Fate of the Middle Class RPG

[Jaesun]

And remember kids, romance in RPG's were first done in the Gold Box Games....

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

By middle class RPG does infinitron mean games designed by middle class people essentially for middle class people or does he mean games that are made by a middling company, something which isn't really about class and is a very confusing way of describing companies?

 

[hpstg]

By middle class RPG does infinitron mean games designed by middle class people essentially for middle class people or does he mean games that are made by a middling company, something which isn't really about class and is a very confusing way of describing companies?

Reading the actual post might help with that question.

 

[mutonizer]

By middle class RPG does infinitron mean games designed by middle class people essentially for middle class people or does he mean games that are made by a middling company, something which isn't really about class and is a very confusing way of describing companies?

Unless my English fails me, I think he just meant: Not insane money AAA, not indie artsy stuff.

 

[Manmower]

more and more stupid

Better dumb than mouth-deep on dev cock like you and some other chucklefucks here.

No idea why companies even run marketing campaigns when they have cucks like you to shill for them.

But if you enjoy paying for shlock and asking for sloppy seconds from half-assed retards without an ounce of talent, who am I to judge you?

 

[Manmower]

The talent they got on their art and writing departments is praise worthy.

I'm gonna drop the troll mask for a second, and ask you an honest question: why do you settle for so little? Neither the writing nor the art in that game was praise-worthy. It was competent, and that's the best thing I can say about it. Why polish the devs' cocks with needless, unwarranted praise? I get it that Infinitron does this, but he's trying to ingratiate himself with devs/pubs, so it makes sense. The rest of you get nothing, and want nothing, yet you ride their dicks like they'll leave you an inheritance. It boggles the mind.

 

[Mustawd]

And remember kids, romance in RPG's were first done in the Gold Box Games....

Romance in any RPGs suck IMO. Goldbox or not.

 

[vivec]

My impression is that 'Middle class' devs are driving the genre ahead while the AAA titles actually stagnate or push it back. The "middle Class" devs can't afford graphics but they can afford talent and innovation. I think at this level there is more attention to detail and better overall mechanical advancement for the genre.

In the end, their earnings are mostly dependent on the word of mouth. Places like steam, Reddit ?) provide some of the few platforms where they can earn publicity. If they manage to create a strong audience base right at the development level via these places (e.g. by attracting customers through steam early developments) they later have to face a less uphill battle to remain in the picture. The real enemy of these developers is thus the flood of new games that pours through similar outlets. In order to remain in public sight, they *must* at any cost do something novel and out of the ordinary. The good news is that this needs to be done once before they are noticed and followed.

In my book, companies like Obsidian and InExile are not really middle class. I say this because they already have attention from a significant portion of the user base interested in the niche product. For the rest, getting to that level scaling is quite hard and probably they can accelerate the process by attracting big name people like MCA into their game.

My hope is that once they have a setup that works and is well known, they also will end up having more stable prospects.

 

[Mustawd]

Why polish the devs' cocks with needless, unwarranted praise?

Where do you even see that? PoE had tons and tons and tons of pages complaining of its flaws. W2 same thing. D:OS was a first comer in the kickstarter era of cRPGs, so it got less flak, but eventually criticism of its pacing and bad writing also came out. Ditto for Shadowrun Deadman's Switch.

To say that you enjoyed a game is not hand-waving away its flaws. Just like bashing the devs without a premise doesn't make you any better than a fanboi. At the end of the day Sawyer, the people at inXile, and Larian all wanted to make a good game. I mean that's obvious. And for some they succeeded. To say "hey, not a bad effort, but fix A,B or C please" is hardly shilling.

Just look at Shadowrun as an example of how a second effort can produce much different results with the same company and team. Why? Because they learned their lessons form the first.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't think anyone stands there and thinks "I want to make a good game", that's just weird. Like no author is saying to himself "I want to write a good book". I think it's fairly obvious that everyone wants to be good at their thing, everyone who isn't a complete wanker, degenerate and hypocrite, of course. How you get to that good is the problem. A problem a lot of people in this industry seemingly can't solve.

 

[Manmower]

PoE had tons and tons and tons of pages complaining of its flaws.

IMHO, not enough.

D:OS was a first comer in the kickstarter era of cRPGs, so it got less flak, but eventually criticism of its pacing and bad writing also came out.

D:OS had crappy writing, true, but it was greater than the sum of its parts. It was a fun game, because it didn't take itself seriously, and it nailed down the carefree RPG ambient. PoE tried to do 100 things at once, and failed at 90 of them. Terrible story, nonsensical plot, cardboard characters, horrible systems that appeal only to spergs (thanks Josh!), crappy villain, laughable setting, cringe-worthy lore aped from D&D, etc. etc. etc. That game doesn't get enough hate. And don't get me started on Fargo and his 'offerings'.

To say that you enjoyed a game is not hand-waving away its flaws.

No, but when someone calls me out on widely-accepted truism (ex: BG2 is fun) while goggling on modern nut-mustard supplied by talentless hacks, then I feel the need to respond.

Just like bashing the devs without a premise doesn't make you any better than a fanboi.

Dunno man, you said it yourself: PoE had pages upon pages of criticism. Shadowrun wasn't a bad game, and I genuinely enjoyed it, but it was acceptable, not this masterpiece of modern design some of the people here make it out to be. If I wasn't such a lazy fuck, I'd type out a 2000-word review, and include at least 10 ways in which they could've made the game better without spending an additional dime on it.

At the end of the day Sawyer, the people at inXile, and Larian all wanted to make a good game. I mean that's obvious.

Not saying they didn't, but most of them are hacks. They keep trying to sell 20-year-old concepts that, when made by their teams, come out worse than the predecessor products. Flashy graphics do not for good design make, but neither should they be discounted. If a game is burdened by multiple flaws in more than 3 categories, then it's bad, there's no way around it. I love Fallout 2 to death, even though it was a buggy mess when released back during the Pleistocene, but that game had SOUL. You really gonna tell me PoE does? Shadowrun? Etc. etc. I respect Larian because, unlike most mid-class indie devs, they're at least capable.

Just look at Shadowrun as an example of how a second effort can produce much different results with the same company and team. Why? Because they learned their lessons form the first.

True.

 

[Ninjerk]

PoE had tons and tons and tons of pages complaining of its flaws.

IMHO, not enough.

 

[Mustawd]

No, but when someone calls me out on widely-accepted truism (ex: BG2 is fun)

I will go to my grave complaining about the RTwP combat of these games. It's absolutely horrible. If you go back far enough in the early 2002-2004 years you'll see plenty of posts complaining that the IE games were pure popamole crap. It's hardly a truism. Which is why you see people with older post dates not say anything. Because it's basically old hat and is constantly repeated by Fallout fanbois such as myself.

unno man, you said it yourself: PoE had pages upon pages of criticism. Shadowrun wasn't a bad game, and I genuinely enjoyed it, but it was acceptable, not this masterpiece of modern design some of the people here make it out to be. If I wasn't such a lazy fuck, I'd type out a 2000-word review, and include at least 10 ways in which they could've made the game better without spending an additional dime on it.

I said that comment as a general statement.

Not saying they didn't, but most of them are hacks. They keep trying to sell 20-year-old concepts that, when made by their teams, come out worse than the predecessor products. Flashy graphics do not for good design make, but neither should they be discounted. If a game is burdened by multiple flaws in more than 3 categories, then it's bad, there's no way around it. I love Fallout 2 to death, even though it was a buggy mess when released back during the Pleistocene, but that game had SOUL. You really gonna tell me PoE does? Shadowrun? Etc. etc. I respect Larian because, unlike most mid-class indie devs, they're at least capable.

I haven't played Dragonfall but it's gotten some pretty good praise over here. From my understanding it's head and shoulders above the original. Which, again, goes to show you that it's not for lack of wanting to make a good game. It's for lack of recent experience making them in the first place. Again, something that I "hope" corrects itself in the next cycle of games.


Plus, you shouldn't take the fact that we don't rave against mediocre games in every post to mean that we don't have criticisms. Only the BG games can make me do that. But you took my initial post as if to say I was somehow holding them up to be a paradigm of success. Which they are not. They are middle of the pack games in the lexicon of RPGs. There are a ton of old games that are much better quality. But for what we've been getting? With all the dumb Dragon Age crap? Or the heaps and heaps of JRPGs? Yeah, it's a nice change to have people attempting to make good isometric/party-based cRPGs again.

 

[AwesomeButton]

people should have been willing to overlook many flaws in any new isometric party-based RPG.

I have been overlooking them for 150 hours or more by now, but this doesn't change the fact that PoE was rushed by a year, and this has been all but directly admitted by developers, even if you didn't have the initial release and its history of patches to judge from. It's pathetic how fanboys gathered to praise how perfect PoE was, only for it to become "perfect-er" with the avalanche of patches. A typical case of "more pious than the Pope". If it was really a good release, it wouldn't have seen all those patches.

"You can never go back home" or something like that?

You can never cross the same river twice. And it's true.

And I think it's pissed people, like those who post on the 'dex, off a bit.

What really pissed me about PoE was that they completely intentionally strayed from their main promise - to bring back the "IE feels". The game plays nothing like the IE games, and this was from the beginning, from the Backer Beta. Saying marketing lines like "It's like the IE games, it has isometric perspective and 6 party members" is just underestimating the intelligence of players of the IE games.

Of course, when it turned out they had been secretly working on a different game using the same technology (Tyranny), and had had programmers and designers shifting between the two projects, that did shed light on the question of why they didn't stick closer to the IE combat system. Resources that should have been devoted to POE had been going towards the development of Tyranny. I won't take anyone's word that the fact the same tech was being used for two projects didn't go into consideration and didn't play a part in how PoE was released. It was our KS pledges, and it just felt like a real dick move.

Let's face it, some of the same developers we have entrusted to make these old school games have had to re-learn how to make them.

The jump in quality in the White March (I & II) is undeniable. I'm really not claiming that "they didn't try" or "they were not skilled enough". I think they just needed that extra year for the initial release and we would have gotten a much better PoE, especially for its writing and characters, which as we now know, have all been first draft.

What I DONT really understand is the codex's reaction to all this. It's as if they've forgotten how long ago a proper isometric and deep cRPG was made.

Yeah, we seem to be forgetting that while some of us have been replaying the IE games every other year, the devs have moved on and have been doing very different things. With PoE in specific, I think a large part of the team hadn't played the original IE games at all.

If you go back far enough in the early 2002-2004 years you'll see plenty of posts complaining that the IE games were pure popamole crap.

And I certainly won't give a shit, because the game was fun, and still is fun. Should I decide what to play based on whether someone used to say it's popamole crap?

To be completely honest, when I was 15 I used to like the romances too. Nowadays though, they do seem creepy.

 

[Mustawd]

Yeah, we seem to be forgetting that while some of us have been replaying the IE games every other year, the devs have moved on and have been doing very different things. With PoE in specific, I think a large part of the team hadn't played the original IE games at all.

Another reason why I have some hope for TToN.

 

[Lacrymas]

I still haven't played White March because I can't force myself to go through that whole experience again. I don't want to deal with the cut-out characters and their silly problems, while wrestling with the combat system. I'll get to it eventually I suppose, but I have better things to play now.

 

[Prime Junta]

Annnnnnnnd, yet another thread is now about Pillars of Eternity. Should've been keeping count.

 

[Lacrymas]

It has been about PoE, and related, from the very beginning, soooooooooooooooo.

 

[Prime Junta]

It has been about PoE, and related, from the very beginning, soooooooooooooooo.

Not really. It was about mid-range, post-Kickstarter RPG's in general, yet here we are once again, arguing about Pillars writing, Pillars combat, whether Pillars is a true successor to the IE games, etc. etc. Even I'm getting bored of this shit.

(Game's still gud though, just don't feel up to another run ATM -- it is a major time investment.)

 

[AwesomeButton]

It has been about PoE, and related, from the very beginning, soooooooooooooooo.

It's ok, if I had been praising PoE he wouldn't have reacted

 

[Infinitron]

The thread is about Wasteland 2 too....and also about Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, a game that by definition "fixes" everything people didn't like about Sawyer's work in PoE.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Reading the actual post might help with that question.

The post doesn't make any reference to class beyond using it incorrectly and confusingly. If someone is talking about class in computer games it's normally a reference to that ol' chestnut "The PC Master Race" debate. Triple A games aren't shit because they're hoping to make them shit, they're shit because they're aiming for the console market. So... what's 'new' in the post to make it thread worthy? The use of the phrase 'middle class'. It's just putting a tired and well understood modern issue in new (and IMO confusingly unhelpful) wording.

Unless my English fails me, I think he just meant: Not insane money AAA, not indie artsy stuff.

So... Double A then... he reads every news bit ever released, he knows that's now the commonly accepted phrase for this standard of company, what's with the whole middle class thing? Not challenging your post, I thank you for clarifying.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

For something with an audience the size of BG, there's going to be a lot of different fans, and those different fans are going to all want different things. Unless you do an exact copy, someone somewhere is going to be pissed at whatever you leave out, even the tiniest little thing. And even if you do do an exact copy, the fans who wanted something new will be pissed that you just made a copy.

Nailed it. The sheer amount of variety in gameplay the old games offer, makes it impossible to match everyone's expectations. There's like 10 camps within the fanbase that want the focus to be on entirely different things. The Skyrim generation wants an isometric walking simulator, the RwTP combat fags want a BG clone, the RwTP haters want combat to be streaminlined so they can just get on with it, the exploration crowd wants a fully open world with no restrictions, the storyline camp wants a tightly designed story driven experience (which usually requires walling off content) and so on and so on. Half of these things are conflicting with each other.

Christ, there were even people on InXile forums asking for romances in Torment, I shit you not.

 

[Mustawd]

The thread is about Wasteland 2 too....and also about Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, a game that by definition "fixes" everything people didn't like about Sawyer's work in PoE.

Yeah, that was surprising. You would have thought people would be falling all over themselves on that game. Tranny or no tranny. Then again, the reputation of the EE's and the initial bungles didn't really help.

 

[Mustawd]

Christ, there were people on InXile forums asking for romances in Torment, I shit you not.

I hope they die in an AIDS fire. Notice I said AIDS. Because HIV still gives them a chance to live a long life.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?