StillLife

Sounds like a case of stream-lining taken too far. When provided the opportunity, I'm prone to just strolling around in a stealth game knocking everyone in a level out if I know they won't wake up, like in Thief, and that becomes the entire gameplay for me. I liked how in the Hitman games you were often forced to work around non-targets, and when you did make someone unconcious, you had to hurry and stay focused on completing your goals before they woke up. Are there generally more crowds of people in BM?

Bah, the Gothics have been the best action RPG series to date. If you consider yourself a CRPG fan and didn't give them a real chance, you did yourself a disservice. Sure you're not referring to Japanese RPGs?

Me too, they need to back off of hyping the combat already and put the dialogue system on display. They've said it will be fairly robust with multiple options and far-reaching outcomes, but that remains to be seen. If it's true however, it will certainly seperate it from being a mere Diablo clone, and will be a big improvement seen over the annoyingly simplistic Wiki system in the "action game", Oblivion.

Well, smacking someone on the head is pretty unpredictable in whether or not you're really knock them out, kill them, or just tick them off, plus it would be pretty hard to guess how long they'd be out for. Using ether, chloroform, or whatever was in the syringe in Contracts however, you could much more efficiently gauge roughly how long someone would be out. I liked how in the older games, the longer you soaked the handkerchief and held it over the persons face, the longer they'd be out. It's actually a bit disappointing to hear you can just beat them into unconciousness if I'm understanding you correctly. Jeez, taken out of context, that might have been one of the most disturbing paragraphs I've ever written.

It's barely even been in development for three years bud. Bit early to cry vaporware. It's no wonder there are so many rushed, incomplete games these days with that kind of attitude.

Either NWN sure is showing its age or the artwork those guys did is terrible. Those screenshots look like ass.

Questioning how you spend your free time and the management of your priorities is an essential part of being human. Nothing inherently whiney about it...well, unless you frequently go on public message boards with your pontifications. Anyway, humans like to dream and engage in fantasies within the comforts of their own mind. It's very natural as it allows us opportunities to think about things we would'nt ordinarily do and even grow and learn about ourselves and the world around us in many ways. Video games -- more specifically, RPGs -- are just an extension of that. They're interactive daydreams with a slightly physical form. It's no wonder people enjoy them. You're unnecessarily reading too much into the psychology of why some individuals enjoy RPGs in particular. Everyone's different and there could be a huge number of essentially mundane reasons. The fact you can rarely get two posters on a forum like this to even agree on what kinds of RPGs they like is evidence of the diversity RPG fans have in what they find appealing about a game. Of course, like Llyranor suggested with the Dak'kon quote: everything in moderation. You breathe too much at once, you're going to hyperventilate. Eat too much, you're going to get fat and out of shape. Play too many video games? You'll end up letting something else that is important fall to the wayside and dealing with the consequences for it. Fail to allow yourself leisure time? You'll go nuts, have a nervous breakdown, climb a water tower with a sniper rifle or have a heart attack and die at 30 like all those Japanese business men back in the 90's.

So what do you think they should do? Remove the console all together from the market? Pretty much. They should put all of their focus into growing market share in other areas of the world and stop pining for Japan so heavily. MS should treat Japan like a woman they're interested in; don't seem desperate or pushy and let her come around on her own if she wants, but move on in the meantime. :D Makes me think of that stupid f'ing game that was supposed to be a mock JRPG they put out which I can't even recall the name of, but it bombed horribly. The Xbox needed RPGs pretty severely at the time too. Xbox owners don't want Japanese RPGs or they would've had a PS2 and on the other hand, Japanese gamers don't want fake Japanese games when they can just get the real thing. If they keep playing to their strengths, Nintendo and Sony might just lose more and more market share in the west which MS will be able to pick up to compensate for lack of appeal in Japan. The 360 is also the only next gen(stupid name) platform on the market as of this date. It would be pretty horrendous if it weren't selling better compared to when the Xbox first launched.

That file didn't even work.

MS needs to just wake up and smell the coffee. Look at that list of most anticipated title's, it's obvious Japanese gamers just have little to no interest in the majority of western games and most likely never will. They have too much loyalty to Japanese businesses to let an American mega-corp like Microsoft potentially dominate what is an important industry there.

Volourn is right. It's understandable why someone might like them, but seriously it is a bit silly to applaud a company for not being afraid to change when they're making the 12th sequel to a series, especially when so many elements of them have been very consistent from game to game.

BioShock or Spore should win. Final Fantasy is too played out to be worthy of winning any awards. It's up to number XII already...XIII if you count X-2. An individual can only enjoy so many random, mellow-dramatic adventures in Metrosexia before it's time to move on.

Still, it can be good to question the validity and the direction an entertainment genre has been taking, even on a forum that's dedicated to the discussion of it. It didn't seem to me he was just trolling to piss people off. Like I said in my earlier post in this thread, based on the fundamental elements of an RPG, I don't think I'm a fan of them, yet here I am wasting my time discussing them because they often contain other stuff you don't typically find anywhere else. :D

But he wasn't claiming computer games are a waste of time: The guy was putting out a hypothetical question of whether or not CRPGs have enough entertainment value to justify the time investment and purchase price compared to other game genres. It's a reasonable question, and he gave some decent examples of why he's not sure. I don't know what the F Hades got all up in arms over. I get the feeling some of you people just read the first few lines of Ginth's post before typing down a knee-jerk reaction.

Compared to most of the games released as RPGs - I hate the genre. -Gameplay through combat is usually terribly easy, plus there's generally way too much of it. -I don't really care about stat tweaking, never have. Especially when it's pointless as a result of what I mentioned above. -If I want a good story, I read a book - I don't buy a $50 computer game. -I hate fantasy settings, especially prissy elves. There are three things I look for in video games billing themselves as RPGs: Exploration, immersion, and role-playing. All too often, those tend to get placed on the backburner in CRPG design though. I don't blame developers for making games that way. I've come to the conclusion I'm just a freak of nature in my preferences, and most people are focused on those aspects I dislike when buying an RPG. So in reality, I don't like RPGs.

Hey, now we're talkin'! I know you meant that in jest, but there's a huge difference between challenging and life-threatening. Doesn't anyone remember older games that were acutally tough to beat, and the feeling of satisfaction you'd have from conquering them in addition to completing the story? When did words like challenging and difficult become a dirty word in video games? Games should beat the hell out of you and bring out emotions like frustration and dismay - it makes the reward for overcoming them all the more enjoyable, as well as establishing an artificial affinity for the game and all it contains. It's no wonder RPGs seem so short these days, when you can pretty much sleep through the combat in the bulk of them since developers have grown overly concerned with desiging games that coddle the player.

I disagree. 1) When you have to keep one person alive at all costs(the PC) who is--if you've played your cards right--usually the most powerful member, it adds an extra level of challenge over just having to keep any old party member alive. On that note, there should be battles difficult enough where you almost have to lose a party member just to get through, defeating the purpose of just trying to reload around it. 2) From a story standpoint, having it so all party members are magically okay if one of them survives a tough battle kills immersion. When a party member dies, it should be a big deal, something you want to avoid, otherwise you can fling them around like lambs to the slaughter and any concern for them is greatly diminished. It should be entirely over if your character dies as your connection to the gameworld is severed. It's not meaningless with reload. The only time KOTOR's method would be justified is in a game where you can only save at certain points, otherwise it's far too easy to just breeze through. KOTORs combat model was friggin atrocious with its utter lack of challenge and should not be followed by any other game.

Right, one person would host, give out the IP address usually through a chat room and everyone else would try to get in.

Yeah, you could actually. It was really the only game I played at the time. This was back when 28.8 modems were the standard though, and some bone-headed 14.4 user would usually jump into 8 player games and lag the bejeezus out of everything, so people didn't do them too frequently. 3v3s were the norm though.

Not quite true, Warcraft 2 was up to 8 players, same as it was post Bnet. There would've been no Battlenet if it weren't the huge online success WC2 enjoyed to inspire Blizzard to go that route.

For the camp that only plays games for the story, RPGs just oughtta get right to it and provide an invincible mode, rather than dumbing down combat in games any further to placate them. Maybe even a feature to skip ahead through combat areas entirely.

The online honor should go to Warcraft 2. Even on the Mac(what I was using at the time it was still fairly new) there were a ton of people playing it. That was when you still had to type in IP addresses. It's popularity only grew more when Battle.net rolled around.

I don't know, Nintendo fanboys can get frothing-at-the-mouth, verbally agressive when they percieve their console god is threatened. There just don't seem to be many of them on this forum.

Even if it's possible to rez, if it's enough of a pain in the ass, it keeps you wanting to avoid death at all costs and keeps the game challenging. When you can carelessly slop through a difficult battle safe in the knowledge everything will be ok after it's over and you can just go about your merry way, it removes a great deal of the thrill and challenge.

I liked the BG2 method. Even better was JA2. Having your mercs say their final words and your parties reaction to their deaths was a great touch. Though you had a large number potential replacements available in that game, which a typical party-based RPG lacks. Video games need to go back to kicking player's asses and stop with the hand-holding. If you have to reload - too bad, losing should suck.