Fate of the Middle Class RPG

[Telengard]

And that's why rpgs went away in the first place.

I'm sorry what?
They went away because money makers realized that there were a lot more stupid morons willing to push awesome buttons than anything else. "Action" RPGs, consoles and easier accessibility to a mass market of retards without a clue or a brain, but with cash to spend killed RPGs. While the "market" is now fucking insanely huge, the "niche" that made up most of the market back in the day is now very small in comparison to the whole, but still there, shaking their heads mostly or just moving on.

Back in the mid 90s, when the classic crpg died, what died was player interest in the level of game the crpg industry could produce. The audience moved on to new shinies, and sales plummeted. Later, the IEs and the Diablos brought in new, related money, or rather Bioware and the Diablos brought in new, related money. The classic rpg was thus already dead, and those two lines just put the final nail in the coffin, ensuring that they weren't coming back. And THEN came the rise of the suits.

 

[Lacrymas]

This is nonsense, romances can be rewarding. An epic journey isnt so epic if you dont get the most beautiful girl in the world by the end. Its just a component of a cool, epic story, of growing up. Whats creepy is when it becomes a goal in itself, when it becomes a feature of the game instead of just another story element. When it doesnt tie into the story and influences it, when its there for its own sake. But mostly when its gamey shit. Friendship, partnership, love, rivalry, all this is worth exploring, but simplifying them to a score is kind of perverse.

I think back to the future, star wars, and other great adventures of the 80s and 90s would have been less without the element of romance, and i do believe it can have the same effect on books and games.

I meant the romances we get in games, not romance in general. The only well-done "romance" in a game I can think of is with Visas Marr.

 

[Prime Junta]

This is nonsense, romances can be rewarding. An epic journey isnt so epic if you dont get the most beautiful girl in the world by the end. Its just a component of a cool, epic story, of growing up. Whats creepy is when it becomes a goal in itself, when it becomes a feature of the game instead of just another story element. When it doesnt tie into the story and influences it, when its there for its own sake. But mostly when its gamey shit. Friendship, partnership, love, rivalry, all this is worth exploring, but simplifying them to a score is kind of perverse.

I think back to the future, star wars, and other great adventures of the 80s and 90s would have been less without the element of romance, and i do believe it can have the same effect on books and games.

I meant the romances we get in games, not romance in general. The only well-done "romance" in a game I can think of is with Visas Marr.

Meh.

Planescape: Torment had well-done romances, and for most promancers they don't even count because there was no fade-to-black and one of the main ones was with a ghost.

 

[Manmower]

The audience moved on to new shinies, and sales plummeted.

Not so. The market expanded and brought in normies who had little patience for spergish devs and their autistic D100 systems. Why do you thinkg BG2 and Diablo 2 sold so well? Hint: it's because they were PLAYABLE. Broadly speaking, sales didn't dry up, it's just that the suits in charge of devs and publishers noticed that the percent of customers leaning towards niche games didn't justify 4-year production cycles that would sell just a couple hundred thousand copies, if at that. Normies would play games likes PoE and buy them in the millions if said games were streamlined enough to be attractive, instead of being buggy, annoying messes put together by autistic hipster vegans.

The only well-done "romance" in a game I can think of is with Visas Marr.

Fucking a blind chick? Kinky! Now if only she were disabled as well...

 

[Lacrymas]

You don't fuck Visas, you don't get physical at all and that's the reason I like it. That removes the sexual part from the equation and it keeps it from cheapening. She views you as an equal in suffering and the only one who can truly understand her, fucking won't add anything to that. The romances in PS:T are VERY ham-fisted and disconnected from the narrative, TNO's quest doesn't have anything to do with that, he isn't trying to "find himself", so a good fucking won't help him. Deionarra was good because it was a background into past lives, but she's not a romance in the Biowarean sense.

 

[Telengard]

Did you know that reviewers were calling the IE games 'outdated' when they first came out? You know what that means? In the world of the worship of shinies, you don't have a long shelf life. The lovers of shinies are already on their way out the door before you even begin.

 

[Lurker King]

Great thread, Infinitron.

To insist on the analogy, high class cRPGs are too expensive to be done right, because they have to be accessible to the masses in order to be profitable. The same can be said about middle class cRPGs, but they also have too short design cycles to make something with proper depth. It seems that our only hope nowadays is with low class cRPGs. They don’t have to compromise complexity to ensure bigger sales and can have longer design cycles. AoD and UR took too much time because it was the first game of each studio. SitS has more depth than games like PoE, or the last batch of kickstarter, but it is filled with bugs and other problems. It is certainly not on par with UR, and even less with AoD. However, all this talk is about quality. If we approach the matter from a survival point of view, I think that as long they have suckers to buy their games, middleclass cRPGs will keep going. The only risk is if these medium studios end up bankrupt by poor management and absurd payrolls.

 

[Lurker King]

Compared to expectations I suppose? PoE sold like 500k copies, D:OS sold a million. I'm happy that the better game sold more though :p What I'm not happy about is that AoD, UR and SitS didn't sell that much and they deserve it far more.

They don’t sell much because most players are popamole, even here. And that is why I don’t think that we can’t actually state that the old school crowd thinks this or that. The class is too diversified and incoherent in its tastes to be treated like that. You will find codexers here who played more old cRPGs than you or me, but enjoyed popamole games such as Shadowrun. Now, if by “oldschool” you mean “players with good taste”, then I would agree with you, but this is a matter of debate. Moreover, I think that this class is too small to be of any relevance to most people, even inside the Codex.

 

[Lhynn]

I meant the romances we get in games, not romance in general. The only well-done "romance" in a game I can think of is with Visas Marr.

About a lot of elements are not done correctly in games, in general. Especially in this day and age when you have an industry that collectively forgot how to make anything worth a shit, with very few exceptions. I dont think that should stop people from trying tho.

 

[Rivmusique]

The hold-up to people rushing to play SoD is that it kinda requires you to barge through BG1 again, its not promoted as a standalone game. BG1 OC was not the great classic of the BG series. I've no doubt over time, quite a long time, most people who bleat on about the BGs will have played it, just as soon as they build up the courage to, firstly, purchase the EE version of BG1 (first wall) and then slog through BG1 again (second wall).

You don't need to play BG1 to play SoD content. You can create a new 64 000 xp character who gets a different starting party based on good/neutral/evil, though they promptly fuck off and every character goes through the game recruiting in the same order. Can even create a whole party yourself IWD style (and not just by doing the multi-player thing you used to have to do in BG1/2) who will stick around for the whole game.

 

[Manmower]

You don't fuck Visas, you don't get physical at all and that's the reason I like it.

I know bro, I played the game. Just sayin', fucking blind chicks? Kinky!

They don’t sell much because most players are popamole, even here.

So anything with the graphics and system fluidity better than 1999 Russian shovelware is popamole? K, good to know. FYI, the reason AoD doesn't sell like hotcakes is because it looks and plays like a Neverwinter Nights 1 pre-alpha module. Caustic bitter fucks like us can enjoy it for its C&C, but most people look for at least a semblance of playability. I'm not ripping on AoD, because I genuinely enjoyed it for what it is, and would gladly play a sequel in the same vein, but let's not pretend games like that are the epitome of enlightened design and refined taste. Then again, since you jerk yourself off to the idea of larping a pretentious dickwad on a taiwanese mural-painting board, it sounds like something right up your ally, you irredeemable twat.

 

[huskarls]

I don't really recall there ever being a wide middling budget rpg field. BG2 was a AAA release and fallout 1 was a rushed and an unpolished low budget release, and that was pretty much the two categories until 2007-2010 when bioware, obsidian, and CDproject made some pretty good rpgs with shitty graphics, but that's just illusory because those were all still AAA+ budgeting and marketing besides alpha protocol and the first witcher. You can't just consider fallout 3 and 4 triple A cancer killing the industry but think fallout new vegas was some middle class borderline indie just because obsidian bitched about their deadlines. Really middle class rpgs would be on the rise and creation from what I've seen of more well funded kickstarters like shadowrun DF and PoE

 

[Lurker King]

BG2 and FO have a low budget only in comparison to AAA games, and that is the reason why they can be considered AA middle cass cRPGs. The diference between a couple million and 30+ million is a lot. The problem we face now is that the few AA studios left are desperate to mantain huge payrolls. Kickstarter is not enough, they need to port to consoles, dumbdown the mechanics, etc. Moreover, most of them are either burnout or are too incompetent to make a new classic. The AA golden age is gone. It's time to move on. The only ones that can provide the games we want are the lowclass guys who are talented and are not willing to compromise their games.

 

[NotAGolfer]

There are no middle class RPGs.
You can conveniently classify all of them as either or .

That's what we do here. And it's so basic that I wonder why I even have to tell you.

What is the fate of the middle class RPG on the Codex? Do we really want to play throwback RPGs forever?

That's incredibly condescending. As if all of these indie RPGs released in the last few years were just that, throwbacks to the good old times.
How about mechanics? How about the evolution in gameplay at least some of them brought?
Fucking graphic whores being obsessed with appearances again.
Sad!

 

[Lacrymas]

You can conveniently classify all of them as either or .

The sanest thing said in this thread.

 

[Lurker King]

I would agree with you if the size of studios was not affecting developer’s priorities, but they are. The sad truth is that the bigger is the studio the smaller are the chances they will provide a decent cRPG. The "class" does matter because they are indicators of quality.

 

[NotAGolfer]

You can conveniently classify all of them as either or .

The sanest thing said in this thread.

Thanks.
And yes, I'm perfectly sane.
I even have a certificate to prove it.

 

[Lacrymas]

The sad truth is that the bigger is the studio the smaller are the chances they will provide a decent cRPG.

That's why the vast majority of AAA bullshit is decline.

The "class" does matter because they are indicators of quality.

How is it an indicator of quality? There are equal amounts of bullshit on every budget level. I'd dare say there are more shit indie RPGs than AAA "RPGs" because AAAs tend to take longer to make and aren't churned out by everyone and their mother.