Not me. TVTropes has already ruined my life.

Failed again Fly. YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!!!

Its not just BioWare, but other companies too, even Bethesda!

I'll get you some day, Skooma! SOME DAAAAY!!! (Hmm, perhaps I'd have better chances if I didn't warn him first? ...Nah.)

RPGs aren't becoming less relevant. BioWare just doesn't want to make them anymore, and this is their excuse.

I personally don't really like RPG shooters such as borderlands, they are not RPGs to me at all. It'd be ridiculous to say Call of Duties are RPGs because they have perks, lol. Mass effect has never appealed to me either, because it just felt more like a shooter than an RPG. Fallout was barely an RPG to me. I'd hope more fantasy RPGs would come out and this year my call has been answered-with two games. Skyrim and dark souls :vaultboy:

Although dark souls is an entirely different type of RPG than Skyrim.

Dragon age.. I played it, beat it and then never picked it up again. Why? It didn't feel like an RPG, more like a hack-n-slash where you couldn't even control your character.

Why does having guns make it less of an RPG though?

See: Deus Ex, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, System Shock 2

Well, then, haven't you just answered your own question?

"The people in that niche group care, and the people in that niche group have been paying good money in exchange for good games - they don't deserve to be 'betrayed' for big money, and they most certainly don't deserve to be derided as 'fans banging on about'."

I used to feel that way once, because I'd poured hundreds of hours into Morrowind, and spent hundreds of pounds over the years on the games, so surely that made me a more important fan than some casual nublet who just thought the cover looked pretty and picked up the game in the bargain bin?

Nope.

The games developers sell the game to the retailer, and the retailer sells the games to the public. The retailer is the customer, not us, and it doesn't matter one whit to any games developer whether ten people buy one game each or one gamer buys ten games.

Modern companies do want us to like the games because they're human beings and enjoy seeing the public have fun with their products - but at the same time, if four million people buy the game and hate it, they've already bought it, so you are indeed correct that it doesn't matter so much by that point because the sale's been made.

No reason to get too cynical, though. Nobody is in gaming for the money because absolutely everybody involved would earn far more doing almost anything else. All entertainment industries rely on the fact there's a queue to get in, so that keeps wages nice and low, which means you have to be really keen to want to do it. Then again, I know someone whose boyfriend makes awful toy spin-off games for handheld consoles, and if you ever wanted to see what a cynical cash-in looks like, that's it. Compared to that (and to most things, really), Mass Effect 2 is a labour of love - but it's a labour of the things I love rather than the things you love. That's not a value judgement on either you or me, beyond an acknowledgement that my tastes are mainstream and yours are - as you acknowledge - "niche".

Not the guns per ce, it's the way they are all about the game. In borderlands that is the case for example. I can't say of those others as I've never played any of them. I hope you understand what I mean :teehee:

Expected from Bioware..... And I disagreed with. People are not offered good RPG's anymore. How can it be said that they are less relevant when there are none in the making, and people are just forcefed the shooter [censored] and awkward (b)romances? That kind of crap sells, of course, but there is no telling how a wellmade more traditional RPG would sell (where the forced genreblending was left to a minimum) if such a thing was ever made anymore in this age of shooters. DA:O was a decent example (though not a particularly good game) of how a more traditional approach can be succesful -- I have no idea as to why that approach was dropped in favor of DA2 (http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/3043/iwanttobeadragonage.png).

Look at the announcement date. Look at the release date. Draw conclusion.

That is a part of the confusion here. Greedy bastards are greedy, I suppose.

And now, after that, RPG's aren't relevant anymore... go figure.

Yeah, it's mostly the graphics (why else are most JRPGs this generation on the handhelds? Alot less shiny needed for those little screens, compared to big HD flatpanels...)

And you say graphics are for the shallow shooter crowd.... look at the Skyrim forum (supposedly bastion of "true RPG fans"). Skyrim trailer came out, and there were thread after thread about how terrible it looks, how lousy the textures/lighting/etc. Later, thread after thread bemoaning that the fact they're not flogging DX11 for all it's worth is so that they can sell to the "mainstream/dumbed down" console crowd. The people complaining about the graphics? The same names are complaining about the "betrayal" of the game not being an RPG anymore.





I've never really seen Borderlands as an RPG. I see it as "Diablo with guns"..... which is ironic, since Diablo is supposedly an RPG. But from many of the standards people list for "true RPG", the roguelikes have always been iffy - yeah, they have lots of inventory, classes, and stats. But they've got little story, no plot-based decisionmaking, no character development, little "immersion" - especially all the traditional text-based ones..... There's alot of good arguments people could use to say that "ARPGs" like Rogue / Diablo / Titanquest / etc, aren't RPGs. Depends entirely on how broad your definition is, and which features you particularly link to the genre.

No.


Don't put words into my mouth. It's deluded to think one fan is more important than another, and I'd certainly never have such a sense of entitlement that I would consider myself an important fan, because there's no such thing as an important fan. The fact is, though, that if you're someone who's been buying games of a certain developer from the get-go, that you can bloody well consider them sell-outs if they start churning out kiddie games to appeal to the mainstream (read: lazy) crowd. BioWare is in the process of doing this, with employees actually admitting that they don't really care much about the story and characters of the first Mass Effect anymore, and I can damn well call them sell-outs for that, and I most certainly can consider them having less and less right to judge the relevance of RPGs.


Because retailers seriously won't order more copies of a game if it's got good reviews, good promotion, and good sales prospects, right? :rolleyes:


Oh, sure, that's a nice side bonus, and I'm sure the people who actually develop and design the games make them out of love for the medium, but breathing down their necks are a bunch of suits that only care about market figures and bonuses to share-holders, and who simply want their product to sell, whether it's good or not, to as many people as possible. You call me cynical, well, I call it naive of you to think that it isn't so. I'm sure there's prople with true fire for the medium, but to game companies, that's just secondary.


Companies don't think in terms of months - they have long-term plans too, so your liking their game is critical, because by the time FIFA '11.255 comes out, they're already thinking about FIFA '11.280 and how they can market it. Once a game is ready to be released, it's old news already for the game company's market strategists.


Oh I'm sure it started out as a labour of love, but the phrase Executive Meddling exists for a reason. I'll bet my entire year salary on it that the people who designed the game came up with a far more engaging, stimulating and challenging game than the glorified-shooter-with-snippets-of-dating-sim that eventually hit the shelves. I even daresay that without those designers, ME2 would have been a mindless shooter with chainsaws on shotguns, tacky oneliners, fast hovercar chases, half-naked women, and cutscenes that consist of Shepard listening to rap and wearing bling, because that's what sells even more - which proves my point: Executive Meddling has watered down games, despite the fact that the designers still have passion for the genre. Maybe you love ME2 more than ME1, and that's your good right, but I respectfully but completely disagree with your statement that those games were simplified because the designers, and not the sales people wanted it that way.


That's just it. My tastes were not niche ten years ago. They BECAME niche when games went from a product made by dedicated fellow gamers, to a product made to the order of corporate executives, with the intent to cash in. And BioWare, due to EA, is hopping along on that trend, and BioWare has no right calling RPGs irrelevant. Like other people have stated, it should be the other way around: BioWare has become irrelevant to RPGs, and I find it very distasteful that they now claim they no longer make RPGs because they're irrelevant, when really the reson they don't make pure-bred RPGs anymore is to dance to the tunes of cash-hungry EA, which was what this thread was about in the first place, not whether or not my tastes are 'niche' and yours are 'mainstream'.

Who cares about Bioware? They aren't any kind of RPG authority. They lost all of their crediblity as an RPG company when they released DA II.

Also, TOR is just as bad as DA II. 300 mil down the drain. Every single reviewer who has played it says it's horrible, and everyone in the beta who talks about it says it's extremely similar to DA II in all the worst ways.

In reference to the title, drop the colon and the quotation marks and you have the answer you seek.

My god, Storm, I agree with just about everything you say in regards to gaming, especially that. I absolutely hate that "Games are expensive to make" excuse, because it assumes the mechanics, gameplay, and creative ideas are expensive. They're not. I could download developer tools right now and work on gameplay and statistics for an RPG I'd like to make, and for free. Hell, even the graphics are easy to work on, especially so when working with a finished and stable engine. What I can't do for free is market it, create lengthy CGI cutscenes, hire unnecessarily expensive celebrities to do the voices, etc.

If developers actually focused more on making the game for a change, they'd find it doesn't cost much at all to make a game that many a gamer would love and buy. The industry gets worse the more money it has, because not only does it begin to abuse its financial power and turn everything into an interactive movie, but it also (very ironically) gets very greedy to the point that it would rather sell proverbial hot cakes than put forth more effort than the average high budget action film.

I just don't understand. It takes less effort and money to make a good game. The only difference is that they have to pick at their brains for imaginative ideas. You know the industry is in trouble when the gamers themselves can come up with better ideas for games, yet these ideas are never built upon. It's a crying shame. All this big business crap and turning RPGs into rail shooters is just unacceptable. All these new trends, many of them Bioware is making quite an example of, make me not even want to call myself a gamer. Being a "gamer" at this point implies I actually give a [censored] about this trash I see these companies blowing out their asses.

Edit: I'd also like to acknowledge that I know that the manpower itself must be funded, so while I did say above that I can do much of it for free, that doesn't quite apply to the real deal. However, my point was that those elements themselves do not cost much money resource-wise, while crafting that incredibly epic city destruction sequence in MW3 is a huge resource hog just in the animation department, and all for just five minutes of "Wow" material. This is why I respect games like Battlefield more. The production values, animations, and all that "epic" stuff is built into the actual gameplay. It's not something you simply watch; Your actions, and the actions of others, is what makes it epic. More games, especially shooters, should learn from that series.

It's quite clear, from what I've seen of Bioware's most recent games and the upcoming mmo, that Bioware is less interested in making games than they are in making interactive movies. That's fine for some, I suppose, but I have high standards for movies that Bioware does not meet, and when I buy a game, I expect to see some serious gameplay and NOT cutscenes broken up by fights through corridors.

BioWare... :flame:


I agree that BioWare aren't really relevant, anymore. I can't stand what they're doing now, how they're treating their customers, or what they believe an RPG now is. Having started playing RPGs back with Baldur's Gate, it's quite a blow to see my once-favorite company do what they do now.

Behold the power of publishing... turning art into profit margins.

You make it sound like realizing that you agree with me is a harrowing experience!


Well, I do admit that I'm being rather dark in my views on the industry, but yeah, that "Oooh but making games is expensive so they have to be commercially-oriented" is erroneous, and it's what the industry wants you to believe, so they can keep playing it safe with dumbed-down game mechanics and feed you shiny graphics. See, they don't just want the mainstream crowd to buy their games, no, if at all possible, they want the "hardcoe" RPG crowd on board as well, and part of that plan is trying to convince us, the old-school role-players, that they have no choice but to dumb down their games. They do have a choice. They just choose the easy gain way.


Indeed. The many good Indie games are proof of this. So don't believe the "but we gotta do it to survive"-excuse.


Ain't it the truth. Sequel upon sequel, each version a bit more dumbed down than the last, then a reboot, followed by dumbed-down sequels to that reboot.

Thing is, we kinda do it to ourselves. When a company like Obsidian, one of the last 'true to the old school'-companies, releases FO:NV, most people complained about the bugs, when they should have been happy that Obsidian picked up Fallout 3, which was seriously dumbed down from Fallout 1 and 2, and again introduced more role-playing elements to it. But no, the bugs were all everyone could talk about.


Mmmno, that's not the only difference. The thing is, dumbed down rail shooter interactive movies with dating sim elements are a safer bet with higher profit margins. It makes sense that developers make these games. It does not, however, make sense that they exclusively make these games, even companies like BioWare, who always proudly proclaimed to make games for the old-school gamer, to be a company that didn't bow to the demands of the mainstream, big-business industry. I get that every company has to have its cash cow, but that's no excuse for not making other games too. Case in point: choosing to make The Old Republic over Knights of the Old Republic III. Why is this done? Because mummorpugers make more money. Any other reason is a bullcrap excuse.


Well, it's always been so that gamers think up great and viable game ideas. Gamers are, after all, imaginative people. But in the old days, people with such talent (and the right connections), got aboard a game developer, or started their own house - so that the old Interplay slogan 'By Gamers For Gamers' was actually true. Nowadays, people with great ideas simply can't get a foot in the door unless that great idea is also a potential cash cow.



Same here, man. I may sound like I'm just going on a cynical, acidic onslaught against BioWare, but truth is, every word I type makes me even sadder that the company I once held so dear has sold out under the pressure of those bastards at EA.

What a shame.
They were assimilated into the hive that is EA. Soon they will be svcked dry and spat out, nasty way to go.

Ehh, that statement can't be entirely factual. I myself disagree with several of the changes Bethesda has made when it comes to Skyrim, but I don't have a single qualm about the graphics. Graphics are and have to be, a secondary concern in my opinion.

So, yeah, statement disproved.

I think it's Bioware who are becoming less relevant, not RPGs.

(Or did someone beat me to that pun already?)

I meant for people to look at both games. Why is one a good example of high quality RP and the other regarded as much worse than it actually is, despite it having nearly the same depth with only minor cuts? It all boils down to the distance between release and announcement for both, as the flaws that were hidden in Origins, yet absolutely there, are now raw and uncut in plain view in its sequel. That's the problem, lack of polish and generally hurried production.
Given how they now take their time with ME3, I don't think that they are resistant to just learning their lesson. They are only experimenting with the boundaries. Why should that not be allowed?