Full reply to your post then...

If you can play the game in different ways and progress, it would be whatever type of game it was with some RPG elements.. As I kinda explained in my first post (badly possibly due to second language)

In that case cannot any game be dismissed as "another kind of game" with an RPG element? RPG element seems to be a catch-all reason to acknowledge without conceding. IMO Skyrim is an RPG because I can play it in several different ways and still progress.

Is it me or is everyone missing the point here?

People say its an RPG because you play a role within the game, you make your own morale choices based on how you perceive the character should act to certain situations. Sure that is most definitely Role Playing and as its in a game that means it must be an RPG. Easy. But you could do that in any game really..

I think the main gripe in Skyrim is there's no gauge for your characters progression with regards to your place and power in the world. Remember its not JUST about roleplaying a character in your head, because thats easy, its also about getting feedback off the game that you are progressing in the world and gaining power or success. It losses that character definition with regards to complimenting your chosen role.

So, I can Roleplay a Thief in Skyrim sure, I can decide not to take certain quests because they would not suit my role. I end up becoming the leader of a band of thieves who don't recognise me as such. This breaks the immersion and leaves you wondering what was the point. Sure, I can just forget about that and continue my escapades as a thief to regain that feeling of role/profession. But the game should compliment my choices to confirm to me that its reacting to the role I'm trying to portray. Thats one thing.

Now to the skills. The perks do a good job at defining my skill set, What's lacking is any representation of my characteristics that tie in with my chosen skills. How am I more agile/dexterous than that warrior or mage I created? Is it because I spent all my points into sneak? Or because my Sneak is at 100? Should there be an indicator that compliments my skill choice which in turn compliments my chosen role? The perk tree should have been a set of skills that are governed by my defining characteristics which shows me how well I can actually do it. Meaning the 0 - 100 is a measure of my roles learning curve with that activity and my governing attribute determines how good I am at performing the the skills within.

Yes I'm talking about Attributes. The very definition of the word defines roleplaying in more ways than just a number, where the number is just the gauge of how good you are at it. It defines and confirms your role and enables the game a way of showing you the time invested with this characteristic. It gives you a sense of character growth and effects how well you can dodge, sneak, jump, roll, etc. By having attributes in a game gives the developer a mechanic to add much more character depth. By taking them out, well we should have guessed how it might turn out.

Definition of Attribute - To consider as a quality or characteristic of the person, thing, group, etc., indicated: He attributed intelligence to his colleagues.

In my opinion attributes define your character further and allows the game to communicate your choices to you within a game world. Its not just a number, it's a measure of power and confirmation to your place in the world that compliments your skill choices and directly reflects how good you are at what you do. By not having this type of measure then in my eyes its not a deep roleplaying game because characteristics tie in to so many different gameplay mechanics. Skyrim of course has RPG elements but its more of a dungeon crawl Action Adventure more than a true RPG that has all those things but with proper character defining quality's. Having to mentally impose your role and not have the game recognise you seems pointless because as I said earlier, you can do that with any game really.


TL;DR?

Does being able to enact a role in your head and force it on a game that does not react to your choices mean its an RPG? I dont think so. True RPG's must have all of the following to be classed as a proper RPG. Sense of Adventure, Dungeon Crawling, Rewarding Exploration. Good Story, Strong Lore, Interactivity, Rich Open Gameworld and most important of all for a sense of purpose, Heavy Character Development Quality's. And just by having attributes in a game as a base to work off, offers mechanics to define all of the above.

You make some good points, but one thing I must say is that it is quite annoying to hear this 'weirdo who lives in a dark basment' arguement. Especially on these forums, I would have thought that people were more aware that you don't have to be a weirdo to enjoy RPG's. I guess they have progressed far enough towards normal gaming that people do think like that, even on an 'rpg' forum.

I would like to point out, I always liked RPG's, and I was known as a sporty kid at school (I didn't do great at school, but won a lot of sport awards). I kept my RPG's when I joined the Army, and when I lived in barracks, some of the biggest scarylooking guys I have ever met borrowed them and enjoyed them. I would love to hear you say that to them... Or me in person.

I'd also like to say that there is no reason it IS weird for guys who like it to spend most of their spare time playing RPG's. In their dark basemant. If you like something, then do it. Jez.

All of them.

So, may I ask then, what RPG features are in those games that's lacking in Skyrim?

Certainly not the dialog options, as the most choice you would get apart from outright interrogation is limited to "yes" and "no".
Certainly not the effect you can do on the world, because apart from the NPCs disposition they just don't care about anything. Even if you are the Leader of all factions in Morrowind, the great Neveraine you are still just called as an "outlander". You might be having nearly all great artifacts of Thamriel, but nobody says a word, apart from saying "your clothes look expensive".

Dungeons and Dragons apparently. And only those before 4e.

Except in those many games that are just loot gathering kill quests, then it is also action adventure. I think this thread has proven there are actually no RPGs at all and we are all victims of one of the most elaborate pranks of all time.

Skyrim is as good as todays RPGs get. Compared to the ones 10 years ago skyrim is nothing but an action adventure, but today it is an rpg. Its a bit sad the industry has become like this..

75% of roleplaying goes on in the players head.
I can't help that kids today don't get that. Call me when you've played the original Final Fantasy.
If you think skyrim's NPC's are vapid..... Just, go play a game made before 1994.
Skyrim will seem like the most engaging game in the world.

For something to be an RPG it needs to be engaging. The world needs to be fleshed out and believable, and I should be engaged to care about its characters.

Question: Is Bethesda going to read any of this, at all, and take any word of it into consideration or are we all complaining to a brick wall?

I wish you had written this to begin with, I could have added it to OP haha..

if you turn off the AI skyrim is a wonderful tool for occupying the kids who just like to interact with the game without the fighting.

keeps my lil girl happy for hours while she runs round stroking sabre cats and trying to ride mammoths.
or play cooking with pots n stuff.

house is much more tidy and quiet since she started playing it.


worth the cost of the game alone.

Completely off-topic but an awesome idea

Took my time wording it so as not to come across as flaming Skyrim and to get my point across properly.

No one will bother to read it.. other than other frustrated players. Some of which try to defend their game in the hopes that it gets better, some [censored]ting on it because they imagined it would be better, and some just trying to wind everyone up!

But there have been some good intelligent replies from both sides, which I enjoyed reading, even if beth wont...

Well, its not that its not an excellent game, because it is.

I really had hoped for it to be more fleshed out, character and world wise.
This is also one of the things Oblivion did poorly, and it received some critique over that, so especially after Fallout: New Vegas showed how it could be done, I had high hopes.
But in many ways the reactions of the world to the player are as poor or even poorer than Oblivions.

What I find particularly dissapointing is how little the world actually changes because of, or reacts to, your actions.
Why dont the people talk about the change in power?
Why are Stormcloak generals still immortal after the civil war ends? I got told there are many Stormcloak camps still out that that had to be dealt with so I went: No problem sir.
Only to find out that if I try I get an angry unkillable person after me. Shoddy.

The writing for the quests and the quest log are, and I didnt think it to be possible, even more shallow and non-existant than in Oblivion.
There was a quest involving Potema. Im a lore junkie, I was so giddy for it.
But does anything remotely interesting happen? Can I side with Potema? Hear her out? No.

In Morrowind and Oblivion at least the bad guy had an interesting speech just before the big show-down.
Alduin? A complete let-down.

Nobody even bothers to tell you anything, you cant ask for clues anywhere, you just have to rely on your magic marker.
All the guild quests are dissapointing. They are short, change nothing in the world and are really just there for the adventurer alone.
Can I help get the reputation of the College back up? Is there some conflict between the fighters guild and thieves guild?

Its just dissapointing.
Maybe I expected too much, but they could pull it off with Daggerfall and Morrowind, so why not now?

Is it me or is everyone missing the point here?

People say its an RPG because you play a role within the game, you make your own morale choices based on how you perceive the character should act to certain situations. Sure that is most definitely Role Playing and as its in a game that means it must be an RPG. Easy. But you could do that in any game really..

I think the main gripe in Skyrim is there's no gauge for your characters progression with regards to your place and power in the world. Remember its not JUST about roleplaying a character in your head, because thats easy, its also about getting feedback off the game that you are progressing in the world and gaining power or success. It losses that character definition with regards to complimenting your chosen role.

So, I can Roleplay a Thief in Skyrim sure, I can decide not to take certain quests because they would not suit my role. I end up becoming the leader of a band of thieves who don't recognise me as such. This breaks the immersion and leaves you wondering what was the point. Sure, I can just forget about that and continue my escapades as a thief to regain that feeling of role/profession. But the game should compliment my choices to confirm to me that its reacting to the role I'm trying to portray. Thats one thing.

Yes I'm talking about Attributes. The very definition of the word defines roleplaying in more ways than just a number, where the number is just the gauge of how good you are at it. It defines and confirms your role and enables the game a way of showing you the time invested with this characteristic. It gives you a sense of character growth and effects how well you can dodge, sneak, jump, roll, etc. By having attributes in a game gives the developer a mechanic to add much more character depth. By taking them out, well we should have guessed how it might turn out.

Now, Skyrim being an RPG or not topic on the side for a second, 4e is godawful. Seriously, terribly bad.

On topic a bit, Skyrim actually does not follow Good vs. Evil paths. While some quests do, the main civil war quest is actually about as grey as grey gets.

Yes, because Skyrim is the only RPG where NPCs don't recognize the things you have done and/or don't show much recognition beyond a line or two. Better revoke its RPG membership away.

Unless there is something more. Oh, I have a bad feeling about this....



But it's tradition! TRA. DIT. ION! RPGs have attributes, you have to have attributes. If you don't you aren't an RPG. TRADITION.

I'd say hogwash, but it should be implied that I think "it's the way things have been done so we should continue doing it that way" a poor argument from my sarcastic use of the word tradition.

TRADITION!

But anway - people talk about hand holding, that is what number column attributes are to me. I want to be entrusted with my character, to take him or her into the world and have him or her grow based upon how I play him or her. I want the mechanics in the back ground, I want sword swinging and lock picking and spell casting and dedication to those and other pursuits to make the character grow. I don't need to see the numbers in his strength and intelligence column.

I neither need or want a game telling me add a number to these numbers in order to increase this number so the number of damage you do takes off more of a number of the enemy's HP when we factor in the number that protects them based on armor. Oh, and you need to solve a riddle? Well lets look at this number (intelligence) compared to this number (difficulty of riddle) etc,

I like RPGing though, so I can live with dice and numbers being something I have to deal with a lot. As long as the setting, story and my role in it are good, and I have choice in how my character moves through the world I am happy to live with it. But I never complain if and when a designer finds a working solution to make the progression of my character more natural and less me playing with his numbers like some kind of Fate. Skyrim is a step in the right direction as it is moving away from tradition for traditions sake when it comes to attributes. I hope they polish the system they have here, improve on it, and don't go back to old school attributes.

That statement eliminates almost all rpgs from that roll, save a handful. So old games like Secret of Mana, or Lufia, or Dragon Quest, or Zelda, or FF2, or any of them . . . guess they aren't rpgs . . .

Ummm......

Point the first: The Elder Scrolls is based more in GURPs (mechanics-wise) than D&D (interface styling until now).

Point the second: The spoken dialogue has seriously hamstrung any roleplaying aspect of the game. You are limited to what has been recorded. Unless you have the facilities to re-record the voices, and the software to integrate it into the game, and the expertise to do all of the above with. If they has stayed with a full text interaction system, instead of going for the 'let's tell the grubs at story!' concept, then the user community could rewrite and add as many branches to quests as the buffer allows. We could create our own quest lines, as complicated as the system could handle.

Point the third: You can't really call it roleplaying when you wind up 'roleplaying' the exact same character. From what I've seen ingame, and heard from trusted other sources (and can check in the game guide), you essentially start with the same character; You get to pick the face, race, and gender. Wow. Talk about character control. And unless you expend an insane amount of effort, you wind up with the same character; a multi-weaponed, high level magic using tank. No real choice, no consequences of choice.

Point the fourth: The quest design is hideously flawed, from a roleplaying point. Dialog is one issue; linearity is the other. Side quests are kind of excusable, but the main storyline? You have one point where you find your are Dovahkin. But how many people would jump at that....and how many would shake their heads in denial and hide somewhere? There should be one of two other points where Destiny slaps you upside the head to get your attention (my design would be a combination of timers and trigger events; meeting the graybeards could be another pivotal point....or having one of them leave High Hrothgar if you are hiding, and seeking you out. A final decision point would be you getting caught in a full out dragon attack on a helpless city. And if you choose to turn away, then you start another timer for Alduin to end the world in fire and destruction....leaving you the last being alive....until the end). Consequences. Those are all glossed over for the so called 'casual gamer'. In the civil war, you have one side of the other.....and neither of them are particularly worthy. But you can also see that the whole event is being stage managed behind the scenes by the Thalmor. I don't know about you, but I can see a whole bloody epic in finding out that truth, getting the evidence, then dealing with Tullius and Ulfric like the brats they are. Ideas like this are why so many 'old schoolers' talk about branching text; you don't have to waste 10 gigabytes of storage space (and pay for and record) enough voice acting to give you some real choice. You could add 20 branch points to -every- NPC in Skyrim and all that would fit in the fraction of space needed for vocals.....leaving room for other things.

Point the fifth: Bling. Simple, linear, easy to understand attributes has given way to an interface more designed for an Iphone (Todd's words, btw). Not because its good design; but because its bling.

Point the sixth: Can't be Duke Nukem; there's no babes and bazoooms!

I dont care.
Morrowind could do it, and so could Daggerfall.
Oblivion and Skyrim could not.