Decline What killed off oldschool RPGs?

[Freddie]

Ah yes, that painting. It's like a joke on her name and her own head looking severed.

I am not comparing EA to Monet. More like Skyrim to Elvis Presley. I don't like Elvis. I also know that if aliens come and ask for our best artist I'll give them Elvis and not Arjen Lucassen I'd rather listen to. Humanity is the only measuring tool we can call objective. If people want Skyrim and Elvis then this is what works for human nature. If you claim any objectivity you can only use global popularity as a measurement, otherwise it looks like blaming human nature and reality itself for not conforming to your wants.

Still you make an interesting point. This talk about Bethesda and Bioware selling out sounds like a conspiracy to me. Akin to saying candy companies sell out by selling unhealthy sweets full of sugar. They always had a goal of creating something interesting to them compromising with what people want. They still do stuff that they want even when public doesn't appreciate it, they still have some artistic integrity. If you want some example of engineered hyped projects then you have plenty of movies and games people buy and instantly forget. Like half of current Marvel movies coming packaged with movies that people actually care about. Ant-man, Thief 2014 and King's Bounty Dark Sides are what you want to compare to Klimt's commercial works. Those things clearly had a lot of talented people involved but still came out like mediocre forgettable distractions, and even then it's not a crime to enjoy them a little. Still no one remembers them now and that's a good measure for me even if they made a lot of money (though only Ant-man did probably). Even if BioWare and Bethesda had sold out at some point people are still discussing and replaying their games from 10 years ago and producing mods for them. Those masses didn't just sheepishly consumed what they were given, they enjoyed and embraced it the same way you were touched by, I don't know, Planescape or Arcanum or whatever is a good artful RPG for you. Here we aren't talking about you liking sincere works of Klimt against his commercial work that plebs consume, we're talking about you liking Klimt while people like, say, Aivazovsky who is able to produce the same cool sea painting each week. Both are recorded in history, but Aivazovsky was able to do great art that sells.

This looks like over simplification. Of course there are people in any production who make them possible, who are interested delivering a good product, perhaps even a vision, simply because of people want to get better in their jobs, get better career opportunities etc. In the end however, there's very little individual freedom at least in the bid budget Hollywood films. There are legion of bean counters and assistant writers whom only job is to make sure that key personnel in productions don't take any unnecessary risks that would put money making formula at risk. Whatever passion there is, it's in accounting. I don't really understand your comparison to candy industry. Candy industry is in business making money, not candies. Candies as products, are mean to an end and with market saturation if product that actually is cheaper to produce and also somehow better candy, however that is measured, that's incidental. Same as films and AAA games.

What comes to games, your example of Bioware is perhaps misguided. Baldur's Gate series was developed when they were still independent, KotOR is notable because that made KotOR 2, which actually is interesting game, possible. I can't comment Dragon Age but Mass Effect was full of promise, sequels happened after EA bought them and while second of ME game sold a lot, ME3's saving grace from economical point of view was hype created by previous works, brand strength so to say, and marketing. ME4 (or Andromeda) was more of the same, and so terrible miscalculation that EA retired the series. I wouldn't count that there still are people still playing them and perhaps making mods, notable at these days and age. There are mods made for about anything and this sort of entertainment is accessible for so many people, that I don't see it's any sort of miracle that there are small fan base for everything, no matter how niche. Some modding, catering to say furry fetish crowd for example, probably has nothing to do if original work is loved or not. They are just platforms that happened to be in right place and that can be used to create content that satisfy totally different needs. Needs original product couldn't fulfil.

If these fans whole approach to original work is to destroy it and replace it with their own fantasy. These people exists yes, but how do their support your argument, when their whole approach to original work is narcissistic?

The point is all those modern games do not appeal to you personally. Let us even assume that is because of your personal sophisticated tastes, no nostalgia involved. Even then I'd say it's not that much about quality but about focus. Whatever older classic RPG you bring to the table I'm pretty sure its writing is not stellar, amount of content is not that great, UI is terrible and gameplay is unbalanced and simplistic. And there I don't even talk about things that are made easier by progress like graphics and sound - but it's not like you have to ignore those things when ignoring, you don't drive cars from 1950's saying that their characteristics where good for their times. There's some unique merit in older games but a lot of it is replicated in newer titles and a lot of it was due to, so to say, special requirements, similar to how people can be nostalgic about old arcade machines specifically designed to extort your money with unfair difficulty. And a lot of it is misunderstood: Wasteland/Fallout world wasn't great because it was postapocalyptic, it was great because it was special and original. But as you well know we get lots of Fallout clones who just try to make the same game, just like every fantasy novel tries to duplicate Tolkien's success forgetting that his success was due to creating something absolutely novel instead of copying something. Thus it's very tempting to deduce that love for classic games is more of an attempt to replicate a feeling of childish wonder you feel when you don't yet know that those games you're playing aren't perfect simulation of alien worlds.

Mechanics wise, I have yet to see ship to ship combat in space done better than other RPG's than in Gold Box Buck Rogers games (1990). Other notable work in that sense is Sentinel Worlds I: Future magic (1988). While changes are opportunity, for innovation to be fruitful, it's also good to ask if change is for the better or for the worse. You mentioned Bioware earlier, so let's see. There were sequences in KotOR where player took a role of gunner and defended Ebon Hawk from the attacking fighters. It was fun for first 3 times or so. The change what happened after that was that there hasn't been interactive ship to ship combat. That whole element was replaced with non-interactive cinematic cut scenes.

It's also very valid question if stats are removed and interactive sequences which allowed opportunities for choice, are replaced with 'cinematic story telling' and if after these changes product, which may be fine candy for producer, is however any more an RPG?

I also feel that your claim that childish (sense) of wonder would be based on people mixing these things with reality is very bold. Older generations saw Wright brothers fly, saw evolution of airplane and some of them man on the moon. They had reason to believe in exponential progression, colony on Mars 2020. What comes to science-fiction and aliens, I can't personally say I believed them to be true someday, even when I was a child, but they made interesting 'what if' scenarios, which sort of served stories inside of stories. Later I discovered Cyberpunk and I don't know, if we look at this world now 30 - 40 years later, in terms of changes in society. High level technology but stagnant progression, disappearing middle class that doesn't really own anything, post modern every man for himself culture, people ever growing need for escapism... I think calling those visions from the past, be those from literature or games, childish is plain ignorant.

 

[ilitarist]

But I'll tell you what separates the old-school greats from modern Bethesda trash: fucking role playing. In Fallout 1 and 2 (and New Vegas by the Obsidian guys), you feel like you're a real denizen of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. In Fallout 3 and 4, you feel like a goddamn tourist and that is by design. Bethesda actively encourages the player to NOT take the world seriously. This is the problem with all Bethesda games, going back to Morrowind. Lots to see, but everything you do feels about as meaningful as a fireworks display, which is to say, not. I can't see why you have trouble understanding this. I played Morrowind when I was younger and hated it for much the same reasons as I hate the new ones. In fact, I played lots of popular video games in the '90s, which I loved at the time, yet they do not hold up and thus they do not stick with me. Nostalgia goggles is a thing, but it's not THAT much of a thing.

Now you're talking. That's a solid distinction. Fallout 3-4 certainly doesn't take itself seriously and it feels much more like a game than a simulator. It has a specific gameplay loop and the game is focused on it. That same loop was inside of Fallout 1 too, of course, but there were less iterations of it, it was less defined, there was a lot of things besides this loop. But do remember that Fallout 1 too had a lot of problems in that regard - it's irritating how often your character has very specific things to say, sometimes with no real choice to make. Same problem with, say, Arcanum. And as you say part of Fallout's worldbuilding was a kitch which was overused by Fallout 2 and then even more Fallout 4 (I think Fallout 3 is around Fallout 2 level of sillyness), it do does too many jokes and doesn't take itself too seriously. It was a great thing to experience back then. Those who try it for the first time today have to suspend their disbelief for many obsolete parts and obvious problems to experience something unique in its roughness. And it is rough: there are lot of quests with very strange solutions, the balance is all over the place, your starting characters may vary from unplayable to unstoppable killing machines. In some regards it's more of a toy than a game. And there it helps that it's relatively short (that's why I don't like Fallout 2 that much, it's too big to be a toy and it breaks too easily).

In some sense games like Fallout 3-4 come from trying to fix legitimate problems with Fallout 1-2 that normal people like you and me had. If they'd ask me what I wanted for Fallout 3 I'd mention they'd need to balance it so that you couldn't create so obviously unviable character - so they made VATS work great with melee and also lowered impact of all stats on combat. I wouldn't, but everybody else would've asked them for more locations - so there are a lot of them and thus the loop is born. It was very easy sometimes to miss stuff in Fallout 1/2 so here comes quest arrow. All those hated things come from genuine desire to make the game better, I think, not just from desire to pander to people. They may overcompensate: this is very similar to how RTS genre was in a very bad place for a while. Around 2005 everyone started to think that RTS has to be a very complex experience focused on multiplayer and balancing for cybersport. It was a case of devs listening too much to hardcore gamers, not casuals. The result was lots of ambitious RTS that didn't gave you anything interesting in regards to singleplayer and overwhelmed you with complexity if you're not well versed in RTS genre. Multiplayer is still not very well balanced, people don't play the game, it dies. Kinda similar to Oblivion - as I remember developer previews apart from all the talk about graphics it looked like exactly what hardcore gamer would dream about - advanced AI, more of everything, cutting off unbalanced skills, making social interaction something more than clicking "raise disposition", proper stealth playstyle. And in Fallout 3 they've went out of their way to add what looked like huge choices and consequences on paper like that Megatonn blowing or becoming Jesus or becoming a slaver. In some regards there was too much choice - it didn't feel consistent (you can enslave but you're always to good for Enclave!) and was too insane for its own good - also see my previous rant about detailed world raising expectations. Like you can imagine Junktown actually has other people apart from 25 guys you see but in Fallout 3-4 you clearly see 96% of populace are raiders and mutants. We all know the result but to me it looks like good intentions aimed not just at casuals but at hardcore gamers too.

Couple of additional points.

Talking about it as the definition of old school doesn't work. Skyrim or Fallout 4 or any of those looped RPGs (probably includes newer Dragon Age games and Witcher 2-3) probably have more in common with Wizardry or Might & Magic games. They had this loop too, sorta. Those games are more like dungeon crawlers (even if dungeon is often a plain or forest) with some reactivity attached. If you limit RPGs to Fallout-likes then you have few options like that afterwards, true, but this view looks unfair.

Second, we still get games like Divinity Original Sin 2. It's sliced into acts so it doesn't have the feeling of a consistent world but other than that it has great reactivity, great feeling of freedom and all that jazz. It's not a very serious game and the setting is as generic as it gets - but still I expect people to talk about it for years to come. Can't be sure yet, of course. But even in terms of being similar to Fallout (or Baldur's Gate, don't know that much about Jagged Alliance but at least we have great XCOM games that are kinda similar - though they too have much more defined loop compared to JA2) we still get FNV, DOS2, Age of Decadence. What they lack in some regards compared to Fallout 1 they overcompensate with others.

 

[ilitarist]

Freddie, pretty sure people still remember Mass Effect series and circlejerk over ME Andromeda being the worst thing ever. By the way it wasn't like ME2-3 at all - much more similar to ME1.

Interesting point about narcissistic fanfiction. I have to think about it. Now I can't add anything apart from maybe they still chose some specific thing to drool over. Maybe most have to chose from what is shoved down their throats by marketing but they still tend to chose some specific stuff, and of course it's not the dumbest stuff they chose.

I haven't played those games you mentioned but of course space combat in KotOR and combat in general is reductive, but I don't see much difference in that regard between KotOR and, say, Baldur's Gate which is usually called a classic. Those game don't try to emulate everything and to me it looks like older games were too ambitious for their own good adding useless skills and barely working mechanics. From my point of view it's better to have no mechanics than to have bad ones. It sounds like I'm skeptical about those games I've mentioned but I just can't tell - maybe those games only had combat, maybe they lacked in some other respects. Maybe they're great and I'm loosing out.

About "childish" - maybe it's a wrong word I chose, I suppose it has negative connotation in English. "Innocent" is what I probably should have said, "optimistic".

 

[Freddie]

I haven't played those games you mentioned but of course space combat in KotOR and combat in general is reductive, but I don't see much difference in that regard between KotOR and, say, Baldur's Gate which is usually called a classic. Those game don't try to emulate everything and to me it looks like older games were too ambitious for their own good adding useless skills and barely working mechanics. From my point of view it's better to have no mechanics than to have bad ones. It sounds like I'm skeptical about those games I've mentioned but I just can't tell - maybe those games only had combat, maybe they lacked in some other respects. Maybe they're great and I'm loosing out.

Future Magic can be difficult to get into, it was that even back then. I think it's perhaps example of developer trying to achieve too many things at once, but that's not with characters but for other reasons. Then what comes to Buck Rogers games, it's that how they implemented it, it's very fast forwarded. Total opposite of 'defend the stronghold' type of missions and that was also achieved without adding zillion skills.

Scenario: There is a mission where party needs to get something from the middle of BioTard 2042 fan convention. There are multiple ways to do it, but because there are folks in the party which has suitable skills for armouring a van (Tech), driving it (Vehicles or some other skill that makes sense in the world) and a good gunner (Heavy Weapons) party decided to use opportunity to get some good will from some other gang and do the thing with style. They drive van through the glass doors inside the convention hall, driver hitting some security. Heavy weapons specialist takes care of the rest while other folks get out from the van, shoot, smash, cut up to pieces, blow up and burn fucking everybody. Then take the [Guest item].
There are some security forces tailing them and a road block but driver passes the skill check (Vehicles) and party gets away without further combat. They get money from recovering the item and because style and brutality they also get in better terms with other gang, resulting opportunity to get in the run involving stealing some rocket launcher shipment.

Previous choices were, if suitable personnel were recruited earlier to make this sort of approach possible. If required skills were on level which made get away possible (without fighting security forces, where failing would have it's own consequence and if fighters were good enough to survive them, let them, and / or destruction of van on roadblock).

In terms of not just Mass Effect, but it could be old sailing ship or modern yacht, even Zeppelin in Steam Punk setting, they are essentially garrisons, or not even that, doll houses and what I have seen. Game play combat is tedious, not involving real strategy layer, which tends to make those encounters cheesy. I don't really see the need to introduce huge amount skills, that's not how that was done in the past. Heavy machine gun is still heavy machine gun, even when it's inserted as hard point in yacht or zeppelin, there is no need for additional Heavy machine guns / weapons skill. Strategy layer makes combat faster, not slower and to make that work with normal gameplay, it's important that available skills are designed to make sense in the game world to begin with.

What is frustrating in new games, that instead of developing basically solid ideas from the past, they are cut entirely. Players times are wasted in cinematic episodes and choice and consequence is taken away. Like I wrote, good candy from manufacturers point of view perhaps, but for people who like RPG's, this sort of products are worthless, if they actually aren't RPG's any more, no matter the wrapper.

About "childish" - maybe it's a wrong word I chose, I suppose it has negative connotation in English. "Innocent" is what I probably should have said, "optimistic".

I think we may have been optimistic how possibilities of graphical and CPU power are used to benefit people enjoying cRPG's

 

[ilitarist]

Freddie, to me it seems you appretiate, so to say, systemic C&C a la more complex versions of Elite. Have you seen Space Rangers series? This is one of those games that tries to do everything. All the parts are disjointed though, you have skills for main space combat/trade/negotiating mode, but there are also ground combat and text adventure questing and arcade shooting that are only affected by some of your equipment.

 

[Freddie]

Freddie, to me it seems you appretiate, so to say, systemic C&C a la more complex versions of Elite. Have you seen Space Rangers series? This is one of those games that tries to do everything. All the parts are disjointed though, you have skills for main space combat/trade/negotiating mode, but there are also ground combat and text adventure questing and arcade shooting that are only affected by some of your equipment.

No, that's nothing to do with it. This is why it would be good if people sometimes tried to play those old classics. What comes to Space Rangers, I have 3 versions of Space Rangers II. It one of those games, while quite unique in it's approach, I like a lot.

I really didn't wanted to turn this to discussion about vehicles but used them as example, but I guess I must elaborate.

What I meant is getting closer to Pen 'n Paper games. I used to play them back in the '80s to early '90s. While scenario I described wouldn't work in AD&D, horses make great targets you know, and carts or wagons are useless without them... and using Golems is something I just don't want to start discussing. There are other settings, Cyberpunk and space fantasy / sci-fi where vehicular combat should be valid option. Buck Rogers cRPG is good example of that in computer space and it's actually based in Buck Rogers P'n'P.

So in tabletop players can buy or steal a vehicle and use it in anyway they wish. In P'n'P I would imagine one element that might make very exiting end game missions would be chase after recovering something like a missile from a warehouse, where for players losing the car, which would perhaps save their lives, would however also mean losing their loot. While this sort of sequences can be even improvised in P'n'P, yet still today in cRPG's this sort of sequences are just cut scenes. There's no interactivity.

When I described in scenario I wrote earlier, I didn't think about making it mini-game similar to Space Rangers, but combination of things. Players attack roll with assault rifle from back window of moving van, is still dependant of character skill in weapon class, possible specialisation (if exist in setting). Then weapon stats, adjusted by possible modifications. Then comes other variables, like penalties from firing on moving platform. In the end however, it's all still ThaC0 vs. AC. Actual special rules were perhaps needed for dedicated hard points, like heavy machine gun platform on top reduces penalty to hit because of frame and that position is elevated, but again in the end, variables.

Then vehicle offers opportunities too. Mass Effect 2 actually did something right in this regard. There were consequences if Normandy were upgraded or not when entering to the final mission. That said, I don't necessarily see that space combat would have worked in Mass Effect, where Normandy's most important feature was stealth.

What comes to driving / piloting, that would be also decided by the dice/RNG. Player can give command, make decisions, Evade Roadblock for example, but how likely that would be to succeed, would depend of relevant skill of character who is driving. For graphical presentation it's important how this works in Buck Rogers, it's abstracted but with computing power of today, something bit more nice could be done. Screen resolutions allow far more possibilities for GUI too.

I never played Cyberpunk or sci-fi tabletop, but rules for computer games were Autoduel (1988) was inspired by P'n'P Carwars (1980). SSI's Roadwar 2000 (1986) was strategy title where your gang operated multiple vehicles.

But in the end it's not about vehicles. It's about that despite you claiming that modern games as as good as old ones, I see very little evidence of that. Then, , I don't really know what is happening in fantasy space. Universally, sure graphics are nicer, there is voice acting in AAA titles and sometimes limited voice acting in AA productions, but those features don't make games good RPG's. There are few exceptions, I liked Shadowrun games and Wasteland 2 but what comes to big picture, for me it looks like we get nicer wrappers and contrast to freedom of P'n'P isn't narrowing but widening.

 

[ilitarist]

Ah, I see.

I think people struggled with this kind of things in the 90's. When you look at many games their inherent mechanics do look like they're from P'n'P, even when the game has no direct connection. Like Daggerfall has you learn languages and manners of speech and stuff. Same, of course, with all the D&D games that have simpler rules and try to simulate freedom through determined options in dialogue. Those games don't just have combat mechanics and, say, persuasion/lockpicking stuff that many modern games have, they try to simulate everything. And of those that I've tried every single one of them fails in that regard. I remember how I started Fallout and saw all those cool things and thought that I can be a ninja in this game. Or a trader, or a gambler, or a hunter - everything! Of course, the world assumes that first and foremost I'd be a dude with a gun and then in my spare time I may trade or gamble a little. Same with IceWind Dale 2 or Wizardry 7 - your party is filled with lore specialists, cartographers and diplomats which may make you think those games aren't almost exclusively about combat.

I think most modern RPGs had lost hope they can do stuff like that properly. I can see that for some people 8/10 shooter plus 4/10 stealth game is more enjoyable than, say, 9/10 shooter with no stealth elements. Older RPGs tried to have everything in them and I appreciate modern more focused designs more. And I suspect that most people do. When Pillars of Eternity had introduced a lot of scenes where you can use skills and stats in text adventure P'n'P style few people noticed. When they added Stronghold simulator that was systemic (unlike NWN2 which had few choices presented in dialogue) people criticized it for not being thorough enough. With modern level of detail few games can try to be unfocused, and only big AAA games like Fallout 4 throw in stuff like settlement building and scavenging, and it still feels out of place, and people in general don't seem to like it. Maybe for you personally amount of possible decisions (mechanical and storywise) is more important than level at which they're executed. Because I think it describes Wasteland 2, for example. It's not like that for me and, I suspect, for most people.

This web of gameplay mechanics today can only be found in Immersive Sim games. Like Dishonored or Prey or (slightly inferior modern ones) Deus Ex. There all the systems interact. Usually those games consist of relatively small levels where everything can interact with everything, and then some more pronounced decisions affect the whole game - obvious ones like what skills you take or what quests you do or subtler ones like what approach to problems you take. Those games intentionally limit themselves - most noticeably Prey which totally feels like a simulator of surviving the space horror thing complete with role-playing and freedom of approach to any problem - but it also makes sure that you want meet more than 10 alive people in the whole game and you won't have much to say to those people. Deus Ex makes your main character do most of the talking. Still if you look for P'n'P feel it's in there.

 

[imweasel]

Another thread with potential legendary status destroyed by walls of texts that nobody will ever read.

OH WELL

 

[Freddie]

Ah, I see.

I think people struggled with this kind of things in the 90's. When you look at many games their inherent mechanics do look like they're from P'n'P, even when the game has no direct connection. Like Daggerfall has you learn languages and manners of speech and stuff. Same, of course, with all the D&D games that have simpler rules and try to simulate freedom through determined options in dialogue. Those games don't just have combat mechanics and, say, persuasion/lockpicking stuff that many modern games have, they try to simulate everything. And of those that I've tried every single one of them fails in that regard. I remember how I started Fallout and saw all those cool things and thought that I can be a ninja in this game. Or a trader, or a gambler, or a hunter - everything! Of course, the world assumes that first and foremost I'd be a dude with a gun and then in my spare time I may trade or gamble a little. Same with IceWind Dale 2 or Wizardry 7 - your party is filled with lore specialists, cartographers and diplomats which may make you think those games aren't almost exclusively about combat.

It makes sense in the setting though. To be able to be anything, protagonist must first be able to survive.

I think most modern RPGs had lost hope they can do stuff like that properly. I can see that for some people 8/10 shooter plus 4/10 stealth game is more enjoyable than, say, 9/10 shooter with no stealth elements. Older RPGs tried to have everything in them and I appreciate modern more focused designs more. And I suspect that most people do. When Pillars of Eternity had introduced a lot of scenes where you can use skills and stats in text adventure P'n'P style few people noticed. When they added Stronghold simulator that was systemic (unlike NWN2 which had few choices presented in dialogue) people criticized it for not being thorough enough. With modern level of detail few games can try to be unfocused, and only big AAA games like Fallout 4 throw in stuff like settlement building and scavenging, and it still feels out of place, and people in general don't seem to like it. Maybe for you personally amount of possible decisions (mechanical and storywise) is more important than level at which they're executed. Because I think it describes Wasteland 2, for example. It's not like that for me and, I suspect, for most people.

I haven't played Fallout 4 but I read about it's world. Their take for settlement doesn't appeal to me because it's not reactionary for player simply clearing some area, but player needs to set up that doll house too. Garrisons... there are people who want them, but in cRPG it's always been the question, then what to do with them?
I recall castle in Baldurs Gate II being sort of cool thing during my first campaign and lame distraction when replayed it. Safe houses in Cyberpunk games make far more sense. What comes to using the idea in other setting and in 3D, I actually liked how in ME 1 BW realised that this works better if Normandy is the garrison (quite compact) and the Citadel is Athkatla or whatever it was, so to say.

I haven't played Pillars, but I think this focus larger and larger scope isn't necessarily always for the better. What I notice when I watch achievement tab on Steam, is that very few people appear to manage finish their campaigns. I recently re-played Shadowrun: Hong Kong, this time via evil path, and noticed that 0.8% of players have finished campaign via that path and only 2,5% of players finished campaign at all. I tried to look for statistics for SR:Dragonfall and it appears that about 6% of players have finished the campaign. It's also shorter game.

Yet people want these far more time consuming games, life simulators that take hundreds of hours to finish. Then most of them don't finish them, so they miss end game content, like final battle or something. Then they start anticipating the next game which is more of the same but again larger and then they don't finish that either. I wrote about this earlier in some other thread, but it appears that anticipating for this 'magical product' is the new product, Star Citizens being prime example of that.

There are economical realities, though there's chance of this turning to death spiral too and maybe that has happened already, but in the end popularity and cultural quirks don't make a good cRPG.

This web of gameplay mechanics today can only be found in Immersive Sim games. Like Dishonored or Prey or (slightly inferior modern ones) Deus Ex. There all the systems interact. Usually those games consist of relatively small levels where everything can interact with everything, and then some more pronounced decisions affect the whole game - obvious ones like what skills you take or what quests you do or subtler ones like what approach to problems you take. Those games intentionally limit themselves - most noticeably Prey which totally feels like a simulator of surviving the space horror thing complete with role-playing and freedom of approach to any problem - but it also makes sure that you want meet more than 10 alive people in the whole game and you won't have much to say to those people. Deus Ex makes your main character do most of the talking. Still if you look for P'n'P feel it's in there.

There is lot of overlap among different genres but I don't think every game should try to shine in every area. Deus Ex is one my favourites and one of the reasons I think is that it doesn't even try anything like party management. I think some limitations are acceptable like 1st and 3rd person games focusing to what they can deliver the best and isometric games for using advantages of that approach.

I don't see anything on computer can achieve freedom of P'n'P but perhaps doing more and better with less, would be approach to consider. Take one city, skyscraper, heist, Zeppelin, then party needs a pilot to fly it. There are three candidates. One is very good, but also very expensive. Other one is good, but very proud and may demand additional favours to take the mission. Third is cheap, experienced but has an eye patch, so no depth perception. So there are choices to be made. There might be side quests available for each pilot. The quest should be doable with everyone, but how well would it go if party chooses pilot with an eye patch?
And I believe this kind of thing is achievable without walls of text, without models which have even their toes animated, super textures and effects and hence super budgets and that's what I liked to see.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Pacing.

Compare Divinity: Original Sin to Dark Souls. Both are newer games, but I find myself going back to Dark Souls more than Divinity despite how much I enjoy cRPGs.

Traditional cRPGs are turn based and can be very time consuming. Contrast that with Dark Souls which has instant gratification.

 

[Silva]

What Drago said. I got disenchanted with CRPGs a long time ago due to the combination of slow pace, walls of texts and an adult life. Souls series was an eye opener for me, as it portrayed similar qualities as CRPGs in a package with better gameplay.

Which reminds me... gameplay in CRPGs is usually bad. You move a sprite around the screen, scroll down walls of texts, and enter tactical combats that are usually cringe worthy and light-years behind proper tactics games like Jagged Alliance or Xcoms. It's even ironic hearing people blame "storyfags". Why da fuck someone play a Bioware game if not for the story? Diaogue is shit, combat is shit, exploration is shit. Everything is shit. If you play those games for any other reason than the story you're a retardo. And the sad truth is that most CRPGs don't get much better than this. Arcanum has superb reactivity and C&C sure, but most of the time you'll be moving your sprite around and doing boring combat where all you have to do is repeatedly press the same button a hundred times. Fallout? Again, great C&C. Good luck dealing with slow as fuck combat (15min to kill a rat) and all over the place encounters that will force hundreds of reloads and hours wasted. Underrail? Fascinating, until you realize you're spending more time moving a sprite around the map than actually engaging in any meaningful gameplay.

Someone above said other genres adopted elements of CRPGs and I agree this is a big factor. These days I'd rather play things like Hollow Knight, NEO Scavenger or STALKERS than any self-entitled RPG because I'll find actually good gameplay together with the RPG elements I like.

 

[ilitarist]

Freddie, just for the record: I do not recommend playing Fallout 4, it's much more of an action game, first-person Diablo with some tame choice & consequence, big gorgeous world and several gimmicks like crafting and settlement building. It's not the evil brainless soulless mainstream pseudogame some people call it (Survival mode presents you with really interesting decisions and makes settlement management justified as you need place to rest, trade and save game so you have to build those around the map for your own safety) but it's far from presenting a consistent world and story. Pillars of Eternity is a fine RPG and has a good roleplaying mechanics like your character getting a sort of character fame, but it's a party-based dungeon crawler for the most part, not even close to Shadowrun games which often make you stop and think about how to react in an interesting conversation.

 

[Freddie]

What Drago said. I got disenchanted with CRPGs a long time ago due to the combination of slow pace, walls of texts and an adult life. Souls series was an eye opener for me, as it portrayed similar qualities as CRPGs in a package with better gameplay.

Which reminds me... gameplay in CRPGs is usually bad. You move a sprite around the screen, scroll down walls of texts, and enter tactical combats that are usually cringe worthy and light-years behind proper tactics games like Jagged Alliance or Xcoms. It's even ironic hearing people blame "storyfags". Why da fuck someone play a Bioware game if not for the story? Diaogue is shit, combat is shit, exploration is shit. Everything is shit. If you play those games for any other reason than the story you're a retardo. And the sad truth is that most CRPGs don't get much better than this. Arcanum has superb reactivity and C&C sure, but most of the time you'll be moving your sprite around and doing boring combat where all you have to do is repeatedly press the same button a hundred times. Fallout? Again, great C&C. Good luck dealing with slow as fuck combat (15min to kill a rat) and all over the place encounters that will force hundreds of reloads and hours wasted. Underrail? Fascinating, until you realize you're spending more time moving a sprite around the map than actually engaging in any meaningful gameplay.

Someone above said other genres adopted elements of CRPGs and I agree this is a big factor. These days I'd rather play things like Hollow Knight, NEO Scavenger or STALKERS than any self-entitled RPG because I'll find actually good gameplay together with the RPG elements I like.

I can agree with this to certain point at least and I picked vehicles as example earlier in different context, but there are others, like what you mentioned. Moving the sprite coast to coast is silly. Why do we do it?

In fantasy space reasons are in history that goes down to the Lord of the Rings at least. It's however silly that what people learned to do very soon in fantasy P'n'P, buy horses. (A)D&D cRPG's, can't do that. But I'm in disadvantage because I don't really know what is happening in fantasy space.

What I recall reading from other topics, is that there are also those who believe any sort of fast travel is some sort of heresy and I guess there are people who feel that unless characters jog 200 miles from coast to coast with their swords drawn and looking bad ass all the time, it breaks their immersion.
I think the best way might be offering options. IIRC one can finish Fallout 2 without using the car.

Trashmobs are annoying and interestingly, they might be ended being part of cRPG's by accident. Infiltron made news post from some blog that covers older games and it was some SSI published game way back. There were other sources too. In a nutshell, it appears that because president of SSI didn't really cared about cRPG's (he was strategy guy) there weren't much support or quality control. Devs didn't had any P'n'P background so they put lot's of trashmobs just because there were monsters in other games. It appears that didn't realised that there were used in earlier titles as XP sources, multi class characters take a lot to level up. And in normal circumstances no good DM puts encounters in game just because. Like party enters in 10'x10' room which is a dead end and there are 200 Kobolds there, just because. For pure dungeon crawling using random encounter tables makes more sense, but they were never supposed to be used everywhere.

ilitarist Thanks for the info, Fallout 4 hasn't looked that interesting though

There is something very interesting in Shadowrun games. I'm actually doing another PT of Hong Kong and hunting developers commentaries. Trash mobs, nope. Moving the sprite over the game world, nope. Even end game situations end up being epic, scope is actually quite small. There are NPC's player can choose to converse with whom can tell about history and events outside of Berlin or Hong Kong, did they needed to simulate the whole world to achieve that sort of depth, nope.

And some of the devs have their roots very deep in P'n'P. They knew what they were working with true and trough and IMO it shows.

 

[ilitarist]

Shadowrun games are the answer to the question "how can you have both story and gameplay". In fact, BioWare tried to be throaat starting with Knights of the Old Republic, I think. Silva implies you can't have non-linear roleplaying playground and challenging interesting gameplay at the same time. And when you're talking about Fallout or Arcanum then yeah, maybe you can. Unless you use level scaling in a very smart way you end up with game becoming trivial sooner or later, whole game mechanics being superflous and so on. I think Skyrim did good with its autoleveling but even that game is about finding a place where enemies are below your level and getting even more powerful by killing them.

But BioWare game structure - same as Shadorun or Pillars of Eternity - gives you gated content and harder bonus objectives. Nothing stops you from having intricate gameplay systems there as Pillars of Eternity and Shadowrun prove (and Tyranny and most BioWare games prove it's hard to pull off). They turn open world freeform structure into a railroaded web of decisions, sometimes with more pronounced effects - after all, in Fallout (especially Fallout 2) few of your decisions affected world as a whole while many of those railroaded games have huge changes (KotOR interactions change when you learn about the nature of player character, ShadowRun hub becomes different).

Again, Immersive Sims go for that feeling of interconnected world a la Fallout 1 but they lack social changes and are all action games by definition. Other than that you only have your Witchers and Skyrims. You've completed a quest in a certain way, now you get some special encounters in the world and guards say new thing around you from time to time, plus there are 5 dialogues in the world where you can go around Persuasion check by being known for finishing other quest, woo-hoo. Maybe that new Kingdom Come Deliverance is better than that but I think I'd heard it by now. Only Divinity Original Sin seems a little bit better at that but it still is divided into zones sort of BioWare style.

 

[Freddie]

I think much of the decline is about willingness to take economical risks. Scope of games is huge at these days, so are budgets and it's sort of death spiral that discourages any real innovation. We have better graphics, voice acting, user interfaces in general are well done. Adventures with walls of text for storyfags, but in the end, they are all more of the same. I think BW had good intention where they wanted to go with romances in ME1 but then someone grasped that 'Hey, these make nice distractions!' and there were enough very vocal fanbase to make it look like it was a good idea. Never mind that thanks to level design it was one of the few cRPG's where sniper rifle actually made sense. That sure ended well to franchise...

I think it's also a matter of attitudes. Ask any 10 people if they prefer quality over quantity and most of them are likely answer that they prefer quality. What happens on the market however, is that people keep buying and anticipating products, most of them don't even finish. Yep, money is on the quantity.

When reality is like this feels trivial to mention how merchant caravans in FO3 couldn't keep up with level scaling and tended to end up being destroyed by rad scorpions. Most players never get that far in game anyway, so why bother to make mechanics work properly? It's funny though how much it's like that old silly thing about wandering high level monster whom could loot and pillage most villages and towns in area, but somehow were only interested in protagonist / party. Now I think of it, where's the game where I can play as a rad scorpion? Eat and destroy everything, perhaps even those developers? Have some dialogue too 'I only exists to make your life difficult' and tie it up to some bizarre dialogue check, which would result denizens eating themselves in few seconds animation. They do it because of pity for creature they understand really has no other function in the universe but to be annoying. So you don't need even click that mouse button to sting, grab and eat them.

I guess these immersive sims are that then. It just leaves people like me who prefer our stuff isometric and turn based cold. Well, at least there appear to be interesting squad level strategy games coming up pretty soon.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

A few things killed it. The biggest was probably a reluctance to adapt. By 2001 gamers and gaming jounalist were over 2D, (this would be the same thing that killed Street Fighter 3 and turned 2D fighting games into a niche market a few years earlier, and the CRPG market was never as big as the 2D fighting game market) I don't think there was one review at the time for Arcanum that didn't complain about its "dated" visuals, and the same is true for a number of other ones. If consoles killed them it wasn't how it's being made out to be in here by some, it was the presentation they brought. By the time of something like Lionheart and The Temple of Elemental Evil, if they wanted to reach a wider audience, (or just an audience) they probably should have been 3D.

Studios also made the jump over to consoles way too late. BioWare does Knights of the Old Republic on the original Xbox in 2003, but Interplay should have probably been looking at how they could bring what they do to that market after seeing how well Final Fantasy 7 did in '97. My guess would be that turn-based tactical combat like in the original Fallout games would have done pretty well on the PSX. Weirdly Interplay never tried bring what they do RPG wise over to consoles, only doing those two Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance games (which were fun) and then doing whatever the fuck Fallout Brotherhood of Steel was.

 

[SpoilVictor]

Video games success. When video games grew up from their infancy they stopped being shameful hobby for boys, suddenly there were millions of potential customers wanting to spend their money. cRPGs ceased to be made by PnP RPG freaks for other RPG freaks. Now RPGs were made by "professional game developers" for folks wanting to live their Aragorn-like power fantasy. New target audience lacks background in PnP RPG's and values different aspects of the games than old audience. Funny how back in the days of IE era Forgotten Realms logo was desired selling point on the box, now it would be a burden 'cause no-one would understand that system. For the same reason almost all RPGs moved from numbers to trees, perks or circles which every dimwit can comprehend.
Same thing happened to simulators - back then there were for every possible thing: airplanes, choppers, tanks even submarines. But at some point publishers realized that they can sell some arcade, trigger happy game with tanks, but not a realistic simulation of said tank, made by bunch of enthusiasts who love tanks more than anything.

Rise of consoles didn't help either 'cause it forced to introduce gameplay focused on thumb activity. Its kinda funny how imput device (pad) shaped whole gaming landscape. RPGs became button mashers, inventories became unusable mess, shooters become mostly horizontal in their design, RTS died out.

Moral of the story: the more successful medium become the shittier it gets. Same thing happened to books - once only for privileged, now 50 Shades or Twilight sells in millions copies worldwide. Music: long gone are days of Bach, Mozart or Beethoven, now Bieber or other seasonal "star" reigns supreme.

 

[Background Character]

FPS killed the RPG star

Oh a oh I met your children
What did you tell them?

 

[luj1]

What killed off oldschool RPGs?

2006 in the narrow sense

in a wider sense - stepping out of the niche market

 

[Ocelot]

The free market killed them.

Why make a "nerdy" oldschool RPG when companies can sell 10 times more copies with an action/shooter/RPG hybrid instead?

 

[EveryoneIsAWeebButMe]

8 pages of navel gazing asperger-bait just to come to the conclusion that old school RPGs died because developers discovered how to make games not shit.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Newschool demographic.

 

[Egosphere]

8 pages of navel gazing asperger-bait just to come to the conclusion that old school RPGs died because developers discovered how to make games not shit.

Please do share some of the modern gems that are "not shit" like PST, Fallout etc.

 

[EveryoneIsAWeebButMe]

8 pages of navel gazing asperger-bait just to come to the conclusion that old school RPGs died because developers discovered how to make games not shit.

Please do share some of the modern gems that are "not shit" like PST, Fallout etc.

Fallout 4, Skyrim, Mega Man Battle Network 6, Final Fantasy XIII, Dragon Age: Inquisition.

 

[c2007]

8 pages of navel gazing asperger-bait just to come to the conclusion that old school RPGs died because developers discovered how to make games not shit.

Please do share some of the modern gems that are "not shit" like PST, Fallout etc.

Fallout 4, Skyrim, Mega Man Battle Network 6, Final Fantasy XIII, Dragon Age: Inquisition.