"you sit in a bar, now interact a bit" is story, so it's a requirement for an RPG.
I understand people sometimes don't play dice to decide what happens, but you normally can't just say "my warrior will cast a fireball at those goblins!". There are limits and they are necessary when playing a game with a bunch of people.
I agree that it's nice when the game actually makes your skills relevant to the plot but I wouldn't say that any game not doing that is not an RPG.
If you can't influence the plot, you can't role play.
With predefined choices you don't play a role
If the game designer gives enough reasonable choices to the player, then it's possible to role play. It's not like you can do *anything* in pen and paper either, I know there are exceptions to the rule, but the usual way of role playing involves a set of mechanics that can be implemented in today's CRPGs, I think Fallout New Vegas is a step in the right direction.
Insisting on a strict set of rules
If we remove the player's ability to change the main story, then even Mario is an RPG. ME is just a Mario game with sophisticated graphics and poor gameplay.
Fallout New Vegas, you can choose who is going to rule the Strip and your path through the game changes completely depending on who you choose.
I can't remember any more games right now.
Just because I set myself up as "Chaotic Evil" doesn't mean I won't help my teammate with her family issues, I may just do it to get into her pants
You are still being limited by your character attributes. If you were playing an evil character and did something good for people then you would be penalized by the game master.
Mass Effect 2 simply decides not to, and similarly that doesn't make it *not* an RPG.
I've never seen an RPG that doesn't have character evolution. Do you know any?
ME2 fits that perfectly, as TFA (and even TFS) show
The TFS shows your choices affecting companions, not the main quest.
RPG doesn't even need a "main" story to begin with
Here is the bare minimum a game must have to be an RPG:
- Player actions must be limited by character attributes;
- Player character must be able to evolve his attributes and skills;
- Player actions must be able to change the *main* story completely, not just side quests (companion stories are side quests);
- Player character attributes and skills must be considered during conversations with key NPCs adding and removing dialog options and changing the *main* story;
The main story cannot be changed and Sheppard's attributes are not considered in conversations with key NPCs, thus ME2 is not an RPG. Basically, you play as a role, you do not role play.
Free software is developed by developers for themselves first. If someone else wants to use it, fine, but it's not the primary objective. So it only succeeds if it does what the developers wanted it to do.
No, it's a direct result of their choice to implement their own Java VM. Sun has been developing theirs for 20 years now, why not use that? The HotSpot beats C in many benchmarks already.
I think they said you couldn't use 3D features from OtherOS, so homebrew wasn't very interesting. My bet is that Sony did a very good job indeed and it was necessary four years to break the PS3 even though it's not completely done yet (you can't run software written on your own Blu-ray).
Nope, there are tons of libraries that support almost everything needed to develop for these platforms, I personally don't have any major problems with compatibility.
I think they should just sue everyone they think is pirating their game instead of sending a threat first. This way justice will decide what should be done and there will be no blackmailing.
Blame Canonical and Apple for not following the Bluetooth standard properly.
Now you get my point, they are not able to implement the standard properly because the standard is so complex. That's the root of the problem and that's why wifi is better.
My android phone notifies me about phone calls and sms messages I get on my Windows 7 desktop over bluetooth just fine. Now try this on Ubuntu or Mac and see what happens, nothing. Same app, same protocol, even same implementation (bluez on android and ubuntu)! I wrote the desktop program (http://code.google.com/p/android-notifier/) and we have a lot of people complaining that it doesn't work, the bluetooth stack generates cryptic error messages that does not mean anything because the OS decided to use its underlying socket abstraction to do RFCOMM I/O, errors during I/O are silently ignored, that sort of thing.
IBM never implemented support for bluetooth in J9 JVM for my palm zire 72, you know why? Bluetooth is just a mess, it didn't work correctly with Windows XP at the time and alternative implementations like SuperWaba wouldn't implement a bluetooth API, they would expose it as a socket abstraction.
We are better off using wifi that is better standardized and focused (just TCP/IP I/O) instead of bluetooth and its profiles, modes of operation, etc.
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one decision at the end of ME1 greatly affects the setting of ME2
Those are two different games and the main quest about the reapers is not affected.
I agree that it's nice when the game actually makes your skills relevant to the plot but I wouldn't say that any game not doing that is not an RPG.
If you can't influence the plot, you can't role play.
With predefined choices you don't play a role
If the game designer gives enough reasonable choices to the player, then it's possible to role play. It's not like you can do *anything* in pen and paper either, I know there are exceptions to the rule, but the usual way of role playing involves a set of mechanics that can be implemented in today's CRPGs, I think Fallout New Vegas is a step in the right direction.
Insisting on a strict set of rules
If we remove the player's ability to change the main story, then even Mario is an RPG. ME is just a Mario game with sophisticated graphics and poor gameplay.
I've played very enjoyable RPGs where that never happened
Ok, I agree, one less requirement :)
some games don't even have a main story
How do you play a role without a story?
Rarely happens in real RPGs, because this sort of thing tends to be "roleplayed out".
Within the limitations of your character, otherwise there is no point in defining a character.
real roleplaying going on
Obviously, there isn't truly free roleplaying in computer games, but it's entirely possible to have a little in the form of pre-defined choices.
Fallout New Vegas, you can choose who is going to rule the Strip and your path through the game changes completely depending on who you choose. I can't remember any more games right now.
Just because I set myself up as "Chaotic Evil" doesn't mean I won't help my teammate with her family issues, I may just do it to get into her pants
You are still being limited by your character attributes. If you were playing an evil character and did something good for people then you would be penalized by the game master.
Mass Effect 2 simply decides not to, and similarly that doesn't make it *not* an RPG.
I've never seen an RPG that doesn't have character evolution. Do you know any?
ME2 fits that perfectly, as TFA (and even TFS) show
The TFS shows your choices affecting companions, not the main quest.
RPG doesn't even need a "main" story to begin with
How do you play a role without a story?
Here is the bare minimum a game must have to be an RPG:
- Player actions must be limited by character attributes;
- Player character must be able to evolve his attributes and skills;
- Player actions must be able to change the *main* story completely, not just side quests (companion stories are side quests);
- Player character attributes and skills must be considered during conversations with key NPCs adding and removing dialog options and changing the *main* story;
The main story cannot be changed and Sheppard's attributes are not considered in conversations with key NPCs, thus ME2 is not an RPG. Basically, you play as a role, you do not role play.
Mass Effect is not an RPG.
I suppose it's some kind of CMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system) written mostly in Java.
Free software is developed by developers for themselves first. If someone else wants to use it, fine, but it's not the primary objective. So it only succeeds if it does what the developers wanted it to do.
I expect the gap to close over time
Me too, but it'll take a LONG time...
direct result of their choice to use Java
No, it's a direct result of their choice to implement their own Java VM. Sun has been developing theirs for 20 years now, why not use that? The HotSpot beats C in many benchmarks already.
real-time applications
I don't think it means what you think it means.
I think they said you couldn't use 3D features from OtherOS, so homebrew wasn't very interesting. My bet is that Sony did a very good job indeed and it was necessary four years to break the PS3 even though it's not completely done yet (you can't run software written on your own Blu-ray).
We'll still get great java and other JVM based language libraries from Apache.
If you have specific technical issues with java portability, I'm all ears, otherwise, you're the one drinking some kool-aid.
Nope, there are tons of libraries that support almost everything needed to develop for these platforms, I personally don't have any major problems with compatibility.
Java! Write once run anywhere. With a different GUI for each platform obviously.
You're not talking about Assange, you're talking about the guy that leaked the data in the first place.
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Why are you disgusted?
I think they should just sue everyone they think is pirating their game instead of sending a threat first. This way justice will decide what should be done and there will be no blackmailing.
Two-thirds of the total people who died were civilians. That's obviously uninteresting!
Blame Canonical and Apple for not following the Bluetooth standard properly.
Now you get my point, they are not able to implement the standard properly because the standard is so complex. That's the root of the problem and that's why wifi is better.
Just look at all those profiles and protocols. If they wanted it to work, they would keep it simple so everyone could interoperate without issues. See my previous comment: http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1838654&cid=34020828
My android phone notifies me about phone calls and sms messages I get on my Windows 7 desktop over bluetooth just fine. Now try this on Ubuntu or Mac and see what happens, nothing. Same app, same protocol, even same implementation (bluez on android and ubuntu)! I wrote the desktop program (http://code.google.com/p/android-notifier/) and we have a lot of people complaining that it doesn't work, the bluetooth stack generates cryptic error messages that does not mean anything because the OS decided to use its underlying socket abstraction to do RFCOMM I/O, errors during I/O are silently ignored, that sort of thing. IBM never implemented support for bluetooth in J9 JVM for my palm zire 72, you know why? Bluetooth is just a mess, it didn't work correctly with Windows XP at the time and alternative implementations like SuperWaba wouldn't implement a bluetooth API, they would expose it as a socket abstraction. We are better off using wifi that is better standardized and focused (just TCP/IP I/O) instead of bluetooth and its profiles, modes of operation, etc.
Bluetooth just doesn't work. It's was never meant to work and is more complex than it should.