Moderator: JC Denton
by icycalm » 28 Apr 2008 19:49
The game was spreading beyond basements, particularly influencing the nascent computer-games industry. Mr Gygax didn't like that either; he thought computer graphics cheapened the experience by substituting an artist's imagination for the player's. And while computers were ideal for streamlining tedious dice rolls and arithmetic, those, for him, were never the point.
by icycalm » 08 Nov 2008 14:25
While I don't necessarily disagree with his point... his logic is so flawed here it hurts. All JRPG battle systems suck because there's so many of them! Of course! Why didn't we all see this before?!
He prefaces the entire thing with something on RPGs, and how the point of an RPG is to assume the role of a character and make choices to develop your character in ways outside combat, and how battle was not the point. The movement away from wargaming roots in an RPG is a Very Good Thing, emphasizing character choice rather than dice rolls. However, by taking all that out of jRPGs, they're no longer Role Playing Games, they're Powergaming Simulators, where the entire purpose is to smash the enemy with whatever you have at your disposal. Therefore, you judge their battle system design versus a wargame, which they have more in common with. And as a general rule, they suck.
The scenarios are all either Monty Hall cakewalks or Revenge of the Asshole DM where they decide to cornhole you for not playing the game with a FAQ. Your entire objective is to Make Numbers Go Up, and with the player divested of any need to concern himself with actual Role Playing, you are relieved of all responsibilities except to build your characters to win as efficiently as possible. Much like in wargaming, where you use your units to win as effectively as possible.
The main difference, though, is that rules for wargaming systems are usually polished far more than jRPG battle systems, allowing for much more interactivity. I'll use CBT as an example, because that's what I'm most familiar with: CBT is on its third set of master rules in 25 years. That's like if Square was just releasing FF3, having spent a decade polishing and refining each game, making tweaks on the rules to ensure balance and writing new rules because they hadn't thought of the random scenario some fan came up with. If you're churning out games at a rate that jRPGs are, you don't get that kind of parity that you achieve in a well-polished game setting where the mechanics have been vetted by players to find the weird, game-breaking combinations devs never thought of, and likewise, the playerbase as a whole never develops an attachment to a system like they do in pen and paper RPGs (though some do, but they're what I like to call an outlier*).
by NeoKubrick » 09 Nov 2008 16:10
by icycalm » 09 Nov 2008 16:28
NeoKubrick wrote:One could say "fuck the main-story [or guild stories]" in either game (less so in the latter TES game), and go off to make and shape their own character.
by Cpt. Coin-op » 11 Nov 2008 01:05
icycalm wrote:...in a world in which everyone was an adventurer there could be no adventures worth pursuing.
Rob the Stampede wrote:...they're Powergaming Simulators, where the entire purpose is to smash the enemy with whatever you have at your disposal. Therefore, you judge their battle system design versus a wargame, which they have more in common with. And as a general rule, they suck.
...you are relieved of all responsibilities except to build your characters to win as efficiently as possible.
by Crazy Man » 22 Dec 2008 10:39
icycalm wrote:My experience with Fallout is limited to a couple of afternoons of playing time using a borrowed laptop back in '98. I don't think I managed to get that far before I had to return it. I've been meaning to play it properly and write a review, so I'll get back to you once I get around to doing that. It would be a real rush for me to discover a second real CRPG.
by icycalm » 14 Feb 2009 14:49
Cole Stryker: Before I even begin I must request that everyone read this, one of the best pieces of game criticism I've ever read. JRPG fans should prepare to be offended. It contains the following money quotes:
Western CRPGs have kept evolving because there has always existed consciousness of a direction towards which to evolve; JRPGs, meanwhile, have been going round in circles ever since their inception -- Fallout is worlds away from Akalabeth; not so Rogue Galaxy from Final Fantasy.
The only kind of evolution JRPGs have undergone is of a cosmetic nature: Final Fantasy was no Ultima, and its endless sequels had to be justifed in some way -- and so they were. CG or anime-style cutscenes and countless hours' worth of voice-acting and orchestral soundtracks were the justification, piled up, stacked and shoved inside cartridges...
Now then. It's no secret that I'm not a fan of JRPG's. It seems to me that the things holding JRPG's back are the very characteristics that define the genre. So I guess this is another way of saying that the best way to make a good JRPG is to not make a JRPG.
Firstly, expensive poly counts have to go in order for this genre to mean anything to me. I'm happy to see that recent portable JRPG's have done this, though I haven't played any of them. They practically had to, with the limited graphical capabilities. It's interesting how a dearth of technology can actually amount to a better game because it allows developers to cut the fat.
Secondly, we've got to lose the cutscenes. Kierkegaard tells it like it is in an epic burn, calling Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, "a groundbreaking JRPG comprised of a single 106-minute-long cutscene, whose only flaw was that it didn't give players the option to skip it." Oh snap, son. The cult of celebrity that JRPG composers enjoy also brings the genre down. Focus on what's under the hood, please.
In order to push the genre into new territory, JRPG's should decide whether they want to be actual role playing games or strategy games rather than a mediocre mixture of both. I'd much rather play a proper RPG like Planescape Torment or a proper strategy game like Advance Wars than a JRPG which offers an hamstrung version of each. Even my favorite JRPG franchise, Earthbound, is super guilty of this. The combat system, even the rhythm based one in Mother 3 is pretty mindless. Developers need ways to mix up the combat mechanics. Use Ice Power to kill Fire Demons. Fight Night Wraiths with the Heavenly Light Arrows. Yawn. Chrono Trigger made these weaksauce mechanics obsolete well over a decade ago.
Make them shorter. I just don't feel like investing 70+ hours on a JRPG. The last one I played was Baten Kaitos, a reasonably fun card-based RPG. I burned out halfway through and haven't played one since (except for the nostalgic Mother 3, for which I made an exception).
Now that I've covered where I think JRPG's should go, I'll talk about where they will go: Nowhere. There are too many people out there content to play bad games. The continued existence of the Final Fantasy franchise is proof enough.
by Strifer » 14 Feb 2009 16:35
by icycalm » 14 Feb 2009 16:44
Strifer wrote:I still find FF the games enjoyable to experience
Cole Stryker wrote:Now that I've covered where I think JRPG's should go, I'll talk about where they will go: Nowhere. There are too many people out there content to play bad games. The continued existence of the Final Fantasy franchise is proof enough.
by icycalm » 17 Mar 2009 19:57
sadinotna wrote:icycalm wrote: I am talking about the players, who in real RPGs are only supposed to role-play a single character
Now I'm curious to your opinions on troupe system games and GM-less stuff like Polaris. Are the real RPGs or not?
by sadinotna » 18 Mar 2009 10:31
by Evo » 19 Mar 2009 04:27
by icycalm » 03 Apr 2009 13:39
Recap wrote:A line about the "RPG" term I wanted to say to you since your fantastic article on the subject -- I don't think you'll find anybody disagreeing it's some sort of a misnomer. It's just that we all accepted it as a polysemic word.
Recap wrote:It's not different to the term "adventure game" [laughs], in the end.
by Recap » 03 Apr 2009 17:51
icycalm wrote:Same goes for this. "Adventure game", on this site, means Zork and Monkey Island -- NOT Zelda. I also expect people to observe this distinction in their forum posts.
by Worm » 03 Apr 2009 18:28
by icycalm » 03 Apr 2009 22:47
Recap wrote:What I really meant with the "adventure game" analogy is that it is another example of a linguistic "borrowing" process with a case of polysemy as the result.
Recap wrote:It's totally arbitrary, nevertheless, yet we all accepted it just for convenience.
Recap wrote:Now, I understand your point that there's indeed a true (or "proper") "RPG" in this video-game world of ours namely "Deux EX" and that's the only one which deserves that label, but it's only _one_ among some thousands.
Recap wrote:We can't change that fact today much like we can't change the hilarious usage of the term "adventure" applied to video-games.
by icycalm » 14 Jan 2010 15:39
Dervish wrote:spinksville, the point of the article is not to "piss all over CRPGs." It's to point out how the "RPG" label is misused and explain how it should be used. This is important, because once you have that clarity in your terms, it's easier to focus on what makes those games good and how to make them better.
The games we currently have can be (for example) wonderful tactical dungeon crawlers--masterpieces, many of them--and those elements are what we should look at when comparing and improving them. But, they are poor RPGs. Progress towards greater plot interactivity has been stalled because everyone got locked into the "RPG means stats" mentality and stopped thinking about anything else. An entire genre is nigh-untapped.
The article is about insight, clarity, and consistency, not saying one type of game is better than another. If people learn to distinguish between "this is what makes stat-heavy strategy games good" and "this is what makes role-playing games good," we'll end up with greater demand for and better examples of each.
by El Chaos » 16 Mar 2010 23:17
by icycalm » 14 Jul 2010 13:16
pahncrd wrote:I've run entire roleplaying campaigns without my players having to see a single stat and handling the rolls on my own. It was actually better that way as the players weren't so fixated on the mechanics of the game and could just roleplay.
by Bread » 04 Aug 2010 11:31
• "I think it would be good if the hero had missions that weren't only about destroying evil."
• "The player is weak, the enemy is weak. That's way too convenient."
• "When did games become something you watch?"
• "Because the story doesn't change, what's the point of playing it again?"
• "Games nowadays are focusing way too much on photorealism."
• "What's a game that's moving in accordance to the scenario? It's the same as living on rails."
• "Levelling up is time for motivation down!"
• "The stage has been set. After that, you're free to do whatever!"
by icycalm » 02 Jul 2012 22:26
by Nic P » 06 Sep 2012 00:38
Kevin Spiess wrote:Not much tops Fallout 2 when it came to open ended quests. Let's take one of the better examples in F2 -- dealing with the Slavers in the city called the Den. The Slavers have a buddy of yours, Vic, that you want to rescue. There were many ways of getting this done.
You could go into the slaver headquarters and shoot them all up. If you were a explosive traps guy, (like my guy was), you could go in the building and plant dynamite, then leave, and blow everyone up. If you had high intelligence and high speech, you could convince the slavers to stop trading slaves, and get them to free Vic. If you were a jerk, you could join the Slavers, get a slaver tattoo on your forehead that would have consequences for the rest of the game, and sell your tribal companion into a life of servitude. If you were a chick with a decent charisma, you can have sex with the head slaver guy for Vic's freedom.
The vast majority of quests in Fallout 3 are like this: go talk to this guy. Kill everybody in your way. The end.
Some of the quests, if you have a high speech skill, you can lie and not have to kill the dudes.
Yay. Woot. Let's RPG it up. Let's go kill all the enemy dudes and get the magical hamster or super Frisbee or W-ever-TF they want me to get. Yay this is fun.