Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 5416524" data-attributes="member: 58416">yes, I am  Though, I'm the type of person for whom the shiny graphics don't matter.  Are they nice?  Hell yeah, and I'd much rather have the graphics I have now than the stick figures I had on a Tandyvision.  However, a crap game with really nice graphics is still a crap game.   In my opinion, there are a lot of games today which look nice, but are very lacking in substance.  I find this to be especially true with many of the new console rpgs.  Many people think the new Final Fantasy games are the Cat's Meow; personally, I feel that the last good game of that series which actually engaged my mind and sucked me in was Final Fantasy 3 (or 6 depending on how you count the series.)   Likewise, there are a lot of games I've bought for systems today and have blown through them in a day.  I still have games for my older systems which I've never finished.     I in no way agree that a WoW character is what I would consider a 'fully developed' character.  I have played MMORPGs, and there were some that I very highly enjoyed.  Some of them even did a really good job of capturing some of the elements of a tabletop experience, but -at this point in time- none of them are able to replace the experience I get from pen and paper gaming.     Though, I will give you that D&D is competing against MMORPGs.  Contrary to the vocal masses which continue to shout that D&D isn't like WoW any more than older editions were similar to video games of their time, I disagree.  There are enough similarities to make that competition a reality.  That ties into what I've said in my previous posts.  I understand the need to bend the game to meet the market of today; however, there comes a point when the tabletop experience has been whittled away enough that a prospective player doesn't feel as though they gain anything by choosing pen & paper over a computer and a visual interface.   But... as I also said in my previous posts, I think it is very wrong to assume tabletop gaming is dead or dying.  For a while now, video games have been incorporating more elements of rpgs.  You can create your own teams in Madden Football; you can explore what is (in my opinion) a world which seems much more alive in games such as Oblivion (and the upcoming Elder Scrolls: Skyrim<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> even the most recent WWE game focuses more on story and character development with WWE Universe Mode.  I'd even point to the cheesy Facebook games like Farmville as being more rpg-like.  The tabletop may need to evolve, but I feel it would be folly to throw away the game genetics which gives the pen & paper experience a look and feel which is different from other types of games. Tabletop gaming as a whole is not dead, and, while I admit that D&D does indeed need to compete with games which look flashier and prettier, I would argue that there is a large amount of fertile ground into which an engaging story driven rpg experience could flourish.  Many people and many youths still read - the recent success of Twilight wouldn't be possible otherwise.  I believe we are at a turning point; that as society starts to more realize that the big flashy experiences we have now are shallow, there will be an increasing want for things which are more mentally engaging, socially fulfilling, and of more depth.  The 'what's next?' question will hit more people; there are people out there who want to experience and enjoy the journey rather than focusing on going from point a to point b (or level 1 to level 30 as the case may be,) even if they aren't fully aware of it yet.</blockquote>

Verification