@ The Magician: I like what you're saying, but again, I think depth is key. With your supposed CoD game, I believe it to be an RPG if it has the depth you implied. However, that depth is very similar to the depth that Bethesda and other companies described Skyrim with, and I disagree with them.

While hours of play seem important, games like Super Mario Bros for NES warranted hundreds or thousands of hours of gameplay.

From what you said about the hypothetical CoD, it sounds like more RPG than Skyrim.

But it would be a double standard to judge the lockpicking mini-game on anything but its difficulty because they both depend on player and character input. If the mini-game were much harder, the character's ability would automatically compensate and assume a larger role in determining the chance of success by scaling the difficulty down as the character's skill improves. Having a RT lockpicking mini-game is identical to having RT combat. If you convert lockpicking to a character-only skill (which most RPGs do) there is no logical argument preventing you from converting combat to a TB format (that being the only way to eliminate player skill). Since ES games have always been RT action RPGs there is no onus on the developers to provide a different mechanic. Their only obligation is to make it compare favorably with RT combat (which it doesn't, at present).

The fact that simulation plays a role in every game doesn't mean it isn't important in RPGs. We're still allowed to talk about it. Of course, it's not a 'defining element'; traditionally that role has gone to other elements (which people don't seem to agree on). My argument is simply that those mechanics, while prevalent, are not necessary or sufficient to create a RPG. If realistic graphics contribute to my immersion and help me connect with my character and stay in role then they are an element that supports my intention to RP.

A game where the avatar's chance of success at completing a task depends on the particular form that the player chose to give it isn't automatically a RPG. In fact, that mechanic is common to many games that aren't RPGs. Even if that same avatar improves over time and has levels, that's still not enough. Is a game in which the player selects a robot boxer from one of several different models and then upgrades them over time by winning matches a RPG? If all the action takes place in a ring against a series of opponents the best you can say is that it is a fighting game with RPG elements. Games require a lot of different elements to sustain the player's intention to RP.

In addition to character > player and character progression you need, at a minimum a basis for establishing that character's character. You need a mechanic to create an identification between the player and his or her avatar, a reason to become attached to that avatar. The player has to either feel that they are playing that avatar on an intimate level (they 'become' the avatar) or they have to feel that the avatar has moral worth that makes them worth taking an interest in from an omnisicent or god-like perspective. That connection is typically created through a number of devices: allowing the player to customize the avatar's appearance (which is not purely cosmetic; it serves the mechanical purpose of establishing identification); allowing the player to choose defining characteristics like race, class, attributes, etc.; providing the player with rich sensory data that simulates the character's perspective so that they can act intelligently and puposefully in the world; etc. Is the 'robot boxer' game a better RPG than the hypothetical game I described in my last post because it follows character > player and has character progression? It takes a lot of different elements to create a good RPG. You can get away with leaving one or two of them out as long as all of the other legs support the table.

Now, please understand that I'm not saying that a RPG that uses character > player and progression isn't probably going to be a better RPG and provide a better RPG experience. There is a reason why they are prevalent features in the genre. I just think it's unnecessarily dogmatic to be overly attached to them.


If that were true, I doubt I'd have wasted my time writing all this drivel. The reason why I wrote so much about it is precisely because there are people who literally mean that Skyrim is not an RPG. I find that position bizarre, so naturally I wanted to study it. My posts are merely a consequence of my thinking about this specific point and trying to understand it. If people were merely saying that Skyrim is not a deep RPG I'd have nothing to argue about.

Well, the game is hypothetical, so assume that it actually does have that depth. Real depth is obviously different from marketing hype.

I'm not arguing that > hours means a better RPG. I'm arguing that players are highly unlikely to be wrong about an experience that has lasted hundreds of hours. If I've played Skyrim for > 150 hours (and I probably have played close to that, if not more) and my perception is that I'm playing a RPG somebody else coming along and telling me that I'm not really playing a RPG but an action game is utter nonsense. It may not have supported their intention to RP for whatever reason (everyone is allowed to have different preferences and tastes) and so may not have been a RPG to them but it's completely egotistical to assume that their concept of a RPG is absolute and universal and that the other player is wrong about 300 hours of experience. That's called ignoring evidence to support a pet theory.

I agree.

Forgive me for not being dexterous with the quote function.

While I do believe that Skyrim shouldn't be labeled as an RPG, I also agree with you that I'd be ignoring evidence to support a pet theory. In short, I just don't think that the social definition of RPG has been defined officially so people aren't going to agree with me. But what did you think of my previous comment about RPGs requiring infinite or intimidating amounts of depth as their defining element?

Edit: Games that boast hundreds of hours of content like Skyrim certainly may well provide it for some people, but in reality when you get past 20 hours at best, any additional time is spent hoping that the game will not continue to let the player down, either due to being a fan of the series or simply trying to get your money's worth. People would even lie to themselves and others claiming that they're having a blast while running around a dead game pretending it isn't dead yet.

I don't see that as necessarily following either. There is no player skill determining the success of speech, none to determine success in crafting, spells need to hit their target, but your success in casting them is skill dependent (whereas weapon swinging has no level requirements), pickpocketing is purely character skill based, etc. The only reason, I would argue, that TES seems to have a great deal of player skill involved is because it is a very combat heavy game. And since combat requires player skill for things like swinging a weapon and dodging attacks, that player skill is highly visible. Outside of combat, however, character skill is overwhelmingly more important.

So is there a double standard? I don't think so. People can prefer real time combat heavily dependent on player skill, while also preferring heavy character skill influence in other areas. Unless you're proposing all other skills would benefit from some sort of minigame dynamic (bring back the persuasion wheel?), there's no real issue that I can see.
Yes, that robot boxing title would be an RPG. Just as dungeon crawlers without any dialogue and the barest hint of a story can be RPGs. Just as a game that is only dialogue and narrative without any combat can be an RPG. Whether you navigate linear corridors or open worlds, it doesn't matter. Those things are only extras that enable certain playstyles. They aren't essential to what is or isn't a role playing game.
They are the only features that set it apart, is the point. Without them, you're just playing an action game. A deep, complex action game with a branching narrative, but still an action game. That's why character skill is essential whereas the finer points of the simulation are not. The latter only makes something a better game, not just a better RPG.
They might think they mean it, but realistically speaking, it's all just anger. Like I said, outside of vague intellectual [censored] no one gives a [censored] where the line is drawn. They care where the line is drawn in regards to what a series offered before and what it offers now, and saying, "This isn't an RPG," is merely shorthand for, "I don't like that they've cut these elements that allowed for these kinds of character options." If you're interested in actually having a dialogue about the merits of a particular title, it's pointless to argue when something stops being an RPG because that's not what really matters to those you're arguing against.

Emphasis mine.

I have to stop here and ask: Why progression? I'd agree if you wrote "change" or "evolution", but that includes progression, regression, acquiring new abilities and forgetting old, and a combination thereof. Which is more in line with what I'd like to see from an RPG instead of simple monotonic raise in power.

An example of an RPG where you regress in overall abilities (while still improving in some fields) would be one set during a big war - say, WWI. At the start, your character is a novice, full of enthusiasm, ideals and energy. As he survives the worst the war has to offer - fights at places like Verdun or Somme - his fighting abilities improve somewhat, but his physical and mental health detoriate, he has to toss aside most if not all of his beliefs about what is "right" and "proper" and finally ends up as a desilusioned wreck of a human.

For starters, how do you feel about slyme's statement (in reference to people who say that Skyrim is not an RPG)?:
Does his interpretation of your classification overrule your experience that, for you, Skyrim is not an RPG?

The whole "it's not traditional RPG so it's not RPG" just doesn't carry any weight. Role-playing is an activity, not a set of mechanics. The mechanics only exist to support the activity and any mechanics will do as long as they do the job. The original mechanics of D&D were rules for tabletop wargaming. They were designed first to simulate medieval warfare to which fantasy elements were later added. If we draw our arbitrary line in the sand at this point, RPGs are strategy/tactics games.

Military units were reduced to individual soldiers, then these soldiers were given additional characteristics (like armor class, hit points, etc.). Different units could then be differentiated by giving them different statistical advantages and disadvantages. At this point, you have units representing individuals of specific classes that have statistical differences from other individual units in other classes. These mechanics are a natural and fairly obvious elaboration of the existing mechanics in tabletop wargaming. It isn't much of a leap to go from an infantry unit of a single soldier to a fighter with attributes that differentiate him from other individual soldiers. The consequence of converting a unit into an individual and assigning him statistics that applied only to that individual is that the player can now identify with a particular miniature because he is different from all of the other miniatures. Sure, you have plenty of warriors, but this one is the best one you have. You get attached to it and you don't want that one to perish. At this point, you don't need the wargame anymore. You've grown attached to a particular unit. You can now use these individual units differentiated by their class and statistics from other units to form parties of adventurers in a fantasy setting. It is at this point, I believe, that you have what could be called a RPG. Your enjoyment of the game has become attached to the success or failure of specific units.

This is also the point at which one player assumes the responsibility of providing the other players with a substitute for the strategy game. Suddenly you have a GM who creates new maps for the players to explore and new 'units' in the form of monsters that replace the opposing army. Once you have characters, an environment, and an opposing faction, a sustained narrative is a natural outcome. Why are these monsters attacking the village? Why are the players exploring this dungeon? This attempt to rationalize the gameplay creates something that we now call a quest. (In D&D, they're modules.) If you string enough of these quests together, you have a campaign (or in the case of computer RPGs, a game).

What is obvious from this little history is that RPGs evolved out of tabletop wargames. What is not obvious is whether or not there is a point at which role-playing stops evolving. If you argue that only games that restrict themselves to the above stage of evolution can be called role-playing games, you've mistaken a stage of development for the intention behind the evolution. The history of RPGs is the history of game mechanics evolving to provide players with more choice and greater depth. Choices make a game broad (more classes, more skills, more spells, more quests, more enemies, more places to explore, etc.) and the number of choices in sequence make a game deep (how many stages of dialogue are there in this conversation? how many stages are in this quest? how many levels are in this dungeon? how many combat elements can I combine into a single strategy?, etc.)

Your characterization of RPGs as having infinite or intimidating depth accords with this intention, but any game with infinite depth turns into a RPG because, by definition, the player has every choice available to him. My CoD example is an illustration of that. I don't believe that a game requires infinite or intimidating depth to be considered a RPG (the early D&D certainly wouldn't qualify) but the more depth and choice you have the more likely players are going to experience it as one.

That is entirely subjective. I don't feel that Skyrim has let me down at all. I've played close to 200 hours and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. It's not deep, but I don't need a lot of depth to sustain my intention to RP because most of my activity is centered around the personal objectives I have for my character. I'm not playing because I'm a fan of the series (I don't find the world or the lore terribly compelling, but I'm a writer so I'm critical of these sorts of things) but I am a fan of the gameplay because it allows me to do what I want instead of shoehorning me into someone else's not-very-compelling narrative. I'm not lying to myself or others. I am having a blast and the game is very much alive for me. Projecting your own experiences onto others and trying to invalidate their experience is just you attempting to justify your definition of the genre at the expense of evidence to the contrary. I'm not doing that to you: I believe you when you say that the game is dead to you and that you don't consider it an RPG. My understanding of the genre doesn't force me to invalidate the experiences of others to support my argument.

@ TheMagician: Touchè.

Hypothetically: TES: VI

No dialogue interaction, 3 skill trees: warrior, thief, mage; no player levels, no exp, no health bar (you breathe for 2 seconds and you're fully healed like most FPS these days), more intense compass pointers with popups on the screen telling you to follow your compass.

Is it still an RPG? At what point does it cross over from "I don't like that they cut this, but it's still an RPG" to "I'm lying to myself by claiming this is an RPG because at some point earlier, the series consisted of RPGs"?
My biased view is that vanilla Skyrim is no longer an RPG, but an action-adventure medisimulation. Is it still technically correct to call it an RPG? Probably, but there are more accurate, less misleading descriptions that should be used imo.

Roleplaying is a personal act one does if one so wishes, and one can do it in every game in existense (some require more imagination and commitment than others), but that doesn't make every game in existense an RPG. An RPG is a game about playing a role inside the game (and not necessarily inside your head, where you're immersing yourself to the scene and telling yourself that you're playing a role now), and if a role is assumed, the role is in charge of what happens in the game and by your guidance. You do not need to "roleplay" when you play an RPG, it's still just a game that provides you with every detail you need in order to play it succesfully.

Your (TheMagician) example of a game is what I'd (in jest) call a genrepizza, but which probably would be labeled as an adventure game, or an action RPG. It basically does not work any different than Fahrenheit (The Indigo Prophesy) at its core (you make decisions in scenes and in dialog, you twitch in actionparts with no character influence, etc). And Fahrenheit is not an RPG, but a narratively driven adventure game. If the role is not accountable for anything inside the game rather than you as a player, then there is no "appropriate" role anywhere but within your mind - and the PC you play is just a vessel of "you" and not a separate entity with it's own appropriate capabilities and defects as it should be.

That's my take on this.

I'm not arguing that you can't have different mechanics in the same game. I'm arguing that you can't, in a game that includes action/reflex mechanics, argue that it is invalid to extend that principle to areas other than combat. That's not the same as saying that everything has to be done the same way, only that it's indefensible to tell someone they can't try.

I believe that it's not only possible to extend those mechanics to lockpicking but that, for a select group of players, that provides a superior RP experience to a mechanic that consists of a single 'activate' click. When I tell people this, they tell me I'm going to create a game that is 'less RPG' even though my experience tells me that it is 'more RPG' because it creates a stronger connection with my character in precisely the same way that RT combat creates a stronger connection with my character. The only way for someone who is 'pro rule' can argue this is to tell me that I am mistaken in my understanding of what a RPG is and that it has nothing to do with identifying with your character and that identifying with your character is bad role-playing and not why the genre was invented. Which from my perspective is just the opposite of the truth. These people have a rule that goes: "If this person makes a statement that conflicts with my own experience, then they are wrong and I am right." I have a rule that goes: "If this person makes a statement that conflicts with my own experience, then they have had a different experience than I have and that's worth investigating."

As far as the persuasion mini-game goes that's something entirely different. The rotating disc mini-game in Oblivion was in no-way a good anologue for persuasion. A good anologue would be dynamically generated response options in dialogue. If you make all of your conversational checks based on your Speech skill and eliminate player subversion then your dialogue would be something like this:

An NPC says: "No, I'm not going to give slyme his sweetroll."

At Speech 15, here are your choices:
[Persuade] "Well, I think you should because it's not nice to steal people's stuff."
[Intimidate] "You better or you're going to be sorry, mister!"
Since the check has been predetermined by the player's skill (minimum Speech of 30 to pass, flat, just like our skill-based lockpicking), the only options that are available are douchy and the NPC is naturally going to reject them.

At Speech 50, here are your choices:
[Persuade]: "Listen, I know that you're angry at slyme because he doesn't agree with your definition of what constitutes an RPG, but that's no reason to steal his roll. I'm sure we can find a civilized way to resolve your differences."
[Intimidate]: "I don't think you understand. I kill people for a living. It's what I'm good at. What makes you think I'm going to mind hurting you and your loved ones?"
Since the check has been predetermined by the player's skill, the only options that are available are obviously (?) effective and the NPC is naturally going to accept either one.

Engaging someone in dialogue with the intent to persuade them and seeing that your only persuasion lines are obviously douchy is equivalent to receiving the "You need a lockpick skill of 50 to open this lock" message that pops up on your screen when your character lacks the skill to pick a lock. The game is giving you obvious feedback that you can't possibly succeed at the task.

I'd rather have a system that doesn't need to communicate my failure to me immediately in the form of an on-screen prompt but instead allows me to attempt something, even if the chance of success is very small. If the lockpicking mini-game is very difficult to complete with a skill of 15 (you have a 20% chance to pick a novice lock, for example) then my actively attempting to pick the lock and failing several times in a row does a better job engaging me without abandoning the character > player mechanic. My immersion hasn't been broken by an announcement from the game telling me about a mechanic. The trade off results in a net win for me and people like me. And for people who svck at the game or don't like it, you can just put back the 'auto-pick' button.

Well, the robot boxing title wouldn't feel like an RPG to me just because it had a couple of RPG elements. Your word against mine, I guess. And the dungeon crawler game you describe includes at least two additional RPG elements that the robot boxing title lacks: exploration and looting (I presume you're allowing them to loot), so obviously a lot more people are going to be inclined to include it. Diablo has more RPG elements than your dungeon-crawler example and lots of people refuse to include it in the genre.

A lot of people would also disqualify your 'only dialogue and narrative' game example as well and classify that as interactive fiction. For me, it would depend on how much freedom and complexity the game provides. If I can define my own character and choose my own path and it includes enough secondary elements (eg. exploration, simulation, etc.) to sustain role-playing over a significant period of time, I'd count that as an RPG too. But then again, in my opinion, there are no 'sacred cow' mechanics when it comes to RPGs.

To me, this statement seems to contradict your previous one about the dialogue only RPG. Why isn't that a 'deep, complex interactive fiction with a branching narrative"? Why should a couple of mechanics differentiate it from an otherwise identical experience? Specific mechanics aren't required. They are common. As long as there are enough other mechanics in place to sustain the illusion who cares if one or two specific mechanics are there or not? If you don't have access to the mechanics (as in my first thought experiment), you're playing a game of Schroedinger's cat: the game only becomes an RPG when you open the box and see what's inside. Frankly, that's just silly. "Well, what do you know, this game I've been playing for hundreds of hours as an RPG isn't really an RPG after all. There's no character > player mechanic!"

What about my CoD example? Isn't that at least as deep and complex as your dialogue only example? If you didn't know that it relied only on player skill but had been told that your skills were determined by the occupation you chose and the weapon specializations you picked and you played it for 300 hours, RPing merrily the whole time would you feel cheated when you found out it was 'all just your own skill'? Are you suddenly wrong about your previous experience? Were you just deluding yourself for 300 hours? Are you really going to invalidate 300 hours of your life just to support an intellectual construct: RPGs are games that have x, y, and z mechanics?

I don't have to worry about that problem. I don't have to invalidate other people's experiences. I just accept that when they tell me they were RPing, they really were RPing. The game had enough of whatever it takes to support that experience for them. Even if they're just being cynical and lying about it, if 100 people tell me that they really did have a good RP experience from a game am I going to tell them that they're all just cynical liars because one of them really was just a cynical liar? This just borders on conspiracy theory. One or two people might be so confused about the concept of RP that they do, in fact, misattribute their own experience to something else. If the game sells 10 million copies and 8 million of them call it a RPG are they all wrong? I shouldn't even need to make a case for it. It's obviously silly. It's far easier to take Occam's razor and say that a handful of RPG fundamentalists are just being overly pedantic.

300 million similar opinions don't invalidate 1 opposing opinion, and if everyone joined forces to put me to death because I didn't think a certain game was an RPG, that doesn't make me wrong either. History shows that majority rules, and it's usually in the dark.

On a side note, I really wanted to see what your Speech check for 100 was!

Eventually it will stop being an RPG because it will no longer provide the players with enough tools to support their intention to RP. This point will be different for every player, and I don't think anyone is privileged to decide when that happens. For you, it's clearly already happened. That just means you've attached greater importance to specific mechanics and their absence makes it difficult or impossible for you to sustain your intention. That doesn't mean that other players, who feel that Skyrim does a better job of sustaining that intention are wrong, or that they're not RPing, or that they don't understand what RP is or that they're lying to themselves and others. From your perspective, given your preferences and experiences, it might seem that way, but that's just subjectivity. You have to give other people the same respect you give yourself for trusting their intuitions.

If BGS cuts more options, more people will say that it's not an RPG, or at least not a good RPG. But that's only assuming they don't enhance other mechanics that contribute to the experience. Does Skyrim have fewer options? Yes. In a number of areas. But it also has more options in others. The character progression mechanic imposes more discipline on players and forces them to be more careful about how they build their character. It has consequences that support RP whereas Oblivion's mechanic had consequences that ran counter to RP. In that regard, Skyrim is an improvement and a better RPG. Skyrim's environments are also much more compelling, which means that exploration (which is, for many people an important RPG mechanic) is more satisfying. Enemy level scaling is also handled much more intelligently than it was in Oblivion. The enemies you face are more diverse and more realistically scaled. That enhances the feeling that the world is sensible and diverse and contributes to RP by providing a better simulation. Crafting, cooking, marriage, and optional, player-selected companions were added (their implementation is a matter for a separate discussion). I could go on. They don't add cooking and marriage to an action game. They add them to a RPG. They might be terrible (almost worthless, in fact) as far as their implementation goes, but they didn't exist in earlier games. They add about as much to the game as drain attribute spells and pauldrons.

People seem to think that I'm saying "you don't need any mechanics to role-play". That's not true. What I'm saying is "you don't need any one, specific mechanic to role-play, you just need a whole bunch of mechanics that contribute to the experience". Adding more mechanics is almost certainly going to make for a stronger RPG. A really good, really strong RPG probably is going to use character > player and player progression because those are important mechanics that support RPing. That's why pretty much every game uses them. The problem is that people equate this ubiquity with necessity. If you're making an RPG, by all means, include them, but don't tell someone else they're not making an RPG because they aren't using the 'secret sauce'. Everyone has their own recipe.

And what's wrong with action RPG? It's only misleading to a small subset of players, not the majority.

Mechanics that make the character more important to the result than the player are RPG mechanics.
For example:
Morrowind Lockpicking IS an RPG mechanic because the character's skill and toolset determines the outcome. All you do as the player is point at the lock and click the mouse button.
Oblivion Lockpicking IS NOT an RPG mechanic because the player is able to usurp the character's skill and achieve the desired goal.

No, but it would be pretty arrogant to assume that you're better than 300 million other people, many of whom are as smart or smarter than yourself. Assuming that you're right and everyone else is wrong is narcissism. If I found myself in that position, I'd be examining my own assumptions, not telling everyone else they were wrong. And the whole 'majority rule' argument is tired. People need to stop playing misunderstood genius and open up to new opinions. It might just be that those 300 million people who don't believe you're Jesus are right. In fact, I could use this same argument against everyone else in the forum and say that my definition is correct and that they're all mindless sheep following RPG conventions with blind devotion...wait, didn't I say that somewhere already?

As an aside: my own Writing skill is only 50, so I failed that test.

I've already gone over my opinion about this several times so you'll forgive me if I don't reply.

Lmao writing skill... you need to get the Keyboard +1.

I didn't mean to appear to say that I was right, though I am (as I've stated in the 'What is wrong with you?' & 'What is right with you' threads) a malignant narcissist, I do try to put it aside to some extent. In what I said about the majority thing, I wasn't implying that I was the only one correct, just that majorities are typically in the dark in their understanding.

Personally I do believe that a great deal of people don't give things like this much thought, and take one glance at the game and say "Oh, this is an RPG." Then when they start getting into the meat of things, (or the lack thereof) their presupposition gets in the way and coats everything in RPG sugar. I do understand that there are a large number of people, like yourself, who have a valid understanding and an excellent point. Of course I disagree, but I see where you're coming from and I do respect it.

To me, they sold Skyrim with a silver tongue, and the first few hours of the game are very deceitful. I went in with the assumption that with a new sequel, depth becomes deeper, and found that the opposite is true. Plus, they took our pants for godsakes. I just think they spent their time and money taking from the RPG and investing in the action adventure until it ceased to become one and became the other and didn't come out and say it ahead of time.

You do understand why they would never come out and say "Here is Elder Scrolls V! By the way... it is also not an RPG!", right?

They intentionally deviated from RPG mechanics because Action mechanics are more popular in today's gaming market. They have a history of making games that are classified as RPGs and while they do tend to make extensive changes between games, announcing that they changed genres would upset enough people that the negative feedback would probably have sunk the release.

I agree. The reason why many games can't be called RPGs is because they don't provide the players with enough of the right mechanics. Everybody can try to RP in any game, but unless the game was designed to support RP, players aren't going to be able to sustain it and they won't call it an RPG. That's why arguments that games like CoD are RPGs fail. The game isn't designed for RP. If they added a lot of RPG elements to it, though, people would start calling it one at some point.

My hypothetical CoD game is quite a bit different than Indigo Prophecy (which is a great game, for people who havn't played it...or at least, the narrative is great, even if the gameplay is clunky). In Indigo Prophecy, you assume the role of characters designed by developers. You follow a single narrative that has a couple of limited side options, but you really have no choice but to play as a wanted man and a couple of supporting characters trying to solve a very specific narrative puzzle with a very limited number of ways to proceed. IP is really just an interactive fiction with action elements. A RT mystery, if you will. There are no joinable factions, optional quests, different ways of interacting with NPCs that change how they respond to you later in the game, any way to customize your character, there is no looting or alternate paths for completing objectives (stealth, diplomacy, combat), etc., etc. In short, it doesn't provide the player with enough RPG elements to be considered an RPG. If you tried to RP IP you wouldn't find it sustainable because there is very little freedom. That's why people don't consider it an RPG.

The fact that my hypothetical CoD uses reflexes instead of character stats doesn't remove it from the genre. The role you choose for your character through your dialogue choices, mission selection, tactical approach (stealth, diplomacy, combat), faction alignments, moral decisions (who lives, who dies), training (to unlock new techniques and combos) can be used to create and sustain a character that is not yourself that has been defined through his or her actions. After 100 hours of gameplay, two players will be having completely different experiences as members of different factions completing different quests using different techniques and equipment making different moral choices resulting in different narrative outcomes. You really have to stretch to not call that an RPG. In fact, this game could easily provide a better RPG experience than Skyrim and most people are content to call Skyrim an RPG. If you also added character skill into the mix, the only players you're converting are RPG elitists who think that's the only important criteria.

Again, you're not talking about RPG mechanics, you're talking about general game mechanics. Creating a stronger connection to whatever character happens to be on screen is important for any game, not something unique to the RPG genre. Deus Ex, Far Cry 2, STALKER, etc are all games that attempt to immerse the player in the character through perspective and simulative world design. Only the former contains anything like character stats.

Hard character distinctions is the only thing that sets RPGs apart from any other genre.
I'm not sure if I'm interpreting you correctly. Are you saying this is how the system ought to be implemented? If so, I don't think you'll find many disagreeing. There's no loss in character skill here. Your success is still determined entirely by your speech skill.
In the case of the Elder Scrolls, they've always allowed you to attempt something regardless of you're chances. In Morrowind, your success at lockpicking could be determined by a whole range of factors: skill level, attribute level, fatigue level, any spell buffs in effect, the quality of your picks. These could make substantial differences in your success rate and there was a great deal of range to the system. This exists neither in Skyrim (where there's no penalties for attempting any lock) or in Fallout 3 (where there are only a handful of hard cutoffs instead of a whole spectrum of lock levels). No prompt is necessary because you can clearly see your character failing or succeeding, and because initial failure does not indicate impossibility.

The problem with a minigame that can completely override this character skill system, is that it incentivises playing against your character. As an RPG, the games job is to compel the player to play in line with their character type at all times, not only when it's convenient. By allowing players to bypass their limitations, they've designed what amounts to a poor RPG. Self control is not an adequate response to this. A player should not have to work against their favor in order to "properly" play the game.

Now, if the minigame prompted only when success would have already be achieved through behind the scenes dice rolls, then I have no issue. Adding in window dressing for the people who want it is fine. I still don't see a difference between clicking to hit someone with a sword and clicking to pick a lock. They are both singular actions. Why is a minute level of control over where you position your pick (or from which angle your sword strikes) necessary for immersion?
Exploration and looting exist in games that are not RPGs. That is purely an issue of world interaction and setting and has no inherent link to what is or is not an RPG. I've never heard someone say, "Diablo is not an RPG," unless they were actually saying, "Diablo is not an RPG on the level of the original Fallouts/Baldur's Gate/Planescape Torment/whatever else." As I said, no one cares where the line is drawn, they simply have personal preferences as to what an RPG should strive for. That said, people can still feel that a game failed to achieve what it intended, or that it might have better implemented certain features, but a new IP is never going to have the same sort of baggage as a sequel.
You misunderstand me. A dialogue-only game can be an RPG. It isn't necessarily. There still need to exist rules that create character distinction. Instead of combat related skills, you might have skills for things like CHARM, BODY LANGUAGE, ACTIVE LISTENING, LIE, SMILE AND NOD, etc. Your success or failure in dialogue is still determined entirely through your character. An adventure game with heavy amounts of dialogue and branching story lines is still an adventure game without these distinctions in character.
No, but I'm not going to call it an RPG either, because it's been established that it's not.
No one invalidating anyone's experiences. It's already been said you can role play without something being a role playing game. We do it all the time on stage or in work training sessions or in the bedroom. But RPG refers to a game with specific mechanics, ones that compel a player to take on the role of a certain character. Without that, there's no way to distinguish between any other genre in existence.

And isn't Deus Ex an RPG

Funny because Deus Ex is classified as an RPG => http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/deus-ex

It's an RPG/Shooter hybrid or action RPG or whatever you want to call it. But I mistyped as I meant to write Deus Ex: Invisible War. My point was that the qualities TheMagician was describing span any and all genres and are not unique to role playing games.

Hybrid doesn't mean the game cannot be an RPG. Hybrids are games that fit multiple categories at the same time. It's an Action game, and it's an RPG too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_role-playing_game "loosely defined sub-genre of role-playing video games" Loosely defined indeed. But it's still considered a subgenre meaning the action RPG games ARE RPGs.

Right, but that's not the point. I'm saying that genres are defined independently of how immersive the environment/perspective is (unless we're talking about the "immersive sim" genre). Deus Ex, STALKER, Fallout New Vegas, Farcry 2, Half-Life, etc that all contain elements that enhance player identification with the character. They all have a fairly strong narrative, all offer exploration, all contain looting mechanics, etc. Not all of them are RPGs, however. This was the position I was responding to.

Fallout New Vegas is a RPG though And you said again "Deus Ex" alone which is damn close to be an RPG by all definitions unless you were talking again about "Deus Ex: IW" which is farther away from the genre.

I think it is important for people to remember the difference between objective and subjective criteria. Objective criteria make things simple and easy and prevent complaints (if you have less points, you are the loser). Subjective criteria make things complex and difficult and lead to debates and arguments (I had better form while we fought, therefore I win).

If we are going to strive to reach a definition, we should seek to rely on as many objective criteria as possible and shun subjective unless absolutely necessary. Things like "immersiveness" and "identification/connection with the character" are impossible to objectively quantify and therefore should not be used when creating a definition.