Re: Hi, and about "Character Stats Vs. Player Skill"
Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2011 11:48 am
Well, the way I define "character development" it does require a "character". The character being a fictitious person, a role that you play. So any games where you develop something that is NOT a character, or where you even don't play a character, wouldn't be role-playing games. That of course does include tower defenses.
But yeah, I do agree that things are not that easy, especially since there are always cross-over games, deserving the genre-buster award. You cannot define sharp borders in between genres, because there are always some games that defy your definition. But that's a good thing. There should be more of those games.
Still, whatever other factors there are contributing to an RPG - I believe character development is the single biggest one. Nothing else is nearly as important for being an RPG. But there are other things - that's true.
And I'd say roguelikes are RPGs indeed. They are special - not your typical RPG, but RPGs they are nevertheless.
And I don't believe that combat is a mandatory requirement. I'm absolutely sure, that it is possible to create a RPG containing no combat at all.
There is no box you can fit all RPGs into. As I said already, there are always games that do defy any kind of distinction you do come up with.
So don't interpret my statements as things that have to be true for every last RPG in existence - that's impossible. Just consider my arguments to be about the "typical" RPG.
But we are very far off-topic here already. The topic was "Character stats vs. Player skill", and while RPGs are the most prominent example of games featuring Character stats, they aren't the only ones by far. The original blog post was using Diablo as an example, which is a hack&slay ARPG, or a "loot-em-up" if you prefer that term - which is a rather specialized form of RPG.
The basic statement was, that Unreal Tournament is a more sophisticated game than Diablo, since UT requires player skill, whereas Diablo means "shooting a fish in a barrel".
My argument was, that stats based games require player skill too - they may even require more mental player skill than your typical twitch based game. But commonly they don't require nearly as much physical player skill as twitch-based games. But twitch-based skills aren't that important anyways, and that "religion" that shooter games created around "player skill" is mostly bullshit. "Player skill" is only used to claim superiority of one game genre over another.
But yeah, I do agree that things are not that easy, especially since there are always cross-over games, deserving the genre-buster award. You cannot define sharp borders in between genres, because there are always some games that defy your definition. But that's a good thing. There should be more of those games.
Still, whatever other factors there are contributing to an RPG - I believe character development is the single biggest one. Nothing else is nearly as important for being an RPG. But there are other things - that's true.
And I'd say roguelikes are RPGs indeed. They are special - not your typical RPG, but RPGs they are nevertheless.
And I don't believe that combat is a mandatory requirement. I'm absolutely sure, that it is possible to create a RPG containing no combat at all.
There is no box you can fit all RPGs into. As I said already, there are always games that do defy any kind of distinction you do come up with.
So don't interpret my statements as things that have to be true for every last RPG in existence - that's impossible. Just consider my arguments to be about the "typical" RPG.
But we are very far off-topic here already. The topic was "Character stats vs. Player skill", and while RPGs are the most prominent example of games featuring Character stats, they aren't the only ones by far. The original blog post was using Diablo as an example, which is a hack&slay ARPG, or a "loot-em-up" if you prefer that term - which is a rather specialized form of RPG.
The basic statement was, that Unreal Tournament is a more sophisticated game than Diablo, since UT requires player skill, whereas Diablo means "shooting a fish in a barrel".
My argument was, that stats based games require player skill too - they may even require more mental player skill than your typical twitch based game. But commonly they don't require nearly as much physical player skill as twitch-based games. But twitch-based skills aren't that important anyways, and that "religion" that shooter games created around "player skill" is mostly bullshit. "Player skill" is only used to claim superiority of one game genre over another.
