Is there such a thing as an "Action RPG"? Poll inside

[CaffeineConquistador]

It's 2109, time to move on from Fallout 1 & 2.

Yeah, I’d say so; current year plus 94 and all.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I wonder if games from 80s like Hillsfar or Silver Box-series were described as action-RPGs in any promotional materials.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

It's 2109, time to move on from Fallout 1 & 2.

What's so good about year 2109 that by then it's time to abandon Fallout 1 & 2?
Are those experiences that one could have by simply going outside?
Got any good betting tips mister timetraveller?

 

[Open Path]

But what about PES 2013?

• You get to create your character.
• Character development varies from character to character.
• You get to pick special cards at certain points of your evolution, which add more abilities to your character.
  
• Stats influence your prowess on the pitch. Literally everything you can do in-game is handled by a stat. If you have the AI handle your character, other stats will define define how the AI play (for instance, "Aggression").
  
• You can increase said stats at will: as you use your different abilities (running, passing, crossing, etc.) your stats will gain experience at the end of matches.
• There is equipment (boots) with different stats.

No. That's a reductio ad absurdum. Sport games are not rpgs and there is not much to discuss -as playing tabletop rpgs or tactic games is not the same that playing football "chapas" -bottle caps used as players-. Even if in virtual sport games can exist some degree of characters progression and character/team skills favours success at some degree, there are many other perspectives that prevent that kind of games to be grouped with crpgs:

• Character/team skill systems are FAR less relevant than player reflexes. There are people, probably a majority, that plays PES ignoring totally stats. Character stats and progression or the use of the different levels in different stats to solve problems are not the main focus of the game. That game as every other sport game is totally focused to player coordination and instant gratification.
  
• Problems to solve are limited to play a sport. That's what define in first place a sport game, the setting and all the mechanics linked with playing a sport. A imaginary sport game in d&d setting would be a sport game yet.
• There is no a single minor thread -secondary, less relevant, but almost always present- linking PES with table-top rpgs experience. No exploration, no inventories, no loot, no combat, etc, etc.

You can compare rpgs with strategy games with characters stats the next time, they form in the same way very different genres but at least the focus of strategy games offer a more similar experience to crpgs than sport games.

 

[PsychoFox]

It's 2109, time to move on from Fallout 1 & 2.

It's 2019 here on Earth.

 

[Sigourn]

There are people, probably a majority, that plays PES ignoring totally stats.

Not only would this be wrong, but it would also be disingenuous.

• When it comes to pro level, people will try to make the best possible teams, which means choosing the players with the best stats as well.
• In cRPGs, you can very much make the case that what ultimately matters is the skill of the player: one player may use the same party to defeat much stronger enemies than another who uses the same party at higher levels. The proof of this is difficulty levels in games like Icewind Dale, with many people unable to complete the game at Heart of Winter mode, because they (the players) aren't good enough.
• In both cases player skill plays a part.

Character stats and progression or the use of the different levels in different stats to solve problems are not the main focus of the game.

Which is why I acknowledged PES 2013 is ultimately not a role-playing game.
My point is that the game shares many elements in common, and yet it cannot be considered an RPG, in spite of being truer to the spirit of RPGs than a game like Chrono Trigger is.

 

[Nano]

Chrono Trigger isn't an RPG. Anachronox isn't an RPG. JRPGs in general aren't RPGs.

 

[PsychoFox]

Chrono Trigger isn't an RPG. Anachronox isn't an RPG. JRPGs in general aren't RPGs.

Yup.

 

[Open Path]

Not only would this be wrong, but it would also be disingenuous.

• When it comes to pro level, people will try to make the best possible teams, which means choosing the players with the best stats as well.
• In cRPGs, you can very much make the case that what ultimately matters is the skill of the player: one player may use the same party to defeat much stronger enemies than another who uses the same party at higher levels. The proof of this is difficulty levels in games like Icewind Dale, with many people unable to complete the game at Heart of Winter mode, because they (the players) aren't good enough.
• In both cases player skill plays a part.

• I really doubt that your first point represent a majority of PES player base... In my experience PES/FIFA etc dudes ingnore stats, play with their favourite teams and players mostly, besides stats, and sometimes play with "suboptimal" teams and players for the lulz AND especially because lowering the level of stats relevance in success highlight better their real life skills -reflexes, coordination, fast, wide and detailed vision etc-. If you and your friends like to put attention to stats is because you/your friends are part of a very specific type of player, a minority one that likes rpgs or strategy games.
• In every game in existence player skills are relevant, the difference is that in table-top or crpgs you use mainly your memory, your analitic capacity, your competence linking ideas or your aptitude managing in deep inventory and equipment, skills, attack types, etc while in a sport game or a shooter you must use mostly your reflexes and some other fast or nearly instinctive abbilities. You "use your brain" playing Call of Duty or FIFA of course but a very different set of brain functions... Even with the ultra-popamolish trash mobs that attack you in some Icewind Dale areas, some people fail, because their intelligence failure, not because reflexes.
• Yes, in both Icewind Dale and sport games players skills plays a part, but a very different set of skills and in a very different way, with more memory or analytic thinking in ID -even if is not the best example of this- and far more weight of character skills or inventories.

If you think about it, the fact that character skills are more relevant than fast reaction of players is what makes you truly play a role -whithout pretending-, as you play mainly through your avatar stats not yours.

 

[a Goat]

PES doesn't have gore so it's not an RPG and even if it was it would be a very bad one.

 

[Sigourn]

I really doubt that your first point represent a majority of PES player base... In my experience PES/FIFA etc dudes ingnore stats, play with their favourite teams and players mostly, besides stats, and sometimes play with "suboptimal" teams and players for the lulz AND especially because lowering the level of stats relevance in success highlight better their real life skills -reflexes, coordination, fast, wide and detailed vision etc-. If you and your friends like to put attention to stats is because you/your friends are part of a very specific type of player, a minority one that likes rpgs or strategy games.

I think you and me where talking about different kinds of "ignoring stats". I was looking at it from a "ignoring stats because skill is more prevalent" point of view, whereas you were looking at it from a "ignoring stats because all that matters is playing the game" point of view, which I agree with (and is why I don't consider PES to be an RPG).

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I wonder if games from 80s like Hillsfar or Silver Box-series were described as action-RPGs in any promotional materials.

SSI in its advertisement defined Hillsfar as an "action-adventure game" in contrast to Pool of Radiance being described as "the first and now classic AD&D computer role-playing game". There was earlier advertisement solely for Hillsfar, but that was rather coy about the gameplay, though it did say that the reader would "play a game that's one vigorous workout", which combined with its succinct list of mini-games would perhaps clue in the reader that Hillsfar wasn't an RPG.

 

[Grognardius Rex]

The term ARPG is an acronymic portmanteau whose purpose is to delineate that a game is neither an action game nor an RPG, but a unique hybrid of both. Trying to claim it is one or the other is as xylocephalic as trying to claim a hermaphrodite is a man or a woman. It is a completely separate genre.

This should be obvious given the extreme opinions on it. Those who have a predilection towards RPGs but find action games anathema will not be interested in ARPGs. Those who have a penchant for action games but think RPGs are execrable will have antipathy for ARPGs as well. Only those who find pleasure in both will be satisfied.

Quod erat demonstrandum: Only those who like “chicks with dicks” like ARPGs.

 

[CyberWhale]

Every video game is an RPG since you assume some kind of a role in it. In Donkey Kong you roleplay a monkey, in Super Mario an Italian plumber, in Gran Turismo a car and so on.
That's the main reason why on RPGCodex you can find discussions on all of these sub-genres of the RPG.

 

[smaug]

Every video game is an RPG since you assume some kind of a role in it. In Donkey Kong you roleplay a monkey, in Super Mario an Italian plumber, in Gran Turismo a car and so on.
That's the main reason why on RPGCodex you can find discussions on all of these sub-genres of the RPG.

You fucking retard.

 

[Glop_dweller]

Not willing to get into this tbh. But no Fallout 4 is also not an RPG due to having fixed protagonists.

I might want to agree that it's no RPG... but I haven't played it. However I'd never agree for your stated reason—a fixed protagonist does not by itself disqualify a game as an RPG—the protagonist is the role to be played.
Planescape had a fixed protaganist; Witcher does also; and those are some great RPGs.

From what I can tell, the FO4 PC has past & present acquaintances, and a spouse—and a child; that's more than Morrowind had. FO4 is ironically the most in depth RPG character of any Bethesda game in recent memory.
(Sure... they strip it all away, but at least it was there for a while; what do you expect of them? They make crap RPG franken-shooters that focus solely on the tinsel side of maintaining a reactive world.)

________

Huh, Wizardry and Might and Magic are not RPGs then. Interesting

Look at Eye of the Beholder; a licensed D&D dungeoncrawler with the full charactersheet rules...and probably my favorite of all in the genre.)

EoB offers zero—absolutely no— options to roleplay, other than combat, and declining (or not) of NPCs to join.
It's still a great game, and it runs on an 8086 processor...which is no doubt part of the reason for its interactive sparseness. Did it qualify then? I think so; but does it qualify as one now?

There is definitely a sliding scale here, and it has to do with scope and system requirements. In those older games, the system presented the abstract essence of the events—and the player could imagine the rest... including (for instance) full conversations with NPCs that exist in the game code as yes/no answers.

But in the recent age, where games are [sadly, IMO] straying far away from the abstract, and focusing on defining the absolute minutia of the experience... there is no excuse for maintaining the same sparse level of conversational choice & consequence to one's actions.

** It's like leaping from passing notes in Morse Code, to then sending 192kbit mp3's.... and still using it for five word statements spoken in SMS slang. Does that still qualify as correspondence? Does it justify needing the machine resources to render the compressed audio? **

Would you go to a theater to watch a three minute silent B&W film that shows a train in motion? Would you call that a movie? Is it worth the trip to the theater? Worth paying for a ticket? It might have been the case back then, but no modern theater could survive on selling tickets to that film now. And the modern desktop & games can be likened to the theater and its films.

One can compare old computer games with recent ones, and try to class them in the same genre, but it's often the case that each was qualified when the criteria were different.

 

[PsychoFox]

Not willing to get into this tbh. But no Fallout 4 is also not an RPG due to having fixed protagonists.

I might want to agree that it's no RPG... but I haven't played it. However I'd never agree for your stated reason—a fixed protagonist does not by itself disqualify a game as an RPG—the protagonist is the role to be played.
Planescape had a fixed protaganist; Witcher does also; and those are some great RPGs.

From what I can tell, the FO4 PC has past & present acquaintances, and a spouse—and a child; that's more than Morrowind had. FO4 is ironically the most in depth RPG character of any Bethesda game in recent memory.
(Sure... they strip it all away, but at least it was there for a while; what do you expect of them? They make crap RPG franken-shooters that focus solely on the tinsel side of maintaining a reactive world.)

The issue here is that we want to have a clear cut definition of the RPG genre. Most people don't really know what an RPG is. Even in Pepe's CRPG book the article that discusses this issue says that we don't know. Well i disagree. I think there can definitely be a definition. However, for that to be the case, some boundaries need to be instated (which for me are personality creation and expression). If i were to alter the definition to allow for pre-determined personalities, then that would result in oxymoron - that is games that are clearly not RPGs would end up being labeled as such. But it never happens with the current definition that i have. Sure, it will exclude games like the witcher and planescape torment, but i'm okay with that.

The other problem is that people tell you that Planescape, Withcer, and Gothic are all RPGs. However they are not able to tell you WHY they think that. What makes either of those games RPGs? Most people have vague idea of what an RPG is in their heads, or they are simply echoing what other people say.

 

[Lord_Potato]

If your definition of a RPG excludes Planescape Torment you know it's pure garbage.

 

[J_C]

Not in the way you mention it in the poll. I think if something is an action game, it can't be an RPG. But an RPG, which predominantly features action/combat as the main gameplay element is an action-RPG.

 

[PsychoFox]

If your definition of a RPG excludes Planescape Torment you know it's pure garbage.

All I hear from you is "retarded", "wrong", "pure garbage" etc. You don't seem to have ideas of your own.

 

[Butter]

"The player has different options for building and developing his character/party, and these options lead to different narrative and/or mechanical outcomes." Personality expression or whatever you want to call it excludes all blobbers, and I won't stand for that.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"The player has different options for building and developing his character/party, and these options lead to different narrative and/or mechanical outcomes." Personality expression or whatever you want to call it excludes all blobbers, and I won't stand for that.

blobbers are jrpgs
For anyone who disagrees, give me a coherent definition of 'rpg' that includes blobbers but excludes jrpgs.

 

[Ismaul]

The combat system has no impact on the fact that a game is an RPG or not.

The Witcher, Gothic, ELEX are as much RPGs as Fallout 1-2, AoD, PS:T, ATOM, etc.

When I think of an "action RPG", I think of a game with RPG systems but no roleplaying at all, basically an action game with a combat talent tree such as Diablo or Path of Exile, not Gothic or the Witcher. Shouldn't even be called an RPG to be quite honest.

So basically there are no action RPGs. You've got either full RPGs, or actions games with combat skill trees.

The usual argument is that tactical / top-down RPGs are true RPGs while RPGs with action systems, employing reflexes, timing and that have collision-based hitting are action RPGs, because the first uses character skill while the second uses player skill. But that's just plain wrong. You're just as much using your player skills in a top-down RPG -- in this case tactical and strategical skills -- than in a 3rd / 1st person RPG that involves player reflexes. It's just that the player skill involved is different. But it doesn't make any game less of an RPG because of it.

 

[Farewell into the night]

Is there a such thing as an vaginal penis?
Yes, it can be a very big clitoris or very small dick.
That's what an Action Rpg's are.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Clitoris is female penis Comrade as to ARPGs really depends if there is some lore playing, dialogues more complex than yes I pick the quest and c&c there, Grim Dawn is RPG no doubt and Titan Quest is not while games like Martyr or Van Helsing sit in between.