The general decline of gaming

[Black Bart Charley]

Oh please, explain yourself with "JA2 and Xcom are completely broken". It's a hopeless exaggeration. They're fun games with good gameplay.

JA2 exploits are listed in the JA2 strategies thread. But they are not exploits on itself. The AI is just dumb. I, as a thinking individual, recognize the faults of the rulework and AI and use it to reach the objective of the game. I dont larp! Since there is no rule regarding time, the game becomes a tedious exercise in patience. That is broken design. See, the point of the AI is to replace a human and the AI is not doing a good job. Because the usual tricks like range abuse or nighttime attacks would never ever work with a human. A human would gang up on you and not just run 1 by 1 into your guns...

And now we come to balance which you dont understand. Mirrormatches are the ideal representation of good balance. But balance does not mean mirrormatches. It means balance in everything. There is a fucking philosophy about it, ying and yang. Your superior troops in JA are balanced out by the higher number of enemies. But this balance gets fucked up by the unable AI, in every game that has a decent complexity to it.

XCOM is so broken, I feel embarrassed to have to explain to you psi tech, the random moving AI, the no time limit on missions, the unlimited money through alien drops, the sniper method, the ... the ... the...

AI is the problem that destroys Balance. Always. And there only one cheap way to make it bearable and that is time limits. Or larping.

And it would matter because they're competitive games between human players. Strategy games like Total War or Paradox games or wargames, or RPGs, are a wholly different matter, though.

No they arent. They are exactly the same. They are games. You game them. Well, you dont. You play and larp. Gaming against humans is the whole purpose of their existence. The AI replaces the human for whatever reason.

failure of understanding as predicted by roguelike example which he does not play

Yeah... I am not surprised.

You have an own game design blog! Read something for a change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game

A game is there for you to compete. Building sandcastles is not gaming. Watching cutscenes ist not gaming. Reading dialog is not gaming. And yet people play those games and enjoy them. Hell, I do too. But lets not lose the true ideal out of sight. And lets not make thread about how everything was better back in the day without hard definitions of what is better, good or bad, without numbers and statistics, without style or substance. Leave the Youtube comments quality posts to Youtube.

 

[DraQ]

I'm sure all of you are familiar with the following conversation:
Oldfag: "Man, games sure were better back then..."
Newfag: "It's just nostalgia back then there were shit games too you only forgot them and remember only the good ones."

Thusly, or similar, go many conversations with newfags about the good old days. It's just nostalgia! they say. You only remember the good games, and then you forget about their flaws! Then they say how games are better today since technology has progressed, and all the usual crap. And while most of what they say is just dumb newfaggery, there is one point nobody can deny: the past had its share of mediocre and shit games, too.

But, thing is: shit games back then were less shit - or, at least, differently shit than modern shit games.

No. Shit games were always shit. And nobody cares about shit games. The thing is, that most (fortunately not all) of current, high profile 'hits' would qualify as shits instead according to old standards.

There is nostalgia.

There is staying power making good games appear more common in the past because time has washed the shit ones away.

And there is the simple fact that back then the games were much less often designed by committees and were therefore much more open to experimentation, innovation and plain old fun.

If some fuck in a suit tells you that you have to include 47% more bloom, 20% more emo characters and 76% more gay romance to boost sales by 12%, you won't end up making a masterpiece - you'll end up sucking dick of some fuck in a suit. Current games are to much lesser degree creative efforts and much greater degree sucky pieces of shit. You can correct for nostalgia, you can account for staying power, but that still won't eliminate caring for lowest common denominator, design by committee and focus groups.

The problem isn't shit games - those always existed. The problem is even major blockbusters being shit.

But just because I cant control myself:

Balance is fucking GOD. Fucking everything. You are a disgusting storyfag and dumbass without a grain of structural thinking. Games are not for playing, they are for gaming. Elite individuals game. Mirrormatches are true gaming. From sports to computer games. BALANCE IS GOD. YOU are the reason gaming declined so much (according to you).

Black Bart Charley, you're a moron.

A malformed, developementally impaired, aberrant, mouthbreathing, retarded fuck.

Balance has its place, it's very important in competitive games played by humans VS humans - coincidentally this happens to include all your examples.
Good job, kid.

However, it's probably the single, most crippling notion anyone ever tried to apply to a single player game. How would you try to balance such a game anyway - with not only vastly asymmetrical setup, but also with one of the sides having vastly different capabilities than the other, because only one of the sides is human.
Now, there are some elements of balance that are just bare essentials in a single player game - game should be completable, game should avoid allowing excessive cheese, and game should provide some actual challenge, but the notion itself is way too vague, especially in RPGs, and there are too many uncontrollable variables involved to make even attempting to achieve balance beyond the essentials I've outlined anything but futile.

And that's why you're a retard - have fun being a unique, beautiful, drooling snowflake, that cannot control itself.

 

[Burning Bridges]

See, the point of the AI is to replace a human and the AI is not doing a good job. Because the usual tricks like range abuse or nighttime attacks would never ever work with a human. A human would gang up on you and not just run 1 by 1 into your guns...

This is bullshit man. The point of AI is not to replace a human - which is impossible - but to enable a human to play alone. If your whole JA2-is-broken is based on that bullshit argument you can forget that anyone here will take you serious. In fact I guess half rpgcodex is already lying on the floor laughing about that narcissistic rant of yours.

But before I get the inevitable flame from you, one thing, I do believe in balance too. And I first thought I was on your side, since I think of chess balance myself whenever the storyfags rave about their unbalanced games. But bringing Ja2 as an example of bad balance? C'mon, this is simply too rich. You think you can troll the codex? JA2 has the most optimal difficulty curve of any game I have ever seen. You can play it for months and it never feels too easy or too hard. It keeps putting up a challenge like almost no other game does.

 

[grdja]

Nitpick (that got me to register after 5 years of lurking).

Black Bart Charley is wrong to use chess as example of perfect balance. We can not mathematically solve chess at this time, so it is uncertain if there for example exists certain win move patter for white or black.

 

[sser]

It was pretty rare for a shit game to get accolades in the past.

I think that is the biggest difference between "now" and "then".

 

[JarlFrank]

delusional bullshit

Why do you always equate your holy grail of absolute balance with gaming vs playing? What about "I like playing gameplay-heavy games like dungeon crawlers and strategy games where you have to fight superior enemies as a challenge" do you not understand? Just because I don't share your idiotic views and don't have the same unrealistically perfectionist expectations from AI doesn't mean I prefer LARPing to actual gaming. Trying to play a successful game in Europa Barbarorum on hard campaign difficulty with an initially small and weak faction such as Pontos and having fun with the challenge of trying to survive against much stronger opponents is LARPing/sandcastle building exactly how?

Also, while JA2 AI is exploitable relatively easily once you know what you're doing (which means you've already played the game once or twice before), it is, especially with 1.13, quite competent and always poses a challenge, especially towards the end when you have to take the capital and they have lots of elite soldiers who will manage to fuck you up if you don't play optimally.

 

[Black Bart Charley]

However, it's probably the single, most crippling notion anyone ever tried to apply to a single player game. How would you try to balance such a game anyway - with not only vastly asymmetrical setup, but also with one of the sides having vastly different capabilities than the other, because only one of the sides is human.
Now, there are some elements of balance that are just bare essentials in a single player game - game should be completable, game should avoid allowing excessive cheese, and game should provide some actual challenge, but the notion itself is way too vague, especially in RPGs, and there are too many uncontrollable variables involved to make even attempting to achieve balance beyond the essentials I've outlined anything but futile.

See how he supports me? Enough complexity -> broken balance -> broken design. Not only that, the AI programmer is just flabbergasted by all the possibilities. And it always happens. I hate that. I see the glaring flaws and the game becomes a tedious exercise in abusing them because I am fucking surely not gonna play even field with a dumb AI. I am here to game by rules, to reach an objective, to win. And some dude the page before said that he doesn't care that a game has overpowered shit in it. Well, he is the posterboy of shit design and oblivion love. If someone gives you a gun and pitts you against a dude with a sword, will you rather have a sword too? Oh I forgot, you create arbitrary rules to make it more challenging. Well, chess masters are known to play multiple opponents at once but at least their rulework is solid. What I am trying to say is, shit design stays shit design.

The point of AI is not to replace a human - which is impossible - but to enable a human to play alone.

As opposed to playing with someone? Everytime where AI is involved, a human can do a better job. Be it a symmetrical setup like in chess or not like in some rpg trash fight. So essentially the AI should behave like a human, eg replacing one, but not laugh at you when you lose. But it is never up to par. So the game becomes different design-wise, compensating for that inability. Be it through masses of enemies or timelimits or whatever enters the developers mind to counteract the crappy AI.

But bringing Ja2 as an example of bad balance?

People win that thing with 1 character. Abusing all the known tricks. It would not work if the enemy was controlled by a human. I have emptied whole maps by climbing on a roof and shooting... They just come running to the sound. A human opponent wouldn't. Where is the balance in that? Of course the whole game is long and you've got only so many soldiers so you could say, well, its alright if 1 of mine can kill 10. Buts it not like that. Your IMP can win the whole game! Why? Because the AI...
And as I've said, you can compensate for broken AI by introducing timelimits (my favorite feature) but that is by no means clean design. Its the same thing Panzer General does. If I had no time limit, I would move 1 hex per turn and the crappy AI would not be able to cause any damage...

Black Bart Charley is wrong to use chess as example of perfect balance.

Never said "perfect". I would be wrong by "perfecting" it alone because the set up is not symmetrical.

Also, people, stop clinging to the word balance. Its not defined by any hard standard. Its an approximation. Its just that computer games are utterly broken in that regard because their AI sucks and the compensations are shit.

do you not understand

Oh I understand. You larp.

idiotic views

citation needed

unrealistically perfectionist expectations

Thats how everyone should roll. Because if they dont, they play the Wii. Was it not you, who started a thread about how everything was better back in the day? Take a guess what happened...

 

[Burning Bridges]

Right, computer AI does not play like humans. Thanks, but we figured that our ourselves, long ago.

 

[Raapys]

There is no decline :mindtrick:

 

[piydek]

Back then there were tons of shit, today there is only SHIT, with a capital S.

My take is that, since I have to sift through lots of trash to find something worth playing today just as much as I had to then, little has changed about the overall quality of the medium.

0/10

More like "-10/10".

Fuck, even these smaller and quite cheap indie games i find on Steam that I like and that give me lots of fun are nowhere near to even mediocre stuff back in the Amiga days for example. I had C64 prior to Amiga and there was lots of shit, but mostly because i had to play pirated little games on cassettes. BUT, most of those SHIT games that existed were still daring, they were more like "WTF, this is truly some crazy shit, what were they thinking?" than uber-epic cutscene and gimmick fest for braindead lowest common denominator of today. It was VERY different and anyone who says differently has no clue what he's talking about.

Shit, games used to be really fucking daring, when i look at early C64/Amiga gaming. There was even lots of maladjusted and downright anti-social stuff. Lots of crazy ideas. Many of crazy ideas that didn't work as well, but a crazy idea that doesn't end up working well is so far ahead of ultra-safe approaches companies are almost exclusively taking today, it's not even funny. You don't have to sift through games to find good ones today, you have to sift through them to actually find something that doesn't insult your intelligence.

One of the major points that is quite overlooked here and that i believe is the most important for the clearly happening decline is that what was once labour of love and free-thinking became professionalism, business, completely money-oriented. And there's no need to explain to the codex what that means.

 

[piydek]

snip

Do you ever actually say anything worth reading or just indulge in shitty rants? You are quickly becoming a dumbfuck-material.

 

[made]

I've pointed this out in another thread which I can't find anymore due to search being broken, but innovation is still there if you bother to look for it. Of course, if you view 1st/3rd person shooters by the biggest publishers as the entirety of gaming you will be disappointed. Look instead at MMOs, casual games, indies, Japanese devs... Doesn't ArenaNet try to break many conventions in their upcoming GW2? Don't a bunch of JapRPGs try to combine oldschool gameplay with modern features? Don't we get stuff like Portal that, if perhaps not groundbreaking in its own right, takes a different spin on an old mechanic? Hell even the big names, while naturally focusing on sales, sometimes manage to fit interesting new stuff in their games - didn't for example AC, boring as it was, feature a never-seen-before crowd simulation? I thought that was quite impressive.

No doubt, gaming as a whole is different now that it was decades ago and will continue to change, but saying there is absolutely nothing new happening while in ye olde days innovation was the only driving force is just too simple and shortsighted.

 

[turn_based_fanboy]

Hate to side with the newfag alt but BBC is not only amusing but also correct in some points. OP suffers from selective memory or is idd a 90s kid. People tend to forget all the shit released back then. There is a word for that phenomenon.

The problem doesn't lie in the number of shitty games as there always were tons of shity games. What is pissing people off is serious lack of truly epic masterpieces that will be remembered after the years.

 

[314159]

So I take it you don't remember all those endless CnC* clones newfags**???

* Command and Conquer
** Teenagers

 

[WalterKinde]

I agree with the OP, I had a similar discussion last week with friends on why there are so many shitty/badly written tv series/movies and that just a decade ago they were better.
The problem is theres now too much shit/technology to distract aka the Internet back then in the 90s etc the Internet wasnt as big as it was, pc gaming as well as console gaming was a luxury most people didnt have more than one pc or two or more different consoles, you had something from sega , neogeo or nintendo not all of them, most devs put effort into their games because it had to sell sometimes over a long period of time, they didnt do focus groups or even have the power of bribing reviewers.
Now its just all cookie cutter to sell the most copies in the shortest time before moving on the sequel or DLC.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS I AGREE TOO THE DERIVATIVE FIGHTING GAMES AND PLATFORMERS OF OLDER TIMES WHERE MUCH LESS DERIVATIVE THAN THE DERIVATIVE STUFF NOW

NOT TYO MENTION THE DERIVATIVE ULTIMNA 3 CLONES WERE MUCH LESS DERIVATIVE

IN SHORT BROS EVERYTING TODAY SUCKS AND OLD TIMES WERE SOI AWESOME GAMES CAME WITH FREE HOOKERS AND BEER

 

[Zomg]

Human v. human adversarial games have such obviously superior gameplay than anything single player they aren't even comparable. If you think that isn't the case you are retarded. The point of single player games is very rarely about making a multiplayer adversarial experience you can play by yourself, i.e. gameplay. Maybe you like it because you like learning systems, maybe you like interactive fiction, maybe you like relaxing grinding, memorizing patterns, whatever, you don't like it for gameplay, don't imagine that you do.

I disagree with the AI thing from BBC though, mostly "AI" is not about making a serious pseudo-opponent but rather just about making something in the gameworld somewhat animate.

 

[Black Bart Charley]

snip

Do you ever actually say anything worth reading or just indulge in shitty rants? You are quickly becoming a dumbfuck-material.

Do you? I'd also like some quotes about that dumbfuck thing. That offends me greatly. You dont throw words around without any backing up, do you? Here, I'll summarize the worth reading part for the lazy.

Op is born in 1990. Op is a moron.
They were cloning left and right from the get go of gaming.
Go on Mobygames and make a statistic for the years 85-90 and 2005-2010. Lets see how much diversity there is now and then. Otherwise, shut your dumb, empty mouth and fuck off to your pathetic shit of a blog.

As for complexity, Crawford said it in 92 better than this faggot will ever manage. Breadth won. And its not like depth was a good thing. Games that have a sufficient depth are broken balance and ai wise. Always were, always will be, but storyfags that lick up the shitstains of a game like Morronwind never learn.

Point is, I hate him and everything he stand for and he made an unsupported rant about things he never witnessed (neither did I) and his mentality is actually the reason you get "games" like the sims and got partly applauded for it.
And then he offered more great insight like that here:

Balance isn't the holy grail of game design

you claim it's impossible to properly balance a deep and complex game

obviously, you never played a wargame.

I bet, the motherfucker still haven't read the wiki article about what constitutes a "game"

The more complex the game is, the more fun it provides to me.

See, how he doesn't care that the complexity is basically fluff but not "game". Its fundamental concept of choice without consequence. I mean, its not like I dont understand it. I have feelings too. But, please:

A game is there for you to compete. Building sandcastles is not gaming. Watching cutscenes ist not gaming. Reading dialog is not gaming. And yet people play those games and enjoy them. Hell, I do too. But lets not lose the true ideal out of sight. And lets not make thread about how everything was better back in the day without hard definitions of what is better, good or bad, without numbers and statistics, without style or substance. Leave the Youtube comments quality posts to Youtube.

And then I was forced to explain how JA and XCOM are totally bonkers. They are "games" just as Checkers is...

Right, computer AI does not play like humans. Thanks, but we figured that our ourselves, long ago.

That was not the point. Point is, the "game" JA2 is not balanced because the AI is dumb and because there is no mechanic to compensate for it, not even some kind of a time limit. Ergo, its not a good game.

The point of single player games is very rarely about making a multiplayer adversarial experience you can play by yourself, i.e. gameplay.

As you say afterwards, than its not a good game. Its a running simulator like Morrowind and Oblivion. But thx for the support.

I disagree with the AI thing from BBC though, mostly "AI" is not about making a serious pseudo-opponent but rather just about making something in the gameworld somewhat animate.

You generalize and dont define. What is AI? Whats animate? AI is not AI everywhere. Quake bots are not equal to to single alienagents on an XCOM map or the strategic enemy in XCOM.
There are different approaches to it and mostly the developers try to build a "fun" AI. And the integral part in game is challenge. Making somewhat animate doesnt not sound like challenge.

 

[Zomg]

I'm saying the integral part of single player video games isn't challenge or gameplay at all. I'm not going so far as to say what the integral part then is, but all these dudes are playing single player games and enjoying them and single player games have intrinsically wan and mediocre gameplay. I am against their widespread delusion that what they're enjoying is the gameplay; I'm not for the delusion that whatever single player game I like is about gameplay and only my taste is therefore legitimate. Single player quasi- or pseudo-gameplay should be done as well as possible I guess, particularly in the realm of eliminating stupid and/or boring bullshit, but it's a constituent not the whole.

I'm like you, I don't fellate the gameplay of X-Com or JA2 because I know damn well how degenerate it is, but I did enjoy those games for a stretch - why, I don't really know; to explore the scope and nature of the game or something, what gameplay there is, the roleplaying, the story, the art, the music, gun porn, who knows.

 

[JarlFrank]

Hey Black Fart Charley you still haven't commented on me saying that I like challenging combat against enemies that are stronger than your party and have to be defeated by tactics/skill, or trying to win an EB campaign when playing with a small faction surrounded by stronger enemies.

And the integral part in game is challenge.

So you'd probably agree with me that these kinds of things are fun and REAL GAEMS even though they're not "balanced" (or, much rather, the balance is in favour of the AI).

 

[Baddygoal]

*Everything that BBC and Zomg said*

Are you high? Do you even know what this thread is about? You posted a Wiki article, lets see what that says:

A game is a structured activity, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool.

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction.

The first lines from the first two paragraphs. Nothing in there or the rest of the article that might suggest that games like X-COM or JA2 are not 'true' games. Challenge is largely subjective. Playing against humans is not some sort of grand gaming ideal, it's just another form, another subset of games.

Human v. human adversarial games have such obviously superior gameplay than anything single player they aren't even comparable.

What are we talking about here? Multiplayer games like Starcraft? Counterstrike? Chess? Snakes and Ladders? Multiplayer Bejeweled?

Surely that depends on the mechanics of the games themselves. Is a head-on match where two humans have to compete to press a single button the quickest more fun than say...the entirety of Fallout 1? Is Sudoku worse than Checkers? But are they only comparable if you play Sudoku against another person, competing to see who does it first?

Just out of curiosity, what PC games do you both consider to be good/great/excellent/tr00 gaems?

 

[Zomg]

I have no idea what the thread is about, I read some of this page of it, maybe. This is the Codex

Most of where I'm coming from is rooted in arcade fighting games, but on PC I'm thinking stuff like FPSes, War/Starcraft, yeah. Those and fighters are obviously heavily execution-bound; I've never played a turn-based game like chess or something like M:tG at any significant level of skill or competition but I recognize that stuff as "real" adversarial gameplay also. Humans can react to your actions, and you react back; the hall of mirrors type situation where modified strategies lead to modified strategies etc. I have never played a single player game that could even slightly emulate that qualitative effect. Single player gameplay is like solving a Rubik's Cube or untying a knot - it can be fun, it can be a little interesting, but it's ultimately inert and waiting for you to permanently crack it open. Multiplayer adversarial gameplay can also be perfectly boring and stupid I guess if you really try for it.

Maybe unlike BBC (not sure) I am absolutely not saying I am a pure and noble gameplay fan and nothing else, I like all that other single player stuff like roleplaying and not being annoyed by other people. What I don't do is say, "I love gameplay. So I'm playing Wizardry 6 and abusing class changing... because that's gameplay."

 

[Baddygoal]

Back on topic, I agree with the OP. At least on a personal level the number of games being developed and released that I am excited about and that I want to play has been on a downward trend since the early-to-mid 2000s (in before "newfag!", I mean all genres of games, not just rpgs.) and has pretty much plunged down to 1 or 0 per year.

When it comes to indies...there might be some if indies actually tried making more 'proper/full size' games instead of churning out endless retro rip-offs or platformers with a single gimmick. Thankfully, there might be a few indie games on the horizon which have potential.

Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard, a shooter set in the ST universe where you play a Klingon warrior
The Wheel of Time, a fantasy shooter set in the WoT setting
Heavy Metal FAKK², a third person shooter/slasher made as a sequel to the cartoon movie Heavy Metal 2000
American McGee's Alice, an action/platformer based on a very interesting interpretation of Alice in Wonderland
Star Trek: Elite Force, another Star Trek shooter where you play as a member of an elite combat team on Voyager
Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, a Star Wars shooter where you play a Jedi and where you have a lighsaber in addition to guns
Gunman Chronicles, a game in the Half-Life engine which plays on a tropical planet with dinosaurs

All good games or good-for-what-they-were- -games. Gunman Chronicles had an interesting 'sci-fi western' sort of atmosphere.

 

[Baddygoal]

I have no idea what the thread is about, I read some of this page of it, maybe.

Ah ok, that explains a lot.

Most of where I'm coming from is rooted in arcade fighting games, but on PC I'm thinking stuff like FPSes, War/Starcraft, yeah.

Makes sense. I see where you're coming from with respect to fighting games and RTSs.

I've never played a turn-based game like chess or something like M:tG at any significant level of skill or competition but I recognize that stuff as "real" adversarial gameplay also. Humans can react to your actions, and you react back; the hall of mirrors type situation where modified strategies lead to modified strategies etc. I have never played a single player game that could even slightly emulate that qualitative effect. Single player gameplay is like solving a Rubik's Cube or untying a knot - it can be fun, it can be a little interesting, but it's ultimately inert and waiting for you to permanently crack it open. Multiplayer adversarial gameplay can also be perfectly boring and stupid I guess if you really try for it.

Again, I understand where you're coming from with adapting strategies and so on, and it is fun. However situations like these aren't exclusive to multiplayer gaming. Take games like Total War, Europa Universalis, Galactic Civ etc in which you make and execute plans then adapt to what the AI does. Granted the AI is exploitable (*if you choose to*) and after enough playthroughs you'll know all its tricks and tactics, but its the same with humans. You play chess or magic the gathering enough times with the same people and sooner or later everyone will know how everyone else plays, you'll learn 'exploits' that work against certain people, and so on.

I suppose, in the end, while multiplayer might have potential and, as you put it, 'real adversarial gameplay', it's very dependent on who you play with and how often you switch opponents.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS ZOMG AND BADDYGOAL NEITHER OF YOU FUCKS HAVE READ THIS THREAD THE POINT IS TO MAKE WITTY ONE LINERS AND INCRESSE YOUR CODEX CRED BY MAKING FUN OF NEW GAMES