How RPG fans ruined RPGs: Telengard on the Fiery BioWhore and the True Nature of the Awesome Button

[Telengard]

All I got out of this thread is that 3rd edition D&D is about the "Awesome Button". Which apparently is that any choice you make is valid. We talking about the same game? Because there are far more means of permagimping yourself in character creation in 3rd edition than in any of the previous ones.

The very first impactful choice you make is "class" and that's a minefield of noob traps right there.

And what, praytell, lies on the other side of those noob traps?

Is it super powers from the comics, like whirlwind attack, manyshot, and monkeygrip?

EDIT: What would whirlwind attack, manyshot, and monkeygrip look like if expressed on the screen with animation and hit effects? Oh yeah, it would look like awesomesauce simply by the nature of what it was.

 

[Telengard]

fuck you and everything you stand for

Well, a generation ago, my people were told to get with the new program or fuck off out of the industry. Now, tactics is dead and Biowhore-design reigns supreme. So, you already got your wish.

And we all got fucked.

when was this battle fought? what year and how badly were you outnumbered

We didn't have online metrics, or cell phones for that matter, so numbers are harder to quantify than they are today. Which is not to say that there weren't people trying. Under the old order, with a circular graph, and grogs on the top, tacticians on the right, power gamers on the left, and casuals on the bottom, it was drawn as a standard pyramid. And in a time when rpg groups were families from around the neighborhood, that seemed about right to everyone.

Not long after that, though, ad&d came out (dated it for you), and it looked more like a modified raindrop as the casuals left.

As for the Power Creep War, it was initially guestimated from number of responses to magazines and the like that those against outnumbered those who were for. And then came Ravenloft and Dragonlance, and finally Drizzt, dual-wielding, and 2e, and those against became so outnumbered that we are largely completely forgotten.

 

[Lhynn]

And what, praytell, lies on the other side of those noob traps?

Is it super powers from the comics, like whirlwind attack, manyshot, and monkeygrip?

EDIT: What would whirlwind attack, manyshot, and monkeygrip look like if expressed on the screen with animation and hit effects? Oh yeah, it would look like awesomesauce simply by the nature of what it was.

All of those you mentioned are pure shit.

 

[Ludo Lense]

You know I am glad that, even though I am quite jaded in certain regards, I still generally enjoy videogames. Because I play them for escapism and not a second fucking job.

 

[Celerity]

All I got out of this thread is that 3rd edition D&D is about the "Awesome Button". Which apparently is that any choice you make is valid. We talking about the same game? Because there are far more means of permagimping yourself in character creation in 3rd edition than in any of the previous ones.

The very first impactful choice you make is "class" and that's a minefield of noob traps right there.

And what, praytell, lies on the other side of those noob traps?

Is it super powers from the comics, like whirlwind attack, manyshot, and monkeygrip?

EDIT: What would whirlwind attack, manyshot, and monkeygrip look like if expressed on the screen with animation and hit effects? Oh yeah, it would look like awesomesauce simply by the nature of what it was.

Unironically, yes. They seem cool, drawing in all the noobs but are mechanically worthless. They are deliberately designed as noob bait and work decently well for this purpose. Of course not falling for that mine means putting the name of a primary spellcasting class there at which point you actually do get superpowers (in any edition). But you could put Fighter there and not be laughed away from the table, there were far fewer character creation traps in the early game, which was my point.

 

[Lurker King]

The problem in your argument is that more abilities for each class, more character interaction, more writing and more character customization do not imply automatically in popamolization and are not bad things per se. In the end, it all amounts to the way they are implemented. And by the way, both melee combat and reactivity in DA:O are miles ahead of those in BG2.

That's the tricky bit. Those things don't lead to popamolization. But they lead to unbalanced, broken combat. And if people would say, hey, I want choice and don't care if it breaks the combat. Then, okay, you got no beef with me.

The issue is, long ago people demanded choice, and when told that it would break combat said: "It's doesn't matter, as long as it's fun." (They even said it on this very forum, which is what sparked this whole thing.) And now rpgs all have broken combat, and people are suddenly saying, "Hey, where did all the quality combat go?"

Everyone here is a little older now than when you were a starry-eyed rugrat playing your first rpg, and it's time to make an adult decision. What is important to you? Combat balance, which leads to quality combat, or lots of character customization mixed with lots of story interaction for your choiced character, which doesn't (it can lead to having a lot of choice in combat, but not a lot of balance). Pick one. But if you pick story interaction and customization, and then ask where the quality combat went, I and anyone else from the old days is going to say, We told you so.

EDIT: what does lead to popamolization is mixing story interaction and character customization with super power-style movesets, the power fantasy, and Joseph Campbell heroic myth.

That is the same AoD vs Underrail combat system debate all over again, which represents the challenge vs freedom debate. I think that more stuff can be balanced in principle, but poor design and laziness gets in the way. Do you think that bioware developers cared if BG2 was unbalanced? Of course not. They just thrown a bunch of quests in it, with spells, items, etc. Their thought like teenagers, that the more stuff the merrier.

Now, we have some important questions here: Do you think that most cRPG players, including oldschool players, ever cared about this? Do you think that most cRPGs were ever balanced? Is it possible to make the challenge persist throughout the game with our current mindset? Let’s consider the last question. By means of quests, cRPGs allow players to receive more XP, SPs, level up, unlock perks, etc., and this naturally leads to less challenge in the long term. However, at least if you consider the lack of balance by the near end of most cRPGs, is how things should be. It doesn’t make sense that a super-skilled fighter who killed hundreds would behave like a noob, who is still learning how to pick a sword. The only way to fix this is to remove the leveling up, or strip the player of some levels, but that would be infuriating. Does this criticism even make sense? Isn’t all PnP games based on the “progressive increase in power” premise?

 

[adrix89]

Balancing is not complicated at all, you just need to put a little effort be a little careful.

You split the game progression into 3 stages: Beginning, Middle and End and balance them individually.

The End game is simple you treat it like the player has all the abilities possible. There is going to be some strategies that are better then others and you want to have a few be viable depending on their playstyle. This you have to absolutely get right and always present the end game as a challenge.

The Beginning you only have to make sure the starting classes and abilities are simple and fun to play.

The Middle is the most tricky just because of the more viable strategies present and a few being overpowered. If you get the beginning and end stages right half your work is done already. You just need a bit of tweaking here and there.

 

[Telengard]

To sum up how it actually works with the big devs. They make something, and then they test it. They don't spend millions of dollars on guesswork. They don't guess, and they're not stupid.

The trouble with choice is variance. Once you give players choice, they will choose different things. That is the nature of choice. And the more choice there is, the larger the variance of power from one character to another. The results plot out on a bell curve, of course. And unless you do something drastic like level scaling, you as a dev only get a small cutaway group of that bell to balance your game around. The larger the bell, the more people get squeezed out. And then the question always arises, where do you, the dev, place that window.

Well, in modern gaming, there is no question. They playtest that bitch into the ground until the audience matches the results they were after. And they pitch that game right down to what the rpg audience is. A bunch of Drizzt-loving, power-fantasy nerds who care more about having their hair match their portrait than whether combat is actually balanced.

 

[Telengard]

Now, we have some important questions here: Do you think that most cRPG players, including oldschool players, ever cared about this? Do you think that most cRPGs were ever balanced? Is it possible to make the challenge persist throughout the game with our current mindset? Let’s consider the last question. By means of quests, cRPGs allow players to receive more XP, SPs, level up, unlock perks, etc., and this naturally leads to less challenge in the long term. However, at least if you consider the lack of balance by the near end of most cRPGs, is how things should be. It doesn’t make sense that a super-skilled fighter who killed hundreds would behave like a noob, who is still learning how to pick a sword. The only way to fix this is to remove the leveling up, or strip the player of some levels, but that would be infuriating. Does this criticism even make sense? Isn’t all PnP games based on the “progressive increase in power” premise?

I quoted some old school players just a few pages back who cared about this very much. And there's plenty more quotes where that came from.

Power Creep was the evil word of the old days. Just like Streamlining is today. If the internet had been around, there would be a Codex-like site built to that very thing. There are numerous magazine articles debating it, particularly around the changes happening to D&D as it transitioned to storybook heroic fantasy. If you all hadn't kicked us out, then you'd have more allies left in the fight against Streamlining today. 'Course, we would demand some games be made that aren't power fantasy, aren't even epic fantasy. And there you are, can't have that.

And never confuse progressive increase in power with the power fantasy. The power fantasy is a particular type of onanistic fantasy whereby the player is placed in a position of power over the entire world. It is the nature of modern game design. It is the Spartan/Super Marine/SciFi Jesus character. And if you listen to dev interviews these days, you'll hear them talk about the power fantasy all the time. Because it is the watchword of the day. Today, just about all games are power fantasies.

 

[adrix89]

Just because its a power fantasy doesn't mean it can't have a good gameplay challenge.

And there is no point in talking about mainstream games, RPGs weren't the only ones that got their gameplay neutered.

 

[Telengard]

The essence of the power fantasy is that the Player has to have power over everything in the world. It's a green line/red line thing - can't draw a red line with a green pen. If the Player ever lost big, then they wouldn't have had power over the world. Thus, for the power fantasy to work, for the Player to feel like Drizzt, then the challenge must be so tiny that it might as well not be there.

 

[boot]

this thread reads like a Socratic dialogue

telengard, wise sage in search of Truth and the Good Game: the nature of the biowhore is a reflection of ourselves, and the seed of decline in all of us

the codex, his skeptical and sometimes unruly companions:

excellent thread.


I think that RPGs with good combat are not made nowadays because most people just don't care about it, and most have forgotten what it looks like, but I like how you really broke everything down and went back 20-30 years to illustrate exactly how it happened.

 

[adrix89]

The power fantasy is certainly an extension of the medium itself.
The difference between this and books and movies is that you have agency as well as escapism.

All of your beloved cRPGs had systems of progression and heroic stories of saving the world and shit.
You weren't a hopeless peasant in any of them.

THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CHALLENGE.

We know why mainstream RPGs are the way they are specifically. It is because the Biowhore joined the CYOA scene just like your precious PS:T did as well as Bethesda never having any idea what to do with stats,skills and combat from the start and fumbled around trying to reach The Wider Audience (tm).
Meanwhile JRPGs said fuck it to the stats and focused on linear story and had the occasional good tactical combat. But Codex will never acknowledge them because muh stats! muh choices!

And here we are. It has nothing to do with power fantasy. If the focus shifted to CYOA type story then combat doesn't matter.

 

[Lurker King]

We know why mainstream RPGs are the way they are specifically. It is because the Biowhore joined the CYOA scene just like your precious PS:T did as well as Bethesda never having any idea what to do with stats, skills and combat from the start and fumbled around trying to reach The Wider Audience (tm).

So let me get this straight. You are arguing that the causes of decline are not power fantasy and lack of balance, but reactivity and better writing? That’s like saying that we have blockbuster movies today because we abandoned silent films, implement scripts and colors; or arguing that Shakespeare ruined action literature with his writing. That is one of the most idiotic things I ever read on the Codex, and that is saying something.

Meanwhile JRPGs said fuck it to the stats and focused on linear story and had the occasional good tactical combat. But Codex will never acknowledge them because muh stats! muh choices!

So lack of reactivity its tantamount to good combat. Western cRPGs were all declined by reactivity and better writing. Take a look at Alpha Protocol. The game has shitty combat because Obsidian spent too much time on writing and reactivity. If they hadn’t done that, they would implement an awesome combat system. The saviors of incline are jRPG, with their retarded weeaboo stories, mongoloid grinding and power fantasy!

And here we are. It has nothing to do with power fantasy. If the focus shifted to CYOA type story then combat doesn't matter.

The decadence of cRPGs was not the result of not idiotic power fantasy and ego stroking, no sir. They are popamoler now because we tried to make them look like proper RPGs, which choices and at all. Therefore, we have to develop cRPGs like strategy games and forget all about choices, because they are the decline. Why had I never thought in that before? That is brilliant.

 

[Lurker King]

This discussion made me realize how useless the term “decline” is. All this talk about “decline” tends to favor the mistaken belief that everything that was made before was better than it is today, and that any novelties implemented latter on such as better writing, reactivity, better UI, quest journal, etc., make them worse. That is complete gibberish and arbitrary. It’s obvious that you will find a lot of odlschool games with trash mobs and broken combat system. In fact, even the power fantasy mentality was already present in most cRPGs. The best you can say is this: odlschool games in general have sophisticated combat system, more detailed character building and less handholding. That is good, but not enough if you have retarded history, repetitive fed-ex quests, trash mobs, etc. The discussion about what is good design in cRPGs should not determined by temporal aspects, especially because players tend to have a selective memory.

 

[adrix89]

So let me get this straight. You are using Telengard’s argument that power fantasy and lack of balance are main causes of decline, and tracking the causes to reactivity and better writing? That’s like saying that we have blockbuster movies today because we abandoned silent films, implement scripts and colors; or arguing that Shakespeare ruined action literature with his writing. That is one of the most idiotic things I ever read on the Codex, and that is something.

It was not better writing or better choices. It was boring writing and meaningless choices but the format and focus still changed, that is what we have.

So lack of reactivity its tantamount to good combat. Western cRPGs were all declined by reactivity and better writing. Take a look at Alpha Protocol. The game has shitty combat because Obsidian spent too much time on writing and reactivity. If they hadn’t done that, they would implement an awesome combat system. The saviors of incline are jRPG, with their retarded weeaboo stories, mongoloid grinding and power fantasy!

They at least acknowledged tactical aspect as a main part of the experience and explored a bit. cRPGs were always more obsessed over the stats and character sheet then how it actually plays. What is the point of your 20 skills and attributes if it doesn't fucking matter? What is the point of customizing the character in Planescape when there is only one objectively best way to play?
Say what you will about jRPGs but some have actual challenge in them.

 

[Ludo Lense]

This has been discussed a million times before. In essence, is the experience defined by gameplay with context has a support or vice versa?

It defines how you approach game development. Do you have an idea which you want to systematize or do you have you have a system for which you want a fitting idea? Is Dark Souls a hard game with a cool setting or an atmospheric game with a hard combat that emphasizes this? What is more engaging? The combat abstracted to its bare-bones or the context around the combat?

RPGs were born from really grognardy wargamers that got bored with how the chess pieces looked and decided to dress them up. But this attracted new people and some of them wanted different rules for these dress ups. "But they are not balanced!" "Yes but we really just care about them being different" and this went on and on with some bad and some good results. Also I find the old timey balancing whining amusing since war games and miniature game are notoriously unbalanced.

By the way, the way economic relevance is disregarded here is pretty disingenuous. Companies, by the very nature of capitalism, try to be bigger and better which has increasing costs thus you need a wider audience. It wasn't that they forget where they came from but that they needed to move "forward". Which doesn't mean that this didn't lead to a terrible place in the industry but to say that companies had a thing against grognards/wargamers/whatever is not exactly correctly, they were "phased out" by indifference if anything.

The fundamental problem is RPG orthodoxy which is currently unshakable. Starting with 2000's the RPG genre got progressively more and more stale, people thought Kickstarter would change this but guess what? It didn't. It just changed who to pander too. The Codex can whine has much as they want but Underrail and DA:I are pretty much the same in the creativity department, they are obviously trying to mimic by the different design trends but they adhere to those trends as much as possible.

That doesn't mean we don't get cool creative stuff like AoD or Undertale (I know this might blow some people's minds but it is possible to hold both those games in high regard because they try different things and are very focused in their vision) but overall the vast majority of releases, both indie and AAA are incredibly formulaic. Going forward doesn't mean we need to go back.

I don't see grognards congregating and pushing games with a combat focus and very little context:

Take Scrolls, Chaos Reborn or Duelyst. One failed and closed, one went by without much fanfare and is not even mentioned. Fundamentally grognards just want the 80's RPG orthodoxy introduced somewhere in the fight between the 90's and 2000's.

To end this mini-rant. If Bioware announced a new RPG in which they said that they are making the most casual game ever but with new systems that were well-designed specifically for this vision instead of the usual neutered D&D style or generic shooter I would be way more interested in playing it than the next kickstarted by-the-numbers old school inspired hardcore "TRUE RPG".

 

[Neanderthal]

The essence of the power fantasy is that the Player has to have power over everything in the world. It's a green line/red line thing - can't draw a red line with a green pen. If the Player ever lost big, then they wouldn't have had power over the world. Thus, for the power fantasy to work, for the Player to feel like Drizzt, then the challenge must be so tiny that it might as well not be there.

Aye, has anyone seen that "Rage of Demons" trailer for Sword Coast Legends where Drizzt attacks Demogorgon at end, now an old school D&Der says, well thats one dead twatneck drow, good riddance to badly written rubbish, but you just know that modern player'll demand that he stand a fighting chance, that this titanic horror be level scaled an eons of experience in the Blood War count for nothing. Only problem i've got wi Watchers Keep in BG2, even Bhaalspawn shoulda been crushed like a bug by this ultimate nemesis, the Tanari hav after all flayed gods and draped their skins over their citadels, an even rest o Tanari fear Demogorgon.

There is too much fucking pandering going on, an yet in a game like Torment which is all about an immortal and undeniably potent protagonist, you get this situation: Lady of Pain, Lothar an a few others'll deadbook you faster than you can say, pike it berk.

 

[Lurker King]

It was not better writing or better choices. It was boring writing and meaningless choices but the format and focus still changed, that is what we have.

Sure, because the writing of the likes of Pool or Radiance and Wizandry are so much better. We need to keep repeating D&D inspired settings, with retarded teenager concepts of teenagers adventurers fighting against powerful evil forces, killing skeletons in dungeons, etc. That is neither a beaten horse, nor boring writing. On the contrary, that is inspiring writing, especially if you did the same thing a billion times. Your comment about meaningless choices it is particularly insightful. I have to agree. This reactivity thing is overrated. The ability to convince the mutant leader in FO to kill itself by talking is nothing special, because it’s always better to blast away your opposition.

They at least acknowledged tactical aspect as a main part of the experience and explored a bit. cRPGs were always more obsessed over the stats and character sheet then how it actually plays. What is the point of your 20 skills and attributes if it doesn't fucking matter? What is the point of customizing the character in Planescape when there is only one objectively best way to play? Say what you will about jRPGs but some have actual challenge in them.

Players that complaint about the rigidity of gameplay in cRPGs should play action games, instead of issuing complaints against the genre. If you are moved by something else, go play it and stop trying to change the nature of the genre.

 

[Lurker King]

RPGs were born from really grognardy wargamers that got bored with how the chess pieces looked and decided to dress them up. But this attracted new people and some of them wanted different rules for these dress ups.

There is some serious revisionism going on here. You mean, they never cared about playing a role in the first place? What they’re called RPGs? They should be called chess with adventurers then.

By the way, the way economic relevance is disregarded here is pretty disingenuous. Companies, by the very nature of capitalism, try to be bigger and better which has increasing costs thus you need a wider audience. It wasn't that they forget where they came from but that they needed to move "forward". Which doesn't mean that this didn't lead to a terrible place in the industry but to say that companies had a thing against grognards/wargamers/whatever is not exactly correctly, they were "phased out" by indifference if anything.

You mean, some studios tried to avoid bankruptcy and the only way to do this is pandering to causals that hate RPGs. Bigger and better are two completely different things. Besides, you’re ignoring that things like reactivity, that some people here are eager to associate with the causal market, even if has nothing to with the causals, but was still maintained by studios like Bioware until DA:O. After that, things went downhill.

The fundamental problem is RPG orthodoxy which is currently unshakable. Starting with 2000's the RPG genre got progressively more and more stale, people thought Kickstarter would change this but guess what? It didn't. It just changed who to pander too. The Codex can whine has much as they want but Underrail and DA:I are pretty much the same in the creativity department, they are obviously trying to mimic by the different design trends but they adhere to those trends as much as possible.

The RPG genre is stale because both causals and grognards alike just care about killing things. Causals want to kill things without character building and challenge, and grognards want to kill things with more complexity. Nobody expected that kickstarter would improve the genre, instead they just expected more cRPGs to play and new classics. However, with the exception of SitS, the remaining kickstarter cRPGs sucked because they were uninspired – Dead State also tried some things, but is not a classic by any means.

Going forward doesn't mean we need to go back.

But things are so bad right now, that we need to go back in order to remember some things that were lost, at least to have some decent character building, combat system and last handholding; which doesn’t mean that we have to consider everything in the past as the gold standard for the genre.

To end this mini-rant. If Bioware announced a new RPG in which they said that they are making the most casual game ever but with new systems that were well-designed specifically for this vision instead of the usual neutered D&D style or generic shooter I would be way more interested in playing it than the next kickstarted by-the-numbers old school inspired hardcore "TRUE RPG".

Why not both? We can have tried and true concepts that were present in old-school games along with innovations - see AoD.

 

[adrix89]

Sure, because the writing of the likes of Pool or Radiance and Wizandry are so much better. We need to keep repeating D&D inspired settings, with retarded teenager concepts of teenagers adventurers fighting against powerful evil forces, killing skeletons in dungeons, etc. That is neither a beaten horse, nor boring writing. On the contrary, that is inspiring writing, especially if you did the same thing a billion times. Your comment about meaningless choices it is particularly insightful. I have to agree. This reactivity thing is overrated. The ability to convince the mutant leader in FO to kill itself by talking is nothing special, because it’s always better to blast away your opposition.

I was talking about the modern implementation which is boring and meaningless. The old stuff had some shinning gems but also had other problems.

 

[Ludo Lense]

RPGs were born from really grognardy wargamers that got bored with how the chess pieces looked and decided to dress them up. But this attracted new people and some of them wanted different rules for these dress ups.

There is some serious revisionism going on here. You mean, they never cared about playing a role in the first place? What they’re called RPGs? They should be called chess with adventurers then.

How so? And chess in this metaphor isn't chess but the general war gaming zeitgeist. You have to understand that the original tabletop wargames were created by people with a huge interest in history, military history to be specific. The "Lore" of these games was closed pretty much. Of course there were times when they switched around said "Let us see who wins the Battle of Nations! I will be Napoleon!" etc. But things were in generally known quantities. On the other hand you had things like cowboys and indians or charades but it was a very chaotic affair.

Tabletop RPGs bridged the gap between these two but it came distinctly from Wargame side (D&D began has Chainmail, a miniatures game). Essentially RPGs came from Wargamers that wanted more mystery and flavor so people who were interested in the mystery rather than how things are resolved came. These people slowly ousted the original Grognards by virtue of market share. Also I think you overestimate Gygaxs and the original crowd's dedication to roleplaying has it is generally seen now (Be anything you want). Early D&D was essentially a challenging power fantasy and pretty restrictive overall.

I don't see how this is revisionism. I thought most people agree this is what happened. [/QUOTE]

By the way, the way economic relevance is disregarded here is pretty disingenuous. Companies, by the very nature of capitalism, try to be bigger and better which has increasing costs thus you need a wider audience. It wasn't that they forget where they came from but that they needed to move "forward". Which doesn't mean that this didn't lead to a terrible place in the industry but to say that companies had a thing against grognards/wargamers/whatever is not exactly correctly, they were "phased out" by indifference if anything.

You mean, some studios tried to avoid bankruptcy and the only way to do this is pandering to causals that hate RPGs. Bigger and better are two completely different things. Besides, you’re ignoring that things like reactivity, that some people here are eager to associate with the causal market, even if has nothing to with the causals, but was still maintained by studios like Bioware until DA:O. After that, things went downhill.

I should have put bigger and better in quotations

The idea of reactivity is very marketable. Binary morality meters actually used to sell at one point before everyone did it. Even so, I still think my point stands, there was no romantic "battle" against grognards 20 yeards ago or whenever.

The fundamental problem is RPG orthodoxy which is currently unshakable. Starting with 2000's the RPG genre got progressively more and more stale, people thought Kickstarter would change this but guess what? It didn't. It just changed who to pander too. The Codex can whine has much as they want but Underrail and DA:I are pretty much the same in the creativity department, they are obviously trying to mimic by the different design trends but they adhere to those trends as much as possible.

The RPG genre is stale because both causals and grognards alike just care about killing things. Causals want to kill things without character building and challenge, and grognards want to kill things with more complexity. Nobody expected that kickstarter would improve the genre, instead they just expected more cRPGs to play and new classics. However, with the exception of SitS, the remaining kickstarter cRPGs sucked because they were uninspired – Dead State also tried some things, but is not a classic by any means.

This might be my naivete but I was attracted to kickstarter because devs said they wanted to do cool stuff without strings attached. Turns out it was pandering. Cool pandering, some of which I enjoyed. But I don't think I am the only that has this opinion. I agree about the killing though only to a certain degree.

Going forward doesn't mean we need to go back.

But things are so bad right now, that we need to go back in order to remember some things that were lost, at least to have some decent character building, combat system and last handholding; which doesn’t mean that we have to consider everything in the past as the gold standard for the genre.

Agree to disagree. Low expectations and good-for-what-it-is mentality is why we got where we are.

To end this mini-rant. If Bioware announced a new RPG in which they said that they are making the most casual game ever but with new systems that were well-designed specifically for this vision instead of the usual neutered D&D style or generic shooter I would be way more interested in playing it than the next kickstarted by-the-numbers old school inspired hardcore "TRUE RPG".

Why not both? We can have tried and true concepts that were present in old-school games along with innovations - see AoD.

Well obviously I was using hyperbole and there are very few games that I think shouldn't exist. A bad game can take the exact amount of work that a good game takes. My point is that if I had to choose between a game that innovates in a completely new way but it is casual focused and one old school generic one then I would choose the former. And of course no game can be 100% innovation, it would probably feel quite jarring.

 

[Infinitron]

Choices in character development may translate into more options in combat but that isn't necessarily so (consider how stat choices don't usually result in new choices, they simply modify the effectiveness of existing choices)

Sounds like the kind of "+10% damage" character development choices that people like whining about here.

 

[kwanzabot]

the old 80s rpgs sucked more then the new ones.... they might have been good at the time if you like pretending to play dnd by yourself with a spreadsheet but they were boring as FK....

 

[Neanderthal]

Now they might seem to be, but even worst were fucking amazing back in day, cos we'd never seen this shit before an it were future. They were evolving an actually innovating, not degenerating like they are now, an golden age in late eighties/early nineties showed off all that potential. My opinion, games were better then, more ambitious, more boundary pushing, more tech challenging. By late nineties nearly all that were forgotten an abandoned, no lessons fucking learned.