Are older CRPGs are designed better than modern ones?

[Catfish]

New Vegas Legion vs NCR was one of the most underwhelming shit in video game history. Only with mods it could be salvageable. Fights between them only happen in certain locations and were pretty much just the same as bandits attacking caravans.

Come on, the reason you don't see much fighting between the factions outside of certain areas is because there is a front line. You are either on the NCR side of the Colorado, or on the Legion side, or in small pockets where the frontline had shifted at any time. Contrary to what idiots who never joined the army and never learned how war is supposed to be waged, you don't get to see battles 24/7 during a war... It doesn't work that way kid...

The reason you don't see Skyrim civil war fights outside of the questline is because the holds are segregated. You are either in a Legion hold, a neutral hold, or a Stormcloak hold, at anytime. Contrary to what idiots who never joined the army and never learned how war is supposed to be waged, you don't get to see battles 24/7 during a war... It doesn't work that way kid...

Oh...

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Alright.

There are several reasons why older games were better:

1. They did not try to second-guess the player's intentions. They were products of individual desires, i.e. games that the creator wanted to play. You can see this in Deus Ex, JA2, System Shock 2 or PST, where SS2 and DX are immersive FPSs that try to create atmosphere, or where PST is an essentially storytelling game. These games played to strengths of the developers and benefited from the love that was put into them. As opposed to that modern games, mostly, are committee mandated, lowest common denominator driven tripes that have no soul. There are of course exceptions, like in AoD or Expeditions or the Underrail game. But these are far and few.

2. Whenever possible these games used tried and tested mechanics. This is not a universal theme. Most older CRPGs were D&D based. While D&D is hardly perfect, it is fun and that made these games easier to be fun.

3. Lack of agenda driven storytelling: Whether you believe it or not, the structure of the story and its characters affect the gameplay value a lot. When games are written from a political view they tend to have a bad writing, because it is a narrower view of the world and can not possibly resonate with humanity in general. In the simpler times of the 90s and early 2000swe had games with a less political undertone, DX being an exception as it's core is a conspiracy.

 

[Paper]

New games have too many cooks, too many cooks! Too many cooks! Too many cooks, too many cooks!

 

[Catfish]

3. Lack of agenda driven storytelling: Whether you believe it or not, the structure of the story and its characters affect the gameplay value a lot. When games are written from a political view they tend to have a bad writing, because it is a narrower view of the world and can not possibly resonate with humanity in general. In the simpler times of the 90s and early 2000swe had games with a less political undertone, DX being an exception as it's core is a conspiracy.

I'd argue the opposite—the classics are mostly those that actually do have something powerful to say about the human condition, while most newer offerings are confused messes because they try to appeal to everyone and end up saying "well, bad things are bad". Like remember in FO1 when the POS Gizmo actually improved things for Junktown, while the lawful good sheriff didn't? Or that little vignette in KOTOR2 in Nar Shaddah where Kreia demonstrates the inherent flaws of binary philosophies by showing the complex impact your decisions have on the world? There is something behind those moments, I wouldn't call it an agenda though, rather, an artistic opinion.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

3. Lack of agenda driven storytelling: Whether you believe it or not, the structure of the story and its characters affect the gameplay value a lot. When games are written from a political view they tend to have a bad writing, because it is a narrower view of the world and can not possibly resonate with humanity in general. In the simpler times of the 90s and early 2000swe had games with a less political undertone, DX being an exception as it's core is a conspiracy.

I'd argue the opposite—the classics are mostly those that actually do have something powerful to say about the human condition, while most newer offerings are confused messes because they try to appeal to everyone and end up saying "well, bad things are bad". Like remember in FO1 when the POS Gizmo actually improved things for Junktown, while the lawful good sheriff didn't? Or that little vignette in KOTOR2 in Nar Shaddah where Kreia demonstrates the inherent flaws of binary philosophies by showing the complex impact your decisions have on the world? There is something behind those moments, I wouldn't call it an agenda though, rather, an artistic opinion.

We are talking about the same thing in differing vocabularies. What I mean by "agenda driven" is "What I consider good is the only good and you are evil if you even dither a bit about it".

 

[Darth Canoli]

I was there too ...

Spoiler

What kind of question what that anyway ?

If one older game had a better design than everything done after, does that mean games were designed better back then ?

If a single game made 3 years ago had a better design than every other game designed by mankind, does that mean games are designed better nowadays ?

Did someone made a story / Darwinian tree of cRPG design so we can compare and analyse ?

Why are you asking this kind of question ?

What did you eat yesterday ?

 

[WilliamLarrySwirl]

You can get a wife in Fallout 2. You can divorce her. You can trade her into slavery to 3 different people. You can sell her to be a fluffer. I think you can pimp her out too.

You are missing the point. Yes you can get a wife, but you don't get to house her in a home where civil war can potentially destroy it with your wife in it... See?

In Fallout 2 marriage is primitive, your "wife" is a glorified companion npc and nothing more. Like a worse Lydia...

What you are doing is pushing the goalpost when you cant defend your points. Or even have one in the first place.

I meant to guote the other person post. It was actually 1 part of there post but I screwed up.

 

[Theldaran]

There are still games like that. Only they're indies now.

 

[WilliamLarrySwirl]

You can get a wife in Fallout 2. You can divorce her. You can trade her into slavery to 3 different people. You can sell her to be a fluffer. I think you can pimp her out too.

You are missing the point. Yes you can get a wife, but you don't get to house her in a home where civil war can potentially destroy it with your wife in it... See?

In Fallout 2 marriage is primitive, your "wife" is a glorified companion npc and nothing more. Like a worse Lydia...

Since everyone already busted your ass, all I'm going to do is this

They busted what? Stop acting like retards please, my arguments haven't been refuted yet. Deep down in you feel it too, and i know it hurts you, and it brings me joy.

All you can do is conspire to give me "bethestard" tags so you can then use THAT which YOU gave me in the first place, as an argument, in place of your poor reasoning to refute my SOLID arguments...

To sum up: Skyrim gives a ton more RPG options and choices compared to so called "classics" of old, yet you nitpick about things bethesda developers didn't add as an excuse to call it a bad RPG, even though older "classics" you kissass all-day-long didn't include even the options Skyrim has in the first place... Talking about retarded.

Also, for additional butthurt (you are going to need lube for this): Skyrim sold far more than 20 million copies for a reason. The audience has spoken, Skyrim is the best open world RPG ever made. Now go cry in a corner.

Some how yesterday I screwed up trying to quote your post and I think my post and your got combined. I don't know how to explain it. But anyways I like Skyrim not because I think it's a great rpg, but because I love to walk around open worlds. In Skyrim you have choices in race and how you build your character but you don't really have choices on how the story goes. It feels more like a action game with perks. Or maybe deeper than that. I like the game so it really shouldn't matter.

 

[eggdogg]

Blackguards and Lords of Xulima are the only "new" rpgs that really got their hooks in me. It seems almost every new games ends up being hot trash...however as video games have been declining board games have been inclining big time. Board games over the last decade or so have been killing it.

 

[orcinator]

2. Whenever possible these games used tried and tested mechanics. This is not a universal theme. Most older CRPGs were D&D based. While D&D is hardly perfect, it is fun and that made these games easier to be fun.

That's probably one of the worst aspects of classic CRPGs, a game with extremely limited interaction with the world should not be using a stat system originally made for a game with infinite possibilities. Having three stats and six skills might not be so great but it's not worse than 3 useful stats, 3 dump stats, 6 useful skills and 20 trap skills.

also lol@"fun"

 

[Lilura]

That's probably one of the worst aspects of classic CRPGs, a game with extremely limited interaction with the world should not be using a stat system originally made for a game with infinite possibilities.

Give a specific example.

Having three stats and six skills might not be so great but it's not worse than 3 useful stats, 3 dump stats, 6 useful skills and 20 trap skills.

Again, give a specific example.

 

[pizza_microwave]

Video games are all shit, I do declare.

 

[orcinator]

Give a specific example.

Not sure what exactly you're asking here, but probably all of em?

Again, give a specific example.

I might have been exaggerating a bit, though the not exactly classic Wasteland 2 comes closest to what I described, but on the other hand, Skyrim had more than 6 skills.
If you're looking for a classic RPG whose attempts to copy PnP rules made it worse, there's fallout which had the useless charisma stat (technically not useless in 2, but only technically since you could just chew mentats whenever you wanted to recruit more party members) a bunch of mostly or completely useless skills and a ton of useless perks. Besides that I'd guess every other game with had charisma as a stat also had it as a dumb stat.

 

[Catfish]

I might have been exaggerating a bit, though the not exactly classic Wasteland 2 comes closest to what I described, but on the other hand, Skyrim had more than 6 skills.
If you're looking for a classic RPG whose attempts to copy PnP rules made it worse, there's fallout which had the useless charisma stat (technically not useless in 2, but only technically since you could just chew mentats whenever you wanted to recruit more party members) a bunch of mostly or completely useless skills and a ton of useless perks. Besides that I'd guess every other game with had charisma as a stat also had it as a dumb stat.

Purely imho, but I always felt like in FO1 these so-called dump stats were there to facilitate roleplaying more than existing to have a tangiable impact on gameplay mechanics, a bit like the biography box in WL2. Think of this — if you didn't actually know that CH didn't directly affect your speech options — would it still feel meaningless?

I guess what I'm saying is the impulse to minmax turns roleplaying into accounting, and that's just wrong. Yes, you may gimp your character by having 9 charisma, but it facilitates an rp headspace, which is the point. Not to say that it's optimal design

 

[Kruno]

At some point executives found that games made money. This is the time when things would start going to shit. If you read the 1st edition of the Dungeons magazine you will see that role playing games started off as naval simulations and went on from there.

 

[orcinator]

Purely imho, but I always felt like in FO1 these so-called dump stats were there to facilitate roleplaying more than existing to have a tangiable impact on gameplay mechanics, a bit like the biography box in WL2. Think of this — if you didn't actually know that CH didn't directly affect your speech options — would it still feel meaningless?

I guess what I'm saying is the impulse to minmax turns roleplaying into accounting, and that's just wrong. Yes, you may gimp your character by having 9 charisma, but it facilitates an rp headspace, which is the point. Not to say that it's optimal design

If I wanted to LARP I'd play skyrim.
Also the fact that Intelligence is the stat that's often checked when talking to people doesn't help Fallout's case.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

I remember that in Fallout and Ultima's you could examine, pick up and use most of the objects in the world.

So for me the biggest difference is that adventures were so popular and "everywhere" that many games were partly adventures, and included puzzles.