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

[Irenaeus II]

I have this ubik studio in Portugal I can help you invest in... Not that I heard of.

 

[Infinitron]

(De)railed.

 

[Telengard]

Thing about grogs - real grogs, not pansy rpg grogs - is that they will quite happily play games on a simplistic 2d map with units that are square counters that have Xs, /s, and :s to represent the unit type. In the rpg realm, outside of the Rogue (only play it if it's free) crowd, there's just no audience for that kind of thing. Instead, you get endless whining about muh graffix! And muh hairstyles don't match muh special portraits!

Grogs piss on you whiny ass bitches, and then they go and play a complex wargame with graphics from the 80s.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Fuck, why was my post moved here? I'm even ignoring this azacorno faggot (he's disgusting)

 

[Excidium II]

real grognards don't play videogames

 

[Irenaeus II]

real grognards don't play videogames

 

[hivemind]

lmao these mods are actually autistic

 

[Cowboy Moment]

lmao these mods are actually autistic

Now that sounds like a good Codex tagline.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm surprised you can make all these subtle distinctions between games in one genre (RPG)...

Nothing subtle about the difference because RPG is the most and widely diverse genre: rogueliikes, dungeon crawler, tactical like JA2, story-driven, sandbox, "classic" or whatever you call games like Fallout and Arcanum, etc.

...but when I bring up Paradox grand strategy games, your response is "well, strategy games have always sold well", as if the success of Starcraft or Civilization was in any way relevant here. I would have thought that different games in the same genre having different target audiences would've been an accepted fact at this point. If the success of Civilization explains the success of EU, then why doesn't the success of Skyrim imply the success of Pillars of Eternity?

EU is an empire building game. While the mechanics are very different from, say, Civ, the concept of building empires is a lot more appealing than the concept of going on a fantasy adventure and slaying goblins. One is something that almost everyone can do and many people want to, hence the girlfriend anecdote someone mentioned earlier. Slaying goblins is what dorks do, to put it simply.

Look at the most popular games by activity: action, resource gathering, building (anything from shelters to cities, empires, and worlds), and hipster shit. There is a reason why Fallout 4 included building shit. It sells. It's what many people want to do. Action and building.

What I'm getting at here (and what my tongue-in-cheek response about EU being real-time was meant to point out), is that Paradox made something different and new. As such, they needed to build an audience for it, and that's what they've painstakingly been doing roughly since the advent of digital distribution, slowly iterating on their basic formula and engine, and consistently having more people show up to buy it on release day.

They did and deserve a pat on the back for it but they tapped into the existing market (aka demand) for empire building games. The demand was there in the first place.

Besides, the funny thing about making declarative statements about what is "easy to play" like that, is that if you have someone who's never played a CRPG in their life try out the golden age classics, they tend to find Fallout less complicated and easier to play than Baldur's Gate.

Sure, Fallout is a very easy game, nobody's claimed otherwise. For the record, easy to play (Darkest Dungeon) doesn't mean easy. I said easy to play (easy to get into, which is a good thing), hard to master, which wasn't an off-hand remark.

I don't think you're complaining about your sales, but rather that you sometimes engage in elaborate mental gymnastics in an effort to justify why said sales aren't better than they are.

I said the same thing over the years. In fact, I expected sales to be much lower and was pleasantly surprised at how well the game was received.

I'd also say that the fine details of your argument can sometimes be hard to discern when it's expressed as "RPGs always sell like shit.". You don't need to sell Undertale numbers...

Never said I did. My argument, when presented in full, goes something like that "RPGs always sell like shit which is why only small studios can make a living making them (not companies like Obsidian burning a mil a month), which is how it was in the beginning, before publishers forced developers to go after a bigger market."

 

[Kazuki]

So this what's feels like, my post has been moved for whatever reason.

Fuck you Infinitron

 

[Irenaeus II]

the girlfriend anecdote someone mentioned earlier

The girlfriend anecdote someone mentioned earlier was about CK2, a game where you mostly manage families doing horrible things to their members. It's kind of a deranged version of The Sims with a map.

 

[CryptRat]

Another big problem with ToEE is/was that it's very low level D&D which is FUCKING BANAL BORING SHIT

I like low level D&D.

 

[Roqua]

Fuck you, you fucking idiots.

I did not post this in this thread, but their children's game review thread and the pricks in charge decided to have more hilarious fun toying with me.

 

[Telengard]

I've always wanted to make this essay, but never had the time when the subject came up. (Forgive any cold-medicine induced randomness.)

THE CASUALNESS OF STATS

Much ado has been made about the "myth" of casuals hating stats. Of course, anyone could just read playtester notes for an inundation of such shit, factor in the percentage of such notes versus the total playtesters, and form a theory. But, we're going to do this the long way around.

So, here is one of the more famous proofs about casuals liking stats.

versus

And it should be noted that there are a number more stats in the baseball game in two separate categories.

People look at these two screenshots, and ooh and ahh about the depth of the stats of the baseball game, and how it obviously has so many more stats than the Gold Box game. Why? Because rpg players are idiots.

The baseball game is the perfect example of the casual version of statistics. However, "Casual" is a term that's been thrown about too much, so let's define two new terms. Rpg-liters and plebs. Rpg-liters are the fans of the likes of Bioware, where the stats are thin, but still complex. Plebs are the real casuals, the ones for whom Bioware is still too complex, and Dungeon Siege is where it's at. The baseball game is not a pleb game; it has far too many stats for that.

But it is an rpg-lite, and one that is the perfect vision of streamlined design. Take the picture. They call them Attributes, but lets use the rpg term of skills for easy translation - every one of their skills is simple and straightforwards, defining one and only one aspect of the character. There are no compound (stacking, in modern parlance) or hidden stats affecting these values. When you have the xp to advance, you choose what skill you want to increase, and you pump it. Liters understand pumping, very much so. They pump gasoline at work, they pump weights, and they pump their dicks all the time. You don't have to explain to them a simple detail like - pump it, and it gets bigger. Pump it, and you become more awesome. Not only do they like that, but that's simple addition math. Grade school shit.

Now, let's go to the Gold Box game. Please note, this is early D&D, so it's not even one of the complex versions. Okay, what's the first stat on that character sheet? Did you say Strength? I'm now the teacher at the head of the class sadly shaking his head. The first stat on that page is Race. Not only is it a stat, it's actually a number of hidden stats that aren't shown on the page. Let's pick one - say, everybody's favorite, the whinging elves.

• They can be fighters, thieves, assassins, magic users, and several combinations including some triple classed combinations.
• Elves who are multiclassed as magic users may cast spells in whatever armor is appropriate to the other classes.
• 90% resistant to sleep and charm spells
• Gain +1 to hit on the use of any bow (but not a crossbow) and any long or short sword.
• Speak their alignment language, common, elfish, gnome, hobbit, goblin, hobgoblin, orcish, and gnoll. And they can learn one additional language for each point of intelligence over 15.
• 60' infravision.
• Notice concealed doors 1/6 passing, 3/6 if searching, and can find secret doors 2/6 (twice the normal chance) if searching for them.
• +1 on dexterity and -1 on constitution.
• Elves who are not in metal armor (and not accompanied by noisier races) surprise 4/6 if they do not have to open a door or portal to reach the opponent.

Now, isn't that special. One word on the screen governs a whole bunch of unseen stats, some of which include words that a pleb wouldn't even know, and a number of which compound with other stats on the screen.

So, let's go to the next stat: class. Dear lord, we just walked across a doozy. Here's one with not just bunches of hidden stats, but hidden stats that compound with level to form huge tables of unseen stats. The plebs are already in the back of the class, drooling in their sleep, and the liters are staring up at you with eyes large in dismay. But let's forge ahead and pick one: wizard. Now you have an hp per level stat, 5 saving throws by level stats, a THAC0 stat, stats governing what kind of equipment you can use, spells per day stats, and a list of spells to choose from - each of which spells has upwards of 10 stats of its own. And not only that, you don't get to have all of those spells with their stats ready to hand, but have to choose which spells you will have available ahead of time, having considered what you are likely to face ahead.

And the liters just pitched a fit and stalked out, before we even got to equipment, and how it is interchangeable, and how some equipment stacks with certain stats and not others, and some have the stat of reach, and ranged equipment has different range values. And on and on and on.

*

Now, picture someone breaking down 3e in the same way, from which TOEE derives. When 3e was released, we were already in the depths of the console casual era. So, is it any wonder that all the rags said it was too hard? But TOEE didn't just lose out on the reviews. The rags cater to their audience of liters and plebs, and thus TOEE lost out on all the pre-release hype articles that it otherwise might have received. The rags didn't care about it before it was released, they didn't care about it during its release, and they said good riddance after it disappeared from view, and went off to write another article about Call of Duty.

Nasty, brutish and short - and that's once you've got past the interface problems. - Awful

Edge Magazine

From the graphics to the gameplay, in the eye of this beholder, Temple of Elemental Evil screams mediocrity. - Poor

Game Informer

As a result, if you don't already know enough about post-3rd Edition D&D to know that "cleave" is an extremely useful feat for a fighter, or that any wizard worth his salt should learn "fireball" at his or her earliest opportunity, then The Temple of Elemental Evil will be very difficult or even bewildering as you slog through the character-building process. It would have been great if the game, like Neverwinter Nights, allowed you to automatically choose "recommended" features for a character upon leveling up or during character creation. - Average

Gamespot (Do note, any time a reviewer uses words like "slog" or "bewildering", these are key words that turn off liters and plebs.

A little boring. There are only two towns and two dungeons in the game, there is absolutely no story to drive things along (when I got to the end boss, I didn’t even realize who it was), and the quests are a joke. - Poor

Game Over Online

As close as you can get without pen and paper, but for diehards only. - Poor

PC Format

A good RPG brought down by the very thing it touted as a feature: complexity. - Awful

Game Revolution

 

[Celerity]

I'm not sure about any of those others, but Lords of Xulima got basically no promotion. The devs don't even always tweet out their sales. It still sold like 45k which is pretty impressive, but if they spammed the shit out of themselves everywhere they'd have a million no problem (and 800k would be mouth breathers who get rekt by the Ogre at level 1 then negative review the game because that's OBVIOUSLY bad design, even though their favorite meme is "just like a Souls game" which always have a super powered enemy in the starter area you can't beat for a while)

That game sold at least 15 copies just because of me. A lot of these people weren't nearly as hardcore as they act and quit early or at best derped their way through Casual...

 

[Celerity]

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The Souls series is remarkable only in that it is modern. Its signature traits - requiring you pay attention and infrequent savepoints were just a common thing every older game did. Even games for actual children, like Mario or Sonic would give you a few lives and make you restart the entire game if you ran out (there was also at least one early infinite lives trick but that's another subject).

The Souls series didn't prove there is a market for difficult games, it redefined difficult as having a clue then proved there was a market for being validated based on that. And then actual difficult games get hurt by this because hey, they're badass and hardcore and can take a Souls game right? So what's all this reading and common sense and shit?

 

[Akratus]

This thread is full of hubris. What kind of obstinate hipster boob tries to argue that presentation and marketing are not important enough to warrant any extra attention?

 

[Telengard]

Nobody would argue that. But they would argue that marketing isn't a one-size-fits-all, automatically-makes-something-popular path to success. (Unless they're idiots, I suppose.)

Marketing must target (using the right images and language) the specific audience that the product is intended to reach. For instance, if you make a TotallyAwesomeBro video, you will reach the TotallyAwesomeBro crowd. Who will take one look at your Not-TotallyAwesomeBro game, be very angry that they were "tricked" into paying money for something they didn't want, and write very Not Awesome reviews about you everywhere they can. Many a small company makes this mistake, and are never heard from again.

The assumption being made here is that there is an audience not being reached for the hardcore games - if the masses were to try it, they would like it. This is wrong wrong wrong. The data from 30 years of playtesting groups will show just how wrong it is. Or you can do a mini-campaign yourself, grab SitS and hand it to all the BG fanatics you know. Say nothing so you don't poison the well. Just record how long they last. (Note: It's funny, if you like black humor.)

Unlike most, VD actually analyzed the crpg market and made a targeted assessment about his audience, like a responsible adult man of business does.

 

[Akratus]

Never said I did. My argument, when presented in full, goes something like that "RPGs always sell like shit which is why only small studios can make a living making them (not companies like Obsidian burning a mil a month), which is how it was in the beginning, before publishers forced developers to go after a bigger market."

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the main thrust of the thread, which is that visual presentation and the information which is presented at first glance, can make or break a sale with both hardcore and non-hardcore people. Although moreso for non-hardcore people, which goes without saying. A topic you completely ignored a few pages into this thread where you conveniently skipped over a very pertinent posts, I would say.

Posts like this:

Well, post-apocalyptic late Roman Empire decadency mixed with extra-dimensional future tech is a p. common setting. Gotta give it to him.

AoD marketing really misrepresents the setting a lot though, implying it's completely mundane. "In a land where ancient evil has never awakened, the job of destroying the world was left to mankind". Except half the storyline is discovering shit about ancient evil... Overall it's very vague what the storyline's actually about, no mention about any of the factions, places or characters you see in the game. Everything's very vague - visit new places, master the system, acquire loot, raise your skills. Is that really supposed to excite anyone? It's basically saying, this is a run-of-the-mill RPG with some nice kill animations.

Compare to the AoW 3 trailer above for example. I'm not saying it's great, but it at least has something kewl and visceral when displaying the different classes. AoD could've displayed the noble houses and guilds like that, and actually hinted at the GODZ somehow to pique the interest.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Even games for actual children, like Mario or Sonic would give you a few lives and make you restart the entire game if you ran out

People like to say this pretty often concerning old games, but it isn't actually true. Very, very few games did this. Rather, losing all your lives generally meant starting at the beginning of the stage. Maybe this used up a continue, but those were often free (castlevania, ninja gaiden, mega man, punch out) or in such plentiful supply you could literally die on the same stage forever and never run out (super ghouls and ghosts.) As for Mario or Sonic, they gave you a TON of extra lives scattered through the stages, especially in difficult areas where you were expected to die, they'd put one just before it so you could essentially practice for free.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The Realms of Arcania / Northland trilogy sold 2.4 million copies until 2008 (so before GoG and Steam), which isn't bad for a German niche game. But back then, PnP games also sold about 5-10 times the copies they are selling now.

 

[Celerity]

Even games for actual children, like Mario or Sonic would give you a few lives and make you restart the entire game if you ran out

People like to say this pretty often concerning old games, but it isn't actually true. Very, very few games did this. Rather, losing all your lives generally meant starting at the beginning of the stage. Maybe this used up a continue, but those were often free (castlevania, ninja gaiden, mega man, punch out) or in such plentiful supply you could literally die on the same stage forever and never run out (super ghouls and ghosts.) As for Mario or Sonic, they gave you a TON of extra lives scattered through the stages, especially in difficult areas where you were expected to die, they'd put one just before it so you could essentially practice for free.

The later ones yes. The earlier ones did make you restart. Granted, the game is like an hour with plenty of shortcuts, but nowadays that shit is marketed as "Roguelite". LMFAO.

 

[Vault Dweller]

This thread is full of hubris. What kind of obstinate hipster boob tries to argue that presentation and marketing are not important enough to warrant any extra attention?

Did anyone claim otherwise? My point was that no matter how slick presentations and marketing are, a hardcore RPG will never sell what a similarly presented mainstream-friendly game can (i.e. gameplay over presentation).

 

[Trashos]

I am not convinced yet. I was not around the rpg realm when DA:O was released, so my question is the following:

Would DA:O be as successful if it featured a proper character development system (instead of the skill tree bullshit it had)? If the answer is yes, I don't see how there is not a huge market waiting for the right rpg.

 

[Tito Anic]

Fixed

presentation and marketing are most important

If Mexican Stalin aka Angry Joe would say that Underrail is best game ever it would be ... i think