Ignoring the obvious mistake in your statement, sure. You don't have to care, and neither do I. Thing is, when I'm talking or writing, bringing up
"popamole loot simulator" will confuse most people. Majority-defined terms won't. Just as
you don't have to care about what everyone else calls it, I am writing my opinion piece, not caring about what everyone
here calls it. It's not really that hard to understand... I call it by what
everyone else calls it, not by
what it should be called.
What is it with people here's tendency to jump all over opinions? This is hardly a civil discussion or a fair debate.
That's why there is the idea of
action games and
shooters. Like I said, if the majorty of people says the sky is green ... they can do that. But that doesn't change what it actually is.
And Fallout 4 is not an RPG, it is an simple action game, a third person/first person shooter if that sounds better.
It has become very popular for some reason to sell stuff like F4, Borderlands and a couple of other action/shooter games as RPGs, even though they contain maybe the bare MINIMUM of what RPGs have. They are not even RPG/Shooter hybrids anymore.
Fallout 4 falls in exactly this situation. It shares SOME characteristics that you find in many RPGs. Like the stats, level ups, experience and a couple more. But those are so diluted in their effects, that you could probably remove all of them, and you would not miss any of it.
I know the idea of RPGs has always been very wonky. YOu know, 20 years ago you had games like Diablo as RPGs. And those games didn't contain really any role playing in that sense. Not like Planescape or even Baldurs Gate, to use a more popular example. But that's where you had niches. Dungeon Crawlers, Roque-Like, Open World you name it.
But you can't see everything as RPG, just because it shares some facets. Even if the publishers and some (or most) of the fans see it as
RPG.
I wish I could find this article again where someone used Call of Duty or a similar shooter with level ups/progression as example, where he explained why CoD was not an RPG, even though it had a few RPG-features.
*Edit
I guess the REAL problem here is, that todays RPG developers, like Bioware and Bethesda actually want their game to appeal to a different audience. The typical shooter crowd. Because this is, today at least, without a question the largest market. You can not sell 30 million games with Planescape or Wasteland. That's not gona happen. Beacuse RPGs have always been a niche. But when you have people working at Bioware intentionally diluting their games, you get simply garbage like Failout 4 or Dragon Turd 2, quote :
With Dragon Age II’s release imminent, senior producer Fernando Melo feels the sequel has far more reach than Origins, even potentially attracting the same kind of crowd that flocks to gaming’s biggest franchise, Call Of Duty.
Speaking to NowGamer Melo said: “We have data that shows there are a lot of people that enjoy playing RPGs although they won’t necessarily call them RPGs. They’ll play Fallout, Assassin’s Creed and even Call Of Duty, which have these progression elements – you’re putting points into things – but they don’t necessarily associate that as an RPG. So we think that if we expand that out we’ll attract a much bigger audience.”
There’s certainly logic in his thinking, and with individuals who failed to be enticed by BioWare’s original epic actually being swayed by the sequel – not to mention the upcoming demo giving gamers a chance to sample its goods first – there’s every change Dragon Age II may succeed in this goal.
A
sad new age of RPG development.
cultured