What is Decline?

[rusty_shackleford]

Decline is the ability to quicksave and reload anywhere.

Console games are right up your alley then.

we probably wouldn't have souls games if it was up to savescummers, yeah, good point

 

[Verylittlefishes]

the cause, the substance and the goal of decline is capitalist realism

 

[Gastrick]

Reduced complexity is usually the biggest sign of decline. Also excessive "streamlining". When you play the sequel and the devs remove features for simplicity because they think it gives the game a wider appeal.

 

[anvi]

Etc..
Etc..

 

[rusty_shackleford]

quoting my post from the MMORPG subforum as an example of the pure decline that is the current MMORPG genre

I hate how gamified modern MMOs are. There's very little, if any, attempt to create a world that feels fantastical -- or feels like one where people would actually live in at all.
If you compare games like EQ and FFXI(which was basically the real EQ2) to anything now it's ridiculous how far backwards the genre has gone.

Mechanics like(not exclusive to those two titles, but rarely if ever seen in MMOs anymore):

mobs spawning depending on the time of day, mobs going to sleep at night and therefore having a greatly reduced aggro radius, mobs having various mechanics of aggro through sight/sound/smell/etc.,
mobs actually having *gasp* weaknesses and resistances
classes having unique and powerful abilities. "muh balanse" bullshit combined with "bring the player not the class"(???), why even make an RPG at this point?
NPCs actually doing things besides standing in one spot all day waiting for you to come talk to them.
Enemies fighting each other. How fucking stupid is it to see a deer and a wolf just casually walking right past each other?
mages having a lot of spells that do many different things rather than "damage in different color" -- especially the situationally useful ones, those are often the more interesting ones.
Languages mattering.
unique time and day system that actually matters. If you make a game set in a fantasy world and just use real-world style days of the week, holidays, etc., that are nothing but fluff you should be bullied irl.
expecting players to work together on a meta-level to figure out things rather than just blatantly telling players
stories that have to be pieced together rather than shoved down your throat, this goes along with the above
and again with the second above, mechanics where players aren't just told how they work but have to be figured out through trial and error. This is one of the biggest sources of gamification.

Did you know that everquest is effectively immune to traditional datamining beyond things like character/enemy models? All conversation data, quest info, item info, etc., is stored on the server and only sent when requested, it's never stored locally. The only way to gather information is through players experiencing it, and while there are third-party tools to capture this and upload it, it's nowhere near the level of e.g., WoW that is datamined before patches even drop and everything is already figured out because it actually requires someone seeing the content.

There is no mystery or fantastical elements in modern MMOs. Everything is figured out before you even have access to it. Go look at any discussion about amazon's upcoming MMO, people are already "theorycrafting" the best builds before the game has even released.
These games -- modern "MMO"s -- don't deserve to be called MMORPGs, they're online lobby-based action games where you spend 80% of your time playing "the floor is lava"

MMORPG genre declined 10x harder than the cRPG genre. The entire fucking genre has been destroyed by "MUH RAIDS! MUH LEWT!"
But I'll admit, some of this is just general rpg(and video game) decline. Quest marker bullshit everywhere, why do you have ESP that lets you know people are in need of your aid?
If they need help so badly maybe they should be the ones coming to you.

cRPG "decline" doesn't even compare. Modern MMORPGs are gutted to the core skinner box mechanics.

 

[anvi]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Tutorials are a hallmark of bad game design, good games teach players without having to interrupt the game to explain how the game works.

 

[Tihskael]

Any game that has come before and after Redguard

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Any game that has come before and after Redguard

Released the same day as the Rise of Rome expansion pack for age of empires.
Good taste.

 

[Lurker47]

chargen with penis customization.

Being the first game to have penis customization is decline. However any game past that point that DOESN'T have penis customization is also decline.

I would permit genital customization in a video game, so long as it does not allow males to select vaginas, and vice versa. Better yet, force main character to be male-only. Women have no business adventuring and saving the world. Or playing video games.

This dude really wants to be spend 30 minutes in character customization custom designing his MC's prostate but doesn't want fully modeled cervices.

 

[Can't handle the bacon]

chargen with penis customization IS DECLINE.

Being the first game to have penis customization is decline. However any game past that point that DOESN'T have penis customization is also decline.

I would permit genital customization in a video game, so long as it does not allow males to select vaginas, and vice versa. Better yet, force main character to be male-only. Women have no business adventuring and saving the world. Or playing video games.

This dude really wants to be spend 30 minutes in character customization custom designing his MC's prostate but doesn't want fully modeled cervices.

I never asked for either of these things. Say thanks to the poles.

According to a growing number of imbeciles otc, the left side is actually the decline, because IF YOU WANT WALLS OF TEXT GO AND READ A BOOK YOU PATHETIC STORYFAGS!!!

 

[Carrion]

Tutorials are a hallmark of bad game design, good games teach players without having to interrupt the game to explain how the game works.

A tutorial is fine if it's just an honest tutorial and not the first three hours of the game pretending to be something else.

 

[Cunt Dickula!?]

Baby don't streamline me, don't streamline me, no more

 

[FreshCorpse]

Decline is a gradient of <0, study up on pre-calc and come back to this forum then

 

[alighieri]

Decline is a gradient of <0, study up on pre-calc and come back to this forum then

How do you model decline of vidya with gradients

 

[Can't handle the bacon]

Honestly, I can't even play an RPG that does not allow me to meticulously sculpt my main character's anal cavity. It's current_year ya'll, get with the times. We are a community!!

yA'lL!!!

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

In general, decline is that which protect the players from their poor choices or provide an illusion of agency/accomplishment. Features which serve to stroke ego, rather than provide a simulation for the player to overcome or interact with. Simplification of features down to a point where nuance is lost is another hallmark of decline. Insertion of an agenda or cultural subversions that are irrelevant to the work itself are also decline.

 

[Lurker47]

Honestly, I can't even play an RPG that does not allow me to meticulously sculpt my main character's anal cavity. It's current_year ya'll, get with the times. We are a community!!

yA'lL!!!

Only if we have some innate anus characteristics based on your sex and race. I'm sick of the left asserting that everyone's anus is built the same way.

 

[Jason Liang]

Check my sig

Quoting myself:

what's wrong with computer RPGs is the failure of WotC to correctly implement a skill system when they designed 3E.

an RPG is not about combat, and it's not about an amazing story either. But it's about experiencing a fictional world through a role. But not any role at all, but a role defined by literature and genre. Hence a class system. Soldier, rogue, wizard, priest, ranger, barbarian, and paladin are stereotypical character roles defined by stories in our literature.

Take Don Draper as an example. His story, and how he fits in the world, is defined by his class- thief, rogue. Class is not a job. It's the role you take in the story. He's not a stereotypical stealthy, dextrous rogue. Instead he relies on his attribute strengths- his intelligence and his charisma. Even if he isn't min-maxed for combat, his character is interesting enough to carry the story.

What makes the AD&D system work is having characters primarily defined by classes. Classes are not jobs. They are these basic literary story roles. In the AD&D system, class is primary, and your attributes are secondary. A 14 strength fighter is significantly worse in combat than a 18/94 fighter, but he's still a fighter. A 14 int wizard is worse than an 18 int wizard but he's still a wizard.

The most interesting BG2: EE experience isn't playing the game as a Berserker/ Mage witih SCS. It's playing the game as a plain Thief, solo if you want the challenge. The greatest quality of BG2: EE isn't that you can stomp through the game as a Berserker/ Mage or even a Wizard or Sorcerer. It's that you can also make your way through the story as a Rogue who isn't especially great a combat or even extremely dextrous.

So really Pillars got it completely wrong. By making class not matter, by making every attribute about combat, and by making every spell about combat, Pillars failed to understand what a RPG system is about. The heart of a RPG system isn't tactical combat. It's about defining characters and roles within a world and a story. Whether or not the makers of BG 2: EE understood this or was just lucky that they were using the AD&D system, I can't say. But it's not really the fault of Sawyer or Obsidian. It's the fault of WotC. Pillars is trying to be like 3E D&D, and the 3E D&D class system is deeply flawed. It's deeply flawed not just for making multli-classing too easy, although that's huge. Is being able to customize your character fun? Sure. But eventually it's a cancer, since it destroys the purpose of role-playing. Again, that's the epiphany: role playing is about playing a basic role defined in literature, not a role you've customized and min-maxed.

But 3E's failure isn't simply the failure to understand the basic purpose of class in RPGs. It also failed to address the main deficiency of AD&D- the lack of a developed skill system/ proficiency system. In AD&D, Intelligence determined the number of languages you could speak, but as far as a skill system goes, the basic rule was just - well, your character knows how to do the things you know how to do. If you can drive a car, you character can ride a horse. If you can write well, your character can compose an essay. If you can swim, so can your character. There was a list of skills in the PHB but there weren't any rules defined for them, and they were completely tertiary to your character.

When AD&D was translated into computer games, the skill system got left out. Gold Box games didn't have skills. BG2: EE had weapon poficiencies and Thieving skills, but not really anything else. In fact, BG2 probably should have implemented a system where Thieve skills like stealth, lockpicking, pickpocketing and disarming traps were abilities that succeeded based on level rather than a die roll.

In summary, the sickness of RPGs these days is that they deviated in the wrong direction from the framework established by AD&D. AD&D took a tactical system and gave it the dimension to be a rudimentary yet effective RPG system. Central to that system is class. WotC's 3E failed to correctly address AD&D's biggest flaw, which was the skill system, and additionally they failed to appreciate the purpose of a class system and opened the door to the wrong path that modern RPGs have stumbled down. Worse, it reflects WotC's failure to understand the basic nature of RPGs, a design flaw that has infected modern RPG design.

In AD&D, your character is defined by 3 (or 4) primary things: class, race (integrally tied to class), alignment (also tied to class), and perhaps gender. In classic RPGs, there is no "skill"- Wizardry 1, Ultima, Gold-box, jrpgs, Final Fantasy, even BG2: EE, are RPGs that ignore skill. Skills are an unnecessary accessory to the basic premise of computer RPGs. Even when games began to incorporate skills like Darklands and Bradley Wizardry games, skills were things that every character could learn and improved with use or training, not hard skill points that needed to be hoarded and strategically distributed at level-up or delegated at character creation.

And yet modern RPG makers somehow have it stuck in their head that they want to base their game around characters based on skills and equipment. This is what has destroyed the identity of RPGs. Which has always been about abstracting different ways of experience world and story into the concept of character class. So the way RPG makers are designing their game systems - based on skills - is antithetical to the actual premise of RPGs. They have a goal which is unnecessary, fail to reach that goal, and end up with a hybrid product which is a shitty version of what they wanted to make in the first place.

On some level, class and skill are contradictory systems. Skills are supposed to be generic abilities available to all characters to train and learn, whereas class creates restrictions on how your character experiences the game. But RPGs have never been about skills as the PRIMARY definition of character and character progression. Yet more and more, modern RPGs use skills to gate content and progression, which is a self-defeating design mistake.

So for RPGs,
PRIMARY is a class system through which the world reacts to your character, changing the story you experience. Race, alignment, gender and reputation are subsystems that refine class.
SECONDARY is a skill system through which you interact with the world. Attributes are a subsystem that refine (or replace) skills.

the class vs. classless character system is a pertinent but side issue.

The main issue is still this:
a) Skills have become more and more significant to the gameplay of modern RPG design philosophy, as we desire to design RPGs to be more and more interactive outside of combat

YET

b) Thus far the skill system implemented in every modern RPG has ranged for embarrassing to shit. Name one post-NWN RPG where the skill system is actually cool and not a retarded detriment.

The reason why RPGs made in the past 5-10 years are worse than the RPGs made pre-NWN is due to a flaw in modern RPG design philosophy, which is to give greater emphasis to skill systems, and even more atrocious, to create games where skill systems completely replace class systems. The classic and greatest RPGs - BG2: EE, PST: EE, Pool of Radiance, Wizardry - didn't use skill systems like the ones now.

But take for example Age of Decadence. Age of Decadence had a lot of innovative systems, but it's skill system and it's gameplay emphasis on passing skill checks nearly ruins the game completely. It encourages the player to either play by "banking" skill points until they need to burn them to pass a check, or else to use a spoiler and "metagame" their character around the skill checks. That isn't role-playing and it isn't fun gaming either. Bloodlines also has skills and skill checks and suffers from the same stupid design.

In fact I can't think of a single post-NWN RPG where gameplay emphasis on skills and skill checks make the game more fun. RPG designers have yet to solve the problem of how to implement skills in a system that isn't detrimental to the gaming experience. Yet games keep coming out with more and more emphasis on skills and skill checks. That's the issue.

Character class is a specific gaming concept that shorthands the creation of a role. Think of it like gaming design technology. Class isn't the same as a character's profession. It's a shorthand definition of a character's primary relationship to the game's story, world and gameplay.

AoD's flaw is it made the skill system too central to gameplay. Not only is the gameplay outside of combat completely reliant and gated by attribute+skill/ skill checks, but AoD also made skill points the character progression system. As you progress in the game, your character progresses by... gaining more skills and skill points. When character progression should be tied to class, not skill. AoD wanted to have classes without actually having classes. But the principal error is the desire to move towards a classless system in the first place.

 

[Boleskine]

In a broader sense outside of RPGS, decline is what happens when the creative people are no longer making the decisions, or at least the creative process is not driving the decisions. Instead, business and marketing majors take over the development process.

Now the development isn't about simply making a great game from the ground up. It's about appealing to "casual" audiences, or it's about creating a long-term revenue stream like micro transactions, or it's about ticking checkboxes to meet wokeness/diversity quotas. Then the game is designed around that extrinsic goal.

Also, decline is when countless failed Hollywood screenwriters find work in the gaming industry.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Instead of having actual combat, the game has a collectible card game based system.

 

[JamesDixon]

Jason Liang You might want to revisit your statement on classes for AD&D as the PHB clearly says in the chapter forward, "After choosing your character's race, you select his character class. A character's class is like a profession or career." That's on page 34 of the PHB premium edition.

 

[Jason Liang]

Jason Liang You might want to revisit your statement on classes for AD&D as the PHB clearly says in the chapter forward, "After choosing your character's race, you select his character class. A character's class is like a profession or career." That's on page 34 of the PHB premium edition.

Perhaps that is a way of generically describing what character class is when you are trying to explain basic roleplaying concepts to someone who is completely unaware. But certainly classes like cleric, rogue, paladin and barbarian are not what we understand as professions or careers. That would be silly. "Charlemagne wants YOU. Sign up today for an exciting career as a professional paladin! Great dental and 401k benefits!" Even the idea of class kits, introduced in AD&D, contradicts the idea that classes are professions. Assassins and Swashbucklers have nothing in common as professions or careers, implying that the thief class is neither one. A character who is thief class is not the same as what we call a professional thief. A professional thief steals things for a living. Don Draper doesn't do that. Al Swearengen doesn't do that. Nor actually does a character like Carmen Sandiego. Class is a storytelling shorthand.

And this is really the reason why this is the key issue of the decline in rpgs. When game developers confuse class for profession, they treat class as something non-essential, which leads to classless game systems. Therefore they completely ignore the crucial role that character class plays in a roleplaying game, resulting in rpgs that are intrinsically flawed and unsatisfying.

 

[Nutria]

Some Supreme Court justice (Oliver Wendell Holmes maybe?) once said about pornography that he couldn't define it, but he recognized it when he saw it. I feel the same way about decline.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

fake choices