What makes a great rpg????

[Crosis]

Well what do you feel makes a huge roll in rpgs? I think story line and classes make a huge deference as in how much you can merge you self in the game and also how much the game has customization. I am a fan of the old school 2d rpgs and even the nintendo rpgs, such as final fantasy and so on. There are so many I have played I don't want to list them all as it would be one long list. But I do not like the new rpgs the 3d ones I feel as if the designers focus to much on eye candy then on what is important like story line and game depth.

[blackmeadow]

i'm really leaning towards customization and storyline.  graphics don't matter to me at all as long as they are consistent and mold to the world/storyline.

[kevin]

      While I'm not a particular fan of genre as a whole really, but it seems to me that having an interest in the story/world/quest are a prerequisite.   So captivating the new players with a new world/quest  seems like a priority to me.    Visuals will certainly be apart of any games initial attractiveness.  That doesn't not necessarily mean  massive 3d worlds though,  rather the style of visuals and the overall presentation.  Be they in 2d/3d or just plain text.  People still plays MUD's after all.     For me,  one of the things puts me off playing such games is often the players interface. Lots of keys, or having to perform constant repetitive operations drive me nuts.

[Draco9898]

RPGs boil down to the battle system for me. Although the graphics, music, storyline, character design, and story design have a tremendous play in it too

[nrasool]

I kinda like the Jade Empire/KOTOR style of RPG game, they were pretty cool, Final Fantasy is okay, just didn't like the random battles all the time

[ShadowCentaur]

i'd say the combat system is probobly the most important feature in an RPG. You spend at least 40% of your time in combat. If the combat doesn't keep the player involved (be it action commands, strategy, or whatever) then a big part of the game gets very boring very quickly. if the combat system is involving, the player will want to get into fights and beat up slimes instead of avoiding unnessecary fights.

[Zenn]

Great storyline and an even greater battle system (the more insane and innovative the better).

[Bustaballs]

Sorry if this is considered necroing here.

Storyline is usually my favorite but, oddly enough, Shadowrun for the Sega Genesis is my favorite RPG and it didn't have a great storyline. It wasn't bad by any means, though. It was the atmosphere of the game and the insane amount of awesome things you could do. One of the first and still the best freelance RPG I've ever played. The SNES version was okay but it was nothing in comparison.

[Makeii Runoru]

I think that some of the best elements of an RPG would have to include smooth gameplay and user-friendly stat systems, so that nothing is left unknown. A deep storyline isn't really needed as long as it's fun.

For instance, if your character had a stat called Vitality that wasn't directly proportional to Life, you'd probably want to know how why it's 125, where your Life is only 32. Or, does Vitality even work towards health, or does it mean Life Regeneration? Some of the final fantasy games include strange stats that I didn't really understand. And, if the stats' descriptions were not evident, I really didn't feel like searching forums for it.

I really liked the Soul Blazer trilogy (Soul Blazer / Illusion of Gaia / Terranigma) Because not only was the fighting in real-time, it also kept "RPG Elements" such as Life, magic, Strength, etc.. They kept the style of Zelda, but made ass-kicking more fun. I also appreciate using uniue HUDs and styles of storing their variables/data.

In Illusion of Gaia, the health was set up in the style of Zelda, only using blue orbs. Each orb was 2 HP. The main character Will (Freedan/Shadow) were able to keep a maximum of 40 HP (Filling two rows of 10. You were also able to see enemy HPs in the topright section of your HUD, shown in red orbs. It was a nice break fro the traditional Life bar and/or numerical value.


CONS of RPGs----

I am not a fan of Quests. This is because Quests are more like Errands. A lot of the time, they aren't worth it, but they can also be rewarding.

I ALSO dislike lengthy dialog. I don't want to sit through a pre-emptive fight scene where the characters actually talk with themselves while the enemy is sitting there ready to fight you.

I don't like turn-based battles. If I would need to go through them, I'd like it if the enemy was shown on screen (FF: Mystic Quest), and not suddenly appear out of thin air (Other Final Fantasy Games / Golden Sun).

[thaaks]

For me it differs.
I love roguelikes where the graphics are minimal to non existant. But I love the replay value as all levels are randomly generated. And many roguelikes have a good humor and they allow a lot of interactivity (you can pray to your god for help, you can sacrifice monsters, you can dip arrows into a poison potion to get poisoned arrows and so on).
Favorite roguelikes are Stone Soup (a modified version of Linley's Dungeon Crawl), Adom, Larn, Nethack and of course Diablo 1 and 2 which are basically just rogue likes under their (graphically impressive) hood  ;D

On the other hand I got addicted to Gothic just for the cool graphics, the great story and the NPCs and their interacting changing based on the story's progress.

And for some reason (I can't explain) I got hooked to Might and Magic 4 to 7...played them all but finished only MM4.
The graphics were not so impressive, the world is completely tile based although displayed in 3D, but the games "had something".

And as Makeii Runoru said: if the RPG has a stats system it must be somewhat comprehensible for the player how it is working.

[Bustaballs]

It looks like me and thaaks are into the same type of RPGs. =)

You should try out some Shadowrun for the Sega Genesis. It's meant for more hardcore players as it is very difficult to obtain a decent amount of money until you get the best gear but if you play the Gothic series, I obviously can't question your ability to play a hardcore game. The Gothic series is FAR from easy.