People always compare internet forums to their home, homes are sacrosanct under US law. Compare it to a store or a mall, it's a much more valid comparison. Basically, in physical locations if the public is generally invited, you cannot uninvite individuals for certain reasons, speech could very well be argued to be one of them, and indeed probably has been by the religious folks preaching the end of the world at the mall. Most states won't allow businesses to throw out nursing mothers (even if they don't cover up) and throwing out minorities for being minorities is disallowed by federal law.
I'm hoping for the same thing, I've said so a couple times before. I actually want all the big guys to fold up shop (yes I know this would mean a lot of lost jobs, and even little guys folding up too, I'm hoping for redemption here for gaming).

I 100% agree on Mass Effect 2 (execution wise, the design philosophy is sound if you do it right) but strongly disagree on the FPS/RPG mix. STALKER did it even though the RPG elements are light but the progression is apparent and the game is one of the best. That is something like what I want to see developers move towards if they want to make the RPG more accessible for a wide variety of people.

STALKER made bullets randomly spray around your aim point, which is far worse. "What the hell? I'm aiming right at the guy and I can't hit him?"

The only way I can see of making that work would be to make the crosshairs randomly wobble rather than making the bullets come out of the barrel at impossible angles. And that's frustrating too.

I don't know how bad that game is, but bullets from some automatic weapons don't always fly straight, Ingram SMG is a great example.

Let me be a bit more clear since I assume everyone has played it quite a bit :p. The weapons you start with are quite weak and inaccurate as you pointed out but can be aimed as good as the stronger ones provided you take the time to adjust aim (think Deus Ex).

As the game goes on you get more weapons which are more accurate and make aiming less of an issue which gives a sense of progression. When I play Call of Duty or Left 4 Dead the low tier weapons and the high tier weapons both have the same chance to hit but are just more powerful giving no sense of progression but more damage as opposed to STALKER which gives more durability, better aim, more damage, and more range due to the better aim. So how exactly is this worse?

In STALKER I could put the crosshairs of an assault rifle on the bad guy at the other end of a short corridor, fire off an entire magazine, and not hit him once. That's pretty much impossible to do in real life without violating the laws of physics... point the sights of a rifle at a guy fifty feet away, pull the trigger, and you're pretty much certain to hit them. And 'adjusting aim' made no difference because _the bullets did not go where you aimed_.

That's the point where I exited the game and downloaded an accuracy mod which eliminated the rubber barrels that the guns appeared to come with. Being unable to hit someone at that distance with a rifle when it's pointed right at their chest is just silly.

Admittedly, FPS games can be worse: if I remember correctly, some tests in DoD: Source showed that you were more likely to hit your target if you aimed to one side of them rather than at them because it had a similar random bullet spread where the place your bullet went bore no resemblance to where the barrel was pointing. The rather paradoxical end result was that people who could aim were worse off than people who couldn't.

You adjusted for bullet drop right? I know this may sound like common sense but I hear this a lot when most people fire AT the target instead of a little above as the bullets don't instantly hit the target. If I aim at the neck or a little above the head they go down really easily.

Okay, not going to go too into FPS vs RPG shooter aiming problems. Just wanted to point out that in real life and real physics that a bullet won't necessarily go where the sights are pointed. In either the up, down or left, right. The bullet will fall inline with the barrel, but the sights don't always match the barrel. I could go in to a big long speach about weapon zeroing and and different facters that can cause a bullet to drift different to the aim, but I think that would be left for a different discussion.

One other thing to keep in mind is that videogames, none of them, reflect ranges accurately. I was just goofing around with Sniper:Ghost Warrior yesterday and it was taking a high powered scope to see and a hit a target at 250m. When I was in the army I had to qualify hitting out to 300m with straight iron sights.

Anyways, just saying that the games reflect real physics closer than we think at times. And the absurdity that is firing distances in videogames.

I don't understand this. Fallout New Vegas is one of the hottest sellers of the year. It's an RPG. Therefore, RPG's are not "dying" or "Falling".

And yes, Fallout New Vegas is a RPG. I'm currently playing it, and it's certainly an RPG.

1) There's stats. The stats matter.
2) I have a wide choice of what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
3) There isn't always a clear cut answer to the problems (IE Quests) forcing me to make the best solution for the character and situation.
4) Every choice I make in this game changes something. The plot of the game world, or who likes me, or who hates me. Everything has an impact.
5) Due to the above, I come to make a defined character. He's either good, evil, or somewhere in between. The choices I make as a player come to decide what my character is living through my experiences.

To me, that's much more of a "Role Playing Game" then simply establishing a good or evil character with no option of change. If I suddenly see or do something horrible, and make a change in the way I handle the game world my character will change. And so will everyone who interacts with him.

If you feel RPG's are "dying" because they aren't isometric or turn based, that's fine. It's a personal decision. But the experiences I'm having in New Vegas right now (17 hours in, first play through) are equal or better then anything I have ever had in any RPG I've ever played previously. If getting you emotionally invested in the character that you are defining isn't a Role Playing Game, then I simply don't know what is.