Now that the dust has settled, how do we make RPGs fun again?

[Desiderius]

There's been a an infinite number of pixels spent here discussing what has made RPGs decline over the past couple of decades
Avowed and Veilguard have clearly vindicated that labor... you were right

So fellas it looks like it's up to us

How can they be fixed?
What do you want, specifically?
Which things did you like about old games that never had a chance to evolve, progress, or come back?
What makes a compelling RPG story
What conditions need to happen to make good RPGs?

Men

 

[MASLV]

1. tough fights
2. cool rewards
3. big boobs

1.challenging fights
2.more rewards
3.im an assman

 

[notpl]

1. Gore
2. Smaller teams
3. No "writers," dialogue and story come from people who have at least one other, real job like coding or modeling

I would say "no women devs" but #3 already takes care of that without being so overtly sexist.

 

[Gregz]

So fellas it looks like it's up to us

How can they be fixed?
What do you want, specifically?
What conditions need to happen to make good RPGs?

There is a certain group of people promoting degeneracy across all forms of entertainment. Until/unless that group is removed from power, nothing will change.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

CRPGs should reset, forgot what happened in the last 20 years or more, and restart from scratch. Instead of looking at and copying the trends in the videogame industry, they should start to use again TTRPGs as a main source of inspiration, like we were again in the '80s, when the first cRPGs were made. Obviously I am not speaking about using current year WotC D&D TTRPGs, but, for example, alterative indie OSR TTRPGs, or others.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Explore genres outside of medieval fantasy. It’s oversaturated. There’s countless genres that you could set a crpg in. Just look at the plethora of ttrpg settings outside of medieval fantasy.

Stop telling epic stories where the protagonist is the prophesied hero who will save the universe. Again, that’s oversaturated.

 

[Incognito]

What do you want, specifically?

Three simple things. It's not rocket science.

1) Excellent turn-based combat with appropriate difficulty that doesn't treat you as a mentally challenged person.

2) A mature narrative, without leftoid progressive themes, and good world building that entices exploration.

3) Branching story and quests based on your decisions. Yes, that's C&C.

Cheers, Sherry

 

[Abu Antar]

When good rpgs come along, not enough people play them.

 

[Takamori]

Some already mentioned already
1) Good fun violence and gore
2) Stories that range from plain tragedy to the usual stuff that we are already used to but done in a sober manner where it takes player agency into account
3)Item autism, ban colored item tiers of retardation do an itemization system where the person have to use their basic cognitive function to notice what is good or not for their characters
4) Get rid of the fucking chosen one plot, I dont need the game 24/7 fondling my balls in a artificial manner
5) Build diversity where the game explore it systems in a respectable manner instead of following the regurgitation decline that Bethesda introduced with Skyrim where there is no wrong choice just build whatever and become anything
6) Thats a more general for all games, allow players to fail let them engage with problem solving.

 

[Ebonsword]

Explore genres outside of medieval fantasy. It’s oversaturated. There’s countless genres that you could set a crpg in. Just look at the plethora of ttrpg settings outside of medieval fantasy.

I dunno, is true medieval fantasy that oversaturated? For example, I wouldn't consider BG3 to be "medieval fantasy". In fact, D&D hasn't felt like medieval fantasy since, I dunno, sometime during 3rd edition? Once shit like tieflings, aasimar, dragonborn, etc. became common races to play as, it became much too weird to be medieval fantasy.

In contrast, something like Dragon's Dogma 2 really captures the medieval fantasy vibe of 1970s D&D for me. Actually, I consider DD2 an excellent example of how you can make a party-based RPG that caters somewhat to "modern" sensibilities while still being an excellent game.

 

[Iucounu]

When good rpgs come along, not enough people play them.

True, gamers get the RPGs they deserve. This applies not just to average AAA consumers, but also to more discerning gamers if we don't seek out and promote new good games.

The good news is that reducing AAA bloat (excessive cutscenes, voice acting and poor business management) should keep costs down substantially, so I'm sure a frugal but talented indie dev could be able to make a profit even from good games.

 

[JarlFrank]

What do you want, specifically?

More immersive sim elements. Environmental interaction and reactivity. Opportunities to do things with the skills and spells I taught my character. Fun skills and spells to use on the world.

The more simulationist a game is, the better. Fewer abstractions, more simulations. Fewer simplifications, more complexities.

A proper RPG should let me do things. Quest design should be open-ended rather than prescriptive: design quests around a goal that can be reached in any way you want, rather than forcing you to do it in steps.
Good: "Your water filtration system has failed and you need a replacement chip. Go find one."
Bad: "Your water filtration system has failed and you need a replacement chip. First, go to Vault 15 and ask them for one." and only after you visited Vault 15 and didn't find one, you can go to the next place and ask there. This fucking sucks. Fallout is great because you can skip a lot of steps once you know what to do, all that matters is reaching the goal.

In a similar vein, quests you can solve before you get them. And quests that you can fail before you get them. Tamriel Rebuilt has some of these, where you can get a quest to capture the soul of a unique monster in a soul gem, but if you already killed it without capturing, the questgiver will tell you that you suck for doing so. Having your actions in the world carry consequences even when you don't know or expect it is super cool and shows the devs paid attention to details.

Which things did you like about old games that never had a chance to evolve, progress, or come back?

More detailed and layered equipment systems, like Morrowind's. There are a few games that do this, like Kingdom Come Deliverance, but not to the same extent as Morrowind, and most games have the same copypasted equipment layout of helmet-breastplate-gloves-boots. Let me wear a shirt underneath my armor, and a robe above it, and two different pauldrons for cool mix-and-match armors! This is not only cool for dressing up your character in a unique style, but also makes loot more rewarding, particularly in a solo action RPG. With a single character, adding more equipment slots means more of the items you find will be useful. If you only have 4 armor slots, they'll be filled quickly, and anything you find from now on has to be a straight upgrade to be worth picking up. With over a dozen equipment slots, you can go much longer before filling out your optimal armor set.

The ability to use any skill on any object in the environment, as seen in Fallout. With the skilldex, you could simply choose a skill and use it on whatever is in front of you. Click on the repair skill, click on a broken well, your character attempts to fix the well. Nowadays, interacting with objects usually involves clicking on the object and getting a dialog window with several options to choose from. Age of Decadence is a prime example of that, all interactions happen through dialog windows. Fallout's skilldex is a lot more elegant and requires you to think up the solution yourself. The game doesn't just tell you "Hey man, you have the option to repair that well", it only shows you a damaged well, and if you put some skill points into repair you might think about trying to repair it. Fallout didn't use this feature to its full potential, and no other game since has picked it up. The potential this has is insane.

 

[Tenebris]

At this point you'll just need to stop looking at companies we knew and go for new ones. Unless most of them clear house and get all new writers it's just going to be more of the same. It would also help if companies showed a bit more patience in cultivating a fan base rather then instantly trying to go for mass market appeal in the hopes of a mega hit.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

CRPGs should reset, forgot what happened in the last 20 years or more, and restart from scratch. Instead of looking at and copying the trends in the videogame industry, they should start to use again TTRPGs as a main source of inspiration, like we were again in the '80s, when the first cRPGs were made. Obviously I am not speaking about using current year WotC D&D TTRPGs, but, for example, alterative indie OSR TTRPGs, or others.

But BG3 did just that, including the degeneracy that goes hand in hand with playing ttrpgs with other people.

 

[CanadianCorndog]

What I'd like to see in RPGs:
- a moral premise that is supported by the choices in the game
- writing by authors who have some experience in life outside of mass media
- interactive worlds instead of static worlds
- something like a PKD or Strugatsky novel turned into a game

 

[mondblut]

We wake up back in 1990, having forgotten everything that happened after like a bad dream it was.

Nothing else will work.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You don't.

 

[VHS9000]

Make blobbers great again. This will solve most of the problems.

 

[itsme]

Purging all psheks from here would be a good start.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

With respect to writing:
Bring back stereotypes. I like my stocky beer drinking dwarves, dumb brutal orcs, powerhungry conceited mages, humble and good paladins, greedy and nimble thiefs, maidens in need of rescue, dungeons full of traps, uncivilized savages, etc. Add a small twist to keep it interesting and tell a classic story. Just read a couple of good old fairy tales, fables, legends, and myths, and take it from there. Keep modern politics out of it.

With respect to mechanics:
Remove open world cargo cult design and bloat. Don't add mechanics for their own sake or just because they have become "standard" in games. Shit like crafting that relies on picking up tons of pointless items that fill every cup and corner of the world. Another cancer is level-scaling and item levels.

 

[PrK]

What conditions need to happen to make good RPGs?

I believe, in our times, it fundamentally comes down to two things:

1. Willingness to make a good game.
2. Ability to make said game.

For the first point, you can easily see how from the start it precludes any game by a big, publicly-traded company just because their priorities are on making money chasing the lowest common denominator, which in turn means – at best - dumbing it down beyond any acceptable threshold. And as the Codex very well knows, the goal of pushing a specific ideology, despite the obvious detriment to the quality of the game, is something that is incredibly prevalent on teams of every size.
As for the second point, even if you manage to have a pure-hearted team wanting to make a good game, you run into competence issues. Artists that lack talent or even basic knowledge of composition or colour theory, coders that are basically script monkeys and can only work on a bloated proprietary engine, or worse of all designers that haven’t even played the cornerstone games of the genre they are working on, thus stuck on trying to reinvent the wheel, falling flat on their faces along the way.

You need but to compare the average RPG developer team of today and even the average publishing executive to that of three or four decades ago to realise that the conditions for making good RPGs have worsened significantly. The only hope currently is from the starving artist subsisting on roots, a small well-meaning and talented team taking a decade working on it on their free time, or the lightning in a bottle happenstance of an eccentric millionaire willing to fund a bigger team of such autists.
Or fucking trying doing it yourself. There is no other way.

 

[Sweeper]

It's a bit like asking how do we restore the Roman empire.
You don't. We had our golden age, and it ain't ever coming back. To a large part the advancement of tech contributed to the "industry standards" problem, which completely and utterly stifled creativity.
When niggas were working back in the 90s, not only were they a higher caliber of niggas, in terms of quality and creativity, but the fairly primitive tech forced them to dial their shit up to 11. Today? You get dumb fucks like Jason Thor Hall. The industry is filled with 'em. They don't wanna make games, they want to be game devs. Same thing right? No, you dumb-dumb, there's a world of difference between the two.

We will, on occasion, get ludokino like Underrail, AoD or Battle Brothers, but as great as they are they too are merely pale imitations of the golden age.

Purging all psheks from here would be a good start.

Don't forget the pepiks.

 

[Sergio]

I must've missed the part when they stopped being fun. Look past the AAA garbage.

 

[RoksCQ]

There's been a an infinite number of pixels spent here discussing what has made RPGs decline over the past couple of decades
Avowed and Veilguard have clearly vindicated that labor... you were right

So fellas it looks like it's up to us

How can they be fixed?
What do you want, specifically?
Which things did you like about old games that never had a chance to evolve, progress, or come back?
What makes a compelling RPG story
What conditions need to happen to make good RPGs?

Apply long knives to developers that design combat with balance in mind.
Cleve made a good point about certain bugs / sploits / easter eggs being left in the game, give the player a chance to go "oh shit a discovery (mechanic / loot)" that stands out

 

[Viata]

Short, can create the whole party, turn-based, no "save the world" bullshit, if possible single dungeon. Just a party having fun exploring this dungeon, maybe some gold or an amazing weapon hidden there. That is it.