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How have your tastes changed?

Mustawd

Guest
By your definition ARPGs are action games in a fantasy (or traditional rpg) setting with rpg elements like stats and what not? Yeah, I can get behind that.

I mean there are so many games that are not in fantasy settings that fit the criteria of an ARPG. I'm playing GUN right now and it has the following elements:

1. Stats
2. Main Quest
3. Side quests
4. NPCs
5. 3rd person action oriented combat
6. Loot/money
7. Upgrades to weapons

Hell, that has more elements of an RPG than Diablo (which is missing #3). And while it doesn't have explicit experience per se, your stats improve as you complete side quests, which is like quest/non combat XP.

Really, ARPGs are just action games in a fantasy setting if you think about it (except for ME and Technomancer which are sci fi).
 
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aweigh

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fluent

you mean the Morrowind argument?

"I clearly stabbed that mud-crab but I missed!"

ehhhhh I'd probably label that game a TRUE action-RPG; i.e. a combination of stats + twitch reflexes. (Yes, this means I believe there are FAKE action-RPGs, such as for example that Fate Zero Dawn Horizon whatever game).

Also, that means Souls games are not TRUE action-RPGs, since you can completely ignore stats and win using twitch reflexes. That means Souls games are simply action games with an (optional) advancement system, i.e. a FAKE action-RPG.

none of this, of course, has any bearing on whether or not a game is good or bad. Plenty of terrible true RPGs and plenty of amazingly good fake-RPGs.
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
Interesting. I do wish more RPGs would try Morrowind's style. I know that is blasphemous to say since to the average person, "first-person view must equal FPS gameplay", but I do think more RPGs that use such extensive dice-rolls would be a great thing. Even if said dice rolls included abstractions such as dodging or movement-based rolls.
 

Serus

Arcane
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Small but great planet of Potatohole
By your definition ARPGs are action games in a fantasy (or traditional rpg) setting with rpg elements like stats and what not? Yeah, I can get behind that.

I mean there are so many games that are not in fantasy settings that fit the criteria of an ARPG. I'm playing GUN right now and it has the following elements:

1. Stats
2. Main Quest
3. Side quests
4. NPCs
5. 3rd person action oriented combat
6. Loot/money
7. Upgrades to weapons

Hell, that has more elements of an RPG than Diablo (which is missing #3). And while it doesn't have explicit experience per se, your stats improve as you complete side quests, which is like quest/non combat XP.

Really, ARPGs are just action games in a fantasy setting if you think about it (except for ME and Technomancer which are sci fi).
Diablo does have side quests (as simple as they are). In fact - there is a pool of them and not all are present in a single game.
Not that it matters much to your argument.
 

Longshanks

Augur
Joined
Jul 28, 2004
Messages
897
Location
Australia.
Mine haven't really changed that much, I've just become less tolerant as free time has dwindled:

- prefer shorter games to longer whereas it used to be the other way 'round
- can no longer tolerate bad writing and hackneyed setups
- ditto goes for terrible gameplay
- fuckin' hate filler, where before I could happily scour every empty BG map
- beauty be damned. There was a time I could play a game just coz it was pretty but not any more
 

Serus

Arcane
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Messages
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Small but great planet of Potatohole
Sorry, went into this thread to write on subject and saw a post i had to respond to ("some1 is wrong on the internet !").

On subject:
I used to play all kind of crpg now i mostly look for ones with tactical combat but mostly i play roguelikes.

TL;DR: All --> mostly roguelikes now
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,240
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Earlier, I used to think dual-wielding barbarians were teh awesome, now I think two-handed barbarians are awesome.
I also have access to a hell of a lot more games than I did about a decade back, initially because Piracy and then because salary. And thank Crom I stopped worrying about storyfaggotry.
 

Mustawd

Guest
By your definition ARPGs are action games in a fantasy (or traditional rpg) setting with rpg elements like stats and what not? Yeah, I can get behind that.

I mean there are so many games that are not in fantasy settings that fit the criteria of an ARPG. I'm playing GUN right now and it has the following elements:

1. Stats
2. Main Quest
3. Side quests
4. NPCs
5. 3rd person action oriented combat
6. Loot/money
7. Upgrades to weapons

Hell, that has more elements of an RPG than Diablo (which is missing #3). And while it doesn't have explicit experience per se, your stats improve as you complete side quests, which is like quest/non combat XP.

Really, ARPGs are just action games in a fantasy setting if you think about it (except for ME and Technomancer which are sci fi).
Diablo does have side quests (as simple as they are). In fact - there is a pool of them and not all are present in a single game.
Not that it matters much to your argument.

Diablo 1? Really? I don't seem to remember them But yah, you're right that it's incidental to the point here. But side quests? For real? Huh...I should replay it.
 

Keye_

Educated
Joined
Dec 5, 2016
Messages
78
I used to be a casual: playing Oblivion, Skyrim, CoD, WoW, etc.
A few years ago I discovered Baldur's Gate. Changed my whole view on video games. I started playing more and more older games.
Now I almost exclusively play CRPGs, redeeming myself for my past. Not specifically a story or combat-fag. I like both evenly. Although browsing the Codex has increased my combat-fag interests.
 

Mustawd

Guest
you mean the Morrowind argument?

"I clearly stabbed that mud-crab but I missed!"

Let's not forget that's also the FO3 argument.

Of course it's not surprising that a complete waste of oxygen such as fluent brought it up, but whatever.
 

Mustawd

Guest
I used to be a casual: playing Oblivion, Skyrim, CoD, WoW, etc.

A few years ago I discovered Baldur's Gate

I....don't understand. BG belongs in the first list...so....what's your point?

240
 

Zetor

Arcane
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
1,706
Location
Budapest, Hungary
Time is money, frenz. There are more RPGs out there than ever, and I'm not a poor kid in HS/college with an infinite amount of free time anymore. I don't care if your game costs $60 as long as it's good, but if you are wasting my time*, gtfo. This means most single-player MMOs open-world games are DOA (W3 *may* be an exception, haven't tried it yet). Ditto with grinding / fighting repetitive no-challenge encounters -- I used to grind like crazy back in the day, but nowadays I make it a point to go through a game with minimal (preferably no) grinding at all. If that's not possible, then the game is not worth playing; note that challenging random encounters to force resource management are OK. I've also come to care less and less about things like graphics, VO and music (I just listen to mp3s or whatever anyway) as long as they're not getting in the way of my enjoyment.

I guess I've also become a bit more tolerant towards console JRPGs (mostly because there are tons of decent-to-good sRPGs and dungeon crawlers on numerous easy-to-emulate platforms), but still can't stand anime or highschool kid characters. Final Fantasy Tactics or Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey: cool; Labyrinth of Touhou or Persona: I'm not kawaii desu ne enough for this shit.


* note that 'wasting my time' doesn't mean "less is more" (which seems to be a commonly-repeated mantra nowadays). 50+ hour games are fine as long as the gameplay doesn't become stale; Underrail is great, DivOS is kind of pushing it, and WL2 is definitely overstaying its welcome. I also don't mind walls of text (I'm a fast reader) as long as the quality is good and it's actually relevant either to the story or to world-building. Meaningless dialogue can die in a fire.
 

Krivol

Magister
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Messages
1,951
Location
Potatoland aka Prussia
I'm trying to reply Morrowind now and... I kinda miss Skyrim - everything is so slow. I know I just have to get through first 20 hours and all will be fine (and speed + athletics will be on proper level), but you need to remember (or scribe down!) info about multiple quests, while in Skyrim you just go forward killing stuff, mostly no brain needed. And no need to read in Skyrim...

God, I feel filthy.
 

Reinhardt

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2015
Messages
29,239
Backed Torment on kickstarter, but now i'm just not interested in it anymore. Not hate it or anything, just not interested and will not play it.
Too old for this shit, i think.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
Are there any RPGs, or RPG design philosophies, that you now like that you used to dislike, or the other way around.

Not really. I still think Fallout is the greatest RPG ever made, 20 years later. And I still think TES is shit on a stick. Taste hasn't changed. But Swordflight opened my eyes to the virtues of resource management and enforced rest restrictions under a Vancian magic system, at the dev-level, which don't really exist in commercial RPGs. Imo, it's as good as single-player RPGs get, eerily close to PnP in spirit, and far superior to the kickstarters that are comically spruiked on the Codex, and elsewhere. It's hard to take even the classics srsly after playing Swordflight, at least in respect to the abovementioned virtues, which have become v. important to me now.
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
I never was a storyfag, but I used to dislike minimal-story NPC-light RPGs (e.g. Dungeon Master), now I actually prefer them to story-heavy games.
 

Serus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
6,681
Location
Small but great planet of Potatohole
By your definition ARPGs are action games in a fantasy (or traditional rpg) setting with rpg elements like stats and what not? Yeah, I can get behind that.

I mean there are so many games that are not in fantasy settings that fit the criteria of an ARPG. I'm playing GUN right now and it has the following elements:

1. Stats
2. Main Quest
3. Side quests
4. NPCs
5. 3rd person action oriented combat
6. Loot/money
7. Upgrades to weapons

Hell, that has more elements of an RPG than Diablo (which is missing #3). And while it doesn't have explicit experience per se, your stats improve as you complete side quests, which is like quest/non combat XP.

Really, ARPGs are just action games in a fantasy setting if you think about it (except for ME and Technomancer which are sci fi).
Diablo does have side quests (as simple as they are). In fact - there is a pool of them and not all are present in a single game.
Not that it matters much to your argument.

Diablo 1? Really? I don't seem to remember them But yah, you're right that it's incidental to the point here. But side quests? For real? Huh...I should replay it.

First Diablo, yep. As i wrote those quests were extremely simplistic but since they were technically "quests" and separate from main quest then = "side quest". For exemple one of the villagers might tell you about a poisoned water supply. You end finding that goatmen did it and you need to kill them all on a tiny sublevel. Afair it is possible to ignore it and skip it completely. This quest is chosen from a small pool of such subquests (at least i think it was on of them) at the start of the game so not all of those appeared in every game. Some others were always present in every game (Arkane' Valor armor thing afair and of curse The Butcher). They were all extremely simple but certainly qualify as sub-quests. I know it is hair splitting but Diablo 1 was more complex than it is given credit - except it was also all very shallow. In this case the pool of the optional randomly chosen subquests was very small and the subquests were simple and inconsequential.
All this doesn't really matter for your inital point.
 

ilitarist

Learned
Illiterate Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Messages
857
When I was young I prefered dialogue and story-heavy RPGs. I guess I thought that if you really want combat you'd better play action or strategy games.

Now I'm much more tolerant in this regard and care more about gameplay system and balanced challenge. Mostly because I read books/watch movies with story better than any videogame but I never saw a book with a good gameplay. So today I may like, say, Fallout New Vegas more than Fallout 3 because FNV dialogues are not completely retarded and story is even somewhat decent, but I still lament loss of exploration and open world from Fallout 3, even though Fallout 3 story and dialogues was really bad. So nowadays I can see myself playing all those Eastern grind-heavy RPGs, cause I probably want more of Wizardry gameplay refinement than Fallout choices&consequences/dialogues.

Maybe one day it will change. Maybe one day I will play a game with choices & consequences, story and player agency that are great, not "great compared to even worse games".
 
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aweigh

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
17,978
Location
Florida
Lilura

you ever played Wizardry-type turn-based dungeon crawlers? They're all about everything you described. I downloaded Swordflight and am gonna start it up later today, and also downloaded Maimed God for NWN2.

I recommend (assuming you've never ventured into turn-based 'crawlers) to try out Elminage: Gothic (Steam/GOG), or Paper Sorcerer (Steam/GOG) if you want something modern.

Of course, the greatest of all time is Wiz 5, and I recommend the PS1 port. (ISO of it can be found by googling, and of course ePSXe is the emu for PS1 games).

Why am I making these recommendations to you? Because of what you posted concerning how you have gained an appreciation regarding the inherent value of vancian casting, etc. Not many "get" this, they think it's something done out of tradition or what-have-you, but it is a more sophisticated form of gameplay in the context of RPGs than having mana pools or the like.

Same goes for resting restrictions, item scarcity, etc. Obviously Wiz-type games are very different from something like NWN, (first-person view, focus on dungeon/maze exploration), but the real joy comes from the depth of the classes, character advancement, party management, resource management, and making hard decisions as to whether when to rest, when to buy a new shield or instead buy 2 potions of poison removal, etc.
 
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aweigh

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btw, digressing a bit regarding the rpg / not-rpg stuff:

- dark souls = traditional action game with a simple "advancement template"; stats have no bearing on the success of your twitch skillz.

- morrowind = "true" action-RPG where stats dictate success of your twitch skillz.

- fallout 1/2 = RPG. no twitch skills whatsoever required, stats determine everything.

- neverwinter nights = RPG. some would argue there is twitch involved due to the way RTwP systems play out, but there is no arguing that NWN/PoE/etc's conflict resolution is always determined by the game's "numbers".

- Witcher series = "fake" action-RPG because while stats determine some stuff in the gameplay, everything is still resolved by the players twitch skillz.

true action-RPG = action rpg.
fake action-RPG = action game with fantasy template / rpg-lite advancement template.

funnily enough, FO3 i would classify as a "true action-RPG", whereas FO4 changed into a fake one and became a standard action game instead.

People need to remember that "RPG" is not necessarily strictly a genre by itself; it is more of a combination of systems, a template if you will, that was cobbled together by plucking stuff from different genres such as from Adventure Games/Gaming (king's quest, etc), and taking stuff from table top (d and d, etc), and some stuff from even RTS games (the entire advent of the RTwP-style of conflict resolution).
 

ilitarist

Learned
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Messages
857
I recommend (assuming you've never ventured into turn-based 'crawlers) to try out Elminage: Gothic (Steam/GOG), or Paper Sorcerer (Steam/GOG) if you want something modern.

I'd like playing something like that too but sadly most modern examples are not that great. Haven't played the one you've mentioned but they don't look that good and reviews talk about glitches and other problems.

Might & Magic X was a recent decent Wizardry clone. Not Might & Magic clone, curiously.
 
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aweigh

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ilitarist

judge for yourself...

Paper Sorcerer (beginning gameplay):


Elminage: Gothic (figuring out a puzzle in Royal Tomb dungeon):


Elminage: Gothic (inside a WIREFRAME Dungeon, in the post-game):


Wizardry Empire 2 (translated into english recently by MrRichard999 and Helly):


The Dark Spire (1st floor of the game's huge tower dungeon, made by ex-Wiz devs):
 

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