Azarkon vs the Cult of Hardcore RPG Fatalism - can hardcore RPGs sell better?

[Lurker King]

Lurker King, your assumptions are tempting to accept, but they are still assumptions. We are missing data.

Look, this is just common sense based on experience. Just look at the negative reviews from both popamoler players and the niche to understand the difference between the two. The first group will complain about bad graphics, lack of handholding, excessive writing, too hard, lack of snowflake complex, etc. The second group will complain about the lack of these things, with the exception of graphics. This is not an controversial and abstruse topic. You just have to look at the way players behave to find an obvious pattern. Look the type of games they enjoy, and the reasons they present to justify their taste.

- Filler quests. I am not buying this at all. If anything, Bioware's forums were full of people complaining about the filler quests when DAI was released. Some reviewers complained too, it doesn't seem like it worked out well for them.

Well, the game it’s still the most successful launch in Bioware history and received the Game of the Year awards from many sites. You have to be really careful when you consider the weight of negative reviews in this case, because most of them are from a vocal minority of old bioware fans that wanted this game to be a proper sequel to DA:O, instead of a inferior copy of Skyrm. They are too "hardcore" for the new generation that never played Kotor, but not hardcore enough in comparison to other oldschool guys. 90% of the buyers never played DA:O and don’t give a shit.

 

[likaq]

Underrail is pretty

If this is true, why underrail sold like shit?

Underrail sold 10k copies on steam more than AoD, despite being 50% cheaper and more beautiful according to hivemind.
And during early access difference in price was $25 vs $8 or something like that.

If cheap and beautiful = many copies sold, why underrail sold only 40k copies on steam?

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'd say it's more than graphics and voice acting that separates. The trend is to dumb down streamline gameplay to make it more "welcoming". That's the key factor.

But conceptually (judging by what Fargo said during development of W2, just the concept of turn-based/party based game made publishers puke) it's not a game that should sell so much. Sure it has name and reputation of studio behind it, but it's still a game where you can miss a shot from shotgun with 95% chance or lose because you're a retard and couldn't deal with RNG when building your base. It is hard for those 96%. How did people know that this turn-based game is for them to make a decision and accept it (and buy it)?

First the brand that drives the media into hyping frenzy. Second, the overall acceptance of TB when it comes to strategy games (see the ever popular Civ games). Third, the simplicity of that TB made clear by multiple videos aimed to reassure players that they can easily play it. It's a system where you don't have to make ANY decisions.

Firaxis made every effort to make the game painfully simple and it paid off:

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/31/3928710/making-of-xcoms-jake-solomon-firaxis-sid-meier

Based on Solomon's design, the video showed off a lot of what would eventually end up in the game (aliens, cinematic cameras, action moves) and a lot that would eventually get left by the wayside (almost everything else).

"The design was pretty far off, in terms of the actual mechanics," Solomon says. "Design-wise, in my mind ... Enemy Unknown was going to be almost an exact remake of the original game."

In the pitch video, you can see the beginnings of a train wreck. Solomon's design adheres to the hardest of hardcore strategy components of the original XCOM and then adds more. There are tons of soldiers, shot modes and time units. But perhaps what would eventually cause the most drama and confusion over the next few years was the one thing Solomon wanted in the game more than anything else: random maps.

So the definition of train wreck is a faithful, hardcore remake with "tons of soldiers", AP and attack types. Thank God we dodged this bullet, eh?

I personally believe that presentation is what makes or breaks the game. And AoD is not particularly apt at that, due to outdated (and ugly) engine and other stuff (for example, Underrail is pretty, has better tutorial in comparison, it's easier to understand what to do in the game, where to find rats to shoot, etc.).

And yet it sold in the same ballpark despite being much cheaper and in two bundles. For the record, I think it's a great game and Styg is a gifted designer but his design (much like the AoD design) will never be a strong seller.

 

[Shadenuat]

If this is true, why underrail sold like shit?

Because it's as unknown as AoD, maybe even less known. And it was just released. But I think it would be easier for it to gain reputation due to it's appeal as more faithful Fallout inspired prodigy, presentation, visuals, so on. (That Eurogamer vid looked positive).

So the definition of train wreck is a faithful, hardcore remake with "tons of soldiers", AP and attack types. Thank God we dodged this bullet, eh?

From the things you mentioned however, you only had one - what XCOM "left on wayside". You had neither brand or cool cinematics.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I think that 100$/Euro/pln (depending on place) would be a reasonable price for a game like AoD. The game was 11 years in making and is very niche.

 

[Karellen]

The Souls series, a hardcore gaming posterboy as it is, did not become a success by appealing to an existing niche audience, but rather by making such a convincing case for its design philosophy that it formed a whole new (and loud and boisterous) niche audience for itself.

You mean, hardcore posterboy for fans of arcade games that didn’t played Atari or NES games. The basics of Arcade games are, well, pretty basic. Anyone can learn how to press a button to dodge and another one to hit. The challenge is in mastering this coordination of pressing buttons as the game progresses. People who pride themselves for beating the Souls series should play old console games to have a proper understanding of what arcade really means. And yeah, it’s not a cRPG by a large margin, is an arcade action game.

Hardcore cRPGs, on the other hand, are a completely different beast. To learn the basics of the systems you need patience, try and error, reasoning, etc. The basic here is not just a matter of pressing buttons and moving the joystick, but requires thinking and it’s abstract. The challenging in these games involves mastering the basics. The learning curve it is way more brutal. Since most players don’t like to think, or can't think, about stats, skills and math when they are playing games, they end up being repelled by a proper hardcore cRPG. Most of these hardcore arcade gamers couldn't understand the concept of character building if their lives depended on it.

I keep wondering about this. Do people (like you, I suppose) genuinely believe that people who don't play cRPGs aren't smart enough or too lazy to play them? Or is this some kind of ironic trash talk? I'm at a loss here. I mean, yeah, sure, there are people who play video games that are objectively dumb. But many of these same people - children, teenagers, parents - also play notably complex competitive board games, many of which demand calculation, positional judgement, reading ahead, approximating probability mathematics, making long-term plans to reach victory conditions, anticipating opponents' strategies and so on, and they play them well, attentively and thoughtfully. That's without even getting to games like Chess or Go, which of course are only the most popular board games in the world, or the millions of people who do their math and make their builds in actual pen-and-paper RPGs. There is nothing fundamentally special about cRPGs in terms of the level of problem-solving they require.

So, why don't "normal people" play cRPGs if they're so smart? I couldn't say, but I suspect one reason might be that quest-centric cRPGs, as opposed to complex strategy games, sims, abstract competitive board games and the like, have a really hard time when it comes to providing interesting and clearly delimitated problems for players. To begin with, there is the lack of a clearly defined victory condition, but also, you have few stable game mechanics through which to interact with the world, so you're left with scripted events which are largely arbitrary in nature. There's nothing that would really encourage players to behave in a calculating, strategic manner, so small wonder they default to treating the game world like a content Pez dispenser. Character stat-based content gating doesn't really change this, since the target numbers are essentially arbitrary and typically very opaque, so from a systemic problem-solving perspective it has all the strategic excitement of "guess-what-number-I'm-thinking-of". This sort of thing has a lot more appeal for people who like to explore content rather than people who are actually into number-crunching.

That said, I don't think it's a hopeless prospect at all to make a better, more appealing "hardcore cRPG". The problem is, making them is very hard and even the most classic of cRPGs classics are, on the whole, deeply flawed games, to the effect that no one can really even agree with cRPGs are, let alone how to make them. In contrast, the Souls games draw from genres where people have, over the years, actually learned how to make them, to the effect that it's actually possible to make nearly perfect action RPG dungeon crawlers like them. At this time, though, the new cRPGs aren't even as good as the classics, let alone better, so I wouldn't expect them to become a popular phenomenon.

 

[Lurker King]

But I think it would be easier for it to gain reputation due to it's appeal as more faithful Fallout inspired prodigy, presentation, visuals, so on.

So what? Fallout is a classic, a great game, but it’s also a very mixed bag. You have mature themes and good writing, but you also have retarded jokes and exploding heads. Saying that you are influenced by Fallout it’s not great with you were influenced only by its retarded themes. Underrail show this because it has most of the silly things you have in Fallout, but none of its depth that makes it remarkable.

You can have immature combatfag things like the ability to kill everyone in one city, but almost zero dialogue checks. You have a post-apocalyptical setting, but that doesn’t have any depth, because it is presented in a childish way and with childish writing. Nobody will be quoting a sentence for the intro of Underrail, or remembering a twist in a quest or a memorable NPC ten years from now, because it’s all childish. The combat is much better than Fallout, but the game is also designed around grinding and backtracking in Diablo style.

The list goes on and on. The fact that is obviously heavily influenced by a lot of other tendencies that have nothing to do with Fallout, results in a completely different game that is only faithful in the looks. If the game is good, it is not because of Fallout influences, I can tell you that. Dropping “Fallout” name is a good way to attract old-school fans that doesn’t know the game, but it is not honest.

 

[Lurker King]

So, why don't "normal people" play cRPGs if they're so smart

The problem is in your assumption that normal people is smart. 90% of the world population hate Shakespeare, hate classic movies, don’t know the difference between good and bad wine if you hit them with the bottles in the head, etc. Why this would be different in gaming, especially in a demanding and complex genre such as cRPGs? Why it is so difficult for you to understand that most people can be stupid or have bad taste? I don’t get it. It’s this some kind of joke, or really think that a bunch of people can’t be wrong because they are a majority?

 

[likaq]

90% of the world population hate Shakespeare, hate classic movies, don’t know the difference between good and bad wine if you hit them with the bottles in the head, etc. Why this would be different in gaming, especially in a demanding and complex genre such as cRPGs? Why it is so difficult for you to understand that most people can be stupid or have bad taste? I don’t get it. It’s this some kind of joke, or really think that a bunch of people can’t be wrong because they are a majority?

This.

Sad fact is that 90+% of humanity have shit taste, that perfectly explain why shit AAA games are selling like crazy, why anything more ambitious or better either flopped hard or sold barely enough to sustain developer/ publisher / creator ( games from troika and blackisle, westwood, bullfrog) , why very orginal cool games like sacrifice flopped very hard while undertale sold almost 1 milion copies, why good scifi shows were cancelled ( farscape for example ), while "The Bold and the Beautiful" have 7K episodes so far etc.

 

[Excidium II]

I think that 100$/Euro/pln (depending on place) would be a reasonable price for a game like AoD. The game was 11 years in making and is very niche.

lol what the fuck. R you rich? Besides "11 year in the making" is p. irrelevant since it wasn't even close to 11 years of fulltime work.

 

[Roguey]

No one can tell the difference between good and bad wine mate http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I think that 100$/Euro/pln (depending on place) would be a reasonable price for a game like AoD. The game was 11 years in making and is very niche.

lol what the fuck. R you rich? Besides "11 year in the making" is p. irrelevant since it wasn't even close to 11 years of fulltime work.

Well, actual price in Poland is 130pln, so it's more than I said . But anyway, the thing is that if we can pay that much for new games, it shouldn't be a problem for westerners too.

Elitism obliges and all that stuff.

 

[Excidium II]

Well since I'm poor I prefer making it cheaper to the poor, not making it as expensive to the rich.

 

[Karellen]

So, why don't "normal people" play cRPGs if they're so smart

The problem is in your assumption that normal people is smart. 90% of the world population hate Shakespeare, hate classic movies, don’t know the difference between good and bad wine if you hit them with the bottles in the head, etc. Why this would be different in gaming, especially in a demanding and complex genre such as cRPGs? Why it is so difficult for you to understand that most people can be stupid or have bad taste? I don’t get it. It’s this some kind of joke, or really think that a bunch of people can’t be wrong because they are a majority?

Well, mainly I was relating my experience that, say, my 13-year-old cousin and my mom are both perfectly capable of engaging complex strategic gameplay problems and deriving entertainment from it. Incidentally, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the sudoku my mother likes to solve didn't objectively demand greater mental acumen than any cRPG. But even if computer RPGs did call for particular intellect, 10% of the world population is 740 million people, you know? The fact of the matter is that the enormous majority of the world's cognitive elite doesn't give a rat's ass about computer RPGs, and if their standard for quality entertainment is Shakespeare and wine tasting (perhaps both at the same time?), I'm not entirely sure they ought to.

Taste is another thing entirely, and of course a lot of people have a bad taste. A lot have good taste too, and the vast majority (I suspect) have some of both. I sincerely doubt that 90% of the world's population hate Shakespeare (though they almost certainly like other things more), but even if that were true, Shakespeare is still the most performed dramatist in the world, so it seems like everything worked out just fine there, didn't it? There's more quality art and entertainment in the world than anyone could possibly experience in a lifetime, while even the best cRPGs are flawed gems at best, so forgive me if I don't feel terribly broken up about most smart people not wanting to play our precious games.

 

[Telengard]

The thing about rpgs and math is it's all founded upon relational math. Fans of hardcore rpgs tend to be the sort of people who can do relational math without even thinking about it. They don't even notice they're doing it. They read associative patterns and learn them without any effort whatsoever. As in, being an elf means I get this and this and this, and if I mix that with being a fighter then it will do this and this and this, and being a fighter will get me this and this and this, and then if I add a level of magic-user, that will change me in this and this and this way. Thing of it is, none of this math is particular complex in isolation. Put it all together, though, and the Player has to start thinking about number patterns. And that's where ya lose most of the public.

Things like Sudoku can have quite complex puzzle challenges, but they don't require you to look beyond the patterns directly in front of you, nor do they require you to learn and apply multiple overlays on top of patterns, such as equipment, spell bonuses and magic items (which all stack and don't stack with various choices made on the character sheet). These elements are why the public often calls rpgs Excel sheets. - A common epithet used also for grognard strategy games.

And it's often not that the public couldn't learn the skills of rpg, it's that they really really really don't want to. They find the entire concept of rpg boring, and when they are taking entertainment, they don't want to be bored. They want to have "fun and relax".

 

[Whisper]

Can someone invite Styg into this discussion?

 

[Shadenuat]

Well, mainly I was relating my experience that, say, my 13-year-old cousin and my mom are both perfectly capable of engaging complex strategic gameplay problems and deriving entertainment from it. Incidentally, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the sudoku my mother likes to solve didn't objectively demand greater mental acumen than any cRPG.

A lot of the thing comes from habit and familiarity with the system. Learning patterns and workings of a genre requires time, and for many people what some gamers do look like it's as natural to them as breathing, but they struggle themselves.

I remember I wasn't able to get into Paradox games for long time. They looked to me as interesting as sports managers. It was actually a long process since nothing in them looked familiar to me, and too many systems and options were hidden under the hood. Eventually though, I learned their patterns and could crack any one of them and like many others began to LARP in them since I could break them too easy. It became easy when I understood what was the exact depth of these games and when my learning curve finally reached it's end.

What if you never learned cards but had to quickly learn and understand how to play poker? Remember all the combinations?

There's probably some game theory and psychology material out there about games and how people learn them and accept them into their minds.

The thing about rpgs and math is it's all founded upon relational math. Fans of hardcore rpgs tend to be the sort of people who can do relational math without even thinking about it.

Damn I wish my algebra teacher heard that 15 y ago. She'd get drunk if she heard I was good at at least *some* kind of math.

 

[Karellen]

Things like Sudoku can have quite complex puzzle challenges, but they don't require you to look beyond the patterns directly in front of you, nor do they require you to learn and apply multiple overlays on top of patterns, such as equipment, spell bonuses and magic items (which all stack and don't stack with various choices made on the character sheet). These elements are why the public often calls rpgs Excel sheets. - A common epithet used also for grognard strategy games..

That's actually a good point, although I'm not sure many modern board games like, say, Settlers of Catan are entirely different - there's a lot of situational analysis, urgency assessment and whatnot going on that, all put together, actually resembles a competitive optimisation process, though using small numbers and not that many moving parts - the complexity comes from your opponents doing the same thing and trying to keep track of what they're up to and how they're doing.

More to the point of this discussion, though, I think you'd readily agree with me that in terms of math, there isn't necessarily a huge difference between the sort of excel-sheet grograndry people get up to in a "hardcore cRPG", as opposed to, say, a popular MMORPG played by millions, in terms of overall complexity. The main difference (if you ask me) is that in a single-player cRPG, especially one that uses stats selected at character creation for content gating, the decisions aren't really informed, since as a player you don't really know anything about what sort of challenges you're building a character for. These content-gates are a crucial aspect of how good a build is, yet you don't even know what those gates are until you've played - a dilemma! I think that's one reason why people respond better to a system where they build the character over the course of the game, since at least they're making character development decisions based on situations they encounter.

Also, I think that if you take the same optimisation-based excel-sheet character building mechanics and apply them to a competitive multiplayer game (Magic: the Gathering, Diablo, the aforementioned popular MMORPG, or, hey, a Souls game), I think people are a lot more motivated to make good builds. After all, suddenly they're no longer constructing a build to survive a nebulous, arbitrary, pregenerated gameworld that could, in principle, have anything in it, but instead they try to apply the system to make a better or more interesting build than somebody else using the same rules and building blocks.

 

[Lurker King]

No one can tell the difference between good and bad wine mate http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis

I forgot that most people have this stupid belief that every scientific news is solid science, as opposed to mere controversial studies that still need to be checked and properly interpreted. This study “proves” that no one can have good taste because they are violating some of the most basic conditions for proper evaluation of wines. They are assuming that tasting is only objective if you can immediately detect what the wine is about if you are blindfolded and without thinking, tasting many flavors in small intervals of time. That is completely stupid and it’s the equivalent of a “Oblivion is a classic cRPG” in gaming. It's a layman assumption that already proves what they want. I won’t spend my time given you lessons of tasting, instead go read this. It’s not as simplistic as the “scientific” news for retards, but it’s more sophisticated, mate.

 

[Telengard]

Things like Sudoku can have quite complex puzzle challenges, but they don't require you to look beyond the patterns directly in front of you, nor do they require you to learn and apply multiple overlays on top of patterns, such as equipment, spell bonuses and magic items (which all stack and don't stack with various choices made on the character sheet). These elements are why the public often calls rpgs Excel sheets. - A common epithet used also for grognard strategy games..

That's actually a good point, although I'm not sure many modern board games like, say, Settlers of Catan are entirely different - there's a lot of situational analysis, urgency assessment and whatnot going on that, all put together, actually resembles a competitive optimisation process, though using small numbers and not that many moving parts - the complexity comes from your opponents doing the same thing and trying to keep track of what they're up to and how they're doing.

More to the point of this discussion, though, I think you'd readily agree with me that in terms of math, there isn't necessarily a huge difference between the sort of excel-sheet grograndry people get up to in a "hardcore cRPG", as opposed to, say, a popular MMORPG played by millions, in terms of overall complexity. The main difference (if you ask me) is that in a single-player cRPG, especially one that uses stats selected at character creation for content gating, the decisions aren't really informed, since as a player you don't really know anything about what sort of challenges you're building a character for. These content-gates are a crucial aspect of how good a build is, yet you don't even know what those gates are until you've played - a dilemma! I think that's one reason why people respond better to a system where they build the character over the course of the game, since at least they're making character development decisions based on situations they encounter.

Also, I think that if you take the same optimisation-based excel-sheet character building mechanics and apply them to a competitive multiplayer game (Magic: the Gathering, Diablo, the aforementioned popular MMORPG, or, hey, a Souls game), I think people are a lot more motivated to make good builds. After all, suddenly they're no longer constructing a build to survive a nebulous, arbitrary, pregenerated gameworld that could, in principle, have anything in it, but instead they try to apply the system to make a better or more interesting build than somebody else using the same rules and building blocks.

I would agree, certainly. But there's a second factor whereby all of the modern rpgs no longer use weighted choices. Choosing a class once was a mixed bag of positives and negatives that the Player balanced with the positives and negatives of choice of race and the positives and negatives of choice of equipment, all combining together to produce a certain outcome that they had planned out. These days, the popular rpgs have cut away all of those weighted choices, giving the Player only progressive choices. Every class can do everything - maybe they won't grow in some areas as fast as their neighboring classes, but they just won't do it as well, they can still do it. Everything is progressive, everything is positive, everything is safe.

What it boils down to is a removal of consequence. Not only does this design remove the need to study and plan ahead, but it removes the painful feelings of inadequacy and failure from making bad builds, because those no longer exist. It's a careful road the popular rpgs action rpg-lites walk, in order to reel in those who don't appreciate relational math and don't like to study and plan, but who do like action and adventure (things that are also in rpgs).

 

[Vault Dweller]

The thing about rpgs and math is it's all founded upon relational math. Fans of hardcore rpgs tend to be the sort of people who can do relational math without even thinking about it. They don't even notice they're doing it. They read associative patterns and learn them without any effort whatsoever. As in, being an elf means I get this and this and this, and if I mix that with being a fighter then it will do this and this and this, and being a fighter will get me this and this and this, and then if I add a level of magic-user, that will change me in this and this and this way. Thing of it is, none of this math is particular complex in isolation. Put it all together, though, and the Player has to start thinking about number patterns. And that's where ya lose most of the public.

Things like Sudoku can have quite complex puzzle challenges, but they don't require you to look beyond the patterns directly in front of you, nor do they require you to learn and apply multiple overlays on top of patterns, such as equipment, spell bonuses and magic items (which all stack and don't stack with various choices made on the character sheet). These elements are why the public often calls rpgs Excel sheets. - A common epithet used also for grognard strategy games.

And it's often not that the public couldn't learn the skills of rpg, it's that they really really really don't want to. They find the entire concept of rpg boring, and when they are taking entertainment, they don't want to be bored. They want to have "fun and relax".

This.

 

[Roguey]

No one can tell the difference between good and bad wine mate http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis

I forgot that most people have this stupid belief that every scientific news is solid science, as opposed to mere controversial studies that still need to be checked and properly interpreted. This study “proves” that no one can have good taste because they are violating some of the most basic conditions for proper evaluation of wines. They are assuming that tasting is only objective if you can immediately detect what the wine is about if you are blindfolded and without thinking, tasting many flavors in small intervals of time. That is completely stupid and it’s the equivalent of a “Oblivion is a classic cRPG” in gaming. It's a layman assumption that already proves what they want. I won’t spend my time given you lessons of tasting, instead go read this. It’s not as simplistic as the “scientific” news for retards, but it’s more sophisticated, mate.

I like how you desperately grasp at trying to feel superior to others over something so insignificant.

 

[Lurker King]

No one can tell the difference between good and bad wine mate http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis

I forgot that most people have this stupid belief that every scientific news is solid science, as opposed to mere controversial studies that still need to be checked and properly interpreted. This study “proves” that no one can have good taste because they are violating some of the most basic conditions for proper evaluation of wines. They are assuming that tasting is only objective if you can immediately detect what the wine is about if you are blindfolded and without thinking, tasting many flavors in small intervals of time. That is completely stupid and it’s the equivalent of a “Oblivion is a classic cRPG” in gaming. It's a layman assumption that already proves what they want. I won’t spend my time given you lessons of tasting, instead go read this. It’s not as simplistic as the “scientific” news for retards, but it’s more sophisticated, mate.

I like how you desperately grasp at trying to feel superior to others over something so insignificant.

Go read meaningful stuff, and then you post about it.

 

[Sceptic]

And it's often not that the public couldn't learn the skills of rpg, it's that they really really really don't want to. They find the entire concept of rpg boring, and when they are taking entertainment, they don't want to be bored. They want to have "fun and relax".

Planning a CRPG party is fun and relaxing though

 

[Eyestabber]

I think the question "how would a game like AoD fare with better production values?" will be answered soon, since Vault Dweller (or was it Oscar? I don't really remember) mentioned their Colony Ship Game will use a more modern engine, which would imply better production values and (I assume) the same depth of gameplay.

But speaking of production values, I think it's worth mentioning that Legends of Eisenwald featured (IMO) prettier graphics/better production values than AoD and that STILL didn't save the game from the "niche within a niche" curse. In fact, comparing both devs reaction to their sales, it does seem that AoD fared better (despite selling less copies). I may be wrong, but it looks like the increase in production values did not translate into additional sales to the point of making the investment worthwhile.

My take is that the audience for "hardcore RPGs" is much less concerned with production values than other genres. So the cost of making pretty graphics/nice voice acting translates into much MUCH less benefits.