Innovation in RPG genre

[luj1]

Nowaday people have high threshold for art quality.

Video game art was never worse.

 

[luj1]

That's 23 million sales over the past 5 years only for a game that looks like this:

Because gameplay is king.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Most RPG innovation is in JRPGs. Which is REALLY sad.

In 2000 Diablo 2 came up with this skill tree system and the entire western gaming industry was like, "Okay, let's just use that forever." The few devs who reject that just copy Fallout's system to some degree, so they're not much better. Worse, the market has largely been trying to simplify and consolidate with other genres. Everything has stats and levels now.

 

[c2007]

The idea that suffering and scarcity is necessary for quality product is so Y2K. It is actually retarded.

This is why your name will never be remembered.

If the prerequisite for success was struggling, I'd be a hell of a lot better off. My personal experience doesn't agree with your bootstraps bullshit. Elon Musk might want a little explanation too, but that's ok you live in a fantasy world where you are actually significant too.

Nice edgy post, sorry your poverty fantasy is hogwash.

You aren't wrong, no one will remember my life of insignificance.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Both Roblox and Minecraft has their initial release on 2000s, generally pre 2010s era of heightened art awareness. So they get their initial gamer base in early and out of the way, which help their blocky art a great deal.

Note they change their art from the initial blocky style into something else more modern, also help a great deal with newer gamer base.

Note also that Dwarf Fortress still keep their initial art and where does DF stand now in regarding new gamers' base?

Underrail would've had the same kind of reaction in the early 2000s. .

Wrong. In the 2000s people are not in the business of setting default rez for game at 19201080 for their 55inch LCD screen. 800600 at the very least, and generally 1024768. Which would have helped their game's overall art sense a great deal instead of the current mode.

You can just set Fallout1/2 at 19201080 and see what does that rez take your top 1/2 game regarding art sense.

If Arcanum and The Temple of Elemental Evil were both knocked in reviews for looking "old" in 2001 and 2003, why would you assume Underrail would be any different?

 

[gurugeorge]

Most RPG innovation is in JRPGs. Which is REALLY sad.

In 2000 Diablo 2 came up with this skill tree system and the entire western gaming industry was like, "Okay, let's just use that forever." The few devs who reject that just copy Fallout's system to some degree, so they're not much better. Worse, the market has largely been trying to simplify and consolidate with other genres. Everything has stats and levels now.

It says something when the most deep and innovative build system in recent years comes from a tiny team of Koreans (Troubleshooter).

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Exploring new ideas and bringing back forgotten ones is always fun, but without proper execution they'll get lambasted by critics and players alike, without marketing no one will learn about them, and when there's money to research and develop the right execution and market the game reasonably well, there's pressure to dumb it down so even a drooling mouthbreather gets his dopamine fix or at least doesn't switch back to Skyrim or PUBG in the first 5 minutes.

So usually when you have (1) new ideas, (2) a decent game, and (3) a decent budget (and at least some marketing effort), you can only pick two. In the ideal world, you'd have all three, but we're not living in the ideal world.

Spoiler

Also, a friendly suggestion to OP: get your head out of your butt and start diving into obscure games. You'll find enough innovation and experimentation to keep you occupied for a lifetime, but you only mention successful titles, cult classics, and meme games.

 

[Cryomancer]

Mythic paths on PF:WoTR and Environmental Iterations + verticality on solasta are both amazing innovations. But I wanna see 100% scenario destruction in a RPG.

 

[StaticSpine]

I wish RPG developers will innovate how they work with dialogs.

I still mostly feel like I'm reading a book instead of playing a game. The use of text is mostly ineffective. Those long-winded descriptions of what characters do and how do they react, ugh. The "show don't tell" principle in the literal sense is ignored. As if this approach was applied when the text was the only tool to deliver narrative because visuals, gameplay, etc were so basic. But it became a standard even when all the options are available.

Japanese developers also have long dialogs, but at least they divide dialogs into smaller phrases, and you do not see walls of texts.

 

[JarlFrank]

Nowaday people have high threshold for art quality.

Video game art was never worse.

You know what I miss the most?

Good old interface design.

Interfaces used to look so good. Across all fucking genres.
Diablo, Fallout, Arcanum, Age of Empires... they all had such good-looking interfaces that looked to be part of the world, with elements of wood and marble and metal.

Spoiler

Nowadays, interfaces are often flat and soulless. Same plague of minimalism that operating systems and websites suffer from (I'm so glad I still use Windows 7, Windows 10 looks so ugly and bland with its flat colors and minimalist style).

Look at the interface of Age of Empires 4 and compare it to 2's:

Yeah, the game is still pre-release so any elements are subject to change but... this kind of minimalist undecorated interface is common these days.
Pillars of Eternity also has a pretty minimalist interface design compared to Arcanum, Diablo, etc:

Same with Wasteland 3 compared to Fallout:

Bland. Boring. Soulless. Interchangable. Nothing in these interfaces says "middle ages!" or "fantasy!" or "post-apocalypse!"

 

[JarlFrank]

Japanese developers also have long dialogs, but at least they divide dialogs into smaller phrases, and you do not see walls of texts.

Which is actually far, far worse because you have to click through a dozen little speech bubbles instead of being able to skim through one paragraph quickly.

 

[Tihskael]

I get what you mean, but this is horrible. Even Tim Cain admitted that there's too many buttons.

 

[gurugeorge]

Interfaces used to look so good. Across all fucking genres.
Diablo, Fallout, Arcanum, Age of Empires... they all had such good-looking interfaces that looked to be part of the world, with elements of wood and marble and metal.

Yeah this is a big gripe for me.

You don't even need the interface to be - I forget the term, it's not "dieagetic" which implies it's an interface existing in the virtual world, but just something that looks and feels thematically appropriate with a fair bit of faux tactile feel about it - you just need it to be not generic-looking, IOW not a computer interface of the kind that could belong indifferently to a game or some trashy app (unless the theme is s-f ofc).

For example, one of the minor problems with Solasta is that although the interface is very well designed in terms of functionality (things are where you need them to be to get good gameplay flow), in terms of "skinning" it looks very modern. A touch of faux wood, stone, metal, something, to keep your mind focussed in the mediaeval fantasy sense of place, would be better.

Audio touches with the UI are also important in this regard. Who can forget the first time they played BG and heard that grinding stone "clunk" sound in the UI? Just a little touch, but it helped keep you in the right frame of mind, in the milieu of the virtual world, and gave you a subliminal feeling of "this is solid." (This one's tricky though, because although it's important it's also subject to a lot of variation in terms of personal taste. But that's why UI modding is something all games should have, if there's enough time and energy for the devs to provide it. Personalizing a game at the UI level always helps bind you closer to the game, at least it does for me.)

 

[Gastrick]

I'd say games that try new things are valuable and have the potential to set the next standard. Original titles and people feel their influence many years after they release/die. If the change isn't good in some way then nothing will ever happen with it (none can help being flawed as well). After some time in certain cases, the original idea is misunderstood and contorted to make a new idea that is purely awful.

 

[JarlFrank]

I get what you mean, but this is horrible. Even Tim Cain admitted that there's too many buttons.

I figured this out on a pirated copy with no manual when I was 12, and my English wasn't even fluent back then.

"Too many buttons" my ass.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

Nowadays, interfaces are often flat and soulless. Same plague of minimalism that operating systems and websites suffer from (I'm so glad I still use Windows 7, Windows 10 looks so ugly and bland with its flat colors and minimalist style).

Developers are probably afraid that new players will be turned off by an interface that doesn't resemble smartphones. Assuming UI design doesn't continue to stagnate who knows how bland and soulless interfaces will look in ten years, hopefully we will come full circle and developers begin to recreate mid-2000s Windows Vista style GUIs.

You don't even need the interface to be - I forget the term, it's not "dieagetic" which implies it's an interface existing in the virtual world, but just something that looks and feels thematically appropriate with a fair bit of faux tactile feel about it - you just need it to be not generic-looking, IOW not a computer interface of the kind that could belong indifferently to a game or some trashy app (unless the theme is s-f ofc).)

I believe the term you are looking for is skeuomorphism.

 

[fantadomat]

Don't know about innovation,but improvement of existing elements and cutting of table top retarded shit that doesn't make sense will be welcomed. I have seen many good ideas getting raped because the devs decided to just copy paste the table top rules. The biggest offender is the warhammer franchise,there is not a single great game in it,sad.

 

[fantadomat]

bethesda was innovating like crazy and look how you trashed it to the ground

They didn't innovate forwards, they innovated backwards.

There are two directions a development can go: incline or decline. Bethesda was incline with Daggerfall and Morrowind, but chose to become decline from Oblivion onwards and then never left that path. Just like how modern "progressives" are pushing society backward instead of forward with such innovative ideas as "critical race theory" and "intersectionalism", Bethesda pushed RPGs - and games as a whole - backwards with such innovative ideas as quest compasses and horse armor DLCs.

The good kind of innovation develops forward, not backward. It adds more options, makes the game more compelling, re-thinks old genre conventions in a creative way.
What Oblivion did was casualize the formula and outright remove features. Daggerfall's and Morrowind's piecemeal armor and the ability to equip clothes under and over your armor? Gone, replaced with a generic chest-helmet-gauntlets-boots equipment system. The exploration of giant dungeons in Daggerfall and a mountainous island in Morrowind where all you have to go on is written directions and you have to find your own way? Gone, replaced with a "follow the marker" handholding feature that completely destroys any notion of organic exploration. That is not evolution, that is involution.

All we see from larger studios these days is either stagnation or involution. Stagnation in the vain attempts of re-making what was done before but failing to capture its essence (Pillars, Wasteland 2, Torment Tides of Numenera), and involution in the way some bad features are put into games just because they're the "standard" these days (Outer Worlds with its far greater degree of handholding than New Vegas had, the introduction of superfluous crafting systems into many RPGs where they don't belong).

We need evolution, not involution or stagnation.

I agree with you mate,but he is not wrong there. They WERE innovative,then they became commercial and declined. There is no endless incline.

 

[fantadomat]

I get what you mean, but this is horrible. Even Tim Cain admitted that there's too many buttons.

And tim cain made outer worlds and tranny lol,he could suck me sweaty balls! Don't care about the opinion of washed up hasbeens that couldn't even make a decent rpg at this point. The more i see their shit the more i think that they were not the driving force behind their old gems. His last good games was vampires from 2004.

 

[The_Mask]

Imagine playing an RPG and thinking that the UI has too many buttons, all of which represent diversity of build and options, which - in turn - can influence C&C.

 

[Cryomancer]

I have seen many good ideas getting raped because the devs decided to just copy paste the table top rules. The biggest offender is the warhammer franchise,there is not a single great game in it,sad.

Is quite the contrary. I see devs butchering their games and destroying class fantasies that are possible on TT gaming, and modders having to fix it, like what happened to NWN2 and Thanks Mystra we have Spell Fixes and Warlock reworked mods.

 

[fantadomat]

I have seen many good ideas getting raped because the devs decided to just copy paste the table top rules. The biggest offender is the warhammer franchise,there is not a single great game in it,sad.

Is quite the contrary. I see devs butchering their games and destroying class fantasies that are possible on TT gaming, and modders having to fix it, like what happened to NWN2 and Thanks Mystra we have Spell Fixes and Warlock reworked mods.

RPGs should be first and foremost developed for PC and should have mechanics that don't make sense shoved in to it because it was in a tabletop. At this point i am beginning to hate the table top games because they hold the genre back. I would rather see another dragon age origin like game than another generic TB game with identical combat to all the other hundreds of TB games. Or maybe another arx fatalis. I don't dislike TB games,but gets tiring every game to be the same. It is not like we see very good writing in them at this point.

 

[Sweeper]

I get what you mean, but this is horrible. Even Tim Cain admitted that there's too many buttons.

Tim Cain says a lot of things.

Spoiler

A reputation takes a lifetime to build, seconds to destroy and forever to repair.
Edit: You were being sarcastic, weren't you? I'm going to bed.

 

[luj1]

He is also literally a homosexual who lost his mind.

 

[Sweeper]

He is also literally a homosexual who lost his mind.

Yeah but he made Fallout. It is what it is.
I forgot you don't like Fallout... he did other stuff too... I guess...