Editorial Forgotten Ruins: The Roots of CRPGs

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Well, may be a big potential market for new gold box style CRPGs, but after the death of classic CRPGs those people have scattered to the four winds and some may no longer be paying attention to the genre. There is no guarantee that the potential market would crystallize into an actual good number of people who would buy any given game.

For example, nobody bought Natuk, despite its superficial* similarities to the classics.

It would take marketing to turn that widely scattered group of potential buyers into an actual market for a game, and it would be risky try and do it.

Whereas the market for tedious counter based wargames is pretty well established, so even if it's not a particularly large market, you can reliably predict that if you take your last game and rename all your WW2 units as Korean War units, you will sell X number of copies, so it's not particularly risky for HPS sims to churn out another game as long as they keep expenses low.

Similarly Vogel has an established market of fans he sells to. He also benefits from having built up that fanbase over well over a decade of making the same shit and an unbroken connection to the days when games like that were actually common.

I don't think you can assume that making an old school style CRPG would be a great financial decision.

* At a superficial level Natuk seems like it has a lot of similarities to the classics and appears well made. But I'm not sure if the combat ever become tactical/fun... I played it for like 6 hours and it never did.

I agree with your point, but if you went and released an oldschool wargame on some obscure website, back when much fewer people had an internet connection, I would say you are almost guaranteed to fail. The fact that Proudfoot may NOT have failed in the first place when he released the game says a lot. I would say that had you released said wargame today you would most likely fail completely, unless you release it on one of the wargaming hubs. The same cannot be said for Independant roleplaying games.

Things have changed. Everyone and their dog has internet connection. Places like the Codex, et al exist to get the word to the unwashed masses...it is a different ballgame since Proudfoot's days of releasing Natuk.

Natuk's combat does not become tactical? And you played for 6 hours?....You really need to tell me ALL about the tactical roleplaying games you have played before. All about them please. I really need to see this. Names and why they were tactical should suffice.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Oh, dear SSI.

Didn't Knights of the Chalice sell well enough that the creator is now making a sequel? Sure, it was a one-man project but it, along with Vogel, proves that there is a similar niche for old-school RPGs just like there is one for strategy/war-games.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Oh, dear SSI.

Didn't Knights of the Chalice sell well enough that the creator is now making a sequel? Sure, it was a one-man project but it, along with Vogel, proves that there is a similar niche for old-school RPGs just like there is one for strategy/war-games.

Eschalon also, along with countless independant JRPG's.

And all of these games exist in their own webspace, and are selling comfortably. If Matrix, for example, tried releasing one of their wargames on a seperate site, with no real advertising or fanbase knowledge, it wouldn't go anywhere.

Most people don't realise that SSI CRPG games after the Goldbox series were largely bug ridden, mediocre/next gen-ish pieces of rubbish that were not worth the time or effort. They also probably don't realise that very few people had access to the internet, so patches were worthless. The game had to be fully working, straight out of the box. Think of this my Codexian friends before over-praising Darksun, fine game that it turned into.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Natuk's combat does not become tactical? And you played for 6 hours?....You really need to tell me ALL about the tactical roleplaying games you have played before. All about them please. I really need to see this. Names and why they were tactical should suffice.

Natuk (in the 1st six hours) isn't tactical because you don't need to think about your moves very much. In fact, you generally can't move, instead you stand in a narrow passageway, while a sea of melee monsters mills around waiting for their friends in front to die so they can take their turn fighting you. There may or may not be casters and archers in the back, but you certainly aren't going to leave your passageway and go after them, because a) there are 30 goblins in the way so you literally can't move forward b) they're pretty ineffective with their "throw rock" spells anyway

It compares rather unfavorably with say (Proudfoot clone) Helherron, where even in the first dungeon you're fighting mixed Kobold parties with melee enemies, ranged enemies and threatening spellcasting enemies and you may need to leave the safety of your narrow passageway to go after the casters (there isn't a sea of bodies either, so you have the option to move around).

Also in Helherron, a simple shield wall in a narrow passageway may not be enough to beat a horde of melee enemies, the game is hard enough that you may need to use some of the spells to break up the enemy rush or they could kill your tanks (!). So even in the first dungeon you are throwing around web spells and spells to turn to floor into ice, causing the enemies to slide around and bump into each other (the game tracks damage for collisions between characters), etc.

Whereas in Natuk even on the recommended higher difficulty setting, you're just standing there in a doorway, meleeing down goblins and hobgoblins, healing, and having your mage shoot his sling as he doesn't need to cast and nothing he has the skill to cast is worth it anyway.

Comparing the first 6ish hours of each game is like night and day in terms of tactics, Helheron has em, Natuk really doesn't.

Later on? No clue.

 

[Sceptic]

They also probably don't realise that very few people had access to the internet, so patches were worthless.

Don't you remember the good old days where you called the company, they informed you there was a new version available, then in exchange for your old game disks they would ship you new ones (pre-patched) free of charge? Those were the days...

 

[commie]

They also probably don't realise that very few people had access to the internet, so patches were worthless.

Don't you remember the good old days where you called the company, they informed you there was a new version available, then in exchange for your old game disks they would ship you new ones (pre-patched) free of charge? Those were the days...

I bought a Gold Box collectors edition and didn't have the codewheel for POR and Azure Bonds. I wrote a letter to the distributor ad a little while later they sent me the wheels, no fuss, no accusations of piracy.

Even Activision was good in the old days: I had graphic corruption with Spycraft, so I wrote to them and they sent back a floppy with VESA drivers and instructions.

 

[mondblut]

Natuk (in the 1st six hours) isn't tactical because you don't need to think about your moves very much. In fact, you generally can't move, instead you stand in a narrow passageway, while a sea of melee monsters mills around waiting for their friends in front to die so they can take their turn fighting you.

It's not the first 6 hours, it's the whole game. Shield-wall across the corridor and spamming missiles/spells from behind their backs is an only tactic (which is kinda the way it works IRL, but who said fighting 10000 similar battles IRL is fun?). If there are dangerous spellcasters in the enemy back, well, tough luck, do something with your spells, because moving and leaving your back exposed to 8 pieces of chaff is still a faster way to die than allowing said spellcasters do their nasty work. On higher levels you just add some buffs to your shieldwall. Hey, it even works in quick combat: get caught in the open, choose autocombat and you're slaughtered in 3 turns. Reload, retreat into a corridor, choose autocombat and after 50 turns you won without much hitpoints lost.

Underpowered magic with very meager AOE effects, way too overcrowded combats, realistic game mechanics making you very vulnerable when surrounded - all of this contributes to making a purely defensive formation the only way to go. The beauty of GB series is that you can clear most rooms with 2 fireballs, here you have none of it.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Sometimes, I really wished I had a nice corridor in every fight. For some strange reason, I only got corridors now and again. Every other time I had to think of creative things to do with spells, and my special advantage: The Assassin. Mr Ninja was very good at hiding in the shadows, and would sneak around the general melee taking out spell casters and archers. Good times.

 

[mondblut]

Sometimes, I really wished I had a nice corridor in every fight.

Oh, but you do. Except in the outdoors, naturally.

See, when you stumble upon an encounter, it doesn't begin immediately, you can still make one step after the monsters appear on screen before the combat is triggered. Now, due to peculiar way Natuk handles the mouse, one click counts as one keyboard-triggered step...except it can propel you across half a screen. So, when you see monsters onscreen in an open area, just click into the closest corridor or, at worst, a corner, and combat will be triggered there. Since monsters begin far away, you'll still have a plenty of time to bring the fighters up front.

Now, Natuk does have its share of encounters where you have to try every obscure spell in your book, use healing items to bring back up that thrice-fallen fighter, summon shit and just pray, no question there. But the majority of encounters are about standing still in a narrow place and doing spaaaartaaaa against hordes of chaff which would overcome you if you move a step.

(Alright, you stand still in a narrow place and do spaaaaartaaaa against tough encounters too, except that this alone won't win it).