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Azarkon vs the Cult of Hardcore RPG Fatalism - can hardcore RPGs sell better?

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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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.
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?).

That's the only way to make good money on RPGs - dumb them down and make them actiony as fuck.

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.
Same as Arcanum, ToEE, Planescape, Wizardry 8, etc.

1. Choices and consequences do not make your game niche.
Never claimed it did.

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.
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.

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?
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.

4. Turn-based tactical combat is more niche than real-time, but still not that niche. XCOM...
There is turn-based and there is turn-based. There's XCOM and there's X-COM.

I won't even comment on the suggestions.
 

sser

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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.
good money

Could I get a more nuanced definition from you on what "good money" would be in the context of game development?
 

Ellef

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It's a terrible post that only the dedicated like VD could be bothered to break down section by section.

I'll just say i'd rather take AODs story and characters over "IM SO HYPED FOR DESTRUCTION OF HUMANITY, BAKA PLANE IS TSUNDERE B-BAKA xDDDDDDD :shittydog:"
 

Shadenuat

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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.
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.
(Not that you can't beat it if you're just very good at twitchy gameplay, but for most people it requires time and experience/skill with controller - and still right mindset).
 

TigerKnee

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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...
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.

I'm certain AoD probably took a hit for choosing "Rome inspired" as its setting because it doesn't fit nicely into a category
 
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Lurker King

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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.

Because it’s the truth.

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."

Of course, because the definition of “hardcore cRPG” player involves the definition of “cRPG”, which involves the definition of “RPG”. I could spend 10 years researching the subject, write a whole book about it, and people would still disagree with me, because that is a complex and abstract subject, involves a lot of assumptions about the ontology of social artifacts, etc. Instead of presenting a definition, you can provide a simple characterization of the typical hardcore player, and they’re also illuminating. For instance, a typical hardcore player have the patience to dwell on a complex character building, which “Underrail”, “Age of Decadence” and “Serpents in the Staglands” have – I didn’t play “Legends of Eisenwald” or “Lords of Xulima”.

I notice that most people have this mistaken idea that when we are talking about games, the truth about the subject must be empirical, based on his impressions and widespread conventions. Thus, the same guy that knows that the apparent changeability of nature can’t be trusted and hide deep and complex patterns, will adopt a completely different, and borderline pseudo-scientific, attitude when the subject is games. Just because you see different cRPGs, that have more focus on particular aspects of gameplay, that doesn’t mean they’re not the same thing at the core. Just because you see different hardcore players, with different tastes about setting, amount of C&C or combat, doesn’t mean they’re not hardcore players at the core. You will need a considerable theoretic effort to establish that the superficial differences among cRPGs represents a deep difference at the fundamental level. Assuming they’re not the same thing because they look different is lazy thinking, because the subject is abstract and involves more than meets the eye.

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.

“Pillars of Eternity” raised over $4.5M on kickstarter, and had a team of known names of the industry. “Wasteland 2” raised over $3M in kickstarter and paypal, has a known veteran of the industry, etc. “Shadowrun Returns” almost $2M and Jordan Weisman name behind the project. “Legend of Grimrock” made by a small team of veterans and has eye candid graphics. So, the successful cRPGs you mentioned all have developers that are small celebrities and exceptional funding from kickstarter - the only exception being “Grimrock”, because it raised considerable less, but this is compensated by the graphics. What you forgot to mention, is that these success don’t have half of the complexity of “Age of Decadence”, “Underrail” and “Serpents”. So, let me repeat that again, numbers in sales are not reliable indicators of quality.

Niche of the niche indie games like “Undertale”, on the other hand, are a different beast entirely. They’re moved by the same hipster culture that helped to promote games like “Braid”, etc. When a lot of people are talking about a game that is super cheap, you attract buyers that are not gamers, and gamers who buy in the impulse. To talk about this experiment in comparison with proper cRPGs makes no sense.

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.

That is if you consider success the amount of sales of “Pillars of Eternity” and “Wasteland 2”, which is an unfair comparison, whether in terms of money in funding, the size of the teams behind them or the fact they’re not veterans of the industry, but first timers. On the other hand, if you consider that this begin as part-time hobby, made by four people (three first timers) and sold more than 32k units for a good price, then that could be considerate a success, especially if you consider that the game is actually great.

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.

There a lot of games with one or two endings. That is fluffy choice and consequence that give the players the illusion that they’re making meaningful choices. The developers can implement this in two days, no big deal. Systematized reactivity, on the other hand, is much harder to achieve and will consume all your resources. If you consider the amount of gameplay that additional choices and consequences represents in “Age of Decadence”, the game is huge.

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”.

Three arcade games whose combat can be encapsulated in one sentence: dodge and hit, dodge and hit. That is not hard in my dictionary, even if you evaluate their difficult in terms of reflex. I bet that a lot of Atari games are harder than them. The fact the only games with hard combat that sold more are arcade games just reinforced my other point: causal and console gamers don’t have the patience to dwell on a complex character building or combat systems. They want a sword to kill things and feel powerful.

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?

Well, people are not afraid of stat sheets when stat sheets are fluffy, because they like to have the illusion of character building. But when the stats really matter and you pay for your mistakes, causals hate. If a poorly made character died every time in Oblivion, players would hate the game to no end, it would sell shit. I’m pretty sure that most jRPGs don’t have stats either, at least that’s my memory tell me regarding jRPGs in consoles.

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.

No arguing here.

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.

Again, few people care provided that they don’t get in the way of the awesomus exploration and your attempts to kill things. But if you die because you failed a skill or stat check, yea, that piss people off, because they want to feel like Conan, the killer.


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:

Hmmm.

Choice of ruleset.

Only players that are niche of niche debate about these things. These players bought the game and like it. It’s a skill system without levels and simple math, no big deal.

Choice of setting.

The setting was marketed to no end in interviews, the trailer, etc. It is one its main strengths and attracted a lot of players.

Not involving industry celebrities.

No arguing here. You should add they are first timers too.

Lack of excellent story & characters.

Even reviewers that criticized the game, praised the story and the characters. However, it’s really difficult to praise the story and the characters if you are bitching about how you die all the time and the game don’t let you explore the game world.

Not enough innovation.

On the contrary, one of the main deterrents was the innovations. Players hated the teleporting, hated being conned by NPCs and most of them criticized the game for being short, because they couldn’t understand how deep the reactivity was.

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.

No, they aren’t. In fact, this is a strong indicator that oldschool games are not widely known because most people don’t know who Jeff Vogel is, even though he made so many games.

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.

You know how ITS could make millions following the example of “Undertale”, the supreme masterpiece of roleplaying game? Focusing on weeaboo aesthetics and the SJW crown. That is a not brainer. I even have the title for their next game: “Age of Inclusiveness, the redemption of the social justice warrior”. It’s all worked out. He doesn’t have to pay for marketing and small SJW celebrities and their acolytes will take care of that. I have a list of names here from tbmlr and facebook. Hey Vault Dweller, when you and your crew are millionaries because of my advice, and you are all in Hawaii drinking cocktails and shit, at least send me a postcard, would you?
 
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Lurker King

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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.

:excellent:
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
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.

Right, I suggested that AoD use a trailer similar to this one for the Wasteland 2 Director's Cut: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=10091

Indies need to be less afraid to create, and subsequently talk about their iconic characters, iconic places, and iconic moments. I think they're afraid of coming across as "LARPy" in a Biowarey way. Like they think caring so much about virtual characters and virtual places is childish and kind of creepy, and if they try to "emotionally engage" potential buyers with those things, they'll come across as insincere and scare people off. So they just talk about abstract stuff instead.
 
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Irenaeus II

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That's a really good trailer indeed.

AoD having a trailer full of mood which focused on factions, NPCs, quests without full spoilers would have gone a long way. That branching scene from WL2 :D trailer is a great part of that trailer and something that could be worked on also.
 

Vault Dweller

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someone should inform Larian that turn-based combat is terrible for sales!
In a co-op game aimed at a very different market.

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.
good money

Could I get a more nuanced definition from you on what "good money" would be in the context of game development?
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.
 

Vault Dweller

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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:

- 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.

So overall, much like our beloved Baldur's Gate, Pillars is a combat-heavy game with stats where instead of exploring the setting, you kill things with minimum effort to push the plot forward. With a better combat system (or god forbid TB) and challenging combat, it would have been more enjoyable. With a stronger focus on the setting/plot/quests, it would be easier to overlook the combat aspect and like the game more despite of it (see Planescape).
 
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Irenaeus II

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I think PoE is great, because I don't think it's easy on hard (I suck?) and the setting/plot/quests are very well written imo (see Planescape). Even then, when comparing to AoD, PoE is clearly popamole in gameplay.
 
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- 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.

Which of these elements changing would have caused sales to halve in your opinion? Reviews of your game seem to uniformly praise the way it handles 3 and 4 so I'm guessing people wouldn't start complaining about gameplay variety or greater skill selection. The uniform gripe with your game seems to revolve around 1 and 2, with people feeling railroaded and hitting walls in combat.
 
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Irenaeus II

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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).

Only a retard could complain about being railroaded in AoD, since the game offers around two or three dozen paths to completion.
 

Krash

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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).

That's what difficulty modes are for. Design the game around hard (your real audience), then make a normal and easy (storymode, whatever) to reel in less skilled masses. It significantly widens your pool of potential buyers with almost no investment.
 

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