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.

Decline Why are RPG fans so uncommonly inept?

Do you think people are more hostile to...

  • both complexity and difficulty in RPGs than in other genres

    Votes: 20 23.8%
  • difficulty, but not complexity

    Votes: 6 7.1%
  • complexity, but not difficulty

    Votes: 12 14.3%
  • neither complexity nor difficulty - but some other related factor

    Votes: 3 3.6%
  • neither complexity nor difficulty, demands to RPGs are nothing special

    Votes: 4 4.8%
  • neither complexity nor difficulty, people are *less* hostile to these in RPGs

    Votes: 5 6.0%
  • König Kamerad

    Votes: 34 40.5%

  • Total voters
    84

Humanophage

Arcane
Joined
Dec 20, 2005
Messages
5,032
I was browsing various Pathfinder-related topics around the internet, and the whinging is bizarre. For example, many people are complaining about an optional easy fight with a swarm where you are supposed to use magic or AoE. A player complains that he is getting wiped out on normal by a boss who dies from a few hits by my party on challenging. Repeatedly, people say that it looks as if the game has a "DM who really hates your guts and wants you to die". A sampling:
and lets you play by the rules, while he comes up with enemies, that ignore them and just slay everything. Level 4 fighter with 1d8+10 damage. Or Lvl6+ archer with 1d8+14, fighter with 1D10+17. You beat them and get regular, +1 and a +2 weapon from them. Enjoy! (Playing on normal.) I deactivated critical strikes. Enemies with +7 when you are fighting with +1 will just one shot you try after try. Stag Lord? Crits for 52 damage vs. level 5 party. Enjoy! Balance? ZERO. You can not cast/buy so much blur, mirror image, mage armor and barkskin potions/scrolls or cast them on everyone. Fighting feels like lottery. Bad roll? Dead. Reload! Bad roll? Dead. Reload! Just repeat, over and over... I never reloaded more often in a computer game! Never. The game gives you plenty of auto- und quicksave slots. For a reason. Once in combat you can not retreat. This random encounter will kill you. Ok, let's reload... FUN! You are not supposed to be here. Don't explore too much. You are dead.
How did you beat him? He wipes my party on Normal difficulty in about 6 rounds... makes me want to deinstall the game.
As someone who lives the pathfinder tabletop RPG, i can honestly say that the devs for this game did not mesh a video game over D20 rules very well. Every encounter is either a no-brainer curbstomp or a high risk total party wipeout. The closer you get to the end of the game, the less your prep work matter for your characters.
I simply can't stand the dice-roll combat system:
* skills descriptions are walls of text and contain many unfamiliar terms
* most of my skills are missing and I don't know what I'm doing wrong
* dice rolls introduce a huge RNG variance to the outcome of the combat
Clearly, those instances of challenge that encourage you to "get gud" are seen as very bad and poor design by the players.

It seems to me that RPG fans are almost uniquely uninterested in remotely challenging gameplay. For comparison, nobody seems to be troubled by the fact that Paradox games are somewhat complicated to understand. Civ4 is pretty hard at upper difficulties, but I have never seen anyone whine when they have to play it on below-average difficulty. Insane twitchy arcade games are considered good because they are tough. Nobody was intimidated by Hearthstone even though it was difficult to get far on the rankings. Puzzles in adventure games can be quite difficult to resolve, but nobody minds that. But the moment there is even mild challenge in an RPG, there come the tears - the player is not having "FUN".

It's not just low tolerance for any challenge, but also any complexity or mild idiosyncrasy. I recall people complaining about AC in Baldur's Gate. Is it really such a difficult and counterintuitive concept to grasp that in this game, a lower number means that you are harder to hit?

Do you agree with this observation and why do you think that may be the case?

P.S. The Codex is an exception here, obviously.
 
Last edited:

Duckard

Augur
Joined
Aug 14, 2010
Messages
354
Most RPG fans play in order to live out their fantasies (heroic, romantic, or otherwise). Usually this means being the best at whatever without having to put in any effort just because they are the main character. When a game doesn't offer this experience, they are upset. In regards to your strategy game comparison, strategy games attract a different kind of player. The kind which plays the game expecting that if they make poor choices, they will fail.

Alternatively, some players are used to PnP RPGs which reward clever thinking and afford some bending of the rules. The rigid constraints of a video game means it requires a different kind of skill set to succeed.
 

Silentstorm

Learned
Joined
Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
Same goes for other genres or how the game is sold as, if i am going to play a fast paced shump, i generally expect to die until i master it, i go in to roguelikes expecting to die until i learn the game.

CRPG's are sold more as being a big sandbox where you can create your own story and characters inside one specific setting and set of rules, and also for having a better than normal story with tons of dialogue, with combat that generally fails in comparison to more strategy minded games or just pure action games.

Therefore, you tend to not care as much about beating a challenge in itself, sure, there are some hard RPG's, but they either were mostly focused on combat, rare exceptions or they were the kind where you could end screwing yourself if you failed to pick one item and such, a style of RPG which dissapeared mostly as it went on.

This means that people who generally play RPG's and only RPG's are there mostly for the story and the chance to make their own thing and be creative, not because the combat or the game itself is particularly hard.

I mean, just look at dungeon crawlers, not all of them have great stories, but fans are more accepting of hard games unless they are just newcomers because, well, dungeon crawlers tend to brand themselves as being harder and for a more hardcore audience, you tend to go in expecting to die and restart.
 

King Crispy

Too bad I have no queen.
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2008
Messages
1,876,563
Location
Future Wasteland
Strap Yourselves In
There are several things going on with op's conclusion that lead me to generally disagree with it, but with exceptions.

First of all, it seems like most of those quotes were drawn from sources whose playerbase is going to be either more of a "main stream" type or, in the case of the tabletop PF player, the type who're just not accustomed to computer RPGs. As you amended with your edit, RPG Codex isn't tolerant of any of that kind of whining at all. The kinds of weaknesses evident in every one on those examples would be pounced upon and ravaged at their first sign in almost any thread about the particular game here. But not so out there in Normieland. In a world in which Steam review bombing campaigns are a thing and on sites where you'll find a review of PF:KM alongside a review of the latest Nintendo Switch title, you almost have to expect such behavior.

Secondly, even though the above is true, you shouldn't consider the kinds of opinions quoted to be the definitive majority. Remember that user "reviews" and shitposting by teenagers on a game's download page often only represent a very vocal minority. A game like PF can't and couldn't have been as successful as it has been had everything they're bitching about really been true and applicable to all the game's players. These are the special snowflakes who find it more appealing to cry about their inability to adapt and learn than they would at actually succeeding at the game.

Lastly, what you find bizarre I find to be the culmination of the inevitable. Years and years of dumbing down not only of RPGs but basically of all games has resulted in this just being the normal climate now. Gone are the days of being required to read a meaty game manual before you could even get started. Getting stuck in a game no longer has any real meaning; you just ALT-TAB out and cheat by Googling where the final piece of the puzzle is (we all do this). So that results in a collective lowering of everyone's gaming IQ, not just of those who can't shut up and figure out what they're doing wrong in the game instead of just giving up and moaning about it to whoever will choose to read it.

This is why RPG Codex still exists, no? To get away from it all?
 

samuraigaiden

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2018
Messages
1,954
Location
Harare
RPG Wokedex
Especially in the console side of things, RPGs have always been the accessibility genre. Games for people with poor reflexes and coordination, which often would also allow you to mindlessly grind and brute force your way through the game's challenges.
 

Humanophage

Arcane
Joined
Dec 20, 2005
Messages
5,032
I actually agree with samuraigaiden that consoles may be to blame, however standard that sounds. I don't believe that until the mid-2000s, the sentiment that an RPG is purely a story game with little player input was at all prevalent. All those big games like Bloodlines, P:T, Arcanum, ToEE, IWD, BG2, etc. were designed to have somewhat challenging content, and I don't just mean combat. For example, I was stuck in P:T for a while because of an adventure-like hurdle in the brothel. On the other hand, the few JRPGs that I encountered were essentially a collection of cutscenes with combat where you can't possibly lose, and with no character building.

Crispy , I am not certain all games are getting dumbed down. Of course, if more people gain access to computers, this outcome is to be expected. But it seems to me that strategies are somewhat improving or at least not declining much. Complexity is now definitely more acceptable in the genre. I can't really notice any whining. Rather, it seems that lazy players tend to be disproportionately drawn to RPGs in particular. And they seem to be disproportionately entitled to whine rather than just scuttle away, acknowledging their ineptitude. It's not even that they are stupid people. It's that they have odd expectations of this particular genre. Where do these unique expectations come from?

I think the issue may be rooted in the tradition that on consoles, difficulty chiefly only comes from reflexes and coordination rather than other sources, unlike on PCs. This would explain why nobody seems to complain about action-RPGs being challenging because if difficulty is attributed to reflexes, then it is acceptable and reasonable. Between 2005 and 2012, consoles exerted considerable influence on the PC market, and the genre got corrupted. Strategies are mostly unaffected by consoles because they had no prominent console counterparts, so alternative sources of difficulty are acceptable.
 
Last edited:

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,877
Location
Eastern block
I was browsing various Pathfinder-related topics around the internet, and the whinging is bizarre. For example, many people are complaining about an optional easy fight with a swarm where you are supposed to use magic or AoE. A player complains that he is getting wiped out on normal by a boss who dies from a few hits by my party on challenging. Repeatedly, people say that it looks as if the game has a "DM who really hates your guts and wants you to die"...

Dont mistake neo-gamer hipster cucks for "RPG fans", please
 

smaug

Secular Koranism with Israeli Characteristics
Patron
Dumbfuck
Joined
Feb 20, 2019
Messages
6,438
Location
Texas
Insert Title Here
Because, mainstream has always preferred action/reflex oriented games. And the modern RPG audience is kind of retarded?
 

visions

Arcane
Joined
Jun 10, 2007
Messages
1,801
Location
here
Puzzles in adventure games can be quite difficult to resolve, but nobody minds that.

That's not true, there are plenty of people who bitch that classic adventure games (and I mean classic like 90's Lucas Arts, not some early King's Quest insanity) were badly designed because the puzzles were inscrutable. Monkey Island 1 is seen as a hard adventure game by some now. It was seen as accessible and user friendly when it came out. And this isn't a case where one might say that the UI is outdated, the Lucas Arts verb system of that era is still better than the one click fits all casualisation that replaced it.

For a modern example, look at the reception Primordia got. Plenty of people complained that it was too hard. And it wasn't particularly hard when compared to 90's adventure games (easier than some of them, harder than others). I've seen enough people bitch about the difficulty of old-school adventure game puzzles (and by old-school here I mean 90's Lucas Arts and similar, not 80's Sierra). There's a reason why the Telltale games or Unavowed became popular. Many modern "adventure gamers" want adventure games without "annoying" puzzles that they would get stuck on. And god forbid if they'd have to go check a walkthrough, that would make them feel dumb.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
It's really mystifying, isn't it. I mean, we were all children when we played those games, how can this shit be hard to anyone when we managed just fine back in the day?
 

alyvain

Learned
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
376
I think the reason is the years of RPG decline. Today RPG is a relatively known niche, where people who liked cinematic stuff like ME2 and I-don't-know-how-can-anyone-actually-like-this-game Skyrim occasionally exposed to the more old-school design philosophy (to be honest, let's call them real RPGs). They don't like it. They don't understand it. They aren't willing to read guides on the Internet or spend time learning the rules of the game.

Games in general used to be more challenging on the whole, and we treated them differently. It's correct, I think, for every genre except maybe for truck driver simulators. In RPG the contrast between old and new is simply jarring. In PC strategies it's relatively small.
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
Patron
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
28,396
Location
Not Here
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
I think modern gamers have this fear of missing out that made them unable to just exclude themselves from games that they do not like.

Dark souls, Sekiro etc made people demand easier completion despite knowingly buying a game that's advertised on challenge.

Pathfinder and most combat heavy IE game demands understanding what numbers actually mean instead of focusing on pick blue/red dialogue choices.

If they would just exercise their option not to buy or play such games their lives would be much happier. Instead they want devs to cater to their tastes.
 
Joined
Sep 16, 2016
Messages
296
If they would just exercise their option not to buy or play such games their lives would be much happier. Instead they want devs to cater to their tastes.
I think this is very on point, but to play Devil's Advocate, I would at least note that a lot of RPGs have very "game-y" systems that can be really tough to get into. You have to really *want* to play an RPG. You have to learn it, from how it's generally intended to be played to how the stats work to (very frequently) learning how to control more than one person at a time.

For comparison, a shooter, or more of an ARPG or action game like the oft-referenced Dark Souls, asks the player to learn more easily readable spatial awareness skills. Weapon timings, range, utility, etc. These are very easy to conceptually pick up and mess around with and figure out through something I'll come up with a term for on the spot, "exploratory play". You just sit down, start playing, and figure it out. RPGs don't allow you to do this, and often even ask for out-of-game learning, experimentation, and the pursuit of mastery from the character screen to the final credits.

Now that I've said that, I'd note that the counter argument is... literally what RK47 just said. Let games be for different people. A world where both Skyrim and Age of Decadence exist is a perfectly fine one in my opinion, but there's definitely a very common attitude that says "X game should be playable and enjoyable by me because other people are enjoying it and it looks kinda neat". I'd be interested to see if there are any solid ways that RPGs could be more comprehensible to the less committed gaming crowd while retaining the parts of them that places like the Codex really enjoy, but that's more of an errant thought than anything concrete.
 

Exhuminator

Arcane
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
609
It's really mystifying, isn't it. I mean, we were all children when we played those games, how can this shit be hard to anyone when we managed just fine back in the day?
If you're as old as I am, two reasons:

1. We didn't have nearly as many games to choose from, so we were stuck with the few we did have. This meant we played them longer and more often, out of necessity if naught else. As a result of spending so much time with less choices, we improved our skills naturally in order to overcome the isolated challenges. Kids today instead just hop on to the next game as soon as they get frustrated with the current one.

2. We didn't have the magical internet to tell us all the secrets (no GameFAQs), or how-to videos (no Youtube), or God-mode hacks to download. Sometimes we could buy a guide for a game (if a guide existed, if you could find it, if you could afford it), we could call a hint line (if it existed for the game, if your parents would let you), and maybe a friend could offer aid (sometimes this worked out). Ergo if progress was to be made, it was most likely via our own grit and determination, not artificial aid.

Honestly MOST of today's young modern gamers are entitled pussies with no strength of character. MOST of them do not value or understand the inherent reward of overcoming adversity by self reliance. MOST put zero stock in the bliss of self accomplishment. MOST of them want everything handed to them, including all the gold stars and participation trophies.

When the world ends I will eat these motherfuckers.
 

Fowyr

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Mar 29, 2009
Messages
7,671
It seems to me that RPG fans manboons are almost uniquely uninterested in remotely challenging gameplay.
Fixed.
It's not just low tolerance for any challenge, but also any complexity or mild idiosyncrasy. I recall people complaining about AC in Baldur's Gate. Is it really such a difficult and counterintuitive concept to grasp that in this game, a lower number means that you are harder to hit?
Another case in point. Back in the times, no one bat an eye because everyone played AD&D CRPG (from Pool of Radiance to Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Hack) or two and knew the rules and those who not - quickly adapted.

Modern RPG players are cancer, pure and simple.
 

Shaewaroz

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 4, 2013
Messages
2,923
Location
In a hobo shack due to betting on neanderthal
I'm very into cock and ball torture
The core of the problem with Kingmaker is that the default difficulty is actually very challenging for a first-time player. Default difficulty should be designed with first-time players in mind. You can perhaps label the Hard difficulty as the ideal difficulty for experienced players, but still make the Normal difficulty less punishing so that even suboptimal character builds can complete the game. Easy difficulty should be reserved for even more casual gamers in mind.

So the difficulty levels should ideally look something like this:


Story Mode - for those who don't want any challenge what so ever and only want to experience the story. It's their loss.

Easy - for casual gamers who just want to pick up the game and be guaranteed to be able to progress even with severely suboptimal character builds.

Normal (the Default difficulty) - designed for first-time players with some experience with CRPGs. The player should be able to complete the game even with suboptimal character builds, but it would require some reloads and effective use of consumables and spells. Some optional content could be very challenging even on this difficulty setting.

Hard - for people who are already familiar with all of the game rules and know how to create optimal and effective adventuring parties. There should still be some room for suboptimal play though. This difficulty should be advertised as the best difficulty for experienced players.

Insane - challenge difficulty for players graving for extreme challenge. Could only be completed with extensive planning, effective use of abilities, spells and consumables and a well-built adventuring party.
 
Last edited:

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I actually agree with samuraigaiden that consoles may be to blame, however standard that sounds. I don't believe that until the mid-2000s, the sentiment that an RPG is purely a story game with little player input was at all prevalent. All those big games like Bloodlines, P:T, Arcanum, ToEE, IWD, BG2, etc. were designed to have somewhat challenging content, and I don't just mean combat. For example, I was stuck in P:T for a while because of an adventure-like hurdle in the brothel. On the other hand, the few JRPGs that I encountered were essentially a collection of cutscenes with combat where you can't possibly lose, and with no character building.

I remember mainstream gaming forums around that time, like Gamefaqs, mostly talking about JRPGs when talking RPGs. Also people who consider Zelda an RPG for whatever reason. People who grew up with consoles in the 90s and early 00s have a very different idea of what an RPG is compared to people who grew up with a PC. If you grew up with Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic, Gold Box, or with Baldur's Gate, Diablo, Fallout, Arcanum, you were familiar with the different types of western RPG: complex character building, dungeon crawling with puzzles and tough combat, choices and consequences, dialogues where you communicate either by picking branching dialogue options or typing in keywords. Meanwhile console players grew up with those JRPGs where your party is pre-determined, levelup bonuses are often pre-determined too, combat encounters aren't that challenging as long as you grind grind grind, and the story has zero player interactivity at all, no dialogue choices only cutscenes.

Obviously these two types of players will have vastly different ideas of what an RPG is.
 

MpuMngwana

Arbiter
Joined
Sep 23, 2016
Messages
336
I think complexity is the biggest hurdle. Most RPGs aren't hard if you know what you're doing, how to build your characters, what ability is useful in what situation. Someone who's accustomed to, say, Mas Effect, and tries playing Kingmaker with no experience of classic RPGs or PnP will have no idea what he's doing, which feats to take, which spells to memorize, what all these arcane abbreviations mean, and as a consequence of this, he will suck at the game and bitch on the Steam forums. Meanwhile, a properly built party will have little trouble with the default difficulty. In contrast, a purer tactics game, or an action game, or a puzzle game will usually have simpler rules, but the difficulty mostly comes from applying these rules in practice (for example, knowing that you can parry during the enemy attack animation doesn't mean anything if your timing is off).

For comparison, a shooter, or more of an ARPG or action game like the oft-referenced Dark Souls, asks the player to learn more easily readable spatial awareness skills. Weapon timings, range, utility, etc. These are very easy to conceptually pick up and mess around with and figure out through something I'll come up with a term for on the spot, "exploratory play". You just sit down, start playing, and figure it out.

Oh, you fabulous optimist.

200fhx3.png


On the other hand, the few JRPGs that I encountered were essentially a collection of cutscenes with combat where you can't possibly lose, and with no character building.

OP's experience with jRPGs confirmed to be two screenshots of Final Fantasy 7.
 

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