Is it just me?

I don't think the engines are the problem. Unity and Unreal couldn't really be called bespoke - they're general purpose engines, and you start with a pretty blank slate. In terms of implementing gameplay, they don't pull you in a particular direction like, say, RPGmaker.

What might be a factor is that, if you're a new developer, it's much easier to get guidance on how to do the things that people have done dozens of times before.

Agreed. If your a new developer the well trodden path is likely to be your first point of call.
For things like Unity I gathered from interviews of some devs that they have had to develop a lot of tools themselves for things that Unity did not come with. For instance 2d games had some trouble and had to develop things like 2d animation tools. I guess Unity has largely righted that ship now. Unreal I have always thought of as a first person engine but glad to hear it is more capable now.
 
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Agreed. If your a new developer the well trodden path is likely to be your first point of call.
For things like Unity I gathered from interviews of some devs that they have had to develop a lot of tools themselves for things that Unity did not come with. For instance 2d games had some trouble and had to develop things like 2d animation tools. I guess Unity has largely righted that ship now. Unreal I have always thought of as a first person engine but glad to hear it is more capable now.

Yeah, Unity is a bit of a strange one with 2D. It's been used for tons of successful 2D games, but was never particularly well-suited for it. It doesn't have a true 2d mode - it's essentially a 3D camera pulled back and locked to view a flat plane. That's one area where I can see Godot making some headway, because it has a separate, dedicated 2D engine.

The interesting thing I've learned about first-person vs third-person vs top-down, is that there's not really much difference on a technical level. Fundamentally, the only differences are the character controller and the camera controller - the bits of code that handle player input and the position and behaviour of the camera. In an FPS the camera essentially sticks to the player model's face, and in a top down game it follows him in the sky. If you have the framework of a good RPG, it can easily be adapted to one or the other.
 
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More clear?
Much more clear, thanks!

On the difficulty thing, maybe you're just way better than me but I'm certainly still getting challenged plenty. Heck, after my first try at a final boss last night, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to beat it at all - and actually, I really didn't have a chance with the characters I was using. I had to switch out half my party for some of the other characters before there was any hope at all. Even then, it was rough - that boss would stomp on a huge portion of the battlefield doing enough damage to one-shot every character I had three times over!

What game was that? South Park 2. I was playing at max difficulty but come on, this is a game I bought as a little "cotton candy" to have during the epidemic! I didn't expect any jalapeno slices in it!

As for shear number of systems, that depends on what games you're playing. XCOM 2 with War of the Chosen (the other game I've been playing lately) certainly isn't lacking there. Egosoft's X games have plenty of systems. South Park 2? Nah. But is that really different from the old games?

Originality is down but that's unavoidable. It's hard not to be original if you're making games in the 80's and early 90's. Now, after decades of a large industry pumping out titles, you're going often going to have to settle for smaller aspects being original. There's still plenty of room for different takes on those older ideas, though!
 
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Is it just me or does RPG news for the last few years seem underwhelming to the rest of you? I come here almost every day to get the news like I have since the days of RpgDot but hardly anything interests me anymore. I feel like there are too many Indie games with dated visuals and uninteresting mechanics while the AAA games look prettier and prettier as they become increasingly less sophisticated and uninteresting. Maybe it's just a mid life crisis and it'll pass…

I have a similar problem, but that's because no game interests me these days anymore, as can be read here : https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45156
I assume that my personal taste has become too different from what's in the RPG and otherwise fashion these days …

I have even given up following Adventure games news - due to a similar cause : Nobody does games I'd like to play anymore, especially there are no games with humour anymore.
 
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No problem, it just shows that there are more people having this problem than just you and me ...

I just hope that any developer catches up with this ...
... And, there is another problem which i have : I dearly miss the humour in games ... Even in Adventures, all I can see is post-apocalyptic, zombies, horror, anything dark and evil ... but no humour.
But ... maybe that's better discussed in another topic. :D ;)
 
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Cyperpunk 2077 looks like one of the greatest games ever made to me. I'm very excited. Also I'm extremely interested in Bethesda's Starfield. I would also like to play that indie Disco game, as it sounds very intriguing, and they have some terrific graphics, smartly using the low budget. Kenshi also looks very interesting, even if many here don't really consider it an RPG at all.

My RPG career (outside of board D&D and AD&D) started in 1989 with Pool Of Radiance and Ultima V. Unforgettable games for me - And I would never touch them these days.

I largely missed the PC RPG craze of the 90's as I didn't have a proper computer to run heavier games. But in 1998 I started Nethack, which became one of the milestones for me.

Then in the 2000's some of the greatest RPG gaming experiences ever: Oblivion with OOO and some other mods. First Mass Effect. First Witcher. These were huge milestones for me. They all blew my mind.

Also Gothic 2 & 3. G3 was buggy as hell, with limited gameplay, but I still found the open world very immersive. Amazing landscape design. Also, first Risen.

And Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I did get kinda bored with "humorous" approach to apocalypse thought, and didn't get very excited about Fallout 4. I would vastly prefer an approach similar to STALKER games. Those should probably be considered FPS games with RPG elements, than vice versa. Buggy as shit, but amazing atmosphere.

In the 2010's I stopped playing RPG's due to work and a too lousy computer. So I still haven't properly played Skyrim, haven't even touched Witcher 3, or Kingdom Come. I intend to play all now, as they seem great, with my awesome new computer that can play the latest games with all the stats maxed to top.

Nowadays I vastly prefer first person view, as I find it much more immersive. In general I consider immersion more important than math and micro-managing in RPG's.

A couple of years ago I tried to play the graphical update of Baldur's Gate 2. I know I would have loved it in the 90's, but despite solid graphics the game felt very dated to me. I had to spend so much time micro-managing things and fighting an enormous amount of battles with repeated tactics (Because repeating the same tactic was the most effective way to win), that ultimately I found it dull. I quit after 20-30 hours of gameplay.

As for other games: Adventure games like Future Wars and Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis. GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. Unreal Tournament. Rat Race on Vic-20. Pong on Atari console. Yes, I started videogaming with Pong in 1980. Thief 3 (I missed the first two on time of release). World Of Goo. Tetris on C-64. Decathlon on C-64. Worms. Lemmings. Speedball 2. First Halo. The list goes on and on…
 
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In the recent past I made solid attempts to step outside of my Tolkien comfort zone and immerse myself in RPGs in other settings but after a few hours it just started to feel like work. I'm a happy camper in a Tolkien-esque fantasy world with forests and mountains and elves and magic… I just never tire of it.

Like Tuukka, it's hard for me to replay the classics from the past. Ultima VII and other wonderful RPGs from the 80s and 90s… it's not the visuals with them, it's always some clumsy time consuming mechanic that turns me off. For example, managing inventory in U7 is just not something I'm going to spend my time doing anymore.

However, I strongly believe that many of the RPG mechanics that made 80s & 90s RPGs so fun never became fully fleshed out in our contemporary times. Rather, most developers don't include these mechanics at all anymore, let alone refining and expanding them. NPC schedules, day/night/weather that meaningfully impacts the game world (NPC interactions, ability to carry out tasks etc.), contiguous worlds (not maps or levels), meaningful loot rather than piles of junk to sell, and so many other things. Many of these mechanics are ignored anymore which is a bummer.

It's not to say that I don't enjoy modern day visuals and story telling is usually better. But I miss those gameplay mechanics and wish it made marketing sense for developers to include them. I'm still hoping for Swen Vincke's "RPG of all RPGs" where he states the spiritual guide for such a game is Ultima VII. Hope he makes this before I die…
 
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What would be the closest modern relative to U7?

I never played U7 - I wanted to, but didn't have the money for it. I know the game very well despite never playing it.

I felt that Oblivion with heavy modding is the closest comparison that I have played. The open world mechanics were pretty amazing to me when I added OOO and roughly 20 other mods. Immersion and illusion of a real world were the best I had ever seen.

From smaller mods I particularly loved the Thief Arsenal mod, which added weapons and tactics from the Thief series to Oblivion. It might sound like a mod that breaks game balance, but the game remained satisfyingly difficult. When playing as a rogue, it added an enormous amount of tactical variety to everything.

I haven't properly played Skyrim yet, but while the base game is much better than Oblivion, I will still add 20+ mods to the base game, and then lots of extra quest and location content.

I have a soft spot for open world RPG's. It all started with Ultima 5, which was probably the most open world RPG at that point.

But yeah, a modern take on U7 would be awesome.
 
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What would be the closest modern relative to U7?

I think that would be Gothic 2 + the Night of the Raven expansion. There are also some good modernizing mods you can find that don't change the original game play but just improve graphics and interface and things like that.
 
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I think that would be Gothic 2 + the Night of the Raven expansion. There are also some good modernizing mods you can find that don't change the original game play but just improve graphics and interface and things like that.

Gothic 2 didn't really feel that interactive to me. Much more immersive than most RPG's for sure, but still. U7 is famous for creating a virtual world where you can do almost *anything*. Gothic 2 is a different type of RPG. Oblivion and Skyrim feel much more similar to U7 in terms of how many ways there are to interact with the world around you, and how the game allows you to create your own way in the world. Gothic 2 is much more of a tunnel-vision game. Which is exactly what it's very good at.
 
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Oh, and I forgot to mention Elex in the list of fairly recent games I'm excited to play. As a fan of Gothic 2 & 3 and Risen, Elex sounds awesome to me. I also dig the idea of combining scifi and fantasy elements.
 
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I think the NPC schedules have largely gone away because players weren't happy when they finally hauled their magnificent treasure back to town only to find that the shop closed 5 minutes ago so they'll need to wait until tomorrow to get their cash.

I'm not so sure about impactful weather and day/night cycles. Few games have them now but few games have ever had them. Maybe they ran into the same issue: players want to do their thing NOW instead of waiting for just the right time?
 
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Is it just me or does RPG news for the last few years seem underwhelming to the rest of you? I come here almost every day to get the news like I have since the days of RpgDot but hardly anything interests me anymore. I feel like there are too many Indie games with dated visuals and uninteresting mechanics while the AAA games look prettier and prettier as they become increasingly less sophisticated and uninteresting. Maybe it's just a mid life crisis and it'll pass…

I have just found this opinion article and now I know why we don't have much fun anymore these days : https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...-lost-boys-embrace-their-inner-censor-opinion

I have my own "Tolkien comfort zone", as you put it, and to me, it's rather DDO.
But even this game has its own problems, because it is so much math heavy it only attracts math-heavy players - read : players who are good in math - and the games' forms are about nothing but mechanics these days. All other kinds of players have gone, I fear. Especially with its current community not showing any signs of interest in anything but mechanics / game math. At least that's my personal perception.
 
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Math heavy, @Alrik Fassbauer;?? For pity's sake, why didn't that advertise that?? Maybe I need to give that title another look... ;)

As for that article, I don't see the relevance? Do you play games to see the progressive, liberal themes!?
 
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The link contains the word censor.
I don't want any censoring in my games. Modders do.

I had quoted from that article elsewhere.

The point is that players define - or try to - by their reactions what games are being made. Gamersgate comes to mind.

This is censoring by the gaming community. They don't want certain kinds of creativity incorporated within their games.

You say you don't want censorship. But are you positive towards censorship pushed forward by the gamer community itself ?
 
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Which exact gamer community would that be? Some mmo I guess…
I posted a few times I don't mind the extreme toxicity of LOL community as it makes me laugh. If it didn't I'd just use the ignore option which does exist or leave the game. I did leave it btw, after thousands of hours spent with it, not because of the community but the game is not fun to me any more.
 
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Well, there seems to be pressure done through some people - I call them "communities", and what kind of pressure it is, is kind of described in that link. I quoted about it in the "Am I the only one ?" thread.

There seem to be people who take advantage of the internet being fast - and anonymous.

Like some people who try to bully developers they don't like out of business. I used the term "gamer's gate" because of that.

And I suspect that the quality of games is declining because of this kind of pressure.
 
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Sorry, I don't see any decline in videogames quality. Rather the opposite.
Sure, the percentage still complies to Sturgeon's Law as is tainted by gambling products falsely advertised as videogames.
 
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