What the fuck is an “RPG”, and how do you distinguish it from games that aren’t RPGs?
Bonus question: do we need a new term for games that are commonly considered to be RPGs?
Role Playing Games
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Don't care didn't ask.
/thread
I asked
What is a retard? Do you need a new term for people that are commonly considered retards?
>What the fuck is an “RPG”
A bad game.
Roleplaying means you have choices in gameplay, you vuild your character, those choices come with compromises, for example a rogue is a nimble archetype, you get good mobility but at the expense of being able to take damage, cannot equip heavy armors, or they come with penalties that would encumber and nullify the rogue's agile nature. It's about specialization in that role. The roleplaying is also in how you deal with the challenges ahead, maybe you could try using diplomacy or bribes to avoid combat. You could play a rogue character in a way that you'll steal from anyone anywhere or just roleplay as some robin wood type where you just steal from richer folk.
Most JRPGs have no roleplaying, you have no builds, no picking attributes, no choices in anything besides which combat skill you're using (which is just analogous to being able to choose a weapon in Doom, that's not roleplaying at all) their job systems are similar to how Dragon Quest 7 did it - you have skills that carry over and in essence, those jobs are just another layer of progression rather than a path of specialization where you have to compromise on things to get other things.
>Roleplaying means you have choices in gameplay
Every game has choices. If there are no choices you aren't playing a game, you're gambling.
the choices of a RPG are associated with the path you took in your specialization, you pick a wizard path, this comes with choices associated with this route, in a conversation you might get an edge in matters of intelligence, you may be able to conjure some shit in a quest that is required, it opens you a certain path. It also comes with compromises, if you have a party with a wizard, sorcerer and a ranger, the lack of physical grunt may affect you negatively, ie you can't push large boulders to open a shortcut or whatever.
There's that Harvey something guy who worked in Deus Ex Invisible War, and he was doing a talk about how that game failed, and part of it he identified as the simplification of the RPG elements and loss of the skills, because people did enjoy for example having the swimming augmentation aqualung plus the swimming skill and being the "water guy" and being able to infiltrate anything that has enough water (the 2 or 3 parts of the game that have this option). You have a scoundrel type of character, and with the street smarts involved you can much easily make contact with fellow people in that world of similar lack of morals. This is roleplaying, you have choices associated with how you are trailing your path in this world. This is not the same thing as which sword I'm using in Devil May Cry or which weapon I'm using in Half-Life, or if I'm killing X or Y first in whatever game because that's all killing anyway.
To roleplaying would be to have more to do than just being able to kill, just as the Dungeon Master says that you entered a cave, the entrance was closed by some trap, and there's a troll inside, if your only option is to kill kill kill, you'd say this is a pretty fucking awful DM
I know some gays say that the choices that you can have in games are more limited than in pen & paper, but I say it's still better than nothing at all
Here's the real answer you won't get from most of the mouthbreathing morons in this hobby who think it's "stats" and "builds".
A role playing game is any game where the player decides what action to take, but the success or failure of that action is entirely dependent on the character's ability which is measured through stats and mechanics.
True RPGs are games like CRPGs and to a lesser extent JRPGs, since those are heavily limited in what actions you can choose since they're completely railroaded. Same applies to stuff like Diablo. Yes this also means games series like Elder Scrolls and Fallout are not true RPGs, they're FPS games with RPG elements since your aiming accuracy is based on the player and not the character.
The genre has become diluted from this original form by focusing more and more on the level ladder and the dopamine from looting items instead of character and personality-based decision making.
A game can be a FPS and also a RPG, Deus Ex has a well done skill & aug system that allows great role specialization, on top of giving you multiple ways to tackle objectives, the nonlethal way, and the "My God JC, what are you doing?" as peoples' gibs are bouncing around
You take something as simple as the augment decision of running faster versus running silently, or the extra melee damage vs the ability to pick heavier objects and open up new infiltration routes, that's a level of build choice with gameplay repercussions that is simply absent in most JRPGs
Deus Ex is way more of an RPG than the Elder Scrolls series, but it still relies on some amount of player skill for shooting and aiming - no matter how good JC Denton is supposed to be at those things.
So how would you describe a lot of the final fantasy games? Most of them have entirely railroaded stories where your "choices" don't have much impact, and the only real choices you have are in character builds (and not even in all of the FF games)
and now that I think about it, you're not even really role playing in most of them . FF7 is about Cloud. You play cloud and do what cloud does, the player is just along for the ride.
JRPGs have kinda bastardized the idea of RPG to "anything with levels". They consider Nier Automata a JRPG, but the level system in it is just so token, you deal more damage and maybe you get more health after a level? But many games in the West that feature more RPG elements aren't considered RPGs, say Far Cry 3 that has a skill tree that you unlock as well as levels, nobody calls that a RPG. But Nier A, which is essentially a Devil may Cry style of action game in an open world is a RPG, because levels I guess.
>but the level system in it is just so token
Automata has a fucking terrible leveling system that completely gates basic hit properties behind and decent damage behind grinding. Either you get the maxuim amount of damage boosters like Last Stand or you deal with chip to no damage and lack basic hitstun.
No one really considers Neir Automata an JRPG, right? It's just an action game with RPG elements incorporated, which is becoming pretty much the standard for all video games today
one dev said they designed 9S to be a young boy because "that's a classic of JRPGs", I don't know how many people consider it, but if you search for Automata and JRPG you'll find plenty of hits all over the web and in here
>So how would you describe a lot of the final fantasy games?
Bad games, but most of them are still RPG, technically speaking.
You don't necessarily need story choices for an RPG to be called as such, classic TTRPGs were pretty much just dungeon crawling for the longest time, the idea of deeper "plots" and player expression is a relatively recent idea, videogame RPGs aren't much different, Wizardry 5 or FF2 are as much of an RPG as Betrayal at Krondor or ToEE, because mechanically speaking, they fit the bill.
A lot of the lines people draw such as "you must create a character" or "you must make story choices" are arguable considering that they're not really true in the original TT context either, all that matters is that they're turn based games with some degree of character/party customization and defined by math instead of reflexes.
>defined by math instead of reflexes
Solid distinction. I think you might be on to something here.
Then you could just add the word "Action" to RPG to signify a game like dark souls or kingdom hearts.
>defined by math instead of reflexes
A challenger approaches
>"Action" to RPG to signify a game like dark souls or kingdom hearts.
Neither of those are actual RPGs, and the RPG elements hurts Souls significantly as it just turns into a weaker Action game as your restriction by the poor RPG features. RPG and Action is the worst combination. KH can only get with it (and only really 2) because it divorces the two genres together instead of trying to blend them in when they don't match up.
>since your aiming accuracy is based on the player and not the character
Up until and including TES 3, it was based on the character.
rpg mechanics usually distinguish it
Yeah man, that's kind of what I'm trying to get to the bottom of, haha. What are RPG mechanics?
if we dont use "RPG" or, inthe case of OPs picture, "JRPG", the only other 2 ideas I'd think of would either be;
>(1) DragonQuest-like
just how Rogue-like, and Souls-like terms are used.
or
>(2) Dragantasy
In lines of Metrovania. and how it is used.
Though RPG and JRPG work just fine.
i fucking hate this font
I don't hate it, but I agree it is uninspired and boring.
Back around the 32-bit era, more and more games started adding "RPG elements" as a selling point. Increasing stats, levels, inventory, NPCs and quests, etc. Now that's everywhere, so the line has blurred even more. There's games that aren't called RPGs nowadays with more RPG elements than many action RPGs in the 90s.
n the course of my career as a vidcon specialist (my own coinage, spend it wisely), I have never seen such blatant and frankly, sickening ignorance as that exhibited by the "people" (if, in fact, they are homo sapiens at all, as their intelligence implies elsewise) that claim that Zelda is not an RPG. There is nothing that Shigeru "Shiggy" Miyamoto could possibly do to make the vidcon any more of an RPG as it meets every single criterion for being one, particularly that it takes place in an imaginary realm with a fantastical beastiary, the damsel/villain ratio is at or above standards, and that the core emphasis of the gameplay is on bedazzling all foes with impeccable swords and sorcery. Furthermore, this line of thought can be extended to all vidcons in which the player controls a character (hence, roleplaying), though I cringe slightly at the thought of such mundane vidcons as Madden being RPGs, as they do not even include exotic weaponry such as the tonfa.
JRPG's is literally just clicking menus and are overly long. Dogshit
You clearly have barely played neither western nor Japanese RPGs.
an RPG in the video game sense is something with stat based progression
was that so hard
So Symphony of the Night is a RPG and Deus Ex is not?
Role playing games have stats that represent your characters statistics. That's it.
All videogames have stats that represent your character's statistics because they inherently need to.
Look at some of the posts earlier in the thread
A "Dragon-Quest-like" is a pure RPG because there's 0 chances for a lvl10 character defeating a lvl100 enemy
A game like elden ring or BOTW is not because you can beat the game without having to have certain stats (beating BOTW without the master sword, beating Malenia naked)
I made some of those posts and and they have nothing to do with that dumb definition
No, you aim and move manually in Arena/Daggerfall/Morrowind, THEN the game rolls a dice to see if your projectiles or melee hits.
It's the simulation layer that makes an RPG.
Do you hit something because you the player accurately manipulate the movement of the character to match the related hitboxes in such a way that they collide in a way that registers as a hit?
Or do you hit something because your player character's hit stat is calculated against the target's evasion stat, with the end result determining whether or not the action was a hit or not?
Now games are seldom 100% either case. But the latter is what makes an RPG and the former is not.
And yes. Videogame RPGs aren't actually about choices or story.