I don't fully understand this. I played through Mass Effect 2 and I enjoyed it for what it was, but as far as I'm concerned, it was in no way comparable to an RPG of any real substance. It was an action game with some non-linearity, good voice acting, and a decent story driving it (imo). With my RPGs, I like to know
why something is going to happen or why something isn't going to happen. I like looking at sheets and calculating my percentage to hit something, or understanding that equipping this piece of armor will do *exactly* this or exactly that. Can you be an RPG without intense, in depth number crunching? Sure. But for a writer to request it to be cast into oblivion (no pun intended) is a bit ridiculous.
I'm also not a huge fan of hidden values, either. For example, City of Heroes, when it first launched, consisted almost entirely of hidden values. Your enhancement did
not increase your kick by 50 damage, it increased it by "a lot." or "a large amount." People were pretty unhappy with this way of doing it, considering they had no real measurement on exactly how much better their character was getting. I understand this as well. RPGs are made more fun when you can measurably see your character progressing and getting better, in my opinion. Seeing my character hit for 10, then getting a brand new weapon and watching that average hit jump up to 25 is fun.
If you're going to steal our difficulty, our branching storylines with consequences to our actions, our fully fleshed out characters, and our strategic gear based combat.. Please don't steal our numbers.
Maybe I'm being ridiculous, but if I'm going to be mindlessly going from corridor to corridor blasting/slashing/biting/humping something to death, I'd at least like to see if I'm doing it for more or less damage than I was 15 minutes ago and why.
TLDR: Complete rambling about nothing in particular! I had a point.. I swear! =P