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So, Jaesun, what's a "classic RPG"? (poll)

What do you think of the new RPG forums?


  • Total voters
    151

stabby

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This is so fucking simple to solve. Just create a "computer RPG" forum and a "console RPG" forum. Multi-platform RPGs that weren't ported to consoles at a much later date can go into the "console RPG" forum, as developing an RPG with consoles in mind dumbs it down to console levels.

...

There's literally no down side to this. It'll be the resident JRPG lovers who will end up wanting a JRPG specific forum to rid themselves of the Western Decline games, which will be in stark contrast to their opposition to any forum split right now. Win fucking win.

Do pardon the little snippy of the middle bit as I do kind of see a teeny flaw in your idea, a very Codex specific one at that. Though I could see this working for a little bit of time at first, I'm guessing that the moment someone decides to talk about a Japanese dungeon crawler (PC-exclusive of course) like, ooooh, I don't know, this one, y'all are gonna have a number of gentle-persons frothing at the mouth before their monocles hit the ground. Some bitching here, a few declarations of 'Decline!' there, and before long there'll be a thread in Site-Feedback saying the boards need to be reorganized because they just don't work as they are.

I say relax and wait to see how it pans out. Either the new boards'll be soon dead and brought back into the fold in 6-8 months so we can all do this again next year, or it'll be a case if 'Holy Shit, this actually works!' and we move on to find some new minutiae within the board lay-out and rally for change of it.
 

MMXI

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Multi-platform RPGs that weren't ported to consoles at a much later date can go into the "console RPG" forum, as developing an RPG with consoles in mind dumbs it down to console levels.
Under these rules, Knights of the Old Republic would be dumped into the "console RPG" forum where it belongs, together with the likes...Dragon Age,
Dragon Age Origins was a PC game ported to consoles that was finished and held for 6 months so it could have a simultaneous multi-platform release. :M
Bullshit. That's just what BioWare wanted you to think. The game was originally going to be a PC game, only for it to get turned into a console game during its development. Do you honestly think EA would have let BioWare continue to make a PC only game for a while after buying them out? In fact, the first interview that hinted at a console release was this one from March 2008. BioWare was bought out by EA in October 2007. If the decision was really made back in October 2007, that left two years of development. Plenty of time to turn a game to shit. Which it largely was.

Anyway, I'm sure Jaesun would move the thread over to the console forum like the good little boy that he is.
 

MMXI

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Do pardon the little snippy of the middle bit as I do kind of see a teeny flaw in your idea, a very Codex specific one at that. Though I could see this working for a little bit of time at first, I'm guessing that the moment someone decides to talk about a Japanese dungeon crawler (PC-exclusive of course) like, ooooh, I don't know, this one, y'all are gonna have a number of gentle-persons frothing at the mouth before their monocles hit the ground. Some bitching here, a few declarations of 'Decline!' there, and before long there'll be a thread in Site-Feedback saying the boards need to be reorganized because they just don't work as they are.

I say relax and wait to see how it pans out. Either the new boards'll be soon dead and brought back into the fold in 6-8 months so we can all do this again next year, or it'll be a case if 'Holy Shit, this actually works!' and we move on to find some new minutiae within the board lay-out and rally for change of it.
This really won't be a problem. We didn't even have that many JRPG topics in the old RPG Discussion forum before the split, let alone ones that would qualify for my proposed "computer RPG" forum. And even then, so what? It's far more accurate and clear cut than what we have right now. Far less ambiguity, and no annoying split between prestigious older games and newer indie releases. I mean, why should Knights of the Chalice and Pool of Radiance be discussed in different forums? Furthermore, why should Crusaders of Khazan be discussed in the JRPG forum?

Advantages:
1) Separates prestigious PC RPGs and most AAA shit.
2) Separates prestigious PC RPGs and most JRPGs.
3) Keeps modern PC indie RPGs like KotC together with the classics.
4) Keeps potentially good new games like Wasteland 2 together with the classics.

Disadvantages:
1) Lets a few Japanese computer RPGs (mainly indies and through the net.
2) Doesn't separate JRPGs and western AAA shit.
3) Divides Japanese computer and console RPGs, even if they play similarly.
4) Results in the old Shadowrun console games going in the console RPG forum.

While the first and fourth disadvantages are minor, the second one wouldn't matter too much. The people who care enough about JRPGs seem to want all RPG discussions dumped into one forum anyway, so this would at least be an improvement on the current slow moving JRPG forum for them as they get to browse their threads together with fast moving Skyrim threads.
 

Stabwound

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Dragon Age was announced in 2004 as a PC game. Then again, by that time they had already released shit like Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire on X-Box so it's not like the concept of releasing shit on consoles was new to them. The early screenshots looked not much different than the game did at release, so it's hard to say how consolized it was or when they decided that it would be on consoles as well as PC.

Dragon Age in 2004

BPozJ.jpg
 

Stabwound

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What is your point? The textures might be better in the released game but it looked like any Xbox game when it was announced. It looks far more like Jade Empire than it does Baldur's Gate. By 2004 Bioware was well into the 3D console RPG market primarily and never looked back.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
What is your point? The textures might be better in the released game but it looked like any Xbox game when it was announced. It looks far more like Jade Empire than it does Baldur's Gate. By 2004 Bioware was well into the 3D console RPG market primarily and never looked back.

Sorry, but the games look nothing alike. This 2004 Dragon Age looks more like a souped up Neverwinter Nights than anything else. And btw, what is the "3D console RPG market"? Do you think there was something inherently "console" about 3D graphics in an RPG in 2004?

gfs_50144_2_4_mid.jpg
 

Stabwound

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Cool story, but Neverwinter Nights came out in 2002 and I'm not even talking about that game.

But I am talking about Knights of the Old Republic came out in 2003. A console game ported later to PC. Also, Jade Empire came out in 2005, obviously in development in 2004 and prior. A console game ported later to PC. So yes, by 2004, when Dragon Age was announced, Bioware was already balls deep in console RPG development and had no intention of going back.

You can even count Mass Effect, another console game that came out years before Dragon Age, between Jade Empire and DA.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'm not sure what your point is. All I'm saying is that the 2004 Dragon Age does not look like the game that was released. It looks more like NWN. PC or console is not relevant here.
 

stabby

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MMXI - Heh, never thought I'd be thankful for a forum to eat a post of mine, 'twas much to long and rambly for my tastes, so let's try a short version:

First, I'm not sure if I can agree with you view of people's reactions to the current board layout, as the vibe I'm getting is that those that dislike the jRPG segregation seem to be of a 'FFS, all this over 6 threads?' mindset, where as those for the animu bannu appear like they took up more space than all the Beth, Bio, & Bliz threads (At least that's how it looks to me).

Moving on, I have to say that I do agree with your idea in parts (I thought I'd mentioned that in my previous post btw), I'm just cynically basing my thoughts on the matter on what I've noticed in my time lurking here. Certain people seemed less than pleased when 'jRPG' was added to the board's description after thread moving fiasco earlier in the year, and said lack of pleasure seemed to be voiced within what few threads that came out of said edict. Basically I'm imagine that sure, people will be happy with the general lack of jRPGs on the computer board (console board will probably be business as usual), until there's the reminder that Japan is A-OK on the prestigious board (also keeping in mind that the fair majority of non-anime styled games are on the consoles).

It's also why I chose that particular thread to link earlier. Some people liked it, some people didn't like the art style but still said thanks for the info, and some acted like they just walked in and found the full cast of Touhou raping their dog. It's easy to see where that thread is going, right?
 

MMXI

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stabby

Right now there's a Japanese and western divide, with the western forums split even further into classic and modern. Much of this thread has consisted of people bitching about the split between classic and modern, while quite a few others have brought up the lack of activity in the JRPG forum and how pointless it is because of it. But you've got to go back to the point of the split in the first place, and that seems to be to have a forum for the RPGs that aren't New Shit and not Japanese. The issue right now is that the classic/golden age forum, which I'm guessing is for people who may not care as much about multi-platform AAA garbage and JRPGs, doesn't capture enough topics of interest to its audience. It doesn't capture games like Temple of Elemental Evil, Knights of the Chalice or even Wasteland 2. These are the types of games that the "classic RPG" audience would be interested in, thus failing its objective as everyone will be checking both western RPG forums anyway. In other words, it serves no purpose other than to slow both forums down somewhat, which General RPG Discussion was never in need of in the first place.

So what are the alternatives? One would be to merge all three current single player RPG boards together into a new General RPG Discussion again, as before. Another would be to try to achieve the aim of the split in the first place with less of its problems. The only sensible ways of doing this is to split between the computer and console divide or the Japanese and western divide.

The problem with the latter, of course, is the same problem we have now. There's no clear way to keep Wasteland 2 and Grimrock threads next to Wizardry and Gold Box threads while keeping Skyrim and Knights of the Old Republic threads out (unless Jaesun moves stuff to General Gaming again, which caused just as much butthurt).

The former, on the other hand, is what I proposed. A console and computer split, with multi-platform games (at development time) going in the console forum to keep threads on shitty AAA games away from Wasteland 2 and turn-based indie RPG threads. In my opinion this is vastly superior to a split between countries of origin because it easily allows you to separate out modern PC exclusive indie/lower budget RPGs and trillion dollar AAA multiplatform games at the same time.

Of course, I have no argument against going back to how things were, and I won't even bother to argue against that. All I'm saying that if there has to be a split, don't split it in the way it is currently, as I don't want Knights of the Chalice threads in a different forum to Gold Box threads.
 

Jaesun

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I really like MMXI's proposal. It makes a lot of sense, and it clearly shows what exactly happened to the cRPG genre. :salute: As even our most Holy Lord of cRPG's MCA clearly stated when developing for Wasteland 2.
 
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stabby

Right now there's a Japanese and western divide, with the western forums split even further into classic and modern. Much of this thread has consisted of people bitching about the split between classic and modern, while quite a few others have brought up the lack of activity in the JRPG forum and how pointless it is because of it. But you've got to go back to the point of the split in the first place, and that seems to be to have a forum for the RPGs that aren't New Shit and not Japanese. The issue right now is that the classic/golden age forum, which I'm guessing is for people who may not care as much about multi-platform AAA garbage and JRPGs, doesn't capture enough topics of interest to its audience. It doesn't capture games like Temple of Elemental Evil, Knights of the Chalice or even Wasteland 2. These are the types of games that the "classic RPG" audience would be interested in, thus failing its objective as everyone will be checking both western RPG forums anyway. In other words, it serves no purpose other than to slow both forums down somewhat, which General RPG Discussion was never in need of in the first place.

So what are the alternatives? One would be to merge all three current single player RPG boards together into a new General RPG Discussion again, as before. Another would be to try to achieve the aim of the split in the first place with less of its problems. The only sensible ways of doing this is to split between the computer and console divide or the Japanese and western divide.

The problem with the latter, of course, is the same problem we have now. There's no clear way to keep Wasteland 2 and Grimrock threads next to Wizardry and Gold Box threads while keeping Skyrim and Knights of the Old Republic threads out (unless Jaesun moves stuff to General Gaming again, which caused just as much butthurt).

The former, on the other hand, is what I proposed. A console and computer split, with multi-platform games (at development time) going in the console forum to keep threads on shitty AAA games away from Wasteland 2 and turn-based indie RPG threads. In my opinion this is vastly superior to a split between countries of origin because it easily allows you to separate out modern PC exclusive indie/lower budget RPGs and trillion dollar AAA multiplatform games at the same time.

Of course, I have no argument against going back to how things were, and I won't even bother to argue against that. All I'm saying that if there has to be a split, don't split it in the way it is currently, as I don't want Knights of the Chalice threads in a different forum to Gold Box threads.

That's a much better compromise, although I must say that so far, even in spite of the elitism of Jaesun and others, I really like the cozy little JRPG board. May compel me to post more about RPGs, since I have more knowledge about these than old DOS games.
 

DarkUnderlord

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The issue for me is simple: Things like Mass Effect should not end up in "General Gaming". General Gaming should be for everything that's not even remotely an RPG. The kind of games you look at and say "First person shooter", "Driving Game", "Train Simulator" or "The Sims". The games that are not, in any way, shape or form, promoted as "RPGs" or even "A-RPGs".

But then we have this quagmire of "other RPG-sort of shit". There's the Japanese RPGs which have stats but focus on tentacle rape and brushing your sister's teeth and fantasising about the gym teacher at school while taking on the vampire children who prey on the school at night. Then there's roguelikes and indies with games like Knights of the Chalice and Ultima, which are very different to the aforementioned Mass Effect, The Witcher or Fallouts.

But then how do you split Knights of the Chalice, Fallout and the Temple of Elemental Evil from Oblivion, Diablo and Mass Effect? When clearly KotC is as much an Action-Game as Diablo. Even the old Gold Box games could be considered as being "action-focussed". While you can say an A-RPG is a game that is more of a real-time, action-adventure focus, it begs the question: Where do games like Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall fit in? That's an action game, with real-time combat.

The clear divide to me is quite simply, one between what we consider "Good" RPGs and those we consider "Bad" RPGs. Hence the original "Classic" forum... to which (unsurprisingly) much butthurt ensued.

Now we could have one forum and dump it all in there - but again, it seems the temptation to make threads in - or move threads to - General Gaming is too great. And keeping it all in the same forum seems... disingenuous (not to mention the complaints). Also, Jaesun is good people and I like to hold on to good people.

The other option is creating forums for all the sub-genres:
- Real-Time Action-RPGs (Mass Effect, Daggerfall, Oblivion, Alpha Protocol)
- Turn-Based (& RTWP) RPGs (KotC, Baldur's Gate, Fallout's - potentially both old and new?)
- jRPGs

... which again raises the obvious issues.

The other option is to create sub-forums, all of which could exist under a master "General RPG Discussion". GRPGD could focus more on the industry and those threads that merge between genres, while the other forums are for particular types of games. And those sub-forums could easily be:
- Indie Games
- Mass Effect
- Elder Scrolls
- Fallout

... but we don't have the topics to warrant it and you just end up with a bunch of forums nobody cares about enough to visit. A "Hot Topics" forum has been suggested, a forum that would exist for a new game that came out. So Skyrim gets released, a forum appears called "Skyrim" and everyone can spam in there. 6 months later when the talk has died down, all the threads are dumped into GRPGD and the forum is renamed to whatever the next latest game is. Only then if two new games come out at once, you'd need multiple forums and then when you shut them down, you're dumping threads all in one forum (where they may end up on page 2 or earlier and not interfere with anything on page 1 but...) it's a weird and irregular sort of change.

So, I'm making a new poll, in a new topic. Voting on that will lead to the final decision.
 

Turjan

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A "Hot Topics" forum has been suggested, a forum that would exist for a new game that came out. So Skyrim gets released, a forum appears called "Skyrim" and everyone can spam in there. 6 months later when the talk has died down, all the threads are dumped into GRPGD and the forum is renamed to whatever the next latest game is. Only then if two new games come out at once, you'd need multiple forums and then when you shut them down, you're dumping threads all in one forum (where they may end up on page 2 or earlier and not interfere with anything on page 1 but...) it's a weird and irregular sort of change.
That's actually the best suggestion I have seen so far. That keeps GRPGD from being flooded with discussions of one game.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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A "Hot Topics" forum has been suggested, a forum that would exist for a new game that came out. So Skyrim gets released, a forum appears called "Skyrim" and everyone can spam in there. 6 months later when the talk has died down, all the threads are dumped into GRPGD and the forum is renamed to whatever the next latest game is. Only then if two new games come out at once, you'd need multiple forums and then when you shut them down, you're dumping threads all in one forum (where they may end up on page 2 or earlier and not interfere with anything on page 1 but...) it's a weird and irregular sort of change.
That's actually the best suggestion I have seen so far. That keeps GRPGD from being flooded with discussions of one game.
Except we never had a *flood* of threads on a specific game to warrant its own forum. Unless, of course, having 3,4,5 threads at once during release time counts as a *flood*.

DarkUnderlord said:
Now we could have one forum and dump it all in there - but again, it seems the temptation to make threads in - or move threads to - General Gaming is too great. And keeping it all in the same forum seems... disingenuous (not to mention the complaints). Also, Jaesun is good people and I like to hold on to good people.
So this entire nonsense is due to Jaesun's thread moving habit? You see, no one else, including you, gives a fuck when some twitchy action RPGs get handled in GRPGD. Maybe it's time for Jaesun - no offense intended - to understand that it's not his task to arrange threads into different subforums and enforce his definition of RPG onto the rest of us. That can't be so hard.
 

spekkio

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DU said:
The clear divide to me is quite simply, one between what we consider "Good" RPGs and those we consider "Bad" RPGs.
Good luck with that. We can't even agree upon what is and what isn't a cRPG...

:roll:

THE CODEX ARE FIGHTING AMONGST THEMSELVES
LOLd hard. Dungeon Keeper had the best voice of "computer assistant" evar.

:love:
 

GordonHalfman

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You see, no one else, including you, gives a fuck when some twitchy action RPGs get handled in GRPGD. Maybe it's time for Jaesun - no offense intended - to understand that it's not his task to arrange threads into different subforums and enforce his definition of RPG onto the rest of us. That can't be so hard.

This. When someone says "this belongs in general gaming", they're really saying either "Look at me I don't like this game!" or "Let's see if I can bait these idiots into the what is an rpg debate #1038484". It's can't actually be a complaint about the way the forum is being managed given how slowly GRPG moves, even during the new Bethesda game hysteria. And if we are having flood problems then just merge threads about the same game the way I thought we already did.
 

DarkUnderlord

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DarkUnderlord said:
Now we could have one forum and dump it all in there - but again, it seems the temptation to make threads in - or move threads to - General Gaming is too great. And keeping it all in the same forum seems... disingenuous (not to mention the complaints). Also, Jaesun is good people and I like to hold on to good people.
So this entire nonsense is due to Jaesun's thread moving habit? You see, no one else, including you, gives a fuck when some twitchy action RPGs get handled in GRPGD. Maybe it's time for Jaesun - no offense intended - to understand that it's not his task to arrange threads into different subforums and enforce his definition of RPG onto the rest of us. That can't be so hard.
To be honest, that's unfair to Jaesun. I've personally been thinking of adding in additional RPG forums for a while. Though mainly my thoughts were of an "Roguelike / Indie" nature for things like Legend of Grimrock, KotC and all the roguelike stuff. The sort of old-school RPG type things. It's a small niche and players of those sorts of games don't want to miss something being flooded out by Mass Effect Thread #4771074 and Skyrim discussion #4892848.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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To be honest, that's unfair to Jaesun.
Don't want to be un-broish to Jaesun, that's why I was asking.

I've personally been thinking of adding in additional RPG forums for a while. Though mainly my thoughts were of an "Roguelike / Indie" nature for things like Legend of Grimrock, KotC and all the roguelike stuff. The sort of old-school RPG type things. It's a small niche and players of those sorts of games don't want to miss something being flooded out by Mass Effect Thread #4771074 and Skyrim discussion #4892848.
That would make sense if we actually had the problem of having 4771074 ME threads or 4892848 Skyrim discussions. Which is not the case. Same with Indies/roguelikes/JRPGs. Are there really so many threads as to require a forum of their own?
 

DarkUnderlord

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That would make sense if we actually had the problem of having 4771074 ME threads or 4892848 Skyrim discussions. Which is not the case.
Yeah but don't we only have one mega thread because every time a topic gets created - it gets merged into it?

Same with Indies/roguelikes/JRPGs. Are there really so many threads as to require a forum of their own?
There are two stickies in the forum for them and the idea is to encourage / create discussion as much as anything. People who like those sorts of games know where to look. Anything new in there is a "Oh hey, something interesting" as opposed to "Someone just posted in the Diablo 3 Thread".

My definition of fast moving is also: If I have to go back a page to read a topic that was created just two weeks ago, then it's fast moving.
 

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