Role-Playing Games: General

[StuR328]

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Animavore wrote:

If I had to choose, I'd go with Dark Souls

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manly men would say Demons's Souls'es's tho

[karlosswan]

Travelling at night is genuinely worrying!! Well as much as it can be in a game. I've just played an hour in the dark battling to get to morning. Morning came, a dragon appeared and battered me!!! I forgot to save!!! Save often!!

[steveeire]

Mass Effect 3.... *runs*









































no but srsly Skyrim is hands down the best RPG around at the moment. Value for money goes a long way to make a great game.

[Soilderblue]

Dragons Dogma.

[seraphim_falconu]

Skyrim. But both are fun.

It's just that Elder Scrolls games are "live in this world" games. The kind of games I dreamed about as a young lad playing games like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Something different from the shooters, the GTAs and even the Saints Rows style of gaming. Something that almost transcends gaming. 

Now, we can all be elitist hipsters here and trash Skyrim because we're so cool, but it represents something great in the gaming industry. One of the biggest games of 2011 was an RPG, and a pretty nerdy one at that. For a long time, such games were relegated to a small niche of gaming, an industry overrun with mindless twitch shooters. Now a game in which you can sit in a library and read books all day was a massive success. This is the golden era of gaming.

Dragon's Dogma's best point is its combat and everything else it doesn't seem to know what to do with. It seems like a cool enough game but I couldn't possibly recommend it over Skyrim. Most of the bashing Skyrim gets is from a small but vocal minority that hates having fun. It still blows mind when I think that they sell this game for the same price as a 4 hour Call of Duty game.

 

[InfiniteStates]

And Dragon's Dogma is a mindless twitch shooter?

I'm sure Skyrim is fun - if you don't fight anything. Or you fight only with arrows/magic. Or you don't want to play in third-person.

I know that if one of your core game mechanics is bland (i.e. melee combat), adding polish on top is akin to trying to polish a turd. I play these types of games to kill stuff and nick there ever improving loot. To me that is fun, and that is where Skyrim lacks.

[seraphim_falconu]

What is this I don't even...

People always act like Bethesda has personally wronged them for Skyrim not having the #1 first person
 melee combat system in the industry. They can name only Dead Island, Condemned and 1 or 2 other 
games that do it better yet they act as if Todd Howard himself has broken into their home and kicked
 their dog.

You play games mainly for the combat. That concept is completely foreign to me, I can't identify with it.
Of course, I'm the guy who fast forwards through the action scenes in movies. I do like some good
fighting but he defining moment in my hobby as a gamer was playing Majora's Mask. With the open
world, and NPCs going about their little schedules, even changing weather; my mind was opened to
the idea of games being more than simple arenas, but fully realised worlds that one could reside in.

From then on, I always enjoyed RPGs but they didn't satisfy the urge that Majora's Mask planted in me.
Then I found Morrowind. I've played games that made me breathless with excitement. Literally breathless, caught up in an epic moment after hours of context. But never have I felt a sense of context so interwoven into the fabric of a place like I do in Morrowind. I feel breathless with just making a loot run from some cave in the Bitter Coast to Balmora. Because I can feel the history. I can feel every footfall,
 every breath of dust. I can feel the thousands of years of living, dying. I can feel that island pulsing with the heartbeat of a martyred god. Why would I care about combat after that? 

Skyrim is a lot like that, but with the technology to make the world much more realistic and engrossing.
The melee combat is serviceable no matter how much drama queens overstate its flaws. And if you're 
playing the game right, it's the last thing you'll be thinking about - if you even choose melee fighting
over the other 2/3 of combat, or for some strange reason try to play a game that was very deliberately
focused on first person mode (one of many steps to immerse you in the game world) in third person mode instead.

So maybe Dragon's Dogma is the obvious choice for people who don't care about lore, quests, 
immersion, roleplaying, fully realised game universes or anything but combat. If that's what you want.
 Although, in that case, people say Dark Souls has the best combat. In fact, the combat was pretty good
on NES games, so if the combat is all you care about, there's no reason to play another system.

If something besides the penultimate melee experience drives you, Skyrim is the game to choose
between the two. 

[InfiniteStates]

That started out ok, but then you devolved into personal attacks due to a difference of opinion and it became apparent it's just an idiotic rant.

Combat is a core component unless you want to just wander around and not progress any quests. If that core component is bland, then it's like putting a Fiesta engine in a Ferrari body.

I'm not denying Skyrim has things going for it, but it also lacks. If that leaves you feeling butt-hurt, well I'm sorry, but that is not my fault.

[seraphim_falconu]

I don't know that I did say anything you should feel insulted by, unless your skin is thin.

You didn't address the main point, which is that the 1/3 of combat which is 1/2,000th of the game isn't really as bad as people hyperbolically state. If melee combat is boring in Skyrim, then all melee combat is dull. What makes any other fighting superior? As a person for whom in roleplaying games, combat is just a means to an end, I can't identify with what the big deal is.

As far as I can tell, this "Skyrim's melee combat is bad" thing is just a meme that caught on and got progressively more exaggerated. It's just one of the ways your character interacts with Skyrim and it works just fine.

If you think that Skyrim's melee combat isn't great, cool story. But then why does it come across as a personal vendetta? You'd think people would just say "as a combat-focused gamer, I don't think Skyrim's combat is wonderful and I recommend Dark Souls/Dragon's Dogma". But whether because Skyrim's a smashing mainstream success and they can't figure out why or what; but people are quite bitter about the whole thing. 

[InfiniteStates]

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seraphim_falconu wrote:

I don't know that I did say anything you should feel insulted by, unless your skin is thin.

You didn't address the main point, which is that the 1/3 of combat which is 1/2,000th of the game isn't really as bad as people hyperbolically state. If melee combat is boring in Skyrim, then all melee combat is dull. What makes any other fighting superior? As a person for whom in roleplaying games, combat is just a means to an end, I can't identify with what the big deal is.

As far as I can tell, this "Skyrim's melee combat is bad" thing is just a meme that caught on and got progressively more exaggerated. It's just one of the ways your character interacts with Skyrim and it works just fine.

If you think that Skyrim's melee combat isn't great, cool story. But then why does it come across as a personal vendetta? You'd think people would just say "as a combat-focused gamer, I don't think Skyrim's combat is wonderful and I recommend Dark Souls/Dragon's Dogma". But whether because Skyrim's a smashing mainstream success and they can't figure out why or what; but people are quite bitter about the whole thing. 

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There are no attacks - I don't know why I wrote that... But that still doesn't change the fact that you are assuming I don't like Skyrim's combat because I'm a mindless sheep following some internet meme, rather than being entitled to my opinion. I find the opinion that it is a meme ridiculous, but that is your choice.

The combat is flat and dull, in my opinion. There is no sense of connection. The only reason I resent Skyrim for that is because it denies me the experience. If it had decent combat, it would no doubt be my game of the year. I certainly don't resent others for liking it, and wish it every commercial success.

But don't tell me I'm not able to form or hold my own opinions. Some people only like fine wines, and some will drink any wine. And to me, Skyrim is a house wine, albeit in a big bottle.