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A step in the right direction.
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Is the New Decline(tm) of cRPGs imminent?
- Thread starter Zanzoken
- Start date
A step in the right direction.
Tigranes
Arcane
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- 10,350
As long as the games have their heart in the right place, I can forgive a lot, and also have fun.
WL2 is a good example of a very clumsy and cumbersome first time effort that at least won my goodwill. WL3, I'm not sure yet. But DOS2 looks good, and despite all the shitty stuff they are insisting on previewing about Tyranny, an Obsidian making POE2/Tyranny is a lot better than the post-FNV Obsidian basically careening between cancelled games and quick buck slam dunks with fart jokes.
Also, really, AOD on your hard drive, another VD game coming soon? Did anybody actually think the planet would live this long?
WL2 is a good example of a very clumsy and cumbersome first time effort that at least won my goodwill. WL3, I'm not sure yet. But DOS2 looks good, and despite all the shitty stuff they are insisting on previewing about Tyranny, an Obsidian making POE2/Tyranny is a lot better than the post-FNV Obsidian basically careening between cancelled games and quick buck slam dunks with fart jokes.
Also, really, AOD on your hard drive, another VD game coming soon? Did anybody actually think the planet would live this long?
Judging by all the hate any and all non-console games get on this site, and the lack of quality of said hate (such as it looks terrible, looks uninspired, has bad animation, and other monkey bleatings of the stupids) I am honestly surprised there was a resurgence and people actually bought some crpgs for a change. It was weird, but abnormal. The world only makes sense when stupid people like stupid shit like Dark Souls, Witcher 3, Dues Ex whatever, Dragon Age whatever, Metal Gear Whatever, bioshock whatever - and smart people like smart stuff like WL2, AoD, Underrail, SitSL, Dead State, etc.
Either that or shitty handheld computer things are getting more powerful and can now run the usual type of monkey shit hipsters like real nice and good now, so these idiots no longer have slum playing games that force them to have a thought and make a choice every now and again.
Either that or shitty handheld computer things are getting more powerful and can now run the usual type of monkey shit hipsters like real nice and good now, so these idiots no longer have slum playing games that force them to have a thought and make a choice every now and again.
While I see what you are saying, I'm not sure your comparison isn't partially apples vs. oranges situation.
WL is it's own settings, with it's own kind of twist. While comparison to Fallout is inevitable, being inspirer to Fallout, games... well, Fallout combat isn't that great compared to WL2. Story wise I think it's tie, except towards ending both games aim for different kind of things. World building wise I think it's a tie, especially considering Fallout created it's own setting.
WL2 was mainly aimed for the fans of original WL. it's most important goal was not to be better Fallout, but better WL and IMO it was succesfull.
Haven't played PoE (lurked impressions from Codex) BG2 is... something that caused kind of over dosage to fantasy genre for me, so I'm not a right person to comment that. In general for me it's more like if The Witcher was a better game for me than BG2? Oh yes, it was. Then again, apples and oranges.
I think at these days there are much more worthwhile RPG's than few years ago. I'm looking forward to Tyranny, CDPR's Cyberpunk, WL3 and stuff like Stellar Tactics from small studios. At the same time I have quite a long back log of different kind of games.
What comes to quest for the future 'ultimate cRPG' I don't think ideas will come from big studios AAA titles at first.
- Thing I feel AAA studios need to (re)discover come from very careful analysis of source material / settings that can be seen in Kickstarters which have been very good capturing tone and feel of their chosen setting in addition to rules.
- It is already possible to create huge worlds, the problem is populating it. At least partial answer could come from from finding what could be done with procedurally created NPC's. Not that 'iconic' NPC's of the world and party members would be removed.
- Developing better AI's. It's been debated for decades and it often looks like a lost cause, especially when even at these days NPC's can fuck up very basic path finding, but I don't know how if there really are that many options left to go further towards better games.
- Developing better voice synthesis, otherwise interacting with procedural NPC's would always be limited by scripts. In other hand gamers are used to voiced characters in AAA titles, there's no going back any more.
So, perhaps more of the human resources could be directed to world building, quest design, writing more interesting key NPC's and expanding dialogue trees, actual voice acting tweaking random encounter tables, etc.
I feel current situation regarding RPG's could be seen either incline or decline, for me in the short perspective it's certainly incline, but only for now. In larger scope and especially regarding AAA studios situations I feel situation is stagnant.
After all these BioWare 'romances' are nothing but dialogue options and animations. They are brought to pedestal because no sane developer wanted to wander there (and ME1 short scene was good attempt, and look what happened... and of course BW decided to go full retard with it, along with their audience) but really, they are nothing more than smoke in mirrors fooling gamers that there is some sort of real development there.
Written dialogue and designing character interactions is, after all just that and animating is just animating, would that be akward polygon characters clipping into each others with their clothes on and sad mimicry of sexual act, or if it were said characters half clipping in space station walls in hilarious attempt to emulate rather basic human motion, like walking.
That said, perhaps there is possibilities in romantic interaction. Even though Saints Row IV isn't an RPG, there are really good romances there (Hey, wanna fuck?) but the problem is that to truly appreciate them player must have first played Mass Effect series. But I digress.
I guess different kind of cRPG's available at these days and it's fracturing effect of audience and sales has been discussed to death here. What I think is interesting how small studios have managed to deliver much more satisfying experiences than AAA studios and one thing behind their success is that they not only have very good picture of their target audience, but also setting they work with.
Perhaps that AAA studio could take such risks and still deliver titles that is possibly ground breaking, achieving 'all that was good before but truly better' and still being able to stay competitive in market against other AAA titles (in also other genres), something has to happen on technological side of things.
Black
Arcane
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Imminent? It's happening right now, devs who were supposed to bring us out of the darkness of decline are now making console games focused on co-op.
I think we just have to eradicate all of the "old guard". Start anew, from scratch. Begin by defining what is rpg.
I think we just have to eradicate all of the "old guard". Start anew, from scratch. Begin by defining what is rpg.
If graphic and visual don't matter, why just don't play all 90's masterpieces? there are a lot of awesome old rpg out there.
It is too difficult to make, in 2016, a good crpg that doesn't look like ps1 bad port?
That is like saying is it too difficult in 2016 to make animated chess pieces to make chess more appealing to stupids? I played the good 90s games, and play them, over and over and over and over. And I will play them more. I don't play graphics - I play games. Preferably good ones of the crpg variety.
What I find hard to deal with from most 80s games and a lot of 90s games is horrible UI and controls, but most of them are still better than the console tripe you fucking animals on this site laud like FO3, NV, Skyrim, Oblivion, etc, etc, etc, etc all the console agmes. Dark Souls has probably the worst UI and controls ever, and that is including the Gothics and even gluing my pubic hairs to my monitor and pretending that is a UI.
All I want is good crpgs games with anything other than ascii graphics, a working and fully functional GUI, and fully rebindable hotkeys. Also, I prefer either 2d or fixed camera 3d. And very complex and indepth chargen and chardev, and full party creation, and lots of ways to use my skills or abilities in the world, and things like that.
People who want fancy smancy graphics and 90% of the games budget spent on graphics usually also want no thinking chargen or no chargen at all, a preference for the game to decide who their character is for them, female toughgirls that weigh 100 lbs and wear high heels 100% of the time, meaningless and flavor only chardev, super easy combat for monkey idiots that would make any sort of decent chargen and chardev meaningless anyways, and lots of sex with companions. Also, a lead character that is metrosexual and would never have time for toughguy classes with all the primping and priming it would take to look so damn metrosexually prepared, and skinny jeans. Throw in some Jordans and some hot new music from whatever boy band is hot at the moment and you have yourself the ideal codex game for monkey savages.
When I was a kid the hot boy bands were Manudo and new Edition. And I think new Edition was only popular around my area, because we are more civilized than the rest of the US (and by extension the whole entire world ((and by extension the whole known universe))).
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The culture, tradition and know-how for making the good turn-based rpgs or strategy games have largely vanished, only small(er) devs holds the fort. Smaller devs like Styg or VD are largely hindered by the budgetary restrictions. The time of the great rpgs are gone, with a very rare exceptions there won't be and wasn't any kind of renaissance.
Just look at film-noir films, they were made in the 40s and 50s but after 50s there's been just a very few well-done noir or neo-noirs, because film-noir were the product of certain era and culture. Same with crpgs, they were product of the 80s and 90s culture and ethos, people and culture have changed and those days will not come back.
Obsidian showed with Pillows of Eternity that they do not have passion nor ethos for traditional crpgs, it reeks of "we made it because we had to". Wasteland 2 had more effort but it was very lackluster but the team IMO lacked the know-how to design turn-based crpg.
I'm not biggest fan of BG2, as the game really falls apart after Spellhold, but the quests and the area design is VASTLY superior to PoE and the cities and maps feel much livelier.
Just look at film-noir films, they were made in the 40s and 50s but after 50s there's been just a very few well-done noir or neo-noirs, because film-noir were the product of certain era and culture. Same with crpgs, they were product of the 80s and 90s culture and ethos, people and culture have changed and those days will not come back.
Obsidian showed with Pillows of Eternity that they do not have passion nor ethos for traditional crpgs, it reeks of "we made it because we had to". Wasteland 2 had more effort but it was very lackluster but the team IMO lacked the know-how to design turn-based crpg.
I'm not biggest fan of BG2, as the game really falls apart after Spellhold, but the quests and the area design is VASTLY superior to PoE and the cities and maps feel much livelier.
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You're right. Appreciating visuals in a game usually means being stupid. Graphic isn't important at all, 30 years of pc\console-technology progress means nothing and all games should look like Ron Jeremy's ass.
If someone will make a perfect Crpg with good graphics we all should hate it because we're too edgelord retarded wannabe-alternative to accept the fact that good graphic is an added value to a game.
Suicidal
Arcane
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- 2,230
Well think about it this way. Since game devs do not operate in a perfect world where money and time is unlimited they have to use their resources to make sure that all the features they have planned for a game are included and as little things as possible are cut out. I admit, I don't know jack shit about game development, but I suspect making actual good graphics takes a lot of money. It may be the biggest part of the game's budget. It may be a smaller, but still significant part of it. And if your game is large and feature-rich, making all of those features, whatever they may be, work while also looking beautiful will make the cost raise exponentially.
So if someone somehow actually made "the perfect CRPG" that is full of interesting quests, had good combat with exceptional encounter design, in-depth character building systems that allow for a lot of strategic choices, great world with an interesting plot AND it has great graphics to boot, well then it probably would have been my game of the century. Game of forever, in fact. There would be no reason for me to hate this game as it would be silly.
But since budgets are limited, compromises must be made. What would I personally prefer for the developer to get rid of in order to actually finish the game before declaring bankruptcy?
Cut half of the planned character classes or make the game have shit graphics? Shit graphics please!
Make the game twice as short or have shit graphics? Fuck that, I like my games long. Shit graphics please!
Make the game really easy to draw in more casuals to earn more money to pay for those fancy graphics.... or just make the graphics shitty? I like my games long AND hard (like my penis hurr hurr), so bring on the shit graphics!
Simplify the character system to program less stats and interactions or shit graphics? Shit graphics.
Have twice as less spells and abilities or shit graphics? Shit graphics.
Day-night cycle or shit graphics? Shit graphics.
Literally every core gameplay feature for me would be more important than good graphics, because a really good game that looks excellent is a really good game, a really good game that looks like shit is still at least a good game, and a shitty game that looks excellent is a shitty, or at best mediocre game.
I respect your opinion because it's good and fair. Still i believe a triple A company, with more than 100 people working on it, can manage a good crpg with good visuals if he wants..
Also, there is a whole world between Witcher 3 graphics and Dwarf fortress.
Pillars of eternity graphics can be considered good enough, but not enough good to justify cutting every other feature. So, it's doable.
Um, no. Unless they are hobbyists, they have to use their resources to make a product that sells better, and when necessary, sacrifice that which is less crucial for sales.
Nigga please. When you're approaching a deadline and realize the game is nowhere close to being finished, switching from non-shit to shit graphics won't cut you any costs. It will only bloat your costs further, because, guess what, newly shittened graphics have to be done, too.
The only way to cut costs on graphics when already down the road is to start cutting content that was supposed to use them. Like, uh, half of the planned character classes, making the game twice as short, having twice as less spells and day-night cycles.
Not to mention graphics, whether shit or non-shit, and everything else tend to be produced by different people. And when you are facing bankruptcy, hiring more coders and writers/designers and spending weeks of older staff's productive time on clueing the new staff in is the last thing a sane manager would do. Even if he fires some artists to free the cubicles, he's still at a loss.
Zanzoken
Arcane
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- 3,596
I think a major problem is there seems to be this set-in-stone feature list that developers and players feel every cRPG is supposed to have. Things like:
- Epic stories and quests
- Tons and tons of combat
- Deep character systems
- Massive exploration
- Branching dialogues and narratives
- NPC companions
- Hundreds of items
- Crafting
- Base-building
- Factions
- 100+ hour playthroughs
And let's face it, people always cream themselves over graphics, even on the Codex -- just read the reactions to the WL3 bullshots if you need proof.
So what you end up with is -- people want games to look stunning AND have every feature ever AND have it all be capably designed and polished -- which probably isn't realistic on any scale. I know some don't like the idea of cutting features because they want RPGs to stay big and huge and epic, but I don't think it works that way anymore, if it ever did at all. Trying to do everything means that some (or all) of it ends up being shit, or it becomes so shallow as to not be worth your time, i.e. Skyrim.
I think the solution, especially for indies, is to define clear goals and a reasonable scope for each project. Pick a couple of features for your main focus, a handful of others that support them, and cut the rest. Then put all your efforts into making it really, really good. That is what will ultimately lead to innovation and moving the genre forward in interesting ways.
- Epic stories and quests
- Tons and tons of combat
- Deep character systems
- Massive exploration
- Branching dialogues and narratives
- NPC companions
- Hundreds of items
- Crafting
- Base-building
- Factions
- 100+ hour playthroughs
And let's face it, people always cream themselves over graphics, even on the Codex -- just read the reactions to the WL3 bullshots if you need proof.
So what you end up with is -- people want games to look stunning AND have every feature ever AND have it all be capably designed and polished -- which probably isn't realistic on any scale. I know some don't like the idea of cutting features because they want RPGs to stay big and huge and epic, but I don't think it works that way anymore, if it ever did at all. Trying to do everything means that some (or all) of it ends up being shit, or it becomes so shallow as to not be worth your time, i.e. Skyrim.
I think the solution, especially for indies, is to define clear goals and a reasonable scope for each project. Pick a couple of features for your main focus, a handful of others that support them, and cut the rest. Then put all your efforts into making it really, really good. That is what will ultimately lead to innovation and moving the genre forward in interesting ways.
Sometimes I dream of making an amazing CRPG if I was allowed to just stick to ASCII graphics. ASCII lightsourcing, ASCII blood, ASCII dialogue windows. Smooth movement and varying sizes, but ASCII-everything. Never have to worry about getting an artist to create anything I CAN THINK OF, or management of complex animation states, or layer-based isometric prop editing.
Just make it visually suggestive of what it's supposed to represent, and have an NPC nearby who can explain if needed. Electric fence? Just pseudographics that flicker and emit "dot" sparks. A fire? Big and small Ws of red color, casting red light on surrounding area. Water? Bobbing ~~~~~ etc.
If I want a house, just make a rectangle with walls and a door, plop some people and items in there. An epic world could be created.
And then I wake up.
Just make it visually suggestive of what it's supposed to represent, and have an NPC nearby who can explain if needed. Electric fence? Just pseudographics that flicker and emit "dot" sparks. A fire? Big and small Ws of red color, casting red light on surrounding area. Water? Bobbing ~~~~~ etc.
If I want a house, just make a rectangle with walls and a door, plop some people and items in there. An epic world could be created.
And then I wake up.
What?
Sometimes I dream of playing it. Then I wake up screaming, drenched in cold sweat.
DeepOcean
Arcane
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- Nov 8, 2012
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- 7,398
I don't know, one part of me is optimist but another part is really negative, you know, Torment is shapping up really good, Bard's Tale IV, I'm curious about as it isn't everyday you see a game with irish influences all over , DOS 2 may be fun but...
One of the reasons we had so much great RPGs on the past was that Interplay, Troika, Origin and other old companies were a bit crazy on the projects without playing this much safe as Obsidian, Larian and InXile are doing now, sure, they failed, but what it is funny is that on the 90's the options avaliable for companies were much smaller than what they are today but you see an almost pathological fear of creative risks on modern companies, it is excatly when they have more options like kickstarter, digital distribution platforms and others that weren't available on the 90's that they become extremely risk adverse.
Fallout 1, Planescape, Arcanum, ToEE were huge creative risks, Wasteland 2, PoE and DOS are pale shadows of those games, not worthy of even being compared to. I finished Fallout 1, Planescape, Arcanum and ToEE and they were very unpolished, buggy (indluding game stopping bugs) games compared with the modern kickstarter ones but why I couldn't tolerate any of three big kickstarter RPG projects for long?
It isn't that Fargo, Feargus or Swen are evil but their cleary have their own agenda and I don't know if I can trust on this agenda. They are business people dealing with millions of dollars on loans, investors and having to pay for the salaries of hundreds of people, the three have a series o failures that makes they weary of risks but I can't tolerate most AAA games exactly for this mentality of extreme risk aversion and seeing this on kickstarter RPGs is disappointing.
Fargo proposal for Wasteland 3 is: graphix whoring, multiplayer and aping popular game of the moment (XCOM), yeah...
Hmmm, where I heard that before?
True incline will only come when companies start taking more risks but I don't know if that is possible nowdays as a company like Larian is hugely rewarded for shiny graphix and multiplayer, it is profitable to keep doing what the other guys are doing.
One of the reasons we had so much great RPGs on the past was that Interplay, Troika, Origin and other old companies were a bit crazy on the projects without playing this much safe as Obsidian, Larian and InXile are doing now, sure, they failed, but what it is funny is that on the 90's the options avaliable for companies were much smaller than what they are today but you see an almost pathological fear of creative risks on modern companies, it is excatly when they have more options like kickstarter, digital distribution platforms and others that weren't available on the 90's that they become extremely risk adverse.
Fallout 1, Planescape, Arcanum, ToEE were huge creative risks, Wasteland 2, PoE and DOS are pale shadows of those games, not worthy of even being compared to. I finished Fallout 1, Planescape, Arcanum and ToEE and they were very unpolished, buggy (indluding game stopping bugs) games compared with the modern kickstarter ones but why I couldn't tolerate any of three big kickstarter RPG projects for long?
It isn't that Fargo, Feargus or Swen are evil but their cleary have their own agenda and I don't know if I can trust on this agenda. They are business people dealing with millions of dollars on loans, investors and having to pay for the salaries of hundreds of people, the three have a series o failures that makes they weary of risks but I can't tolerate most AAA games exactly for this mentality of extreme risk aversion and seeing this on kickstarter RPGs is disappointing.
Fargo proposal for Wasteland 3 is: graphix whoring, multiplayer and aping popular game of the moment (XCOM), yeah...
Hmmm, where I heard that before?
True incline will only come when companies start taking more risks but I don't know if that is possible nowdays as a company like Larian is hugely rewarded for shiny graphix and multiplayer, it is profitable to keep doing what the other guys are doing.
Good graphics can add value to some people, but have no effect on if a game is good or not when looking at it as a game. Also, what constitutes good graphics is subjective. I dislike photorealistic graphics such as most AAA games go for, but I did like the graphcis of Kingdom of Alminor or whatever the game with Todd McFarland was called. I like the ToEE graphics, I dislike washed out graphics like in BG1 wilderness areas and FO wilderness areas. I think the graphics of Wiz8 are very impressive still to this day. Very sharp and crisp and bright.
Graphics can make a good game better if they appeal to the player.
Graphics cannot make a bad game good. They can only make a bad game look good and appeal to the sensibilities of superficial idiots who put form over function.
Lastly, if a game spends 100s of millions of dollars on graphics the investors are aiming to have a return on the investment. This is done by appealing to the broadest audience possible. The broadest audience possible means children, retards, and adults who do not like rpgs, complexity, character generation, thinking, etc. Judging from recent "AAA" offerings they like metrosexuals who loot something every two seconds or two feet moved and vapid females that weigh 100 lbs or less and are just dying to have your penis shoved in them. This audience also dislikes any sort of meaningful chardev, or significant chardev, and all choices are meant to be flavor only (if choices are even given). Flavor only means no thinking, no gimping, no needed skills, no reason to even have it really. And meaningful chardev would be wasted since this audience hates challenge and is easily duped into believing games meant for retards are challenging.
This is also means that the game will be 100% developed for the console and have a console UI and no thought or functionality put into a civilized pc KB
setup for civilized normal people. Basically, your fancy graphics guarantees the game will suck really bad for people with refined taste and a penchant for quality systems and mechanics and desire to play a deep and complex game.
I like games that focus on the game part, that have meaningful chargen and chardev, do not allow retards to not think or be successful, and other regular and normal rpg characteristics.
And also, please keep in mind I tell the truth as I know it. Despite my refines tastes and like of only good games I really enjoyed all 3 MEs. They included everything bad I stated above but somehow managed to be good to me. Good enough where I will buy the next one at full price and not wait for the GOTY edition to be 5 or 10 dollars a couple years after it comes out, which is my SOP for the other shitty AAA games that are complete shit for fucking idiot monkeys.
I agree. Well stated.
Kinda funny that for me Original Sin was saved because of co-op, but I didn't except that the other "saviors" of RPGs would embrace the Larian design - in case with Wasteland 3. That is nothing I wanted at all. The singleplayer top-down RPG was killed as soon as it was reintroduced to the gaming market. Tyranny also shows what the coming indie-RPG genre will become. From PoE (which was a personal disappointment, but still had this old school "feel" to it at points) to now babies first RPG. It's kinda brutal to see If I'm being honest. The market was probed for old school RPGs with Kickstarter and it proved successful, not necessarily with the "hardcore rpg" -crowd but with the whole of gaming. So here we are again, making stuff more casual / accessible / introducing online elements to reach a broader audience. History repeat itself. The main difference is that devs themselves are doing it without publisher interference which was the common evil all these companies shared.
Sure we have Underrail and games as such, but I have a feeling that these games would be released regardless of the RPG renaissance that supposedly started with the Kickstarter craze.
Sure we have Underrail and games as such, but I have a feeling that these games would be released regardless of the RPG renaissance that supposedly started with the Kickstarter craze.
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What we really need is quotes 6 levels deep, fuckfaces.
I agree (other than coop and D:OS). But it seems InXile is the one seeking additional funding of games by going to publishers and reneging on what was stated with Torment's KS, or going for more consoley games in general without any prompting. Larian always has wanted to be a console dev and is just currently slumming with us pc losers until they can finally be the next CD Project. Do all devs want prestige of bigger sales on console more than being great crpg developers? Or instant classic developers?
It is funny that Obsidian is the only one not to make a KSed console game yet, and has hired Tim Cain, and really seem like they just want to make what they think are great crpgs and not console trash for idiots.
Because they are dog food.
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