RPGWatch Feature - Game of the Decade 2010-2019

well, that'll learn me

lackblogger said:

Wtf has hours played got to do with the price of fish? Have you never heard of the concept of quality over quantity?

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I don't think it's a bad system. Hours spent on them would make a decent list of my top strategy titles. But I have no RPG's with those kind of numbers (100+ hours).

Alcoholics don't tend to drink the good stuff all day every day They tend to consume whatever gives the biggest hit for the least money

Shagnak said:

I clearly suck at this lack the time to have an informed opinion about top anything. (also why I didn't participate)

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You don't need to. As an individual you can act uninformed, but you would be a part of the intelligent swarm.

I saw this far too late to vote unfortunately. Looks like an interesting experiment. For what it's worth, I'll just quietly leave my own little list off the top of my head and sneak out the back door. Moving along now, nothing to see here.

1 Fallout New Vegas
2 Legend of Grimrock 2
3 Dark Souls
4 Pillars of Eternity
5 Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
6 Shadowrun: Dragonfall
7 Draakensang: River of Time
8 Avernum: Escape from the Pit
9 Elex
10 Legend of Grimrock

Pessimeister said:

I saw this far too late to vote unfortunately.

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Don't worry, you're already the fourth person to completely ignore the three week voting process that saw that thread be front page news for that entire time but post into the results thread within 24 hours of it going live

I'm disappointed that my expectations about the comments that express negativity with respect to the resulting list are unmet.

The only one who shows some negativity is lackblogger himself

Sometimes this community can be quite mature.

But... That's not fun!

Myrthos said:

The only one who shows some negativity is lackblogger himself

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Aside from the usual lackblogger trademark whines that any regular already knows like the back of their hand, there's an additional complaint here from me:

It's only a Once in A Decade Community Event, I mean, if someone can't be arsed to Play The Game for something like that then I for one will be keeping an extremely cynical eye upon such people come any threads on the topic of 'Community Values'.

And there was indeed a lot of 'Community Values' threads right bang in the middle of this Once In A Decade Community Event… of which many of the contributors to those threads were conspicuously absent from this perfectly well behaved event.

And I do not find such details a coincidence.

As for cRPGnut's latest attempt at a comedy troll, well, I still find it fascinating how so many people seem to rush in between myself and him every time I point out his latest batch of disingenuous fake news.

But then of course there is the comedy angle. Am I setting myself up for community ire by even bothering to point out an obvious comedy troll? Probably, but like the sentiment of the community drama threads, it's not so much one specific post or instance, it's the non-stop everlasting repeated nonsense over many years that just wears you down, you know what I mean. Imagine I view cRPGnut's posts the same way you view dteowner's posts.

A couple of the games I voted for actually showed up, so colour me surprised. All in all not a bad list!!

lackblogger said:

Wtf has hours played got to do with the price of fish? Have you never heard of the concept of quality over quantity?

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Quite a lot really, if we're not talking linear narrative RPGs. It's why Skyrim is on there, afterall.

Not going to complain about the results, it's about as I expected. Thanks lackblogger for taking the time to compile the data.

I agree with the point that Witcher 3 is probably closer to an action adventure game with choices than a true cRPG. But even though I tend to strongly prefer RPGs where I get to make my own character and where stats & how you build a I enjoyed Witcher 2 and 3 a lot. So I think I voted on it simply for my subjective enjoyment of the game.

The games I voted for which didn't make this list were Expeditions: Viking and Expeditions: Conquistador. I still highly recommend those games for those who haven't played at least one of them.

TomRon said:

@forgottenlor;, in that case I think you are at least part of a pretty large minority. I agree wholeheartedly with both your opinions on W3 and Xcom.

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Yes, I would recommend no-one panic about their tastes and opinions with regards to this result as, if anything, it proves that the genre is indeed much more Wide-Open than it has ever been.

Even the no.1 game was effectively dismissed by one in three people. Long gone are the days when something like Baldur's Gate 2 would get a 90% approval rating and not liking it would genuinely make you feel like there was something amiss about you.

And from then on in the next batch of games are all well below 50%, meaning that for every other game made this decade over half of us didn't rate them, meaning the 'negativity' towards practically any game made by anyone is likely going to be the majority opinion.

This isn't a wholly bad thing as the last decade's strength was in width rather than height. There's been a phenomenally large amount of choice in the marketplace which has allowed practically every niche to have it's moment, as @joxer; said recently.

The fact that it's increasingly difficult for each game to be heard in the deluge is a different topic, as is the problem, if it is a problem, of the increasing dilution of the genre to a point where searching via an RPG tag search doesn't really help you find something that is what you were looking for.

A wonderful example of the old adage that the grass is always greener on the other side. The naughties where there was very little activity but each game was probably played by most people, or the teens where there's tons of activity but barely anyone's playing the same games

Drithius said:

Quite a lot really, if we're not talking linear narrative RPGs. It's why Skyrim is on there, afterall.

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So much "quite a lot" that you fail to list even one reason but instead make a definitive statement without qualification

Indeed. Would I change your mind? A 'discussion' on these forums is a fool's errand the vast majority of the time. And I'm content in not caring how you perceive things.

Pokes @lackblogger;. You're too serious, you should smile more, you've achieved something, which without you would not have been realized. Regardless of who voted or not, it does not diminish what you have accomplished.

Thanks lackblogger for all your work and thanks Myrthos and the watch.

Good list. Not even too many surprises, although I did think that the Dark Souls games would have been higher. I know Kingdom Come was in the top 15 but I thought that would make top 10 also.

I've only not played 13 of them.

Of those I own 2 but have yet to play (POE: Deadfire and Torment: ToN).

Five of the 13 are Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3 and Mass Effect 2&3 (Never could get into Dark Souls which is actually a little strange as I like almost every "Dark Souls Like" game I play. I really should try Mass Effect 2 one of these days).

Disco and Kenshi I plan on playing sometime.

Fallout 4, Legend of Heroes, and Assassins Creed I doubt I will ever play.

Seeing Dragon Age Inquisition ranked so high has got me thinking about giving it a shot. I found the first one so so.

daveyd said:

The games I voted for which didn't make this list were Expeditions: Viking and Expeditions: Conquistador. I still highly recommend those games for those who haven't played at least one of them.

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Conquistador for sure would be on my list as well, I really liked that game. I liked viking as well but I actually liked the companion and story mode of the first game more; if I remember right some people complained about that but I liked it.

I was happy to see Legends of Eisenwald sneak into the top 50 as well.

Drithius said:

Indeed. Would I change your mind? A 'discussion' on these forums is a fool's errand the vast majority of the time. And I'm content in not caring how you perceive things.

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No, heaven forbid a discussion, that would be a lot less meaningful than just angrily typing an faux-authoritative dismissals.

We've had this discussion before anyway, though I'd be at a loss to link the exact place. Let's do the quick bullet points:

Any RPG, by necessity, needs to be of decent length. It has to have some kind of minimum length to feel like a Full RPG - because of the need to feel epic but mostly because it needs room to let the player feel like they've spent a good amount of time developing a character.

Hence short RPGs are often criticised for being too short. "It was over before it really got going". The usually accepted minimum is about 30 hours, but there's no hard and fast rules.

There's no such thing as an RPG that's too long, but it's logical to expect that many people will get life distractions prior to completing an RPG that is really pushing that upper limit for some. This is usually around the 130 hour mark.

What cRPGnut is talking about is how much time he can spend in a game dicking about, artificially extending the game-time beyond what the developers or the majority of gamers would even consider.

Effectively, this is the 'sandbox' design of gaming. Which is all well and good, but has little to do with RPG design and is more of a general game design that can be used in any genre. You yourself asked why cRPGnut doesn't play Minecraft for example, the epitome of the sandbox game design principle, complete with survival mechanics too-boot.

Oh, he didn't like the graphics...

So his no.1 issue with regards to his reasoning for enjoying a game isn't length of game, it's how the game meets all of his other plastic criteria... and then and only then... how much time he's spent in a game.

To which any one of us could spend as much time as we like in any game we decide to like and play, we could milk a gold-exploit for 10 hours or grind out a unique weapon for 10 hours, cRPGnut like to harvest consumables and rearrange his inventory for 10 hours, but none of this is a 'crucial factor' in assessing how much of an RPG a game is nor whether that specific grind is of any relative quality above another game's grind.

The resultant effect of this attitude to any game is that it effectively states that "I like games that allow me the room not to play the game", and this has no specific relevance to RPGs. You'll also note that "not playing the game" is a coincidentally accurate assessment of cRPGnut's posting habits

A bit like saying "I disagree with XYZ but am going to refuse to discuss why" is effectively "not playing the game".