RPG Codex's Best RPGs - 2019 - RESULTS ARE OUT!

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Anyone thinking that the voting system is to blame for the results not living up to their expectations is just fooling themselves anyway.

The results certainly lived up to my expectations...

 

[Roguey]

Diablo 2 making the list for the first time is proof of how influential Lilura's blog is even in her absence on the Codex.

 

[Jamma]

The voting system is good, more or less. The problem is that it encourages a very top heavy voting, with the top 20 having more points than the other 250. This could be considered good because we are looking for the best RPG, rather than ranking all of them, but from the 23 spot and on the differences between games come down to one or two points, with many ties, so that part of the list gets sketchy.

This looks at the difference in points between each game:

These small differences lead to higher variance, in which a single voter can have a huge impact. It's not a surprise that this issue crops up from the 23th spot when the voters are given 25 points to hand out.

This is the same graph but looking at the the differences in points at intervals of ten, so the difference isn't between 1st place and 2nd, but between 1st place and 11th.

It's easy to see there's very little difference past the 20th spot.

The list is good IMO, so I would fix this by writing good reviews that highlight what games are worth playing and why, regardless of their rank. At the same time, maybe more points are needed in the future for the bottom of the list to mean anything.

 

[DeepOcean]

Codexers you are a fucking joke.

Joke is on you for not understanding the metaphysics of incline.

When someone invokes incline, you should always think about the hidden meaning of this majestic term:

1998 Incline:
"I'm really impressed by how artful and ambitious this RPG is, I can only imagine how great the future will be, there can only be incline from now."

2018 Incline:

"Please EA lord, I need something to eat, I'm on this dungeon for years, you killed everything that was sacred for me. I need something."

"Shut the fuck up, EA doesn't give a shit about you or this place anymore, they are hunting whales now, you are free."

"Free? I mean can I play something that isn't an online third person/FPS/MMO game with micro transactions?"

"Now that is funny... look outside, you useless bum."

The player looks outside, and there is only a wasteland of scorched earth where all eyes can see.

"That is all that is left after the EApocalypse. There are only crazy people wandering on those wastelands, half of them are demented by the SJW disease, the other half of them are wondering if it was a better life choice to be a lawyer or a medical doctor instead of being a RPG game developer or that maybe they should be hunting whales too like EA is doing. The first half will kill you in sight as their cult demands flesh blood from white males as they don't like to work and the other half maybe will throw some garbage they have in spare for you if they pity you enough."

"Don't complain, everything is good for what it is now."

"Well... I guess that is incline?"

 

[Q]

It's a poll for the best RPGs, not for the "kinda ok, would maybe give more points if I had" RPGs. So if 12 people love Nier: Automata enough to give it 4 or 3 points each, it should definitely be higher than the game 11 people gave only 1-2 points.
The original goal was precisely to stop the cargo cult & poser votes, to force people to put their points where their mouth is. And I still think it's very good at that.

Next time do a system with 10 "runer-up" votes. It's up to 10 games each get only 1 point (or maybe half of a point) in addition to your standart 25 point-buy. So the people can promote some good titles that they enjoy. I think it's more fair when 100 ppl somehow enjoying ToEE weights more than 10 Nier fanboys (and maybe some of them trolling).

 

[thesheeep]

It has, yes. Or at least I remember fighting something pretty large with wings which had some kind of fire attack.

The game is really great, but indeed marred by one giant problem: It is too long, like Void_Pickle said, but with a twist.
Basically, you reach max level about halfway through the game - even if you don't do all the side quests. And from then on, there's nothing new, just maybe some gear to upgrade. That's simply not enough. Besides that, the game has no quick travel, so you walk the same roads over and over and...
I really do like the combat system and how you fight with your companions, but those two problems alone could wear anyone down. Maybe it is as high in that list because people are desperately hoping for a sequel (they indeed are) to fix its problems.

Dark Arisen has literal gems you can place around the map that you can teleport to. You literally set your own fast travel points, retard.

I already answered that.
Despite these gems, you still spend too much time treading the same paths continuously. Also, there are only five (+5 in New Game Plus, but I certainly never played that long, game got boring halfway through).
In addition to that, these gems come into play WAY too late. Especially when you are someone who tackles side-quests before main quests, you'll be spending a long time without any useful quick travel besides teleporting to the main city.
It's not even like Morrowind, where you have rather conveniently placed "lore-friendly" quick-travel points.

 

[Molina]

let see how games that were declared as incline games by the codex fared in this poll:

banner saga -> game that codexers declared as incline game , it was so inclined game that month when it was released was month of incline:


https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/january-of-incline-the-banner-saga-released.89123/


1 point , place 221!


neo scavenger -> another majestic incline game, codexers fapped to this incline game like crazy : place 78


ftl, another majestic incline game according to codex : place 203


and mamy more "incline games" with abysmal places e.g
paper sorcerer place 221
grimrock place 186
kotc place 58

and last but not least, my personal favorite: Serpent in the staglands

Codexers spend fucking 5 years fapping like crazy to this shit game, oh so awesome pixel art gfx, oh so awesome rtwp, oh so awesome devs, oh so awesome majestic incline game -> 0 fucking points

That's right, read my lips codex: ZERO POINTS.

Codexers you are a fucking joke.

This argument is absurd and retarded. 300+ votes and not a single soul listed this game. NOT A SINGLE PERSON.

300*25 = 7500 opportunities for this game to appear and not a single vote. Maybe this game is not that good, right?


About FTL: I just think most people dont see this game as a RPG. Is that simple. The game is brilliant indeed and deserves a better place in any list. This is clearly a deviation in the results.

I dont know how accurate felipepepe is willing to get: maybe this is good enough. If he wants to see a 100% perfect result, there are some things to discuss and maybe improve/ change:

- could be good to investigate and maybe let people re-vote games that are climbing or falling 20+ positions.

- battle brothers, FTL and other roguelikes/ strategy games should be in this list?

- maybe we missed an important title?

But, then, maybe the results will look fake: artificial. Idk.

The Codex list is well known enough to be mentioned even from the outside. It serves as a short guide for anyone who wants to play RPGs. So putting pseudo RPGs, strategy games, action games with three skill points.... It's a missed shot.

 

[Urthor]

How is a game about micromanaging your little dudes like FTL an RPG?

Like whichever smooth brained individuals decided to include that forgot to add the non space travelling version, The Sims, as well

 

[Jarpie]

Just one question: How the fuck Dragon Age: Origins is in the top 100? It's such a fucking borefest with a fucking shit and boring mechanics, even more boring than fucking Pillows of Eternity, for fucks sake.

 

[Nutria]

So where are the results? I'm not expected to sift through 49 pages to find them, am I?

 

[Butter]

So where are the results? I'm not expected to sift through 49 pages to find them, am I?

Deadfire clutched it.

 

[Matador]

Why not make a new thread with 2019 results? Where the fuck are the results?

 

[felipepepe]

ITT people ask for a quest compass

 

[SniperHF]

Well Witcher III did make the top 15 so it's not like we're completely averse to compasses 'round here


Which kind of works both ways though because I can imagine certain other sites reacting to Witcher III being "only" #15

 

[Matador]

ITT people ask for a quest compass

You could just put a link to your own work so people can find it more easily. You chose to make a clever comment. Congratulations.

Here is the list:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...mwCeFhw6RoX_iMa8ZshNdZxEz4/edit#gid=344519919

Series list:

Spoiler

 

[Optimist]

So where are the results? I'm not expected to sift through 49 pages to find them, am I?

Take a turn left on page 40, post 991.

I'm happy that I was able to vote in this poll. The first one almost made me stop lurking, and create an account; shame I didn't. Now I feel as though in a few years I may yet become a true codexer!

Deeply saddened by the fall of Gothic 3, though. I don't think any other cRPG made playing an archer so much fun - the shooting mechanics were much, much better than in Risens or Elex. To those who - like me - got burned when it first released: try reinstalling it, grab fan patches, and just let Kai Rosenkranz ease you in.

 

[Nutria]

What these results are telling me is that there's a pretty heavy late-1990s bias here. Also Grimoire: Heralds of the Autistic Neanderthal is better than Betrayal at Krondor and Darklands lmao. Anyone who believes that needs to put into their local State Institution for Spergs.

 

[Popiel]

There are surely memes here, like Grimoire higher than Wiz 7, Betrayal at Krondor and so on, but I think that overall the list is decent - not good, not great, but decent - considering that we're in an age of decline. Some folks complain that first generation games are slowly disappearing, but let’s be honest, are they really, bar some exceptions, truly contenders against games in current top10? I doubt that. Perhaps one of only really disappointing things is that fuckin’ ELEX managed it and games like Dark Sun: Shattered Lands did not. That’s baffling. Just like fuckin’ Twitcher 3 on #15.

 

[Funposter]

What these results are telling me is that there's a pretty heavy late-1990s bias here.

here's an alternative: CRPGs peaked during a very small window of time and the results reflect this

 

[Nutria]

Yeah, to be honest, obviously there's a certain culture here that's gonna favor certain games over others, but I think this is about as close as you're ever gonna get to a fair ranking.

 

[Popiel]

Just by the way, Morrowind, I prophesize, will continue to fall down with each next voting, reasons for which I wrote about elsewhere. It's in a certain way really sad, but understandable.

 

[Ninjerk]

It's good to see Fallout 2 get its comeuppance.

 

[laclongquan]

Since you're here, I might as well try to ask my questions:

1: Why was this particular poll not announced well ahead of schedule like many others before it?
2: This poll was not even announced on the RPG Codex front page. Why is that? Ineptitude? Whose ineptitude then?
3: Why the short window for voting?
...

In short: Hold! What you are doing is wrong. Why are you doing this?

1. Because I got a long holiday and decided to do it. And I don't usually announce polls "well ahead of schedule", I just do them when I feel like it.
2. Every time I make the yearly GOTY vote, people complain it gets too many non-Codexers. So this time it was only for registered users who actually browse the forums.
3. 10 days is not short. We had 371 people voting, which is a huge number. Last day only had 5 new votes, so clearly extending the deadline wouldn't change much.
...

1. This poll was talked about waaay long before. One reason of the delay to 2019 is that we, as voters, feel Pathfinder Kingmaker players should have a decent time so patches and fixes are out enough that the initial release bugs wont skew its rating. Thus we wouldnt have bug felipepepe to do it sooner.

2. While his reason for no frontpage news is reasonable, I still feel a proper announcement make sense. Let's bug the staffs in charge of news posting about this outrage.


3. Yeah, the short window is actually a bit short. We need more time to change our own votes. I actually have some misgivings about my own list and plan to change it to a 25 full, not 22 partial. yet once I look at it, it's closed~

 

[purpleblob]

felipepepe

Are you going to do the Bayesian average etc and post the results out officially?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

What these results are telling me is that there's a pretty heavy late-1990s bias here.

here's an alternative: CRPGs peaked during a very small window of time and the results reflect this

Whether they peaked during that period or not is highly debatable. What's not debatable is that late 90s and early 00s is a "I'm a teenager and this is my golden age of gaming" period for your average, proverbial codexer. And some of the younger ones are obviously influenced by it. It's the same for me btw, I'm not pretending to be wiser or different, but it's pretty obvious that there are games that owe their high position and status pretty much to that alone and not their objective qualities.

That said, this edition also shows that the generational change is real. And it's not pretty imo.