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Decline Worst travesties in the genre?

Vulpes

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Oct 12, 2018
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148
The game was so bad that it got burned in my mind. Am i the only one?
Far from it, just talking about it is enough to give me a headache. I tried to complete it once in preparation for DAI back in early 2014 and let me tell you, the first act was so nightmarishly bad that I almost uninstalled it halfway through. The only reason I continued playing it was because I heard that the two story DLCs were somewhat good and that they're best left until the final act of the game. And while I admit that the second act was a noticeable improvement, I just couldn't bring myself to finish it and left the game with such bad memories that I haven't touched the series since
 

alyvain

Learned
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Mar 18, 2017
Messages
376
DA2 is still the best Dragon Age. The first one is a bad Baldur's Gate, the Inquisition is a bad MMO. But DA2 is one of a kind. They should use it in prisons and primary schools.
 
Self-Ejected

c2007

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Skyrim takes the cake for me. Too much LARPing, and when I solved the main quest in 10 hours, by accident with no clue that that was the grand conclusion, I uninstalled and never looked back.

DA2... Fuck that fucking game. Institutional corruption was embraced making this game, and while the decline had been there from the start with BW, it was in your face from this point on.

Old school:

Ultima 3 - still a great game, but not nearly as interesting as Ultima 2 despite being better made and able to complete without help. Many of the interesting and bizarre parts of Ultima 2 were canned for the streamlined gameplay of 3, and despite some QoL improvements it was not a significantly "improved" gameplay from 2, just less buggy.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Messages
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Pathfinder: Wrath
Worst travesties implies lasting bad consequences for the genre or the entire gaming industry, not simply bad games.

1) World of Warcraft. It's not a travesty in of itself, but its design pollutes gameplay and itemization even now. It works fine as an MMO, but developers haphazardly transplant features that make no sense outside of it just due to its sheer popularity, thinking it's going to have the same effect in single-player games. It not only has consequences for single-player RPGs, but it effectively killed the MMORPG genre. You might argue the itemization is taken from Diablo 2 instead, but the gameplay isn't from there.

2) Oblivion. The game that almost single-handedly changed the RPG landscape for the worse. I'd say the series as a whole has a hand in it because of its continued referral as RPGs, while that can't be further from the truth, and it poisons the discussion still. It brought level-scaling to the forefront, it brought in the masses and just the inclusion of an open world made all subsequent AAA RPGs-in-name-only try to have one as well. Open worlds were popularized by GTA as well, but I'd argue it isn't in the same way.

3) Fallout 3. Oblivion with guns and the rape of a beloved franchise that will never see the light of day ever again. I'd say most of the damage was done by Oblivion already, FO3 just cemented everything that was wrong with it and literal shooters started being referred to as RPGs.

4) Bioware post DA:O. The decline started with the console-oriented KotOR, reducing party size to 3, I wouldn't say it has character building potential and it continues Bioware's focus on romances, it isn't too bad yet, but it's going to be. The gameplay shows a skew towards functionality, rather than a selling point, it's a vehicle for the story that is enough to take you from point A to point B and that's it. This slope towards functional gameplay is exemplified by DA:O, where the combat exists, but it's sloppy, random, it isn't character-focused (as in builds), and it has 0 encounter design. Given this context and the popularity of action games and action games parading as RPGs, it's not surprising that the awesome button in DA2 won out in the end and we got a combat system which is bare-bones at best and it's directed towards spectacle and nothing else. The lack of encounter design continues and the inclusion of bosses is only to fill up a check-list. The writing is the best Bioware have ever churned out, but due to the interference of publishers and the rushed state of the game, it insured they'll never try anything risky ever again. Thus everything that came out after it being worse and worse, culminating in Anthem.

5) The mediocrities of the Kickstarter era. Old has-beens trying to make a style of RPGs they haven't made or played for 15 years, resulting in bland, boring imitations that try to please everyone and failing at satisfying anyone. The writing being so bloated and incompetent is a huge reason why this is. InXile's parodies and both PoEs are like farts in the wind, failing to make any lasting impact of substance, only being talked about on very dedicated RPG forums and either defended by sycophants or bashed. The worst crime is that their mediocrity made the genre commercially non-viable again. The one exception being D:OS and it's popular for the wrong reasons, making it a crime as well.
 
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Vulpes

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Messages
148
1) World of Warcraft. It's not a travesty in of itself, but its design pollutes gameplay and itemization even now. It works fine as an MMO, but developers haphazardly transplant features that make no sense outside of it just due to its sheer popularity, thinking it's going to have the same effect in single-player games. It not only has consequences for single-player RPGs, but it effectively killed the MMORPG genre. You might argue the itemization is taken from Diablo 2 instead, but the gameplay isn't from there.
While I agree that WoW's itemization has no place in a SRPG, I can't find one example of it influencing gameplay. I don't remember ever playing a RPG that tried to emulate things such as it's complex talent trees or glyph system. And as a matter of fact, I'd argue that some games such as the DA series would've been better of with such systems in place
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
You can't find one example of third-person cooldown-based gameplay?
 

ebPD8PePfC

Savant
Joined
May 13, 2018
Messages
225
Final Fantasy 7, with no competition. It introduced mainstream western audience to the jrpg genre in the worst way possible. Difficulty is reduced to grinding and the focus is instead on high budget visuals fed to the player in a mostly linear fashion. It would end up hurting both the audience who came to expect "better" visuals from western RPGs, which at the time meant prerendered backgrounds with pig disgusting 3D cut scenes. This was impossible for western developers who aimed for complex interactive environments and operated on a tenth of the budget, which contributed in part to the rather static environments in IE games.
Final Fantasy 7 cost 45M$ to make, and 100M$ more went to marketing. Fallout 1 which was released in the same year was supposedly done with 3-4M$. Adding to the budget issue was the nature of cRPGs, which was far harder to sell. They had complex combat and required a lot of reading, and on the other side of the ring were pretty visuals, great soundtrack, and a huge marketing budget. The result was obvious.

But the damage wasn't only done to western developers. The success of Final Fantasy also led other JRPG developers to follow the AAA path of high budget visuals with low difficulty. Square Enix still hasn't recovered from what Final Fantasy taught them about making successful video games.
Like Oblivion, FF7 itself isn't a travesty, but its success sure was.
 
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Vulpes

Scholar
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Oct 12, 2018
Messages
148
Why the hell are you attributing cooldown based combat to WoW? Have you ever even played it or any other MMO from that era?
 
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fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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The mediocrities of the Kickstarter era. Old has-beens trying to make a style of RPGs they haven't made or played for 15 years, resulting in bland, boring imitations that try to please everyone and failing at satisfying anyone. The writing being so bloated and incompetent is a huge reason why this is. InXile's parodies and both PoEs are like farts in the wind, failing to make any lasting impact of substance, only being talked about on very dedicated RPG forums and either defended by sycophants or bashed. The worst crime is that their mediocrity made the genre commercially non-viable again. The one exception being D:OS and it's popular for the wrong reasons, making it a crime as well.
That is true only for the big ones like numanuma and poe. There is plenty of good ones that ended up delivering. Good example is the shadowrun games.
 

thesheeep

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
That depends on the person, i like having different levels even if they aren't designed by hand, i can honestly say i have spent more hours playing Spelunky, Streets Of Rogue, Enter The Gungeon and others than many RPG's or even classic games, precisely because they offer a different experience and challenges all the time.

Then again, a lot of my favorite games aren't procedurally generated so i would be a hypocrite if i said i typically prefer roguelikes and roguelites, heck, i think in the past few months i haven't played one, not even Enter The Gungeon despite getting a big update.

I do enjoy Enter the Gungeon a lot since it's a good game, but I played it often enough now that I can recognize the patterns of the levels. You don't really get "infinite levels". You get a bunch of different layouts that repeat on subsequent playthroughs. Since you play the game a lot, you also must have noticed that most patterns of rooms appear again and again. Procedural generation is often like that: it repeats certain layouts and patterns, but it pretends that it's actually got "infinite levels", which isn't true. You will notice the repeating layouts and patterns at some point, and realize that you're playing through the same levels again and again, just with minor changes to them.
Shame on you for being a broken record, and shame on you, too, for making me sound like a broken record as well, when I come in to bring some perspective against your irrational procgen hate...

Anyway, your statement above is true, usually.
But that's still like 100 times more variation than any game with handmade content, so...
Besides, I consider something like Gungeon to be only midly procedurally generated - all the single blocks of a level are handmade (maybe the stuff lying around on the floor is random, too). STRAFE also falls in this category, btw. So if you think the level design there is bad, blame whoever designed the single blocks, not procgen.
True procedural generation is something like ADOM, Caves Of Qud, Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld. Where (almost) everything really is procedurally generated (in the case of DF even history, those crazed madmen!).

Nobody would get the idea that level design in these games sucks, because, frankly, it's not that important - the games wouldn't be better if someone took ten years to design 1000 dungeons by hand.
That's because they are games driven by mechanics, not level design.
Which is what I always say: If procgen is a good idea or not (and in what capacity) depends on the type of game more than anything.

What I find more interesting than focusing so much on level design is that most games featuring procedural generation nowadays have a problem that is mostly unrelated to it: Bland game mechanics.
If game mechanics are the colors and brushes a player can use, levels are the canvas. But I feel that many games with procgen just hand you a single brush and two colors.
Which ends up - who would've guessed - sucking, which then in turn causes certain people to think it had anything to do with the procedural generation of the levels. When even the best levels couldn't save the the blandest game design.

It is alarming how many people here react to those da2 pics as if they haven't played the game.
The game was so bad that it got burned in my mind. Am i the only one?
I think I played it. Can't remember. It was either not memorable or so horrible my psyche erected a barrier to spare me the memories.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
The mediocrities of the Kickstarter era. Old has-beens trying to make a style of RPGs they haven't made or played for 15 years, resulting in bland, boring imitations that try to please everyone and failing at satisfying anyone. The writing being so bloated and incompetent is a huge reason why this is. InXile's parodies and both PoEs are like farts in the wind, failing to make any lasting impact of substance, only being talked about on very dedicated RPG forums and either defended by sycophants or bashed. The worst crime is that their mediocrity made the genre commercially non-viable again. The one exception being D:OS and it's popular for the wrong reasons, making it a crime as well.
That is true only for the big ones like numanuma and poe. There is plenty of good ones that ended up delivering. Good example is the shadowrun games.
The Shadowruns didn't manage to make a lasting impact either. They might be a bit better than PoE and InXile's crap, but not good enough to keep RPGs in the public consciousness and leave an impression. I even forgot about their existence when writing that post. The nu-SRs were a one-time thing, I doubt the devs are going to make any more of them. The indies that continue to come out are great, sure, but their development is slow and uncertain.

Also, like it was mentioned, big, bloated budgets in general was perhaps the thing which started the decline of not only RPGs, but gaming as a whole.
 

ColonelTeacup

Liturgist
Joined
Mar 19, 2017
Messages
1,433
Oblivion - the beginning of consolification and dumbification

Fallout 3 - one of the worst travesties in the RPG genre

Fallout 4 - same shit but more logarithmic (even worse)

Skyrim - travesty to gaming in general, a half-broken unplayable mess

Pillars - made some critical errors, but in this group a very minor offender

Numenera - same

Outer Worlds - one of the worst incoming travesties

BG3 - probably one of the worst incoming travesties, aka the Fallout 3 of IE games (God forbid)


some honorable mentions - DA: Inquisition (was never a spectacularly promising franchise so who cares), ME: Andromeda (it was so good that everyone wiped it out of their brain memory)
Mass Effect 2: On disc dlc to be sold later
Dragon Age: Camp where an npc tries to shill the paid dlc to you in game, at the expense of immersion
Dragon Age 2: Barely a game, padded out with a disgusting amount of reused assets, sold for full price.
 

Tytus

Arcane
Joined
Jul 9, 2011
Messages
3,596
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Mazovia
Mass Effect Andromeda - game made by untalented SJWs for untalented SJWs that don't actually buy any games.
 

vazha

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2013
Messages
2,063
The House of Time part of Pathfinder : kingmaker - so bad made me abandon an otherwise rather decent game.

Itemization & retrain at a whim system in DOS 2: Immersion breaking of epic proportions. One minute my char is a two hander wielding platemail clad warrior and the next minute a wimpy thief? No please. I pray they dont repeat it with BG 3.

Combat in Inquisitor. Please somebody get the source code from those Czech dudes and mod it somehow.

other more obvious offenders have already been pointed out, so I rest my case here.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
That depends on the person, i like having different levels even if they aren't designed by hand, i can honestly say i have spent more hours playing Spelunky, Streets Of Rogue, Enter The Gungeon and others than many RPG's or even classic games, precisely because they offer a different experience and challenges all the time.

Then again, a lot of my favorite games aren't procedurally generated so i would be a hypocrite if i said i typically prefer roguelikes and roguelites, heck, i think in the past few months i haven't played one, not even Enter The Gungeon despite getting a big update.

I do enjoy Enter the Gungeon a lot since it's a good game, but I played it often enough now that I can recognize the patterns of the levels. You don't really get "infinite levels". You get a bunch of different layouts that repeat on subsequent playthroughs. Since you play the game a lot, you also must have noticed that most patterns of rooms appear again and again. Procedural generation is often like that: it repeats certain layouts and patterns, but it pretends that it's actually got "infinite levels", which isn't true. You will notice the repeating layouts and patterns at some point, and realize that you're playing through the same levels again and again, just with minor changes to them.
Shame on you for being a broken record, and shame on you, too, for making me sound like a broken record as well, when I come in to bring some perspective against your irrational procgen hate...

Anyway, your statement above is true, usually.
But that's still like 100 times more variation than any game with handmade content, so...
Besides, I consider something like Gungeon to be only midly procedurally generated - all the single blocks of a level are handmade (maybe the stuff lying around on the floor is random, too). STRAFE also falls in this category, btw. So if you think the level design there is bad, blame whoever designed the single blocks, not procgen.
True procedural generation is something like ADOM, Caves Of Qud, Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld. Where (almost) everything really is procedurally generated (in the case of DF even history, those crazed madmen!).

It really depends on what you consider "100 times more variation". Yes, levels are always different but you will still recognize patterns, types, etc, and there will be some inevitable things created by random generation, like dead ends that don't have anything interesting in them, that you can avoid in clever level design. There will at some point be something that reminds you that this level wasn't designed by a human with a creative vision behind it. That's why proc gen levels always start to feel samey to me at some point.

I'd rather play a game with a dozen truly well-made levels built by actual designers, than a game with millions of proc gen levels that all feel like proc gen. In truth, proc gen doesn't really give you more variation than hand made levels. Usually it gives you less variation, actually. If you take something like Thief or Dishonored, you have 10 to 12 hand-made levels of which each one is unique. (And in the case of Thief you have 1000+ fan-made missions, of which at least 20% or so are actually good and also have their unique style and touch.) If you look at dungeon crawlers like KotC, Grimrock, Might and Magic, etc, you have meticulously hand-crafted levels and encounters, and each encounter is designed to be a decent challenge at the level you are expected to meet it at, and there are puzzles to solve in the dungeons. BG2 is beloved for its wizard duels and generally tough and interesting encounters. Morrowind for its unique items you can find tucked away in deep dungeons.

The more procedural things are, the less impact they tend to have. Morrowind's hand-placed loot and BG2's hand-crafted unique items are often cited as some of the best itemization in RPGs ever. Meanwhile, people can't stop complaining about how lame and boring the randomly generated loot in Divinity: Original Sin is. Getting a "unique" item (which isn't truly unique because some of its stats are randomized) feels less impactful than in BG2 or Morrowind because it could drop when you kill a boss... or it could not. Because random chance plays a role in which items are found where, finding a unique item feels more like luck than actual player achievement. In games like MW and BG2 it feels like your own achievement since the unique items are always locked behind specific barriers: a tough encounter, a bunch of traps, a certain quest, creative exploration etc. When items are procedural you think "looks like I had a lucky run" rather than "I managed to track down this unique, yeah!"

As for your claim of levels having more variation, that is only partially true. In a game with hand-crafted level design, where you have 5 level designers each contributing 3 levels, you'd end up with 15 distinct levels, each with its own personality and style. And these levels can be vastly different, both in content and in quality, which leads to such discussions as "which Thief level is your favorite?". In a proc gen game there are no favorite levels because nobody is ever going to see the same level as any other player (unless you can specify the random seed manually, but it's still not the same). In proc gen games, you usually get 3 to 6 different layouts or styles of level. Say, you get the "dryad forest", the "undead crypt", the "demon underworld", the "warlock tower". These are the four types of dungeons you will encounter in the game. Almost all roguelikes do this. Even Dwarf Fortress does this. And while the actual layout of these places will vary, the overall style will stay the same. Dwarf Fortress has these pyramids, which will always have a similar (but not same) layout. Villages in DF also have similar layouts every time. Etc.

Since there will always be styles and patterns that, after some time of playing the game, will become familiar and recognizeable, there is no endless variety of levels. There's only be slightly different versions of the same levels you've gone through a dozen times already. Meanwhile, in a hand-made game every level can be unique and pull a twist on the formula. It can combine assets in unorthodox ways that still manage to work well together. It can put in surprising and challenging encounters, specifically designed to surprise the player. Locations can be filled with lore, writing, and a purpose. There is a lot more variety in hand-designed levels than there is in proc gen.

In my personal experience, no proc gen game I played up to now has given me as much sheer variety of levels as Thief and Dishonored 2 did, or Baldur's Gate 2. Proc gen games mostly deliver fake variety by juggling similar patterns and styles in different ways each time, but the end result feels way more samey than the dungeons in BG2, a Might and Magic game, Wizards and Warriors, Ultima Underworld, etc.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
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The mediocrities of the Kickstarter era. Old has-beens trying to make a style of RPGs they haven't made or played for 15 years, resulting in bland, boring imitations that try to please everyone and failing at satisfying anyone. The writing being so bloated and incompetent is a huge reason why this is. InXile's parodies and both PoEs are like farts in the wind, failing to make any lasting impact of substance, only being talked about on very dedicated RPG forums and either defended by sycophants or bashed. The worst crime is that their mediocrity made the genre commercially non-viable again. The one exception being D:OS and it's popular for the wrong reasons, making it a crime as well.
That is true only for the big ones like numanuma and poe. There is plenty of good ones that ended up delivering. Good example is the shadowrun games.
The Shadowruns didn't manage to make a lasting impact either. They might be a bit better than PoE and InXile's crap, but not good enough to keep RPGs in the public consciousness and leave an impression. I even forgot about their existence when writing that post. The nu-SRs were a one-time thing, I doubt the devs are going to make any more of them. The indies that continue to come out are great, sure, but their development is slow and uncertain.

Also, like it was mentioned, big, bloated budgets in general was perhaps the thing which started the decline of not only RPGs, but gaming as a whole.
Who the fuck cares about it?? Only insane people would have expected RPGs to become mainstream fad. The kickstarter craze was never going to do this shit. It was good because it brought us a few good games and maybe a few more are in development like black gayxer. RPGs are niche thing for people with specific kind of thinking and at least some brains in their noggin. It is not something that should become mainstream,such shit will hurt the community,the industry,etc etc.
Tho i only care if the game is a up to codex standards and if i like it. The rest is irrelevant.
 
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thesheeep

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'd rather play a game with a dozen truly well-made levels built by actual designers, than a game with millions of proc gen levels that all feel like proc gen.
Well, suit yourself.
Thankfully, there are enough games for everyone.
But your weird crusade against procgen, which in truth only boils down to "I don't like it" or "this is badly done procgen" is getting really weird.

In truth, proc gen doesn't really give you more variation than hand made levels. Usually it gives you less variation, actually. If you take something like Thief or Dishonored, you have 10 to 12 hand-made levels of which each one is unique. (And in the case of Thief you have 1000+ fan-made missions, of which at least 20% or so are actually good and also have their unique style and touch.) If you look at dungeon crawlers like KotC, Grimrock, Might and Magic, etc, you have meticulously hand-crafted levels and encounters, and each encounter is designed to be a decent challenge at the level you are expected to meet it at, and there are puzzles to solve in the dungeons.
Puzzles suck in RPGs. Actually, puzzles are probably what I'd put as my worst RPG travesties.
If I want to do crosswords, find patterns or solve lever puzzles, I can buy a puzzle book for children. Or play hidden object games. Which I actually do, when I'm sick and my brain is high on meds :lol:

Memorable encounters can be had in procedurally generated games as well, I don't think I need to point you to specific threads/videos/stories/etc. about memorable things that happened RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, Kenshi (not procgen levels, but other kind of procedural content), or any other (good!) game with procedural content generation. And those come in great variety and did not require meticulous hand-crafting for each and every one of them.


Morrowind's hand-placed loot and BG2's hand-crafted unique items are often cited as some of the best itemization in RPGs ever. Meanwhile, people can't stop complaining about how lame and boring the randomly generated loot in Divinity: Original Sin is. Getting a "unique" item (which isn't truly unique because some of its stats are randomized) feels less impactful than in BG2 or Morrowind because it could drop when you kill a boss... or it could not.
That's all true, but also all down to the fact that, as you wrote, you connect unique items in BG2 with the struggle to get to them (and partly their really unique power).
D:OS itemization is shit not because it is procedural, it would be equally shit if it were the same every single time. Even uniques suck in D:OS2 because they become too weak to use after you level up once.
None of which is even related to procedural generation.
As if it was impossible to put unique items (truly unique items, that were designed by hand with a backstory, etc.) behind a specific challenge in procedural generation. It sure isn't - though, it isn't usually done. But then that is just bad design, not anything that would lie in the nature of procedural generation.

If you want to say that bad design often goes hand in hand with procedural generation, then I'd even agree. But that just means that there are a lot of shitty designers who are too lazy to design good levels so they use procgen as a "quick" bandaid. It does not mean that procgen itself sucks as a tool.

As for your claim of levels having more variation, that is only partially true. In a game with hand-crafted level design, where you have 5 level designers each contributing 3 levels, you'd end up with 15 distinct levels, each with its own personality and style. And these levels can be vastly different, both in content and in quality, which leads to such discussions as "which Thief level is your favorite?". In a proc gen game there are no favorite levels because nobody is ever going to see the same level as any other player (unless you can specify the random seed manually, but it's still not the same). In proc gen games, you usually get 3 to 6 different layouts or styles of level. Say, you get the "dryad forest", the "undead crypt", the "demon underworld", the "warlock tower". These are the four types of dungeons you will encounter in the game. Almost all roguelikes do this. Even Dwarf Fortress does this. And while the actual layout of these places will vary, the overall style will stay the same. Dwarf Fortress has these pyramids, which will always have a similar (but not same) layout. Villages in DF also have similar layouts every time. Etc.
This one I agree with. Well, except that even if you have 5 designers x 3 levels, you won't necessarily end up with truly unique things, only in the best case scenario. We've all seen hand-made levels so bad that I'd take even mediocre procgen over them.
The time a level designer invests into a big level, a programmer invests into a "kind of level" - which then has more variations, but similar styles. That games with procgen typically feature only a handful of styles instead of dozens is something that I hope will be rectified at some point (*cough* *cough* ask me again in two years *cough*).

There is a lot more variety in hand-designed levels than there is in proc gen.
There is (typically) more variety within a single hand-designed level than within a single procedurally generated one. Yes. And by extension, typically the same is true for a single playthrough.
But after you have seen that single level's variety, that's it - it will hold no more surprises for you. Takes a lot more to see all the patterns and variations in different instances of a procedurally generated level.
Obviously, that requires a game that you'll want to play through multiple times, or that requires many restarts, etc.
 
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JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Thankfully, there are enough games for everyone.
But your weird crusade against procgen, which in truth only boils down to "I don't like it" or "this is badly done procgen" is getting really weird.

My crusade is caused by every second new indie game that is announced being proc gen, despite the market already being flooded with these things.
You see a new game announced, with a cool concept, but then you notice it's one of those proc gen games again where all the levels will feel the same 2 hours into the game and it's just meh.

I wouldn't be this adamant about it if the balance wasn't that skewed in favor of proc gen right now.
 

Cross

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Oct 14, 2017
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2,983
Oblivion - the beginning of consolification and dumbification
That would be Invisible War and Kotor back in 2003.

Final Fantasy 7, with no competition. It introduced mainstream western audience to the jrpg genre in the worst way possible. Difficulty is reduced to grinding and the focus is instead on high budget visuals fed to the player in a mostly linear fashion. It would end up hurting both the audience who came to expect "better" visuals from western RPGs, which at the time meant prerendered backgrounds with pig disgusting 3D cut scenes. This was impossible for western developers who aimed for complex interactive environments and operated on a tenth of the budget, which contributed in part to the rather static environments in IE games.
Final Fantasy 7 cost 45M$ to make, and 100M$ more went to marketing. Fallout 1 which was released in the same year was supposedly done with 3-4M$. Adding to the budget issue was the nature of cRPGs, which was far harder to sell. They had complex combat and required a lot of reading, and on the other side of the ring were pretty visuals, great soundtrack, and a huge marketing budget. The result was obvious.
How could Final Fantasy 7 contribute to the static environments in the IE games, when Baldur's Gate began development nearly 2 years before Final Fantasy 7 came out in the US? And how could it contribute to the use of 3D cutscenes, when the IE games didn't even have those, apart from an intro and a few seconds of establishing shots whenever you entered a new area?

Furthermore, what are you comparing the IE games to when you describe their environments as static and lacking in interactivity? The last AD&D RPG released before Baldur's Gate was Dark Sun, where you could bash open doors and attack NPCs. In the IE games you can bash open doors, attack NPCS, lay traps and use skills like pickpocketing and stealth. Where is the decline in interactivity?

Tthe use of pre-rendered backgrounds was also nothing alike. This is what an area looks like in Final Fantasy 7:

j4xHdBy.png



This is what an area looks like in Baldur's Gate:

westofnashkel.gif


Totally the same, right?
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Thankfully, there are enough games for everyone.
But your weird crusade against procgen, which in truth only boils down to "I don't like it" or "this is badly done procgen" is getting really weird.

My crusade is caused by every second new indie game that is announced being proc gen, despite the market already being flooded with these things.
You see a new game announced, with a cool concept, but then you notice it's one of those proc gen games again where all the levels will feel the same 2 hours into the game and it's just meh.

I wouldn't be this adamant about it if the balance wasn't that skewed in favor of proc gen right now.
indie games use procgen because they're made on a shoestring budget and designers cost money
 

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