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Where did the RPG go?
Rydeson
Member UncommonPosts: 3,852
I was posting in another thread when someone mentioned "skill" in today's gaming and got me thinking.. Why do RPG games need skill, and where did the role playing go? I remember back in the 70's when I first started playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragon, and it never required skill to play.. If anything, it was a thinking person's game.. You and your friends role played thinking your way through an adventure.. It wasn't about how fast you can react to the Dungeon Master.. It sure as hell didn't take skill to roll d8, d12 and d20 dice..
When did MMORPG's lose the RPG, and turned into a skill based Esport? Original EQ was more role play then it was skill.. Unless you consider the ability to not get agro as a squishy.. I wouldn't call that skill tho, I would call that more like don't be stupid.. LOL It didn't matter if we are talking AD&D or EQ, or AC, it was about role playing and having fun.. I played in many groups in my EQ days, and unless someone was just being silly, it didn't really matter if your tank was skillful or not.. It was a social game, just like golf and bowling leagues..
There were days that a tank (whom could of been expert skilled) would not be invited into a group because of their tude.. The game allowed less skilled players to ROLE play, without being a burden or hindrance to the group, unlike today's games that encourage and promote exclusive behavior. What is your gear score? Is it possible to get back to true role playing, where skill takes a back seat? or are we stuck in an Esport world now that everyone has to compete against everyone else?,, and the PvE world itself means little..
Comments
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
And what is wrong with down time? It doesn't matter if I'm playing cards, or monopoly or golfing, there is always downtime.. It's not a race, which sadly it seems that so many that play online feel it has to be.. In golf do people run from shot to shot, so they can finish the round in less then an hour? NO.. Granted there are times I thought EQ went a little too far on meditation and health regeneration, but this instant regen went too far...
In EQ role playing yourself as a taxi driver to make money was good.. Buffing for coin was equally good.. Many times I played or paid to have someone play field banker.. I wasn't in any hurry to get to max level.. I never felt it was a race, nor was I pressured to feel it was one.. There are things in the past that are almost no more.. Combat roles like "puller" are gone, "crowd control" has been nerfed to next to nothing.. "support" roles are almost extinct.. I remember when thieves could actually pickpocket NPC's for cash.. not anymore.. When was the last time you needed a thief for their lock picking skills?.. I miss those defining roles that made the world and characters feel alive and fun.. I used to "track" all the time in EQ.. That skill is meaningless now
About that skilled tank with the tude not getting groups well that's not incorporated into today's MMOs since a majority of them have cross server LFG systems.
I never played EQ but I played UO before and after EQ came out. So I understand what you mean. UO had skilled and non-skilled players and provided content that allowed both non-skilled and skilled players to enjoy.
Check out this article on Why Crafting Sucks
Yeah I think e-sports have definitely impacted the was games are designed these days. Role playing really has traditionally been in the PvE realm even when you're talking about a DM as a person, they're still technically part of the environment side of the equation as they're dynamically creating the environment for you to play in.
But, thinking is skill-based. What the real issue is that twitch reaction time has become more prominent in a genre that was founded on character building. RPG's in the past were rarely difficult, but they were designed for people who really enjoyed digging deep into the nitty gritty details and nuances of stats and tables. Perhaps the rise of accessible technology has removed that barrier as keeping track of all these things with excel and numerous websites has taken most of the effort out of it, so all we have left is the physical reaction time of playing our characters to determine our "skill".
It's the whole netdeck, optimal build mentality that anyone can copy the best option available without having to know what they're doing. New to an MMO? So what, just google a certain class and you'll find a guide for the best builds, exactly what buttons to press and when to press them, all that's left is physically pressing the buttons. I don't think there's going back, people want the info, but they don't want to engage their minds to get it.
When the game become about more combat and lest "virtual world" interface
I prefer call nowadays game MMO H&S than RPG .
You don't ready need to chose words when talk with NPC and your choses don't cause effect to the game.
Then there are lest player make contents since the developer want to keep the game run in they way.
It leave less and less room to RPG to say .
So i guess the RPG ready left to find new place , maybe we can find it on table with some dices and paper to fight again winter's cold , but not in video games .
Well , it make me feel unsatisfied when i pay for RPG and get something else. Though H&S or action wasn't too bad IMO .
What role-play? The original EQ was camp/loot drama, and lots of chats about the real world, in between a little bit of combat.
It is boring to me?
Just because i.e. Wildstar is labelled as "MMORPG" and that i.e. SWG was labelled "MMORPG" as well - it does not mean that they in reality are same genre or type of games.
You just have to realize that, once you realize that you may simply stop considering certain titles as MMOPRGs.
Once enough customers will do that, hordes of new games that nowadays would atuoamtically be labelled as "MMORPGs", will get diffrent labels instead.
Considering that MMORPGs as genre is taking a nose dive, losing it's ground to diffrent genres (lobby, multiplayer, moba, co-op even single player rebirth), this process is already in motion in the background.
/thread pretty much!
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
In fact, precisely because of this, the use of the term MMO is being broadened. Otherwise, sites like this one won't have much traffic or business.
The market is very fair, if more people find lobby games, MOBA, and online single player games more fun, MMORPGs have to adapt to survive, and adapt means change (which is why the definition is called into question).
Or devs can do what blizz does, stop making new MMORPGs.
I think you have a very different definition of role play then I and many others.. Happy Holidays Which makes all the difference in this discussion.. I assume you view role play as "ACTING".. No, we don't go around calling all the females "my lady" and talk like B rated Shakespeare.. Most of us talk role as in "position" to fill, such as Tank,, or in football Quarterback.. Comprendo?
I don't think the RPG is completely dead in online games these days but it's definitely not what's popular. I mean you can still log onto EQ if you so choose or find a private server that has EQ or another game that is set at a certain time within the game like vanilla wow servers or EQ-kunark servers. So you can still revisit those places that gave you such joy like I did when I was playing EQ on a private server and had a blast for a good 6-7 months straight with a group of people in the winter/summer of 2014.
However, when you look at current games, RPG has been completely removed for the most part. As you said, it's much more centered around solo gameplay rather than any type of group play. However when you do partake in group play in most of the current style of games, it's peddle-to-the-metal "go go go" gameplay and really doesn't have any time for any kind of RPG or roleplaying mechanics. Hell I play WoD right now with RL friends and other than my RL friends and I speaking on TS/Vent, most of the time there is no other communication between anyone in the group or raid for that matter. Unless it's other people griefing other members of the group/raid or calling others out as "noobs" or "griefers". However, once your done you hop out and back to your garrison you go, most likely.
Honestly I think it's just a matter of the popularity of online games. Back in the 90's only folks that were either computer geeks or game geeks knew anything about playing games online. Even then half the people didn't wanna deal with modem connections being interrupt by family members or disconnected constantly. Not to mention if your access number was a long distance phone call, talk about pissed parents when they got that $300 telephone bill from you being online late at night with out them knowing. (yes this happened to me a couple times lol)
Then online games got popular. In my experience EQ started it and Wow finished it off showing how fun an online game could be. Also between EQ coming out and growing in popularity and then wow, high speed internet became more and more common allowing everyone under the sun to hop online. These basically brought the masses into our industry and now, since the masses will pretty much throw their money at anything, they have now taken over the large portion in demographics of people who play, so the games are aimed at them. Instant gratification, eye candy games are now the current industry standard.
However, I have hope for the industry, I mean we have a lot more games available to us than we did back then and that's absolutely a good thing. Even now, like they mentioned in the current www.mmorpg.com column, "General:State of the Game: 10 MMOs to watch in 2015", the industry is changing. Some devs see a route to make the games that some of us want with the introduction of crowd funding in the past couple years or at least make games they want that no publisher would pay for unless it netted close to Wow numbers in revenue or subs. Not to mention the current retention of players helped with this, I mean having a ton of players for beta/alpha and 3 months after release is good but losing a good portion after the 3rd month I think helped wake some people up in the decision rooms.... I hope. Time will tell if some of these devs are making games closer to the older games but with some new features. I try and stay optimistic and attempt to enjoy the current games as much as I can although I must admit that when choosing a game, group play is a large part of the deciding factor for me. If there isn't much group play, than I better have friends playing cause otherwise I won't play for long without others to enjoy the world with. Lets keep our heads up and vote with our wallets, it's the best we can do unless a bunch of us go to school for game creation and start making our own, although I know of a couple people who are doing just that because of this same issue that you, I and they see.
open seamless world ... not so much (see skyrim) ... persistent virtual world ... yes.
danger, not so much (see D3 hardcore high g-rift) ... but death penalty ... yes.
It was being broadened for last 10 years. Now when further broadening is being hard due to insane amont of titles being labelled as "MMO" and due to weakening of MMORPG genre in the west - sites like MMORPG.com started to report on broader and broader amount of games - including purely single player games or pure FPS games in order to save their viewership. They are gradually changing into general gaming websites, which means that they will get into more competition with actual general gaming websites.
Final effect of it will be naming changes. Big "pure" MMO sites liket his will start merging with other gaming sites or will change their name and target or will do something else to stop being labelled as "MMO" site because they will have to in order to keep profits and margins.
Some of them may decide it is too costly and may take a path of scaling down or even close down instead.
My guess is that their best bet is to ditch the MMO, and keep the RPG (not pnp RPG, just CRPG), but they do have to compete with sites like rpgwatch and rpgfan.
or they can focus on online games, and cover MOBAs, and e-sports games (which they are already).
Second option - trying to change into general online gaming sites is propably both better and more viable option.
I don't think all mmo sites will surive though. There will be some casualities along the way.
agreed. Running a website business is not easy. Hopefully at least this place will survive.
The traditional RPG is almost extinct.
Role Playing means literally what it says. You play a role in a game or imaginary setting. This Role can be anything but traditionally it was fantasy based so let's stick with those terms for more clarity.
You play a role as part of a group. You can not "win" alone but you can win if everyone plays their role.
You decide if your character is evil, neutral or good (or anything in between. This is the most often forgotten aspect of Role playing and no modern MMORPG has what was back then called "alignment".
You act within the borders of that role. You can't save the kitten if you are evil. It's simply not allowed and none of the modern games care about restrictions like that.
It's true casual D&D took zero skill but back in 2nd edition it took a ton of skill to reach level 20 if you had a legitimate DM. Have fun exploring every inch of the Underdark in 2nd edition. Or taking on a Tarasque?
EQ took skill as well. Groups won't take just any noobs to hack their way down Sebilis or Howling Stones and if you wiped it could take you all night to get your corpses back..
The problem is true skill has been lost. Strategy replaced with dps rotations. Skill replaced with gear checks. Challenge replaced with difficulty settings. Wipe recovery replaced with bullet catching.
Where did the RPG go?
Well....
As the games in this genre give you higher quality graphics, more refined mechanics, more and more emotes, etc. etc. They require less imagination and when you use less imagination you get less role play.
When we were kids we had to make up everything. Nowadays it's all made up for us.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Are you kidding me? E-sports take real skills. Just ask the pros in S Korea.
Yeh .. much better world. Now we have professionals making up fun content for us ....