are quoting from some glossary sometimes....). Well, I red some theories, but I think experience, in this particular case, surpasses the importance of theoretical knowledge. I'm talking about role playing for entertainment purposes ONLY. What happens in psychology role playing, stays in psychology role playing. I am not gaming for health purposes. Are you? If you are, I suppose you would also travel to Casablanca for the waters...
Finally, I didn't left anything unanswered. I don't remember San Andreas. Is it exactly the same kind of game as GTA IV? I suppose so. If it is, then it is not a role paying game. You have few choices, you don't even have dialogues, your character is presented as it is, without any possibility of customizing, you are always supposed to play a criminal (the game's title says it all), even if you choose not to kill innocent people, I guess that's not much of a choice, just a degree of nastiness. And I don't think that our actions can make much of a difference in that particular game world, except creating some street fights if you push the wrong people on the sidewalk or being shot by cops if you pull out your gun. You can't talk to most of the NPCs, usually they are nothing more than "moving scenario". You have missions, but most of them have to be accomplished in a pre determined way, you have not choice in the matter (at least in most of those missions). And they straight and linear at the beginning. You have to play a lot to be able to choose which mission you will take on first. I know that all this I mentioned does not dismiss GTA as a role playing one by one, but on the whole, if a game has none of that, it is not a RPG. So the conclusion is: GTA, whatever the version, is not a role playing game. It could be. Maybe it should be (though it would sell much less if it was advertised as RPG, I'm sure about that. So much for RPG being a "magic word"). I mentioned in the past (not here in this forum) that GTA could be one the best RPGs. As it is, GTA is an immersible open world game. I like it, but it is too linear, and when I find a boring or very difficult mission on the first hours of gaming I just give up. That's what happened with San Andreas (and it's why I don't remember it), and with GTA IV too. The one's before were too long ago.
And so it goes. I will stop arguing with you now. It is too boring and it just keeps going backwards. You are consistent, but that's not nearly enough to convince me of anything. Stay with your definition, I will take mine instead. May I?