What really is an Action RPG. Is PoE the characteristic example?

The standard defintion of ARPG, in most game magasines and on rewiev sites is games that are diablo style games. You run around and hack monsters in huge piles.

You are ofc allowed to call whatever you want for it but the "big mass" wont understand if you call Skyrim an ARPG.

IMO a ARPG is defined by a game with loot drop itimization , in a way that dictates characters stats and abilitys.


So to put this simply it's a game that has a HUGE pool of dropable loot wether from a random number generator or a massive item pool. that directly effects the HP pool / skills / damage / tank or "other " stat a character has.

the "action" part of a ARPG is not really acurte i find, yes it's fast paced action sometimes but some RPG games are like this as well . the diffrence lies in the itemization. IMO ARPg was basicaly a marketen term coined a long time ago by some 1 ( diablo 1 marketing team ? ) to seperate thare game from more traditional RPG's of the time ( singile lane walking 1 square at a time RPG games like D&D ) so at the time it WAS a action game compared to what most other games offered. This has changed but the game tag has not.

Short version:

Does it have a skill tree and the only quests involve killing things?
Then it's an action rpg.

The reason ARPG is even a term is when Diablo 1 and 2 came out many people were uncomfortable calling them RPGs, but they didn't really fit with the Action moniker either. As Diablo's formula got cloned by so many competitors, a need rose for naming the genre classification. The name needed to be something that was neutral and doesn't advocate a specific brand, unlike the phrase Diablo-clone (In the same way that DOTA was once used as a genre classifier for all MOBAs, Diablo-clone needed to be superceded with a non-brand-specific identifier). ARPG is the term that won out.

Now if you look at the term ARPG in a vacuum it is actually a pretty broad. It seems like it should capture anything that is both Action and RPG. This interpretation leads to a different usage than its original purpose, which was a way of grouping all the Diablo clones together in a neutral fashion. Thus there are people that use the term both ways: to refer to any nexus of action and RPG, or to refer specifically to the Diablo formula.

As you can see from the above, genre names are fluid. They are also open to interpretation and imprecise. Trying to shoehorn every game into exactly one genre is fraught with peril, especially when we consider the difference between a genre and a sub-genre is rather arbitrary. Does it really make a difference if we think of Witcher and POE as two different sub-genres of one genre, or as two different genres?

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Karkadinn wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

It is a vague term; wanting to make it more does not make it so

Saying "an aRPG is basically a Diablo clone" is flat out wrong. Or what have you, Titan quest, torchlight, sacred.......... Good games? Cooooooooool they didn't define the genre: the sub genres did.

Is it an RPG? Does it do the action thing? It's an aRPG.

Everything else is wishful thinking, and you're all wishful folk.

Wanting to make a specific set of words pass along a concept agreed upon by the majority is, in fact, how language works. It's only 'wishful thinking' if you don't get enough other people to agree with you upon the definition. If enough people think 'Diablo clone' when you say 'ARPG,' then that is what that term means, regardless of the literal meaning behind the words.

When I say fighting game, do you think of every single game with 'fighting' as a concept literally in it, or do you think Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, etc?

That's nice and all. I appreciate the nature of language as an ever evolving construct, but that does still does little to change the fact that people are wrong when they say "aRPG are Diablo clones." I mean, that is the nature of the evolution of language--people are wrong, because for language to change a phrase needs to mean something different than what it currently does, and that means at some point the phrase has to be misused in the way that will eventually be accepted as the new meaning. Cool.

Thing is, this occurs usually out of necessity, to expand upon the meaning of things that require further clarity. Remember when Pluto was a planet? Yeah, like that.

"Action Role Playing Game" is sufficient in describing what it does because we have other phrases to modify the meaning further, to narrow the scope of meaning to be more specific. It is not a Pluto kind of situation; its meaning does not need to change to be more accurate because its scope is vague. It is a mash up of two other vague genres.

If you want to say something along the lines of "Microsoft Flight Simulator is an action roleplaying game because you execute actions and you are playing the role of a pilot," or in your case something more to the tune of "Metal Slug is a fighting game because you fight things" then you are being intentionally dense.

So again. Is the game an RPG--does it have elements of character building commonly associated with RPGs? Is the game action oriented--does the execution of game play out in real time and make use of player reflex as opposed to occurring in iterative sequences that make use of player computational ability? If the answer to either of these questions is no, then it is not an aRPG. On the other hand, something like Skyrim IS an aRPG because it is literally a fucking action role playing game. It's just a different kind of aRPG game than a "Diablo-like." That shit's a sub-genre.

It literally means what it means, and trying to make it more is nothing more than applying bias to literal meaning. And that's cool too, because the other way language evolves is through shared ignorance. Maybe we're upon the precipice of ignorant people changing the meaning of a phrase. It happens. A lot. I can't change how people receive and interpret language, but in the meantime I can argue that those people are wrong. That is the evolution of language.

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crystalwitch wrote:

Short version:

Does it have a skill tree and the only quests involve killing things?
Then it's an action rpg.

I guess Diablo isn't an ARPG then since it has no skill tree and has a few quests that don't involve killing things.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

The reason ARPG is even a term is when Diablo 1 and 2 came out many people were uncomfortable calling them RPGs, but they didn't really fit with the Action moniker either. As Diablo's formula got cloned by so many competitors, a need rose for naming the genre classification. The name needed to be something that was neutral and doesn't advocate a specific brand, unlike the phrase Diablo-clone (In the same way that DOTA was once used as a genre classifier for all MOBAs, Diablo-clone needed to be superceded with a non-brand-specific identifier). ARPG is the term that won out.

Now if you look at the term ARPG in a vacuum it is actually a pretty broad. It seems like it should capture anything that is both Action and RPG. This interpretation leads to a different usage than its original purpose, which was a way of grouping all the Diablo clones together in a neutral fashion. Thus there are people that use the term both ways: to refer to any nexus of action and RPG, or to refer specifically to the Diablo formula.

As you can see from the above, genre names are fluid. They are also open to interpretation and imprecise. Trying to shoehorn every game into exactly one genre is fraught with peril, especially when we consider the difference between a genre and a sub-genre is rather arbitrary. Does it really make a difference if we think of Witcher and POE as two different sub-genres of one genre, or as two different genres?

"Final Fantasy Adventure" was released 1991 and is clearly an action rpg with a relatively big brand name for that time: Final Fantasy. Diablo 1 was released 1996. It wouldn't surprise me if the term "action rpg" existed before diablo 1 was released.

POE is a LBMS,loot based monster slaying game.

But seriously to me it's a ARPG with MMO elements.It has too much of the same appeal as Diablo,TQ,Dungeon seige and Sacred to not be seen as an ARPG.

I've only played 3. TQ, D3, and PoE. Last two seemed more like economy sims. Have to say I liked TQ2 best or maybe cos I was 12 and have better memories then. I didnt play online and foudn everything i needed in game.