Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

1eyedking Top 10 things that RPGs don't do anymore

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
Patron
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
17,274
Location
Terra da Garoa
So, I've been thinking about writing another clickbait article about RPGs, this time on ideas & concepts that were common, but now vanished. I mean, beyond good combat, fun dungeons, actual good writing, etc...

For example:

Item-based UI: Think Stonekeep, Lands of Lore, Ambermoon/star or Albion - you only had a on-screen compass if you bought/ found a in-game compass. I always thougt this was a cool concept.

Deadly Architeture: Dark areas, teleporters, pits, spinners, traps, no-magic areas, etc... dungeons of the past were often as threatening, if not more, than the actual monsters than inhabited them. Just ask any Wizardry player.

Problem is, while that all works well in first-person view, the omnipresent 3rd-person "behind the back" camera makes most of those tricks impossible - you can't seamlessly teleport a player in a game like The Witcher or Dark Souls without him noticing.

Riddles: Who can forget Betrayal at Krondor's chests, or that riddle the Baldur's Gate Genie made:

A princess is as old as the prince will be when the princess is twice as old as the prince was when the princess' age was half the sum of their current ages.

I remember reading a idiot game designer talking about how he doesn't do riddles anymore because people just Google then answer. That's bullshit, might as well not make a game at all since people will watch it being streamed.

Secret Characters: Another downside of the BioWarization of RPG companions is that they become a huge selling point and marketing focus. People knew the entire life of Dragon Age: Inquisition's companions even before the game was released.

This had a nasty side-effect - it kills any surprise. Imagine if Chrono Trigger came out today - you would know Magus can be recruited 6 months before release. It kills all the surprise of suddenly meeting a talking deathclaw in Fallout 2 (WUT?) and being able to recruit him (OH YEAH!!).

Any suggestions? It's a fun discussion, and I'll credit any idea I end up using. :)
 

shihonage

Subscribe to my OnlyFans
Patron
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
7,157
Location
location, location
Bubbles In Memoria
UI feeling like part of the game. Made of stone, with some bubbly potions or whatnot. As opposed to looking like some shitty Flash app.

Keeping "floating numbers" away from the first-person gameplay screen. Because it's a fucking dungeon with monsters in it, not The Matrix.

Unique death animations (probably because sprites allowed infinite artistic freedom, where you could portray something falling apart in a million different ways).
 

SausageInYourFace

Angelic Reinforcement
Patron
Joined
Dec 28, 2013
Messages
3,858
Location
In your face
Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
ideas & concepts that were common, but now vanished

..you only had a on-screen compass if you bought/ found a in-game compass..

Grimrock has an in-game compass only if you find it, iirc. Its also pretty much a requirement if you wanna map out the dungeon yourself cause there is (optionally) no auto-map.

Deadly Architeture: Dark areas, teleporters, pits, spinners, traps, no-magic areas, etc.

Grimrock has some of these too and a bunch of other modern blobbers and roguelikes do too. So they didn't really vanish if you know where to look.

-
One thing that I miss today is a crazy genre mix of scifi and fantasy in the setting, like M&M and Wizardry used to do and devs going really crazy with a setting and art direction (e.g. Xeen) but thats not really gameplay and probably not what you are asking for.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
Patron
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
17,274
Location
Terra da Garoa
Grimrock is entirely made as a throwback to old dungeon crawlers.., it's kind of expected that it would re-thread some of these ideas.

Sadly, the poor sales of Grimrock 2 probably means it will be a looooong time before we get more of that :(
 

Cosmo

Arcane
Joined
Nov 6, 2010
Messages
1,387
Project: Eternity
UI feeling like part of the game.

I'm also fond of solid UIs, not only because their art makes them part of the game, but also because they felt like a literal window to a marvelous new world, so much so that in those day i was often driven to take it all in by burning my eyes 3 inches from my CRT screen...
Same thing with isometric games like HeroQuest that mimicked the convention of having a game board, which was the occasion to paradoxically create wonderful and atmospheric pixel art.
Of course this is also the era of awful cluncky UIs, that ate way too much of the screen, but something of the imagination was lost when the rise of 3d games made it so that the sole thing granting immersion was the game world itself, and when UI had to be as functional and forgettable as possible.
 
Last edited:

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
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
Last edited:

Arulan

Cipher
Joined
Feb 13, 2014
Messages
313
Translatable Languages:

Pool of Radiance comes to mind. While it was as simple as taking out the DRM-wheel and translating some runic symbols, the process involved added to the experience. Another example being The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, where you don't immediately know how to translate Daedric symbols, but start to piece it together, and quickly realize that the game allows you to learn a lot of information earlier than you're perhaps supposed to, if you translate the right messages.

Keeping the Game an Unknown:

You could talk about a whole lot of different subject here, but the general idea being that a lot of RPGs today are too quick to reveal themselves to the player, meaning the player knows what to expect from the game. The topics include how over-balanced design leads to players expecting dull incremental items, or the seeing through a magic system that consists of little more than ranged-attack with elemental effects. Additionally, RPGs with text-parsers often created a feeling of discovery that isn't present with a simple list of dialogue choices, especially when you connect the dots on pieces of information that led you to a given prompt. And finally, this also includes examples of games surpassing your expectations of your choices, especially when it's not blatantly pointed out to you, such as Fallout.
 

Scroo

Female Quota Staff
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2010
Messages
1,865,340
Location
Too far away from the sea
Codex 2014 Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
Actually killable party members. In any modern rpg party members just get up after any kind of battle and are all líke "lol didn't hurt"

which also leads to

Party Members attacking each other / leaving the party forever if they can't get along with another party member / your actions.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,185
Location
Bjørgvin
CRPGs no longer treat players as literate.
Every fucking line of text has to be voice acted these days. Are there people who play CRPGs who can't read, or is it just what the designers/publishers think?

No quest compasses.
Nuff said.

Keeping things abstract.
You can no longer use your imagination and "fill in the blanks", wether it be characters, combat or level design. CRPGs have become more like movies, and less like games in general.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
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
It's also a more expensive game.

But no, I guess you don't. Not sure they'd be interested anyway, though. Time to move on to something new (which might end up being a blobber too, we'll see)
 
Last edited:

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
Quest journal with different routes leaving different writings, ala Planescape Torment and Arcanum. It created and can reinforced certain point of view without making it blatantly obvious.

You dont have to know that you forgive the old rogue his betrayal because it relate to an old experience in your past. You as a gamer know you do that because it's XP. to know more you need to dig into less used feature.
 

SausageInYourFace

Angelic Reinforcement
Patron
Joined
Dec 28, 2013
Messages
3,858
Location
In your face
Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
CRPGs no longer treat players as literate.
Every fucking line of text has to be voice acted these days. Are there people who play CRPGs who can't read, or is it just what the designers/publishers think?

Unfortunately, when watching reviews of games like Div OS, Wasteland 2, SR HK or PoE, one of the most common topics that comes up and is an element of criticism is the voice acting or the lack thereof. So even in the target audience of these games there seems to be a large group of players who are not used to reading texts in games and simply don't want to. While I too think thats bullshit I can't really blame the developers for keeping that in mind.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
Actually killable party members. In any modern rpg party members just get up after any kind of battle and are all líke "lol didn't hurt"

which also leads to

Party Members attacking each other / leaving the party forever if they can't get along with another party member / your actions.

This is a difficulty setting in Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny. In both those games you can also set companions to die even if you play on the easier difficulties. You could argue it is no longer done by default, but it isn't something that has completely disappeared.

As for your second point, I agree with this. I think in one of the Mass Effect games (or maybe Dragon Age?) two of your companions have a fight and you have to pick which one you side with, the other one leaves, unless you have a high enough persuade skill to make them both stay. In Jade Empire, just recruiting one companion will make other companions leave, so it isn't something that has been gone for long - but it was definitely something absent from both Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny.
 
Joined
Apr 27, 2015
Messages
821
Location
Isometric realm
1. Never be able to see everything from 1 play through;
2. Rely on the mistery to find every secret in the game ( I know it's easy because of internet nowadays but devs should work harder to make secrets - secret :) - Underrail did a great thing with it's sense of wonder );
3. Choices that do matter in the game;
4. No gay characters;
5. Inventory that looks great like Arcanum;
6. World with random encounters; (Arcanum, Fallout);
7. Day and night cycle with activities to NPC's; (Arcanum)
8. Let the main character be the most important one, with no direct control over the followers ( Arcanum );
9. Mandatory Isometric perspective;
10. Make Arcanum 2 :D

I would also add great combat like Underrail. Arcanum 2 with improved graphics and Underrail combat. Or make Underrail with companions and a map.
 
Last edited:

Doktor Best

Arcane
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
2,849
So, I've been thinking about writing another clickbait article about RPGs, this time on ideas & concepts that were common, but now vanished. I mean, beyond good combat, fun dungeons, actual good writing, etc...

For example:

Item-based UI: Think Stonekeep, Lands of Lore, Ambermoon/star or Albion - you only had a on-screen compass if you bought/ found a in-game compass. I always thougt this was a cool concept.

True that. I remember when i was playing Albion (my first rpg) as a young boy and i always got hopelessly lost in 3d areas, when i found out about the compass i was overjoyed because the game just gave me such a helpful yet ordinary tool.

Deadly Architeture: Dark areas, teleporters, pits, spinners, traps, no-magic areas, etc... dungeons of the past were often as threatening, if not more, than the actual monsters than inhabited them. Just ask any Wizardry player.

Problem is, while that all works well in first-person view, the omnipresent 3rd-person "behind the back" camera makes most of those tricks impossible - you can't seamlessly teleport a player in a game like The Witcher or Dark Souls without him noticing.

And yet Dark Souls is one of the very few games who nailed that concept almost perfectly. The dungeon layout with various natural and unnatural traps, ambushes, dark/poisonnous/heated areas. Swamps that lets you move at a slower pace, labyrinthian areas where you get lost easily, narrow bridges you have to pass, steep drops you can easily fall down if you dont pay attention. The richness and creativity in those measures to kill you is so enormous in these games, it blew me away when i first played it.


Riddles: Who can forget Betrayal at Krondor's chests, or that riddle the Baldur's Gate Genie made:

A princess is as old as the prince will be when the princess is twice as old as the prince was when the princess' age was half the sum of their current ages.

I remember reading a idiot game designer talking about how he doesn't do riddles anymore because people just Google then answer. That's bullshit, might as well not make a game at all since people will watch it being streamed.

Its a cheap lie. They dont implent them anymore (or if they do they do it in an insultingly easy way like in Far Cry 3 or Skyrim) so all those morons who buy games to play them like the brainless zombies they are dont get annoyed by their own stupidity and complain online. Uncharted did it somehow passably for a mainstream game. They implented voiced monologues of the characters that give you the solution to the riddle which could be turned off in options. But for most developers even this is too much of a hassle. Its as sad as it is simple, nobody cares about them. If riddles would sell games as well as tits or violence does Devs would drown us in them.

Any suggestions? It's a fun discussion, and I'll credit any idea I end up using. :)

I will add a feature i have only seen in two games up until now: The ability to adjust difficulty settings in various areas like in System Shock 1 and Fallout 2. You could set a difficulty for combat encounters, for ressource mangement, for puzzlesolving and for a timelimit. This would make us able to form our own game experience the way we like it. Some like a harsh economy that forces them to loot everything and fuck everyone over so they can earn some cash, others dont. Some like hard encounters they have to savescum in order to beat, others dont. Some like hard riddles or puzzles, others dont because it ruins their pacing. Make it optional.
 
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
6,207
Location
The island of misfit mascots
Not so much a crpg gripe as a general gaming gripe, but I feel that the general window of creativity has narrowed. You can't get away with making a game about a talking Earthworm any more, no matter how good it is. Or about an alley-cat trying to get laid. Yeah, lots of that shit came with the crappy graphics of the era, but even when goat simulator was made as a joke game, I couldn't help but think of how many awesome mechanics you could put into that game if you actually wanted to make a proper version with gameplay, simply by reason of substituting the usual bipedal PC with a quadraped that can jump, headbut, stealth and chew through just about anything.
 
Unwanted
Queued Shitposter
Joined
Oct 22, 2016
Messages
275
What, you dont find Larian hilarious?

Puzzles in Serpent in the Staglands are interesting for lack of a better word.
Like, you find a kids diary where he describes getting eaten and you hoard it cause you know, autistic, forget about it, aside from when you try to clean up the inventory...
Five gameplay hours later you run across a hole in a wall and fight some Danurii and Evil Kids (who look like grown up barbarians) or something and find a deadend with 3 kettles that need to be rotated to the right letter. And no hints at all.
Go through the inventory and by chance find the kids diary, which is kinda long but makes sense in context and scrolling through it you find a chant "VRA VRA VRA" which fits the kettles. Voila.
You go down, fight more Danurii (garbage loot) and find an uneaten kid. Of course I forgot where I found the diary... Go to next village and talked to everyone. Innkeeper takes him of your hands for an incredible 30 XP. Worst puzzle reward ever. Should have googled that shit.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom