To me even Diablo was no real RPG, but an Action Adventure. I liked it, I liked Diablo 2, but neither were an RPG to me. I never understood why they were labelled as such. RPG is about how a game and world feels, story depth, choices and mechanics. Not just stats. In Final Fantasy you usuall do not get to choose if to put a point in Dex or Str if you level, yet its story depth and living world with all its backround makes it an RPG.
The question "Is it fun" is not enough. I usually go head -> Desk if I try to find out about new RPGs in some online shop and filter by genre "RPG" just to get stuff like Assasins Creed or some FPS-, or other Action-games thrown at me and I have to shovel through pages of other games to find the real RPGs. "Playing a role" is not enough either, since then about EVERY game would be a RPG. P&C Adventures and RPGs used to be the genre with the deepest stories and worlds. Stuff you could imagine to play P&P wise. Worlds to feel, experience and explore for those little stuff like books, or choices to be made, bacrkounds to be found.
Throwing in some points to distribute doesn't make a game a RPG, but just *Enter genre here*-game with RPG-Elements. System Shock 2 is no RPG it is a very atmospheric and deep FPS with RPG elements, for example.
True that Diablo was NOT an RPG, but there were some of us who played it like one. If you think about it, roleplay is a choice, not a game mechanic. In my paper and dice D&D experiences, we had people who were all about the gear and their character was nothing but a bunch of scribbles on a paper, and we had others who would make a +1 broadsword seem like Excalibur because their character believed it so.
No, the real problem came when the developers forced a story that defined you from the get-go. The latest of these is ESO, which forces you to be some sort of undead prisoner, and EVERYONE is one. What???
Nothing wrong with a story, but true roleplaying occurs when you define your character, your ROLE. Role has actually somehow been translated to whether you are a tank, DPS, or healer (three terms I never use to describe my character, which immediately puts me at odds with the new style player), that what you DO is your role, not how you INTERACT.
We heard for too long the idiots who laughed at roleplayers, claiming that we all spoke as if we were Old Testament prophets, and so did the others who, being new to the game, said, "Oh, I don't want to do THAT" and joined the big guilds that could offer the free gear, free money, raiding opportunities, PvP teams, blah blah blah while the smaller, RP focused, even theme based, guilds languished and died.
Game design has done much to kill RP, but the player base is the true perp. Like I said to open this post, we used to roleplay in Diablo.
Comments
To me even Diablo was no real RPG, but an Action Adventure. I liked it, I liked Diablo 2, but neither were an RPG to me. I never understood why they were labelled as such. RPG is about how a game and world feels, story depth, choices and mechanics. Not just stats. In Final Fantasy you usuall do not get to choose if to put a point in Dex or Str if you level, yet its story depth and living world with all its backround makes it an RPG.
The question "Is it fun" is not enough. I usually go head -> Desk if I try to find out about new RPGs in some online shop and filter by genre "RPG" just to get stuff like Assasins Creed or some FPS-, or other Action-games thrown at me and I have to shovel through pages of other games to find the real RPGs. "Playing a role" is not enough either, since then about EVERY game would be a RPG. P&C Adventures and RPGs used to be the genre with the deepest stories and worlds. Stuff you could imagine to play P&P wise. Worlds to feel, experience and explore for those little stuff like books, or choices to be made, bacrkounds to be found.
Throwing in some points to distribute doesn't make a game a RPG, but just *Enter genre here*-game with RPG-Elements. System Shock 2 is no RPG it is a very atmospheric and deep FPS with RPG elements, for example.
My 2 cent
True that Diablo was NOT an RPG, but there were some of us who played it like one. If you think about it, roleplay is a choice, not a game mechanic. In my paper and dice D&D experiences, we had people who were all about the gear and their character was nothing but a bunch of scribbles on a paper, and we had others who would make a +1 broadsword seem like Excalibur because their character believed it so.
No, the real problem came when the developers forced a story that defined you from the get-go. The latest of these is ESO, which forces you to be some sort of undead prisoner, and EVERYONE is one. What???
Nothing wrong with a story, but true roleplaying occurs when you define your character, your ROLE. Role has actually somehow been translated to whether you are a tank, DPS, or healer (three terms I never use to describe my character, which immediately puts me at odds with the new style player), that what you DO is your role, not how you INTERACT.
We heard for too long the idiots who laughed at roleplayers, claiming that we all spoke as if we were Old Testament prophets, and so did the others who, being new to the game, said, "Oh, I don't want to do THAT" and joined the big guilds that could offer the free gear, free money, raiding opportunities, PvP teams, blah blah blah while the smaller, RP focused, even theme based, guilds languished and died.
Game design has done much to kill RP, but the player base is the true perp. Like I said to open this post, we used to roleplay in Diablo.