New OOTS products from CafePress
New OOTS t-shirts, ornaments, mugs, bags, and more
Page 1 of 4 1234 LastLast
Results 1 to 30 of 93
  1. - Top - End - #1
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    Lizardfolk

    Join Date
    Aug 2022
    Location
    the other Pacific coast
    Gender
    Male

    Default Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Hello, this is my first attempt at opening a thread.

    I'm sure many of you notice how most video games that get labelled as "RPG" have barely any role playing elements, if at all...
    A lot of the time, a "levelling up" mechanic is all a game needs to "earn" the label in the first place.

    I can't help but think of "Destiny 2" or "The Division", which are listed as "RPG-shooter" in many online stores or websites.
    Now, to me at least, these games are nothing like an RPG.

    I thoroughly enjoyed "Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines", "Pillars of Eternity", "Drakensang" and "Neverwinter Nights" (specifically, the Diamond Edition) for their open-ended quests that can sometimes be resolved through dialogue/exploration alone, or can even take on different twists based on your character's background.

    Don't get me wrong, I love "diablo-like" games. I can't count the hours I've sunk into each of "Dungeon Siege", "Sacred" and "Torchlight".
    But I can't help but feel that these "level-up-only RPGs" are muddying the water on what the genre is actually supposed to be about (namely role play)

    Sometimes I even feel as thought strategy games, of all genres, have more role-play elements in them than so-called RPGs. For example, while "Crusader Kings" is nominally a military strategy / development game, in practice most of your interactions with the game's world happen through "role-played" choices and inter-character drama.
    Diplomacy in "Civ 6" or "Total War: Shogun 2" (albeit with mods) do more for my role player soul than many "in-name-only" RPGs despite all their flashy "quests", "loot" and "character builds".

    Believe me, I had high hopes when "Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines 2" was first announced, but yeah... well...
    On the plus side, Obsidian has promised us a new game and their track record has been stellar.
    Also, there was a story-game based on "Vampires" recently... forgot it's name, but allegedly it mixes role-play with visual novel.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    Eldan's Avatar

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Switzerland
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Yeah, "RPG" just has come to mean "can level up your character's skills". It's just what it is. I guess that's why you should watch trailers and read reviews first before buying anything.

    Try Disco Elysium, if you haven't. That scratches a lot of roleplaying itches.
    Resident Vancian Apologist

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Lord Raziere's Avatar

    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Gender
    Male2Female

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Yeah, I remember the days of Bioware rpgs. say what you will about them, but their simplistic choice systems did get me into roleplaying games and they did provide enough choice and make those choices matter enough to feel like roleplaying. I still play Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas as rpgs rather than getting anything new, and even then Skyrim doesn't really provide a lot of actual choices. I picked FO4 because it was one sale recently and I'm probably going to play that and replay Outer Worlds just for variance whenever I'm done with Amalur/ME trilogy (which will be soon Amalurwise, going through Fatesworn DLC mainquest since my experience with Amalur sidequests are that they are largely meh, only worth it for the exp and I doubt I need to be max level to beat Fatesworn, and that combat is more repetitive than I remembered. Amalur counts as rpg because it does have dialogue choices, just not as good as Bioware)

    now? I don't really consider most games that come out to be rpgs at all. they're just leveler games. and I agree with the strategy game sentiment of being conducive to roleplay. roleplaying as a conqueror or leader of a nation can be fun in Civ 6, or as all kinds of empires in stellaris.

    Starbound with mods comes close to roleplaying I feel like, because you can just create any structure you want, use any equipment you find, and just have fun roleplaying as this space explorer going through the galaxy to some random planet, finding some random town or ruins and interacting with it. no leveling either.

    I've really try to play Divinity 2 Original Sin, but I just keep drifting away from it, even though its actually good roleplay, I think it because I'm not used to the old isometric design top down design on this realistic 3D world. like, if it was more 2d sprite like, or something I'd probably love it but to me its just such a weird way to do it, probably because I'm used to Bioware's more up close third person thing.

    like the thing is, all dialogue heavy games are now becoming pure dialogue as visual novels, all the action or strategy games going pure strategy or action, and roleplaying games have been founded on being a mix of dialogue, strategy, action, things like that. to videogames, roleplaying is a mix of genres when video game design I think has been simplifying itself because either:
    -they're making mobile games to make money and thus want to simplify as much as possible, and dialogue/choice heavy games complicate that
    -or they are making such big triple A games they focus all on the visuals, gameplay itself to have any time for good choices or dialogue that roleplay requires and deliver a pure good experience of that game
    -they're a small indie company that can only make a visual novel because they don't have expertise or money to combine the visual novel elements with actual gameplay elements.

    like I just hope we reach a visual plateau, where they can't really improve the visuals anymore, so that the only thing left is to make games with actual depth, because roleplaying games require some measure of mixture and depth to work right, because roleplaying is a layered thing that has take into account a lot of things that don't all work the same.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


  4. - Top - End - #4
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    Lizardfolk

    Join Date
    Aug 2022
    Location
    the other Pacific coast
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Wow!
    Amalur is a blast from the past... I had to stop playing it to focus on school and just kinda forgot about it.
    I'll need to check out that remake they did.

    I remember liking how the NPCs tell you their version of events/lore, so you really need to ask around to get a full picture.
    That's a unique design choice that I wish more games did. Of course it requires a lot of quality writing

    I think maybe Disco Elysium has something like that too? It's been on my radar for a while now. I've just been too busy going through the Yakuza series.

    As for graphics vs depth... I like to refer to the concept that "limitations produce art".
    One of my lecturers in a design theory course liked to describe the process of "design" as
    the conflict of the designer with the limitations of their medium of choice
    Now, she was talking about technical design, but I think it applies to creative design just as well.

    Back when the medium of video games was limited by CPU power and memory to the point that it was barely possible to represent a single humanoid shape, game designers had to work around that limitation to make games engaging nonetheless.

    In one of the episodes of "Game Center CX" the show host plays old-school text-based detective games.
    Some of them have a feature similar to Fallout 1, where you can ask any NPC about anything by typing a single word.
    This made me think... surely text-generation AI will soon be advanced enough to come up with on-the-fly replies for NPCs in a rudimentary game like that?

    If that were made possible, role playing video games could be taken to the next level.

    Man... this idea completely flies in the face of the "art as limitations" shtick I brought earlier, doesn't it?
    there I go contradicting myself again...

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Lord Raziere's Avatar

    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Gender
    Male2Female

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    I mean I never knew that about Amalur.....because I never needed to ask. all the quests are "go here, kill this" in some form or fashion and the true villain often is revealed by me doing that anyways. but then again, everything being a little too solvable by violence is a criticism that can be said against Skyrim as well.

    as for Disco Elysium....sigh I might play that someday eventually, if only to see why everyone talks it up aside from the funny skill personality things I see people joke about and what little I've seen others play of it. I guess I'm just not that interested in roleplaying some eccentric washed up detective. Like I get the appeal of the skill-personalities, but I wish it was attached to something cooler y'know? because I like it conceptually but I'm just not that interested in everything else about Disco Elysium.

    I mean such AI generation would probably still have logical limitations and/or a designer would still have to set certain limitations of what they can generate, as a setting must have focus and too wide and you'd probably get sentences or responses that don't make any sense if they don't.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


  6. - Top - End - #6
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    Eldan's Avatar

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Switzerland
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    as for Disco Elysium....sigh I might play that someday eventually, if only to see why everyone talks it up aside from the funny skill personality things I see people joke about and what little I've seen others play of it. I guess I'm just not that interested in roleplaying some eccentric washed up detective. Like I get the appeal of the skill-personalities, but I wish it was attached to something cooler y'know? because I like it conceptually but I'm just not that interested in everything else about Disco Elysium.
    Yeah, you're always going to be an eccentric washed-up detective, there's no way around that. There's a lot of small things you can tweak, but you're always going to be a cop who after 20 years on the job, taking on way too many emotionally draining cases at once, succumbed to drug-use, alcohol and depression.

    It does a few things really well. World, building, emotions, writing, but if we're specifically talking about the roleplaying, it's I think that the game allows you to **** up and **** up hard. Failing various social skill checks or saying the wrong thing in dialogue can make you feel like a total *******, and it's not a temporary thing. It puts thoughts in your character's head that will come up again later, and characters won't just forget it.

    That's a thing that just felt refreshing to me. Most games don't allow the player character to be a total ****-up. You're a hero with some minor setbacks, or maybe a villain.

    The interesting thing is that while there are hundreds of skill checks in the game, you can actually finish the game without passing a single one of them, except for a single one the game lets you retry several times and helps you along with if you fail too often. There's even an achievement in the game for solving the murder case without ever looking at the crime scene or the body. IT really just lets you do your thing.
    Last edited by Eldan; 2022-09-12 at 04:26 AM.
    Resident Vancian Apologist

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Vinyadan's Avatar

    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by MetroAlien View Post

    Don't get me wrong, I love "diablo-like" games. I can't count the hours I've sunk into each of "Dungeon Siege", "Sacred" and "Torchlight".
    But I can't help but feel that these "level-up-only RPGs" are muddying the water on what the genre is actually supposed to be about (namely role play)
    If I recall correctly, Diablo was created on the mold of roguelikes, then got shifted from turn-based to real-time. So in RPG terms it's fundamentally a dungeon crawl.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    DwarfFighterGuy

    Join Date
    Dec 2014

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Yeah, I know what you mean about there just not being any rpgs about. I’m currently playing Morrowind for precisely that reason. The other big contender I’d recommend is Crusader Kings 3, because you play a royal house and it rewards you by playing to your current character’s foibles.

    Regarding Disco Elysium, I adore what it does, but it’s also trying to have a conversation with me about regret over one’s personal life. That topic is kinda anathema to me, so I’m not interested in engaging with the game on that. Maybe in 20 years I will be?
    Last edited by NRSASD; 2022-09-12 at 06:52 AM.

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    Eldan's Avatar

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Switzerland
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Morrowind is an interesting case, though. Excellent worldbuilding and writing, great freedom, but you don't really make any choices, do you? Sure, you can kill important NPCs and end the main quest, but that just ends things, it doesn't let you change how it goes. Killing Vivec doesn't lead to a bad ending where Dagoth Ur wins, it just leads to no ending.
    Resident Vancian Apologist

  10. - Top - End - #10
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    BlackDragon

    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Manchester, UK
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Well, the problem there is that CRPGs need to have an ending, and generally providing multiple different endings with different ways to get there is a heckuva lot of work that isn't likely to result in better sales because the sort of players who actually want that sort of thing are in the minority. The original Fallout games did it to an extent, but even there what they basically did is split the world into smaller chunks and provided different outcomes for each section, then showed the results of that in post-ending cutscenes. I don't think, for example, that you can have a Fallout 2 main quest ending that doesn't involve blowing up the Enclave base, though.

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    DwarfFighterGuy

    Join Date
    Dec 2014

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Morrowind is an interesting case, though. Excellent worldbuilding and writing, great freedom, but you don't really make any choices, do you? Sure, you can kill important NPCs and end the main quest, but that just ends things, it doesn't let you change how it goes. Killing Vivec doesn't lead to a bad ending where Dagoth Ur wins, it just leads to no ending.
    That’s a fair point, but I’m going to challenge it specifically because I don’t think you need to have multiple endings to have player choices. In this case, I’m taking an entirely different route than I did last time. First time I played, I was a Telvanni wizard who worked with the Mages Guild, while this playthrough I’m playing a House Redoran/Imperial Cult/Thieves Guild. I’m seeing totally different content than I saw last time, because choosing certain guilds locks you out of all but the intro quests for other guilds.

    In short, I think you can still call it an RPG if you can make meaningful choices within the game, even if the ending is fixed. Planescape Torment is the quintessential example of this.

  12. - Top - End - #12
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Vinyadan's Avatar

    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Morrowind is an interesting case, though. Excellent worldbuilding and writing, great freedom, but you don't really make any choices, do you? Sure, you can kill important NPCs and end the main quest, but that just ends things, it doesn't let you change how it goes. Killing Vivec doesn't lead to a bad ending where Dagoth Ur wins, it just leads to no ending.
    You can make choices, just not in the main quest. I think Balmora came early in development, so they put a nice number of choices there. The lady for the Mages Guild will give you a number of quests that can be solved through murder, but you don't have to. In some quests she wants something from someone and asks you to get it any way you want, making it clear that she doesn't care about the well-being of that someone; in others she sends you to kill people, but you can talk to them and let them get away instead.
    In the Thieves Guild, you can get a key by stealing it, buying it, or winning the owner over. Once you get the key, if you enter the residence, you will find a body. You can then report it and search for the killer, and you can choose whom to execute (I never tried, but I believe the wrong choice will make the main quest impossible to finish). You also can choose which side to be on between the Fighters and the Thieves Guild.
    In House Hlaalu, most missions I have seen could be finished in various ways. You are sent by a Hlaalu to kill a kwama queen in the mine of a rival. But you can tell him on her and get paid not to do it. And you can still do it anyway, and get paid by both, getting compliments by the questgiver for your style. There is a string of missions where a Hlaalu councillor sends you to work for a Hlaalu administrator. You can just do what the administrator tells you to, or you can report back to the councillor who is collecting evidence to get the administrator jailed, who will offer you a different way to complete the quest.

    Other locations however are nowhere near as inspired, and don't go much beyond the kill/fetch quest. There's a number of slave quests where you can help the slave or betray him, however (one in Suran with a fugitive slave, and one in Hla Oad with a slave that has been packed with drugs and you are supposed to take her to the Camonna Tong in Balmora to be sliced open).

    Also, killing Vivec opens up a different, well-hidden way to end the Main Quest. As far as I know, that is the only (secret) choice you can make, and it's a very consequential one, although it doesn't change Dagoth Ur's fate.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

  13. - Top - End - #13
    Titan in the Playground
     
    ElfRangerGuy

    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Imagination Land
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Well due to the influence of D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games, leveling up and numerical stat bonuses are inextricably tied to the RPG genre.

    And when it comes to computer game versions, the numbers part is what the computer is really great at. That's why these hybrid genres like action-RPG or FPS-RPG, which meld action or FPS gameplay with RPG systems for character development, have even become possible. And turns out, enough people like the extra complexity in their action or FPS games to make these genres successful.

    I think what OP is really complaining about is lack of story. Story and choices are typical for RPGs, but not really necessary. You can have a hack 'n slash RPG or a dungeon crawl. Rogue-likes originally fell into this category, where you're just doing the numerical and combat parts of the RPG, and they've been around for four decades now! Taking on a role in a roleplaying game doesn't always mean creating your own unique character or making important story decisions; sometimes it just means acting out a script or following along where the game leads you.

    But on the other hand, you can attach a story or meaningful choices onto almost any genre of game if you want to.
    "Nothing you can't spell will ever work." - Will Rogers

    Watch me draw and swear at video games.

  14. - Top - End - #14
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Lord Raziere's Avatar

    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Gender
    Male2Female

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Eh, I disagree. dungeon crawls aren't actually roleplaying, they're just action. combat. no different from beat em ups.

    "But Raziere" I hear a hypothetical person say "dungeon crawling is the core of DnD's experience, the first rpg ever!" yes. did I stutter? dungeon crawls by themselves aren't roleplaying. roguelikes are the epitome of a dungeon crawl and I never found them particularly conducive to roleplay because its just going through corridors, avoiding traps and attacking people, its repetitive.

    as following a script....no. videogames do that for you with cutscenes is the problem, there is no room for you to mix in your own stuff, like its already done for you there is no point. maybe some ttrpg people write scripts and follow those, but I don't see a game with a set story and character as roleplaying even if its in the genre, because all the roleplay work has been done by the creators. I'm not even following a script, because the dialogue and cutscenes already play it out. like if I play something like Tales of Bersaria, I like the story and whatnot....but I don't consider it conducive to roleplaying my own character. I can appreciate the story sure, but I never at any point actually find myself roleplaying as them. I'm just a distant observer.

    and thats the problem with what your saying Killian: good story doesn't actually translate to roleplay but neither does leveling and combat. I love a good story sure, if its done for me its just reading a novel in a different medium. while pure leveling and combat, is hard to say even exists outside the pure roguelike where you just thrown into random dungeons to fight and pick up upgrades with no explanation. its thus action/tactical combat scratches the action or tactical part of my brain depending on its style but not my roleplaying itch.

    I can't define anything that doesn't fulfill the roleplaying requirement as a roleplay experience.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


  15. - Top - End - #15
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Zevox's Avatar

    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Video game RPGs and tabletop ones are simply two different things. If you go back to some of the oldest video game RPGs, you can generally see how they took inspiration from tabletop RPGs in some way or another - with the first Final Fantasy there's obvious D&D influences in the class system, and particularly the magic system, which has actual spell levels and spell slots, for instance. But as the genre developed in video game form it became something very different from what we associate the term with in tabletop RPGs - or several somethings, actually, since it's a wide genre with many sub-categories, and a lot of people disagree on what deserves and doesn't deserve the label at this point.

    At the end of the day though, it's silly to bicker over what is and isn't an RPG. The term is too widely used at this point for such arguments to ever resolve anything. I might not personally consider something like Dark Souls to be an RPG due to it not feeling like it has much focus on its story, but that won't stop other people from calling it that, any more than some people not feeling like JRPGs with no story-affecting choices to make shouldn't be called RPGs will ever stop me from calling them that. At best you can try to hash out the various subcategories and what belongs to each - JRPG, WRPG, action-RPG, strategy/tactical RPG, etc.

    The one that bugs me most at this point is that there are two different uses for Action-RPG out there these days. PC-centric players tend to use it to refer to games in the vein of Diablo, while console-centric ones like myself use it to refer to RPGs with more action game style combat - the "Tales of" series, The Witcher games, etc - despite those being very different things. Unfortunately there's not really a good solution to that, either, at least as far as I can figure. You'd need a different name for one or the other, but I can't imagine any other name for the latter, and not being a fan of Diablo-esque games can't think of what else to call them either.
    Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!

    "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis

  16. - Top - End - #16
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Rynjin's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2016

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    I've always thought of games like the Witcher 3 as "action-adventure RPGs". They have a lot more in common with action-adventure games mechanically than "pure" RPGs.

  17. - Top - End - #17
    Banned
    Join Date
    May 2007

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    I just don't think the label means all that much anymore. It's so generic that it's no longer a useful descriptor and I usually use different ones if I'm searching for something to play.

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Well, the problem there is that CRPGs need to have an ending, and generally providing multiple different endings with different ways to get there is a heckuva lot of work that isn't likely to result in better sales because the sort of players who actually want that sort of thing are in the minority. The original Fallout games did it to an extent, but even there what they basically did is split the world into smaller chunks and provided different outcomes for each section, then showed the results of that in post-ending cutscenes. I don't think, for example, that you can have a Fallout 2 main quest ending that doesn't involve blowing up the Enclave base, though.
    Tyranny tried to do this, and the wheels absolutely fell off towards the end. Although I think that had more to do with wanting to set up DLC/Sequels and doing a terrible job than the difficulty of writing an ending.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post

    Starbound with mods comes close to roleplaying I feel like, because you can just create any structure you want, use any equipment you find, and just have fun roleplaying as this space explorer going through the galaxy to some random planet, finding some random town or ruins and interacting with it. no leveling either.
    Off topic, but have you tried Terraria? If you liked Starbound then you'll probably like it as well. Starbound is basically just "Terraria in space but worse"

  18. - Top - End - #18
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Lord Raziere's Avatar

    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Gender
    Male2Female

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    Off topic, but have you tried Terraria? If you liked Starbound then you'll probably like it as well. Starbound is basically just "Terraria in space but worse"
    I haven't, Terraria just sounds like Starbound not in space, which sounds worse than Starbound to me. you'd have to tell me the specific details of Terraria that make it better than literally being able to going from planet to planet exploring environments and mods that improve upon Starbound- the appeal of such thing is hardly just in the potential of the base game, becuase I purchased Starbound entirely for the mods.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


  19. - Top - End - #19
    Banned
    Join Date
    May 2007

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    I haven't, Terraria just sounds like Starbound not in space, which sounds worse than Starbound to me. you'd have to tell me the specific details of Terraria that make it better than literally being able to going from planet to planet exploring environments and mods that improve upon Starbound- the appeal of such thing is hardly just in the potential of the base game, becuase I purchased Starbound entirely for the mods.
    Terraria also has a thriving mod scene.

    They're similar games that have similar concepts, and play very similarly. Starbound was literally made by a guy that used to work on Terraria. You only go to one planet, but it's huge and there's a ton of different biomes, items, bosses, cosmetics, events, things to explore, etc. I've played both and Terraria offers way more exploration and diversity than Starbound did. Gameplay is very very similar to Starbound except more streamlined. Bosses are faster, and so is your character. There's hundreds of items and most of them are unique in a way more than just + stats. They add gameplay changing things like dashes, double jumps, sprints, invulnerability frames, etc.

    Obviously there's going to be some differences. You don't go into space, there's almost no clearly defined story, and the early game is a bit slower but ramps up to be much faster later. If you enjoyed one you'll probably enjoy the other though.

  20. - Top - End - #20
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    Eldan's Avatar

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Switzerland
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    I should get back in Terraria. I played it for maybe one afternoon before I got into Starbound. And Starbound really does have that problem, it gets quite samey after a while. Most of the creatures are rather uninteresting to fight, though it has some nice randomly generated dungeons.

    Are there NPCs, villages and so on in Terraria? I don't remember any from when I last played, years and years ago.
    Resident Vancian Apologist

  21. - Top - End - #21
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Lord Raziere's Avatar

    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Gender
    Male2Female

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    Terraria also has a thriving mod scene.

    They're similar games that have similar concepts, and play very similarly. Starbound was literally made by a guy that used to work on Terraria. You only go to one planet, but it's huge and there's a ton of different biomes, items, bosses, cosmetics, events, things to explore, etc. I've played both and Terraria offers way more exploration and diversity than Starbound did. Gameplay is very very similar to Starbound except more streamlined. Bosses are faster, and so is your character. There's hundreds of items and most of them are unique in a way more than just + stats. They add gameplay changing things like dashes, double jumps, sprints, invulnerability frames, etc.

    Obviously there's going to be some differences. You don't go into space, there's almost no clearly defined story, and the early game is a bit slower but ramps up to be much faster later. If you enjoyed one you'll probably enjoy the other though.
    Yeah but if its so good, now I don't want flowers for algernon myself because I like the concept of a space adventurer going around using fabricator tech too much. like the entire point of this thread is roleplaying, and Starbound fulfills this fantasy of this nanofab-astronaut adventurer that can go wherever and do whatever and make whatever in the galaxy, and if Terraria doesn't have the same sci-fi feel that kind of interferes with that fantasy, because Starbound's still better than No Man's Sky in that the character is actually customizable and the planets are more interesting.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


  22. - Top - End - #22
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    Eldan's Avatar

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Switzerland
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Nah, Terraria definitely doesn't have that Scifi feel. That was absolutely what I loved about Starbound as well, building my own space station, fabricator-teching my way around the universe. It's just that after a while, all the planets were more than a bit samey, the monsters too.
    Resident Vancian Apologist

  23. - Top - End - #23
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    BlackDragon

    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Manchester, UK
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    I've played both, and I reckon the NPCs in Starbound are more intelligent than the ones in Terraria--they're quite capable of climbing ladders to reach their assigned rooms, for instance, which Terrarian NPCs don't seem to be.

  24. - Top - End - #24
    Titan in the Playground
    Join Date
    Sep 2007

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    On the "labels" vein several posts above: I feel like the need for labeling is getting ever so weaker since player exposition to games are more from direct gameplay videos nowadays, as opposed to just written pieces of "gaming journalism" days, which needed those tags to get the point across.

  25. - Top - End - #25
    Banned
    Join Date
    May 2007

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    I should get back in Terraria. I played it for maybe one afternoon before I got into Starbound. And Starbound really does have that problem, it gets quite samey after a while. Most of the creatures are rather uninteresting to fight, though it has some nice randomly generated dungeons.

    Are there NPCs, villages and so on in Terraria? I don't remember any from when I last played, years and years ago.
    There are NPCs, but they're not super advanced. You basically meet whatever obscure requirement there is for the NPC to spawn, build them a house, and they spawn in. They mostly just exist to sell you different things, although some do have other functions or rudimentary quests.

    As for dungeons...not in the same way that Starbound implements them. You might go to an area, explore it, get the unique loot, and fight the boss...but it's not a separate map with its own mini-plot the way Starbound generates it.

    Terraria is more about exploring, finding crazy stuff, building neat items and arenas, and fighting tough bosses. You'll meet a boss and think "how am I ever supposed to beat that thing??!" and then you'll come up with an item and arena combination you can make to do it. It starts out arguably slower than Starbound but by the end ramps up way higher.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    Yeah but if its so good, now I don't want flowers for algernon myself because I like the concept of a space adventurer going around using fabricator tech too much. like the entire point of this thread is roleplaying, and Starbound fulfills this fantasy of this nanofab-astronaut adventurer that can go wherever and do whatever and make whatever in the galaxy, and if Terraria doesn't have the same sci-fi feel that kind of interferes with that fantasy, because Starbound's still better than No Man's Sky in that the character is actually customizable and the planets are more interesting.
    Hey, that's fine. It was just a suggestion on something I thought you'd enjoy. If what you like about Starbound is the atmosphere and feeling like a spacefarer I don't think Terraria would ruin it because it doesn't try to do those things at all. It's more that the gameplay loops of explore/build/fight are similar than the space aesthetic.

    No Man's Sky has also come a long way by the way. I don't know when you last tried it, but as someone who played around launch and refunded it I was very pleasantly surprised when I tried it recently.

  26. - Top - End - #26
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    RangerGuy

    Join Date
    Aug 2013
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    OP, if you haven't played the Baldur's Gate series, I highly recommend picking up the Enhanced Editions. An abundance of choice and loads of dialogue options really set my RPG bar high at a young age. There's so much you can do and so many different ways you can play - and the fact that you've got a party of 6 and they all play off each other (especially in BG2) makes the roleplaying aspect very fun. Not the most nuanced choices, but I've been surprised numerous times by the number of ways I can derail the story that the designers accounted for.

  27. - Top - End - #27
    Spamalot in the Playground
     
    Psyren's Avatar

    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    I've really try to play Divinity 2 Original Sin, but I just keep drifting away from it, even though its actually good roleplay, I think it because I'm not used to the old isometric design top down design on this realistic 3D world. like, if it was more 2d sprite like, or something I'd probably love it but to me its just such a weird way to do it, probably because I'm used to Bioware's more up close third person thing.
    All I can say is stick with it, it's a fantastic game. Great story, great characters, great combat, great voice acting, varied builds, romances (including queer ones), multiple endings... Larian nailed that old-school Bioware feel and it's no wonder they got tapped by WotC to make Baldur's Gate 3 after knocking it out of the park on this game. I especially love the environmental/elemental system that lets you do things like break an oil barrel and set the oil ablaze with your fire spells and then put out said fire by conjuring rain and then electrify the water etc.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
    Plague Doctor by Crimmy
    Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)

  28. - Top - End - #28
    Titan in the Playground
     
    ElfRangerGuy

    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Imagination Land
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Are actors not playing a role? Is the character from ROGUE not the role that the player takes on when he's exploring the dungeon?

    You're free to disagree, but I'm saying that your definition of roleplaying is vastly more limited than the one in practical use in the world. It doesn't always mean "being in control of the narrative" or "making choices that matter", those are optional components. Popular ones, true, but not essential.
    "Nothing you can't spell will ever work." - Will Rogers

    Watch me draw and swear at video games.

  29. - Top - End - #29
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    BlackDragon

    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Manchester, UK
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    FWIW, my definition of a CRPG has always been a game in which your in-game character's skills are at least as important as your own twitch gaming skills. Probably doesn't fit all corner cases but it works for me.

  30. - Top - End - #30
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Lord Raziere's Avatar

    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Gender
    Male2Female

    Default Re: Video Gaming Role Play Woes

    Quote Originally Posted by KillianHawkeye View Post
    Are actors not playing a role? Is the character from ROGUE not the role that the player takes on when he's exploring the dungeon?

    You're free to disagree, but I'm saying that your definition of roleplaying is vastly more limited than the one in practical use in the world. It doesn't always mean "being in control of the narrative" or "making choices that matter", those are optional components. Popular ones, true, but not essential.
    My definition is practical. your definition pretty much says any game is a roleplaying game, its too wide. By your definition, Halo is a roleplaying game because your taking on the role of/acting out Master Chief shooting everything around him, its meaningless.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •