I miss the old RPG style.

[faspxina]

I feel you, but the problem with those old games is that when "you press a button", nothing "awesome happens".

 

[Hides His Eyes]

snip.

You completely missed the point of my large ass post right?

I said we cannot compensate at this moment. Developers are getting tools down and learning with the tech and stretching it as far as they can go. Accessibility is Key, not "because of maths" but because they do allow easier things to work with. As much as I'd like to see swords and axes having a few different skill sets, I wouldn't mind missing it if it involved losing say...several dungeons or shouts.

In the words of Howard Stark:

"I am held back by the technology of my time, it is up to you to finish what I started"

Developers cannot please both sides. So they pick what they can to provide an enjoyable experience, in this case, graphics and size over substance. What'd be the point of playing Skyrim if there are only like 3 towns? It'd be fun, but alot less bigger than you'd expect.

I agree they can't currently have both. As I said, character options and depth are (partially) at odds with fast-paced action gameplay. My point is that there is no reason to always pick one over the other, when there is clearly still a huge market for games that sacrifice the latter for the former. And there is a huge market for them; that's why threads like this are so frequent, even if they bore you and Team Rocket. It's also why the developers of Shadowrun Returns set out to raise $400,000 for their project and have raised over $1,800,000.

Also, I'm pretty Skyrim is spatially smaller than Morrowind, if not by much.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

Well one of the problems is that when we got better processing power we became able to do things real time.

Yea, that's why they never had action gameplay in real time back then. Oh wait, they did.

Not the extend you are talking about. We didn't have the calculating power to simulate the AI of 5 darkspawn at the same time while calculated the dmg according to their set place and power.

Yeah we had action games. Just nowhere near what you are suggesting.

Uh... unless your definition of "old RPG" excludes Fallout, real-time gameplay wasn't a problem when that generation of CRPGs was being made.

My definition of action RPG excludes fallout....

I dont find that to be so strange.

Well one of the problems is that when we got better processing power we became able to do things real time.

Yea, that's why they never had action gameplay in real time back then. Oh wait, they did.

Not the extend you are talking about. We didn't have the calculating power to simulate the AI of 5 darkspawn at the same time while calculated the dmg according to their set place and power.

Yeah we had action games. Just nowhere near what you are suggesting.

The way you made it seem was that all they could back then was turn based combat or something.

They made rpgs like that because they were trying to emulate p&p rpgs/wargames on computer. The modern rpgs are all action game/shooters now because they're trying to appeal to the most ppl possible. And we know there's a ton more action/shooter fans, than traditional rpg fans out there. Eh, it's all about the $$$$$$ obviously.

Dude what does the P&p games have in common?
They are designed to be able to be done on paper. There isn't a lot of calculations going on here because they were designed to be done at a reasonable phase.

When we got more calculating power what do we do with it?
That we can calculate 8 combat turns a second then what does it add?
Nothing.
We got better processing power allowed us to do real what we were forced to make into simple maths.
Look at it from a different perspective where you dont have a bias towards nostalgia.
Guild wars 2 combat VS SWTOR combat. One uses an old system with a target lock and the other is moving towards an action oriented play. The WoW mode of combat was a result of limitations and resulting design decisions. So was a lot of your old combat.

If I want to play an action game, I'll play a fucking action game. There's only like 859545486479650876085975484985956987 of them out there to be played.

Why should all games play similar to each other ? That doesn't make too much sense, does it ?

Its not a question of what is a better game.
It is what is more likely.

A poster before me said it best.

Well one of the problems is that when we got better processing power we became able to do things real time.

I agree. But real-time is not inherently superior, and I think it's time developers realised that. Turn-based just fits better in some types of game. Kind of like colour film. It was a great technological advance and thank god for it - but some films are still made in black and white because they are better in black and white.

Thanks, but I do agree with Anthraxus here. If I want to play a game that's full of fast-paced action then I'll play an action game. If I want a game where I get to create the main character and direct his/her traits and abilities myself, then I look to RPGs. And contrary to popular belief, these two things are at least partially at odds with each other.

Its mainly because maths is fun really (to the right people). I didn't really bring into what was the best type of game. I love my turn based strategy for the very reasons you just said.

The thing is when we have the calculating power to calculate the actual trajectory of a set of arrows in Shogun then ofc we are going to use it rather than have a 1-10 roll and 123 is miss.

Yeah I see your point. But fidelity to real-world physics is not the most important thing. Also, I don't find maths fun at all, I just loooove building my own characters, and if a little maths is required for that then so be it.

I do get tired of explaining to people that it's about choices, not about "watching numbers get bigger".

But you can still build up chars with a high degree of choice in the modern action RPG's. Take Kingdoms of Amalur for example.

I am going to go out on a limb here and while you say you dont like math, I think part of you do if you love the old style game. It is the basic drive of a strategy game. Being able to see the pattern and figuring out how to manipulated it to your advantage.

Ofc I may be wrong. It is just an assumption on you looking back on specific old style of RPG. It rewards you understanding the system higher than it rewards execution. The crucial difference between the new and the old ways.

Ok, maybe I do like working the system a little. But it's definitely secondary to the choices thing. I am always out to create MY character, not necessarily the BEST character.

And yes, there are some big RPGs that still do the choices thing pretty well. Amalur is a good example, based on what little I've played of it, although it is still miles behind Neverwinter Nights or Morrowind. But from looking at the way Bioware and Bethesda seem to be taking their respective franchises, and now the zero-player-input system of Diablo 3... it's a downward trend.

 

[DoPo]

But you can still build up chars with a high degree of choice in the modern action RPG's. Take Kingdoms of Amalur for example.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you only get a rogue, a warrior, a mage and the combinations between them in KoA, right? And they were primarily focused on fighting, so you have "i hit stuff", "I shoot stuff and hit it from behind" and "I blast stuff", with some combinations that overlap slightly. At least that's what I got from the demo. Are there any viable non-combat skills/builds?

 

[Something Amyss]

It is like saying "there is no good heavy metal anymore" when you just listen to rap and R&B. Of course you cannot find any good heavy metal anymore. You are not actively looking for it.

Of course, that's still a shift. It used to be you didn't have to look for these games.

That's one of the down sides of innovation and a growing market, more genres to make games in means fewer titles in each genre.

You are joking, right?

This isn't the result of "inovation" (LOL, btw) or the growing market. It's a result of consolidation.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I think it has a lot to do with developers being afraid of their work being wasted. Cory Barlog and Casey Hudson had an interview at one point where he said something along the lines of "we could never make a game like you, where there is a chance the player might only see a 1/3 of it". Developers dont dare to block of a path for the customer. If the customer got the game he should be able to exp almost a 100% of the work they put into it in 1 play-through. I think it is another by product is the CoD liniar gameplay. They want people to look at their animations because they spend time on them. Something missed is work wasted.

It is casualty of modern game I suppose.

Yeah, I think that this is a legitimate problem with "modern" RPG design - I think that with the type of content in graphics-intensive/voice-acted RPGs, it becomes very expensive for them to give the game deep choices. One of the reasons I've very psyched to see what they do with Wasteland 2.

 

[Weaver]

People always bring up the old days, as much as nostalgia is great and we should learn from the past, we should NOT be using it as the main way to the future. We wa-NO, NEED, games to advance in order to make them better: RPG's, FPS's, JRPG's whatever the genre.

So complain all you wish, I don't have anything against you. You have your opinions and I have mine, but take a look at what we have now to what we have then:

2012:

2003:

Notice a difference? And before you drop the "No, they're both horribly written games that are bugged to hell" line, THINK about what we have. There is more than meets the eye.

Well, uh, Skyrim has better graphics and worse core design. And I guess it has more scripted events. And physics and AI gimmicks it doesn't do anything interesting with. Hey, I know, better pathfinding! And alchemy has a different interface. Truly this is the pinnacle of what RPGs should be.

Re: your core point, I think it's important to remember that "advancement" and "improvement" are not synonyms for "using the latest technology."

Morrowind also had an a pretty usable UI on the PC as well. It was really easy to manage my shit in Morrowind, but in Skyrim it takes me like 3 minutes of menu sleuthing.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

Actually some of the best character skill systems I've seen are in Vampire: The Msquerade - Bloodlines and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obsucra. Arcanum in particular, what they have in common is that when you level up/get experience it's given to you purely in the form of points to spend on abilities, which are all clearly spelled out from the start so you know what you're building.

Except that they never bothered to actually spend more than one femtosecond on balancing Arcanum, so you so never know whether you're going to create a useful character.

Just how bad is the balancing?
Strength gives exponential bonuses to melee attacks, and Agility lets you accumulate enough action points to cross the entire screen in a single turn to move in for the kill.
On the other hand, all the buyable firearms are effectively useless, and crafting the actually useful guns requires spending additional points in Intelligence and Gunsmithing.
And the resulting firearms specialist wielding a freaking Elephant Gun will still be a vastly inferior fighter to Dog, your party's animal companion, because he was "smart" enough to dump all his point into Strength and do such ungodly amounts of melee damage that he'll simply *chew* through reinforced chests and lava golems.

I know bad the balance and combat are, but that's why I always play it on Easy so that I can build my character however I want without having to worry about details like that. For example, my first character was a magick-allergic Dwarven gunsmith, and I managed to get through the game eventually. So yes, obviously the combat needed to be balanced in order to make picking combat skills more meaningful, but my main point was that I never felt cut off from the rest of the possible options. Compare that to pretty much D&D game where the moment you pick a character class and race you essentially close off more options than you open up. Fair enough, that works in a pen and paper setting where the game is defined by having a team of human players working together, but in a single player RPG it just feels limiting.

Blah, I know I'm rambling but my basic point is that I don't think a PC should be limited by character classes in a single player RPG.

 

[LilithSlave]

I miss how innovative Chrono Trigger was in the SNES era.

No random battles, no battle-screen switches(Chrono Cross has this), multiple endings, new game plus, the works. I know a lot of people hate Kingdom Hearts and there's this big Kingdom Hearts backlash that's happened, but Kingdom Hearts was one of the few games that truly learned from its predecessors in terms of gameplay. And even it could have gone a lot farther.

But I also like the old RPG style even in the ways people use this against jRPGs and call them as outdated and not evolving. In some ways, yes, they could be doing better. I still like old school RPG styled. I'd rather play Tales of Symphonia, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy Tactics, and so forth, than the lot of these modern wRPGs that seem to be dominating everything. I'm even starting to get nostalgic for bad Final Fantasy games when faced and bad jRPGs in general when faced with a flurry of Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect and so forth being everywhere.

Heck, jRPGs are seen as old school. Japan has been making a lot of first person dungeon crawlers as of late, and Wizardry is practically seen as a jRPG now. After all this Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, and so forth talk out there, I think I could go for some good old Wizardry myself.

Having said this, if they made a sequel to Jade Empire with a bigger world, more quests and less boring combat I'd be all over it. Frustratingly shallow, but I think it's the best world and one of the best stories BioWare have made.

AND HIRE TECMO FOR THE CHARACTER DESIGNS.

 

[omglazorspewpew]

I am kind of surprised it hasn't been brought up but...how come you aren't paying attention to the DS and the PSP? Those systems had a boatload of those kinds of older style RPGs. Most of my DS collection are RPG games. Between all the Shin Megami Tensei games (Devil summoner, Strange Journey), Radiant Historia, Etrian Odyssey series and a few rougelikes like Shirin the Wanderer and Izuna, those would keep me satisfied for a long time.

As far as huge console RPGs, I was always under the impression that is very hard to make them because of how expensive they have gotten...PC is a slightly different story though, but I am not very qualified to speak about those

 

[scorptatious]

I don't what it is with these nostalgia threads, but they just bug the hell out of me.

OT: Now, I do like a lot of older RPG's as you can tell by my avatar. And while I can somewhat agree with some people's complaints about some of modern day RPG's, I still have fun with them. The Mass Effect games had an engaging story-line with a great cast of characters and RPG aspects.

FFXIII, contrary to popular belief, is a good game with a unique and fast paced combat system, likable characters, awesome bosses, and good music. I can agree however that it's pretty linear with it's level design. But the second half of the game kinda makes up for that.

And from what I've heard, Xenoblade is a really good game. I may actually try it out sometime.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

Compare that to pretty much D&D game where the moment you pick a character class and race you essentially close off more options than you open up. Fair enough, that works in a pen and paper setting where the game is defined by having a team of human players working together, but in a single player RPG it just feels limiting.

Blah, I know I'm rambling but my basic point is that I don't think a PC should be limited by character classes in a single player RPG.

What about single player rpgs that let you control a whole party ? It works there also.

Yes, but only if they perfectly implement the ability for the team mates to do everything the PC can do. Generally speaking the PC is doing all the talking at the very least, which limits you a bit.

Well, even then... I don't want to just start rambling about what I think would be best, but if I was designing a team based RPG like, say, Knights of the Old Republic I'd make it so that your team mates choices were limited by classes but your PC wasn't. They could only focus on specific skill sets whereas your PC would get free reign over every possible character ability, assuming he had the points for it. Obviously that potentially makes the PC far more powerful than the rest of the team, but fuck it, they're the PC and it's really annoying getting completely upstaged by NPCs.

Okay, self indulgent talking over.

 

[Thatrocketeer]

If you can give me at least 15 games that aren't mainstream that use the old RPG style and are actually GOOD in my view, then I might change my mind, until then, I prefer the streamlined yet enjoyable RPGs that we have today.

Grab the top 15 that fit your definition of "RPG" from this list [http://roguelikechallenge.appspot.com/]. And that's just old-school roguelike RPGs that were made in a 7-day period during a particular week in 2012. If you broaden your search, you'll find even more.

I've always considered roguelikes to be a different genre from RPGs. The Old style ones that I've been talking about are those isometric, dice rollers. I really like the concept of roguelikes, yet I never seem to get into them for a long time.

 

[Therumancer]

I just started playing vampires the masquerade bloodlines (on the advice of someone here actually). Extremely difficult game to get into (poor graphics, clunky combat, EXTREMELY complicated skill system)but the dialogue and the intricate skill system (once you figure the damn thing out) eventually sucked me into it. take my advice: If you like RPGs and can stick with a difficult to get into one for a bit, play this game. As I was playing it last night, I realized I was more immersed in this game than I had been in any game for a long time. It is not without faults: bugs, spending 30 minutes trying to find some godamn building that is hidden in the most unintuitive alleyway imaginable, and losing progress makes you want to rip your face off. But I'm enjoying it more than any other game I've played in a long time.

The only RPGs I enjoyed this much were
Baldur's Gate I & II (my introduction to RPGS)
Fallout 2
fallout
KOTOR I & II
Planescape Torment
Assorted Final Fantasy Games
a bunch of JRPGs that I don't want to list because it would take forever. the point is I like SNES and PS JRPGs.
Morrowind (sort of. I still have nightmares of trying to find stuff in Morrowind through obtuse directions)
and probably a bunch of others I'm not thinking of right now.

The point is: modern RPGs have lost their way. What makes these games so much fun is a mixture of the compelling world, humor, great dialogue, memorable characters, massive number of skills and abilities that are fun to use, and the massive variety of ways you can solve problems.

Modern RPGs have lost this. I can't think of a single RPG that was released in the last 3 years or so that I enjoyed as much as I enjoy these older ones. Even through the crappy graphics, the poor combat, and the bugs I still find myself enjoying the older ones more.

Why do studios insist on making Action games with RPG elements and calling them RPGs when they have relatively linear storylines, crappy dialogue, and easily forgettable characters?
Why can we not have a REAL godamned sequal to KOTOR II? good combat is fine. in fact, good combat is awesome, but it shouldn't be the focus of an RPG. it should be there to drive the plot, force character development, and also an option that must be there just to be awesome.
I am sad. I really want more of these games. No other genre sucks me in like a good RPG.

Welcome to one of the major points of why people hate casual gamers.

The answer here is very simple, your typical person can't enjoy things that complex. They don't want to learn, and have to figure out what all these abillities do, or build a wimp into a dynamo, they want immediate gratification. The focus is thus on simplicity and accesibility as opposed to depth, ensuring that the lowest human denominator won't get bored, or stuck, or have trouble figuring anything out. The casual wants to be told how to play the game with very clear answers, given a choice of character types they want to know what the best one is, and already you see people complaining about things like "Diablo 3" for all it's simplicity because there is no clear answer. I won't be surprised if Diablo 4 just has one charater "the hero" and a single attack button. When you get more complicated than that, like real RPG gamers want, like having a whole ton of character types, and then subtypes and specific skills within those character types, a casual will typically brain freeze in unacknowleged intimidation and go load up something like a shooter.

Game companies want the biggest possible profits, and to move as many copies of a game as possible. Casuals vastly outnumber serious gamers. Of serious gamers RPG gamers are a pretty big niche, and profitable to cater to, but not as profitable as selling a dumbed down product to the masses of humanity, and the industry wants those massive profits from selling to as many people as possible, they want to release products simple enough to not exclude anyone.

Exceptions to this exist (as they do to everything), and I think the pendelum is swinging back to an extent. ToR which is about as casual as an MMO can get has kind of tanked, and EA seems to be realizing the problem being the fickle nature of casual gamers who don't stay invested for long, compared to catering to a reliable market like serious MMO gamers (within the MMO arena). I imagine we'll start to see this with single player games eventually, but it will take longer because that's not based on maintaining a user base.

None of which I'm saying is nice, but it's pretty much the answer to your question of why the industry does what it does. You'll notice the new buzzwords are along the lines of "easy" and "accessible" not so much "deep", "immersive", or "complex", while these other terms are used it's far rarely, and typically only after assurances of how easy and accessible something is.

To use "Bloodlines" as an example, the reason your not likely to see another game like that recently is because while there is a decent audience of people for it, and a profit could be made, someone who makes a vampire game today is going to want to go after the biggest possible audience of people... and that means fans of series like Twilight and fiction in that vein. If they are going to invest 20 million, they want to sell to the biggest possible audience to move the most copies, why be content with say making 30 million when you could make 100 million? Do you think your typical Twilight fan has the patience or capability to figure out, never mind play and enjoy "Bloodlines"? Not to mention when it comes to vampires, the biggest fan groups want romance, angst, and sparkling, not grim bloodsuckers waging non-stop supernatural war and engaged in horrorific investigation. Especially when all of that is paced, and controlled by stats and numbers, as opposed to twitch reflexs and brawling that give immediate gratification. To your typical Twilight (or say Underworld) fan Bloodlines would be a "boring" game due to all of the elements that make it a serious RPG.

 

[Therumancer]

[

Old RPG's, while well made and carefully crafted, are in the process of the conversion to higher powers. In other words, THE DEVELOPERS ARE DOING THEIR BEST TO BRING THEM TO LIGHT WHERE THEY ARE APPEALING.

Take Fallout, It was definitly great, timeless and enjoyable. Then after the whole problem with interplay, Bethesda brought a stimpak to the franchise and brought it to life with Fallout 3, an Oblivion styled world while STILL keeping the traditional formula; huge world, story, V.A.T.S., dark-witty humor (Though not as much as new vegas).

There wasn't much for character, but its pretty damned difficult to write diverse characters when there is the entire world one must focus on first.

If there is one complaint I hate more in most RPG's is that we should take a step back to this:

Or this:

Thats not roleplaying, thats just following a path and using what weapons/powers you want, wait, that sounds like a- Typical Expectation from a First Person Shooter.

People always bring up the old days, as much as nostalgia is great and we should learn from the past, we should NOT be using it as the main way to the future. We wa-NO, NEED, games to advance in order to make them better: RPG's, FPS's, JRPG's whatever the genre.

So complain all you wish, I don't have anything against you. You have your opinions and I have mine, but take a look at what we have now to what we have then:

2012:

2003:

Notice a difference? And before you drop the "No, they're both horribly written games that are bugged to hell" line, THINK about what we have. There is more than meets the eye.

Hmmm, a lot of pics, I edited the first one out but I didn't want to cut more for fear of messing up the quoting.

I just wanted to say that your missing a huge part of the point. Most of what your showing is graphics, and the truth is new technology can be used in old ways of playing games. The gist of this arguement is about people who want more complex games, and ones where the stats and skills and such are what determine the outcome, rather than your abillity to move a controller quickly.

See, there is no reason why most of those games could be be re-done with modern visuals without maintaining their core gameplay, which is what a lot of people want. This generally doesn't happen because of the desire to make everything accessible to the most casual audience possible. In comparing Skyrim to previous games like say Morrowwind or Daggerfall, while it got prettier, it also lost a lot of the options that were previously in the games. You have less guilds/factions and such you can join and work with, less skills, and less control over doing things like creating and casting spells or crafting magical items. With each installment there has been less and less in the games going with the prettier graphics. For example in Skyrim I can't fly, and that's a big deal when looking at how in the series you used to be able to. I'd love to have been able to engage some of those dragons in aeriel combat instead of having to shoot arrows/spells at them and/or wait for them to land. Being able to make items or spells to do things like fly was part of what made me feel powerful in Morrowwind, even at my most powerful in Skyrim I feel like a pale shadow I what I should be able to do.... and yes, I understand things like this can be modded, but the point is that the core gameplay has become much simpler, and options have been lost in the name of making things far more accessible.


Right now there is no reason why you couldn't make a game like "Bloodlines" (OP's example) with modern technology other than it's too complicated for most people, and wouldn't sell enough copies to casual gamers. Other than sheer accessibility there was no reason to remove the skill trees, attribute allocation, etc... from the Diablo series.

Now, there are exceptions, there always are, but as a general rule as games have gotten prettier, they have also gotten simpler and provided far less that you can actually do in them, especially when it comes to RPGs.

As nasty as I am, I don't begrudge casuals their games in an absolute sense, I just think we need to see more of them for serious gamers and RPG players. The problem is that the industry is always going to go after the largest group, which isn't us. I understand that, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be happy about it and not rail against it.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

I don't what it is with these nostalgia threads, but they just bug the hell out of me.

OT: Now, I do like a lot of older RPG's as you can tell by my avatar. And while I can somewhat agree with some people's complaints about some of modern day RPG's, I still have fun with them. The Mass Effect games had an engaging story-line with a great cast of characters and RPG aspects.

FFXIII, contrary to popular belief, is a good game with a unique and fast paced combat system, likable characters, awesome bosses, and good music. I can agree however that it's pretty linear with it's level design. But the second half of the game kinda makes up for that.

And from what I've heard, Xenoblade is a really good game. I may actually try it out sometime.

Again, there is no "nostalgia" in sight here. Things have changed and many of us think that change has been for the worse. This is a perfectly reasonable position to take, it has nothing to do with being blinded by nostalgia.

But your opinion of FFXIII suggests that you and I have radically different ideas about what constitutes "good" or "bad", so I guess there's not much point debating it.