RPG Codex - Vote for the best RPGs

You can vote on the RPG Codex for your best RPGs of all time:

Glorious Codexia, it is time.

It's been 5 years since we did our Top 70 RPG list, one of my favorite things here at the forum and the moment that eventually led to the CRPG Book.

Since then we got fan-favorite titles like Witcher 3, Age of Decadence and Underrail, plus hundreds of indies that some people are very passionate about. And 2019 has been a crappy year so far, with no recent big RPG to cloud our perception. So this seems like a good time to see how things changed.

I'll keep the same rules as the previous one: post here a list with your top RPGs and assign 1-5 points to them.

Each person has 25 points to distribute between what they think are the best RPGs ever. You have to spend at least 1 point per game, and at most 5 points on each game, so you can vote anything from 5 to 25 games, weighting how great you think they are. This is the RPG Codex, so I trust that I don't have to make a tutorial on such basic point-based system. Please.

Besides that, the rules are:

• Only PC games. Multi-platform titles like KotOR or Dark Souls are ok, but no 20-years-later ports like Chrono Trigger.
• I will combine the votes for base game & expansion as one single game (e.g., NWN 2 + MotB). Same for Ultima VII & Serpent Isle, Might and Magic IV & V (World of Xeen), and all those Mount & Blade stand-alone expansions.
• You can spend less than 25 points, if you can't think of 5 RPGs you like (but why are you even here?)
• Your vote be ignored if you can't do basic math.
• No votes from alts or accounts created after this vote began.
• Voting will close on May 6th. You can freely edit your vote until then.

[…]

More information.

Our old top ten thread is here.

I have to admit I chuckled when I read the bit about your vote being ignored if you fail to do basic math. =p

I just had a look at that thread and it really does show the codex up for the appalling hive of muck that it truly is, it's like, where do you even begin trying to understand their mindset.

Perhaps it's the laughable voting system where someone such as yourself, who's actually played enough cRPGs to actually have a relatively balanced view even considering personal taste, will vote for 25 games but, ultimately, all will be completely worthless votes due to the fact that the more games you vote for the less points you can give them, while the same 10 people from the last poll 5 years ago will continue to vote for the maximum 5 points for Fallout 1, 2, Planescape: Torment and Arcanum, rendering any votes for anything else utterly redundant.

Or perhaps it's the fact that their administration is so utterly uncaring that it not only lets these wastes of space continue to shaft up their forums week in and week out with their hysterical non-stop 'shitposts' about every other game ever made, but it actively goes out of its way to reinforce them week in and week out with such things as the 'made-for-ganging-up' ratings system, utterly rigged 'free polls' and profile picture insults.

Or perhaps it's the irony of having a poll for best cRPG on a site which is approximately 40% occupied by a small handful of independent game developers who use the site as effectively their own in-game forums, resulting in a whole raft of games being nominated with 5 star votes that aren't even cRPGs by even a very wide margin of definition, from King of Dragon Pass to Battle Brothers to Age of Decadence, not to mention another whole raft of roguelikes. All of which might be good games, but the poll doesn't ask for good games, it's asking it's readers to vote for the best cRPG.

Or perhaps it's the complete lack of staff presence in the poll itself, a poll which will be used as a definition of what the site is all about that has almost zero representation from almost any of the administrative team. One imagines they are all sitting back and laughing at all the idiots that are stupid enough to vote, merely judging the thread by how many clicks it gets or how many people get angry over it.

Or perhaps it's the utterly hilarious way the only real contenders to the 'untouchable four' are all the exact kind of games that are completely antithetical to the every day discourse on the site, such as Witcher 3, Fallout New Vegas and Dark Souls, all of which are supposedly better 'quality cRPGS' than Lords of Xulima, Blackguards or Divinity: Original Sin. Again showing that classic bizzare hivemind mentality where 'because I liked it more' is more important than 'because it's objectively a better cRPG'.

Or perhaps it's just the overall impression one gets from all of this that the site is pretty much nothing more than a pretentious mess of hyperbolic 'shitposters' that 'imagine' themselves as high class purveyors of quality while the reality is more that they're like a gang of drunken hobos rummaging through bins in rags swearing and grumbling at passing actual cRPG aficionados like yourself.

I must admit, I was tempted to make an account, just to give my two cents worth to the whole proceedings, but what's the point? Even if ten of us went over and gave 5 points to actually good cRPGs, it'd still be nothing more than minor dent in the armour of broken-record fallout/PS:T fanboys and all the in-house developers and their fanboys.

Still, I'm glad I did read the thread, at least your post has some titles on it that might interest me down the line that I hadn't come accross before, so it can't be considered a complete loss.

Yep in the words of Benny from Fallout:NV.

From where you're kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck.
Truth is…the game was rigged from the start.

They also have a poll for games they think don't belong on that list. All I can say is most of them have shitty tastes in RPGs using their own forum website lingo.

As NWN, Witcher III, PoE, and Dragon Age Origins are great RPGs.

I see quite a number of votes for TW3, PoE and DA:O in their top 50 RPG despite some complaints. There is no way NWN1 will make it to their list though :/

Kingmaker is voted often so here's hoping it will make it to top 10 along with BG2 I think IWD will make it to top 50 again too, yay.

Originally Posted by lackblogger
-CUT-

So you are essentially complaining that most people on 'Dex don't share your "objective" opinion.. with that ego and willingness to write these pointless walls of text you would fit into 'Dex much more than you think.

I like distributing 25 points quite a bit. Like I say a lot with this kind of thing, though, you have GOT to say what kind of "best" you mean!

"Best" could mean the games I personally had the most fun with. Ultima 2 would do great on that list because, other than Temple of Apshai (sp?), it was the first computer RPG I ever played.

"Best" could also mean the best games available right now. If I somehow wiped my brain of every memory of all the computer games I have ever played, this would be the list of the games I want to play. No way would I want to play Ultima 2 in that case.

It could mean other things, too, like maybe trying to pick out the best RPGs "for their times" by trying to correct for technology changes. They're all interesting polls (at least to me) but, when you just ask "what's best," I don't know how to answer.

Originally Posted by Archangel
So you are essentially complaining that most people on 'Dex don't share your "objective" opinion.. with that ego and willingness to write these pointless walls of text you would fit into 'Dex much more than you think.

So you are essentially telling me that the RPGcodex doesn't share my opinion and so therefore I'd fit in there more than I would anywhere else.

Yes, you do pretty much exemplify the state of that site really quite well…

Sorry you found my small collection of paragraphs 'pointless', perhaps if you spent more than two seconds hastily hashing out some utterly boring hyperbolic drivel you wouldn't end up writing two sentences that completely contradict each other.

If you are the same Archangel who prefers the RPGcodex (to the order of 11,108 posts in just four years) to any other game forum then why would anyone be surprised by this… I've no doubt your hilariously unaware stupidity is exactly the kind of personality that's considered the very height of what cRPG forum'ing is all about over there

Originally Posted by Zloth
I like distributing 25 points quite a bit. Like I say a lot with this kind of thing, though, you have GOT to say what kind of "best" you mean!

"Best" could mean the games I personally had the most fun with. Ultima 2 would do great on that list because, other than Temple of Apshai (sp?), it was the first computer RPG I ever played.

"Best" could also mean the best games available right now. If I somehow wiped my brain of every memory of all the computer games I have ever played, this would be the list of the games I want to play. No way would I want to play Ultima 2 in that case.

It could mean other things, too, like maybe trying to pick out the best RPGs "for their times" by trying to correct for technology changes. They're all interesting polls (at least to me) but, when you just ask "what's best," I don't know how to answer.

This is exactly the whole point of the problem. They have no objective beyond telling everyone that Fallout was a good brief series of games once, and yet decide to roll out these polls with no direction, implication nor eventual benefit.

cRPGs have been a 'thing' now for approximately 40 years, to which even the more casual of older players could find one game per year average they'd like to see on the eventual list, but with just 25 'points' to spend you might as well ask which were your top favourite movies of the last 40 years. Heck, it would be hard just naming your top 5 favourite 80s/90s Schwarzenegger movies before you even got onto everything else! [inb4 Alrik says he didn't like any Schwartz movies apart from Kindergarten Cop etc]

And if you pick more than 5, then you're lessening your vote power. Who benefits the most? The people who only ever played Fallout and don't give two shits about any other RPG.

Imagine if you're a massive Might and Magic and Ultima fanboy, unable to even decide yourself which of the nearly 25 games in those series you liked the best, oh hooray, you gave one point to Might and Magic 3, a game you personally consider better than Fallout & the results come in… Fallout = no.1, Might and Magic 3 = no.217… but worse… King of Dragon Pass, not even a cRPG, not even close, gets 52nd position…

So they tell you "it's just a poll to see what the people of the codex like". Oh, we know that already, they like Fallout… Duh. Etc etc.

Originally Posted by lackblogger
So you are essentially telling me that the RPGcodex doesn't share my opinion and so therefore I'd fit in there more than I would anywhere else.

Yes, you do pretty much exemplify the state of that site really quite well…

Sorry you found my small collection of paragraphs 'pointless', perhaps if you spent more than two seconds hastily hashing out some utterly boring hyperbolic drivel you wouldn't end up writing two sentences that completely contradict each other.

If you are the same Archangel who prefers the RPGcodex (to the order of 11,108 posts in just four years) to any other game forum then why would anyone be surprised by this… I've no doubt your hilariously unaware stupidity is exactly the kind of personality that's considered the very height of what cRPG forum'ing is all about over there

In your post you continue the same stubborn narrative and then call me stupid.. who is the better fit for Codex here LOL

I only got so many posts there because forum is way more active than any other RPG forum and they also got active sections for Tactical gaming and comics/shows/movies.

Originally Posted by lackblogger
And if you pick more than 5, then you're lessening your vote power.

You aren't lessening it, you're spreading it. If you pick only those 5 games then you've helped those games a lot but you've shafted the rest of the games completely. If you pick 25 games then you've helped a lot of games but only a little. No matter how you cut it up, it's going to be 25 so your impact is the same as everyone else's. (You could call it a zero sum game but, of course, it's really 25. ;)

Originally Posted by Zloth
You aren't lessening it, you're spreading it. If you pick only those 5 games then you've helped those games a lot but you've shafted the rest of the games completely. If you pick 25 games then you've helped a lot of games but only a little. No matter how you cut it up, it's going to be 25 so your impact is the same as everyone else's. (You could call it a zero sum game but, of course, it's really 25.

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

A Fallout Fanboy can give 5 points to each game in the series. A Might and Magic fanboy can only give 2/3 points to each game in the series. Fallout fanboys can get full whack without any game in the series being 'ignored'. If a Might and Magic fanboy wants to give 5 points to any game then they have to take those points from other Might and Magic games…

So???

Originally Posted by TheRealFluent
So???

LMAO.

What codex imagines as itself:

Originally Posted by Carnifex
I have to admit I chuckled when I read the bit about your vote being ignored if you fail to do basic math. =p

What it actually is:

Originally Posted by TheRealFluent
So???

"maximum 5 points for Fallout 1, 2, Planescape: Torment and Arcanum, rendering any votes for anything else utterly redundant."

Well, those ARE the best ones.

I do agree it's a flawed system though. The premise is understandable, but like you point out it's perhaps hard to get anything meaningful out of it it in the end. I still think it will be interesting to see where it goes though. Sure, top 10 might remain the same, but spots 11-50 are certainly bound to shift around.

Personally I'd prefer something like a top 15 games system where every game mentioned gets a single point, and then add all the points up. Still, there's hardly a "right" way of doing a poll like this. CRPG's is too wide a genre with a way too big time span in titles. Several more narrow polls might be a better idea.

Glanced through the thread. Seemed heavily tilted toward the older games but if that is what they prefer, who am I to say other wise.

Kinda interesting voting mechanic, but clearly problematic. One guy can only vote for his top 5 games and wipe away the people who want to vote for a whole list of their favorite games. Still, the results will be interesting.

So lackblogger is basically bummed out because people like Fallout and will vote for it. I gave my 5 points to Fallout 1 there, no regrets.

What some people do not seem to understand is that famous games will obviously always win because more people have played them. In any voting system, this is how it works and, guess what, it does show the opinion of the people on the site. No point in complaining just because you dislike the results.

Originally Posted by GabrielMP_19
So lackblogger is basically bummed out because people like Fallout and will vote for it.

Resorting to lies now? That's really sad … but very codex?