Community The Age of Incline: RPG Codex's 2012-2016 GOTY Results

[Jazz_]

Spot on Lhynn, AoD doesn't excel at anything unlike Troika's games, it's a decent indie game with poor production values even for being an indie game. I honestly don't understand how a game like AoD can attract such fanatic fanboys, unless it really blows your mind to have a heavily branching storyline, I guess, but even that it only plays out in scripted set pieces, like going thru different slides in a CYOA visual novel, the ''great reactivity'' is nothing like in Fallout where it involved player agency in the world and the choices were tied to actual gameplay.

 

[Darth Roxor]

the only thing troika's games ever excelled at were bugs

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

So Lhynn If AoD is a COYA what is an RPG?

 

[Ismaul]

the ''great reactivity'' is nothing like in Fallout where it involved player agency in the world and the choices were tied to actual gameplay

This is where we differ.

Dialogue choices and skill checks are actual gameplay. The C&C is the game.

"But no! It's in the interface! Using the interface can't be gameplay, it's just a tool to control the game!" lol

 

[makiavelli747]

"But no! It's in the interface! Using the interface can't be gameplay, it's just a tool to control the game!"

and how is that killing trashmobs is the game ?

how can one argue about definition of RPG then...

 

[laclongquan]

Nobody knows about Fallout Resurrection 1.5 which is why it's so little known around here.

Codexers who played it loved it though.

Being product of a Codexer only help your marketing, not your product's quality.

 

[V_K]

Dialogue choices and skill checks are actual gameplay. The C&C is the game.

"But no! It's in the interface! Using the interface can't be gameplay, it's just a tool to control the game!" lol

Interactivity doesn't equal gameplay. The problem with dialog choices is that they don't present any challenge, there's no strategy (or any thought process for that matter) involved. You either pick an option that is tied to your best skill, or the one that best suits you larping ideas.

 

[Ismaul]

^Oh I agree that dialogue choices are not challenging if tied to a simple check. And I have agued VD over it. AoD is not without its flaws; by pushing the dialogue stat check mechanic to the max, it revealed the limitations of this system, I don't dispute that.

But the system does work in AoD, if you take it to be a multiple playthrough game, which, by having so much C&C and branching, it inherently is. It is not typical strategy that guides dialogue choices, stat checks, and character build. It's lore discovery. The strategy is actually using a playthrough to get some piece of lore you couldn't in another, to access an area or choice you couldn't get to before. The whole game is built like an archeological dig where each playthrough allows you to get to another layer. This is the challenge (in addition to the combat).

You can see it as a flaw or a strength. Granted, for a single playthrough, it's more of a flaw IMO, there is no challenge in trying to guess the stats you need to pass a check. And this is one of the reasons why VD is moving away from that system for the Colony Ship RPG. But we wouldn't have known the issues with that kind of system without VD trying it out like that in the first place. And it makes for a very unique game.

 

[Sizzle]

Theres something really wrong with you.

Frankly, I'm amazed he still hasn't tried to kidnap VD's wife and take her place.

"She was unworthy of you, Vince, she never truly believed in C&C like I do. The Colony Ship RPG will be the best game ever, even better than Dungeon Rats. Now, you magnificent designer stud, make love to me - CYOA style!"

 

[Konjad]

Okay, now that the "muh potato" drama has hopefully waned, I'd like to ask: would people be interested in doing a "Top 25 (or maybe 50) RPGs + SHORT reviews" list like we did for the Top 50 list?

If so, start writing.

Yes, but I'd like to suggest something.

First, make a topic where everyone can suggest game to be nominated. So you won't miss titles you personally don't know.

Then make the voting for all the games that were suggested (it will be a lot, but I believe in you, mighty felipepepe)

Do a 10 scale voting with 2 additional options. 5 scale is not enough, it doesn't let me express my feelings, so to speak, and I feel dirty voting 5/5 when I'd rather give something 9/10 or 8/10.
The 2 additional options would be: 1) Didn't vote (like before), and 2) Not cRPG (because lots of the suggested games will be anything but RPGs)

Then, at the end when presenting the results, give tags to the games, such as 'turn-based', 'story-heavy' etc, so those butthurt twats who moan and whine that Thwitcher 3 is not the true RPG because it is open world, not set in a basement, and the combat is not the same like in tactical games would just shut the fuck up, because they are pathetic shits.

that's all for now. stay tuned.

 

[Black Angel]

(or any thought process for that matter)

Reading and choosing a dialogue check requires no thought process?

I guess it's a plausible argument when you want to consider 'one that best suits your larping ideas'. I think the flaw with AoD's skill/stat checks system is the fact that they were actually designed around the use of tags and, thus encourage the mindset of choosing the best which suits our larping ideas. I didn't follow the development logs of AoD, nor all the arguments and discussion which ensued, but I can't wrap my head around whatever problems that might arises if VD and co designed the system without having it to revolve around the use of tags. After all, PS:T used no such things and it definitely require some thought process. The challenge would be to see if which dialogue option would give the best outcome (or rather, the intended outcome based on what role of the characters we're playing). Yes, that might still end up as akin to choosing the one that best suits my larping ideas, but we're playing a cRPG after all, there's just not as much freedom as in P&P RPGs.

I would love to see more RPG handle dialogue checks like New Vegas, where failed checks showed different dialogues, but without the tags, and with the branching like in AoD. Or just do it altogether like the older Fallouts where if you didn't have the requirement, the dialogue don't appear. Or maybe a mix of both (which is something AoD did).

 

[Mareus]

People like Oblivion not because they like the design (or lack thereof) but because they like sandbox games a lot. It's probably the hottest RPG genre these days, which is why everyone's jumping on it, including Bioware.

Sorry, but this makes no sense. Surely you understand that the sandbox genre is the product of game design, so when you say that people like Oblivion not because of it's design but because they like sandbox - you are contradicting yourself. Design has everything to do with it - wheather that design intails dumbing down certain aspects of a game or creating a huge open world, or doing the opposite - all of it is still by design! Besides, you are now talking about popularity of certain genres, which is not what my argument was about. I merely mentioned Oblivion as a response to how non-sensical it is to defend your design decisions by dismissing criticizm as nothing more than personal preference.

Coincidentally, that's why Witcher 3 is the #1 game and not only on the Codex and that's why every Bethesda game is a huge hit regardless of how badly they fuck up the design - compared to Fallout 4 Skyrim is a fucking masterpiece.

I think you are simplifying things too much. If you had a valid point here, then it would follow that every open world sandbox game would be more successful than any non-sandbox game, but this is not the case. Hell, Call of Duty alone debunks your argument. There are many reasons why Bethesda's games are so popular and choosing the sandbox open world design may play into it to some degree. But you are ignoring the fact that they also dumb down their games a lot, which is also by design so that they can appeal to wider audience. You ignore the modding support. You ignore the graphics, the marketing, the production values, etc. But, none of this has anything to do with my criticisms of your game.

We've talked a lot about Oblivion back when it was released and not a single person ever produced a semi-decent argument defending the design flaws. They simply liked the gameplay, that whole 'go anywhere, do anything, forget about the main quest' thing and were willing to overlook the flaws, i.e. nothing but a strong personal preference.

Exactly! But that is not what I was doing when I was criticizing your game. My criticism is focused on the objective fact where despite a huge amount of choices in AoD, the game plays more as a cold, detached from humanity stats management game than a roleplaying game due to it's design which shoe horns players into constant brick walls they had no way of predicting. So the player is often times forced to choose the stats and actions not based on what would be the most natural or logical choice for that character, but based on meta-knowledge and what is the most efficient solution for that particular situation. Now, I will grant you that you can make an argument how there is some personal preference involved here in the sense that there are players who prefer fanatical "no way out-no compromise" scenarios vs those of us who wish a bit more flexibility so that we don't have to play your game with goddamn meta-knowledge half of the time. But you can't honestly stand here and pretend that your design choices don't come with a particular set of problems that might actually work antithetical to the RPG genre.

And don't get me wrong, most of your ideas are brilliant and in principle I support them. I am just not happy with how it turned out and think you can do much better next time if you actually come out of the echochamber of your retarded fanboys.

PS. 12% of all players completed the infiltration quest which means that at least twice as many people attempted it, yet only two complaints about that Centurion.

Oh yes, we are just going to ignore the fact that the majority of your player-base comes from people who have been pushing for exactly that type of design, and we are just going to ignore all those who didn't bother to complain,.... aaaaaaand just for extra objectivity measure we are also going to ignore all those who complained about similar things, but came up with different examples,... NO skewed confirmation bias here - this is statistics 101 and quote "the logical conclusion is that you simply don't like the design, not that the design is objectively bad." Brilliant! Just brilliant reasoning there, Vince! Seriously, you need to come out of your echochamber into the real world a bit.

 

[V_K]

Reading and choosing a dialogue check requires no thought process?

Well, about as much thought process as choosing what to order in a restaurant. Unless you're a health freak, in which case choosing what to eat becomes a much more intellectual task.

The challenge would be to see if which dialogue option would give the best outcome (or rather, the intended outcome based on what role of the characters we're playing).

I theory, yes. In practice, I've never seen a game that gives you enough information to make an informed decision. AoD certainly doesn't. It actually makes it worse because it offers you no second chances.

 

[Lurker King]

^I actually prefer the "2 street cities" approach in plot-heavy games than full open world. Allows for more focused content. Imagine Bloodlines with gothic style sandbox world, all that walking back and forth to advance a mostly linear storyline.

They also ruin the quest design and reactivity. Take FN:V, for instance. The reactivity is held down by the hundreds of fillers quests and trash combat. It’s very difficult to appreciate the consequences of your major choices if you have to walk around a giant map for tens of hours and do a bunch of minor tasks. In games such as FO and FO2, which are also sandboxish, the map is smaller; there are less quests, etc. If you consider the first TW, which was the only one I played, the moment-to-moment gameplay was awful, the combat was horrible, but it had some reactivity and the fact that they used books to make the game world put it above the average of shit generic writing. The second TW was obviously trying to imitate other popamole games with better graphics and even worse combat. The third I don’t even. If you also consider that is practically impossible to balance the combat in a sandbox game, because you provide the player with one million filler quests, it should be obvious that this “let me go around naked because I want to be free” mentality is ruining cRPGs. Fuck this decline.

 

[Lurker King]

Reading and choosing a dialogue check requires no thought process?

Well, about as much thought process as choosing what to order in a restaurant. Unless you're a health freak, in which case choosing what to eat becomes a much more intellectual task.

Why should require thinking if the stats represent the intelligence of your character?

The challenge would be to see if which dialogue option would give the best outcome (or rather, the intended outcome based on what role of the characters we're playing).

The challenge lies in mastering the system and trying viable builds. cRPGs ARE NOT ACTION GAMES. They have character building for a reason. Your stats and skills represent your abilities and limitations. Trying to please someone who wants to play cRPGs as arcade games is a fool’s errand. That’s the cRPG design 101. If someone think any different he doesn’t care about cRPGs, character building and should be playing Super Mario instead – which not surprisingly will also let you make mistakes and die in order to reload, as in any challenging game.

 

[Lurker King]

What Bloodlines has on The Witcher 3 is a higher denstiy of great characters, but that is accounted by the different scale of the games. Also they ooze sex appeal. On the other hand, TW3 has a lot of small parts, but the big ones have quite some depth to them.

Bloodlines is based on a much better PnP system that adds a lot to world building.

 

[Mareus]

You're correct on everything else though. Open World was a mistake in Witcher 3, and it was another mistake in MGS5. It will be yet another mistake in Cyberpunk 2077. Can't wait until this shit fad dies off.

There might be a way to do open world right. Think of a game that has characters and choices and consequences of Withcer 3 just done better with no handholding and better dialogues, and then combine that with the open world and exploration of a game like Morrowind. I think such a game might actually be pretty sweet. As for you hoping the open world fad might die off,... well keep hoping. You feed the dumb mob of people the same shit all the time, and eventually they will learn to like it.

 

[Lurker King]

Sorry, but this makes no sense. Surely you understand that the sandbox genre is the product of game design, so when you say that people like Oblivion not because of it's design but because they like sandbox - you are contradicting yourself. Design has everything to do with it.

His point is that people care for design only in the sense that they want to walk around free. How you do this, which involves all the design details, is irrelevant for them if you let them walk freely. On the other hand, maybe you are right. It has everything to do with game design, i.e., shallow game design. You can’t make a believable setting if players can walk around freely to do a million of filler quests. F:NV took a lot of heat for implementing skill checks. So in a sense you are right. They don’t seem to care about design, but that is only because they have shallow design preferences.

I think you are simplifying things too much. If you had a valid point here, then it would follow that every open world sandbox game would be more successful than any non-sandbox game, but this is not the case. Hell, Call of Duty alone debunks your argument.

“Call of Duty” is a cRPG? We are discussing cRPGs.

Exactly! But that is not what I was doing when I was criticizing your game. My criticism is focused on the objective fact where despite a huge amount of choices in AoD, the game plays more as a cold, detached from humanity stats management game than a roleplaying game due to it's design which shoe horns players into constant brick walls they had no way of predicting.

Your criticism can be summarized as this: “I don’t like text-adventures and scripted scenarios because most cRPGs I played don’t have them. Please, be like everyone else because I’m too arrogant and lazy to learn something new”.

So the player is often times forced to choose the stats and actions not based on what would be the most natural or logical choice for that character, but based on meta-knowledge and what is the most efficient solution for that particular situation.

Read: “I’m forced to choose what makes sense based on my previous choices and stats/skills, but I feel restricted by this because most games treat skills as stats/skills outside of the combat as fluffy and allow you to make choices that doesn’t make any sense for the lulz. My choices shouldn’t matter or make sense, because I just want to explore around to kill things”

and we are just going to ignore all those who didn't bother to complain,.... aaaaaaand just for extra objectivity measure we are also going to ignore all those who complained about similar things, but came up with different examples.

It’s obvious that no developer will ever please everyone because people have different tastes. The only thing that matter is whether AoD gameplay structure is bad designed or not. You don’t have any arguments besides your own egotistical preferences that you magically assumed should be endorsed despite that they reveal a despise for character building or realism.

 

[Lurker King]

I would love to see more RPG handle dialogue checks like New Vegas, where failed checks showed different dialogues, but without the tags, and with the branching like in AoD. Or just do it altogether like the older Fallouts where if you didn't have the requirement, the dialogue don't appear. Or maybe a mix of both (which is something AoD did).

There is plenty of second best choices in AoD. On the very first quest of Thief and Assassin playthrough you can notice this. The problem is that you only remember the fucked up scenarios because you get traumatized by them. This makes everything seem much harder and restricted than it is, especially in comparison to most cRPGs. I suggest everyone who complains about the ridigity of AoD to make a thief playthrough in Teron. Take a pen and a paper and write it down how many fuck ups you can do and still move foward.

 

[ArchAngel]

^Totally agree. Fucking Bethesda's influence declining everything. The Witcher 3 was way too big for its own good.

I fear that Cyberpunk 2077 will suffer from the same issues.

Nah, Witcher series already started to decline with pompamole console TW2.

 

[Lurker King]

Its serviceable, functional, you dont really care for the characters, not even yours. So while its well written it never engages the player on any level.

No, what gives you reason to care for the character is BGs, FOs or PS:Ts because you want bioware characters that look like anime instead of things that make sense.

It is functionally a CYOA, not an RPG. and its not even a good CYOA because it never gives you a reason to give a shit. No friends or likable characters you can interact with, everyone is an asshole, the world is a shithole. Never instills a sense of adventure or wonder.

Of course is not a cRPG! If you can make a bunch of choices tied to your stats and skills that's a CYOA. I agree. Genuine cRPGs are the sandbox games that let you walk around freely to do whatever the hell you want without stats/skills checks because fuck it. That's a complete inversion of values. It's the world upside down.

 

[Zeriel]

^Totally agree. Fucking Bethesda's influence declining everything. The Witcher 3 was way too big for its own good.

I fear that Cyberpunk 2077 will suffer from the same issues.

Nah, Witcher series already started to decline with pompamole console TW2.

I still think TW2 is a better game than TW3. Clearly not in size or scale, but the things that characterized The Witcher up until then (the storytelling, the choices and consequences) I found much better executed in TW2. And that's with the situation far favoring TW3--they spent way more money on that game, TW2 had an entire act cut from it due to the financial problems they had at the time, etc. TW3 has a fuckton of content, but very little of it matters, even the main story quests. There's like one or two decisions in the entire game that actually change anything, and the things they change are ending slides for the most part. TW2's choices led to entirely different acts.

And hell... I know people criticize the combat a lot in TW2, but I enjoyed it far more than TW3. Fundamentally they're both equally flawed, but TW2's talent tree was far better, which made the combat more enjoyable for me. It's not like TW2's talent tree is great, indeed before TW3 came out I would have expected them to improve it, but instead we got "+1% to thing you never do". Compared to that, 2's character development is an embarassment of riches. That's to say nothing of the whole level scaling thing...

I know this is a deeply unpopular opinion, but I think just about everything in TW3 that isn't "production quality" or "size", was a net decline from TW2.

 

[Arthandas]

People who bitch about TW3's combat should just install Ghost Mode/Preparations and shut the fuck up.

 

[Sizzle]

Its serviceable, functional, you dont really care for the characters, not even yours. So while its well written it never engages the player on any level.

No, what gives you reason to care for the character is BGs, FOs or PS:Ts because you want bioware characters that look like anime instead of things that make sense.

PS:T and Fallout having BioWare anime characters? What?

Seriously, you really are the worst sort of deluded fanboy - it's not enough to say that AoD is, like, the greatestest RPG that's ever graced the genre, no, you have to convince yourself (because that's the only person you're convincing here - you) that PS:T and Fallout had bad characters.

 

[Mareus]

Its serviceable, functional, you dont really care for the characters, not even yours. So while its well written it never engages the player on any level.

No, what gives you reason to care for the character is BGs, FOs or PS:Ts because you want bioware characters that look like anime instead of things that make sense.

PS:T and Fallout having BioWare anime characters? What?

Seriously, you really are the worst sort of deluded fanboy - it's not enough to say that AoD is, like, the greatestest RPG that's ever graced the genre, no, you have to convince yourself (because that's the only person you're convincing here - you) that PS:T and Fallout had bad characters.

Some of these AoD fanboys (#notall) are more retarded than Oblivion fanboys, I swear. Oblivion fanboys say stupid shit out of ignorance and you can address that. With some of these AoD fanboys, I am constantly asking myself if they even have a brain. You can't even adress their non-sense. It's all just some loud incoherent dumb noise.

 

[makiavelli747]

With some of these AoD fanboys, I am constantly asking myself if they even have a brain.

you couldn't even figure out how to buy weapon and stuff before first quest....
and now you saying somebody here doesn't have a brain?