Review Leave Arcania Alone!

[SCO]

Give it up jim - gaming is dead.

 

[Kraszu]

And those fucking manboons in the commentary section...."OH I DON'T HAVE TIME TO GET IN TO DEMANDING GAMES ANYMORE".....who the fuck are you trying to fool

This doesn't even make sense no matter what they circumstances are. If they have less time, then they should play less games not shittier ones.

 

[zeitgeist]

And those fucking manboons in the commentary section...."OH I DON'T HAVE TIME TO GET IN TO DEMANDING GAMES ANYMORE".....who the fuck are you trying to fool

This doesn't even make sense no matter what they circumstances are. If they have less time, then they should play less games not shittier ones.

They're just repeating what marketing taught them. It's absolutely undefendable logic, but as you can see it does what it's meant to do very well, it makes people feel superior to someone else (the hypothetical basement-dwelling "hardcore gamer" who apparently has no life, which somehow enables him to play good games), for playing a game that's objectively worse in every way.

They convinced people that having jobs and responsibilities in life should somehow make them spend time on anything at all, regardless of its quality, instead of it being (as you said) the other way around - such people should logically strive to only play games that are actually worth playing. And the bickering between artificially created market segments based on lies, half-truths and completely imaginary concepts brought from above continues.

 

[Shannow]

I used to respect poster DArtagnan over at the Watch but he really went overboard in that thread:

You apparently live in a world of black and white, where a game is either good or bad.

Apart from DArtagnan having always been a moron who tried to hide behind walls of text, what exactly is so retarded about that comment?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Because the argument he replied against with that comment, wasn't depicting world as black&white. He just pulled it out of his ass as a complete strawman. Here's the whole back'n'forth:

Now in my opinion there are three types of RPG that have focus of different things:

1. Exploration, games like this focus on exploring the world, if done right other elements like combat or story can be put in second place (Morrowind, old Gothics).

2. Combat, RPG that makes combat their primary focus need to have fun and exciting combat with addition of interesting enemies and good loot. (Mount and Blade, Diablo, Nox)

3. Story, good story and dialogs can make any game fun even if all other elements are sub par. (Mask of the Betrayer, Planescape Torment)

There are games that are good in every department but Arcania failed in every single of them, so why play it if the combat, exploration and story sucks. Now official opinion here is "well it does not suck its just casual" is pretty stupid in my opinion, game is simply bad and saying that its good because there are people with half of a brain that will enjoy it is fundamentally wrong.

To which DArtagnan replied with "hurr durr u see only black and white, trollolollol"

 

[Azrael the cat]

I used to respect poster DArtagnan over at the Watch but he really went overboard in that thread:

I know I'll enjoy it, even though it won't be a particularly good match for my preferences.

You apparently live in a world of black and white, where a game is either good or bad.

Combat is entertaining

I know that casual gamers are becoming less casual by the minute

That means that the masses will slowly evolve and start demanding more and more

If Arcania doesn't do well, it means casual gamers have already evolved beyond that simplistic formula

If it DOES do well, then it's still a step towards a real Gothic in the minds of the casuals. That means it might actually HELP the success of Risen 2 - just to name an example.

I agree somewhat with his general claim, but not as applied to this game - it's a step backwards and I don't see how you could characterise it differently.

I have been occasionally getting hopeful every now and then by some of the threads I see on mainstream gaming sites. For example, the Escapist had one recently where people were bitching about how it sucks in rpgs that you never get any real freedom of choice, because Mass Effect railroads you into doing mcguffin quests when it should give you the chance to just pickpocket the mcguffin from the questgiver, or just kill the guy, or find another way around etc. I pointed out that that was a staple of crpgs not that long ago - I don't think anyone noticed, but I've seen quite a few posts now from console gamers indicating that they're now familiar and a tad bored with linear mole-popping, and want a bit more freedom both in quest solution and combat tactics.

I'm not so optimistic as the rpgwatch guy is - I've seen nothing to indicate that they'll actually start demanding it from publishers, and certainly nothing to indicate that they'll accept the necessary sacrifice in graphics/tech (I mean relative sacrifice - as in time spent making non-linear maps and multiple solutions is time taken away from graphics etc). But there is something to the idea that re-evolution is a possibility. Not a certainty, not something that is clearly happening. But a possibility.

 

[Azrael the cat]

And those fucking manboons in the commentary section...."OH I DON'T HAVE TIME TO GET IN TO DEMANDING GAMES ANYMORE".....who the fuck are you trying to fool

This doesn't even make sense no matter what they circumstances are. If they have less time, then they should play less games not shittier ones.

Not to mention that the style of games we're talking about were in many ways easier to play in small bursts than current ones. I don't mean the old graph-paper-mapping, have to get back to an inn to save, masochist (and hence awesome ) Wizardry games, rather the Fallouts, infinity engine games, Deus Ex, V:tmB, etc. Those games all worked around bite-sized quest after bite-sized quest - you never had to strategically plan ahead except for your character build (and even that was more a series of cumulative decisions than anything that required you to hold a long-term master plan in your head). I never got lost with those games.

Compare that, however, to FO3 or Dragon Age and I stop playing as soon as I take a week away from it - huge map and lack of direction in FO3 makes bite-sized playing really difficult unless you're doing it all the time. You put it aside for a while and you can't remember which places you've explored, where you were going, what the relevance of a quest is, etc. Dragon Age is more focussed, but there's so much filler combat (as is common in current crpgs) that you can't get ANYTHING worthwhile done in a short playsession - completing one quest can take hours of trash-mob-cleaning.

The whole idea that modern games are more suited to short play-sessions seems to have been borrowed from the mmorpg arena (where it is mostly true) and applied to single-player gaming without actually thinking about whether it's true.

 

[circ]

Duwd. Arcania can't even do fucking combat. A pretty big thing in an RPG one would think. What is this talk about dumbing down, when the enemies run around like blind mice?

 

[DreadMessiah]

Game is dull, boring, and just all around bland. Feel bad for those that bought it. Even oblivion was more fun.

 

[Achilles]

I've seen quite a few posts now from console gamers indicating that they're now familiar and a tad bored with linear mole-popping, and want a bit more freedom both in quest solution and combat tactics.

I really wish that were true, but I doubt it is. Most likely these console gamers are old pc gamers who migrated to console for whatever reason and they have a good grasp on what a true RPG should be like. Besides, even if it is true, we've established that people posting on gaming forums are not the publshers' main target group. I want to believe that there is a way out of the decline, but I can't see it anywhere on the horizon.

 

[halasterbc]

I've seen quite a few posts now from console gamers indicating that they're now familiar and a tad bored with linear mole-popping, and want a bit more freedom both in quest solution and combat tactics.

I really wish that were true, but I doubt it is. Most likely these console gamers are old pc gamers who migrated to console for whatever reason and they have a good grasp on what a true RPG should be like. Besides, even if it is true, we've established that people posting on gaming forums are not the publshers' main target group. I want to believe that there is a way out of the decline, but I can't see it anywhere on the horizon.

I've been noticing this too, but i don't think the main problem is consoles x pc. I think it all goes down to developers aiming big sales worldwide, end of story. They'll make a game every casual will buy, and old gamers will buy too because they're addicted. What pisses me off the most is today we have the technology and bigger companies to make great game engines to finally go past the boundaries older game engines had, with the greatest controls visuals and audio to make it even better, but it's simply more cost-benefit not going that far. Let alone the mass advertisement for shitty games. Who's investing against all this shit to really please every gamer? Maybe a crazy billionaire gamer would, but that's an oximoron i guess. Maybe the next generation will have a larger number of old gamers and we'll see some change.