Incline RPG Codex's Top 50 cRPGs - Results and Reviews

[Lhynn]

Football manager 201X would take cRPG goty every year if people voted with their hearts.

 

[Sigourn]

Each person has 25 points to distribute between what they think are the best RPGs ever. You have to spend at least 1 point per game, and at most 5 points on each game, so you can vote anything from 5 to 25 games, weighting how great you think they are.

IMO, one should only list games they consider the best games ever ("ever" in these past years, naturally), give them each a score from 1 to 5, and call it a day. No "having to juggle points between games" needed. Else one single person can assign 25 points to Underrail, but another person can't decide between Age of Decadence and Underrail (for example) and have to split their points in between games.

It's just what seems logical for me. By doing it this way, people are free to suggest more games, and giving them the rating they believe is right. 5 to 25 games to vote seems fine to me (even if I would make it 20 max).

 

[felipepepe]

Read the rules: you can't give 25 points to a single game, 5 is the cap.

So one can give 5 to AoD, 5 to Underrail and then distribute 15 points among other games they enjoyed. The whole point is not to see if Aod > Underrail, but rather to see what else is cool and people should give a try.

 

[Goral]

I like this system, at least there will be no trolling downvotes as was the case with Age of Decadence in the GOTY edition (BTW, still waiting on DarkUnderlord to deliver: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/codex-goty-2015-results.107369/page-12#post-4417950 )

 

[naossano]

Would be good to clarify the qualifying time period for games that are localized into english years after their initial release.

Should be a different section, so they still can be voted on initial release.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Read the rules: you can't give 25 points to a single game, 5 is the cap.

So one can give 5 to AoD, 5 to Underrail and then distribute 15 points among other games they enjoyed. The whole point is not to see if Aod > Underrail, but rather to see what else is cool and people should give a try.

You should just ask people to list their order of preference, as many games they wants. Then you could assign points to the way you see fit, say for instance by using Borda Count or modification thereof.

 

[tuluse]

We came up with original system for very good reasons.

Not one of you has more than 25 rpgs that deserve to be on any all time list.

Only a few hundred people participated, 10 people being able to override 200 people by giving 25 points instead of 1 is ridiculous.

Order of preference is shit, I like a lot of games equally well and want to reflect that.

 

[Sigourn]

Read the rules: you can't give 25 points to a single game, 5 is the cap.

My mistake. Still, the issue persists: if you have 6 games you consider to be 5 out of 5s, you can't give each of them 5 points. Hence you need to start juggling points.

The whole point is not to see if Aod > Underrail, but rather to see what else is cool and people should give a try.

That's basically what I said. You need points to know what games are really (according to the Codex) better than others. Without points, you just have a massive list of games with no real starting point other than "pick any game and play it", thus no ranking is really needed.

What happened in the previous voting (and I read every page of the voting) was that some games got few points because people wanted to add more and more games into their lists. If people really want to know what games are worth their time, what better way than to limit games to 25 (to have variety) and have people freely distribute points with no hard cap of "25"? (To accurately vouch for a game's quality without having to make concessions) I really think it's the best way to do it.

Not one of you has more than 25 rpgs that deserve to be on any all time list.

That means the Top 70 cRPGs are 45 too many.

Only a few hundred people participated, 10 people being able to override 200 people by giving 25 points instead of 1 is ridiculous.

And this is solved with my current proposal. Why would people assign just one point to a game is beyond me, it's best if you don't vote it at all.

Order of preference is shit, I like a lot of games equally well and want to reflect that.

And this is solved with my current proposal. If you believe 6 games are equally good, and they are all 5 out of 5s, you will be able to reflect that.

 

[tuluse]

And this is solved with my current proposal. If you believe 6 games are equally good, and they are all 5 out of 5s, you will be able to reflect that.

There's 72 freaking games on this list, how big do you want it to be?

 

[an Administrator]

100

 

[Sigourn]

There's 72 freaking games on this list, how big do you want it to be?

If people vote honestly, I can guarantee you it won't be as massive as you think.

The problem with the previous voting was that people literally said "I won't vote Fallout, it will make it to the top anyways". Thus the list gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

My suggestion works in here because there aren't plenty of awesome titles from 2011/2012 to present. But you can easily notice there are plenty more good titles from 2014 to earlier.

 

[tuluse]

There's 72 freaking games on this list, how big do you want it to be?

If people vote honestly, I can guarantee you it won't be as massive as you think.

The problem with the previous voting was that people literally said "I won't vote Fallout, it will make it to the top anyways". Thus the list gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

No one has more than 25 top rpgs, everyone can vote honestly.

This is the codex, so you will never see 100% honest voting regardless of system.

 

[Sigourn]

No one has more than 25 top rpgs, everyone can vote honestly.

This is the codex, so you will never see 100% honest voting regardless of system.

Indeed. Hence you are limited to 25, and you are not even forced to vote for 25 games. You vote for 1, 2, 3, 4, or 15 if you really think thsoe games are amazing or very worth your time.

The problem with these votings is that there are certain games you just know will be right there are the top, so you want something else too. But when some people vote honestly (PS:T, Fallout, Fallout 2, etc) and others say "fuck it, I'll vote games no one has heard of", there's a communication issue.

 

[Infinitron]

Anyway, my plan is to start this on January 8, with a similar voting system of the Top 50 list:

Wait, don't we have a regular GOTY 2016 to do too? Why the excitement over this thread all of a sudden

 

[felipepepe]

The problem with the previous voting was that people literally said "I won't vote Fallout, it will make it to the top anyways". Thus the list gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

What made the list long was that I framed it broadly. From the data I could've taken a BEST GAME EVER, Top 5, Top 10, Top 100... whatever. It's not the voting system that determines this.

Also, giving 1 point to a game is already a positive vote. Wanting to give 5 to every game you enjoyed is like rating games "10/10 - Good for what it is". And everyone should get the same points, otherwise people like you will spend like 125 points voting and distort the results.

Wait, don't we have a regular GOTY 2016 to do too?

Bah, we can do it later. I want to get this done before the D:OS2 and Numanuma hype begins, and It's not like 2016 was a fucking awesome year anyway...

It's gonna be what... Tyranny, Dark Souls 3, Desu Ex and Dungeon Rats? Meh.

 

[Infinitron]

And Fallout 1.5!

Also Bannu Saga 2 and Siege of Dragonspear from the beginning of the year.

 

[Gregz]

We came up with original system for very good reasons.

Not one of you has more than 25 rpgs that deserve to be on any all time list.

Only a few hundred people participated, 10 people being able to override 200 people by giving 25 points instead of 1 is ridiculous.

Order of preference is shit, I like a lot of games equally well and want to reflect that.

I thought that was the purpose of the Bayesian analysis. Making many 1 point votes competitive with fewer 5 point votes?

 

[tuluse]

I thought that was the purpose of the Bayesian analysis. Making many 1 point votes competitive with fewer 5 point votes?

You're confusing game of the year voting with top rpg voting.

 

[Gregz]

I thought that was the purpose of the Bayesian analysis. Making many 1 point votes competitive with fewer 5 point votes?

You're confusing game of the year voting with top rpg voting.

Oh, my bad.

 

[Sigourn]

What made the list long was that I framed it broadly. From the data I could've taken a BEST GAME EVER, Top 5, Top 10, Top 100... whatever. It's not the voting system that determines this

Of course. But it's not the same to have a game that three people voted/received a measly amount of points, than a game that 40 people voted, is it? Or 20, or 15. That's a considerable number in my book. If 15 Codexers agree an RPG is very good or fairly good, I'll definitely listen to their opinion.

And "BEST GAME EVER" just wouldn't happen with that voting. As I mentioned earlier, people actively avoided certain games because they thought their votes would change nothing.

And everyone should get the same points, otherwise people like you will spend like 125 points voting and distort the results.

Everyone has the ability to rate the games however they see fit. Points don't exist anymore in my system: you judge a game based on what you think about it, not some arbitrary imposition of "well, you can't rate tons of games as masterpieces!". There will be always people who have played more games than others, and thus can judge many more games at once.

Here's an example of what I would vote, with my limited experience, disregarding titles I don't consider worth anyone's time (2 out of 5):

- Planescape: Torment: 5/5
- Fallout: 5/5
- Morrowind: 4/5
- New Vegas: 4/5
- Gothic: 4/5
- Wasteland 2: 3/5
- The Witcher: 3/5

People who have played tons of great RPGs should have the right to nominate them and rate them as such.

Hence, I would take note of the results as following:

- Amount of votes, first.
- Overall score, second.

To me, it is much more important to know 20 people thought a certain game was worth playing, than some stray Codexer's opinion that an obscure game is a 5 out of 5.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Order of preference is shit, I like a lot of games equally well and want to reflect that.

Then you list them with equal rank, there's no inherent problem with ranking systems regarding indifference.

The vote counting systems are kind of engineered to counter strategic voting, although not perfect. However with respect to top-50, given hundreds of voters, and not knowing what others are going to vote makes strategic voting pretty hard for any practical purposes.

 

[felipepepe]

To me, it is much more important to know 20 people thought a certain game was worth playing, than some stray Codexer's opinion that an obscure game is a 5 out of 5.

I disagree 105%. Everything I do is precisely to avoid the voting being just a popularity poll.

We already know that shit. PoE, W2, AoD, D:OS, Twitcher 3, etc... those are the obvious most popular games, ranking them in other of popularity is meaningless. Who the fuck cares that PST got 6 more votes than Fallout 1? That's GameFaqs level of game analysis.

I have no interest in this retarded circle-jerking, my goal has always been to find out what ELSE there is besides the big & popular titles. Gems like NEO Scavenger, Tale of Wuxia, Sunless Sea, Heroine's Quest, Voidspire Tactics, and so on.

 

[Sigourn]

We already know that shit. PoE, W2, AoD, D:OS, Twitcher 3, etc... those are the obvious most popular games, ranking them in other of popularity is meaningless.

It doesn't matter because, as you mentioned, they are obvious popular games. One hears wonders of them all, the order is meaningless.

But this?

Gems like NEO Scavenger, Tale of Wuxia, Sunless Sea, Heroine's Quest, Voidspire Tactics, and so on.

All of those I wrote down on my lists. The only one I know is very popular (on the Codex) is NEO Scavenger. Of the rest, I've heard little other than a name drop. And who knows how many more games like those are around. But until I see a consensus, they are just random names. One guy saying Tale of Wuxia is a 5 out of 5 doesn't mean anything if no one else has played the game.

Else I could easily deceive and say "yeah, random game X made by my uncle is a real gem".

 

[Ninjerk]

Well guys, we better pack it in. Any RPG recommendation or discussion anywhere on this board could be deception so what the fuck are we all doing here in the first place?

 

[felipepepe]

All of those I wrote down on my lists. The only one I know is very popular (on the Codex) is NEO Scavenger. Of the rest, I've heard little other than a name drop. And who knows how many more games like those are around. But until I see a consensus, they are just random names. One guy saying Tale of Wuxia is a 5 out of 5 doesn't mean anything if no one else has played the game.

You may now think NEO Scavenger is popular on the Codex, but it won 3rd Best RPG of 2014 with very few votes:

#3 - NEO Scavenger
The third place comes as a surprise. NEO Scavenger was released less than a month ago and was only played by 15% of the Codex, yet people were clearly impressed. About 42% of those who played it gave the game a 5/5 score, and 36% rated it 4/5. The game's average score was 4.12, the Bayesian average lowered it to 4.09 to compensate for the low number of votes, but it still managed to stay ahead of Wasteland 2 and grab the third place.

That's why I make these lists. You can't have a consensus if no one even knows the game exists.