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Why the majority of the codex dont play the true classics?

Alkarl

Learned
Joined
Oct 9, 2016
Messages
472
As someone who grew up a consoletard weeb, but has played, completed, and loved a lot of these classics in the recent past, I, too, can say that these games scratched an itch I never knew I had.

There is something just so refreshing about rolling your characters, building them with purpose, and then being unceremoniously dumped into the game. It's so freeing, in an age where people are modding the intros out of games and constantly bitch about the stories on the internet.
 
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
4,065
Grew up with Fallout. Anything older tend to be a pain to play for me, more often than not. Daggerfall and Wasteland were fine (minus some mechanics) but tried going further back to Ultima or similar games and I had to go around typing names and shit (figthing stickmen in Ultima I was kinda funny).

Overall I get used to old graphic, but UI and ease to use are bigger deals. And I already have an impresive backlog of old and new shit to play.
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,640
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
Ultima IV-VII; Might and Magic 2; Wizardy 6/7; Wasteland; Darklands; Betrayal at Krondor; Realms of Arkania II; Pools of Darkness; Dungeon Master

I played about half of those when they were released and half of them in the last few years.

Postulation: Not everyone has infinity game time/dollars.

Postulation 2: Not everyone knows about every game that ever existed.
 
Joined
Jan 18, 2018
Messages
1,301
Grab the Codex by the pussy
Playing old classics for the first time when you have 1 free hour for gaming a day:

Try to manage the party inventory and skills, read couple pages of the manual, try to guess the keyword that the friggin NPC wants.... boom... 1 hour passed and you are still on the first screen of the game.
That's in the second week after you managed to install that ancient artifact in your pc.
 

Piotrovitz

Savant
Joined
Dec 21, 2017
Messages
805
Location
Paris, Texas
Grew up with Fallout. Anything older tend to be a pain to play for me, more often than not. Daggerfall and Wasteland were fine (minus some mechanics) but tried going further back to Ultima or similar games and I had to go around typing names and shit (figthing stickmen in Ultima I was kinda funny).

Overall I get used to old graphic, but UI and ease to use are bigger deals. And I already have an impresive backlog of old and new shit to play.

This exactly.

Most of oldschool hand-crafted graphics are charming as fuck and if it wasn't for the terrible pain in the ass UIs, that artificially prolongs all of those games by tedious inventory management and all that jazz, I would say that 80s and early 90s classics would definitely enjoy more popularity among modern gamers.
 

Covenant

Savant
Joined
Aug 3, 2017
Messages
343
I think people nowadays are much less tolerant of games unnecessarily wasting their time. So things like bad UI, high encounter rate with unchallenging combat, basically anything that soaks up time without challenging the player appropriately - fetch quests, backtracking, unskippable tutorials - come off as much bigger sins today than they did in the past because we're no longer limited in our game-playing by what games are available (were any of us talking about our 'backlog' back in the early 90's?) but by how much time we have. It's not just the classics that suffer from this, naturally, but they were much more likely than a modern game to have you need to go through ten different screens for some simple inventory management.

Not that plenty of games being released today aren't doing the same thing and worse, of course.
 

Master

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 19, 2016
Messages
1,160
Funny, i find older games (up to Wizardry 1) far less guilty of what you describe, the worst modern examples being FO3/NV.
 

Neanderthal

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
3,626
Location
Granbretan
I tried to play Ultima VII and found it just too frustrating: I had to master clicking with either the left or right mouse button, I had to place items in slots around my characters body where they would naturally go, I was confused by the byzantine conversation options, it took me twenty fucking minutes to install the game with Exult, and worst of all I could put a bag inside a box inside a chest and so i'd lose all my important items! Are they expecting me to manage my inventory or something?

:popamole:
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
Because those old classics have aged poorly and life is too short to play games with garbage graphics and poor controls. That is reality. Even i am an oldfag and can't stomach most old games.

There are many hypocrite oldfags who cling to their nostalgia in order to get codex-cred because they played obscure and old games most haven't, but if they were honest, they would admit this: There is no point in playing the classics today, unless you are studying game design for professional reasons or something.

Truth be told, the oldest playable classics for most are the original Fallouts and the Infinity engine games. Older than that and you enter rotten territory. Even the original Diablo sucks to play today. Try it.

Kill yourself, retard.

Yes, "even" Diablo still plays great today.
I played it several times during the years, and it played exactly the same. Guess what, the way a game plays does not change.

Also, when exactly, according to you, does a game become unplayable? I want the point in time when Diablo turned from playable to unplayable.

And, yeah, sure, people are wrong and in denial calling you a popamolist, but you're correct in calling them pimplefaced nerds if they don't play the new garbage games... that apparently according to you, one has to play? Why? Because they're new of course!
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,656
I completed Wasteland a few years ago and it was a complete waste of time I only went through because I didn't have anything particularly better to do.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
Because golden era of classics RPGs was also an era of shit interfaces, no-life game design, teenage masturbatory storylines and awful usability. Most of the classics are garbage and a waste of time, and that's a fact. The exceptions are Darklands, Betrayal at Krondor and Jagged Alliance all of which still hold up decently.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
If you can't enjoy World of Xeen or Dark Sun: Shattered Lands today, you don't like games.

I played World of Xeen for the first time in 2007 or 2008, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands for the first time in 2017.
They were perfectly playable with intuitive interfaces and were very fun to play.

I played Pool of Radiance for the first time in 2015 or 2016, using the Gold Box Companion utility for some modern interface convenience features (automap and shit), so for some old games fan-made interface improvement exist.
 

abnaxus

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
10,849
Location
Fiernes
because the average codexer is a popamolist in denial
B0G4r.png
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
Because golden era of classics RPGs was also an era of shit interfaces, no-life game design, teenage masturbatory storylines and awful usability. Most of the classics are garbage and a waste of time, and that's a fact. The exceptions are Darklands, Betrayal at Krondor and Jagged Alliance all of which still hold up decently.

The no-life design and terrible storytelling are still prevalent today.

Terrible storytelling, sure. No-life design, not really. Old games had a lot of poorly thought out mechanics that served no purpose other than to waste your fucking time. It may have been fine when I was 12, but I simply don't have patience for all that archaic bullshit anymore.

But yes, it is highly amusing when I see those Codexers who love to pose as some high brow veterans only reference things as far back as the Infinity Engine and Black Isle catalogue. Sorry, you do need to play at least some of the classics before you get to wear your top hat and monocle.

Me, I have played most of that shit when it came out, and I have no intention of touching any of it again with a ten foot pole.
 

Smegmalicious

Barely Literate
Joined
May 20, 2018
Messages
5
Location
Parts Unknown
Let's Play: Might and Magic: World of Xeen

Ok. Found the game no problem on My Abandoneware. Super small file, downloaded instantly. Soooo...."This app can't run on your pc." Alright....quick google search leads me to DOSbox. Quick download, setup and config. Haven't used DOS in forever so I don't remember the commands. No problem, google has the answers. Ok so after 10 minutes or so I get the game running. Pixel art is surprisingly nice looking.

I glanced at the manual pdf....what in the holy hell? 71 fucking pages? I'll just jump right in.

Ok...so it's a blobber. I've played Grimrock, so I have some idea how to do this. Hmm...graphics aren't so pretty now that I'm in the game. And what is that noise? Is that the fucking music? Jesus christ....can I not turn that shit off?

My mouse is all laggy and shit...like unplayable. Back to Google. So I mess around with the emulated pc speed. Ok that shit kind of works now. I can at least play the game.

Nope wait....mouse stopped working entirely.

Fuck it....done.
 
Unwanted

Bladeract

It's Neckbeard Shitlord. Again.
Dumbfuck
Joined
May 19, 2018
Messages
239
Location
-66.273, 100.984
I think people nowadays are much less tolerant of games unnecessarily wasting their time. So things like bad UI, high encounter rate with unchallenging combat, basically anything that soaks up time without challenging the player appropriately - fetch quests, backtracking, unskippable tutorials - come off as much bigger sins today than they did in the past because we're no longer limited in our game-playing by what games are available (were any of us talking about our 'backlog' back in the early 90's?) but by how much time we have. It's not just the classics that suffer from this, naturally, but they were much more likely than a modern game to have you need to go through ten different screens for some simple inventory management.

Not that plenty of games being released today aren't doing the same thing and worse, of course.

That holds true for people who don't like games and just want an interactive fiction, like how Hepler wanted a button to skip combat.

Games like JA 2 don't waste time or have bad interface, nor do any of the later ultimas or wizardries or many other games. However they still require you to play them, which is not nearly least common denominator enough for many 'gamers'.
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
Because golden era of classics RPGs was also an era of shit interfaces, no-life game design, teenage masturbatory storylines and awful usability. Most of the classics are garbage and a waste of time, and that's a fact. The exceptions are Darklands, Betrayal at Krondor and Jagged Alliance all of which still hold up decently.

The no-life design and terrible storytelling are still prevalent today.

Terrible storytelling, sure. No-life design, not really. Old games had a lot of poorly thought out mechanics that served no purpose other than to waste your fucking time. It may have been fine when I was 12, but I simply don't have patience for all that archaic bullshit anymore.

But yes, it is highly amusing when I see those Codexers who love to pose as some high brow veterans only reference things as far back as the Infinity Engine and Black Isle catalogue. Sorry, you do need to play at least some of the classics before you get to wear your top hat and monocle.

Me, I have played most of that shit when it came out, and I have no intention of touching any of it again with a ten foot pole.

And you thought those interfaces were shit even back then, did you?

Speaking of which, the interface in Darklands can hardly be called good and the combat is awful RTwP. lul, try playing it again today, maybe that will also turn out to be shit for you.

Also, how many years you think until these new awesome game that don't waste your time will become shit as well?
 

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