Decline Why 95% of the "modern" cRPG are so lame?

[DalekFlay]

Why does the world change we must stop it!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Why does the world change we must stop it!

Agreed, we should just let everyone die of disease because it's new and new is good.

 

[damagedbrains]

Because of modern project management practices.

Games with dev teams of 10-20 continue to be more fun than games with dev teams of 100-300.

Yeah I worked in a small team before, and I met a guy at uni who worked at Crytek as part of a 100 people team.

The difference in workflow and who does what kind of work is gigantic.

I worked on complete quests from start to finish: coming up with characters, placing them in the towns and dungeons, writing all their dialogue, writing the quest log entries, even determining what reward you'd get in the end and which encounters you met on the way. One full quest made by one person. All quests were designed like that: someone in the team was assigned to do a quest in location X, and then he/she would come up with the whole thing from scratch. There was brainstorming with other team members, of course, but the final product of your work was all yours.

The guy I met who worked at Crytek worked as narrative designer there and what he did was mostly coordinating the team and making sure all the different writers were on the same page. The way they worked was that the exact same character would have a dozen writers who'd all just write and handful of lines for that character. Each cutscene would be written by a different guy. Nobody in the team could point to one specific character, one specific mission, one specific event etc and say "I made that", the writers and level designers there only made small parts of everything. In the end you'd have one character whose lines were written by 10 different writers and stitched together by the project manager.

Of course you're not going to end up with anything interesting when that's how games are developed. There is no creative process anymore. It's assembly line manufacturing. You make a few little parts but you will never identify with the finished product because you barely had any control over its shape. There's no creativity in a product designed by committee.

Man I've been saying this to my gamedev friends for so long now, using the same word: its all committee designed. Although Kingdom Come isnt the best game around, its got a fuckin soul. Dan Vavra tweeted once (for the record I don't swing with twitter) how his team had like 7 writers for the whole game, compared to the truckload of meat bought from the writers shop at Rockstar. People defended rockstar. People like their rockstars and naughty dogs sweaty and beguiling, in the worst way possible. We don't get good games cause of people. Thats why its so much more important to play small dev'd games, although its difficult to find which one is worth playing.

I have my method of selecting games to try, I look at the picture of the guy who designed or wrote the game. Its really easy to spot a weasly one. Look for the length of facial hair and the sound of words. If its anything like Timothy Leary without the humility, stay clear.

 

[Wunderbar]

In the end, large teams means you end up with many cooks who aren't fully aware of what the other cooks are doing, all tossing their own spices and ingredients into the same bowl.

that is why Todd keeps BGS small - he cares about quality and consistency. Hail Todd!

 

[Lawntoilet]

Why does the world change we must stop it!

 

[AwesomeButton]

Neoliberal world may tell you how all you need to succeed is to work hard, but in reality people at the top know very well that it's them who hold all the cards and all the talk about hard working is just a mirage.

In most circumstances returns on capital are higher than returns on labor, so nothing to be done there. That has always been the case, except in times of crisies when labor becomes in such short supply that no matter how much money you have there is no labor on offer.

 

[adddeed]

In the 'CRPG Wasteland' era lasting from 2003-2011, only a handful of CRPGs worth playing were released, while the high-budget productions claiming to be RPGs gradually simplified and streamlined gameplay to such an extent that they arguably no longer belonged to the genre. The release of Legend of Grimrock in 2012 marked a profound shift in CRPGs, with the arrival of niche developers who created Incline by looking backward to classic CRPGs in order push the genre forward. Though, to be sure, they remained a distinct minority in the genre.

Legend of Grimrock (2012)
Paper Sorceror (2013)
Legend of Grimrock II (2014)
Underrail (2015)
Age of Decadence (2015)
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (2012/2013/2016)
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (2016)
Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar (2017)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018)
Kenshi (2018)
And various others

Nice propaganda. With the notable exception of AoD (and Dungeon Rats, which you fail to mention), your list contains naught but trash.

Now let's take a look at your so-called "Wasteland era" of 2003-2011:

Temple of Elemental Evil
Silent Storm
Hammer & Sickle
Mask of the Betrayer
Storm of Zehir
Fallout: New Vegas
Alpha Protocol
The Witcher 1
Mount & Blade: Warband
Knights of the Chalice
Gothic 2 (and NotR)
Dragon Age: Origins
Hordes of the Underdark
Shadows of Undrentide
KotOR
KotOR II
Vampire Bloodlines

So even with the epic decline of Oblivion, Oblivion With Guns and Ass Effect, an all-but-dead genre still exceeded your Kickstarter faggotry. Of course, 2003-2011 cuts a poor figure against Core Renaissance (1996-2002), but I'd take ToEE over every single game in your list put together.

You're one dumb bitch arent you. Jesus.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Underrail, Pathfinder Kingmaker and even ATOM RPG to an extent, are all great CRPGs.
The Slavs will carry on the torch of the west, both in terms of RPG development, and other areas.
The decline in CRPG quality is synonymous with the decline of your civilization. Have fun with Jamal and Abdul westerners

Lol, yeah the US has pretty much become a Banana Republic no different from a corrupt Third World country with sham "elections."

As a CRPG fan, Eastern Europe has helped saved the day for sure, along with Obsidian and InXile.

 

[Pompey]

Lol, yeah the US has pretty much become a Banana Republic no different from a corrupt Third World country with sham "elections."

You reap what you sow.

 

[Absinthe]

It's like devs don't understand the basics of structure and pacing.

You start grounded and then slowly build up to an epic climax that gets foreshadowed along the way, so you have something to look forward to.

When you have exploding dragons in the intro, what's left to build up to?

There's no rule that you have to start grounded. You can start with epic shit right off the bat. The question is whether or not you craft a compelling journey out of it or whether you're instantly just doing pointless wish fulfillment shit. You could make a game where the protagonist is a badass warrior solo killing a dragon with his sword in the opening segment of the game, only to have the next segment be "Some dude just stole your magic sword and armor; now you have to go on a journey to get it back. Good luck, Conan." and that would work. And it could be that the player never even has an epic fight like the opening segment for the rest of the game.

 

[KK1001]

Death of the mid-sized company and relatively hands-off publishing style. The goldilocks seems to be around 10 - 50 people working on a project. It's all indie shit (which has produced most of the best games of the past decade) or 2000 person corporate bureaucracies.

EA, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, Take-two need to be broken up. You could probably get 15-20 good companies out of their corpses.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Fact is, even indie games are shit now. They started great by developing games and genres that no one was developing anymore, because the idiotic mantra "it's old and it does't sell anymore" spelled by the management of AAA industry and idiotic journos. But now they just distanced themself from their roots again.

 

[Lilliput McHammersmith]

20 years of drought, there is a high probability the last great devs didn't pass on their skills and no one can make it happen but a couple of guys feeding of roots in their garage.

Maybe stop chasing after everything that's new. The best can't be beaten:

I highly doubt that "current gen RPG developers" have played JA2, and quite plausibly, have never heard of it.

They always mention the exact same games: Ultima, Wizardry, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and on some rare occasions, they mention Planescape: Torment.

I don't think that SS2 or JA2 ever reached the same level of popularity that those other franchises/games did.

Similarly, almost no developers mention the Gold Box games because, again, they were never as popular as the above mentioned franchises/games.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

JA2 isn't an rpg

 

[Raghar]

Obviously SS2 and JA2 are not RPGs. JA2 was classed as strategy game when it was released. And it was released in era when strategy games had some complexity. They were not streamlined crap that screams developers wants your money.

 

[JarlFrank]

20 years of drought, there is a high probability the last great devs didn't pass on their skills and no one can make it happen but a couple of guys feeding of roots in their garage.

Maybe stop chasing after everything that's new. The best can't be beaten:

I highly doubt that "current gen RPG developers" have played JA2, and quite plausibly, have never heard of it.

They always mention the exact same games: Ultima, Wizardry, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and on some rare occasions, they mention Planescape: Torment.

I don't think that SS2 or JA2 ever reached the same level of popularity that those other franchises/games did.

Similarly, almost no developers mention the Gold Box games because, again, they were never as popular as the above mentioned franchises/games.

Which is a big problem.

If you work in a field you should have more than just a surface level knowledge of its history. They don't allow you to skip medieval cathedrals in architecture class either, even if you want to build ugly postmodern brutalist blocks, nor can you skip the hideous brutalism even if you want to build classical manors for millionaires. You gotta get at least a basic familiarity with all the styles before they give you that architecture degree.

Meanwhile in game development, you can be completely oblivious of anything made before 2010 and that's totally fine.

 

[Lilliput McHammersmith]

20 years of drought, there is a high probability the last great devs didn't pass on their skills and no one can make it happen but a couple of guys feeding of roots in their garage.

Maybe stop chasing after everything that's new. The best can't be beaten:

I highly doubt that "current gen RPG developers" have played JA2, and quite plausibly, have never heard of it.

They always mention the exact same games: Ultima, Wizardry, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and on some rare occasions, they mention Planescape: Torment.

I don't think that SS2 or JA2 ever reached the same level of popularity that those other franchises/games did.

Similarly, almost no developers mention the Gold Box games because, again, they were never as popular as the above mentioned franchises/games.

Which is a big problem.

If you work in a field you should have more than just a surface level knowledge of its history. They don't allow you to skip medieval cathedrals in architecture class either, even if you want to build ugly postmodern brutalist blocks, nor can you skip the hideous brutalism even if you want to build classical manors for millionaires. You gotta get at least a basic familiarity with all the styles before they give you that architecture degree.

Meanwhile in game development, you can be completely oblivious of anything made before 2010 and that's totally fine.

I agree completely.

The lack of mention of JA2 and SS2 for tacticool games is not out of fear of being compared to the greats (I mean, they mention X-COM, FFS), it is a distinct lack of research and knowledge on the part of the developer. I mean, is anyone surprised that modern tacticool games are just a direct rip-off of nuXcom? These other devs had no knowledge, no love for the art, no motivation other than trying to cash in on the massive financial success of nuXcom.

 

[TemplarGR]

JA2 isn't an rpg

B-b-b-but it has stats and shiet

 

[Harthwain]

Video games is a hobby, feeling good about playing one isn't taboo, the quality of the content is the problem.

Hobby? More like mass entertainment at this point. Unless we talk about more specialized - indie - games, which target specific niches. This is bound to be more interesting than something tailored to as many people as possible. Also, smaller games tend to take their chances and experiment in order to make a dent, while successful series/developers tend to stick to "tried & true" approach, because it's safer that way. This increases the chances of finding a rough gem among the indie games.

And even if for some reason it's impossible for a huge team, why not doing it with a team of 40-50 people?

It's manpower-to-work ratio problem. The more work you need, the more people you need to finish it (or have to spend more time developing, which costs money. Or cut content, etc.). But at the same time there is a point when throwing more people at the problem isn't going to help, because it requires coordination.

Sadly with everything in this market they require some sort of spotlight, aka marketing. For example I'm almost sure that Space Colony is gonna be a good product, but given the lack of interest from the mainstream media outlets will it be able to reach the full market just by the quality of the product itself? So getting a good product is just a step, we complain that companies spend more money in marketing instead of the game itself but its for a reason. You have to constantly dangle the carrot in front of the retards and tell then to consume product.

I partially disagree - when it comes to smaller games the main reason to do marketing isn't to "constantly dangle the carrot in front of the retards and tell them to consume product", but to get info to anyone who might be interested. It's a simple message, really: "Hey, I exist!". There is a bunch of games I wouldn't have known about if I weren't subscribed to a YouTube guy who covers indie games. I agree with you when it comes to bigger games though - it's about getting the message as far and wide as possible, and to hype the game up, so it gets across to average people who simply don't follow gaming news (or do so very shallowly).

ctually I remember on something interesting. When BG3 was released, main developer of BG3 said he's surprised players shown someone who looked sensibly instead of using one of weird skin colors and million decorations. Basically, players did what I expected BG players do. They wanted to play decent game with sensible average story, and main character who would look like a parrot will not fit into the story.

There is much simpler answer to that: people playing RPGs often "insert themselves" into the game. Since a lot of people playing video games are white males, then it should be of no surprise that was the most commonly made characters. The second reason would be that human is a fairly simple start, as it doesn't require much tinkering with. You are much more likely to make a more complex character once you are familiar with the game, if you're not a genre veteran already.

When you have exploding dragons in the intro, what's left to build up to?

"A good film should start with an earthquake and be followed by rising tension" - sir Alfred Hitchcock.

It's like devs don't understand the basics of structure and pacing.

You start grounded and then slowly build up to an epic climax that gets foreshadowed along the way, so you have something to look forward to.

When you have exploding dragons in the intro, what's left to build up to?

There's no rule that you have to start grounded. You can start with epic shit right off the bat. The question is whether or not you craft a compelling journey out of it or whether you're instantly just doing pointless wish fulfillment shit. You could make a game where the protagonist is a badass warrior solo killing a dragon with his sword in the opening segment of the game, only to have the next segment be "Some dude just stole your magic sword and armor; now you have to go on a journey to get it back. Good luck, Conan." and that would work. And it could be that the player never even has an epic fight like the opening segment for the rest of the game.

I watched an anime once and the way it worked was by breaking the ceiling and making the main character become more and more epic/crazy to overcome the seemingly impossible odds. But this can work only so many times before it turns into a parody.

 

[Momock]

I think it happens to CRPGs what happens to anime: instead of seeking inspiration from observing the world and try to transcribe it (rules trying to simulate in the game how things work in the world, environements based on real locales and architecture, characters with motivations that make sense) or tell something about it (just the rules tells us something about how the autor thinks the world operates, no need for in-your-face "commentary"), nowadays the devs only take inspiration from other CRPGs (trying to emulate the rules of games instead of the rules of the world, so we see always the same systems, there's no inventivity) and they speak about themselves ("metacommentary", or whatever the name is, and the rules are for the sake of the rules). Also: pandering to retards.

It's not the only cause of course, a lot has already been said here (and is right). But I think it's a big one.

PS: 95% of RPGs are shit just because they're garbage, I was more talking about the 5% that are supposely "good" but are just boring to me.

 

[Gray Wing]

They water their games down in an effort to appeal to the lowest common denominator in order to recoup the cost of all the voice acting and texturing HD horse butthole.

Companies were not as 'risk averse' during the sprite and text based era.

 

[DalekFlay]

If you work in a field you should have more than just a surface level knowledge of its history. They don't allow you to skip medieval cathedrals in architecture class either, even if you want to build ugly postmodern brutalist blocks, nor can you skip the hideous brutalism even if you want to build classical manors for millionaires. You gotta get at least a basic familiarity with all the styles before they give you that architecture degree.

Meanwhile in game development, you can be completely oblivious of anything made before 2010 and that's totally fine.

I don't know how "video game school" works, but if they don't at least have one class on classic video game design that would indeed be a shame. However I also think it's true that if you're making a game in 2021, it's 10,000 times more important to know what sells now, rather than what sold then. Also if someone were to make a "retro game" like Dusk or whatever, I would want that to come from passion for that time period and style, rather than to make some money off of boomers and gen-xers. I guess my overall point is that exposure to these styles and genres are what matters, more than some kind of formal instruction.

Luckily I think the exposure today's youngins get to older games is more frequent than ever, with speedruns, youtube randomness and the general popularity of *heavy sigh* "nerd culture" and retro tech as hipster street cred.

 

[Glop_dweller]

Why 95% of the "modern" cRPG are so lame?

Lame is a very apt description, but in the real sense of the word; not the slang sense. They are hamstrung both by committee, and choice of preferred demographic.

I believe the answer is Anthropophobia... though alas, it might not be an irrational fear these days.
These days the offended organize on social media for word of mouth boycots, studio/developer shaming, and worse.

To do anything significant in any creative field these days—and release it to the public, one has to simply not give a shit and just do what feels right for the project. That will never happen with design by committee.

Once... I was asked to —volunteer!— a booklet cover illustration for a school fair. It showed the school yard, a band, and happy people enjoying the fair. This was pen & ink to be printed 4" x 5½", and the band singer was about ¾" tall. By the time it got through their committee [each one vying to have their own opinion make a difference; be obeyed]... I was told that the singer was over sexualized, and they demanded changes. It was absurd; it was because the singer was wearing a full length dress. Design by committee disproportionately empowers either stupid people, or fearful ones.... in both cases the ones that relish & thrive upon being able to say, "I told you so!" at every opportunity.

 

[Dycedarg]

I don't know how "video game school" works, but if they don't at least have one class on classic video game design that would indeed be a shame. However I also think it's true that if you're making a game in 2021, it's 10,000 times more important to know what sells now, rather than what sold then. Also if someone were to make a "retro game" like Dusk or whatever, I would want that to come from passion for that time period and style, rather than to make some money off of boomers and gen-xers. I guess my overall point is that exposure to these styles and genres are what matters, more than some kind of formal instruction.

Luckily I think the exposure today's youngins get to older games is more frequent than ever, with speedruns, youtube randomness and the general popularity of *heavy sigh* "nerd culture" and retro tech as hipster street cred.

You're right when you say that people making retro style games should be motivated by passion. But I don't think there's necessarily a choice between retro games and what sells right now. A few years ago, many journos considered turn based combat to be a relic of the past. And while many still do, there is clearly a market for turn based rpgs. And if you guide yourself strictly by what sells right now, chances are your game won't stand out in the crowded Steam marketplace. Unless, of course, you're already a very big company.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

always do the opposite of what game journos say and you'll have a best selling video game no problem