So what your are saying is you would rather run around pointlessly killing random monsters and not have anything to really do is fun?

If it was pointless it would be no fun. But I get cooler weapons and more skills to use to more effectivly kill enemies so when the challenge of the game increases I'm ready! Tactical combat is pretty fun if set up right and is still the core gameplay of japanese RPGs. Only in japanese RPGs the combat tends to be so easy as to not be any fun.

I mean most american rpgs have no story line are really boring

More boring than bland combat and dialog scrolling? Most RPGs made in non-asian places still have plots and some of them are pretty good, but it's the great gameplay that some of them have that makes them stand out.

I dun know if you like having something that can feed your brain with entertainment like a good story line or a book...

It takes a lot more thought, practice, agility, and spacial visualization to succesfully play a fighting game. If you want to excersize your brain you're better off playing a game with fast paced action like tetris or a fighting game. If you want to be fed a plot watch a movie or read a book since these are the forms of media for that. Games are intended to be interactive forms of media and if they don't allow for much interaction with the player then they aren't good games.

Basically storylines keep the games from getting dull like Seika and Mystic Journey..

Mystic Journey was boring because the main gameplay was bland. It needed eithermore interesting way to improve your character or more interesting combat. I never played Seika but I'm sure it suffers from similiar problems. Plot can be good but it generally impedes gameplay making things worse. I think C&C Generals had the perfect idea of putting plot sequences in during load times since that's when I expect to waiting and it keeps things interesting instead of just a loading bar. It would have been awful if it interputed me when I could have been playing.

Ya need a point for the existance for you to play..

I generally play to try and do better. It's still why I keep comming back to Tetris since there is always room for improvment(Though after reaching level 21 on the gameboy version I don't think I have much room for improvment left :P). Even if the plot is interesting the first time through it becomes even a bigger reason not to play a second time since it's no longer interesting. Most of the older games I go back to play are ones without plot since sitting through plot sequences is much more boring a second time through.

Going around sensely killing is as fun as me shaking a stick at my rabbit. >=2

If it was pointless it wouldn't be fun. This is why properly rewarding player and increasing difficulty properly is important to a game that depends on combat as primary gameplay which is the main focus in japanese RPGs. Plot is just a extra dessing for the game like graphics and only has a small impact on how the game is played. This is one big reason why Japanese RPGs are boring because combat is pointless since the difficulty is so easy as to make any rewards meaningless.

(This has nothing to do with anything but I like the forums its kinda like politics :))

I can agree with you here :).

Theodis wrote:

The point of having genres is classification. If RPG means everything it's no longer a useful category to group games. RPG has become meaningless in itself and is now used as a buzz word on the back of boxes to attract people to other genres. I've seen several games claim to have "RPG elements" all of which meant different things ie being able to level up, or having a set plot, being able to get items, ect. Sadly most of these things have nothing themselves to with role playing.

I think that RPG isn't too broadly defined. Genres are meant to classify, but genres are also meant to be immediately recognizable and to elicit some preassumptions. If I see a movie of the action genre I have certain assumptions that the movie can work off of when I enter. If I go to see a movie of the romance genre I have other assumptions. There can be totally different romance movies and totally different actions movies, but they still are categorized as such. All of living things are usually defined into one of 5 groups, yet the category of animal doesn't become useless. The category of animals is further broken up into mammals and birds and fish and such, and Rpgs can further be broken up into MUDS and hack-and-slash and pnp and so on, and further broken up from there, but for a broad term I think it works fine. As for having "RPG elements", it can be a marketing ploy, but it can also be a useful way to express an idea. If a game says it has "RPG elements" and then says it has statistics later I know what they mean, even though statistics could mean many different things. I understand that the game has probably strength and intelligence and speed. If the game had instead started by saying it had "Strategic elements" I'd make different assumptions about what those statistics were (ammo size, morale, men, firing range perhaps). The human mind works largely with patterns. RPG is just another pattern to help us relate game features.

For something to be gameplay(as far as I'm concerned) you have to be scored either numericaly or abstractly based on how you play according to some kind of rules. This could be as simple as winning or loseing or it could just determine future events(in a more or less favorable way). So for roleplaying to actually be considered gameplay the roleplaying itself would have to be in someway scored. Generally in computer and console "roleplaying" games your scored and moved forward based on tactical combat not choices you make for how your character acted. Generally how your character acts has already been dictated by the story-line so you aren't really playing the role you're just being fed it by the game.

A very good point, something I hadn't really thought about in much depth. Its a good argument for why most roleplaying games perhaps aren't best described as roleplaying.

I love playing rogue-likes but I in no way would consider them to be RPGs like most other games with that genre slapped onto them.

But, see, most people do and thats the important thing. My point was never that every game called a roleplaying game is classified in the best possible way. My point was that certain games are accepted as roleplaying games and that thats really the only requirement. Champagne needs to be from the Champagne region of France, but lots of people call any sparkling white wine champagne. Is it technically incorrect? yes. But since everyone knows what everyone is talking about the word works fine. Language evolves. RPG has happened to evolved to mean alot of things that it didn't orignally mean, but that doesn't mean that it can't be used in those newer ways.

I tend to sidestep this whole issue by differentiating the terms "RPG" and "roleplaying game". Technically, one means the other, but they have changed to mean different things.

RPG - hack and slash

Roleplaying - "True" roleplaying; more like PnP roleplaying than hack and slash

There we go, argument sidestepped. (Well, I like it anyway.) =P

Um... how do you filter out newbies? Do new players spring fully-formed from the skull of Zeus, or are there just no new players?

What I meant is. The members version of the game has no newbies because it is a pay to play system. All the newbies are on free to play because they didnt buy a subscription to a game they havent even tryed yet. When they get better in the game and are no longer newbies, some buy pay to play and some don't.

Yep. Rule #2 (or is it #3?) of all GMs is to Be Flexible. If players go off the beaten path, rewrite your story to work with the change. Don't tick them off by implying, "No, you can't do that, you @#%&@#s! This is my game and I say how it goes!"

That's not to say that you shouldn't use everything in your power to encourage people to go along with your story, and that's also not to say that you can't start treating people unfavourably if they continually and deliberately interfere with your campaign plans. After all, rule 238-§32C states that you shouldn't take no crap (although, of course, it's written in euphemistic legalese).

If players go off the beaten track, stop beating on them. ;)

Why would a designer be malicious if they caused a TransferFailed() to just run another Transfer()? All (that I know of) online games that have multiple servers to a world just send the player over to the other server when necessary. There's no popup box asking them if they want to. They already showed that they wanted to go to that area by casting a magical spell, walking near to the boundary, or something else.

I'm talking about less savoury worlds that impose transfers on a user that the user did not choose to perform.

Picture this: any machine-code computer game you download can interact with your system and delete files. That doesn't mean it's OK to allow BYOND games to do so.

Hedgemistress wrote:

I don't think that's any more malicious then the Nintendo games where answering "No!" to "Do you accept this quest?" yields "The game can't start until you do! Do you accept this quest?"

But BYOND prides itself on disallowing people from seizing control over the clients. Web browsers work the same way -- you can be forwarded to another site, but you can configure your browser to ignore that feature.