Wake me up when the Incline begins...

[mondblut]

So you basically have no idea what you are talking about. The few teleports in the game are optional, you have lots of exploration, things to do and lots of walking around.

So why is everyone constantly complaining about them, then? Are you and the other couple of obsessive fanboys the only ones who have actually played it or something? I've read about teleports galore and no real journeying about the time it was announced somewhere between the combat demo and the release, with VD defending it as "meh, walking around is just the padding anyway", and decided I have no interest in a game designed with that in mind.

Either way, discussing AoD without actually playing it is a honorable Codexian tradition, just ask Prime Junta

that it is just VD's game, a fucking nobody. Let's just talk trash to show how much we despise him

I did not wish him death, I did not wish his enterprise a financial ruin, I did not wish cancer upon his loved ones - that raises him far above the developers I actually do despise.

I do, however, despise AoD fanbois.

 

[octavius]

I agree; I had similar experiences with ancients games like Magic Candle, Wizardry 1-5, Dark Heart of Uukrul, which I played first when I was in my forties.

I agree with the sentiment but can't resist playing devil's advocate: nostalgia may nonetheless be a factor insofar as old games are necessarily old-school and thus exhibit traces of the kind of video game design that shaped your formative gaming years and hence your expectations of what games should be like.

Yup, you probably have a point there.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

many here are living proof nostalgia is a retarded argument because me, and many other, regularly play ancient stuff still today.
i played x-com last month and it's still without equals. let's examine something more difficult but still one of my favourites: fallout 2. age took its toll, the interface can be clunky (i blame the first who said that "right click to rotate action", which has been big in the past, was a great idea), it may be bugged and it may have its limits, but its baseline value is staggering. the amount of dialogues, choices, big and small consequences, the real free character development, all this stuff has never been replicated. a world so vast that by joining the slavers and/or following caravans the game transforms into "mount & blade tactics".
i replayed it last year and stopped only because of some new bug toward the end (and was too lazy to look for a fix/workaround), but i enjoyed every second of it. last year. not 10 years ago. i was as an old grumpy fart as i'm now, and i loved it despite knowing every nook and cranny.

 

[toro]

But Underrail is the first "classic" in years. It's isometric, has great TB combat, has a good story, has a great perks system, has unique systems (for ex: oddities) and it's above everything else that was released in the last years (more specific since 2010 when F3:NV was released).

It's mostly linear, grinding as fuck, has overpowered broken builds, retarded MMO design (cooldowns, idiotic enemies respawning all the time), retarded writing, fedex quests.

The game ends with Deep Caverns but before that you can approach the game in any way you like it. You probably don't know what linear means.

There is no grid if you go with Oddities XP system which by the way it's innovative for RPGs now-days.

Overpowered broken builds is what makes RPGs great and fun.

Cooldowns complain is a non-issue. I guess this is the point where you start with cherry picking.

Enemies are not respawning all the time. You could have known that if you played the game but you probably didn't .... cause there is no map (!?)

You don't know what retarded MMO design means (Skyrim, Fallout 4). Underrail has some filler content but the vast majority of the game world is hand-crafted and there are few instances where shit repeats.

That retarded writing is 10x more interesting that PoE - it happens that I like it and it's filled with hints if you pay attention.

Overall fedex quests are few but again ... you could have know this if you played the game.

So, basically you are another retard which speaks without knowing the subject of the discussion. Play the game and then we can discuss. Until then, fuck off.

 

[himmy]

This thread is hilarious. Sure the good old games were good, but if this place would have been around back in the day, your enjoyment of them would have been spoiled by all the vitriol and the drama thrown around the forum, just like any other game released since then.

It's so weird that a community of people brought together by the idea that there was an objective golden age of games and that it is now passed also complain that they are not living in another golden age now. That's not how golden ages fucking work! It's like going on a silent film fan site and seeing people complain that The Artist wasn't as good as The Battleship Potemkin. Yeah, no shit? A product trying to pay homage to a certain epoch didn't manage to be superior to the greatest product that medium ever had? Shocker.

 

[anvi]

your enjoyment of them would have been spoiled by all the vitriol and the drama thrown around the forum

This is only true if you are a spaz.

 

[mondblut]

your enjoyment of them would have been spoiled by all the vitriol and the drama thrown around the forum

Vitriol and drama are delightful cherries on top.

 

[Mustawd]

That said, anybody who plays the nostalgia card when discussing a game is a massive retard that doesn't understand the point of debate.

Nostalgia is powerful. I don't see why you think it's a crappy card to play. When people start tearing apart games that share similar aspects to other older games they enjoy, then I think it's perfectly credible to point that out.

many here are living proof nostalgia is a retarded argument because me, and many other, regularly play ancient stuff still today.

The point is not to say that we only enjoyed old school games because of nostalgia. The point is that nostalgia will allow us to continue to love old mediocre to good games while trashing the shit out of current mediocre or good games.

 

[pippin]

If the Codex existed 20 years ago, you'd still have people posting in the Grimoire thread.

 

[AMG]

Nostalgia is powerful. I don't see why you think it's a crappy card to play. When people start tearing apart games that share similar aspects to other older games they enjoy, then I think it's perfectly credible to point that out.

Crying "muh nostalgia" is as much of an argument as saying "ur retarded". You either explain why someone's criticisms are stupid or hypocritical or shut up.

As for the topic, the RPGs made recently are more competent than most of the classics tbh. The highs may not be as high, but you no longer have to deal with awful shit like Arcanum or Fallout combat.
So if you're not content with what you're getting, you either have shit taste or unrealistic expectations.

 

[Tigranes]

Just calling something nostalgia is devoid of logic, because every time anybody says anything good about old stuff you can just say 'nostalgia' like 13 year olds say 'ur mom'.

You can't use nostalgia card indiscriminately, so you have to have a supporting reason - that saying X game had cool feature is nostalgia talking because, for instance, it was the first game at the time to do it and actually here are ways new games do it better. Notice something? You could just make that argument without referring to 'nostalgia', which you can't even prove - how are you going to prove that I am nostalgically biased about X game, as opposed to actually really thinking X game was better? You can't. So why not just make substantial arguments that Y feature was shitty or Z new game did it better? Just going "you're nostalgic" implies that the other person is incapable of unbiased thinking and everything they say should be rejected, instead of actually debating the point. If I really am wrong that old game was good, then you don't need to call me nostalgic to prove me wrong.

Especially in a place like Codex where many people replay old games alongside new ones - the number of times I talk about something in, I don't know, Arcanum and someone says 'nostalgia', hey dickface I played through it 2 months ago.

 

[DeepOcean]

I really hate the nostalgia argument, people many times take "Man, there were great games one the 90's." as "You are saying those 90's games are perfect, you are just a nostalgia fag." Those are actually very, very different statements. I'm fully aware of the crappy parts of those games even at the time they were released, played Fallout 1 for the first time as a 12 years old kid and absolutely hated it, played again with 20 years old and enjoyed it immensely so people should stop trying to guess other people lives and making swiping baseless generalizations.

 

[Morality Games]

it has been almost 5 years since the first big Kickstarters for Divinity Original Sin, Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity and while most of those early pie in the sky games delivered good if not great games none of them have delivered the "timeless classic" their pedigree would lead us to believe. Other games like Age of Decandence, Underrail and Undertale had much lower profiles but also delivered pretty good stuff but still none of them feeled me with the wonder of let alone a Darklands or Baldur's Gate but even a unheralded gem like The Summoning.
All in all after I finished Tyranny over the Hollidays I wanted to play something else and I ended up replaying Dark Souls, doing some missions in Metal Gear V and firing up Stalker Misery to see how the game ran with my new 1060gtx and all of a sudden I had done the first map in a couple of hours and the sun was almost up...
My point is that most of the "new incline" games are good games but none have filled me with the wonder of Saying "yeah that is one of my all time favorites" and I seriously doubt I will be replaying them the same way I do Stalker, System Shock or a good Might and Magic...the closest I came was replaying Wasteland 2 for the director cut (which made some pretty good improvements) and trying a different conquest section and first chapter for Tyranny to see the changes in the but other than I hardly see myself replaying them for awhile
Oh Mr Blakemore why have you abandoned your most fervent disciple?! When will Grimoire come to announce the true Incline?

One of the primary issues is that the features that create a sense of mystery and adventure in RPGs are no longer conventional design. In BGII there were no markers indicating whether what a given magical item should mean to you (it had to be discovered in the experience) while in Pillars of Eternity instead of looking for great treasure where you get to work out the strategic implications you're just looking for colors -- purple, blue, green that tell you exactly what your level of excitement and strategic priorities should be.

The former design has a wonderful simulationist element that makes you feel like an adventurer in the Realms while keeping your eyes trained for WoW tiers is a constantly, unrelenting reminder that you are playing a video game.

 

[Mustawd]

rying "muh nostalgia" is as much of an argument as saying "ur retarded"

Just calling something nostalgia is devoid of logic, because every time anybody says anything good about old stuff you can just say 'nostalgia' like 13 year olds say 'ur mom'.

I really hate the nostalgia argument

What I'm trying to say is that SausageInYourFace has a good point in WHY nostalgia can give you rose tinted glasses. Not that it is an argument on its own. Of course you need to point out WHY nostalgia is to blame for your retardness.

 

[purpleblob]

Whenever someone voice that they prefer older games, you can't just use "nostalgia" argument. Yes, nostalgia is a powerful thing, gives people roses tinted glasses, making them remember more positive than negatives. So what? It doesn't change the fact they are enjoying older titles more than recent titles. The truth may be, older titles are better than recent titles with or without nostalgia for many of us.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Did anyone expect that POE, WL2, DOS, etc. would be as good as Fallout 1 or Torment, though? They are inevitably going to be products of the 2010s - made by that generation of developers, sharing much of those later sensibilities, no matter how old school they try to be.

Plus, those games didn't come from nowhere. They weren't 'oldschool', they were the pinnacle of a genre/subgenre that had been steadily improving for nearly 20 years. To get games of that quality, you'd need the genre to not only re-emerge, but also consolidate itself and build back up to that level over the next decade.

 

[DeepOcean]

This thread is hilarious. Sure the good old games were good, but if this place would have been around back in the day, your enjoyment of them would have been spoiled by all the vitriol and the drama thrown around the forum, just like any other game released since then.

Don't exaggerate, when MotB was released people reacted to it with praise here, when New Vegas was released, it was the same even with harsh criticism upon the gameplay problems the game inherited from Fallout 3. Even recent popamole RPGs like the Witcha 3 received a neutral reaction with both criticism and praise, same with Dragon Age Origins. The shadowrun games got a positive reception from Dragonfall and Hong Kong even with some vocal criticism. Frm waht I remember D:OS was pretty much well recieved too.

 

[mondblut]

The highs may not be as high, but you no longer have to deal with awful shit like Arcanum or Fallout combat.

What? Isn't "single-character turn-based is best turn-based, giving NPC control to retarded AI is awsum, if Fallout did it, it's the best that can be done" all the rage till today?

 

[Morality Games]

Shadowruns (at least the second part - the only one i played) was incline. Not as in - "it is a timeless classic" - incline but as in "a turn-based, party based crpg with an ok-ish story/setting" - incline.

The combat system is as shallow as you get and the main story is retarded. The setting would be great if they knew how to profit from it. The game is an iPhone game for fuck’s sake. I played the games because I was foolish enough to take some people here seriously and was bored to death. If you said that the developers had what it takes to make a decent game, I would believe you. But that doesn’t matter because they just want to make a buck.

I am not a big fan of Arcanum, but at least it had a somewhat functional game attached to its CYOA visual novel.

So Arcanum has better gamaplay than AoD? OH MY GOD, I’m not reading this. So let me ask you this. If instead of teleporting between different scenes you just had to walk, the game would not be a CYOA anymore?

Not trying to be philosophical about it, but I don't think being on an Iphone in and of itself is sufficient reason to dismiss a game.

King of Dragon Pass exists on tablets/phones, for example. And iOS phones increasingly have controller/keyboard support.

 

[Ranselknulf]

 

[Outlander]

many here are living proof nostalgia is a retarded argument because me, and many other, regularly play ancient stuff still today.

Sure, but how old are you?

 

[prodigydancer]

You people should stop being such grumpy grogtards and acknowledge that at least some of the modern games are fine. All that "decline never ends" doom and gloom stuff is dull and it leads nowhere.

If your "incline" is supposed to be the return of the good old days, it'll never begin. Quit now and don't bother coming back anymore.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

many here are living proof nostalgia is a retarded argument because me, and many other, regularly play ancient stuff still today.

The point is not to say that we only enjoyed old school games because of nostalgia. The point is that nostalgia will allow us to continue to love old mediocre to good games while trashing the shit out of current mediocre or good games.

that's not nostalgia. that's idiocy.

 

[Lurker King]

Did anyone expect that POE, WL2, DOS, etc. would be as good as Fallout 1 or Torment, though? They are inevitably going to be products of the 2010s - made by that generation of developers, sharing much of those later sensibilities, no matter how old school they try to be.

Plus, those games didn't come from nowhere. They weren't 'oldschool', they were the pinnacle of a genre/subgenre that had been steadily improving for nearly 20 years. To get games of that quality, you'd need the genre to not only re-emerge, but also consolidate itself and build back up to that level over the next decade.

This “pinnacles of game design” narrative is misleading, because it suggests that developers were Mozarts doing something impossible to achieve in the past. The only thing you need is developers that studied decent cRPGs, especially the challenging ones, and are not afraid of selling poor. I’m sure that the game industry has knowledgeable developers that grow up playing games like Civilization, but only want a fat paycheck. It’s a dying breed, I will admit that, but you still have plenty of unwilling specimens around.

Not trying to be philosophical about it, but I don't think being on an Iphone in and of itself is sufficient reason to dismiss a game.

King of Dragon Pass exists on tablets/phones, for example. And iOS phones increasingly have controller/keyboard support.

Ok, but the gameplay of King of Dragon Pass revolves around text-adventures. You don’t have to position your party members to avoid getting shot, or open the inventory to choose your equipment. The idea that you should be expected to do these things in an iPhone is crazy.

 

[DeepOcean]

Plus, those games didn't come from nowhere. They weren't 'oldschool', they were the pinnacle of a genre/subgenre that had been steadily improving for nearly 20 years. To get games of that quality, you'd need the genre to not only re-emerge, but also consolidate itself and build back up to that level over the next decade.

I'm skeptical of this evolution view, RPGs gone on really different directions over the years and I dunno if you can say there was an evolution. Just to take some examples, stuff like the Wizardry series and their similiars, the Ultimas, the Gold Box games and the Infinite Engine games, they aren't exactly an evolution from each other but more like different directions took by different developers.

While I agree that is possible for D:OS 2, Torment and PoE 2 (If Obsidian get their shit together and start doing decent encounter design and learn how to fucking code a decent enemy AI.) to be good games, games like Tyranny and the Wasteland 3 kickstarter makes me very worried they might not follow the direction of incline as some people are hoping.