Decline Do you even play new RPGs anymore?

[JarlFrank]

Sure, I love brand new RPGs, I played Knights of the Chalice 2 this year.

Same. And Troubleshooter. I even enjoyed... Fallout 4! Gasp! Terrible story and dialogues, but the gameplay is decent if you mod it and level design good.

I mostly find myself drawn to games with solid gameplay these days. If it's a storyfag game, it has to be really good at being a storyfag game (like Disco Elysium which spoke to me). Otherwise, please make sure the gameplay is fun.

And sadly, many modern developers have lost sight of how to design fun systems (see Sawyerist balance obsession for example) and how to design good encounters.

If your encounters suck and are a drag to play through, of course the game will be shit.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Im still playing a lot and both old and new crpg and games in general. Being adult with home and family don't stop this passion.

 

[TemplarGR]

Not really. I am willing to play new RPGs but only if they are not nostalgia-exploit-schemes and overrated overhyped indie trash by the "rpg community" (most of whom wouldn't understand a good RPG if it hit them in the head).

This last decade there have been a few good single player CRPGs (or hybrids/multigenre): Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, Witcher 2, Witcher 3, Deux Ex Human Revolution, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, The Outer Worlds, Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2. I enjoyed those a lot. Not much else, honestly, other than those i mostly wasted my time playing Heroes of the Storm, Diablo 3, Civilization V/BE/VI and such.

I am not into indie games. I believe they are a cult thing, a vocal minority overhypes them way out of porportion, especially eastern european ones. I am not against indie games, and i believe they have a place in the industry, i just don't like it when supposed "huuuuuuurd cuuuuuuuuure gamerz" pretend those indie games are the best the industry ever produced, while they are just overpriced junk that should be costing 5$ at best without a sale and they are sold at AAA price levels because of hype. I suppose it is cheaper to pay shills to overhype your junk than to pay for software engineers and artists, so it makes sense.

Looking into future games, i will certainly buy anything single player Bethesda makes, until (and if) they go full-Bioware mode, at which point i will stop. But i haven't been dissappointed by an Elder Scrolls (except Oblivion, fuck Oblivion)/Fallout yet, so i am still eagerly anticipating their next one. I will also be buying anything single player CDPR and anything single player Eidos Montreal, for the same reason. I know some of those companies have produced multiplayer trash recently, like Fallout 76 or the Avengers, but those were never targeted to me and i don't care for them. I am just waiting for the next Elder Scrolls, Fallout 5, Cyberpunk 2077 and Deux Ex MD sequel. I am also eagerly anticipating Obsidian's Skyrim clone and an Outer Worlds sequel, i liked the Outer Worlds a lot unlike the pseudo prestigious cult here and i would certainly buy the sequel.

But until those games are released, nope. I am not interested in weeaboo games, i am not interested in huuuurd cuuuuure indie trash, and i am not interested in 90s nostalgia bait/copy pasted gameplay. I have already played BG/Icewind Dale and Fallout 1/2 20 years ago to exhaustion, thank you very much.

 

[Thac0]

Same. And Troubleshooter. I even enjoyed... Fallout 4! Gasp! Terrible story and dialogues, but the gameplay is decent if you mod it and level design good.

Have you tried the survival mode? It is crisp man, they really went the extra mile in providing settlements with doctors and the wildness with sleeping bags. Took Fallout 4 from a massive disappointment for me to a game where I have 100 hours in. Dialogue, C&C and that stuff is obviously still shit but gameplay wise that is as good as you can expect from Bethesda Fallout. Lightyears better than Fallout 3.


For me the sweet spot is being 5-10 years behind the release line. You get games which aren't completely mechanically outdated yet, they still run well on the same OS, and time has proven which of them are shite and which are good already. Also you get them for less than 50% of the original price on Steam and Gog.

 

[CryptRat]

I have enjoyed many recent RPGs of different kinds immensely.

P&P-style player-created party adventuring types of campaign, aka my favourite type of games : Knights of the chalice 2

See also : Wasteland 2

P&P type encounters especially, good claustrophpobic dungeon crawling or just good combat games : Dungeon Rats

See also : Blackguards, Underrail, Paper Sorcerer, Divinity : Original Sin, Labyrinth of Touhou series, Elminage Gothic

Exploration, puzzles, 0 handolding : Lurking series

See also : Legend of Grimrock II, Serpent in the Staglands

Exploration combat : Voidspire Tactics

See also : Horizon's Gate, Swords & Sorcery Underworld, Bludgeons & Kraken

Build-based non-combat gameplay : Heroine's quest

See also : Void Pyramid, Stygian

Rogue-likes : Caverns of Xarkazien II

See also : Demon, Infra Arcana

UFO : Evowok Breeder

See also : Neo Scavenger, Towers of Twilight

 

[Serious_Business]

Fucking Emotional Thread. "I have a crisis of identity" - fuck off boyo. That shit has no truth value. Go cry in some corner and find yourself. But first you must find happiness~~~

 

[Jvegi]

Do you think Victor Hugo is incline Bester ? I've read Notre Dame recently and it was great. and it definitely demented more of me to judge it as such than Arcanum of PST did.

 

[bloodlover]

Yes I do and some are very fun. But unlike "back in my day" I also play other genres too and mix it up a bit. I don't spend 12hours every day playing the same thing anymore (I don't have the time nor the interest) but if the game sticks with me I will eventually sink in many hours into it (Grim Dawn would be a good example).

I also feel that most RPGs these days don't have that "something" to hook you for days on end so taking a break more often than not is expected and quite normal. Maybe I am old, nostalgic, maybe games are average at best now; whatever it is, new RPGs don't stick with me anymore the way they did in the past.

 

[JarlFrank]

For me the sweet spot is being 5-10 years behind the release line. You get games which aren't completely mechanically outdated yet, they still run well on the same OS, and time has proven which of them are shite and which are good already. Also you get them for less than 50% of the original price on Steam and Gog.

I usually play games 4 years or so after release. Means I can get the whole package with all DLCs in a cheap bundle, the game is fully patched and won't receive new patches (which in the case of moddable games also means that released mods will always run stable without risk of a future patch breaking them), and there are usually a couple of mods around with which I can customize the experience to my liking.

Buying a game years after release means you get the best version of it. I remember Rome 2 Total War had lots of problems at release and people hated it, it was buggy and unbalanced. I only bought it years later with all the DLC and think it's one of the best Total War games. I pretty much skipped the shitty phase and went right into the fully patched all DLC complete experience.

 

[bloodlover]

JarlFrank Same here. But by playing a game after many years you miss out on fresh discussions about it and you might get huge spoilers.

 

[Comte]

I think I am done with the genre. I have played almost the entire codex top 100. And just get bored with the newer stuff. I mostly just play paradox grand strategy and some niche computer wargames. Rpgs are for kids.

 

[TemplarGR]

Buying a game years after release means you get the best version of it.

Yes, i agree with this. With the added bonus that you need cheaper hardware too. Game developers make much of their income by taking direct/indirect bribes from hardware companies, especially gpu manufacturers, to make their shit insanely hardware demanding for no reason other than to push expensive hardware sales. At least by buying later you get the recommended PC at half the price.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

& poll with set questions which clearly intent to skew results.
Why I'm not surprised?

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Either if I know there's a high likelihood I'll enjoy it based on previous entry (Pathfinder) or if I have some weird loyalty/curiosity to see what happens to the series (BG3).

 

[OSK]

I do attempt them, but the playthroughs go on a turtle's pace since the play sessions are so far in-between and not that very long either. And to be honest the reasoning is mostly that I use Linux and hate to have to restart my computer just to boot into windows....

What RPGs don't work on Linux?

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

As far as the big feature rpgs go I find studios like cdprojekt, warhorse, inxile are still improving for the most part as opposed to the stagnated (piranha bytes) or significantly declined ones (obsidian, bethesda, bioware).

 

[Ol' Willy]

The problems of being a storyfag, I recon.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I play a handful of new games that happen to be interesting enough to grab my attention, but I'm more interested in exploring stuff I've missed before.

 

[Terenty]

No mention of Elex? Shame on you

Btw, Bester, as a fellow russian i have to ask. Have you played Код Доступа:Рай? I'm playing it right now and i'm fucking blown away by how great it is. It's absolutely one of the best rpg hybrids from Russia alongside Space Rangers, but unfortunately barely anyone played it. Fuck Stalker, this right here should've been an international success.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Fuck Stalker, this right here should've been an international success.

You're forgetting that Stalker is not a Russian game.

 

[Bester]

Fuck Stalker, this right here should've been an international success.

You're forgetting that Stalker is not a Russian game.

When it came out, we still widely considered ukrainians russians. Should it be retconned now that they're filthy animals or not is a matter of opinion. Slavophiles still consider them Russian.

Have you

No.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

When it came out, we still widely considered ukrainians russians. Should it be retconned now that they're filthy animals or not is a matter of opinion. Slavophiles still consider them Russian.

Sounds like a bad case of coping and failed geography classes.

 

[Grauken]

When it came out, we still widely considered ukrainians russians. Should it be retconned now that they're filthy animals or not is a matter of opinion. Slavophiles still consider them Russian.

Sounds like a bad case of coping and failed geography classes.

Slavophiles are like weeaboos, fetish comes first, reality second

 

[Storyfag]

I think being a storyfag means you're in the wrong place, just go read books to have direct access to narrative, cutting through all the bullshit.

Yes, we've been telling you storyfags for years: GET OUT! Go read book -only then we will have respectable top RPG polls.

No, u.

Now, to the topic at hand. There are new offerings that have potential. Tyrrany was such. There are new offerings that are pleasing. Kingmaker, for example.

 

[Bester]

When it came out, we still widely considered ukrainians russians. Should it be retconned now that they're filthy animals or not is a matter of opinion. Slavophiles still consider them Russian.

Sounds like a bad case of coping and failed geography classes.

No, there's strong case for it if you look around. Look at Poland for example. For historical reasons, it's easy to point towards linguistic simplifications and artificiality that exist in Ukrainian and Belarusian, but don't exist in Polish. Also Polish culture has great literature, first class composers (who in many ways inspired Russian composers), first-class Polish mathematics. It's a standalone culture. Ukraine has none of that. Or rather it has that, but as Russia.