Editorial Matt Barton on the state of today's CRPGs

[Infinitron]

I'm not yet convinced that Wasteland 2 will be more than just another aRPG.

A turn-based, full party control, aRPG?

 

[Gord]

I'm not yet convinced that Wasteland 2 will be more than just another aRPG.

A turn-based, full party control, aRPG?

This is a good basis, but no guarantee.
I do have rather high hopes for it, there's just a bit of doubt remaining. Blame the constant barrage of hyped AAA games over the last decade for it.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not yet convinced that Wasteland 2 will be more than just another aRPG.

A turn-based, full party control, aRPG?

This is a good basis, but no guarantee.
I do have rather high hopes for it, there's just a bit of doubt remaining. Blame the constant barrage of hyped AAA games over the last decade for it.

I've always thought aRPGs were real-time by definition.

Perhaps you're confusing "action RPG" with "combatfag RPG"? Not the same thing.

 

[octavius]

And MM6? Did he even enable the turn-based mode in that game? I have never played the game outside of turn-based mode, considering the volume of enemies you face. Hell, I even dislike MM6 a little and I am not the biggest fan of that game. But calling it a shooter is just coming from an alternative reality.

You could strafe and shoot in MM6 in real time mode. Real time combat in MM6 definitely felt more like Doom than like a proper turn based CRPG.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Didn't MM6 have auto-aim? I remember pressing one single attack key, without necessarily having to bother target my attacks, when faced with weaker enemies.

Look, the point is that Matt Barton seems confused between "RPGs with first person perspective and manual combat" and "RPGs that are shooters".

Might and Magic VI is not Mass Effect.

Ultima Underworld is not Bloodlines.

Arena and Daggerfall are not Fallout 3.

How difficult is it for anyone playing RPGs for more than 5 years to understand? It's the simplest thing ever. To assume that MM6 began a trend of shooterization that has led to Fallout 3 is mindboggling. MINDBOGGLING.

 

[octavius]

I don't think MM6 started a trend, but nonetheless its real time combat is far closer to Doom than games like Morrowind and Oblivion are, slaughtering hordes of enemies by strafing and shooting.
Not that I have much against it; it was more fun than the uninspired combat of MM3-5, but somehow it didn't feel quite right for a CRPG.

 

[Gord]

I've always thought aRPGs were real-time by definition.

Perhaps you're confusing "action RPG" with "combatfag RPG"? Not the same thing.

Well, as always the definitions are somewhat vague, but imho a aRPG is defined by relatively shallow mechanics (while a combatfag RPG can have pretty deep mechanics), not so much by TB or RTwP, or whatever.
On the other hand, a "combatfag RPG" might start to turn into a JA2-like tactics-game, at some point.
But enough of this, I don't want to start the bi-monthly "What is an rpg?" discussion here.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

That's generally based on a weird perception that well-known games from the nineties were somehow hardcore titles for elite gamers. I've got a strange feeling that these people didn't actually do a lot of gaming during those times or they suffer from a bad case of illusions de grandeur, 'cause I remember that every kid in my class who had a PC played stuff like UFO, Panzer General, Master of Magic or Fallout and loved it.

I always thought that hardcore games are something like, I don't know, Harpoon or insanely realistic flight simulators. But even then it's a stretch cause expressions "hardcore game" or "elite gamer" sound campy as fuck.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Check this out, Cowboy Moment (and make sure your annotations are on). This is the only video I've ever watched of someone playing a video game over the internet. I guess it's a Let's Play but it differs from other Let's Plays because it doesn't have some wretched troglodyte mumbling and cussing over gameplay or dancing around in front of a camera. If we treat videos like presentations over entertainment, we allow them to be taken seriously and attract an audience looking for something more substantive than the people who watch Let's Plays.

Oh I just realized you think I am talking about doing a Matt Chat styled show, with some slob standing in front of a webcam stuttering about how Morrowind is great or whatever. No. Never.

The question, my brother, is not whether we are capable of doing these things. The question is whether we actually want to "connect RPG Codex to a larger audience".

I don't think this is a question at all, or else we wouldn't have a Codex Twitter feed or Facebook page. More people = more ad revenue for DarkUnderlord. Not that I'm suggesting this for monetary reasons. I think it would be fun to do.

That is quite good, at least for the purpose of showing a game off with some light commentary. Most video LPs suffer from the author thinking he's doing stand up comedy, and failing - like Matt's review of Daggerfall linked in this thread. I wouldn't mind a series of videos on classical RPGs done in a style similar to that Gimmick LP, especially since no serious video editing skills are required to produce such a thing.

That said, the Codex Twitter/Facebook conundrum supports my point more than it does yours, I feel. Both of those started off as a project by a single member (Bee and Grunker respectively), which got a greenlight from DU, but remained very controversial among the community at large. And while the Twitter account has become somewhat accepted due to its potential for trolling developers and game journos, the Facebook isn't very popular.

 

[Sceptic]

I don't think MM6 started a trend, but nonetheless its real time combat is far closer to Doom than games like Morrowind and Oblivion are, slaughtering hordes of enemies by strafing and shooting.

I usually like you. Don't be a retard please.

Wyrmie has explained in great detail exactly why MM6 combat is not anything like Doom. "Both have strafing" and "both have shooting" is irrelevant when your strafing has no effect on whether your shooting connects. Your stats AND ONLY YOUR STATS do. Seriously, "Doom led to MM6" is like saying "Xenon led to Pool of Radiance" - hey, they both have top down combat!* And you can move too!

Of course the fact that Ultima Underworld was publicly announced before the FPS genre existed, and moreso the fact that Ultima Underworld led to the creation of that genre, is not inconsequential to the argument.

Also Wyrmlord stop harvesting brofists.

* OK, so maybe that argument doesn't hold because POR is isometric combat. Sue me.

 

[Sceptic]

As for Arena, he might have a point there, because Arena was being developed as a party-based RPG for some time, before the publishers told them to get back to the first-person style game they were making.

Correction: Arena was being developed as a multiplayer gladiatoral action game. Before it Beth were known purely for first-person action games. Arena was supposed to be that before they saw Ultima Underworld and decided to turn it into more of an RPG. Also, there was no publisher pressure, Beth always self-published (and it's what almost bankrupted them when both Battlespire and especially Redguard were massive commercial flops).

None of this detracts from any of your points though. If anything Arena is an interesting example of anti-shooterization.

 

[Morkar Left]

He nowhere mentioned that M&M6 and UU are bad games. He just said that they were among the first to borrow the shooter gameplay which is a firstperson realtime 3D environment that relies on player reflexes to successfully play them. And that is technically correct.

Except they don't require player reflexes.
All you do in Ultima Underworld is hold your mouse in one side of the screen for a particular kind of attack and keep it there to have the attacks continue. Beyond that point, it depends on the weapon you are using and your stats. That is nothing like the strafing and shooting of Doom.
And MM6? Did he even enable the turn-based mode in that game? I have never played the game outside of turn-based mode, considering the volume of enemies you face. Hell, I even dislike MM6 a little and I am not the biggest fan of that game. But calling it a shooter is just coming from an alternative reality.

Just because you never used the rt combat in MM6 doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. And it was meant as the default combat system (see the manual and how the tb part is implemented). Most people switched the combat system I suppose. Shooting from afar to decimate the enemy or get rid quickly of trashmops and using tb for melee and proper spellcasting.
UU requires player reflexes compared to games like Goldbox. But you can rightfully argue that this is true for Dungeon Master, too. That’s why I already blame DM for the first step in decline instead of Doom (despite being a good or even outstanding game in itself).
The main point going from tb to rt combat is to let the player handle things in realtime to create tension. Keep in mind that the early shooters weren’t that reflex-heavy as later ones. It’s an evolution.
Castle Wolfenstein is a lot easier to handle than Doom despite similar engines but by the time it came out you had an adrenaline rush from playing it. Similar to Alien Breed which was top down. But both were action games and had the focus on rt action. You couldn’t just stand around and think “How can I smash that alien / ze Nazi in the most efficient way?”. You just had to get rid of it/him as quickly as possible or you were dead. Exactly like in UU and unlike Goldbox games. Action over strategy.

That's generally based on a weird perception that well-known games from the nineties were somehow hardcore titles for elite gamers. I've got a strange feeling that these people didn't actually do a lot of gaming during those times or they suffer from a bad case of illusions de grandeur, 'cause I remember that every kid in my class who had a PC played stuff like UFO, Panzer General, Master of Magic or Fallout and loved it.
I always thought that hardcore games are something like, I don't know, Harpoon or insanely realistic flight simulators. But even then it's a stretch cause expressions "hardcore game" or "elite gamer" sound campy as fuck.

I don't even remember the term "hardcore game" was ever used in the 90's. There were just games. Personally I consider the term got invented from modern day gamers who were really challenged by older games. Mostly because they were more challenging. And that is especially true for the rpg genre. Not because the older rpgs were THAT difficult but because the modern "rpgs" are that piss easy that it is totally impossible to avoid to win the game (KotOR).

 

[Phineas]

When he wrote that, I wondered: Has Matt actually given a chance to these games, or did he spend only five seconds on them before dismissing them as shooter imitators? Or did he just see screenshots of these games and made his mind about them? Dismissing an entire genre of first-person RPGs with manual combat as just pseudo-shooters simply betrays a shocking amount of ignorance about how they actually play. I didn't hear about these games until I was 16-18, but at least I gave them a chance.

Just look at his Daggerfall "review".



He's a clueless poser.

What the fuck are Oblivion, Mass Effect, & Fable doing in Matt's collection? Why hasn't he sold them yet?

 

[octavius]

I don't think MM6 started a trend, but nonetheless its real time combat is far closer to Doom than games like Morrowind and Oblivion are, slaughtering hordes of enemies by strafing and shooting.

I usually like you. Don't be a retard please.

Wyrmie has explained in great detail exactly why MM6 combat is not anything like Doom. "Both have strafing" and "both have shooting" is irrelevant when your strafing has no effect on whether your shooting connects. Your stats AND ONLY YOUR STATS do. Seriously, "Doom led to MM6" is like saying "Xenon led to Pool of Radiance" - hey, they both have top down combat!* And you can move too!

Of course the fact that Ultima Underworld was publicly announced before the FPS genre existed, and moreso the fact that Ultima Underworld led to the creation of that genre, is not inconsequential to the argument.

Also Wyrmlord stop harvesting brofists.

* OK, so maybe that argument doesn't hold because POR is isometric combat. Sue me.

Except I never said "Doom led to MM6".
I said "its real time combat is far closer to Doom than games like Morrowind and Oblivion are, slaughtering hordes of enemies by strafing and shooting." That MM6 uses stats to determine hits and Doom doesn't is not that relevant in practice, since the actual real time combat gameplay is quite similar. And in Doom you only aim along the X axis anyway. One could even argue that Doom is the more tactical of the games since you can trick enemies into shooting at each other.

 

[Machocruz]

What game did Ultima Underworld borrow shooter gameplay from? It predates Wolfenstein 3D by two months. The shooters did the borrowing.

The progenitor of UU's combat isn't the FPS, it's the hack and slash arcade game if anything..

 

[A user named cat]

 

[Wyrmlord]

What game did Ultima Underworld borrow shooter gameplay from? It predates Wolfenstein 3D by two months. The shooters did the borrowing.

The progenitor of UU's combat isn't the FPS, it's the hack and slash arcade game if anything..

When I first found this out a few years ago, it boggled my mind.

It was an RPG that inspired much of the shooter genre today. And then it was shooters that inspired RPGs many many years later.

 

[SCO]

Too far

 

[DraQ]

There is no old school or new school crpg. There's either 'like PnP school' or 'GFTO school.'

inb4soyou'resayingactionrpgsaren'tlegitimatedesign?derp

I tried to fit a GM into my PC, stripped him down of all extremities, of course, so that he'd fit (and not try to escape for that matter), but he sort of just started rotting so I had to throw him out.

So far I conclude that 'like PnP' school is non-viable.

Also, the author managed to miss the point completely, at the very least the part where "This shift towards shooter-ization began very early" should have clued him in.
What a shame.

The holy grail used to be trying to match the complexity and possibility space of PnP games. Now the holy grail is possibly being able slip date rape drugs into drinks in an elven tavern.

Indeed, but neither the timing (TB vs RT), control scheme (point'n'click vs direct and 'actiony') nor perspective (FPP vs iso) has much bearing on possibility space. If anything a 'shooterized' approach could be more fruitful - ever tried to cast a fireball at the ceiling (say you have a wood or thatched roof and you really want it gone or falling down in flaming chunks onto whatever is in the room) in iso game?
Oh, right, you can't.

 

[Machocruz]

I tried to fit a GM into my PC, stripped him down of all extremities, of course, so that he'd fit (and not try to escape for that matter), but he sort of just started rotting so I had to throw him out.

So far I conclude that 'like PnP' school is non-viable.

Some are closer than others. Effort to replicate the breadth and depth of PnP games as far as the medium can manage are obvious in Fallout.. Not so obvious in Dragon Age 2 The former fits nicely into my concept of "like PnP."

Besides that, my comment was more a declaration of my own preferences, and disdain for any type of electronic RPG that makes an effort to do less than that.

Indeed, but neither the timing (TB vs RT), control scheme (point'n'click vs direct and 'actiony') nor perspective (FPP vs iso) has much bearing on possibility space. If anything a 'shooterized' approach could be more fruitful - ever tried to cast a fireball at the ceiling (say you have a wood or thatched roof and you really want it gone or falling down in flaming chunks onto whatever is in the room) in iso game?
Oh, right, you can't.

Good thing my comment wasn't in relation to shooterization, controls, perspective or combat systems, but a general statement on what developers then and now believe the genre should or can aspire to. I just happen to think worrying about implementing waifus should come after all your other vital features are fleshed out adequately.

 

[Sceptic]

Except I never said "Doom led to MM6".

True, that was in response to the article. My bad, I should've made it clear what was addressing your point and what was addressing the article's, I kidna mixed it all up there.

That MM6 uses stats to determine hits and Doom doesn't is not that relevant in practice, since the actual real time combat gameplay is quite similar.

On the contrary, it is entirely relevant. Again, it's like claiming that POR was derived from Xenon because hey, you "slaughter hordes of enemies" (your words) in both. Actually come to think of it MM6 was inspired by Xenon - "slaughtering hordes of enemies by strafing and shooting" is exactly what you did in Xenon too.

That's plain silly. The shooterization argument has always been about the deemphasizing of character stats over player skills. Oblivion plays more like Doom because it relies exclusively on player skill to dermine hit - just like Doom. MM6 doesn't. This is not a statement of quality - I love Doom, and the reasons I think Oblivion's shit have little to do with it using the shooter formula. The point is that just because both have enemies and both have strafing doesn't mean they play the same, and their mechanics are completely different anyway.

Oh and I wonder - if you were not slaughtering the enemies in Oblivion by "shooting and strafing" then how the hell were you doing it?

One could even argue that Doom is the more tactical of the games since you can trick enemies into shooting at each other.

Please stop.

What game did Ultima Underworld borrow shooter gameplay from? It predates Wolfenstein 3D by two months. The shooters did the borrowing.

Like all real-time first-person CRPGs UW borrowed heavily from Dungeon Master. But because of the 3D engine it could do many things that its predecessors could not, such as real physics and heavy use of Z-axis, and it also shone above the endless DM clones by having its world make sense and being populated with more than hordes of monsters that are there for no discernible reason other than helping you level up.

 

[Morkar Left]

The holy grail used to be trying to match the complexity and possibility space of PnP games. Now the holy grail is possibly being able slip date rape drugs into drinks in an elven tavern.

Indeed, but neither the timing (TB vs RT), control scheme (point'n'click vs direct and 'actiony') nor perspective (FPP vs iso) has much bearing on possibility space. If anything a 'shooterized' approach could be more fruitful - ever tried to cast a fireball at the ceiling (say you have a wood or thatched roof and you really want it gone or falling down in flaming chunks onto whatever is in the room) in iso game?
Oh, right, you can't.

The point is that both are completely different approaches to determine the outcome of combat. One is action-based (even when it comes with stats), the other is based on strategy and group tactics without time restrictions for the player. The later one is completely extinct in genre right now and the former is very poorly executed.
And that's not even considering the lack of freedom and nonlinearity in todays "rpgs".
That's all Matts rant is about. And he's rightfully doing it.

 

[octavius]

That MM6 uses stats to determine hits and Doom doesn't is not that relevant in practice, since the actual real time combat gameplay is quite similar.

On the contrary, it is entirely relevant. Again, it's like claiming that POR was derived from Xenon because hey, you "slaughter hordes of enemies" (your words) in both. Actually come to think of it MM6 was inspired by Xenon - "slaughtering hordes of enemies by strafing and shooting" is exactly what you did in Xenon too.

Again, I'm not talking about games deriving from each other. I'm talking about the similarity in game play.
What possible similarity in game play is there between Xenon and POR? One is a real time top down action game where you shoot up space ships and ground installations. The other is a turn based game where you control a party of characters.

That's plain silly.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

The shooterization argument has always been about the deemphasizing of character stats over player skills. Oblivion plays more like Doom because it relies exclusively on player skill to dermine hit - just like Doom. MM6 doesn't. This is not a statement of quality - I love Doom, and the reasons I think Oblivion's shit have little to do with it using the shooter formula. The point is that just because both have enemies and both have strafing doesn't mean they play the same, and their mechanics are completely different anyway.

You are confusing game mechanics with game play. In practice Doom and real time MM6 is quite similar in game play.

Oh and I wonder - if you were not slaughtering the enemies in Oblivion by "shooting and strafing" then how the hell were you doing it?

I've never tried "shooting and strafing" in Oblivion, since the enemies rush into melee too fast, archery is underpowered and slow, and you don't face the hordes of enemies you face in Doom and MM6 anyway.
In MM6 your blob has a much higher attack rate and combined with having more time for strafing and shooting since the enemies are slower and further away, the game indeed does feel more like Doom than Oblivion.
In Oblivon I had most fun using a custom made assassin/sniper (high Bows, Swords and Stealth skill), something which is not possible in Doom or MM6.

 

[Morkar Left]

Dumah
Trying waaay too hard. Good luck next time.

 

[Harold]

I have a sneaking suspicion that Dumah is hiver's alt.