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[BurnedToast]

He described the vast majority of RPGs ever made - sure there are a few outliers (Bethesda's games mostly) but generally speaking everything he complained about is a staple of the RPG genre. It seems to me he just does not like RPG games. It's like me complaining about racing games because I can't get out of the car and shoot all the opponents.

Even the outliers, the oblivions of the world, have basically the same problems he complains about. Linear quest? check. Oh sure, you can wander off on your own - but to what point. You can become the head of different guilds, but again those are all linear quests and no different then side quests in other games. Sure you can loot everything off a guy but so what? you can't carry it all so you pick and choose the best bits, no different then looting in a standard RPG really. And so on.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what he wants, but I don't think there's ever been a real open-world sandbox RPG type game before (and to be honest it sounds like it would be pretty boring).

[Footkerchief]

generally speaking everything he complained about is a staple of the RPG genre.

That was kind of his point, I thought.  That current RPGs are gameplay boilerplate assembled by companies who've decided that creating new mechanics isn't profitable.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Yeah, well, it's depressing once you notice that rpgs give you, oh no roleplaying at all!

Dragon Age took the cop out and claimed to be an "Action RPG". If you want my full view on Dragon Age, you can read that game's thread- I actually enjoyed it for my one full playthrough(and multiple beginnings until i realized it was the same shit), and then gave it back to the friend I borrowed it from. I will not be playing it again until extensive mods come out. (Instead of working on play balance, let's introduce a one-dimensional dating sim where you bribe girls with jewelry and blacked-out implied sex scenes for a mature rating to give little man-children who will never get laid a sense of accomplishment! Fuck you devs. Fuck you.)

I don't even like D&D, but it's depressing when a couple of million bucks and trained programmers can't come close to the experience of listening to some random neckbeard on the internet making shit up. Neverwinter Nights skirted around this with extensive modding tools, and it made for a great game.

That's why I'm particularly impressed by efforts like Dwarf Fortress to try something different.

[Funk]

Df work because it takes out a lot of over used and stupid ways of doing things
i.e. runing around a full pelt even when your at deaths door and have stuff weighing more than own body in Hammerspace.
in df you crawl in pain that makes you black out from time to time.

the pain and the hard ship make it a better story and so a better game.

[Timst]

Why does most of game programmers (for large companies I mean) release poor games ? Because they lack time. Why do they lack time ? Because player wait for the game, investors (and developers, incidentally) wait for the cash, and during the developing time, no game is released and no cash is earned. Plus, the technology keep upgrading, so the longer you stay on adding custom dialog trees and dynamic shops, the more you'll have to update the graphic engine to keep it up to date.

You know what will be great ? A game that'll constantly be under development, with releases every year or so (after an initial longer development time of course). Think of DF, or better yet, think of all these professional software like Photoshop or Microsoft Office. After releasing a new version of the program, the developers start adding more feature and bug fixes for the next version. But in the videogame industry, once the game is released, everything involved in it's development (short of the 3D and game engine) is discarded, and if they want to make a sequel, they start against from scratch.

Just imagine if Morrowind was still developed. Now we're talking about an almost 10 full years of development. Just imagine : by now, every single NPC will have a unique story, there would be a neat physic engine, modern graphics, a lot more content, etc. But no, they decided to stop developing it after 2 add-ons. All of that would have been added release after release, the same way toady cut his oncoming features into "arcs".
Well, the modders communities compensated it someway... but they do not have complete power. They can add new weapons, new quests, new cities, new textures, but that's almost all. The game engine, physic engine (or it lack thereof), combat mechanism etc... is hardcoded and un-moddable.

[QuantumSawdust]

He described the vast majority of RPGs ever made - sure there are a few outliers (Bethesda's games mostly) but generally speaking everything he complained about is a staple of the RPG genre. It seems to me he just does not like RPG games. It's like me complaining about racing games because I can't get out of the car and shoot all the opponents.

Even the outliers, the oblivions of the world, have basically the same problems he complains about. Linear quest? check. Oh sure, you can wander off on your own - but to what point. You can become the head of different guilds, but again those are all linear quests and no different then side quests in other games. Sure you can loot everything off a guy but so what? you can't carry it all so you pick and choose the best bits, no different then looting in a standard RPG really. And so on.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what he wants, but I don't think there's ever been a real open-world sandbox RPG type game before (and to be honest it sounds like it would be pretty boring).

Even if he does dislike almost all RPGs (not to put words in his mouth), he still clearly sees something he likes in them or he wouldn't have picked that genre as an example of one that is in dire need of improving. And it's not necessarily a poor standpoint to argue "here is a genre I dislike, but it could be so awesome and appeal to a much broader fanbase if the developers do X and Y".

I can relate to that. I loved RPGs when I was in 8th grade and below. I still enjoy old RPGs quite a bit, in fact. They were fantastical, wondrous worlds to explore with numerous challenges and opportunities to prove myself by exceeding the normal gamer. However, as I have grown and seen other genres so have my expectations of RPGs. They do have some glaring flaws that get in the way of my enjoyment. It's hard for me to get immersed in a story when I kill a guy with the armor I've been searching for, only to find he only carries a root on him. And so on. Heck, that bothered me even before RPGs had lootable corpses, but its way worse when they go through the effort to simulate a fallen enemy, but don't simulate even the clothing that enemy wears. Old RPGs didn't even try to simulate many things, so it was less often we were confronted with the contradictions within the game world.

Right now, the market share of people who will not buy games unless they begin to focus on game mechanics as opposed to graphics is smaller than the market share of people who will not buy games if they if they do exactly that. And sadly, probably will be for the foreseeable future.
I guess I would sum up my disappointment with - it's hard to see a genre I appreciate so much getting steadily worse and worse every single year. Yay DF.

[Chicken Launcher]

Upon first entering a new game world, I want to be overwhelmed. I want to have to spend considerable time just getting my bearings, figuring out how everything works, sussing the internal logic of the game universe.

This. One of my favorite parts of starting a new game is having no idea how much depth it has, and then discovering all of the fun little secrets of the world while still learning how to swing my battleaxe.

[Shima]

Upon first entering a new game world, I want to be overwhelmed. I want to have to spend considerable time just getting my bearings, figuring out how everything works, sussing the internal logic of the game universe.

This. One of my favorite parts of starting a new game is having no idea how much depth it has, and then discovering all of the fun little secrets of the world while still learning how to swing my battleaxe.

I get a nice moment of lightheaded excitement when I first begin an open-world game, where you first load in and it's like, "Wow, what can I do here?  What should I do?  What should I see?  Where do I go now?!"  I LOVE that.  You only get that feeling once per game, though.  Coincidentally, that's also why I HATE forced tutorials [Oblivion] and what I call "Midgar Sections" (being locked in a small area for the entire beginning, usually a city of some kind) [Final Fantasy 7 is the namer, Bioware's franchises also tend to do this to you].  Being forced and confined like that seriously robs you of a wonderful feeling when you first start a game, and I seriously hate that.

[Thief^]

On the other hand when I enter a fully open-world game I often get the thought "wow, now what do I do?".
The problem with a lot of open-world games is that they forget to actually put in any information on what you can do. Aimlessly wandering and killing things is only entertaining for so long, and running entirely pointless quests gets boring FAST. If there isn't any way to really make a change to the game world, it's not really worth playing, IMHO.

It would be hard to play DF in a way which didn't impact the game world. Well done Tarn, you're "frickin" awesome.

[dragnar]

In theory, DnD is what all RPGs are attempts to be. A world in which you have a quest, but can do anything you want to achieve it. You could even ignore the quest completely(though the DM might not like that...). Most current RPGs tell a mediocre story, and allow only one way to complete the main quest.

Ironically, I think that the best possible thing that could happen to gaming is another crash. Until that happens, developers won't even bother to create great games, it simply isn't profitable. A crash would destroy the gaming industry, but allow for creativity to return, instead of the current stagnation.

We have the technology to create a sandbox game in which your actions actually mean something, where a story shapes itself as you play. What DF is heading for is proof of this. The only reason this hasn't been done is because companies can create good graphics a lot faster than good gameplay, and the graphics sell better.

[G-Flex]

He described the vast majority of RPGs ever made - sure there are a few outliers (Bethesda's games mostly) but generally speaking everything he complained about is a staple of the RPG genre. It seems to me he just does not like RPG games. It's like me complaining about racing games because I can't get out of the car and shoot all the opponents.

I think the problem here is that "RPG" is so ill-defined as a genre. Open-world story-based RPGs like Morrowind don't try to be hack-and-slash loot-pinata RPGs like Diablo II, which don't try to be FMV-driven totally-linear classic-style JRPGs like Final Fantasy (VII-X), which don't try to be verbose, immersive story-driven games like Planescape: Torment, which don't try to be roguelikes, or whatever DF Adventure Mode is going to end up like, or open-ended games without much of a set story at all like, say, Darklands.

What he described wanting is a rather reasonable form of RPG. You're right to say that nobody's ever completely succeeded at it, because it's a tall order to fulfill, but from what he's said, they hardly even tried and didn't come anywhere close to where other games have been.

[Shima]

Ironically, I think that the best possible thing that could happen to gaming is another crash. Until that happens, developers won't even bother to create great games, it simply isn't profitable. A crash would destroy the gaming industry, but allow for creativity to return, instead of the current stagnation.

We have the technology to create a sandbox game in which your actions actually mean something, where a story shapes itself as you play. What DF is heading for is proof of this. The only reason this hasn't been done is because companies can create good graphics a lot faster than good gameplay, and the graphics sell better.

Exactly.  That's why I want PC gaming to die, so that we can get quality again.

[Dakk]

Woudn't DF also die if PC gaming died though?

[woose1]

I thought Dragon Age: Orgins was fun...

Also: Who said mages were underpowered? Holy crap man, my squad is now 3 meat-puppets who's sole purpose is to keep the zombie/orc things from attacking this guy.

Althought the freindly fire is a bit much. 

*Bam, lightning bolt to the FACE*

[Shima]

Woudn't DF also die if PC gaming died though?

Not in theory.  Since DF has no real stake in the business aspect of PC gaming, it would be entirely unaffected.  Honestly, as far as I'm aware, Tarn makes DF because he wants to make a game, there's no money-motive like all the corporations have.

I suppose a better phrasing would be "I want the PC market to collapse".