RPG Codex - Vote for the best RPGs

I enjoyed participating in the vote. I gave:

5 points
Morrowind

4 points
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

3 points
Kenshi
Pathfinder: Kingmaker

2 points
Outward
Final Fantasy 7
Nehrim
Baldur's Gate 1
Anachronox

Fun little poll. I like stuff like this.

@purpleblob; , Did you contribute your votes to the poll? I'd be interested in seeing them.

TheRealFluent said:

I enjoyed participating in the vote. I gave:

5 points
Morrowind

4 points
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

3 points
Kenshi
Pathfinder: Kingmaker

2 points
Outward
Final Fantasy 7
Nehrim
Baldur's Gate 1
Anachronox

Fun little poll. I like stuff like this.

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No Fallout in the list?

Archangel said:

No Fallout in the list?

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There's a lot I couldn't add. I enjoyed Fallout a lot but there are others I listed that I've replayed several times I had to give shout-outs to. I'm sure when I play Fallout 2 the list will be updated.

I'm sure Fallout 1&2 will be in the top ten once again.

Nostalgia aside they just don't appeal to me anymore.

Maybe it's time for a remaster with the Unity engine?

Couchpotato said:

I'm sure Fallout 1&2 will be in the top ten once again.

Nostalgia aside they just don't appeal to me anymore.

Maybe it's time for a remaster with the Unity engine?

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If we wait long enough I am sure Beamdog will do it

Archangel said:

If we wait long enough I am sure Beamdog will do it

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Don't give them any ideas they already milked other franchises. Also last time I checked they are developing a strategy game called Axis & Allies based on a board-game.

Has to be their first non remastered game in years.

TheRealFluent said:

@purpleblob; , Did you contribute your votes to the poll? I'd be interested in seeing them.

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I sure did, here's mine:

Baldur's Gate II - 5 points
Pathfinder: Kingmaker - 4 points
Neverwinter Nights - 3 points
Icewind Dale - 3 points
Expeditions: Viking - 2 points
Mass Effect - 1 point
Mass Effect 2 - 1 point

Skyrim 5
FO4 5
DAO 5
NWN 4
PK 3
POE 3

Grrr… I want to mutter about that 'PC port" clause and I'm stuck with the math! OK fine...

Say just two people vote. Lady My Way Or The Highway puts 5 points into A, B, C, D, and E. Mr. Magnanimous puts one point into E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z,π,Θ, and Ξ.

The top game is E. A-D get a four way tie for 2nd. The Greek letters are thrown out because they aren't real PC RPGs so F-Z are in a 21-way tie for 6th.

Obviously there's a lot more than two voters but what I'm trying to illustrate is that spreading your votes out lets you influence the position of a LOT more games. When you look at the total effect over the whole list (instead of just looking out for #1), both strategies balance out.

I didn't vote in the poll because the Codex is a cesspit, but I did it as an exercise to see what I came up with.

4 points:
Morrowind
Witcher 3

3 points:
BG2
Planescape: Torment

2 points:
Skyrim
Bloodlines
Fallout 2
Darklands

1 point:
Ultima VII: The Black Gate
Tides of Numenara
Alternate Reality: The Dungeon

The 1 pointers especially could easily be swapped out with some other games, like Wasteland (1) or D:OS2.

There are some games in their list I don't personally consider RPGs, like Deus Ex, that I love and would be on the list if I did.

Games conspicuous by their absence: Arcanum is IMO one of the most overrated games of all time, though I like the setting. I like all the Dragon Age games and POE 1&2, but none of them really stand out to me. I missed my window for Fallout 1. By the time I tried to play it, I couldn't stand it. I liked Fallout 2 (obviously) through New Vegas, got something out of 4, and want to puke at the sight of '76. I can't even believe people are voting Kingmaker this high. It replicates a ruleset, big whoop. It's a bad game.

Zloth said:

Grrr… I want to mutter about that 'PC port" clause and I'm stuck with the math! OK fine…

Say just two people vote. Lady My Way Or The Highway puts 5 points into A, B, C, D, and E. Mr. Magnanimous puts one point into E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z,π,Θ, and Ξ.

The top game is E. A-D get a four way tie for 2nd. The Greek letters are thrown out because they aren't real PC RPGs so F-Z are in a 21-way tie for 6th.

Obviously there's a lot more than two voters but what I'm trying to illustrate is that spreading your votes out lets you influence the position of a LOT more games. When you look at the total effect over the whole list (instead of just looking out for #1), both strategies balance out.

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There wont be a whole list. He's already stated he's cutting it off when it gets to a point where games don't get enough votes to warrant bothering writing a new line on the page, so around the 50-100 mark, probably around 70 again. Which is precisely another reason why he wants the scoring system he chose, to lessen his workload. You don't seem to be able to get your head around the fact that quantity is irrelevant here. 10 people could give 1 point to Might and Magic 3 but 3 people could give 5 points to the latest porn-RPG & if the cut-off is 15 points then that porn game is now 'a better RPG' (by codex's laughable standards) than Might and Magic 3...

I'm a person that avoids that site, so thanks to those that are providing us with these updates.

I don't care about codex, but since it's covered in the news here I'll comment. In one sentence, as it's codex and codex is simple.

Any voting system that wants to make sure Neo Scavenger is within top10 of best RPGs of a decade/century is bullshit.

Don't forget to follow proper decontamination procedures when you return.

The results are in, and they're as predictable as you can imagine. M&M3 did indeed come 130th while the strategy game King of Dragon Pass came 53rd, lol.

As a bit of fun @HiddenX; , I analysed the extent to which you effected the poll with your vote of 1 point for 25 different games & the results were as follows:

You had zero effect on the outcome of 15 of the games you voted for.

Of the remaining 10, two of the games were games only you voted for & reside at the end of the list at the no.221 spot. Those were Bard's Tale 2 and Exile 1.

Of the remaining 8 I'll list them in order of how many places you gained for them:

Albion got 113th place instead of 127th.
Amberstar got 136th instead of 149th
Geneforge got 81st instead of 85th
Daggerfall got 54th instead of 58th
Divinity: Original Sin got 32nd instead of 35th
Legend of Heroes TiTs got 74th instead of 75th
Dungeon Master got 62nd instead of 63rd
Pathfinder Kingmaker got 13th instead of 14th

However, as a bit more fun, let's see what you could have done if you'd have just gone for 5 games for 5 points instead:

You could have pulled Albion to at least a top 100 position
Daggerfall to a top 50 position
Divinity: OS to a top 30 position
& by chosing Blackguards instead of another close pick, you could have got that into the top 100 and, finally, of course, given a pity 5 points to mm3 to get that in the top 100.

But don't worry, I don't take codex polls THAT seriously either

I think the most notable codex 'trend' from this poll is the complete collapse of the two major pen and paper cRPG series: D&D and The Dark Eye. Aside from two of the top three games being D&D, you have go a long, long way down the list to find any more, and when you do the news is very bad indeed:

Baldur's Gate fell 2 places
NWN2 fell 9 places
Icewind Dale fell 2 places
Dark Sun fell 4 places
Temple of Elemental Evil fell 20 places
Realms of Arkania 2 Star Trail fell 12 places
Knights of the Chalice fell 31 places
IWD2 fell 28 places
NWN fell 10 places
Drakensang River of Time fell 33 places
RoA 1 Blade of Destiny fell 12 places
Pools of Darkness fell 52 places

And it's not just those, Divine Divinity dropped off the grid while falling 34 places and the Ultima Underworlds took a good nosedive each as well.

& it's not entirely a case of "they're old", because check out the surprising risers:

Pools of Radiance up 10 places
Gothic 1 up 10 places
Wizardry 1 up 17 places
Diablo 1 up 38 places

& what do these games have in common? They're all the first game in a series where people tend to give out 'brofists' if someone mentions they are 'starting to play the series & enjoying it'… Even though for most of those series the first is not traditionally considered the best. It's a great showcase of the codex's pressure cooker atmosphere though, the unmoveable top 10 & the token adherence the 'first' of things, all in the name of collecting the right pictures below one's post & more importantly, pretending to 'fit in' After all, why would any poll have Diablo 1 but not Diablo 2? If that doesn't speak volumes then one would just have to assume the listener would prefer not to hear

I’m actually impressed that you invested the time to analyze that

Anyway, what would, in your opinion, be a good voting system for something like this?

Not an easy question. Just ask the people who are involved with the Hugo awards...

Myrthos said:

I’m actually impressed that you invested the time to analyze that

Anyway, what would, in your opinion, be a good voting system for something like this?

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I can't help it, I see numbers and I have to analyse them.

A few weeks ago I analysed the viewing figures for every Beatles Video on YouTube since the date at which they released their entire library after years of removing them all on copyright grounds. About June 2018. The result was just over half a billion views in nine months. 533,186,755 views to be as exact as it's possible for me to be. So I then worked out that if all of their tracks had been available since YouTube got popular then they'd probably have about 7 billion views, almost exactly the population of the world.

If you have a particular favourite song by them I can tell you exactly where in the top 211 songs by them it came in the last 9 months by view count. The most viewed was surprisingly not Hey Jude, contrary to popular belief, their currently most popular song is Don't Let Me Down, which had just over 50,000,000 views in the last 9 months.

Anyway, where were we?

Ah yes, a voting system. There's lots of ways you can perform a voting system and get both decent and interesting results. My first step would be to form sub-categories of similar games, so that the pool is smaller and the chance of being invaded by alternative fanboys is reduced.

For example, you could do it by date, "best game from whenever-1984, 1985-1995, 1996-2005, 2006-2015, 2015-onwards, or you could do it by platform, such as Atari, Windows, PlayStation, Nintendo, xBox, PSP, Gameboy, etc, etc, or you could do it by generally bunching games in more like-for-like categories with some being slightly odder fits but overall everyone seeing the logic of why they are bunched together. Or some combination of all of those and possibly other delineators.

One of the most common questions on forums is "games that are like…?" & more often than not they'll get the most appalling answers because most people are just concerned with promoting the things they themselves like, like if someone asks for a game like Baldur's Gate & someone recommends Skyrim or Wizardry 8 because they're all 'RPGs', when the reality is that there's probably about 30 or 40 games you could list that are more 'like' BG than Skyrim or Wizardry & if they were neatly listed somewhere in a realistic order of probable quality then that would actually be more useful than just a rag-tag list of names that are as much a taste lottery as choosing between Mario and Duck Hunt.

In terms of asking people to vote and what they need to do to vote, I'd keep it pretty simple & just ask them to list out their top 30 games (or however many they want to list) that they think are 'like BG' (for that specific category poll) & ask them to try their best and order them by quality and similarity.

The final tally would just be a count of numbers combined with a very mild weighting system associated with where in the list people placed a game (so something like Lionheart doesn't get too high just because it might have lots of votes, for example). You don't even need to be clinically accurate with the weighting of positions, you can just go by pure intuition without even assigning a point value to the positions.

& to top it off I'd prefer to have a good governing body of somewhere between 5-10 people, preferably each with their own overlapping specialisms to act as the final word should there be any sniffs of corruption who couldn't alter polls individually but could act as a whole unit should they all agree something fishy is going on. This at least means a good few people need to be bribed heartily insead of just one person. & these guys/gals would still be at the mercy of popular opinion even if they took bribes & if all the games on the list look to be by the same developer or whatever then a new council could be 'demanded'.

You might think all of this stuff sounds awfully stuffy and overcomplicated, but it's actually remarkably simple & it's usually the bizzare mathematics and obvious shilling that are actually more complicated in the long-run. Most of the stuff I suggest is just common-sense, but putting common-sense into words always makes it sound more complex than it actually is, like, imagine describing the rules of a sports game to someone, to you it's all easy and you don;t even think about it, but start describing it to someone else who's never seen the sport before & you end up in all kinds of bother and confusing elaboration.

Cacheperl said:

Not an easy question. Just ask the people who are involved with the Hugo awards…

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Nah, even this very liberal forum struggles to even find 10 games a year to be worth voting for let alone have any controversy over the three or four at the top.

All-time is a bit more complicated though as the available pool of games is closer to 1,000ish and growing every year. Hence chopping it up into sub-categories around the 50-100 games mark each would then make it both more manageable and more relevant.

With things like Hugo, Oscars etc is that they all get stuck in the times and genres of whenever the award was started, unable to adapt to rising quantity or changing tastes. I mean, why even have a combined award for Science Fiction AND fantasy, jeez, let someone else take half the burden & stick to at least one to ease the overload...