Why do so many GREAT RPG's worsen in late game?

[Butter]

Games that improve in late game:
The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate (level design gets progressively better)
Gateway to the Savage Frontier (final battles are the only highlight of this rather dull GB game)

I can only think of these two, and they are old.

The Dark Heart of Uukrul's best level is its last.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

Simple. The games are too long.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The games aren't necessarily too long, but shorter RPGs have an advantage in developers being able to focus attention on all levels and anything else that might affect the later parts but not the early- to mid-sections. Thus, shorter games such as Dungeon Master, Pool of Radiance, Fallout, and Legend of Grimrock have an intrinsic advantage in being able to maintain a fairly consistent level of quality from beginning to end. Lengthier games always run the risk of running short on time and resources to properly complete the later sections of the game, as with the Codex's #1 JRPG CRPG, Planescape: Torment.

 

[Cryomancer]

The games are too long.

WoTR is way shorter than Kingmaker yet the bloated boring part starts way earlier.

According to HLTB Kingmaker main + extras takes 130 hours to complete. The game only becomes a chore in house at edge of time which is like 110h+ into the game.

 

[octavius]

The Dark Heart of Uukrul's best level is its last.

I found it too chaotic to my taste.

 

[gurugeorge]

I think to some extent, because developers know most people won't finish their games, they spend most of their efforts on the early part of the game to create good first impressions.

Which suggests they should just make the games shorter and more evenly good in the first place - but then a) they wouldn't be able to market the games as "epic", which would lose them money in one way, and b) the games wouldn't feel epic to the people who do push through (and that's probably a not insignificant minority).

It's always a balancing act - time, energy, enthusiasm, money, they all run out at some point, so it makes sense to put more of the energy there is into the part of the game that most people will play.

Tbh, I think most of the big games have done okay, it's really only the very last bits where most of them fall down, you still get pretty good value for money through the mid-game in most of them. I can't say I've ever felt cheated, as they're all good value for money compared to most other forms of entertainment anyway.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Obvious answer for most of these RPGs that start ailing by late mid-game is that you've obtained godhood. It's up to the developer to find clever ways to keep it challenging.

 

[Raghar]

Rule of commercialism.
Make game for money -> Make first chapter quality one -> release 80 percent of it as a free demo -> make rest of chapters as you want, they paid already -> pay taxes -> release new crap 3 years later.

It's simple. If not for piracy, we wouldn't know how a quality game looks like, because we wouldn't be able to play 70 games year, we would have to stick with 3-7. Now with piracy, we can use our experience to compare all of them, and admit most of them are BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Why do so many great RPG gaming websites worsen in late game?

 

[Daemongar]

It's simple to verify from Steam achievements or such, but the fact remains:

Most people don't come anywhere near completing games. Example: Elex, which on Steam I believe had achievements on Day 1: only 20% of those playing on Steam have the "Visionary" achievement. Which is unavoidable if you complete the game. From checking other games, well, it seems to follow suit. Deus Ex: Human Revolution about 39% completed. Yes, "oh, Elex was so shitty nobody would want to complete it, etc." But the same follows suit for games everyone loves, it would appear.
Just saying it would be fiscally irresponsible for a PM to spend as much time on back end content. You could pretty much whip up a chart on where to spend your time for maximum sales and entertainment in a few minutes if you really wanted to.

I want to know who draws horses starting from the butt.

There was an old thing "Are you an artist?" which would have half a drawing for you - you were to complete the drawing and send the completed picture in with $5 or so. Artists would review your work then send you info on an "Art-by-Mail" training course. It was in all the comic books back in the 70's and 80's. This was pre-internet stuff.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Underrail's final area is pretty dope. I like how they build it up as this epic challenge that kinda psychs you out, even though it's really not that tough.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Most people don't come anywhere near completing games.

Just to add a few more examples:

Less than 10% of players finished Baldur's Gate according to Steam achievements.
Less than 10% for Shadows of Amn
Less than 4% for Throne of Bhaal
Less than 7% for Icewind Dale
Less than 6% for Heart of Winter
Less than 4% for Neverwinter Nights
Less than 3% for Shadows of Undrentide
Less than 2% for Hordes of the Underdark
Exactly 9% for Planescape: Torment

The real blackpill comes from looking at the percentile of players who escape the tutorial areas.

 

[Sentinel]

Why a significant drop in the quality happens in so many RPGs?

Because as a CDPR developer said after the release of Witcher 3, most times the development starts at the final areas of a game and they work backwards from there, so these areas will have the most primitive ideas and designs. By the time they finish the game there's no time to go back and polish it up to the quality of the initial areas.

 

[Funposter]

Better to front load good content knowing that 50+% of players won't even finish the game, but still enjoy it, than to have a strong finish that many people will never even see. It's about realism and development priorities. Alternatively, early game content is easier to balance, develop and playtest than late game content, so it ends up being a lot more polished and well thought-out but not on purpose.

 

[Skdursh]

Because once you play two hours you can't refund it anymore. Only gotta put in enough effort to keep the player invested until then.

 

[Average Manatee]

RPGs become increasingly difficult to balance the longer they go on due to the variety of builds, whether players have completed all sidequests vs. beelined main quests, and whether rare equipment is found and utilized. So even if devs put as much effort into it as the beginning of the game, it's going to come out less tight and focused. This is the opposite of playing PnP with a DM who can customize every step of the adventure along the way for you.

 

[Daemongar]

Just to add a few more examples:

Less than 10% of players finished Baldur's Gate according to Steam achievements.
Less than 10% for Shadows of Amn
Less than 4% for Throne of Bhaal
Less than 7% for Icewind Dale
Less than 6% for Heart of Winter
Less than 4% for Neverwinter Nights
Less than 3% for Shadows of Undrentide
Less than 2% for Hordes of the Underdark
Exactly 9% for Planescape: Torment

The real blackpill comes from looking at the percentile of players who escape the tutorial areas.

The only thing that may skew the results is, well, those games came out 10 years before they were on Steam. I finished all of those but don't have the achievement for all that many. The premise is sound, tho, that few actually finish most games in their library. It would be rare to find a game > 8 hours in length with 50%+ completion rate.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Darks Souls 2, Demon's Souls, and Dragon's Dogma are great from start to finish.

 

[Cryomancer]

difficult to balance

Balance doesn't make any game great. The most balanced D&D edition? 4e which is by far the worst.

This excessive focus in balance is what is making RPG's so boring.

 

[Average Manatee]

Balance doesn't make any game great. The most balanced D&D edition? 4e which is by far the worst.

This excessive focus in balance is what is making RPG's so boring.

Balance at least needs to be somewhat close. Otherwise you get crap lack the last third of the game either being a complete snooze, or the opposite in VTM:B where the end game is unplayable without a combat focused build.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Dead City was also patched in way after the development was considered to be finished, so it's more of an expansion than a proper end-game.

The actual end-game in ATOM is a bunch of mushroom cult members crammed into a tiny corridor.

It was even referred to as Dead City dlc IIRC.

Atom Team traditionally has pretty barebones endgames, just look at Seventh Heaven and 'Northern Invasion' in Trudograd.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Eg?

• VtMB is amazing till late Chinatown
• Pathfinder Kingmaker is great till Pitax and after Pitax, including the optional chapter is too boring
• Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous at the late chapter 4 becomes a endless slog
• Baldur's Gate 2 : Shadows of Amn is great till you return from Underdark, then becomes less great
• Gothic 2 chapters 1/2/3/4 are amazing but late game sucks
• Returning 2.0 mod made ch 5 a bit better with some cool areas and a undead mystery to solve and quests yet chapter 7, added by the mod is atrocious.
• NWN2 OC is good till the last dungeon
• NWN1:HotU, the last chapter is arguably the WORST part of the epic adventure
• Might & Magic VII : For Blood and Honor - After the second promotion quest, the games drops in quality a lot.
• Dark Souls : After Ornstein and Smough, the game drops in quality a lot
• Solasta : The end game fells a slog

There are exceptions to that ""rule"". Ravenloft : Strahd possession was amazing from the start till the Strahd fight. Gothic 1 is amazing from the "welcome to the colony" till the last fight in the sleeper temple. Dark Sun : Wake of the Ravager is amazing from the first minute playing till when you fight the terrifying Tarrasque at end game. Eye of the Beholder 3 has some really bad parts like UNDERWATER no magical fields but the late game is not that bad.

Why a significant drop in the quality happens in so many RPGs?

Fewer than 20% of players actually reach the endgame. I suppose it was even lower in the pre-Internet age when you could not easily google solutions to problems.

Also, reviewers often don't finish game before deadline for review. So its more beneficial for the devs and their game to frontload it with content and quality and worry about the endgame last (or enhance it with dlcs after the game has already sold a decent number of copies).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The "ran out of motivation" argument doesn't work because games aren't developed linearly.
The real reason is that most games have a ~20% completion ratio.

Which is a chicken or the egg problem. Is the reason completion rates are so low because gamedevs frontload content, or do gamedevs frontload content because people don't complete games?

 

[Cryomancer]

Balance at least needs to be somewhat close. Otherwise you get crap lack the last third of the game either being a complete snooze, or the opposite in VTM:B where the end game is unplayable without a combat focused build.

Disagreed. If we are talking about a campaign full of undead, a lawful good cleric or paladin should have a much easier time than a cryomancer for eg. Ravenloft : Strahd possession is extremely hard without a cleric in your party. So what, it makes sense. Balance as an tool to give more fun to the player, by not frustrating him or allowing him to easily steamroll is fine. Ballance as a end goat in its own lead to the boring gear farming cooldown managing modern """"rpgs""""

 

[Black]

Easier to front load the good stuff. In any medium, really. Compare the amount of well done early/mid parts to well done late parts.