Community RPG Codex GOTY 2021: Results & Cool Graphs

[felipepepe]

Tags: GOTY 2021

It's time to see what the Codex enjoyed in 2021!

This year we had 569 voters, who rated 154 releases from 2021. This is the largest numbers of games we ever had in the poll. It was a bit harder to vote, but I think it worked well to help us sort what's worth a second look outside of the obvious big releases.

Best 2021 RPGs

The competition for GOTY this year was tight, three titles stood out - Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous was the most popular, The Chronicles Of Myrtana: Archolos had extremely positive reviews, and ATOM RPG: Trudograd was right between them in popularity & positive reviews.

Since the voting system was made to reward quality over popularity, Archolos was the big winner. Only 20% of voters played it, but over 90% rated it positively - almost 85% of votes being 4/4! Congratulations to the team, it's an impressive result for a mod that got released just 2 months ago.

Pathfinder was second. It's a good place, but it performed a bit worse than the first game. Kingmaker was played by 54% of voters and had a 67% of positive votes back in 2018, while Wrath was played by almost exactly the same percentage (53%) but only got 54% positive votes.

On the other hand, ATOM: Trudograd kept almost exactly the same results - the original ATOM had 88% positive votes in 2017, Trudograd got 85%. The % of people who played it also only had a slight decreased from 35% to 33%.

Honestly, it's remarkable how the Codex is consistent in its interests, with sequels getting almost exactly the same play % as the first games.

Here's the Top 10:



Read the full article: RPG Codex GOTY 2021: Results & Cool Graphs

 

[covr]

Myrtana

 

[Konjad]

Thanks for posting results

 

[felipepepe]

Did you screw up Death's Door down at the bottom?

Death's Door 1,93 4,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,00 23 65

23 votes 0 ratings?

I did, good catch. It was actually #40, fixed it now.

 

[ga♥]

Just FYI it was possible to vote multiple times in the form.

WOTR having 11% of 1, should show how this is worthless and rigged, someone took the time to multivote 1.

 

[Thac0]

RPGWatchs' pet rpg Tortured Hearts got an impressive total of 8 votes here
No wonder, as the starting price of above 30€ was way too high.

 

[Thac0]

Also Redaxium got really respectable polling results.


*BAYESIAN AVG.* % WHO PLAYED POSITIVE NEGATIVE RATED 1/4 RATED 2/4 RATED 3/4 RATED 4/4 AVG. Nº OF VOTES POINTS
Redaxium 2,56 5,4% 61,3% 38,7% 25,8% 12,9% 9,7% 51,6% 2,87 31 89

Were the 50% 4/4s shitposting, or did his insanity end up in an inspired product?

 

[Roguey]

Half the number of voters that we've been getting the past few years. Maybe half our usual crowd didn't care about this year's games and maybe a good chunk of them gave up when they saw that bloated list. Four games got 0 votes period and over 50 got a single digit number of votes. Like I said a while ago, the list of games should be restricted to those that have had a thread with multiple pages worth of discussion. A goty poll is not the time or place for "exposure" for a bunch of RPGs no one gave a damn about for most of a year.

Anyway congratulations to the Archolos fans for successfully downvoting Wrathfinder into second place. And RIP Encased for screwing up a Fallout clone for the Codex of all places.

 

[Konjad]

 

[Grauken]

Congrats to Archolos for winning this prestigious award

 

[buffalo bill]

A haiku:

JH is too low
Was shit year for RPGs
To hell with this poll

 

[Infinitron]

The Forgotten City at #8 is the WTF result of this poll. Everybody I saw talking about the game in its thread hated it!

 

[Joggerino]

Good job, thanks!

 

[Tacgnol]

The Forgotten City at #8 is the WTF result of this poll. Everybody I saw talking about the game in its thread hated it!

Hate would be too strong a word for it personally. I was frustrated that it claimed to be well researched (the writers had some very strange ideas about Roman society), and I thought the gameplay was pretty bad.

It did however have some interesting characters and puzzles.

I personally thought Return of the Obra Dinn was a better "narrative walking sim" or however you define games like FC.

 

[Fedora Master]

So the top three games are all various degrees of Slavjank. Fitting.

 

[lukaszek]

loop hetero and manjuiceeater whats wrong with you people

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Wrath of the Righteous Kino. Owlcat can't stop winning. Now drop the DLCs and make that Starfinder games bois.

 

[Konjad]

The Forgotten City at #8 is the WTF result of this poll. Everybody I saw talking about the game in its thread hated it!

I didn't like it, but I didn't vote for it because I didn't ctrl+f it as I wouldn't even guess it's in an RPG poll lol.

So the top three games are all various degrees of Slavjank. Fitting.

Slavs are the masterrace, duh.

But honestly, this GotY awards should use some more advanced algorithm for counting. It's good that it somewhat avoids popularity contest (which is basically any other sites' GotYs), but still not enough. Trudograd is both popular and gets much more positive votes than WotR and yet it loses to it still because of lower popularity.

The popularity points should be regressive and mostly matter to games with very few players, not when they are counted in hundreds.

 

[Grauken]

The Forgotten City at #8 is the WTF result of this poll. Everybody I saw talking about the game in its thread hated it!

Never even heard about this. Must be one of those hidden masterpieces everyone talks about

 

[felipepepe]

But honestly, this GotY awards should use some more advanced algorithm for counting. It's good that it somewhat avoids popularity contest (which is basically any other sites' GotYs), but still not enough. Trudograd is both popular and gets much more positive votes than WotR and yet it loses to it still because of lower popularity.

The difference between WotR and Trudograd is 0,02, they're basically tied. However, WotR had way more 4/4 votes. it deserves the second place.

 

[Grauken]

Realms of Antiquity getting a respectable 5th place warms my heart

 

[Maverick Beyond]

Is Encased really that bad?. I haven't played it yet, but it looked promising.

 

[Modron]

Is Encased really that bad? I haven't played it yet, but it looked promising.

It's really pretty good up until it entered early access and didn't sell all that much. There is a night and day demarcation between the early kickstarter funded areas and when it entered early access. Areas become increasingly devoid of content, conversations become increasingly linear with less player choice/skills checks, and the three large cities in the second half of the game are by and large unfinished (carmine heights is a little more baked then the other 2 but it's pretty obviously unfinished). They cobbled together a main storyline, labeled it complete, and left the second half of the game pretty barebones.

It's a decent game even with all its flaws, the extreme negative ratings are more in response to them pulling a Double Fine and labeling a .75 version as 1.0 and saying it's finished. Lots of unfulfilled potential.

 

[Tacgnol]

Is Encased really that bad?. I haven't played it yet, but it looked promising.

From the sound of it, it starts alright but takes a really sharp nosedive in the 2nd half of the game.

 

[Humbaba]

So Wrathfinder is the best full cRPG that is neither a mod nor a standalone expansion, no complaints here.

 

[Azalin]

So what was the best rpg of the last 5 years accoridn to codex voters?

 

[Lord of Riva]

I am surprised by Realms of Antiquity on such a high place, I am somewhat resistant to old clunky shit for reference I lost interest in playing bards tale 1.

The looks of the game don't matter to me but how playable it is does, so, anyone who has played it what can I expect?

I like the fact that there is something I haven't seen at all in the list.

 

[agris]

Half the number of voters that we've been getting the past few years. Maybe half our usual crowd didn't care about this year's games and maybe a good chunk of them gave up when they saw that bloated list. Four games got 0 votes period and over 50 got a single digit number of votes. Like I said a while ago, the list of games should be restricted to those that have had a thread with multiple pages worth of discussion. A goty poll is not the time or place for "exposure" for a bunch of RPGs no one gave a damn about for most of a year.

Anyway congratulations to the Archolos fans for successfully downvoting Wrathfinder into second place. And RIP Encased for screwing up a Fallout clone for the Codex of all places.

I expect there's a good bit of truth to people being turned off by the massive list. Your criteria here for inclusion (multipage thread to demonstrate organic interest) is a good one, as is the argument that this type of poll isn't really the place to promote exposure.

felipepepe any thoughts on tightening up the list for next year?

One issue, your notion that Archololololos fans downvoted cringemaker is pure cope. I gave Lololos 4/4 while never playing wotr, and not voting for it. Why do you think people who enjoyed ToEE would boot up cringefinder and not hate the.. cringe?