Verter said:
Sorry for the late reply, I couldn’t post before. TL;DR I understand why you see action-RPG as a different genre and I only partially agree with you (although action-adventure games with RPG mechanics are definitely different). Also, I mostly disagree that the type of RPG, or the genre in general, should be an early decision to make, specially in the case of inexperienced developers, because that can lead to mindless imitation and lack of real design, resulting in mediocre products. What it’s definitely important is to have a base concept or experience that you want to trasmit (and then find the genre that best fit it). Apart from these points, my post is mostly trying to expand on my first answer to the questions posted by the OP. |
I have to be honest, I don't design video games, so this is all theoretical - the only time I was involved professionally in VG design was some 2 decades ago, the project was way overambitious and, expectedly, failed as early as prototype stage. I can't say I miss it much (I work in the film industry, so it's never boring), and given that THE game I would like to make still cannot be made (though it's getting much closer), I "limited" myself to tabletop RPG design, which honestly is what I prefer anyway. So most of how I look at VRPGs still comes from TTRPG point of view.
That said, I do consider VRPGs to be, for the most part, an attempt at converting TTRPGs to video game format, and not completely its own thing. So making an VRPG, at least systemically, would be, from my perspective, not that much different than creating an TTRPG.
The reason why I consider action-RPGs as a different genre is that they can have all the systems of TTRPG, but in addition have a whole another layer that needs to be taken into account, that being action gameplay and, from my perspective, "proper" action RPG would translate attributes and skills of an RPG into actual action gameplay.
In my previous Bow skill example, a TTRPG/CRPG would take that skill, and, after applying all modifiers, trigger resolution mechanisms and see if your character hits or not. Ideally, in action-RPG (again, from my perspective), you as a player would aim, and it would be up to you to aim as best as you can, but Bow skill will influence how easy it is for you to do that, or maybe how much spread your shot has, once an arrow has been released (there's always that weird middle ground where TES:Arena/Daggerfall/Morrowind fall in, where actual skill roll determines a hit chance, although you, as a player, are controlling actions of your character).
Another example could be Strength and Size attributes. In RuneQuest/BRP/Mythras, your melee damage modifier comes from a combination of two (in addition to weapon damage). Ideally, in action-RPG (again, from my perspective), those attributes would be translated to actual physics based properties (Exanima and Scum try to do that, to some degree). So your character Strength and Size would be tangible physical values in those world, which would directly influence how hard he hits, or his Agility would directly influence how quickly he performs actions, Speed how fast he moves and so on. Of course, there aren't many games that try to do this and most are satisfied with having fairly fixed action gameplay, with various RPG stats affecting numbers and not actual moment to moment gameplay itself.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, while RPG and action-RPG could be pretty much designed the same way on macro level (world, plot, even some mechanics), when it comes to gameplay part, I do see them as quite different beasts. Personally, I would never try to make an action-RPG, cause that would mean intimate knowledge of how to implement action mechanics in conjunction with RPG mechanics, and, to me, that seems much more difficult to do (at least properly) than designing turn-based RPG, for which there are plethora of ways to do and reference, either in TTRPG or VRPG area. Hence, why I said, choice of genre should be fairly early decision as well.
