The Game That Wasn’t There

E

Eternal

Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
Kotaku hosts on op-ed piece about the current crop of western RPGs compared to those of yore.<blockquote>I have lamented the fading of turn-based gameplay before, but I have to reiterate how galling I find its absence in Western RPGs. I play RPGs when I want a break from fast-action and twitch-reflex dependent gameplay, not to experience more of it. If I have lovingly crafted a party of characters, not being able to take advantage of their individual abilities to the fullest because I'm too busy trying to give orders to them all in the middle of being fireballed, or because my FPS reflexes aren't up to snuff, is a major disappointment.

Bethesda, at least, made some attempts to remedy this with the VATS system in Fallout 3, which was an improvement over Morrowind's pure-FPS combat. BioWare, on the other hand, incurs much of my ire for their copy-paste combat system they use in every one of their games. Yes, you can pause and issue orders, but the speed with which unexpected things happen means you can often lose a combat in one or two seconds without having a chance to try and salvage the situation. Controlling one character means you are either sitting in front of the enemies, clicking attack over and over again; waiting for the cooldown on your special moves to keep spamming them out; or sitting in the back waiting for the cooldown on your ranged attacks so you can do the same. Meanwhile, your AI-controlled party members might be doing what you told them to do through their limited scripting system, or they may be running into a wall while being peppered with arrows/lasers/fireballs. Dragon Age gives you the ability to program your compatriots to a degree, but even that is limited by the player's choices in investing points into unlocking the ability to lead them; this is absurd. Much like it was ridiculous for FFXII to force players to buy Gambits in a system that required them for party members to be useful, it is ridiculous that a player isn't automatically given the option to program their party to their own liking.</blockquote>
 
That was a good read, thank you for providing the link.

I hope he's wrong about his closing sentance aswell.
 
I actually don't mind Kotaku compared to most general video game boards. They are far more likely to call a game like fallout 3 and ME2 an action game with a few rpg elements than the norm.
 
Bethesda, at least, made some attempts to remedy this with the VATS system in Fallout 3, which was an improvement over Morrowind's pure-FPS combat.
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Morrowind? He must mean Oblivion, since Morrowind isn't pure FPS. Every attack is a dice roll.
 
Yeah I was kinda surprised that he mentioned Morrowind rather than Oblivion. But anyways..

I hated the "program your buddies" system in Final Fantasy XII. It's ludicrous. You basically end up running around and you don't do anything at all.. When you control more than one character, it should be turn based. I actually had fun playing FF XII though until they have you controlling more than one person.

Even in Fallout Tactics I would often only use one character, while having the others either stay behind or cover them. Real-time gameplay where you control more than one character is simply.. we... epic failure. :P

The only time where this works well is in an RTS style game, but even then I have difficulty employing their special abilities.
 
Paperbag Boy said:
Bethesda, at least, made some attempts to remedy this with the VATS system in Fallout 3, which was an improvement over Morrowind's pure-FPS combat.
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Morrowind? He must mean Oblivion, since Morrowind isn't pure FPS. Every attack is a dice roll.
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Well, you still have to use your twitch skills for those dice rolls.
Though yeah, the comparison is baffling for me too.

Still, interesting piece, I'm surprised I actually agree with most of it, it's something that doesn't happen often with Kotaku.
 
I seem like the only one here that enjoyed FFXII combat system, it never got boring to me, even grinding. I never used gambits much at all minus basics and just micromanaged, which I guess I'm more than willing to do in a game.
 
There's also the issue in FFXII where "Hey, you get this cool loot later on in the game if you thought to check this walkthrough earlier, but only if you didn't get the first 12 treasure chests in the game... Oh.. you got them? Sucks to be you!"

It's nice to see that someone enjoyed FFXII. I had to use the gambits, because I simply can't manage to control more than one character at a time, and using gambits basically meant I wasn't actually playing the game myself. I did finish it though. It's not like it was the worst game ever. I just think it would have been better as a turn based game with encounters, rather than this MMO thing the gaming industry seems to think everyone just loooooves. GAG! HACK! Ptooey!

If I wanted to play Guild Wars then I would play Guild Wars. Keep your MMO out of my single player.

Edit: During those extra boss fights you pretty much have to have your gambits set up properly, or you're dead in the water. "Oops! healed them with the wrong spell. Gotta reload and change my gambits. Oops! My people aren't using a strong heal spell. Oops! My people aren't healing that particular status effect."....

An RPG where you have to check something out and then reload and try again until you've learned exactly what's needed? Sounds more like one of those old action games that are designed to eat your quarters.
 
PaladinHeart said:
An RPG where you have to check something out and then reload and try again until you've learned exactly what's needed? Sounds more like one of those old action games that are designed to eat your quarters.
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hehe, plenty a time I saved in the middle of turn based combat, only to die repeatedly at the next turn... cue replaying the same turn repeatedly until I landed a critical/the enemy missed/got bored.

Article in question said:
Of course, what they lack in character creation depth, they more than make up in facial design options. So, if depth of nose and variety of mustache options are more important to you than actual character skills, maybe this doesn't bother you so much.
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That pretty much sums it up.
 
TychoXI said:
Article in question said:
Of course, what they lack in character creation depth, they more than make up in facial design options. So, if depth of nose and variety of mustache options are more important to you than actual character skills, maybe this doesn't bother you so much.
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That pretty much sums it up.
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My dream of a game with deep, resonating character stat allocation and comprehensive moustache selections seems to be slipping further and further away...
 
Maybe someday someone will actually think of making something really cool, like The Sims + Dungeons & Dragons, combining life management & farming and such with turn based combat.

But big game developer studios suck. The only way I'll ever see a game like that is if the character is 2 pixels high, you have to use the keyboard to play, and the gameplay screen looks like someone vomited.
 
Kotaku said:
Bethesda, at least, made some attempts to remedy this with the VATS system in Fallout 3, which was an improvement over Morrowind's pure-FPS combat.
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Oh yeah: "they've ruined the RPG by making it play like an FPS, but relax!: they've implemented a mechanic that ruins the point of it playing like an FPS". I wouldn't exactly call it "attempts to remedy"; I'd better call it "covering a hole with a hole".

Other than that, not a bad read.
 
One of the first mods people should get for Dragon Age is the one that unlocks all the tactics slots. Spending valuable points on unlocking basic AI is ridiculous. But, easily modded and moved past. Also, the mod for an instant cooldown on Steal saves a lot of time and headaches.

PaladinHeart said:
Maybe someday someone will actually think of making something really cool, like The Sims + Dungeons & Dragons
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They just announced the new Sims would be medieval. Might be worth a look-into.

Also: I think this is the first time I've seen a game journalist argue against character development, especially for party members.
 
What is this, I don't even....

I got a news post! :O

Anyways, all things aside while I don't often agree with Kotaku, I read it daily as they seem the least biased or when they are biased they are pretty open about it (Luke Plunkette for example makes no effort to hide the fact he pretty much dislikes Nintendo.)

This article touches on a lot of points that needed to be said and read by a larger mass, unfortunately much of it went over peoples heads.
 
@Eternal: If you're going to reply to someone, then shouldn't you do so on the forum that their post originally took place on?

I hadn't really understood NMA's stance on this, and why they call it "cross-site trolling" until now. Now I understand that it's kinda like taking a debate from another forum and transferring it to NMA, which is kinda like clutter and not really fair to NMA.

terebikun said:
They just announced the new Sims would be medieval. Might be worth a look-into.
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Eh, the last game they made with fighting in it was Spore, and after the first stage in the game, it turned into epic suck. And that first stage in the game would have been better off as a standalone game, with more features, for abou $10 on X-Box live & Playstation Network.

But I'll probably play their medieval game anyway.. who knows? Maybe it will actually be good. :P

It needs at least the following though: Fighting monsters, farming & hunting, owning a house (and being able to decorate & improve it with your loot), and being able to get married and have children (and being able to teach those children some of your hard earned fighting skills). And no more anti-aging stuff. I always use that, even though it completely messes up the game for me. xP
 
This article is more of a lament about the death of the turn-based genre in the U.S. (Although Japan is still trucking on...). Really, the only thing that applied to WRPGs of today was the loss of meaningful character creation options in favor of making your character's face look pretty.
 
OakTable said:
This article is more of a lament about the death of the turn-based genre in the U.S. (Although Japan is still trucking on...). Really, the only thing that applied to WRPGs of today was the loss of meaningful character creation options in favor of making your character's face look pretty.
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Pretty? Can't even do that. The best you can hope for is something that doesn't resemble a deformed monkey retard face.
 
Ixyroth said:
OakTable said:
This article is more of a lament about the death of the turn-based genre in the U.S. (Although Japan is still trucking on...). Really, the only thing that applied to WRPGs of today was the loss of meaningful character creation options in favor of making your character's face look pretty.
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Pretty? Can't even do that. The best you can hope for is something that doesn't resemble a deformed monkey retard face.
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At first I thought you were making a comment on his avatar, and then I recalled the great difficulty in making a face for a character in The Sims (2 and 3) and Oblivion & Fallout 3. The Sims 2 had the easiest face maker (using the toolset outside of the game that is), because you could use sliders that could easily blend a bad, angular face into one that has smooth lines. Much harder to do in Oblivion & Fallout 3... >.<
 
What troubles me the most is the fact that they didn't had to trade one thing for the other. In theory having good gameplay mechanics and deep storyline doest not exclude amazing graphics. They are not polar opposites. So I ask why? WHY? Why can't you give me a game with amazing graphics and rich lore?
 
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