What ever happened to RPG games

Call me old(40) call me foolish(can be at times) but what ever happened to RPG games. I started playing RPGs with ultima3 on the 64 which didn't have alot of wasted time with hugh cut sceens that really didn't help the play of the game at all(not that the system could run them anyways). But lets take Dragons age 2, there was so my space and wasted programing to wasted cut sceens with your party members that could have went to building Dungens and passages that weren't all the same with just different opens to go. They didn't even take the time to to build rocks around them just blocked them off....
Ultima 4 which i might have called the computer store 250 times to see if it was in came on 8 floppy discs, which took forever to load...but everything was built different...every town had its own feel, dungens were hugh deep and kick ass... you would think with all the tech we have now of days the story's would get better ...
Don't get me wrong I love the how great games look now of days but i want to be deeply ssubmersed into the games story...Maybe its just me....

It's dead, Jim.
- Dr. Leonard McCoy

That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.
- Abdul Alhazred

Video games firms want to make money. To make money, they need to sell to customers.
Video games have grown into a large social activity with players playing video games to get a sense of belonging. They play a lot of games, games after games after games and follow the hype.

One solution for RPG producers was to attract more of these glutonous players to the RPG genre, to convert them to RPG players.

Or another solution was to bring the genre to these players by removing any feature they dislike.

The second road was chosen. This is what happened to cRPG.

I understand that companies are in business to make money...hey that is why i get up in the am during the week...BUT...you would think if they cut down the size of the team making the game and all the money payed to voice overs etc there would be lots to make....
Lets face it PC games use to always drive new computers...gamers where always looking to the latest and greatest card, ram, etc to play the latest and greatest...
I know we live in i want i want i need just throw it away but someone out there must want to go back to old school with a good story a great idea that would sell enough games to make money and keep real gamers coming back and begging for more...
The ones that don't like things about RGP games are mostly the ones that couldn't figure out what 1 + 1 was unless someone smarter than themselfs texted it too them...so not even sure how they get the money to buy the game to bring with...
Maybe my coffee isn't working this morning...or just in a mood but ....i long for a game that last more than a few days with nothing to to slove or figure out...Christ they even mark hidden doors now of days...

Wow I have never read this rant before ever.

CelticFrost said:

Christ they even mark hidden doors now of days…

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Quite expected. Games are to be fast in, fast out, easy to digest.

That is what is needed if firms want to sell to glutonous players who buys a game, half played it and buys a new one.

But that is what i am talking about...
There has to be some old school gamers out there that want to make a great game and be happy making some sort of profit....if it takes them 3-4 years to make the game at cost of XXX amount of dollars ..if you make %30 on that and you made something to be proud of...isn't that better than making %150 for crap!!!!!!
Not looking to make millions and millions of morons that can't tie their own shoes without the help of their mommy and daddys...
When i was in school i hated programing so took the hardware end of it...
Now wishing I had the programing behind me...as I just want something that is fun, fair, keeps my mind thinking, and has a reason behind it...
Nothing better than working for 8hours just to find the magic boots that let you walk over fire to get the spell book that lets you open the gate to some house...castle or whatever it might be....

CelticFrost said:

But that is what i am talking about…
There has to be some old school gamers out there that want to make a great game and be happy making some sort of profit….

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There are plenty, and they make great indie RPGs.

My view is that gaming is going through something similar as what films are going through.

Computers are able to create fantastic special effects for movies. For example, whether you liked it or hated it, Avatar had some serious eye candy.

But with the special effects revolution, the storytelling of blockbuster movies has diminished greatly, focusing more on the eye candy and less on the storytelling. For fxample, few will argue that Star Wars IV, V, and VI are inferior to I, II, and III in the storytelling department.

With the advent of 3D videocards dating back to the late 1990s (I bought a 3dfx card just to play Ultima IX back in 1999) I've seen the same thing happening with videogames in general - a large focus on visuals with good gameplay taking a back seat. This of course, has impacted CRPGs and how we play them today.

Now don't get me wrong, I was there in the 70s and 80s and I would be lying if I said we didn't care about graphics back then - we did. Better graphics was the rallying cry for each new console from the Oddyssey (sp?), Atari 2600, intellivsion, to colecovision and so on.

But despite the incremental improvements with the graphics capabilities of both cmputers and videogames of yesteryear, their capabilities were hugely lacking by today's standards. And for this reason, I belive we as players got better gameplay - because despite the graphical presentation, there was enough horsepower to make compelling games.

My hope is that this period of time 'discovering visuals' as I think of it, will pass and there will be a better balance between visuals and gameplay. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, when contemporary releases fail to deliver, I get by replaying some of the classics. With gog.com, things have gotten a lot easier to play older games on modenr machines. Right now I'm playing M&M7. The graphics bothered me for about 1 or 2 minutes, but the steller gameplay had me forget about that pretty quickly.

I'm somewhere in between. A lot of the nostalgia for the days of yore is just nostalgia. It is really hard to argue that the goldbox games, Eye of the Beholder, or most other games from the period when I started playing RPGs around 1990 are better RPGs than modern games. Character building, interaction with NPCs, choices and consequences etc have been improved rather significantly compared to most of the oldies. Interfaces have also improved tremendously.

Of course there are some classics that really were ahead of their time in more interesting roleplaying elements. Ultima Underworld, Betrayal at Krondor, Darksun 1/2, and Darklands come to mind. But they arent exactly superior, and in several cases killed by the interface. RPGs prior to the Baldurs Gate/Fallout generation were with those few exceptions (I've probably overlooked a few, never got into the early Ultimas for instance) pretty weak.

I can honestly mainly think of one aspect that clearly has gone downhill, and that is dungeon design. There has been a serious shortage of dungeon crawlers since Arx Fatalis and maybe Dungeon Lords. This doesnt bother me personally as I find that dungeon puzzles often end up in a tedious search for the right button and pressure plate, but I can understand that those who enjoy puzzles in their RPGs miss the classics in that area.

But then there is the thin line between improving interfaces and dumbing down too much, coupled with actual laziness. Ultima Underworld (or for that matter Morrowind) gave enough text hints to solve almost any quest within the games, but a modern Bethsoft (no singling out of Bethesda, they arent the only ones to do this) game might rely on quest markers instead, and simply make the quests impossible without those. I get the feeling this is partially because the devs are too lazy to write up lore or dialogue with hints.

I would have to disagree with some what you have stated above. There was a ton of interaction in games of old. It was just in stead of be voice overs...there was alot of text you needed to read and in alot of cases write down yourself with a pen and paper. I am not saying i don't like that fact you get a journal now to keep tract of what is said to you it is a nice feature. You also speak of them maybe being to lazy to come up with good lore...Take dragon age 2 there were so many useless books and what not that would update i stopped reading them after a few hours....
Just my personal thoughts ... that a RPG should have traps, hidden doors, buttons and what not to figure out....either by your own or by reading what has been left for you to in other places....
I guess more to the point making a game for x-box or ps3 which i have both as i have children and dumbing them down or making them fix for what they can run just seems to be the way alot of things are.,....I think with all the space and ram these days the stores could be so large with more to explore and learn of worlds created for us to enjoy

I'm quite older than the young kid of OP but also don't have the same level of gaming culture. I started really play at end of 80's only and significantly only during first years of 90's. So I didn't develop any deep nostalgia for 80's or 90's games, because it wasn't my youth not even my teens.

And for me it's a little rude now to play old games. Many have plenty flaws like repetitive area, no story or almost, bad hints design for puzzles and quests, simple fights, dead puppets companions, and more. Sure it's not all and not all have all those flaws. But only very few will not have huge flaws from my point of view. I tried played some years ago some of the first Ultima, it was perhaps the III or even the IV, don't remember. It felt from my hands. And no it's not the graphics, I spend 10 to 50 more time into an ascii game like ADOM.

I played the first M&M, probably 1,2 & 3 or 4. It was good time but I totally don't understand someone quoting one as "stellar gameplay". Or another example, Ultima Underworld, the puzzle design is amazing, the dungeon design is unmatched in 3D category, the merging of story elements and gameplay and exploration is incredible. But the main story is tedious, the fights are limited, the class system is poor.

Now the point is some gaming elements have almost disappeared in western RPG, the picture in JRPG tend be rather different until the very last years. For example WRPG won't have much puzzling and complex exploration, dungeon design quality, secrets and mid secrets design, tactical turn based fights.

I won't try analyze the reasons, the main are probably 3D cost, and perhaps an evolution of players and designers to different games with less cerebral challenges.

But I feel the complain was more valid some years ago, and sort of the Witcher release or perhaps a counter reaction to Oblivion, anyway I felt something changed that year. But yes, not to come back in past.

Zaleukos said:

A lot of the nostalgia for the days of yore is just nostalgia.

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I tend to disagree. I still listen to a lot of 80s music because, well, I was a teenager in the 80s and I'm connected to the music of that time because I was going through puberty and whatnot. Because of that connection, I still find the music of the 80s as enjoyable as any contemporary tunes that I might like today.

Today's teenager may or may not like 80s music, I wouldn't know. But I genuinley still like 80s music so it's a combination of nostaligia and a genuine regard for music from that time, not JUST nostalgia.

However, Gog.com has really put your assertion to the test. Since gog came online, I've bought and played a bunch of old games from the 'days of yore' and I've really been enjoying myself.

There have been a couple of games that I bought from gog where it WAS just about nostalgia and I found my desire lacking to complete those games. But most of the games I've bought from gog I've genuinley enjoyed, so it really is more than just nostalgia in those cases.

It's true, some things are better with contemporary games, particularly UIs are less cumbersome. But my take is that developers had to be a lot more creative given the limited technology of the day and as a result many older games do in fact have superior gameplay compared with modern games, just not superior presentation.

Zaleukos said:

But then there is the thin line between improving interfaces and dumbing down too much, coupled with actual laziness. Ultima Underworld (or for that matter Morrowind) gave enough text hints to solve almost any quest within the games, but a modern Bethsoft (no singling out of Bethesda, they arent the only ones to do this) game might rely on quest markers instead, and simply make the quests impossible without those. I get the feeling this is partially because the devs are too lazy to write up lore or dialogue with hints.

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I agree with you. But to be fair, while I did come across a number of quests in Oblivion where the quest marker was your only clue as to where to go (and I agree this is not good and does reek of laziness), the vast majority of quests still had enough hints in the lore to get you where you need to go. This is why I'm a big advocate of being able to turn quest markers on and off with the UI - that way a developer is forced to take into account the possibilty that a player will play with quest markers turned off and therefore include the needed lore to get the player moving in the right direction.

Ah yes, the old hidden doors and switches. Because of those things, I would end up spending hours slowly walking up and down corridors and jackhammering the space bar. Exceptionally bad idea, that. (It wasn't even put into Advanced Dungeons & Dragons very well. "We search for secret doors"... in every friggin' room and most of the hallways. Yuck.) Secret doors can certainly be done well but expecting us to do dumb, repetitive tasks isn't the way.

ChienAboyeur, I don't know if gluttony is the right word but game players sure don't play all the way through games much. Looking at Steam achievements, it seems like less than one in four people actually complete these games with half of them qutting after about a dozen hours. That's got to make developers ask why they bother making long games.

Well when i was having my coffee this morning and typing away I was thinking alot about how crappy DA2 was after the first one was a nice game to play for a week anyways. Maybe i will hold off any more on this subject until sometime after may17…If what i have seen and readed about on the witcher2 is close to what I am hoping all might be good in my world of gaming….at least for the short term…..

Ah yes, the old hidden doors and switches. Because of those things, I would end up spending hours slowly walking up and down corridors and jackhammering the space bar. Exceptionally bad idea, that. (It wasn't even put into Advanced Dungeons & Dragons very well. "We search for secret doors"… in every friggin' room and most of the hallways. Yuck.) Secret doors can certainly be done well but expecting us to do dumb, repetitive tasks isn't the way.

ChienAboyeur, I don't know if gluttony is the right word but game players sure don't play all the way through games much. Looking at Steam achievements, it seems like less than one in four people actually complete these games with half of them qutting after about a dozen hours. That's got to make developers ask why they bother making long games

Just as i was waving the white flag on the subject i read this...
I really hope you didnt spend hours and hours looking for these things as most of them really werent that hard to find if you followed the quests and what others in the game told you.

As for not finishing games...I have two boys and they dont really finish any game...
Most players rent a game at blockbuster or whatever store and after the glow of a few hours it is left on the floor never to be played again......

ChienAboyeur said:

Games are to be fast in, fast out, easy to digest.

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Games as Fast Food ?

Yes, this analogy makes some sort of sense … Expecially given the play-through time span seems to shorten with every new generation of games …

If you like puzzles, hidden doors, traps, etc, then play DDO (it's FREE) and join up with Team Corwin and the RPGWatch Guild on Khyber!!

The reality is that games cost money. Ultima 4 cost a fraction of any modern game to make due to it not having to spend the amount modern games have too on graphics(not cheap on man power and cost) Unfortunately making a game like ultima 4 now a days with somewhat decent graphics would take a few years for someone to develop with a team big enough to complete it and actually make a profit. A game unfortunately needs flashy graphics or mass appeal to make back what they spend making them. Unfortunately RPG fans are a niche crowd so its hard to justify large budget pure no frills rpg games now.

If you are interested in some decent old school type games check out Basilisk games and Spiderweb games, they are pretty much what you are looking for, at least thats what I got from your posts.

www.basiliskgames.com
www.spiderweb.com

CelticFrost said:

I really hope you didnt spend hours and hours looking for these things as most of them really werent that hard to find if you followed the quests and what others in the game told you.

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Oh yes I did, because there weren't any clues. Shooters were even worse about it. Heck, I was doing it in Fallout 3 for one quest because it just said there was a secret switch in the room. That room was sure big compared to the size of the tiny button I was trying to find.

As for not finishing games…I have two boys and they dont really finish any game… Most players rent a game at blockbuster or whatever store and after the glow of a few hours it is left on the floor never to be played again……

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I was checking Steam achievements so no worries about rentals and hopefully no worries about pirates that just downloaded the thing to see if they liked it, either. *BUT* there could be quite a few that just bought the game for half price or even less.

P.S. I just finished Fallout 3: New Vegas. The topic title is sounding exceedingly silly to me right now.