Rhalle said:
Nerdy!? Who died and made you prom queen?
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The role-playing paradigm in the post-Oblivion era
- Thread starter Lumpy
- Start date
Nerdy!? Who died and made you prom queen?
PorkaMorka
Arcane
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Excluding Roguelikes, JRPG inspired games and Console/Handheld games:
KOTC was the only CRPG released post 2005 that I have played and enjoyed to the same degree that I enjoyed classic CRPGs.
Avernums are worthy of mention in that I have logged a lot of hours on them and actually re-played the demo portion of 6 after losing my saves.
But with the Avernum games I invariably end up in a state of almost having fun, but not quite managing it. Every aspect of the content is just shoddy enough that I would really be having much more fun doing something else. The combat is mediocre, the dialog is mediocre at best, the quests are on par with those found in MMORPGs, etc.
I hated all other CRPGs released during this era that I played.
I suggest that people expressing this opinion be clearly marked with a "perspective whore" custom title, so that they may be more easily shunned and ostracized.
Alternatively, we could skip straight to the pogrom.
KOTC was the only CRPG released post 2005 that I have played and enjoyed to the same degree that I enjoyed classic CRPGs.
Avernums are worthy of mention in that I have logged a lot of hours on them and actually re-played the demo portion of 6 after losing my saves.
But with the Avernum games I invariably end up in a state of almost having fun, but not quite managing it. Every aspect of the content is just shoddy enough that I would really be having much more fun doing something else. The combat is mediocre, the dialog is mediocre at best, the quests are on par with those found in MMORPGs, etc.
I hated all other CRPGs released during this era that I played.
Overweight Manatee said:
I suggest that people expressing this opinion be clearly marked with a "perspective whore" custom title, so that they may be more easily shunned and ostracized.
Alternatively, we could skip straight to the pogrom.
Jaime Lannister
Arbiter
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2007
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- 7,183
A few years ago, the love for Fallout, Arcanum, and PS:T was near universal. Now there's a growing contingency that hates anything post-1994.
Jaime Lannister said:
Unless you count Drog's alts, nothing has really changed. Mondblutians have been present and vocal for a long time.
roll-a-die
Magister
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- Sep 27, 2009
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CrimHead said:
Fiat Emphasis.
In more full terms, seen it before sensations, combat sucked ass, combat was forces upon you, not as inspiring as Fallout, unfocused design, shitty balancing of power. Pro's however are the setting, and the story, vaguely.
In essence I've come to realize it essentially was a remake of fallout with a somewhat better story(which is debatable.) and a fantasy overlay.
Carlos' Bitch1
Arcane
CrimHead said:
Probably graphics and perspective. They usually don't admit it in a thread or in a direct answer about Arcanum, but if you read their posts regarding other games, the answer suddenly becomes fairly obvious.
Only circumstantial evidence, but it seems to fit.
Carlos' Bitch1
Arcane
roll-a-die said:
I agree with the combat sucking, that is a huge letdown for this game, especially for me. The poor balance is also noticeable, though due to my penchant for being a tech character (thus making the game more difficult), I am glad that it is unbalanced in my favour, so to speak.
However, I don't understand what you mean by 'not as inspired as Fallout', what do you mean by this?
And unfocused design? Do you mean the combat again? The fact they didn't focus on one type of combat or the other is certainly unfocused, though I suspect you mean something else after already mentioning the combat aspect.
Erzherzog
Magister
Arcanum has fallen quite far from the Codex's favorites, hasn't it? It always had that qualifier in the old days though. "You know it's the best RPG ever if they could just iron out the bugs."
Fallout has too, at least a bit. No longer regarded as the closest we'll get to perfection anymore. PS:T Seems to get more praise than ever before now though...
Hell, I haven't heard anyone say "Codex Holy Trinity" in forever come to think of it.
I'll be honest though...Arcanum has that charm about it that makes it greater than the sum of it's parts.
Fallout has too, at least a bit. No longer regarded as the closest we'll get to perfection anymore. PS:T Seems to get more praise than ever before now though...
Hell, I haven't heard anyone say "Codex Holy Trinity" in forever come to think of it.
I'll be honest though...Arcanum has that charm about it that makes it greater than the sum of it's parts.
PorkaMorka
Arcane
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- Feb 19, 2008
- Messages
- 5,090
Bad balance is really an understatement though. It seems like a lot of the time when we say bad we mean "on the lower end of mediocre" but in Arcanum, we're talking downright bad.
This was a game which you could trivialize by simply picking one of several standard RPG archetypes for your character and making a sensible but entirely unresearched and unoptimized build for him.
After botching character building (including your core magic vs tech concept) and combat(in a game full of combat), it's very hard to come back and earn a high rating from anyone who is being honest about it.
The fact that it (Arcanum) ever rose above flawed gem status to be included in somebody's holy trinity is a sign of fanboyism, nothing more.
This was a game which you could trivialize by simply picking one of several standard RPG archetypes for your character and making a sensible but entirely unresearched and unoptimized build for him.
After botching character building (including your core magic vs tech concept) and combat(in a game full of combat), it's very hard to come back and earn a high rating from anyone who is being honest about it.
The fact that it (Arcanum) ever rose above flawed gem status to be included in somebody's holy trinity is a sign of fanboyism, nothing more.
Erzherzog
Magister
Well now surely you're joking. Arcanum manages to be fun at the end of the day and all the mono-spectacled amateur criticisms we do does not change that.
Carlos' Bitch1
Arcane
How could you botch your character build this badly unless you were going for something incredibly exotic? Give me some examples. I cannot think of any build that has one of these areas downpat that cannot finish the game handily. I can think of a few clueless builds that someone could make in order to make sure they fail, but that is about it.
The combat is flawed, no doubt about it. It isn't the worst I have come across though. The called shots at least allowed some measure of difference, little as it is. They should have just had a full up copy of the Fallout system in this regard if they couldn't make something better at the time.
roll-a-die
Magister
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- Sep 27, 2009
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The standard Troika flaw, they focus too much on adding new stuff, and not enough on refining what they have.Blackadder said:
Magic V. Tech, there's 80 of spells, yet Tech is stuck with something like 50 or so recipes, if that, given that from what I recall you can't just purchase them from the menu like you can Magic, you've got to find allot of them, to the point where the tech crafting seems like more of an afterthought, and Oh shit, we need to add that because it fits, lets just throw together what ever, than an actual feature. Not only that, but the spells often don't work correctly or are of barely marginal use. To the point where if you pick magic, there's two path's you have to have, conjuration or necromancy, nothing else matters.
Then comes the balance issues. Spells are far more useful, with far less effort, time spent finding rubbish, space in your inventory and XP expenditure than the Technology path..
It's a flawed gem like all of troika's games. Honestly in terms of writing, VtM was better, in terms of gameplay, VtM and ToEE were better. In terms of setting, Arcanum really shined, but it's really the only time they made their own.
And no Erzherzog, I don't care about graphics or perspective, doing so is stupid. I agree with you on that it has charm, ToEE lacked that, and that's why ToEE is worse than Arcanum.
Xor
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2008
- Messages
- 9,345
I think Arcanum disappoints people precisely because it came so close to perfection; it flew too close to the sun. It's a brilliant game at times, but that just makes it more disappointing when the flaws emerge.
Troika obviously had some great ideas about what to do with the game, but their execution was off. Like Fallout, each town is mapped out well (exquisitely so in Arcanum), but like Fallout most of the towns have hardly any side quests. Arcanum is almost worse in that department, having several locations that serve no purpose at all in the main story with maybe two optional quests attached to them. The only areas that felt developed were Shrouded Hills, Tarant, and Caladon (although I think they could have done more there). How about a few more quests in Ashbury? Ideally, each area would have its own contained storyline the way they tried to do in Fallout 2; New Reno had its mobsters, Redding had the mining companies, Broken Hills had the mutants versus humans (probably the best example of what I mean).
For example, Blackroot has problems with bandits and ties to Durnholm, make a series of 5 or so quests with different factions that revolve around that, and then culminate with a final quest where you decide what the outcome will be for the town in the ending slideshow. This could be taken a step further to affect other towns as well, making Durnholm hostile if you convince Blackroot to revolt, or something like that. The possibilities are endless, and that's just one town off the top of my head.
The combat system was ambitious but fell flat. I shouldn't need to go into detail. And forcing the player through tons of filler combat was another design mistake. The only opportunity I can think of to avoid a "plot" dungeon with diplomacy is in the wheel clan, and doing so is a terrible choice from a powergamer perspective because you're losing a ton of XP, and since powergaming is pretty prevalent in RPGs, that means many players are going to go through the dungeon anyway, and be pissed that the game is forcing them to. Others might not even figure out that diplomacy is an option; you need 14 int and a decent speech skill to pull it off.
All the dungeons were like that, with pretty much no freedom and very difficult to sneak through. Practically impossible if you had companions. No, the designers obviously expected you to fight everything. That's probably the biggest overall flaw with the game.
The entire character system was clunky and didn't really work well. I would have liked to see character points have more weight on stats, maybe making them go from 1 to 10 with 5 being average or 1 to 5 and starting at 1, and then the max level could have been set to something reasonable like 20 and the stat requirement for spells could have been changed to a level requirement. The existing system just forces the player to spend tons of character points maxing the "good" stats while ignoring the others entirely.
I'm not even going to touch on the story. I actually enjoyed it and was surprised by the reveal the first time through. It seemed like they were using the standard prophecy of doom plot, but then that gets turned on its head when you meet Nasrudin and figure out that the dark elves had a hand in shaping the Panarii in the first place. Could have probably been told better, but I think they did a good job using a cliche and then doing something different with it.
I could also bring up the bugs, but I'm actually rather forgiving in that area and even the crash and save corruption bugs didn't darken my opinion of the game, I just looked at them as challenges to be overcome.
So overall, Arcanum is still a pretty good game, and I'd say it's a great cRPG. Nothing that I've played has come close in modern times, but that's probably because nothing has tried to emulate it. 3D cRPGs are almost an entirely different genre, and there hasn't been much pressure to surpass Arcanum, or Fallout for that matter. Maybe AoD will manage it, but who knows. I've played through Arcanum several times, and I'll probably play through it again, probably more than any RPG that came out last decade if you don't count Diablo 2 as an RPG.
Troika obviously had some great ideas about what to do with the game, but their execution was off. Like Fallout, each town is mapped out well (exquisitely so in Arcanum), but like Fallout most of the towns have hardly any side quests. Arcanum is almost worse in that department, having several locations that serve no purpose at all in the main story with maybe two optional quests attached to them. The only areas that felt developed were Shrouded Hills, Tarant, and Caladon (although I think they could have done more there). How about a few more quests in Ashbury? Ideally, each area would have its own contained storyline the way they tried to do in Fallout 2; New Reno had its mobsters, Redding had the mining companies, Broken Hills had the mutants versus humans (probably the best example of what I mean).
For example, Blackroot has problems with bandits and ties to Durnholm, make a series of 5 or so quests with different factions that revolve around that, and then culminate with a final quest where you decide what the outcome will be for the town in the ending slideshow. This could be taken a step further to affect other towns as well, making Durnholm hostile if you convince Blackroot to revolt, or something like that. The possibilities are endless, and that's just one town off the top of my head.
The combat system was ambitious but fell flat. I shouldn't need to go into detail. And forcing the player through tons of filler combat was another design mistake. The only opportunity I can think of to avoid a "plot" dungeon with diplomacy is in the wheel clan, and doing so is a terrible choice from a powergamer perspective because you're losing a ton of XP, and since powergaming is pretty prevalent in RPGs, that means many players are going to go through the dungeon anyway, and be pissed that the game is forcing them to. Others might not even figure out that diplomacy is an option; you need 14 int and a decent speech skill to pull it off.
All the dungeons were like that, with pretty much no freedom and very difficult to sneak through. Practically impossible if you had companions. No, the designers obviously expected you to fight everything. That's probably the biggest overall flaw with the game.
The entire character system was clunky and didn't really work well. I would have liked to see character points have more weight on stats, maybe making them go from 1 to 10 with 5 being average or 1 to 5 and starting at 1, and then the max level could have been set to something reasonable like 20 and the stat requirement for spells could have been changed to a level requirement. The existing system just forces the player to spend tons of character points maxing the "good" stats while ignoring the others entirely.
I'm not even going to touch on the story. I actually enjoyed it and was surprised by the reveal the first time through. It seemed like they were using the standard prophecy of doom plot, but then that gets turned on its head when you meet Nasrudin and figure out that the dark elves had a hand in shaping the Panarii in the first place. Could have probably been told better, but I think they did a good job using a cliche and then doing something different with it.
I could also bring up the bugs, but I'm actually rather forgiving in that area and even the crash and save corruption bugs didn't darken my opinion of the game, I just looked at them as challenges to be overcome.
So overall, Arcanum is still a pretty good game, and I'd say it's a great cRPG. Nothing that I've played has come close in modern times, but that's probably because nothing has tried to emulate it. 3D cRPGs are almost an entirely different genre, and there hasn't been much pressure to surpass Arcanum, or Fallout for that matter. Maybe AoD will manage it, but who knows. I've played through Arcanum several times, and I'll probably play through it again, probably more than any RPG that came out last decade if you don't count Diablo 2 as an RPG.
CrimHead
Scholar
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- 3,084
@roll-a-die
Not as inspired as Fallout? The inspirations for the settings are working on the same premise, I think. Let's take a basic setting and blend it with another , creating something wholly unique in the process. Fallout is Post Apocolyptic/1950's vision of the future, while Arcanum is Fantasy/Victorian Era. I think it just comes down to whether you prefer Fantasy or Sci-Fi in terms of the setting.
I agree with the game being somewhat broken, but you're a Morrowind fan aren't you? Simply exploring the enchanting system in that game, without any foreknowledge whatsoever, can lead to incredibly broken combinations of equipment. I remember the first time I played it I was able to craft a ring of constant levitation and 100% chameleon outfit. Arcanum has things like backstab, but at least its not THAT bad.
Not as inspired as Fallout? The inspirations for the settings are working on the same premise, I think. Let's take a basic setting and blend it with another , creating something wholly unique in the process. Fallout is Post Apocolyptic/1950's vision of the future, while Arcanum is Fantasy/Victorian Era. I think it just comes down to whether you prefer Fantasy or Sci-Fi in terms of the setting.
I agree with the game being somewhat broken, but you're a Morrowind fan aren't you? Simply exploring the enchanting system in that game, without any foreknowledge whatsoever, can lead to incredibly broken combinations of equipment. I remember the first time I played it I was able to craft a ring of constant levitation and 100% chameleon outfit. Arcanum has things like backstab, but at least its not THAT bad.
ElectricOtter
Guest
Just steer clear of his blog and you'll be fine. I'd recommend giving the Exile trilogy and Nethergate a try if you want a more gameplay and setting focused experience, and Geneforge for a good story, atmosphere, and C&C-fest.Roguey said:
I guess it has been 5 years since Oblivion came out and I became a grizzled old dinosaur
. I haven't been playing many AAA titles since then, but here's what I have:Dragon Age: Decent Baldur's Gate clone, fun for a little while. Never finished it, the Deep Roads (or whatever they were called) killed my interest. 5/10
Gothic 3: Didn't like it as much as the second one, but still a great game. Don't remember a lot, honestly. I need to replay it sometime. 7.5/10
Geneforge 4 and 5: Awesome entries to the series. 4 was p. good, but 5 took the classic Geneforge formula and expanded and improved upon it. One of the few games I've played that honestly felt epic. G4: 7/10 G5: 9/10
Geneforge 3: Kinda meh. Much more limited in scope that the other Geneforge games. Probably the weakest entry in the series. 6/10
Avernum 4: This was a fairly shoddy, early attempt to put Avernum into the Geneforge engine, and it did not work out well. Boring combat, forgettable story, small world, and boring areas overall. On the upside, I did like the weight system. 4/10
The Witcher: Exceeded my expectations. Combat wasn't great, but story and setting were nice. The graphics were also pretty good. 6/10
Eschalon: Combat is weak, story is boring, areas are repetitive. Never got past the demo area. However, it did have nice character creation, traps, and dungeons. 4/10
Fallout 3: If Oblivion was a punch in the face, this was a kick in the balls. Retarded monkey writing, ruined lore, shit-ass combat, bad atmosphere, mediocre story, broken mechanics, the list goes on. I have to admit, though: exploring the capital wasteland could be entertaining and the exploration was pretty good. This game was one of the reasons I found the Codex, actually. But Bethesda still raped Fallout, and for that I cannot forgive them. Unless TES5 is really good. 2/10
Fallout: New Vegas: I just started playing it fairly recently (only about 3 or so hours in), but I already love it. The atmosphere seems restored to something close to it's former glory, plus the writing and quest design are quite good. RPG elements are restored, along with well-developed factions. The shooting mechanics are also nice. Coupled with the mainstay Fallout lore, this makes for a great RPG, the likes of which aren't common nowadays. Well worth the $59.99 I for it. 8.5/10
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Are you kidding? the favorite troll target has been PST for a while. It's getting more bashing for its combat than even Arcanum lately...Erzherzog said:
As for Arcanum, I think it's because of what Xor said. I still consider it unrivalled in terms of quest design.
Eh, the only one I can remember criticizing the graphics openly is DraQ, and IIRC he likes the game. Personally they never bothered, even though the game's style has that plastic look.Blackadder said:
ElectricOtter
Guest
No, I'm 99% certain I have a PC version of the game that I bought for around 60 bucks. What, did I get ripped off or something?CrimHead said:
CrimHead
Scholar
- Joined
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- Messages
- 3,084
ElectricOtter said:
http://www.amazon.com/Fallout-New-Vegas ... 692&sr=8-1
That's where I bought mine
PC versions of multiplatform games are generally 10-15 dollars cheaper than their console counterparts.
Carlos' Bitch1
Arcane
Oh, I got a free tee shirt with my purchase of Arcanum too. I guess that will be worth a penny or two one day.
roll-a-die
Magister
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2009
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- 3,131
Exactly. Well really, Fallout is Mad Max+50s, and Arcanum is Tolkien in the Victorian Age. Both are inspiring, Fallout is just slightly more original, considering just about anything+tolkien has been tread out thousands of times.CrimHead said:
You know, I'd really like to see more books and games based off the Lovecraft style fantasy. And don't say dragon age, because yeah, that game is Tolkien.
Hell I'd really love to see more Fantasy games take inspiration from a source OTHER than Tolkien. I think a Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe style setting would make a fantastic RPG, so long as it was done in a mature fashion(IE not a kids game, but more in line with a T or M rating.)
ElectricOtter
Guest
I bought mine in a store... let me check their website real quick.CrimHead said:
EDIT: well I'll be damned. It was $49.99 after all.
Severian Silk
Guest
I haven't played Oblivion yet. Is it any good? I hear some people like it. Has Vault Dweller played it? I'd really be interested in hearing his comments about the game.
Secretninja
Cipher
Fallout I played to death long before becoming a prestigious member of teh codex.
Planescape I played and loved after becoming a prestigious member.
Arcanum I played before joining the codex, thought it was shit. After joining the codex I gave it another shot and still couldn't enjoy it.
Planescape I played and loved after becoming a prestigious member.
Arcanum I played before joining the codex, thought it was shit. After joining the codex I gave it another shot and still couldn't enjoy it.
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