I'm roleplaying just fine.

I'm guessing you just svck at TES games and roleplaying in general.

the true definition of rpg is about taking the role of a character, becoming a character, the elder scrolls series are the most accurate rpg by far.

One of the things I didn't like is that you are forced to accept all quests basically unless you quit the conversation, and most of the quests (except the Daedric ones, which are the best quests IMO) can only have an outcome. And it mostly involves going into a dungeon.

Also, for most of the quests, there's no dialogue options, basically you just press E to listen to the next sentence from the NPC. You can't choose what to answer, and you're forced to say things even if you'd not want your character to say them.

I classify most of those things as a lack of RP, so I kinda agree with OP.

well, I am signing off to play some skyrim and although I am unhappy with certain aspects of this game I still love skyrim immensely.

I've turned down many quests by simply walking away.
That's what one of my characters did when she started chatting with the kid asking for the DB.
I just roleplayed that my character found this request unacceptable and simply walked away.

What's wrong with that?

Do you need the game to do everything, give every option that millions of players may want? Impossible. Everyone wants something different.

If you want to really roleplay...do it. Pretend...make believe...use your freekin' imagination once in a while.

Did you honestly feel that the "anything" was the literal "anything", or "in the context of anything in the game?". Obviously your mage character will not be developing the space shuttle in Skyrim after a good four year engineering college and a post-grad education in the aerospace field, but in the literal definition, that qualifies as "anything"

It's a great game, it's just i don't agree with a few design decisions. A few of which are:

Guild ranks, you get a better sense of progression when a higher member promotes you and maybe gives you a gift along with it.

Guild requirements, i can be a full on theif and become archmage of the College Of Winterhold. Something wrong
there and i don't think anyone can disagree that this
feature should be in place.

Multiple choices for quests, more choices and decisions to make in quests would make quests much more interesting.
When i can have a direct influence on the outcome of a
quest makes things more immersive rather than i completed X quest and it played out for me (having no
choice).

And... Skyrim has the stats and (in)abilities that allow differentiation between characters. My Khajiit light-armored archer+Two-handed swordswoman cannot play the same way as my Orcish Heavy Armor Sword+Board character.

It really isn't. There are zero choices in at least 90% of the quests (more of what I define an RPG being than stat crunching all day long). It's either:

A. Do the quest the way it's set up and ONLY that way
or
B. Don't do the quest (AND have it sit in your log FOR-EH-VUR)

That's just lazy quest design. Cut out the `50000000 fetch quests and give me something with some real meat to it, some cause-and-effect, CONSEQUENCES FOR MY CHOICES.

I mean, don't worry too much Bethesda, other RPGs have only been doing that for 15 years...

Time to put the game back into the box and move on?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_video_game:

Terminology - Pretty much there.
Settings - Fantasy, yeah. There.
Game Mechanics - This one is what so many are having issues with.
One/Several Character(s) - One plus followers, so yeah, check.
Fulfilling quests - Check, except according to others, quite slim.
Developed story-telling and narrative elements - yeah, kind of, but behind the scenes (lore).
Player character development - I would have to say yes here, but it could have been more nuanced. Daggerfall was way better.
Complexity - Despite new things to do, I don't think anyone can say yes to this one.
Replayability - I don't know yet, but I suspect I'll be doing the exact same dungeons.
Immersion - Mixed feeling. Immersive as hell at times, then there are things that throw it completely out the window (3rd person).
Electronic medium removes the necessity for a gamemaster - Right, because rules and complexity is down the drain.

Colors indicate my own ratings as far as relationship to the definition and how successful that was. Too much red and yellow there imho.

I'm not disputing that. I was calling out the suggestion that stats are outdated given the ability to determine results through player skill.

You're right.
This is a 2d side scroller...

A viable concern. Although I do believe, for example, the Chief of Police in your town doesn't have to be the strongest, smartest, fastest, best-shooting cop on the force, because in the context of his "guild", he needs to be the best Administrator, that's all, in a game like Skyrim, it is necessary to have some sort of tangible guild structure that the character can advance in only by reaching several thresholds for skill, comparable with the rank he or she wants to attain.

Your thief? No reason he can't become archmage. But he should have to be a damn good mage to do it, and the questline should have held up advancement in several stages so that by the time the questline ends, the thief can reasonably hold that rank

@Hoblak

Fair on all accounts, however the replayability and immersion are defiantly more opinionated then te others in your list.

Some of the things you have in red are similarities to pen and paper RPGs, not requirements to being an RPG. And as a person who played and ran those back in the day, I can disagree with Wiki on several aspects. Such as 'complexity'. Being very complex was not a requirement at all.

When I hear people complaining they can't roleplay in "Oblivion" and "Skyrim" I have to ask myself is it the games that are dumbing down or the people trying to play them.

Azrael
The Nord with the Sword

Actually the game mechanics from this game are pretty much copied from another one.


^ This. It says it quite clear. They're no longer games. "They're visually rich experiences." FFXIII, DA2, TESV, all of them fit into what RPGs have become.

And yet, the Giants manage it with just a boulder, large tree branch, and (un)lucky volunteer.

...That's because the [censored] Psjiics are just as bad as the Thalmor in the field of dikeing around with people. Yeah, the college gets screwed over, but that's because the Psjiics are dikes.

What RPGs are you talking about? Skyrim is no worse than Bioware in the "Meaningless Choices" department: Bioware just happens to give you meaningless dialogue that railroads you no matter what you do.

At least in Skyrim, you can choose to force alternate paths. Sure, the log may not record it, but the extra gear and corpses lying around town say otherwise (Someone decided to go "Omnicidal Neutral" in the Forsworn Conspiracy quest, for example)

Hmm... I find the questlines to have "developed story-telling and narrative elements" - If there's any problem, it's that you can choose to go off-the-rails with them.

Character development: Skyrim makes your character actually dynamic. In previous games, as far as the game was concerned "Once a Sword-Wielding Warrior, always a Sword-wielding Warrior"... Even if you diversify into axes, dual-wielding, Restoration, and Enchanting.

Complexity: Certainly more complex than any action or Adventure game. Have you seen what the Optimizers have come up with using Enchanting, Smithing, Alchemy, and spell-casting? (Answer: Unlimited destruction spells. Blizzards that out-damage dual-dagger sneak attacks, Monsterous poison effects). And without the Cheat Sheets, the Atronach Forge is a complex headache. Spell and weapon synergies, counterintuitive behaviors, and the like are prolific in Skyrim - just not to the extent as in previous games.

Replayability - Aside from the main quest, only if you're boring. There are far too many dungeons for me to even comprehend doing them all in the same order the same way with all my characters. Radiant Story ensures that many quests aren't the same across multiple playthroughs. It's certainly above and beyond anything Bioware or Black Isle put out, as well as the last two TES games.

Electronic Game Master - The combination of Radiant Story and Random Number God replicate the experience a lot better than any RPGs I've played.

I know what a Role Playing Game game is.

I'm saying that sometimes rules needs to be complex to make sense. Take Realms of Arkania, where (iirc) skills could be modified by three attributes (and not all attributes were good ones), and/or varied among classes how they were distributed. In TES there were always only a single attribute per skill, making them shallow. Now however, attributes are completely gone.

Numbers are needed for me to see where I'm at. Unlike a dice RPG, I don't have to know or use any of the underlying maths to get going. Instead that happens completely in the background only showing the results as numbers. Since computerized, the rules themselves can be complex as hell without bogging down the player. That's what's caused the simplifications used in some dice RPG system. It was required to get by. For players (not so much true for those developing, coding, , exploit prevention, and balancing the system ) that is no longer the case. So why the hell are we going in the wrong direction?

With computer power, rules should get more complex to allow the finer differences that makes things make more sense, instead they become simpler for every iteration of the game.

Maybe not true for all, but believability is a huuge factor for me when I game. That is also why I would like to have "hardcoe mode" which could implement these finer things. For those not wanting that level of realism, toggle off that button and play without the added level of cause and effect.

Skyrim is not an RPG!*

* based on certain very specific and restrictive definitions of RPG

This game is what you make of it. If you play it like an action game, then it's an action game. I play it like an RPG. I get immersed within the world (that's why I buy these games) and my characters. To me this game is an RPG. No one can tell me otherwise how my to experience the world Bethesda provided for us. If I so choose one day to play it in hack-n-slash fashion...then so be it. But in the mean time, I'll take my time and just wander around and live in the province of Skyrim.

Err, not everyone think that Skyrim is a RPG per se, it is more an Action-RPG or Hack'n'slash RPG ... Ultima 7, for exemple, is closest to what a RPG should be and that's light years away from any TES tbh.
And, please, don't fall into the Bioware Battlefield : Mass Warfare Effect III A-RPG syndrom : there has been no true RPG for sell for years, it is just marketing.

To RPG or not RPG that is the dice roll.