Starmaker: What's a deep RPG?
Is Arcanum a "deep RPG"? Planescape: Torment? Kenshi? Tales of Maj'Eyal? Death Knights of Krynn? Dark Heart of Uukrul?

Vendor-Lazarus: While I couldn't agree more about game genres needing tags today, I disagree about your tag descriptions ,)

Maybe there could a kind of tag tier system.
Devs gets to set the initial tags, but everyone could add their own, then verified buyers of the game gets 3 votes, verififed GOG consumers gets 2 votes, and GOG members gets 1 vote.
Only the top ..ten? tags get shown without revealing the list.

Personally, I'd also like some more objective tags as well.
Camera view, camera angle. etc.

About your RPG remark:
Console RPG--------JRPG
Console RPG--------ARPG---------Spectacle Fighter
CRPG------------------Adventure----Action RPG
FPS--------------------ARPG----------Looter Shooter
Computer RPG-----Roguelikes---Roguelites
Computer RPG-----WRPG
Computer RPG-----ARPG----------H'n'S
Computer RPG-----ARPG----------Immersive Sim
Computer RPG-----ARPG

ConsulCaesar: Adventure is another "offender" that gets thrown at basically everything with a storyline, be it a point-and-click, RPG, action game or visual novel. I think not only tags, but a better defined classification in the store (with only 8 categories right now) would help navigation and finding new games of specific genres.

LyraVonRavenlock: Planescape: Torment is generally considered the benchmark that everyone agrees on. Some of the more common titles fans of the genre usually include in their lists are Dragon Age: Origins (while the sequels aren't), and the Original Mass Effect Trilogy, or Vampire: The Masquerade. I've seen the Witcher Series included as well, and I dare say, I agree with that, I found that game to do an incredible job in terms of well-written characters and an immersive story and world, fleshed out with writing.

LyraVonRavenlock: Sometimes genre tags lead to the wrong purchase.

Buying a game tagged, for example, as "RPG" only to realize that it's actually an Animated Story / a Hack & Slash / a Strategy / an Adventure game with choices/ a Platformer with gear changes, more than it is an actual RPG game.

Sure, we can read through the comments, and sure enough, someone will have kindly taken the time to warn us to the truth, thus saving us from a wrong purchase.

Or we can go to Youtube, twitch, whatever and watch someone play the game. But maybe that's kind of a spoiler for a new purchase for some.

But wouldn't it be better if we could select "Deep RPG" and get a list of everything with good enough writing to apply for that tag? Or to find that Animated Story that we like without getting confused with puzzles in this Classic Adventure game which was simply tagged "Adventure", and thus made it impossible for Animated Story fans to discover?

So, add more descriptive genre tags. Obviously, some games fall in-between genres, so why not spell that out? If a game is a Strategy where you have a Captain who can lvl up and better her gear, don't just call that a Strategy / RPG. It's misleading. Name it a Classic Strategy with Captain of the Team Levelling, or something more accurate.

More accurate genres can make us more decisively move to an actual purchase instead of having to spend time researching and watching someone else play the game. Or worse, making mistakes and having a negative experience with our past purchases.

Edit: As ConsulCaesar pointed out, we need the whole classification system to reflect the above, not just tags.

LyraVonRavenlock: Planescape: Torment is generally considered the benchmark that everyone agrees on. Some of the more common titles fans of the genre usually include in their lists are Dragon Age: Origins (while the sequels aren't), and the Original Mass Effect Trilogy, or Vampire: The Masquerade. I've seen the Witcher Series included as well, and I dare say, I agree with that, I found that game to do an incredible job in terms of well-written characters and an immersive story and world, fleshed out with writing.

Starmaker: My point is, when people say "deep RPG", they mean different things.*

Planescape: Torment is the storygamiest storygame that every storygamed. The character-building, advancement, and combat mechanics there exist purely in service of the story; they'd be unfun to tinker with in isolation. Unlike Troika with Arcanum, Black Isle didn't even try. But it's a good game, and whatever tags people think are favorable, they apply to it after the fact, because it's good.

Now, ToME is I think the gold standard for tinkering, and Kenshi is the gold standard for tabletop-style doing whatever the hell you want (anti-skill-game purists would cry foul tho), and DKK and Uukrul are party-based transistor-era classics, from before that newfangled 256 color nonsense. Aren't they deep, too?

(Reportedly, the one game that satisfies most definitions is Divinity: Original Sin 2.)

* Hell, some people say "story" to mean "boring shit that's foisted on you", i.e. bad by defiition.

nightcraw1er.488: "boring shit that's foisted on you"

nightcraw1er.488: There is another similar thread:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/dear_old_good_new_bad_reviewers

What it basically says, and this thread, is that you want to absolve yourself of the decision making and get someone else to police things. It’s not going to happen, no one has the resource to put in, and it wouldn’t help anyway. End of the day, you alone can decide on a game. There is never going to be agreement on what is what, and it likely wouldn’t help you anyways. What is baldurs gate for instance? Is it an RPG, a Tactical Real Time game, a story driven narrative. It’s just nonsense, look at a game, do a bit of research, then buy or don’t buy it’s up to you. Reviews, tags, such like is only there as a suggestion.nightcraw1er.488: Planescape torment is a narrative driven adventure.
Dragon age origins is a real time crpg
Vampire the masquerade could be a FPS crossed with RPG
Witcher is an action game

Wikipedia has different tags for these. Steam has different tags. It’s only an indication to try to help.

LyraVonRavenlock: Nowhere have I seen Planescape torment categorized as anything other than an RPG. It offers such an authentic rpg experience, that's actually close to the tabletop DnD games which mothered the genre.

Vampire the masquerade isn't a classic rpg, true. My understanding is that people include it exactly because of the immersive story.

Witcher could be characterized as action in the same way that AC is. Again it's the incredibly fleshed out characters, atmosphere and story which gets it into that category for many people.

The point is, it doesn't matter the word we use. If you don't like "deep rpg" or don't agree with the games that make that list to a lot of gamers, that's completely fine. What does matter is that we have a way to know whether a game offers the experience that we're looking for. And we need more accurate information for that. Calling everything an "adventure" really doesn't work for a many of us, any more.

LyraVonRavenlock: Exactly! "Adventure" means absolutely nothing any more. I'll probably not buy a game classified as "adventure" as I've no idea what kind of game it's supposed to be. And yes, when i say "tags" I mean the whole classification that goes with them.

Orkhepaj: artist fart