Decline RPGs substitute offering strategic constraints for purported "character expression"

[Ol' Willy]

YOU DID. YOU GREW UP. The person who played Fallout in 1997 is not you anymore. That person does not exist anymore. You outgrew him. You just failed to realise this, and think that modern games are somehow worse just because you are not 12 anymore.

First time I played Fallout 1 and 2 in 2007.
First time I played Fallout 3 in 2008.
First time I played New Vegas in 2010.

Fallout 3 is no match to the first two at any circumstances, at any time. New Vegas is solid third.

Your argument is invalid, your trololo is lame, and you are boring.

 

[agris]

How should I respond to that?

Thanks for asking.

1. When making news posts regarding games from studios with a mixed record, you can refer to the developer's record. I think the vernacular in your business is "checkered history".
   
2. When you write a news post built around a studio's trailers / PRs / marketing blurbs that reiterate similar promises that the studio has been unable to meet in the past, you can remind readers that "Similar to their promises for [FEATURE] that [STUDIO] made in the past for [RELEASED GAME]; their ability to deliver on said hype is an open question"
3. When a news post focuses on an in-depth area of gameplay / design by a studio, you can provide context such as "[STUDIO's] previous releases were often/sometimes criticized for [POOR FEATURE] owing to [REASONS]"

You do all of the above, and more, with positive comparisons. Do it for less-than-positive comparisons as well, and your posts will better reflect reality and come off less like hype. Notice that the above approach is studio agnostic, my frame of reference for such points is mostly OE / inXile but it should not be limited to them, I just don't have the gaming breadth to hold grudges across the industry.

If inXile somehow mess it up, I'll have to reconsider. And if they don't, perhaps you will.

Aside from the fact that inXile has messed up severely and repeatedly in all of their last 3 major releases (WL2, TToN, BT4) and you seem unaware of it(1), I would be more than happy to acknowledge a good release by that studio. As it stands now, each of those 3 releases has demonstrated a certain area of game making that inxile is fundamentally poor at, to such an extreme degree that it overshadowed the other positives. BT4 is probably their best release to date, and that's because the game length-extending gimmicks and shallow itemization don't really shine through until you're 20+ hours in, and the combat loop is generally entertaining until you've done it for 20+ hours.


(1) Have you you played any of these games to a significant degree? I did, except for WL2; the early experience of which was so shoddy and mis-matched with the hype surrounding it that I put it down with disgust and haven't been able to pick it back up. if I want a squad tactics fix, I can go back to Silent Storm or finally bite off JA2.

edit: typos, clarity

 

[Sigourn]

YOU DID. YOU GREW UP. The person who played Fallout in 1997 is not you anymore. That person does not exist anymore. You outgrew him. You just failed to realise this, and think that modern games are somehow worse just because you are not 12 anymore.

First time I played Fallout 1 and 2 in 2007.
First time I played Fallout 3 in 2008.
First time I played New Vegas in 2010.

Fallout 3 is no match to the first two at any circumstances, at any time. New Vegas is solid third.

Your argument is invalid, your trololo is lame, and you are boring.

First time I played Fallout 3 was in December 2014.
First time I played New Vegas was in 2015.
First time I actually gave Fallout a proper go and beat Fallout and Fallout 2 was in 2018.

I also agree with what you said. New Vegas is much better than Fallout 3, but GameBryo and inherited Fallout 3's assets and visuals really harm the game. If it was made in the classic engine, to me it would be New Vegas >>> Fallout > Fallout 2, not even a contest.

 

[Sigourn]

you will see that it is simplification, to appeal to more people, to meet the lowest common denominator. And as safe as possible.

I think it's key to understand that there's a difference between "simplification" and "make it easier". By simplifying games, what devs are making are games that all play similarly to each other. This is what leads to the famous "Sony movie games" trope. Or what leads to most "RPGs" nowadays being action games with very surface-level RPG elements tacked on top. It's not so much that games needed to be "dumbed down" for people to love them. It's that these games where changed from what they were for people to love them.

So for instance you get Fallout 4, a game that is:

• Open world.
• Action.
• "FPS".
  
• "RPG".
• "Stealth".

It's not [insert favorite action game]. It's not Doom. It's not Fallout. It's not Thief. It's just a mix of genres, watering down everything that made those games I mentioned special while keeping the basic mechanics around. Someone who wants a true Stealth experience will not be satisfied. Someone who wants a true RPG experience will not be satisfied. Someone who wants a true FPS experience will not be satisfied. Someone who wants a true Action experience will not be satisfied. And someone who wants a true open world experience, where "open world" means something else other than "go wherever you want whenever you want", instead of "explore more and more of the world as you manage to open it up", will not be satisfied.

It's a jack of all trades, master of none, and a great example of what "appealing to the lowest common denominator" means: it has a little bit of everything, but never goes full speed with it.

 

[gurugeorge]

Just a reminder to spergs here, roleplaying is not about tabletop wargaming. Also, video games are not tabletop games. CRPGs are not tabletop simulators, like a chess or backgammon video game. In video games you can do a lot of stuff without the need to throw a dice. In proper role playing video games like Skyrim, you don't need to roll a dice to jump, you just press spacebar and jump. You don't need to throw a dice to figure out if you will accurately hit, you just move close to your opponent and mouse click. Dice are needed in tabletop CRPGs because there needs to be a set of rules to structure the LARPing around. When you try to hit someone with a sword in tabletop, how do you know if you succeeded? Do you get a wooden sword and actually physically try to hit him? No, you just throw a dice, and well, if it is in your favor, you hit. If not, you don't. That is for tabletop. In VIDEO GAMES, this is not needed. You can just do that easy peasy in real time. And that is just one of the things that video games do differently.

What i am trying to say is that people here want something that makes no sense, they hold unto an ideal for CRPGs that is quite frankly retarded, but they still cling to it because that is what they grew up with. They want games to be like 20-30 years ago, despite technology moving forward. In fact, like modern ludites, they think that any game that actually utilizes current hardware capabilities, has to be "decline" and "garbage". Especially if that game has mainstream appeal. They ignore that the games they loved 20-30 years ago also had mainstream appeal.... Back then, when they were kids, they didn't discover these "hardcore crpgs" because they were so niche and tough to find. Fallout was advertised on all gaming magazines. Diablo too. Baldur's Gate likewise. It is not like those games were niche or hard core. They were actually quite the mainstream AAA endeavors of their day. They were among the top contenders of their respective years for all-around GOTY, not just rpg-GOTY. And this on major game publications and sites. It is just that, you know, the world moved on since then. THE WORLD MOVED ON, SPERGS. We don't game on Pentium 1s @133Mhz with 16MB of RAM anymore. We need better. Hardware became vastly better and allowed for better experiences.

People here on the Codex resemble JRPG faggots in a lot of ways, just for WRPGs. Just like JRPG weeaboo masochists, they cling to the same retarded game styles because that is what they grew up with. Back in the NES and SNES ages games couldn't do any better, so the JRPG template was formed as the best way to utilize the hardware to make RPGs with. Then PS1 and PS2+ came, and japanese developers just improved the graphics, but left the game style intact. On the other hand, WRPG developers decided to actually embrace the hardware advancement to provide better RPG experiences, and they ran circles around JRPG spergs. That is why after a certain point JRPGs became extremely niche and mostly a japanese-market-thing, while WRPGs dominated. Yet we see the same thing here with codex spergs, they cling to the rpg style of the 90s like it is some holy grail of role playing that can't be improved upon.

I mean, back when BG came out, i was salivating on the possibility to have VR open world photorealistic CRPGs in the far future. Now that i can have those experiences, according to CODEX SPERGS, i have to call open world VR photorealistic CRPGs "decline" and just accept poorly made indie clones of the original BG as some kind of "best crpg incline".

I generally agree with this, but I'd just like to say on the other side that the problem with realtime control is the limitation of inputs (mouse, keyboard, etc.).

The problem is the more you try to make the thing a realtime simulation, the more you bump up against having only one "action" input at a time, the more you bump up against conundrums like how much to simulate physics purely (e.g. Exanima) vs. how much to leave settled motion subsystems stimulated at the level of AI (e.g. one learnt to step over things as a child, and that's now automatic).

The upshot is that until you have true holodeck simulation you're always going to have to abstract quite a lot, so it's just a question of what you abstract and when. And because all the genres are just artifacts of being "stuck with" some previous level of technological development, in pursuit of the perfect simulation, they all have valid and interesting ways of abstracting certain things. For example, a turn-based game gives you a chance to simulate really weird, complex and interesting abilities that you'd need that higher level of input (that's missing from realtime) to do in realtime. Stats and dice rolls are a neat solution to problems that can still (or something like them can still) have a place in gaming.

So while it's true that a lot of disgruntlement is due to nostalgia for what one grew up with, what first grabbed one's attention, etc., and we're all getting older, all the various snapshots of solutions to problems of abstraction that were key functionalities in earlier phases of the pursuit of the ultimate simulation are still valid, so long as the ultimate simulation is still out of reach on account of limited inputs and the fact that most of the time we just want to do these things sitting on our asses in chairs.

 

[Thac0]

I dont have a problem if Infinitron is generally optimistic to neutral about stuff. The community does its part to drag up every single fault the company has ever commited and will generally tear them to shreds.
When people are retarded enough to buy a game they are gonna hate, and do it in a way they cant refund, its their problem, not Infinitrons.

 

[AwesomeButton]

That's why I started talking about those underrated indie RPGs because to me that's what "current" right now and all this disappointment about Kickstarter spiritual successor hype from seven years ago is old news.

I forgot to reply to that. Being on the codex pretty much every day, I hope I am keeping an eye on the underrated indie RPGs, like for example Titan Outpost, and waiting for them to mature enough. I no longer have the ability to muster time for more than one thorough playthrough, so I am patient with Early Access/Beta titles.

 

[Tigranes]

Which kinds of RPGs were those?

This is a question I asked of myself too, and I wanted to make that argument later.

I agree it's not a case of a lost paradise. I think it's a case of present day PR trying to persuade us there was a lost paradise and buying the next spiritual successor will bring it back.

Also, I have to be edgy, otherwise people won't read on.

Just for the record, I like this thread & this post was far more clarifying & reasonable than your OP, which read more like too many long-held complaints were compressed into one muddy general post. At any rate, if you are 'edgying it up' just to get clicks, isn't that the same thing the popamole RPGs are doing?

Anyway. I think many of us have agreed for a while that the "future" of RPGs lies not with the old guard breathing their second-to-last on crowdfunded opium, but new independent designers who are willing to try and find their own new answers to the fundamental design goals of RPGs. Age of Decadence is far more than a Fallout homage; it tries to find its own new answers to the problems Fallout tackled. Which is why it's no surprise some players react very badly to it, and that it makes its own new mistakes. Same goes for Disco Elysium, which tries to really find its own new answers, to the point that a lot of people will throw knives for saying it's an RPG.

I remember putting down money for Pillars of Eternity while thinking that AOD/Underrail is still the future of the genre. I don't regret funding it, though. A world where games like DOS help prove viability to investors/etc for more independent RPG projects, and a world where Obsidian got to at least try and make real RPGs again, is better than, well, Armoured Warfare and South Park. I guess I'll eat my words yet when we get Microsoft-funded Obsidiskyrim in five years, but listen, when that one doesn't sell very well MS will probably just shut down the division.

As for temple boy, dude still cannot handle the fact that plenty of Codexers continue to play, appreciate, and even newly discover old games, because his brain overdosed on television ads and bad business journals in airport lounges until he believes NEW is GOOD and OLD is BAD and anybody who likes old things must have the NOSTALGIA DISEASE as is proven by the fact that they like old things and no this is surely not a logical fallacy at all, rather it is a brilliant insight that only he has the power to perceive - when in fact it is he that desperately clings to this narrative for solace in order to make sense of his impoverished world. Truly, he is a literary being.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Just for the record, I like this thread & this post was far more clarifying & reasonable than your OP, which read more like too many long-held complaints were compressed into one muddy general post. At any rate, if you are 'edgying it up' just to get clicks, isn't that the same thing the popamole RPGs are doing?

For this post to be short and clarifying, you need the context of the OP.

I remember putting down money for Pillars of Eternity while thinking that AOD/Underrail is still the future of the genre. I don't regret funding it, though. A world where games like DOS help prove viability to investors/etc for more independent RPG projects, and a world where Obsidian got to at least try and make real RPGs again, is better than, well, Armoured Warfare and South Park. I guess I'll eat my words yet when we get Microsoft-funded Obsidiskyrim in five years, but listen, when that one doesn't sell very well MS will probably just shut down the division

On the subject of unintended consequences - I've told this story any times, but what made me register an account on the codex was not Pillars but Inquisition - I wanted to warn people against buying it. Was it being hyped on the codex before release? Probably it had some proponents, seeing as some are still defending it.

 

[Tigranes]

Just for the record, I like this thread & this post was far more clarifying & reasonable than your OP, which read more like too many long-held complaints were compressed into one muddy general post. At any rate, if you are 'edgying it up' just to get clicks, isn't that the same thing the popamole RPGs are doing?

For this post to be short and clarifying, you need the context of the OP.

I remember putting down money for Pillars of Eternity while thinking that AOD/Underrail is still the future of the genre. I don't regret funding it, though. A world where games like DOS help prove viability to investors/etc for more independent RPG projects, and a world where Obsidian got to at least try and make real RPGs again, is better than, well, Armoured Warfare and South Park. I guess I'll eat my words yet when we get Microsoft-funded Obsidiskyrim in five years, but listen, when that one doesn't sell very well MS will probably just shut down the division

On the subject of unintended consequences - I've told this story any times, but what made me register an account on the codex was not Pillars but Inquisition - I wanted to warn people against buying it. Was it being hyped on the codex before release? Probably it had some proponents, seeing as some are still defending it.

Dunno, I ignored Inquisition totally. The simple truth is that there are many people here who willingly spend their time (and possibly their money) playing and enjoying games like DA2/3 and Fallout 4, happily and regularly consuming knock-off ready-to-eat microwave RPGs. There's all this distracting handwaving about how "at least I didn't pay for it", "I had to see how bad it was", etc, etc., but in the end, when people willingly spend hundreds of hours on lukewarm nothingsoup with 2% RPG powder, you have to believe their actions, not their words.

I am no stranger to playing and enjoying kind-of-bad-games every now and then, of course. But - and maybe this gets to your original point - many of the new RPGs are so soulsucking to play not just because they aren't good, but because they are so laboriously constructed around the idea that you will take their horribly written stories very seriously and that all the makework around combat and character building really matters. You've got to watch through hours of cutscenes where they take themselves very seriously, you've got to spend hours collecting shit and levelling up as if it matters when you know perfectly well you can give your controller to a monkey and they will still win on Hard.

I don't think that's something that comes out of the Kickstarters, though. That's something we were already seeing with, say, KOTOR1, where they were already rehashing identical character/plot conceits and the combat could play itself. And I think the KS games actually do partly roll back that trend and try to give you some real challenges and real consequences (e.g. WL2 really did try, I think). And perhaps something like BG3 will represent a new era of that compromise point, where you get something with the budget and visibility of Inquisition, but neither quite as blatantly cardboard cutout RPG, nor as genuine about being a real RPG as, say, Underrail.

 

[Drowed]

I dunno... After the disastrous reception of Dragon Age 2 here, I don't remember many people being optimistic about Inquisition. On the contrary, what I remember is that most people had little (or no) hope that something could be salvaged there, but you always have some insane users defending this or that game around here (as we have our own mascot here defending Bethesda's games).

Personally, I don't think the future of RPGs is lost. I think it's a natural process in every product. Product X attracts public. Companies make product X. Companies want to sell more (because they grow and, in the process, receive greater pressure to perform better in sales) so they try to make product X have a wider reach, which turns it into the product Y, and eventually, Z. You have an audience thousands of times larger, but now those who liked product X feel orphaned because they no longer recognize what they liked. Then, at a certain point, new small businesses emerge that also have a passion for product X and start creating their own versions of it. And the process repeats itself, where you either die a hero or live long enough to be the villain of the next generation.

 

[mondblut]

The best RPGs were made in damp cellars by a handful of malnourished, scruffy devs on defective game engines 30 years ago.

FTFY.

 

[Ontopoly]

I dunno... After the disastrous reception of Dragon Age 2 here, I don't remember many people being optimistic about Inquisition. On the contrary, what I remember is that most people had little (or no) hope that something could be salvaged there, but you always have some insane users defending this or that game around here (as we have our own mascot here defending Bethesda's games).

Dragon Age 2 was good, best Bioware game since the first Baldur's Gate tbh.

 

[Sweeper]

When people are retarded enough to buy a game they are gonna hate, and do it in a way they cant refund, its their problem, not Infinitrons.

What if they buy the games they know they're gonna hate just so they can be even more pissed?

 

[Ontopoly]

When people are retarded enough to buy a game they are gonna hate, and do it in a way they cant refund, its their problem, not Infinitrons.

What if they buy the games they know they're gonna hate just so they can be even more pissed?

Doesn't everyone do that? Although they usually don't buy them, but pirate all those bloated gigs of game, play it fourteen times and 100% it at least once, all to be able to tell people online how bad it is. If it has an online mode then it's a different story, then all those guys who kept saying how bad the game was going to be before it was released and whine about how bad it is when it is released, they are all playing it on steam or whatever service they use day1.

 

[Ontopoly]

Hey, Infinitron! That post wasn't shit, Bioware basically reused the same formula with every new RPG after the first BG until DA2, when they actually made a completely new game and took it in a different direction. No saving the world stuff, all the usual tropes were gone and you even had a framing narrative that they did some fun stuff with. Up until then it was the same thing over and over again, reheated with some new setting or some new feature or combat system, but very samey. It was like playing the Geneforge games, the first one was good, but then the next four were the exact same thing over and over again. DA2 broke that trend and that's why it is the best Bioware game since BG, or BG2 since they perfected a lot of things from BG1 in it and added many of the tropes that would then define them as a studio. Like the romances, strong companions, less open ended and more plot driven nature, and all that.

 

[Thac0]

When people are retarded enough to buy a game they are gonna hate, and do it in a way they cant refund, its their problem, not Infinitrons.

What if they buy the games they know they're gonna hate just so they can be even more pissed?

Thats called Masochism and I dont kinkshame.

 

[Ontopoly]

When people are retarded enough to buy a game they are gonna hate, and do it in a way they cant refund, its their problem, not Infinitrons.

What if they buy the games they know they're gonna hate just so they can be even more pissed?

Thats called Masochism and I dont kinkshame.

It's only masochism if it's painful, this is more like the gamer version of women's erotica. Oh no, please don't ravish me you big hunk, I'd hate to be the target of your untamed lust~ But with a game instead, so like, oh no, this game is so terrible, everyone is talking about it and I just have to suffer through playing it on release until I complete it, such a burden, but I will do it just to be able to tell other people about how bad it was~ UwU

 

[AwesomeButton]

I don't think that's completely voluntary though. I think some end up in such situations because playing games has become such a habit for them that they end up choosing to play a game as a path of the least resistance. They have books they haven't read, films they haven't seen and have lined up, but it's somehow easier to just follow your habit, even if what you're playing is some time-filler. It's a second or further level of procrastination - "I have this nice book I wanted to read, but let's play some of this garbage instead, because it's less effort"

 

[ANtY]

Now that I saw the trailers and steam info, I remember that I've already seen both Iron Oath and Glorious Companions earlier, but I disliked the presentation in both cases and then I didn't look further. I could give Iron Oath a try, but the 3D and style of Glorious Companions hurts too much.

GC's dev here. We're actually working hard on improving the graphics in the game, so I'd say to check it out a few months from now, the overall look of the world map, the battle locations and some of the units will change diametrically (you can see some of that in our Steam devlogs). Cheers!

 

[AwesomeButton]

the rest are action-RPGs doing action-RPG things

This got me thinking, isn't "action-RPG" another definition in need of revision?

How much "action" is there in present day action-RPGs?
First, difficulty -- is popamole really "action" anymore, when it's about waiting for the enemy to pop out of cover or waiting for his swing animation so you can counter? Sure such kind of reflex-dependent gameplay can be made engaging (as evidenced by Sekiro, Dark Souls, etc, which are counted as RPGs here btw?), but the fact is that it's also been watered down and made "accessible" to the point where I don't know if "action" is the right word. My description of Witcher 3's combat for example would be "some light distraction interspersed between dialogue scenes, so the player doesn't doze off in front of the screen", and this description wouldn't change much for other action RPGs.

Second, quantity - hasn't the ratio of combat to filler story turned into a ratio of "filler combat to interactive movie"? I haven't tried to measure it, but my subjective impression is that narrative - through scripted dialogue scenes or player-controlled navigating the world, with your character - takes up much more time than the action parts. Even in action RPGs, the action plays second fiddle to the story. It's like multiple genres are melting into some kind of interactive movie with whiffs of the gameplay of niche genres.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Now that I saw the trailers and steam info, I remember that I've already seen both Iron Oath and Glorious Companions earlier, but I disliked the presentation in both cases and then I didn't look further. I could give Iron Oath a try, but the 3D and style of Glorious Companions hurts too much.

GC's dev here. We're actually working hard on improving the graphics in the game, so I'd say to check it out a few months from now, the overall look of the world map, the battle locations and some of the units will change diametrically (you can see some of that in our Steam devlogs). Cheers!

Hey thanks for coming by. It's one reason I try to stay away from early versions of games, nowadays when one can't be sure about even a release version. I've only seen the trailers and screens on your steam page so far, when the time comes I'll see how the game gets received overall. Good luck!

 

[Infinitron]

You might be overthinking it.

(The real long-standing problem with the term "action-RPG" is that it's used for both first/third person shooter/slasher RPGs AND for isometric point & click Diablo clones)

 

[AwesomeButton]

You might be overthinking it.

(The real long-standing problem with the term "action-RPG" is that it's used for both first/third person shooter/slasher RPGs AND for isometric point & click Diablo clones)

Who is this a problem for? To me it seems like a pretty minor one.

I see as the real problem that a number of genres are being invaded by the interactive movie. Even this would have been ok if the interactive movies were of good quality, but for the sake of chasing the dollar, they are generally trash, with very few exceptions but I don't want to branch into that kind of argument now. Classifying the reasons they are generally trash, is a separate discussion.

 

[JarlFrank]

the rest are action-RPGs doing action-RPG things

This got me thinking, isn't "action-RPG" another definition in need of revision?

How much "action" is there in present day action-RPGs?
First, difficulty -- is popamole really "action" anymore, when it's about waiting for the enemy to pop out of cover or waiting for his swing animation so you can counter? Sure such kind of reflex-dependent gameplay can be made engaging (as evidenced by Sekiro, Dark Souls, etc, which are counted as RPGs here btw?), but the fact is that it's also been watered down and made "accessible" to the point where I don't know if "action" is the right word. My description of Witcher 3's combat for example would be "some light distraction interspersed between dialogue scenes, so the player doesn't doze off in front of the screen", and this description wouldn't change much for other action RPGs.

Second, quantity - hasn't the ratio of combat to filler story turned into a ratio of "filler combat to interactive movie"? I haven't tried to measure it, but my subjective impression is that narrative - through scripted dialogue scenes or player-controlled navigating the world, with your character - takes up much more time than the action parts. Even in action RPGs, the action plays second fiddle to the story. It's like multiple genres are melting into some kind of interactive movie with whiffs of the gameplay of niche genres.

I think a major reason for these issues is that some designers/studios don't even like combat (be it action combat or strategic combat) and just want to deliver a story, so the combat becomes either piss-easy or a tedious chore. Dragon Age 2 is a great example of utterly abysmal encounter design, combat isn't fun in this game, it's just supposed to look cool. And we have multiple writers/designers on the development team who admitted they don't like combat and play the game on the easiest setting. When designers obviously prefer story to gameplay, they're gonna design shit gameplay because they don't know what good gameplay is about.

That's why such games often have very tedious, repetitive, boring combat or puzzles. "Guys who like combat like to kill lots of enemies so let's put in a lot of enemies to please that crowd" thinks the designer who doesn't understand encounter design.