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

[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.

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.

Later ones of mario sure, but I just mentioned like 4 games that are commonly considered to be 'old school nintendo hard' that really aren't, because you can just keep trying over and over until you memorize the level, which was only a few minutes long. People put on nostalgia goggles when they talk about these games and how difficult they were. Lots of shit was difficult when you were 6.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Later ones of mario sure, but I just mentioned like 4 games that are commonly considered to be 'old school nintendo hard' that really aren't, because you can just keep trying over and over until you memorize the level, which was only a few minutes long. People put on nostalgia goggles when they talk about these games and how difficult they were. Lots of shit was difficult when you were 6.

The whole point of these early games was that you could finish them in a reasonable amount of time, if you had memorized the levels, because there was no saving.

 

[Akratus]

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

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).

Fair enough. I just felt there were some points in this thread on the importance of presenting one's product that were dismissed seemingly only on the grounds of it being disagreeable.

 

[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.

Later ones of mario sure, but I just mentioned like 4 games that are commonly considered to be 'old school nintendo hard' that really aren't, because you can just keep trying over and over until you memorize the level, which was only a few minutes long. People put on nostalgia goggles when they talk about these games and how difficult they were. Lots of shit was difficult when you were 6.

I just mentioned Mario and Sonic. And my point was that people did beat these games when they were 6, yet this is now the new modern hardcore. So much so that entire series are basing modernized hardcore on it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Eh, as far as I'm concerned modern hardcore are roguelikes or games with brutal difficulty settings like shmups. I just wanted to point out that something like Dark Souls is significantly more difficult than those older games, which you could easily learn to finish without dying after just a few hours of practice, as an adult. They were easier than a lot of modern games. The original super mario was only ~25 minutes long without any warps. It's pretty much a joke compared to something like a saveless run of Shovel Knight or the last levels in Super Meatboy, which are pretty 'average' levels of difficulty these days. There was no actual need to pay attention in the original mario because a single death would only set you back like 30 seconds, and even a slew of deaths would be less of a time investment than a similar slew of deaths fighting a boss in Dark Souls.

 

[Celerity]

When I say modern hardcore I mean "What is being defined as modern hardcore", not what actually is. It's a really low bar. And no, Dark Souls is not very hard. Watch your screen, pay attention, and worst case is you lose a few minutes of progress. Just like those old games. Layer a bunch of handicaps (SL 1, no heals, etc) and it starts getting interesting but even me and my old man reflexes can still beat it so it's still not a very high bar (and then you find an actual hardcore reflex based game like Boshy and I ragequit on the second screen).

 

[Damned Registrations]

I didn't say it was very hard, but it's certainly harder than it's contemporaries like Oblivion or any number of FPS cinematic snorefests. And it is still harder than games like the original mario. Worst case scenario isn't losing a few minutes of progress, it's losing a pile of souls you took half an hour or more to gather. But I wouldn't use something like loss of progress as a measurement of difficulty anyways. A better example would be how much practice (as in time spent above and beyond what you require to finish the game at whatever pace you find reasonable) is needed to be able to finish the game without dying. By that measure, it's rather difficult, because the specific timings of many enemies can be important, as well as the controls themselves (learning how to dodge effectively, how quickly you can heal, etc.) it takes at least a dozen hours of practice to be good enough to finish the game without dying. It'd only take a couple of hours to become that proficient at mario, and if you're used to the genre, you may very well pull off a deathless run on your first attempt. Games like Dark Souls? Not going to happen. Way more skill required to even beat the game once.

 

[Celerity]

Yes, everything has been dumbed down. The difference is you expect a visual novel from generic mass market triple A shit. When "pay attention and consider your surroundings" is the definition of hardcore, then anyone actually offering a hardcore game will just get nerdrage from a bunch of enabled casuals. Anyone actually looking for one will have a hard time finding it. See also: Most of the Xulima thread full of people doing Casual runs even here.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Honestly - this is one of my frustrations with some of the RPGs out there. No offense VD - but you had some notoriety with your interviews and never thought you cashed in on that.

That being said - it's an uphill battle for indie devs. I wish/think/hope that the smaller dev studios that have ties to classic RPGs and old school gaming (Obsidian, InXile, Larian, whoever made the Shadowrun games) should use their larger audience to be ambassadors for the smaller indies like AoD and Underrail. Part of that is approaching them, but it's not like they get real competition from guys like VD and Styg. And it can create some recursive interest into the genre as a whole, which would help their bottom line in the future.

As much as people turn their noses up at marketing, it's worth it. Word of mouth will only work if you get a critical mass of people in the right environments - be it reddit or other boards. I know it feels icky, but AMAs and shit like that can drum up interest for your game and tap new markets. I feel like VD was content with preaching to the choir. And if he's happy with the sales that's fine. But as a fan of the genre, and a fan of these harder core games, I wish he'd do more.

Then again - I am saying this from behind a keyboard and have no knowledge of the inner workings of Iron Tower or VD's brain. Maybe he did all of these things. Maybe he sent feelers out to guys like Fargo, Avellone, and Sven to say "hey - I'm making an old school game too - play it a bit if you have the time and if you like it a few tweets in support would be awesome" and they turned a deaf ear.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

This Facebook post is no longer available. It may have been removed or the privacy settings of the post may have changed.

This is why some people use archive.is, so we can see the shit even when somebody wants to SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING.

 

[Azarkon]

Yes. Read negative reviews of AoD. This is EXACTLY what most people complain about. Because actual choices imply actual consequences. "CAN'T DO DARIUS TOMB AS THIEVES GUILD. 0/10". You're used to merely cosmetic C&C so it doesn't surprise me that the implications of using of REAL C&C (and the reasons why that clashes with modern gaming consensus) sail right over YOUR head.

The negative reviews from a small subset of the 25,000 Steam users who actually bought the game? Holy shit, what a sample. Now tell me where you got the idea that the 500,000+ who didn't buy the game cared about "not being able to do Darius Tomb as Thieves Guild"? Now tell me about how this same logic applies to Underrail, Legends of Eisenwald, Serpent in the Staglands, and Lords of Xulima, none of which have the same emphasis on stat checks locking out 75% of the game? Or did you forget that my post was about five games and not one?

The gameplay part is simply nonsense, becase when you remove all the bullshit padding (question marks) Witcher 3 is not THAT big. It's on par with Dark Souls 2 + all DLC. The story part, I agree. The popular fantasy series? Only in potatoland, maybe parts of europe. Nobody here ever heard of Sapowski.

Dark Souls 2 isn't even considered the best Dark Souls among Dark Souls fans, so of course it sold much less than fucking Witcher 3, considered not only the best game in the series, but the one that finally brought back all the popular Witcher characters eg Ciri, Yennefer, etc., and which was highly rated by practically everyone, 10/10 Gamespot, GOTY, etc. The idea that Dark Souls sold less than Witcher due to combat difficulty is simply nonsense. Try: Dark Souls is a Japanese game whose only selling quality is combat, because every other aspect of the game is bare bones. The game even suffers from the fact that it has no established setting, obscure story presentation, and tedious save mechanics, yet it out-sold every "hardcore RPG" I listed combined - and many of those sales come directly from the game's reputation for "hardcore" difficulty.

Want another example? Go check out The Binding of Isaac - 1.3 million+ sales as of this writing and one of the hardest Zelda clones on the market.

It's obvious you never played AoD to keep on writing idiotic shit like that. That game brings challenging and punishing combat and a world that reacts beautifully to your choices. Underrail also brings challenging combat (but not as hard as AoD IMO) and several layers of systems (weapons, traps, psi powers, stealth, throwing, consumables etc) that perfectly interact with each other to create something unique and incredibly fun. That's the thing that sets them apart AND makes them niche. You can't have one without the other.

Reasserting your argument does not make it correct. There is no evidence that challenging, deep combat = terrible sales.

Read Steam forums. The butthurt about the stat checks in The Abyss and other places is simply amazing. Almost as amazing as seeing a completely clueless oldfag.

Your selective bias with regards to reading forums for what you want to hear =/= evidence.

No. PoE is the product of Sawyer's hubris. And acquiring a PnP license is expensive and restrictive as Telengard pointed out. And D&D, for example, has passive leveling (as in "leveling up" has a series of passive benefits). AFAIK VD rejects passive leveling. In AoD every single improvement of your character is a product of a CHOICE you made. No passive leveling BS and therefore more room for manboons to botch their builds and whine on Steam. Yeah, not every PnP ruleset has passive leveling but good luck finding one that doesn't AND has enough popularity to positively impact sales.

You can mess up your build in any popular PnP system, including D&D. Are you seriously trying to tell me you can't mess up your build in D&D? That dual classing at the wrong time won't completely wreck your game in Baldur's Gate 1, forcing a reload? That not having the proper stat distribution at the beginning of the game could break your character? Just because Age of Decadence has opportunities for messing up your build does not = terrible sales. You could do that in fucking World of Warcraft and Diablo 2, the "manboon" solution of which was to start reading spoiler sites that give you optimal builds.

The idea that this cost Age of Decadence massive amounts of sales... is absolutely inane.

I accepted that you're a clueless decliner a while ago.

Cool, because I've never been 100% on the Codex coolaid, even back in 2007. Probably because I play games other than "hardcore RPGs."

You weren't talking about W3, you were using Undertale as an example of "good storytelling sells guise, look at undertale". As stated above, I agree with the "W3 good storytelling played a role in its success" argument, but that's not the argument you were using then. It's highly amusing to see you accusing me of using strawmen and whatnot and then dropping something like that.

Because mentioning that Undertale sold well due to its story & characters, clearly means that I only think weeaboo storytelling sells.

Witcher 3 storytelling is also heavily reliant on a technology capable of delivering top notch facial animations and the $$$ to hire quality voice acting. Remember the Bloody Baron? Pretty amazing storytelling right? Now try doing that same thing without the animations and the voice acting. Yeah...

That'd explain the success of "To the Moon." Oh wait.

As for Undertale, it has been said many times before ITT: its success is entirely owed to the fact that tumblerinas decided to promote the game for whatever reason guided their whimsical and irrational existence at the time. It has ZERO merits. And the fact that you deluded yourself into thinking this piece of indie shovelware has something to teach to "failures" like AoD, Underrail, LoE and others does NOT change the reality that hardcore RPGs are a niche within a niche within a niche and, therefore, their sales "ceiling" is really low.

I'm sure Tumblrinas promoted Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland 2, Legends of Grimrock, Divine Divnity: Original Sin, etc. as well. Oh wait.

Your ability to spam Codex emoticons is only matched by how annoyingly out of place they are, especially given your disdain for the "tumblrinas" who have the same habit. Is it your goal to make your posts difficult to quote, so as to make people want to respond to you less, by the logic that tedious = challenging = niche of the niche of the niche? In that case, you've succeeded.

 

[Azarkon]

When I say modern hardcore I mean "What is being defined as modern hardcore", not what actually is. It's a really low bar. And no, Dark Souls is not very hard. Watch your screen, pay attention, and worst case is you lose a few minutes of progress. Just like those old games. Layer a bunch of handicaps (SL 1, no heals, etc) and it starts getting interesting but even me and my old man reflexes can still beat it so it's still not a very high bar (and then you find an actual hardcore reflex based game like Boshy and I ragequit on the second screen).

No single-player game, at the end of the day, is that hard. The highest level of challenge is achieved in gaming via multi-player and that's the same regardless of whether you're talking about oldfag PBEM strategy games, twitch-fest FPS/RTS games, "hardcore" MMOs, etc. There are people in those games who are ten times the "hardcore" gamer as your average Codex "hardcore RPG" player, who'd spend 80+ hours a week figuring out the game, planning strategies, writing code to simulate the game system, etc. Every genre has its "elites." It does a disservice to all of gaming to believe that "hardcore RPGs" are special in the level of challenge they offer.

The difficulty of the combat is not and has never been the main cause behind why "hardcore RPGs" don't sell as well as mainstream games. Now, the way you ramp up the difficulty in your game - ie your execution of the challenge curve - could, in specific cases, negatively affect your sales, such as when you make the beginning of the game an exercise in tedium. But that's not the fault of the gaming public. That's the fault of bad design. But even so, I'd have to mention the example of Baldur's Gate, a game that actually gets easier as you go through the game, per the D&D system, and which required a lot of reloading in the beginning due to your entire party dying to a single wolf, etc. The lesson is that people are not as bothered by difficulty as many would have you believe.

In fact, I'd even argue that games such as the Souls series would've never been able to sell as well with easy combat, because they'd have lost the only marketable advantage they had.

 

[Azarkon]

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).

That's contingent on what you define as "mainstream," and frankly speaking, the concept of "mainstream" has changed so much over the last decade that it's increasingly difficult to make these sorts of generalizations.

There was a time when I thought no RPG would ever out-sell FPS games such as Call of Duty. Then came Skyrim.

There was a time when I thought no indie game would ever be the envy of AAA developers. Then came Minecraft.

There was a time when I thought no game with crappy isometric graphics would ever become the most played game in the world. Then came League of Legends.

The fact that former Warcraft 3 mods have taken over the video game industry in the last five years tells me that there is a bigger story than the one we've been told by failed developers & fatalists.

The video games industry does, in fact, go through cycles. Ten years ago MMORPGs were all the rage. Today MMORPGs are struggling. Mainstream favor come and go, and its champions are not necessarily the $100+ million AAA behemoths we've been told are the recipe to success. And just the same, doing the opposite of what AAA/mainstream developers do does not give a game an automatic pass for being a "doomed masterpiece." Yes, I'd agree that at the present, a "hardcore RPG" won't sell as well as the genres presently loved by the "mainstream." But that's not to say there won't be a developer, in the future, who'd make a "hardcore RPG" sell millions.

 

[Celerity]

When I say modern hardcore I mean "What is being defined as modern hardcore", not what actually is. It's a really low bar. And no, Dark Souls is not very hard. Watch your screen, pay attention, and worst case is you lose a few minutes of progress. Just like those old games. Layer a bunch of handicaps (SL 1, no heals, etc) and it starts getting interesting but even me and my old man reflexes can still beat it so it's still not a very high bar (and then you find an actual hardcore reflex based game like Boshy and I ragequit on the second screen).

No single-player game, at the end of the day, is that hard. The highest level of challenge is achieved in gaming via multi-player and that's the same regardless of whether you're talking about oldfag PBEM strategy games, twitch-fest FPS/RTS games, "hardcore" MMOs, etc. There are people in those games who are ten times the "hardcore" gamer as your average Codex "hardcore RPG" player, who'd spend 80+ hours a week figuring out the game, planning strategies, writing code to simulate the game system, etc. Every genre has its "elites." It does a disservice to all of gaming to believe that "hardcore RPGs" are special in the level of challenge they offer.

The difficulty of the combat is not and has never been the main cause behind why "hardcore RPGs" don't sell as well as mainstream games. Now, the way you ramp up the difficulty in your game - ie your execution of the challenge curve - could, in specific cases, negatively affect your sales, such as when you make the beginning of the game an exercise in tedium. But that's not the fault of the gaming public. That's the fault of bad design. But even so, I'd have to mention the example of Baldur's Gate, a game that actually gets easier as you go through the game, per the D&D system, and which required a lot of reloading in the beginning due to your entire party dying to a single wolf, etc. The lesson is that people are not as bothered by difficulty as many would have you believe.

In fact, I'd even argue that games such as the Souls series would've never been able to sell as well with easy combat, because they'd have lost the only marketable advantage they had.

I'm not disputing any of that. What I'm saying is that if you dilute the meaning of words enough eventually you'll have a decent sized crowd accepting it, and the meaning of the word hardcore is so diluted it barely means anything at all anymore. So much so that games about making obvious choice, stacking damage, and killing enemies in one hit before they move is considered hardcore. No one ever called Diablo a hardcore series and yet that's exactly what it was - an effortless AoE farm fest.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I mean, the souls series wasn't a success because of the difficulty. That was something they didn't really market about until dark souls. They basically coasted in on the massive popularity of Demon's Souls, which was frankly the first game of it's kind (single character, stat/equipment driven dungeon crawler) to actually hit the mark in a long, long fucking time. Playing Demon Souls after something like Oblivion or Zelda was a godsend. The 'git gud' memeing was a symptom of it's popularity, not a cause. It was popular because it's atmosphere, writing, voice acting, aesthetics, size, difficulty, originality and mechanics were all well above average.

Celerity if you're going to go on about what isn't hardcore, you'd better have examples of what actually is. As I already pointed out, early console games you could master the mechanics of in a couple hours don't qualify.

 

[Celerity]

I mentioned early console games as an example of both things we could beat as children and the definition of modern hardcore. As for actual hardcore, how about some nice older Wizardry games, especially 4? Nothing compares with that. Even some of the modern hardcores that aren't a joke are still significantly easier than that. But because of that dilution those sorts of games still get the shock SO HARD responses. Just look at absolutely every negative review on Lords of Xulima.

 

[HobGoblin42]

In retrospect, I would say almost all games of my childhood were pretty hardcore - especially CRPGs.

For example, playing a goldbox game as Pool of Radiance being a 15 year old German lacking proper knowledge in the English language. Of course, without any user manual , equipped only with a hard to read copied adventurer's journal and all that took place years before the internet gave us access to any kind of information. Not to mention losing your save game from time to time due to cheap floppy discs.

About 15-20 years ago, every developer/publisher tried to become as mainstream as possible (VD mentioned Baldur's Gate and Diablo) and the term hardcore was equivalent to sales disaster.

But nowadays, in the Golden Time of Saviour Gabe, some games actually use 'hardcore' as subversive marketing instrument, with more or less success. I am sure VD intentionally did it with AoD.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I mean wiz 4 would certainly qualify, but you're talking about a completely different kind of game in that case. I think a better comparison for Dark Souls would be Zelda 2, which shared a lot of features, like losing your unspent xp if you die too much, checkpoints, relatively difficult ambushes from minibosses or unfavourable terrain.) It was certainly far, far more difficult than those short games that only sent you back a minute or two when you died, that even an amateur could finish in an hour.

Besides, I think when it comes to a lot of games, when people refer to them as 'hardcore' they don't necessarily mean they are difficult, but rather that they are complex. Like Civilization would be a 'hardcore' game not because it's so difficult, but because only someone who spends a huge amount of time playing games would ever get into it. Then it gets overlap with whatever other games those people played, which are often just whatever game from the 80's/90's, which have no real similarity but people assume they must be the same if the same people like them.

 

[Celerity]

Hardcore = complexity is also something being greatly diluted. Again, my Derpest Dungeon example. There's very few mechanics in the first place and none of them matter except for maximizing direct damage. People still claim it's "hardcore" despite being a single solution puzzle that basic bots can run. And if you removed the grind from it by just making all the bosses available immediately instead of a mobile style progress bar, you could beat the game within the refund window. And then you look at a decent modern hardcore like Xulima, how many people even understand how the shop pricing works (aside from me and people that heard it from me)? Answer: Not many. There's still people claiming it's level based or something else. It's not, and this is pretty basic as hidden mechanics go. I didn't figure it out because modder either, the mod tools don't show you that. Observation does. If you're wondering: Any item with a non set cost (so lockpicks, torches, shurikens, crystals, food) increases in cost every time you run out of them (and sometimes low on them), and all of those except food also increase in cost every time you buy some but not all of them.

I'd also consider the Souls series (after Demon Souls) as "only setting you back a minute or 2" because you only lost souls if you 1: Had them. 2: Died twice in rapid succession. If you spent it on items or levels you can freely death zerg anything, and shortcuts made sure that anything was never far from your last save point.

 

[Telengard]

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.

Just listen to the fans.

I'm having a problem with this game

Even on easy the game is just too hard to allow you to advance without multiple retries. Every single time I get into a major fight especially against elite troops I will probadly die atleast once. The only way I can get through most fights is to pause every few seconds and spam health potions and when they run out we're dead.

What am I doing wrong with this game? Have I built my characters wrong or have them set up incorrectly or should I give up and restart the game.

I pretty much stopped playing the game for several months because of this.

I just don't get it. I can't get very far in Dragon Age Origins or KOTOR 1 for that matter. People say hard mode is too easy and I'm getting crushed on normal. I tried to find a guide online but came up empty. I click, I wait, I see my character get hit a million times, I die. I even try to move out of the way of a telegraphed attack but since the game is based on a dice roll it already registered as 'hit' so I still get hit. Help please

Im not expert since im pretty bad at dragon age myself but the combat is based nearly entirely on stats. You don't dodge attacks by moving out of the way or block attacks by pressing a button to raise your shield.

It's based around building a party with good stats that work well together and then during the battle positioning yourself correctly and prioritizing enemies and such. You usually want to get someone who can tank damage followed by someone who can deal damage with someone who can then heal your team and so on.

I love the game. I really do... it has amazing story and gameplay. I just find it to be WAY too hard. Maybe it's just me. I've played many BioWare games, and none of them have been this difficult.

I'm playing on Normal. I admit some of the difficulty is my fault, as I forgot to buy health potions. But even so, I routinely lose 3 party members in every skirmish. I've tried tactics, keeping archers and mages in the back, using abilities from each character, but the enemies just seem to hit more and harder than I can. I am ashamed to admit I have taken to using the heal cheat from time to time just so I don't stack up death wounds on characters.

Does anyone else feel the same way? I'm with my dog and Alistair and Morrigan in that Folthering village or whatever. Morrigan hasn't learned heal yet, which could solve problems in the future. I just think BioWare could have made combat slightly less frustrating.

yeah i kno what ya mean im doing the redcliffe battle right now and ive died damn near 8 times already and ive bought all the potions i can all the lycurms or whatever they are called and no matter how many traps or diffrent strategies i use i still get beat. my charecter is a mage and i have morrigan, allister, and the rogue chick but i might have to use the cheat code for this one cus this is getting ridiculous

You can change difficulty at any time during the game through the options. If constantly losing battles is frustrating, fight the battle on Easy and then go back to normal. Just a suggestion. Easy isn't THAT easy, it is still a challenge. You'd be surprised. Patch 1.01a is supposed to make Easy, easier - if they could only fix the bugs with the Patch so we could use it.

Imagine hundreds of messages just like the above, mixed about a handful claiming it's too easy, and thousands complaining about hair and dresses options, and you'd have a standard feedback package for a Bioware-style rpg.

 

[Azarkon]

In turn-based RPGs, people complaining it's "too hard" usually just need to go online to find a simple set of guidelines for how to build their characters and approach combat. It works for virtually every turn-based RPG in existence. This is why the "too hard" argument works even less well for turn-based RPGs than it does for twitch-based games, because in the latter, you could actually imagine a scenario in which Joe Gamer cannot finish the game because he doesn't have the physical reflexes for it, while that is never the case for turn-based games.

The above also works for strategy games' single-player challenges. But of course, multi-player is a different story.

 

[Telengard]

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.

Germans are also a special people, graced by God with a love of simulation, stats, and PCs. It's only too bad the rest of the world surrounding them are all console cunts.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

The reason to bring up Souls in the context of this discussion isn't as an example of games that are popular and a sales success in spite of its difficulty. The difficulty is overrated and mostly arises from the games promoting a very cautious and meticulous playstyle, not unlike a roguelike (hence players trained on modern AAA dreck having a lot of trouble and thinking it's super hard).

The reason to bring it up is that the series is very adamantly anti-handholding in most of its design decisions. You get a basic combat tutorial, and then you're alone to do as you please in a fairly open world (though not in the Bethesda sense), including walking to endgame areas straight from the main hub, with little to no direction save for cryptic hints from a weird NPC. There are stats, but they're not explained beyond short tooltips. You have certain options at rest areas, but the only way to find out what these actually do is to try them out. There is no map. There is no save scumming - the game autosaves, if you die, you respawn along with all enemies, but the world is persistent otherwise. Killed an important NPC by accident? No way to undo it, C&C bro. Some areas have gimmicks you need certain items to handle, and that isn't communicated to the player either. Oh, and you drop all of your XP when you die and need to get it back. Die again before getting it back? It goes away forever.

Based on this description, do you think you can get the mainstream to buy and enjoy this shit? Sony didn't think so, which is why they basically abandoned the first game in the series to its own devices. And yet, nowadays they're multi-million sellers on Steam alone, with consoletardia not lagging far behind. The reason to bring it up is as a humbling lesson for anyone making declarative statements about what the mainstream will and will not buy.

 

[Telengard]

In turn-based RPGs, people complaining it's "too hard" usually just need to go online to find a simple set of guidelines for how to build their characters and approach combat. It works for virtually every turn-based RPG in existence. This is why the "too hard" argument works even less well for turn-based RPGs than it does for twitch-based games, because in the latter, you could actually imagine a scenario in which Joe Gamer cannot finish the game because he doesn't have the physical reflexes for it, while that is never the case for turn-based games.

The above also works for strategy games' single-player challenges. But of course, multi-player is a different story.

But you're forgetting that that is tantamount to admitting that they're too dumb to succeed. And they don't want to be told they're dumb while they're entertaining. They want to have fun and feel awesome.

Really, it's like teaching Algebra. Anybody technically can look up how to do it, but not everyone is gonna do it.

EDIT: Also, when they say hard, most people mean hard and boring. And remember, this is DA:O we're talking about - a very basic version of an rpg.