Irenaeus II
Unwanted
Yeah, I won't argue with that.
When they do poorly, yes. Look at Serpents, for example. My point was that RPGs have a very limited appeal, so whereas an action game can easily sell 500,000 copies, if not millions, a hardcore RPG has a much smaller range. There is a reason why Troika is dead. There is a reason why RPGs almost went extinct until they were revived by Diablo and Baldur's Gate by inserting a heavy dose of RT action there (anyone old enough to remember that Diablo was TB in the early iteration?).But what I don't get is this attitude that "hardcore games" have literally no appeal outside of a small group of "hardcore gamers" and therefore, when they do poorly on the sales front, excuses aren't even necessary.
Same as Arcanum, ToEE, Planescape, Wizardry 8, etc.Age of Decadence, Legends of Eisenwald, Lords of Xulima, Serpent in the Staglands, and Underrail are *not* united in their design goals, priorities, and achievements. But they *are* united in their failure to reach the mass market.
Never claimed it did.1. Choices and consequences do not make your game niche.
People can accept hard when it's tied to their hand-eye coordination, not when it's TB, characters' skills, figuring out how to beat the odds stacked against you.2. Hard/unforgiving combat does not make your game niche. Not in the era of Demon Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne. Many people want "hard," and even those who don't, can be satisfied with a difficulty setting.
Did anyone claim that? Ever? Yes, there are stats and skills, but in most games they are disconnected. #2 complaint we got is stat- and skill-restricted access. Most people don't want it. They want cosmetic character sheets, stats and skills that make them more awesome, not restrict them in any way.3. Stat sheets & character creation do not make your game niche. Virtually all JRPGs have them, the aforementioned successful Western CRPGs have them, and even Bethesda's games have them. People aren't afraid of stat sheets. They might be afraid of stat sheets that are overly complicated, but then why shouldn't they be?
There is turn-based and there is turn-based. There's XCOM and there's X-COM.4. Turn-based tactical combat is more niche than real-time, but still not that niche. XCOM...
good moneyBut what I don't get is this attitude that "hardcore games" have literally no appeal outside of a small group of "hardcore gamers" and therefore, when they do poorly on the sales front, excuses aren't even necessary.
It's such a horrible post. People who brofisted it should be ashamed, really.
While DS is a real time game, picking right equipment, planning, knowledge and patience work in it better than casual action game approach. In some ways it makes you think like in a turn based game. This is why many people die so easily in it and couldn't get into it, because they couldn't get into right mindset.People can accept hard when it's tied to their hand-eye coordination, not when it's TB, characters' skills, figuring out how to beat the odds stacked against you.
This doesn't seem to be true as far as I can tell - I've seen a lot of lamenting that anything that doesn't fit into those generic categories (Tolkien, Europe, Generic Sci-Fantasy and Post-Apoc) take a hit in sales - if you try to make an RPG inspired by say Feudal China or Medieval India, you might as well be committing financial suicide.But even in case you're not going to use an existing setting, you should, at the minimum, make the effort to create a setting that isn't just a pale imitation of an existing setting. Nobody cares about generic-medieval-European-fantasy-setting-195251 and generic-post-apocalyptic-grimdark-setting-99582...
But what I don't get is this attitude that "hardcore games" have literally no appeal outside of a small group of "hardcore gamers" and therefore, when they do poorly on the sales front, excuses aren't even necessary.
First, to make this argument, you need to define what "hardcore games" are - and as much as everyone is throwing around "real RPG" and "hardcore RPG" as though it is well-understood what they are, years on the Codex have taught me that no one actually agrees on what it is, and for that matter, what its representative titles are. Age of Decadence, Legends of Eisenwald, Lords of Xulima, Serpent in the Staglands, and Underrail are *not* united in their design goals, priorities, and achievements. But they *are* united in their failure to reach the mass market. This is the only similarity between all of these games other than the fact that they are low-budget Western CRPGs, and it is disingenuous to equate "hardcore games" with "low-budget Western CRPGs that sell poorly."
I'd agree that Western CRPG is a less lucrative market than genres such as Action RPG and FPS, but it is also ridiculous to only blame the genre. There *are* successful low-budget Western CRPGs - Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Legend of Grimrock, even Pillars of Eternity though that's stretching it. And of course, games such as Undertale, To the Moon, and Skyborn show that low-budget =/= low sales, though here we could argue that JRPG fans are forgiving of low-budget graphics while Western CRPG fans are not, even though I don't think that's the case.
My personal opinion on games such as Age of Decadence, Legends of Eisenwald, etc. is not that they are "too hardcore" to succeed, but that they made specific decisions during the development/design process that cost them wider appeal. The bulk of these decisions are not core to the design, but are excusable mistakes, which their developers even admit to; but just because it is excusable, does not make it less of a mistake.
Choices and consequences do not make your game niche. There are many mainstream games with choices and consequences, and which advertise their games through it. Latest example: Until Dawn, the sales of which "vastly exceeded expectations." The idea of promoting player agency, and giving players choices through the course of the game, is very much mainstream today.
Hard/unforgiving combat does not make your game niche. Not in the era of Demon Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne. Many people want "hard," and even those who don't, can be satisfied with a difficulty setting”.
Stat sheets & character creation do not make your game niche. Virtually all JRPGs have them, the aforementioned successful Western CRPGs have them, and even Bethesda's games have them. People aren't afraid of stat sheets. They might be afraid of stat sheets that are overly complicated, but then why shouldn't they be?
Turn-based tactical combat is more niche than real-time, but still not that niche. XCOM, Transistor, all the aforementioned successful Western CRPGs, JRPGs, most tactical strategy games such as Endless Space, Age of Wonders, etc. all have turn-based combat. It's not a dead sell just because your game has turn-based combat; it is a dead sell, however, when your game only advertises turn-based combat.
Attribute checks deciding dialogue choices, etc. do not make your game niche. In actuality, outside of the Codex and a few other communities, few people care about whether the game has attribute checks.
With the above in mind, I'll list the main issues with Age of Decadence, Legends of Eisenwald, Lords of Xulima, etc. that DID, in my opinion, negatively affect their sales:
Choice of ruleset.
Choice of setting.
Not involving industry celebrities.
Lack of excellent story & characters.
Not enough innovation.
Second, as much as we talk about how these games are no longer being made, *they are being made*. Take Jeff Vogel, for example - he's been making these "old school" games for the past 20 years! Just the fact that I'm able to call up 5-6 games in *two years* ought to tell you that this market is saturated.
It's similar to 4X games, in this respect - nostalgia for the old games is just not going to cut it when there are over a dozen 4X games on the market from the last five years. It's not the dead RTS genre where people just want to see a new quality RTS game because so few have been made in the last decade. We live in an age where there are a lot of turn-based games and a lot of old school CRPGs, from both big-time developers such as Obsidian, and small-time developers such as Jeff Vogel. In this sort of industry, you need to *innovate* to set yourself from the crowd. Just making another Wizardry, Fallout, etc. isn't going to cut it, because as much as we want to make it look otherwise, the industry has had plenty of "old school" RPGs in recent years.
To this end, I think we need to straighten out a few facts, here
Honestly I think there's a very large degree of plain random luck involved as well. There are a lot of factors that are simply beyond one's control, like what others games or announcements are released in the same timeframe, the general state of the economy, the whims of high profile people that may or may not give it a lot of free publicity. Sales revolving around merit or even marketing might be a comforting thought, but it's old father Random Shit that truly decides the course of fate.
AoD marketing really misrepresents the setting a lot though, implying it's completely mundane. "In a land where ancient evil has never awakened, the job of destroying the world was left to mankind". Except half the storyline is discovering shit about ancient evil... Overall it's very vague what the storyline's actually about, no mention about any of the factions, places or characters you see in the game. Everything's very vague - visit new places, master the system, acquire loot, raise your skills. Is that really supposed to excite anyone? It's basically saying, this is a run-of-the-mill RPG with some nice kill animations.
Compare to the AoW 3 trailer above for example. I'm not saying it's great, but it at least has something kewl and visceral when displaying the different classes. AoD could've displayed the noble houses and guilds like that, and actually hinted at the GODZ somehow to pique the interest.
In a co-op game aimed at a very different market.someone should inform Larian that turn-based combat is terrible for sales!
It depends on many things like the size of a studio (i.e. production values), built-in audience, etc. For example, for a small studio like ours, 'good money' would be selling 200-300,000 copies. It's not a crazy, absolutely unrealistic number in general, but for a game like AoD, Underrail, etc it is. For a company like Obsidian that would be 1.5-2 mil copies and up. Again, not an unrealistic number (that's what the Stick of Truth sold), but Pillars fell way short. Then again, had Pillars been more hardcore, it wouldn't have sold more than 200-300,000 copies.good moneyBut what I don't get is this attitude that "hardcore games" have literally no appeal outside of a small group of "hardcore gamers" and therefore, when they do poorly on the sales front, excuses aren't even necessary.
Could I get a more nuanced definition from you on what "good money" would be in the context of game development?
Then again, had Pillars been more hardcore, it wouldn't have sold more than 200-300,000 copies.
Then again, had Pillars been more hardcore, it wouldn't have sold more than 200-300,000 copies.
What does more hardcore mean? More difficult or more traditional or more complex or...?
Pillars has several mainstream aspects:Then again, had Pillars been more hardcore, it wouldn't have sold more than 200-300,000 copies.
What does more hardcore mean? More difficult or more traditional or more complex or...?
- it's easy on Hard
- can't fuck up your build, all stats make you more awesome at combat, one way or another, which means you don't really need to think when creating or leveling up your characters; compare it to ToEE.
- pitiful skill selection
- gameplay revolves around killing things, combat is shoved everywhere even in quests where it doesn't make any sense; compare it to Arcanum to see the difference in complexity.
Mostly the difficulty. Increasing complexity and failures for skills/atributes combinations would destroy the game for the huge casual audience it managed to attract (they are dummies).
someone should inform Larian that turn-based combat is terrible for sales!
In a co-op game aimed at a very different market.