kris
Those are great points. I certainly don't think that's the best thing I've ever written about RPGs, and I agree with pretty much all of your criticisms of the piece as an argument. I especially agree that it's a big old ramble that doesn't really end up going anywhere, which is a problem I face a lot.
I don't necessarily agree with your assessment of the current industry, but I agree with more of what you just said than I agree with what I said in the original post.
But I would argue that part of the problem is the context within which it's been presented here versus the context within which it was originally composed. While I agree that a stronger, more well-researched/reasoned argument is always better, and that my piece has major flaws that I would have attempted to address in subsequent drafts, I think it's important to remember that I was commenting on another person's post, not presenting an argument in a vacuum. There's a difference between a comment on a blog post and a blog post. Had I known my analysis was going up here before I wrote it, I would have built a stronger case, not relied on assumption much or at all, and gone through multiple drafts of the post. But that, to me, is the stuff of blog posts and essays, not comments. Comments are meant to raise points and provoke discussion, not to conclusively prove a point.
Also, it's actually meant as a "devil's advocate" piece, not a defense. It's me trying (and failing, obviously) to find the logic in arguments that seem counterintuitive, not me defending counterintuitive arguments.
None of which excuses the shoddy level of argumentation on display. I regret that, and I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to dismantle my argument piece by piece. I love criticism, because it challenges me and helps me improve as a writer.
As far as my "wanting to be contrarian" is concerned, I think there is probably some of that in there - it's always good to challenge an ingrained opinion, if only to strengthen said opinion. But nothing I said was said solely to troll, if that's what you're implying. I was trying to see the logic in the other side of the argument, as I mentioned above. If you equate that with trollng, then by your definition I was, but I wasn't
trying to piss anyone off.
Oh, and the flippant response to idonthavetimeforthiscrap's post was simply because I doubt I'll ever convince him or her of a damn thing. If "Decent RPGs aren't for kids" is his starting point, then we have nothing to talk about, because I think decent RPGs are for everyone willing to engage with them. That's notably different from saying that decent RPGs are for everyone, period; I think
that sentiment is what got us into trouble in the first place. As Josh Sawyer has rightly noted, designing mechanics explicitly for people who hate those mechanics is simply a bad idea.
Oh, and just to give you an idea of what I absolutely fucking despise about modern RPGs: "awesome buttons" (which didn't even fucking work as a design tenet in Dragon Age 2; the only thing that it helped with was giving better visual feedback to the player, which should've been done in the first fucking game anyway, but it wasn't, because they played too much fucking WOW and it made them forget that simply showing glowy status effects isn't proper goddamn visual feedback on any level when you're not looking at sprites from overhead - and no, I didn't play Origins in "Baldur's Gate 2" mode, because it was annoyingly disorienting to
constantly be going into zoomed-in cinemas with fancy camera tricks and then smash-cutting to me looking down from the sky at teeny-tiny people), mandatory tutorials, irritatingly exact quest markers, the way they dole out constant meaningless gratification, choices that might as well be "press X to evil," no choices at all, an exclusive focus on combat mechanics at the expense of non-combat mechanics, an exclusive focus on lethality at the expense of nonlethal play, combat that is solely based around hitting the bad guy until he dies (we have Diablo and its ilk for that, thanks - and yes, I am far too fond of long parenthetical asides, and I do recognize that it's a flaw), a near-total lack of roleplaying options for my class outside of combat, the MMO mentality that's infected single-player games, the belief that a fetch quest is anywhere near an actual side quest, Bioware tunnel design (good name for it!), childishly written and hideously overbearing romances designed to make the player (as opposed to the PC) feel like he has a significant other, the way those romances are structured by the game design to be "rewards" for the player, mannequin sex scenes where the clothes stay on because Fox News, the way it's impossible to find out details about some characters
without romancing them, the complete lack of optional content or exploration, the way everyone seems to have heard of my character and his or her heroic deeds and thus feels duty-bound to remind him or her of them at every opportunity, morality meters, essential NPCs, unkillable children (either don't put them in the world or let me be as horrible to them as I am to anyone else), the trend of entirely removing interesting features rather than spending development time fixing them, the way efficient design is prioritized over the quality of the player's experience, the focus on better graphics over better gameplay, the weak writing, the lack of tactical variety, the lack of party control, the lack of granular mechanics, the focus on giving minmaxers what they want, the adherence to fantasy cliches, the focus on "save the world" plots, the way a lot of the most interesting lore could almost be from an entirely separate game given how little of it is actually on show or affects the mechanics, the way the player's idiocy is taken for granted, the way companions are forced on me whether I want them or not, the lack of party creation, the insistence on giving the PC a voice, the lack of a good overhead/isometric perspective, the way the hand of the designer roughly shoves me along along a certain path instead of gently guiding me, the insistence on bashing me over the head with declarative dialogue explaining the lore, the stupidity of so many NPCs... The list, perhaps surprisingly, goes on.
Many of these things were not always issues for me, it's true. Many of them are also ones I can ignore. The Baldur's Gate/KOTOR comparison I laid out in my post is based entirely on the way I felt when both of those games came out, not on the way I feel now. I would have probably appreciated an "awesome button" very much when I was younger. I don't care about it now, and it wouldn't have fixed the real problem anyway.
Sabriana
The reason I didn't answer your question is because Kris is right. That statement was an unequivocally stupid one to make, and it's the bit I regret putting in there more than any other. What I
meant by it was that because there are less choices, the ones that are still in the games can feel (and I do mean "feel," because they aren't serious at all unless you buy into the illusion of choice something like Mass Effect creates) more serious and life-or-death, because you aren't constantly making choices.
I definitely don't agree with that argument, and in fact find it heinous, which is why I was careful to say it "could be argued" and not that I was the one arguing for that point. Not that that helped people understand what I was saying any better. Also, "meaningful" was the wrong word for what I was getting at anyway. "Serious" or "impactful" is better.
Daemongar was actually the one who mentioned kids first.
Todd Howard stated in MANY video interviews how he prescribes to the ideas that the player should have constant ego stroke feedback, not be locked out of being able to do anything (why the fuck do they even bother putting skills in TES since he wants to negate their purpose), and for as many quests to be as epic as possible (why so many 'save the world' quests are in the game outside of the main story). Obisidian tried to reinstate all of the RPG mechanics Todd and his trained monkeys ripped out of the formula, but I just don't see BGS learning anything from that. OE put in a ton more stat and skill checks for dialogue and world interaction options, gave SPECIAL attributes more impact on skills (still not as much as the original games though), and tweaked the damage and armor systems a bit back toward the original instead of TES's generic, shit system. BGS were either geniuses in the way they made 3 accessible to the console masses and are gradually incrementing the design toward real RPG status; or more likely they threw the old fans a bone to shut them up and stop giving them negative press (most likely the latter
). It is obvious that BGS want to make RPGs for people who don't like RPGs.... so Fallout: Post-apocalyptic Hiking Simulator 2 it will be.
BGS!!! 
is all about. Every modern game makes me feel... powerless. Like I'm watching a movie (and boy, I hate movies). I still remember the first time I killed a Deku Baba in TLoZ: OO; the simple fact that it would drop different things according to how you would kill it humiliates every modern game. Or the trial scene in CT: when I realized that everything I did at the festival could be used against me, it scared the shit out of me (I was very little :D). Now, we have games where you can kill dragons with your bare fists and marry a hot chick by just saying her "Are you interested in me?". Try that in real life, it will be funny.
