Decline Worst travesties in the genre?

[Riddler]

Dragon Age II

DA2 sucked because there was no encounter design. Every single fight was identical: baddies pop out of nowhere(sometimes they literally fall from the ceiling), you beat them, then more magically appeared.
It destroyed any point of tactical positioning because enemies randomly spawned on top of your ranged characters.
There were a handful of enemy types and all enemies were reskins of these. Spiders were just archers with spider skins.

Not joking about them falling from the ceiling btw:

This is how enemies spawn in DA2.

It also sucked because of the writing.

It's irredeemable on every level.

Not conceptually. Having a story set in a single city spanning a decade (or more?) is interesting. Where it failed is in the execution.

 

[index.php]

Every RPG with level scaling.

 

[MajorMace]

When the only thing you get right is the concept, It'd be quibbling to say that it wasn't irredeemable on every level. The "execution" after all, only entails - you know - making the damn game.

 

[JarlFrank]

When the only thing you get right is the concept, It'd be quibbling to say that it wasn't irredeemable on every level. The "execution" after all, only entails - you know - making the damn game.

Yeah when it comes to concepts I can offer you a dozen docs filled with cool ideas that would certainly be great if made into a game one day, by competent programmers and designers.
Right now, they're just ideas in docs, there are no games yet.

And I bet everyone on the Codex has a doc like this on his hard drive somewhere.

A cool concept doesn't make for a cool game if the implementation sucks. And the implementation of Dragon Age 2... oh boy, if you buy a boxed copy of that game you don't need a vacuum cleaner in your house.

 

[Comte]

Man can't believe none of you mothafuckas mentioned Ultima IX. That is a travesty. Also Underworld Ascendent.

 

[Silentstorm]

On this note, the trend of procedurally generated levels is a big massive decline. It's infected indie RPGs to a large degree and every second game that comes out these days is some kind of roguelike or roguelite. As if level design wasn't important at all and you can just slap a bunch of mechanics together, have the levels and encounters be generated by the computer, and call it a day.

It doesn't really work for full blown RPG's where you expect the world to have some semblance of design that lets you change the world in future replays depending on your playstyle, but i have no idea what the problem with procedurally generated levels are.

So, developer wants to make it so that the game is always fresh, different and forces the player to learn and adapt with a mechanic that many people absolutely love...what's the problem?

Okay, fine, many procedurally generated games suck, but you can say the same about many games without procedural generation as well, and you're acting like making that kind of game is easy, when there is a reason why people spend years and years working on procedurally generated games, because, you know, you still have to make a world, you still have to make graphics, soundtrack, UI, making a bunch of obstacles and items for the player to discover, make an algorithm that makes fun levels that are beatable and so forth.

It's not as if people just make a bunch of stuff and then put a code of line to make every level random, even the algorithm behind those kinds of games takes a lot of work and testing, that isn't me saying that level design isn't important, far from it, most games i love aren't procedurally generated all the way, but i heavily disagree with procedural generation being automatically inferior or bad.

 

[JarlFrank]

It doesn't really work for full blown RPG's where you expect the world to have some semblance of design that lets you change the world in future replays depending on your playstyle, but i have no idea what the problem with procedurally generated levels are.

So, developer wants to make it so that the game is always fresh, different and forces the player to learn and adapt with a mechanic that many people absolutely love...what's the problem?

Okay, fine, many procedurally generated games suck, but you can say the same about many games without procedural generation as well, and you're acting like making that kind of game is easy, when there is a reason why people spend years and years working on procedurally generated games, because, you know, you still have to make a world, you still have to make graphics, soundtrack, UI, making a bunch of obstacles and items for the player to discover, make an algorithm that makes fun levels that are beatable and so forth.

It's not as if people just make a bunch of stuff and then put a code of line to make every level random, even the algorithm behind those kinds of games takes a lot of work and testing, that isn't me saying that level design isn't important, far from it, most games i love aren't procedurally generated all the way, but i heavily disagree with procedural generation being automatically inferior or bad.

I don't mind roguelikes. I even enjoy some of them. But there's been such a flood of roguelikes and especially roguelites that it seems like indie devs don't like doing level design anymore and just go for procedural all the time. And the result is a lot of games that are very samey: since levels are procedural they lack character, it's just a sequence of ever similar levels and encounters with no personality to them.

Procedural games are games you play for half an hour at a time, once a week or month, then you've had your fix and go play a game with real levels to experience content that's actually good.

90% of procedurally generated games just make me want to play a similar game with hand-made levels instead. Especially once I've become familiar enough with the game to notice the patterns of the procedural levels.

Recently even FPS have tried to jump on the procedural fad, see Strafe, which nobody liked because FPS is a genre that lives off its level design, and that game's procedural levels are just meh and boring.
Proc gen won't be able to give us intricately designed and visually stunning levels like what, say, the Quake community shits out on the regular.

If you want infinite content for your game, make a really good game with hand-made levels, then release the editor to your community so they can make mods for all eternity. Look at Doom, Quake, Tomb Raider, Thief, NWN. Those games are old yet people still make new mods for them. Heck, even FRUA, the Gold Box creation kit, still has an active community.

And all that content actually has some variety, personality, design to it which computer algorithms can't remotely reach.
Heck, even mediocre user mods are better than that bland and boring, ever-samey procedrual shit, where you notice the patterns of the level generation algorithms after two hours of playing, and from then on everything will feel the same despite always being "new".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I think procedural for the developers is a great idea that boosts productivity. E.g., a designer can procedurally generate the skeleton of a dungeon until it looks like what they want, and use that as a base to get working on rather than making it by hand.

 

[Silentstorm]

That depends on the person, i like having different levels even if they aren't designed by hand, i can honestly say i have spent more hours playing Spelunky, Streets Of Rogue, Enter The Gungeon and others than many RPG's or even classic games, precisely because they offer a different experience and challenges all the time.

Then again, a lot of my favorite games aren't procedurally generated so i would be a hypocrite if i said i typically prefer roguelikes and roguelites, heck, i think in the past few months i haven't played one, not even Enter The Gungeon despite getting a big update.

 

[Sacibengala]

Who more entered here mistakenly thinking that the thread was talking about travestites?

 

[PsychoFox]

Pillars of Eternity. For a game that was a kickstarter darling and all that, i really don't get why it's considered to be so good. Everything about the game is just so... bland. Don't get me wrong, it's competent, but far from stellar like some people say it is. For a game about souls, it sure lacks a lot of just that. Combat is uninspiring, the writing tries so hard to tell so little in so many words (and then most of what it says is just bland and uninteresting), companions are boring, it has very little room for RP... yeesh. Don't know what all the fuss was about. I put ~10 hours into it and i'm done.

 

[alyvain]

Dragon Age II

DA2 sucked because there was no encounter design. Every single fight was identical: baddies pop out of nowhere(sometimes they literally fall from the ceiling), you beat them, then more magically appeared.
It destroyed any point of tactical positioning because enemies randomly spawned on top of your ranged characters.
There were a handful of enemy types and all enemies were reskins of these. Spiders were just archers with spider skins.

Not joking about them falling from the ceiling btw:

This is how enemies spawn in DA2.

It's like it wasn't even a game, just a prank that went too far

 

[JarlFrank]

That depends on the person, i like having different levels even if they aren't designed by hand, i can honestly say i have spent more hours playing Spelunky, Streets Of Rogue, Enter The Gungeon and others than many RPG's or even classic games, precisely because they offer a different experience and challenges all the time.

Then again, a lot of my favorite games aren't procedurally generated so i would be a hypocrite if i said i typically prefer roguelikes and roguelites, heck, i think in the past few months i haven't played one, not even Enter The Gungeon despite getting a big update.

I do enjoy Enter the Gungeon a lot since it's a good game, but I played it often enough now that I can recognize the patterns of the levels. You don't really get "infinite levels". You get a bunch of different layouts that repeat on subsequent playthroughs. Since you play the game a lot, you also must have noticed that most patterns of rooms appear again and again. Procedural generation is often like that: it repeats certain layouts and patterns, but it pretends that it's actually got "infinite levels", which isn't true. You will notice the repeating layouts and patterns at some point, and realize that you're playing through the same levels again and again, just with minor changes to them.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Any single-player game that uses MMO style itemization. That shit is a deal-breaker.

 

[PsychoFox]

^Agreed. FUCK RANDOMLY GENERATED LOOT AND FUCK DIABLO. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

 

[Master]

Witcher 2 Kraken fight made me facepalm really hard, which i never did for any game.

What ?
I recall some nintendo-esque 3-times gimmick, was there something particularly bad at release or something ?

To answer OP : Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
Although it's a fun game.

Just watch a youtube video of it. Its ridiculous video game shit, like something out of Dead Space or Metal Gear Solid. And this was supposed to be an RPG?
It didnt help that TW1 was still fresh in my mind, where bosses and the whole game were a pretty subtle affair.

 

[Modron]

Witcher 2 Kraken fight made me facepalm really hard, which i never did for any game.

What ?
I recall some nintendo-esque 3-times gimmick, was there something particularly bad at release or something ?

I don't recall it being a timing issue but more like you had to walk up the tentacle pixel perfect or you would get knocked off, must have taken me like 13 tries to walk up that damn thing.

 

[MajorMace]

I don't recall it being a timing issue but more like you had to walk up the tentacle pixel perfect or you would get knocked off, must have taken me like 13 tries to walk up that damn thing.

Oh yeah now that you mention that, I remember this bullshit.
Long time I've played twitcher 2, I remember I was confused and felt let down coming from the first game. Took me a few hours to get used to the weirdly sloppy movement and gameplay. But I really liked the plot in the end though.

 

[Darth Canoli]

NwN series ...
Bland story, settings & NPC.
Clunky combat system (well, it's you against your mouse)
Loading screens.

Thinking about it, it was a visionary concept, the Pillows saga made it its moto.

 

[cloudropis]

Dragon Age II

DA2 sucked because there was no encounter design. Every single fight was identical: baddies pop out of nowhere(sometimes they literally fall from the ceiling), you beat them, then more magically appeared.
It destroyed any point of tactical positioning because enemies randomly spawned on top of your ranged characters.
There were a handful of enemy types and all enemies were reskins of these. Spiders were just archers with spider skins.

Not joking about them falling from the ceiling btw:

This is how enemies spawn in DA2.

Are you the guy who made the blog from where you got that pic from?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Dragon Age II

DA2 sucked because there was no encounter design. Every single fight was identical: baddies pop out of nowhere(sometimes they literally fall from the ceiling), you beat them, then more magically appeared.
It destroyed any point of tactical positioning because enemies randomly spawned on top of your ranged characters.
There were a handful of enemy types and all enemies were reskins of these. Spiders were just archers with spider skins.

Not joking about them falling from the ceiling btw:

This is how enemies spawn in DA2.

Are you the guy who made the blog from where you got that pic from?

no
I don't have access to DA2 so I just searched "dragon age 2 ceiling enemies"

 

[Popiel]

Oblivion - the beginning of consolification and dumbification

Fallout 3 - one of the worst travesties in the RPG genre

These two really exhaust the subject in a way. Oblivion for obvious and F3 for symbolic reasons.

 

[luj1]

Popiel Yeah absolutely. They are pioneers of decline

 

[HeatEXTEND]

poe is up there.

 

[fantadomat]

It is alarming how many people here react to those da2 pics as if they haven't played the game.
The game was so bad that it got burned in my mind. Am i the only one?