I am disappoint. I was looking forward to giving Final Fantasy XIV a short whirl this week without having to dish out $60 at launch. Oh well, maybe the beta won't be pushed back too long (or outright cancelled). It’s a little worrisome that there would be critical bugs severe enough to completely pull the installer and the entire beta 3 weeks before the launch date. But on the other hand, name one large MMO with a perfect and unhithered launch? I assume that within 3 to 6 months time most of the critical bugs and server load issues will have been smoothed out. That time period is when we need to be taking a more critical look at both the game and Square Enix’s ability to support it.

That said, I still hold very little faith in Square Enix to ever hold the ability to make a decent MMO or single player RPG ever again, based off of the notable decline in their flagship titles. Unless major positive change happens, gone are the days of the JRPG dynasties. But then again, I’ve become somewhat of an MMO skeptic and obviously WoW biased. I hope I’m wrong and that it is a legitimately good game, regardless of my disinterest in subscribing.

Since I’m on the topic of FFXIV: Many people have been abuzz about the XP capping. I don’t comment too much without actually having played the game (QQ) but my question is: Is it really necessary to gate content to that extent? And, will it work toward a more casual friendly game or will it just frustrate people? All MMOs gate content to some extent, but a hard cap seems pretty harsh. I guess it depends on how much non-grind content is available. If there are for example, very comprehensive secondary systems (like crafting), it might not be that bad of a change.

But still, WoW currently rewards players for spending some time away from the game by rewarding rest experience. I have always been a fan of positive reinforcement over punishment. Penalizing the hardcore player base, the one demographic willing to stick with it through thick and thin does not seem to be that wise of a choice. I mean, charging prospective players $13 a month and then arbitrarily dictating exactly how long they can play? What? I am an adult and can dictate my own time usage. As for minors, just put a parental lock in place. That’s my 2 cents.

When people talk about where role-playing games come from, I'm pretty sure that pen and paper systems like Dungeons & Dragons come to mind. In truth, people have been role-playing for centuries, spanning from improvisational theater to murder mystery types of parlor games to even a child's game of pretend, even though we don't think of them as role-playing games.

So that begs the question: What exactly is a role-playing game? The term "role-playing" in modern times has been thrown around so much that is has seemingly lost its meaning. The traditional definition of a role-playing game encompasses a fairly wide range of games in which a player assumes a role in a fictitious setting. Success and failures within the game are determined by a set of rules and guidelines. The goal of any good role-playing game is to tell a collaborative story, crafted out of the choices and consequences of its players.

This is how it usually works: Each player chooses or is assigned a role or a character. Each player is in turn in charge of using that character to interact with the setting for the sake of progressing the narrative. The point is that, the players are responsible for choosing paths from their character's point of view. It's all about viewing something from another person's perspective and deciding what they would do, not you.

The game world, at least in a traditional pen and paper role-playing campaign is represented by a dungeon master, who is generally in charge of managing the setting and creating any details or encounters that the players would come across on their adventure. The dungeon masters also serves as a referee, enforcing the game's rules and providing player guidance. In a computer based RPG (CRPG), the dungeon master is represented by the AI.

So what makes a computer game apart of the role-playing game genre? First and foremost: Computer role-playing game is a misnomer: CRPGs lack the distinct ability to allow players to choose. Many of the newer RPGs such as Mass Effect, do allow for some degree of choice but ultimately lack the ability to create emergent stories based solely upon a player's actions. At heart, a role-playing game is a story created by its players. The setting is just a construct.

A more accurate description would be interactive fiction. The player assumes the role of a character and plays through a predefined story. The game still tells a story, but a linear one. All video game narratives are linear, some just hide it better than others. But if having a story and playing an entity is the definition of a CRPG, then all computers games would be of that genre. In Mario you assume the role of Mario on a quest to save the princess. In Half-Life, a game that is ironically closer to a role-playing game than many actual CRPGs, you are for all intents and purposes Gordon Freeman. Valve has been very careful about not breaking your point of view within the game.

However, neither of these games, to say the last, are considered even close to CRPG by modern standards. Traditional CRPGs were defined by gameplay, being largely stat based and heavily influenced by D&D. Nowadays, the RPG genre spans such a wide variety of titles that gameplay itself is almost irrelevant to its definition. So again, what exactly defined a computer based role-playing game? What exact criteria separates an RPG from a non-RPG? Two things:

1. Character progression: All CRPGs have either a leveling or an advanced skill/stat based character progression system in effect. Above all game mechanics and combat systems, character progression is the one technical element that all CRPGs have in common.
2. A narrative: A narrative must contain (my loose definition) a setting, characters, conflict, story and dialogue. In regards to computer games, role-playing games usually have more developed story interaction than most other games of other genres. By definition, all RPGs feature a character or role that the player fills.

Both Deus Ex and Half-Life are first person shooters yet only one is considered to be a part of the role-playing genre. Even though Half-Life, as mentioned before, could arguably be truer to a role-playing game than most actual CRPGs, it is not because it has no character progression system in place. The same is true of many other RPG sub-genres: For example: Final Fantasy Tactics vs StarCraft, Puzzle Quest vs Bejeweled. Though many games have a narrative, in order to be considered a CRPG they must also have character progression.

Interesting exception: Sleep is Death. It's a two-player collaborative story telling game. One person creates and controls the world the other persons plays an entity or a character in that world. The player and creator alternate turns: The player interacts, moves or speaks and the creator in turn alters the world. Each turn is automatically screenshotted and compiled into a story. That's the closest thing to role-playing that I've ever seen in a computer game. Specifically because of the role player choice has within the game and the focus on actual story telling.

So will we ever see a "true" single-player or massively multiplayer role-playing game? One day, but not now. At the moment I don't think that gaming technology has progressed to the point of being able to create a fully emergent story. But that said, the CRPG genre is constantly changing so the next great game could be just around the corner. I don't think I covered everything that I wanted to cover in this post. So at some point I would like to type out at least two more articles: 1. The Appeal of Role-Playing, why we like it and what we learn. 2. Eastern vs Western Style CRPGs.

I was reading this article the other day and thought that it was interesting. This post was originally going to be a response, but it kind of went off on a tangent. So by, "Winning, Losing, Death and Consequence," I really mean "Death and Consequence." The other part of the title just sounded nifty. Anyway, gaming deaths should have consequences, given that they are appropriate to the nature of the game. The player should have to feel the weight of a bad decision as to not trivialize the game. At the same time, these consequences need to be reasonable.

I am not certain if it is because I have gone increasingly casual over the past couple of years, but as a working adult with relatively little free time (in comparison to uuh college), I don’t have that much time to enjoy my media of choice. I like a challenging game and I like my decisions, poor or not to have significance, but I really do not enjoy the time wasting aspect of a rough death mechanic. On any given week night I have about 3 to 4 hours of playtime after eating and what not. A half hour to an hour of time making up time after reloading a game after dying is a significant portion of my evening. I can personally do without arbitrary time wasting.

This exact criticism was one of my big beefs against Final Fantasy XII. In a long RPG, harsh death penalties severely interrupt the story, which is counterproductive given that the entire purpose of a role playing game is to progress the narrative. Sparsely placing save points and forcing players to traverse long distances after dying during a boss encounter doesn’t fit with the context of the game. It is an old mechanic originally used out of technological limitation; It doesn’t have a place within modern gaming.

Final Fantasy XIII handled death in a slightly different manner: Save points, though still used are placed with more frequency. If you die during an encounter, your party will load from the point right before you engage in battle, giving you time to rethink your strategy and swap paradigms and party members around. Many newer games follow a similar train of thought regarding death mechanics and I think that it is a good compromise. An encounter can be hard without being unnecessarily frustrating. Other than repeating a though fight x amount of times, there is relatively little disruption to the flow of the game.

Besides, why does time need to be the only method of punishment? And for the record, WoW’s punishes in the form of a hit to equipment durability. Repairs cost money and time = money (same thing :P). Death should be fun or at least more creative. Ideally, I think that character death should have a lasting effect in the game environment. I love persistent gaming environments that embrace this idea, which is what fascinates me about Dwarf Fortress (I still intend to play more of this game if I ever get over the learning curve).

You will die horribly in Dwarf Fortress. Your civilization will crumble and fall, overrun by enemies and social unrest. But losing in Dwarf Fortress is just the beginning. When you die, you can reclaim your fortress as well as your previous fortune should you chose or start a new. Either way, the efforts of your first campaign are now an active part of the gaming world. The big picture is that every event, be it winning or losing contributes to the overall story. You still lose, but your loss is a part of the game. No time is ever lost.

Death should add to the uniqueness of your particular story, instead of representing yet another tedious element of gameplay. Or rather, instead of dying and restarting from a saved game, what about just having characters that permanently die in a dynamic fashion? You could of course just reload a saved game, but I think that players should be encouraged to face the consequences of their failure within the context of the game. The goal of a game is to be challenging AND fun, not frustrating. Neither goal is mutually exclusive.

Bioware has the idea. Mass Effect 2 for example (spoilers ahead):  Towards the end of the game I was given the chance to travel through the Omega 4 Replay to rescue my crew or to delay the rescue mission for the sake of preparing myself. It was not a forced option, it was a location within the galaxy map (that I accidentally clicked on...). I chose the latter option, not knowing that my crew, including the lovely Kelly Chambers would be dissolved in a vat of acid before my eyes. I sacrificed my crew for the sake of dicking around. I really wasn’t expecting that to happen, I wasn’t expecting there to be a consequence.

A part of me still wants to reload the end of Mass Effect 2 to replay it for the sake of getting a perfect ending (I also lost Legion during the last mission). Another part of me though feels that doing so would be cheating. I think I will just stick with my original outcome. I will be missing a few buddies when the third game rolls around but that should at least make it a little bit more interesting, right?

You see folks, this why I can never ever run a serious, as in, "professional" gaming blog. I'm just never current on anything that isn't World of Warcraft, The Sims or the one or two other games that I am interested in enough to pre-order and actually post about before they go out of style (I also never post, but that is a different issue :P). But that aside:

Assassin's Creed was a good game, not great by any measure, but good; It just failed to live up to the massive amount of hype constantly being pushed out at the time. I think the most disappointing aspect of the game wasn't necessarily the repetition (though the repetition was pretty bad, I had to force myself to complete the game), but that it felt half-assed. Most people compare it too a tech demo, demonstrating the crowd reaction engine and I think that is for the most part an accurate assesment.

Where the hell is my package going? Why did ship from Oklahoma to Kentucky when I live in California? Furthermore, why did I bother with one day shipping on Amazon instead of just running over to Best Buy to purchase it after work QQ. I ordered the newest Sims 3 expansion pack, Ambitions on Sunday. I feel obligated to write a semi-review or glitch (go go EA QA) guide at some point. Actually, I am looking forward to playing this expansion quite a bit because it changes core gameplay. World Adventures was interesting, but allowing sims to travel to other load zones broke time continuity (among other things).

Other than the three new load zones and a couple of other things, not a whole lot was added into the game. The ability to control sims while on the job, as opposed to them just vanishing into a rabbit hole for 8+ hours has been on the top of most player's wish lists since uuuh the first game?

Oh And: Come on EA; would it have hurt you that much to roll out some of the Sims 2 expansion pack functionality into the Sims 3 base game? (like apartments). Or at the very least, some fairly significant additional content in the form of a free downloadable patch instead of pushing everything into DLC on your stupid store. I know that I will still end up purchasing every single expansion pack like an addict but still. T_T

I MUST GET BLIZZCON tickets tomorrow. Watch me get held up at work or stuck in traffic on the way home though :/. Oh and, I went a whole week without playing WoW, playing any games (iPhone games on the plane don't count), or sitting in front of (my) computer because I *gasp* went outside! Might post about my vacation if I ever get around to sorting through photos.