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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

TheGameSquid

Scholar
Joined
Aug 23, 2014
Messages
124
I think the complaint about the swarm enemies is rather legit actually
i had no idea about those. quest giver told you specifically to use only splash weapons and gave you flasks. I do not understand complains, what else did you expect?

I'm pretty sure those comments and the items were added later in a patch. There's now even a tutorial popup that explains how swarms work I think, but that was added to address the many complaints Owlcat received. Could be wrong though.

I don't understand why someone would buy Kingmaker then complain it's to hard and complex. Do people not watch gameplay/video footage of the game there going to buy? Like I don't care if you hate Kingmaker but don't buy shit you know you aren't going to like/understand.

I'm assuming that those people were expecting to have a little more explanation about how the game works in the game itself? Like I said, there's plenty of retards out there complaining about all sorts of shit, but I'm sure there's also a bunch of people who would really like to enjoy the game, but just have a hard time grasping how the intricate mechanics work because the game explains nothing to you. Again, I'm totally fine with it and I'm playing and enjoying the game as we speak, but I don't blame people for feeling a little lost.

When I try to use a complex piece of software, I usually find it helpful when there's good documentation for example. If I have to go on a mailing list where people tell me to figure shit out myself I might be less inclined to use it.
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
Specifically about Kingmaker, I am personally also rather annoyed about the amount of whining on display.

However, let me play devil's advocate for a second. I think we shouldn't ignore the reality here. The barrier to entry for Kingmaker isn't very low. Pathfinder can be a pretty daunting system, and while the game does grant you enough info on specific details, it's easy to get lost if you don't have a solid grasp of the basics of the system (which the game doesn't provide). So should players start by reading the core rulebooks first? That hardly seems like a good idea. There are many CRPGs where you start out, learn as you go, and wing it. But Kingmaker does require some strong insight into the game from the very first screen of character creation. It's very easy to create completely inept characters if you're not familiar with the basics. When I played Baldur's Gate for the first time, I just took that lovely manual that shipped with the game, read it diagonally, and I sort of understood the basic of BioWare's implementation of AD&D. But games don't ship with solid manuals anymore.

You can see a lot of people referring to Nerd Commando's videos (is he the same guy as Pope Amole btw?), but sitting through some of his videos can be a bit... challenging as well, and I can totally understand that people would rather start playing the game instead of watching random Youtube videos first.

I think the complaint about the swarm enemies is rather legit actually. Personally, I wasn't familiar with how swarms worked in Pathfinder, and this had me rather confused as well. Mind you, I wasn't angry or anything (hell, this is probably the smallest and least interesting "quest" in the entire game and completely optional), but it does beg the question: how is the player supposed to know how to beat these enemies? One could certainly make the case that the game simply doesn't provide you with enough information to overcome this "challenge".

Another complaint you see often is that in the first few hours it's not entirely clear how recovery, resting and camping work. I agree, it took me a few seconds to sort that out as well (the resting screen is a bit confusing the first time it opens). A very short hint, popup or in-universe explanation could have gone a long way in explaining to people how to get rid of certain stat penalties etc.

TL;DR: Yes people complain WAY too much on the various forums, but I think it IS true that we can do a better job at teaching people how the RPG systems work. Personally, I am absolutely not against accessibility as long as it doesn't compromise the actual gameplay (by streamlining etc.).

Kingmaker needs more tutorials in general. Kingdom management left me baffled the first time through the game and my kingdom actually crumbled. Thankfully I'm a pretty patient guy and restarted with a new character, but for most people that's an angry, negative review.

I think beyond regular tutorials explaining the game mechanics RPGs also need "philosophy tutorials" that explain WHY an element is like it is. For example, in ELEX, how you can cross tougher enemies right from the jump of the game. Rather than try to fight a troll for 2 hours (like some professional reviewers did), it would be better to have a philosophy tutorial explaining why the world is built like it is, so people go in expecting to run into tougher monsters than they are capable of fighting. Otherwise you just get negative reviews calling the game broken (said reviewer gave it a 3/10 if I recall correctly) and they leave upset. More tutorials explaining why the devs built the world and how it's built would help IMO. Same goes for a game like Lords of Xulima, specifically the start of the game where there's a big ogre in the middle of the road which says Impossible above its head yet gamers still try to kill it, end up dying and then complain about it. A simple tutorial about how you can expect to find impossible level monsters that you can't kill would have helped. Lots of examples of this specific thing.
 

TheGameSquid

Scholar
Joined
Aug 23, 2014
Messages
124
Kingmaker needs more tutorials in general. Kingdom management left me baffled the first time through the game and my kingdom actually crumbled. Thankfully I'm a pretty patient guy and restarted with a new character, but for most people that's an angry, negative review.

Yup, I'm not ashamed to admit that I found kingdom management very confusing as well. And it's not that the game does a bad job at explaining it, but that it just makes almost no attempt at all to do so.
 

samuraigaiden

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2018
Messages
1,954
Location
Harare
RPG Wokedex
And this takes to another problem with modern gamers: they have to win always, otherwise it was a bad experience. Learning empirically through trial and error is now bad design, despite being the way mankind has learned things since the dawn of times. Good design is getting told exactly what to do and then getting a pat in the back for half assing it anyway.
 

Jamma

Novice
Joined
Jul 10, 2018
Messages
30
The people you speak of are playing battle royals where there's 1 winner and 99 losers, so I doubt your theory checks out.
Learning through trial and error is also hardly the best way, and games have other ways of teaching players that should be more common.
 

Voltigeur

Novice
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
33
A lot of people have no ability to introspect when it comes to video games and will blame the game for their own ineptitude every time without exception.
 

TheGameSquid

Scholar
Joined
Aug 23, 2014
Messages
124
And this takes to another problem with modern gamers: they have to win always, otherwise it was a bad experience. Learning empirically through trial and error is now bad design, despite being the way mankind has learned things since the dawn of times. Good design is getting told exactly what to do and then getting a pat in the back for half assing it anyway.

I'm not sure trial and error is necessarily always the best way to learn or teach. Especially in this case, where some players perceive the combat system as very non-transparent, it seems to be me that it can be really hard for those people to learn something from their failures.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

Administrator
Staff Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2009
Messages
8,600
Location
Deutschland
There was one guy complaining about mobs that poison you in PF:K because using delay poison didn't occur to him and dealing with stat damage is inconvenient, so the game has to be badly designed. I remember times when poison meant you made a save vs death and died when you failed it, but these days dealing with -3 STR is reason enough to whine like a pussy about "bad gamedesign". Everything I don't like or am too retarded to deal with is bad design.

PF:K isn't even that unwelcoming. You level up you get more powerful, you can't even avoid it (+AB, +saves, more HP etc). Compare with Dark Eye games: when you level up you get no HP, your attack doesn't improve, your defenses don't improve etc. Everything depends on where you put your points.
Yet, PF is still complicated enough for retards to completely fail at building combat worthy characters, hence the cringeworthy whining. But that's nothing new either, it was the same with Blackguards or AoD/Dungeon Rats or any other game with a modicum of challenge.

I'm unsure if all that is because RPG devs were churning out dumbed down crap aimed at the lowest common denominator for ages - or, if those devs merely adapted to the progessively increasing stupidity of the audience.
 

jf8350143

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
1,277
is he the same guy as Pope Amole btw?
yes

I think the complaint about the swarm enemies is rather legit actually
i had no idea about those. quest giver told you specifically to use only splash weapons and gave you flasks. I do not understand complains, what else did you expect?
These are patched in later. When the game just launches the NPC simply told you to go there and next thing you know, you are facing an enemy that's pretty much invincible because it's the very start of the game and you probably don't have any flasks and no aoe spells.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Anyone comparing early PF:K complaints to the current game doesn't understand just how unfinished and buggy the game was at release. I played it at release and the game simply wasn't finished -- you couldn't progress past certain parts.
 

cretin

Magister
Douchebag!
Joined
Apr 20, 2019
Messages
1,347
The people you speak of are playing battle royals where there's 1 winner and 99 losers, so I doubt your theory checks out.
Learning through trial and error is also hardly the best way, and games have other ways of teaching players that should be more common.

why do you think these are the same players? I doubt your theory.

the number one normie complain with the original dayz mod was that people would shoot them on sight and take their shit instead of having some gay LARP interaction with them
 

Humanophage

Arcane
Joined
Dec 20, 2005
Messages
5,032
Anyone comparing early PF:K complaints to the current game doesn't understand just how unfinished and buggy the game was at release. I played it at release and the game simply wasn't finished -- you couldn't progress past certain parts.
What made you purchase it so early? I thought it was abundantly clear from the reviews that it was buggy, and you can generally expect new games to be very buggy so you have to exercise double caution. It looks like an invitation to spoil your impression of a game.
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
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.

To be fair, the same thing can be noticed in the older generation as well.

And the problem is mostly smartphones. Haven't you seen those 50 year olds who speak into their magic oracle to retrieve trivial facts (that are usually irrelevant to the discussion) or when you use a technical term put it into wikipedia and triumphantly read it out loud? I'm so sick of this shit many people no longer even know what a train schedule is and cannot find their way home once their battery is down. How are these people supposed to solve a challenging RPG game? They can't even read a 2 paragraphs without forgetting the content. Take the incentives away from people for flexing their brain and 2/3 become helpless lemmings.

And besides this is not even the major problem. The real issue us that this generation of developers is just as braindead and turns out underwhelming shit that requires zero effort, and all looks the same.
 

Humanophage

Arcane
Joined
Dec 20, 2005
Messages
5,032
No gaming sites reviewed PF:K until a while after it released.
User reviews at the Codex, GOG, Stream, and other websites. Moreover, it is simply the general pattern that games are buggy upon release, especially the first couple of months, so you can assume it's the case that a game is buggy.
 

Exhuminator

Arcane
Joined
Sep 10, 2015
Messages
609
To be fair, the same thing can be noticed in the older generation as well. Haven't you seen those 50 year olds
Sure we could extrapolate the concept to cover a societal issue en masse, fair enough.

The real issue us that this generation of developers is just as braindead and turns out underwhelming shit that requires zero effort, and all looks the same.
This is a good point.
 

Kyl Von Kull

The Night Tripper
Patron
Joined
Jun 15, 2017
Messages
3,152
Location
Jamrock District
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
These are patched in later. When the game just launches the NPC simply told you to go there and next thing you know, you are facing an enemy that's pretty much invincible because it's the very start of the game and you probably don't have any flasks and no aoe spells.

they were added in the first or second patch, within 48 hours at most.
 

jungl

Augur
Joined
Mar 30, 2016
Messages
1,420
complaints about pathfinder kingmaker are legit though. The difficulty is all over the place. Its basically the rpg equivalent to when a indie developer makes a 2D platformer game they grew up playing and fucks up. They fail to ease the player into the game and gradually increase the difficulty over time. Instead the difficulty is all over all the place.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
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".
There are two poles of gamers, those who think the story is a nice accessory to good gameplay and those that think gameplay is only accessory to a good story, gamers are spread on a continuum that go from extreme storyfagottry (The story was good so what the game sucks.) to extreme gameplay fagottry (Story? Who needs that?). Strategy games rarely attract people who think story is primary and gameplay is secondary, it is already an established convention of what you can expect from pretty much most strategy games, those gamers don't even bother when they see a strategy tag on steam, so you won't see this whinning that much.

However, RPG games are in part systems heavy and in part narrative driven so story-faggots will be attracted to them, to make things worse, the RPG term is very confusing and ill defined, so games like Pathfinder and Planescape Torment share the same genre while offering very different experiences. So when you see the RPG tag on steam, you won't know much about the game especially nowdays as the RPG title is more of an marketing gimmick buzzword than actually something used to define things.

When storyfaggots realize the game they are playing is challenging, they get frustrated because they don't care about gameplay that much and the more demanding the gameplay is, the less inclined they are of even caring into learn it, so you see hilarious stuff from people that actually didn't even bothered to learn basic stuff. If gameplay is too much on the way, they will see it as an obstacle to their fun (seeing the dialogues, cutscenes, experiencing ambient story telling and an uninterrupted audio visual experience) while a gamelay fag would only be turned on by that.

This varies from people from people and even from moment to moment, there are moments where I'm more of a gameplay fag and wanna go deep on a game, others where I'm more of a storyfag and just wanna chillax and see stuff. I think most people are like that and most people won't simply buy games they think they aren't into, only a small minority of childish people will whine and whine without stop because a game didn't catered to their whims when they could easily had researched a little about the game to figure it out the game wasn't made for them.
 

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
7,947
It seems to me that RPG fans are almost uniquely uninterested in remotely challenging gameplay.

I think the answer to your question though is that many people are drawn to the genre expecting an interactive novel in the manner of many a notorious JRPG. I think the expectation is for combat and such to allow them a sense of participation in between the story bits so people aren't entirely passive, but aren't expected to be hard enough to slow down the pace of the story.

Odd, since RPGs are the main games I look to for challenges given that they offer the chance to get in over your head better than most thanks to the very nature of levels and skills. A good example of that is a side area early on in Geneforge 2 that is higher level than the player and seems placed to be discovered and revisited. I found with my Agent I could kite themobs in there slowly killing them with my poison dot, but if a mob caught me I was one shot. I cleared it anyway for the fun of it spending hours doing so before fully entering the main area of the game and then found a progressive challenge with higher and higher enemies with a reward at the end that I did in one go as well (I realized only at the end I could have kited the last guy and looted the end reward as well).

I mention this because I did the opposite with JRPGs as a kid, doing optional content later on when I was higher and could stomp it and wonder why the difference.

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.

I don't know about that in the case of Paradox games.

It's so easy to not fuck up that it feels more and more like they're catering to people's power fantasies rather than providing challenges or pushing historical era appropriate things they know people wouldn't like, like building a massive empire only for circumstance to randomly hit and make it fall apart. In a game like CK2 it's very hard for things to fall apart unless the player deliberately engineers that, and often times, even then they need to manage the collapse themselves reducing it to larping (Whenever I play and I feel it's time for that I need to toss out granted independence in order to simulate a collapse on a size and scale I've never seen happen in game).
 

infidel

StarInfidel
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2019
Messages
494
Strap Yourselves In
To be fair, Paradox grand strategy games are well known for being more complicated than the average game, even the simpler games have people outright telling you to read guides and watch hour long tutorials before playing just to learn the game.

The people that would be attracted to such a thing are likely to get said games or even buy them, you don't buy a grand strategy game unless you want to look at a lot of menus and text after all.

Giving Paradox games as an example of something that is hard but nobody complains about the difficulty is erroneus. There is a distinct difference between failing in a Paradox game and in ye olde CRPG. In the first case when you fail, you usually fail hilariously and quite often get a good player story out of it (the positive reviews on Steam are full of them and I recall whole threads on Reddit devoted to these) while in the case of something like P:K it's "hey, I went to these spiders and couldn't do any damage, WTF?". Not to mention that Paradox games do not have a set sequence that you can follow and "win the game" and CRPGs do, even dungeon crawlers. I suppose when someone makes a DF-level of complexity endless dungeon crawler, people will treat it differently but until then, no.

I don't understand why someone would buy Kingmaker then complain it's to hard and complex. Do people not watch gameplay/video footage of the game there going to buy? Like I don't care if you hate Kingmaker but don't buy shit you know you aren't going to like/understand.

I'm looking at the game's Steam page, there's nothing there to hint at the difficulty. The description does not hint at that, the negative reviews mostly say buggy/boring/slow. What's there to dissuade your average Skyrim lover from buying the game? And don't say that you need to go read reviews, any Steam sale makes the game cheap enough so that you don't care about research much. In contrast, Celeste's page has a "difficult" game tag, "hardcore platforming challenges" and "where every death is a lesson" in the description. All the reviews say how it's "one of the hardest" and the trailer video shows that levels are hard at first glance. You've been warned, buyer.
 

infidel

StarInfidel
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2019
Messages
494
Strap Yourselves In
Why not, they wouldn't enjoy it anyways.
 

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