This Fall is going to be the greatest fall in the history of RPGs

[Readher]

Do we need all these fucking fancy graphics, voice actors, cutscenes, and bullshit?

Sales indicate yes. Obviously a person like me will note that this wouldn't happen if it wasn't for storyfaggots but that's just me. I warned you. You didn't listen. You continued to jerk off to planescrap borement

If you don't care about story and are only interested in combat then you should be playing multiplayer games against actual unpredictable opponents instead of wasting time to meaninglessly beat a few if/else statements which were literally designed to be beaten and are a solved problem.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Do we need all these fucking fancy graphics, voice actors, cutscenes, and bullshit?

Sales indicate yes. Obviously a person like me will note that this wouldn't happen if it wasn't for storyfaggots but that's just me. I warned you. You didn't listen. You continued to jerk off to planescrap borement

If you don't care about story and are only interested in combat then you should be playing multiplayer games against actual unpredictable opponents instead of wasting time to meaninglessly beat a few if/else statements which were literally designed to be beaten and are a solved problem.

Storynigger detected. You will be killed and you won't be missed. Sharpening my machete as we speak.

 

[Vic]

If you don't care about story and are only interested in combat then you should be playing multiplayer games against actual unpredictable opponents instead of wasting time to meaninglessly beat a few if/else statements which were literally designed to be beaten and are a solved problem.

no, no, no.

games are about solving problems. the game gives you a combat enounter, a puzzle, or another form of challenge and solving that is what makes a game a game. the "story" is just there to add some extra motivation and, recently, to pull in a crowd of people who don't actually enjoy gameplay and just want some kind of interactive movie.

to them, going through the gameplay to see the major plot points is the challenge. Most of them play on normal or easy mode.

RPGs are a mix of different things but your argument shows that you don't understand gameplay at all. There's a dopamine rush when you solve a particular challenge and it's this "reward system" that makes games work. You don't need a story to create a fun game.

A story works on the same principle by the way, you read it and in the end there is a payoff, which is your reward for reading. If you play games for the story you are only adding more things to do to get your reward, the conclusion of the story.

I suggest to you that if you don't take satisfaction from the actual gameplay, go and read/watch movies as your enjoyment will be far greater. Stories in RPGs are absolute dogshit compared to pure text, it's not even a contest. For that reason I don't give a shit about them in RPGs and I play them on harder difficulties so that they provide an adequate challenge, because that's what games were and should be about, not cinematic bullshit.

And on the subject of multiplayer games, they are designed to be beaten too, because developers balance the shit out of everything.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Well, there were games where first come first serve and griefing others repeatedly was the daily grind. Being a target sucked but being the grief-giver was golden. The days of no safe zones and online assholery. It probably still happens on some games.

Anyway, I hate to see hollow agenda driven games where it is all flash and pizzazz but gameplay is meh as all fuck.

 

[Vic]

yeah there are still people who spend hours every day camping low levels on warmane private WoW server. But I think in the modern current wow that's long not possible anymore. But that's not competitive PvP anyway. For competitive games the devs are constantly balancing and patching and the meta changes, I think path of exile is the biggest one where each patch the meta changes or so I've heard.

 

[mondblut]

If you don't care about story and are only interested in combat then you should be playing multiplayer games against actual unpredictable opponents instead of wasting time to meaninglessly beat a few if/else statements which were literally designed to be beaten and are a solved problem.

And you should be watching movies and GTFO of our hobby.

 

[Sweeper]

Do we need all these fucking fancy graphics, voice actors, cutscenes, and bullshit?

Sales indicate yes. Obviously a person like me will note that this wouldn't happen if it wasn't for storyfaggots but that's just me. I warned you. You didn't listen. You continued to jerk off to planescrap borement

If you don't care about story and are only interested in combat then you should be playing multiplayer games against actual unpredictable opponents instead of wasting time to meaninglessly beat a few if/else statements which were literally designed to be beaten and are a solved problem.

Why do storyfags always get up in arms over this shit? The core of what a video game is has never been and (by the virtue of it being a video game) will never be the story.
Tetris. Space Invaders. Pacman. Fucking Pong. Take the story out of the vast majority of videogames, you still have the gameplay. Take the gameplay out and you get Disco Elysium.
You seem to have taken a wrong turn to a wrong website owing to your ill-fated choice of a wrong hobby. May I direct you to goodreads.com?

 

[Old Hans]

Tetris. Space Invaders. Pacman. Fucking Pong.

to be fair those guys probably had 1kb of ram to work with

 

[Sweeper]

to be fair those guys probably had 1kb of ram to work with

Not the point.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Games can have both good gameplay and good story. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

 

[Tyranicon]

Gameplay is the story.

But this works both ways. If you're playing a game where 50% or more of the best parts are just reading text, congrats, the text is the gameplay.

 

[Vic]

reading is not gameplay

 

[Sweeper]

Games can have both good gameplay and good story. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

They can, and you can even play them solely for the story, but that's not their purpose. Video games at their core, fundamentally, are not a storytelling medium regardless of how hard you try to make them to be.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Gameplay is the story.

Unless you're playing some very generic game that simply has no narrative context, nah.

You can have a preference for greater or lesser narrative depth (e.g. PST in one extreme, IWD in the other, BG in the middle), but as long as there is a story aspect to a game then it should be done well.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

there are still people who spend hours every day camping low levels on warmane private WoW server.

This is what you call a good time.

 

[Tyranicon]

reading is not gameplay

Maybe or maybe not, but RPGs are probably right behind CYOAs in word count so this isn't a genre for people who don't like reading.

Gatekeeping the illiterates is one of the prime parts of the hobby.

 

[Vic]

reading is not gameplay

Maybe or maybe not, but RPGs are probably right behind CYOAs in word count so this isn't a genre for people who don't like reading.

Gatekeeping the illiterates is one of the prime parts of the hobby.

what's the point you are trying to make? a game that consists of only reading isn't a game at all. CYOAs aren't games either.

 

[Readher]

If you don't care about story and are only interested in combat then you should be playing multiplayer games against actual unpredictable opponents instead of wasting time to meaninglessly beat a few if/else statements which were literally designed to be beaten and are a solved problem.

no, no, no.

games are about solving problems. the game gives you a combat enounter, a puzzle, or another form of challenge and solving that is what makes a game a game. the "story" is just there to add some extra motivation and, recently, to pull in a crowd of people who don't actually enjoy gameplay and just want some kind of interactive movie.

to them, going through the gameplay to see the major plot points is the challenge. Most of them play on normal or easy mode.

RPGs are a mix of different things but your argument shows that you don't understand gameplay at all. There's a dopamine rush when you solve a particular challenge and it's this "reward system" that makes games work. You don't need a story to create a fun game.

A story works on the same principle by the way, you read it and in the end there is a payoff, which is your reward for reading. If you play games for the story you are only adding more things to do to get your reward, the conclusion of the story.

I suggest to you that if you don't take satisfaction from the actual gameplay, go and read/watch movies as your enjoyment will be far greater. Stories in RPGs are absolute dogshit compared to pure text, it's not even a contest. For that reason I don't give a shit about them in RPGs and I play them on harder difficulties so that they provide an adequate challenge, because that's what games were and should be about, not cinematic bullshit.

And on the subject of multiplayer games, they are designed to be beaten too, because developers balance the shit out of everything.

There are only so many interesting problems you can come up with in games environment and sooner or later, after playing enough games, the dopamine you get from that is going to be significantly diminished. The same goes for writing, the more good books you read, the more good movies you watch and the more games with (relatively) good writing you play (as rare as they come), the higher your standards will become. Multiplayer provides significantly more dopamine because competing with others is the human nature, especially for men, so getting better and beating other humans feels good. Beating a few if/else statements that literally everyone picking up the game is expected to beat is shit.

To give an example, solving Rubik's Cube as a kid feels great. Solving it nth time as an adult feels like a waste of time. The games are the same. Why would I waste my time on playing Dark Souls which lacks any worthwhile story if I could be playing a fighting game online instead? Both games rely mostly on timing and pattern recognition, but beating a human in a fighting game will feel significantly better than beating an NPC.

The biggest reason I'm playing games instead of (or rather alongside) reading books and watching movies is because you get to affect the narrative in games. This is why RPGs are pretty much the last single-player genre I play anymore. I play CYOA as well, but there are even fewer good ones than good RPGs, sadly.

The part about multiplayer games being solved is a brainlet take. No player/team stays at the top forever, there are always upsets at some point and someone always comes up with a new strategy or whatever, forcing the previous champions to adapt or fall into irrelevance. This is the beauty of actual competition. AI in games will eventually run out of if/else statements, a human never will.

 

[Vic]

There are only so many interesting problems you can come up with in games environment

trust me, if you enjoy games you will not run out of them in your life time. In addition you can create your own restrictions to make it even harder for you, it's what a lot of people do who with games they like. Rereading the same story over and over tho? I don't think so.

The same goes for writing, the more good books you read, the more good movies you watch and the more games with (relatively) good writing you play (as rare as they come), the higher your standards will become.

I have to disagree again, it just sounds to me like you're talking out of your ass. A game doesn't have to be better than the last you played, just different enough to get you curious. Stories have been around for thousands of years and people are always coming up with new ideas.

Multiplayer provides significantly more dopamine because competing with others is the human nature, especially for men, so getting better and beating other humans feels good. Beating a few if/else statements that literally everyone picking up the game is expected to beat is shit.

Okay so you're a competitive player. Maybe single player games aren't for you.

To give an example, solving Rubik's Cube as a kid feels great.

That's the best example of gameplay you can give? What are you even doing here...

AI in games will eventually run out of if/else statements, a human never will.

Gameplay isn't just competing against AI tho. In fact, AI is the absolute weakest part that constitutes challenge in games. Into the Breach offers excellent tactical gameplay and the AI is pretty "dumb" and still it manages to create some great puzzle-esque combat situations. The developer wrote about it, it's a nice read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OPRNzAVQNgPtP35HzhV2ZzEqE1eCdXbWA7lEZXDdMHQ/edit?usp=sharing

Really, to me it sounds like you're a guy who doesn't enjoy single player games, that's fine but realize that most of us here do enjoy it and that particularly good combat encounters are an absolute joy to play. But I'm also a combat fag.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

trust me, if you enjoy games you will not run out of them in your life time. In addition you can create your own restrictions to make it even harder for you, it's what a lot of people do who with games they like. Rereading the same story over and over tho? I don't think so.

HELL YEAH! So true and I've done this often. I do it IRL vs pests and plants too. Rip out some briars with my hands or slice em up with a pocket knife.


It is very sharp....

 

[Nifft Batuff]

These games looks like the typical dumbed down shits that passed for RPGs in the worst period for the genre, around 2006-2014, so nothing new under the sun. What it is strange is that at the time the kids rarely criticized them, while now they think they are living in some kind of gaming apocalypse. Maybe Baldur's Gate 3 has created a cognitive dissonance in their manipulable brains.

There's a huge difference between the RPG dark ages and today. When I look at RPGs from the dark ages, I see market conditions driving developers towards consolization, reduction and casualization.

When I look at modern RPGs, I see a completely corporatized product with mandatory brainrot masquerading as a game.

I partially agree. The games that you cited will be probably the new rock bottom, but this is just the "AAA" industry.

I don't know what will reserve the future, but I still think that present day gaming, including the RPG genre, is in better situation than during the "RPG dark ages". All the worst "invention" in gameplay that we still criticize today were introduced during those years, and outside the two or three AAA games with the samey cringe gameplay there was an absolute void during this dark age.

Looking at relatively recent games, games like Underrail (just to make an example), were something impossible even to dream of in the '00s - beginning of '10s.
This is for example a selection of games from this summer Fest. Many of these games probably will be shit, but the choice is huge, and there are many prestigious genres among them that were absolutely disappeared during those dark ages.

 

[Readher]

trust me, if you enjoy games you will not run out of them in your life time. In addition you can create your own restrictions to make it even harder for you, it's what a lot of people do who with games they like. Rereading the same story over and over tho? I don't think so.

Just because there's a ton of rehashes to play, doesn't mean they're worth spending time on. Adding self-imposed restrictions to make the games harder (and in theory more fun) sounds like cope soyboys use to defend their favorite slop.

I have to disagree again, it just sounds to me like you're talking out of your ass. A game doesn't have to be better than the last you played, just different enough to get you curious. Stories have been around for thousands of years and people are always coming up with new ideas.

Well, I'll have to disagree too. Once I play a good game in a certain genre, I'm not going to waste my time on inferior ones. I expect every game I'll play from now on to be at least very close in quality to that one, or alternatively be vastly better in certain aspects while falling behind in others, evening it out in the end. This is why I played through Alpha Protocol, even though the gameplay was serviceable at best. The writing and C&C was way above what you usually get in games. The stagnation we have in the industry right now is precisely because of your way of thinking. No one wants to raise the bar, no one wants to innovate, everyone is just copying the same shit over and over again, and most of the time they aren't even capable of copying competently, and their game can't match the quality we had 20 years ago. This is despite an insane amount of text- and video-based development resources, AAA-capable engines with documentation being available free of charge and tons of assets you can either get for free or buy cheaply.

Okay so you're a competitive player. Maybe single player games aren't for you.

I've grown out of most of them. They were fun and novel at first, but at some point it's just more of the same, usually incapable of matching the quality of game(s) from years ago. I see no point in spending time on such endeavors. With movies, it's easier, since they're 2.5 hours at most, so even if they're subpar, it's not that big of a deal. Games, especially various RPGs, take tens or even hundreds of hours of your time. They better be good if they want me to sit in front of them for that long.

That's the best example of gameplay you can give? What are you even doing here...

It wasn't supposed to be an example of gameplay. It was supposed to be an example of how aging and experiencing the same or similar things multiple time changes your perception of something. An activity that used to be fun and bring a lot of dopamine can become joyless when repeated often enough, or if it becomes too trivial.

Gameplay isn't just competing against AI tho. In fact, AI is the absolute weakest part that constitutes challenge in games. Into the Breach offers excellent tactical gameplay and the AI is pretty "dumb" and still it manages to create some great puzzle-esque combat situations. The developer wrote about it, it's a nice read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OPRNzAVQNgPtP35HzhV2ZzEqE1eCdXbWA7lEZXDdMHQ/edit?usp=sharing

Really, to me it sounds like you're a guy who doesn't enjoy single player games, that's fine but realize that most of us here do enjoy it and that particularly good combat encounters are an absolute joy to play. But I'm also a combat fag.

If it's just about puzzles for you, then why don't you just play Sudoku? A suggestion in the same vein as your "just go watch movies or read books". Games are a unique medium because they're capable of interactivity and combining the strengths of various other mediums. My ideal game would be basically a Bethesda game but good. Interactive world, being able to affect it, freedom. Basically a full "living in another world" experience. It was something I thought would surely happen by now back when I played Morrowind in 2002, but alas we've stagnated and there haven't even really been any developers who could match Bethesda in their prime over all those years, never mind surpass them (Warhorse, Awaken Realms and to a certain extent Rockstar notwithstanding).

It's not that I don't enjoy single-player games, my expectations of them have simply risen to standards seemingly impossible to meet in the current state of the industry. They're much lower for multi-player titles because the competing against another human(s) factor is making things much more interesting and the dopamine hit from victories is much higher. Plus I get to make friends from various countries and even partake in things like tournament organization, which are interesting group experiences.

I'm happy for you that you're satisfied with combat in games alone, since it means you have a lot to choose from, but that just doesn't work for me. The closest to that would be Jagged Alliance, where the mercenary theme and some sim aspects make things interesting enough for me to play. JA2 nostalgia helps too.

 

[Vic]

I appreciate your response, not much else to say for me. As for Sudoku, I did play it a lot in school, also Picross, still play 3D Picross on my old 3DS. But yeah, if you liked JA2 definitely try the third one, it's quite good.

 

[Harthwain]

Gameplay is the story.

I'd say it depends a lot on the type of gameplay. For something sandboxy gameplay can be the story (in the literal sense. Crusader Kings comes to mind here), but I heavily doubt it will apply to any of the games in the poll (with Awoved being the only potential exception, if it goes into the route Bethesda tends to go with their games).

 

[Vic]

lol "gameplay is the story" is just some generic statement, what's a story anyway? I like this definition:

a story is a description, either true or imagined, of a connected series of events

so yeah, gameplay can generate stories, in fact there are games that are for the most part "story generators" like the aforementioned CK, or Dwarf Fortress where the extremely intricate simulation engine generates stories small and large.

Personally, I could never take these "stories" seriously because they are just generated by randomness inside my computer, they feel artificial, kind of like reading a story written by an AI.