Wanting a PC focus, complexity, challenge and depth is NOT "nostalgia"

[archonsod]

I suggest you read the post I quoted, in which the "more complexity" was accepted, and then realize that you're being a stupid little troll as usual. Archonsod off.

I suggest you come to terms with the fact that people may not accept what you accept. If it's not too hard on your brain that is.

[Gray Guardian]

That game was much inferior to the previous two that they aren't even particularly comparable. It doesn't even have the over world travel, quite possibly the best part of the previous games, as it's set in a city. I'm not going to ignore your points of view because I'm not that petty, but if you have the time you should really give Star Trail or even Blade of Destiny a go.

Damn, I thought the consensus was that Riva was the best and most advanced part of the trilogy. I might have to check out Star Trail some day, since it's available on gog.com.

That said, I think I have no choice but to accept your points on the other matters!

[Sparkasaurusmex]

I expect to accept complexity- except extra excess is less than excellent

[Wizardry]

Damn, I thought the consensus was that Riva was the best and most advanced part of the trilogy. I might have to check out Star Trail some day, since it's available on gog.com.

That said, I think I have no choice but to accept your points on the other matters!

Shadows over Riva probably has the best combat encounters actually, but it's very small scale and all set in a town. It also has a 3D engine to move around in outside, while the previous two games were tile based. The first two games, with Star Trail being the best, provide you with a huge map when you exit the starting town. You plan your route to your destination and you set off. Night and day pass, and you can set up camp for the night. Once you've set up camp you can go looking for plants to make potions and you can even go hunting for food. You have to buy bedrolls for your characters to sleep on, and there's weather and climate too, depending on your location, that can cause diseases that need to be treated. Your characters have to dress appropriately for different conditions, and their boots can be warn out through travelling. You come across lots of things while you're travelling, whether they are merchants or even boats offering you alternative passages/short-cuts. It's incredibly detailed, but admittedly not everyone's cup of tea.

[Nalano]

Someone should summarize this thread for me!

Wizardry happened.

[Heliocentric]

Someone should summarize this thread for me!

Lots of game namedropping, then the thread lost its way and started being meta commentary about itself.

[fiddlesticks]

As opposed to more recent party-based RPG's like Dragon Age 1&2? Most of the "innovation" shown by party-based tactical RPGs post BG2/PS:T are in production values made possible by bigger budget.

I never said the Dragon Age games were particularly innovative and neither do I consider them to be. Bioware in general hasn't deviated much from the formula that made Baldur's Gate 2 succesful and the same could be said of almost anyone else. In the past few years, the only title from a big developer that I would say pushed the boundaries of the RPG genre was Alpha Protocol and even that relied a lot on the template provided by earlier games. RPGs have borrowed quite a bit from other genres, but the general concept of what an RPG is supposed to be hasn't really changed since Fallout.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Planescape: Torment wasn't a bad game because it didn't reinvent the genre. Neither was KotoR or Mass Effect. It's nice to see a game with new mechanics, but it's just as nice to see a game that uses preexisting mechanics well.

I originally wrote this post in the Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall Kickstarter thread:

I doubt we'll ever see much innovation on Kickstarter. When you look at their most successful gaming projects, they almost always rely on nostalgic feelings to gather support. People are more than willing to back you if you're selling something they know and love, but they're hesitant to show support if there's no real indication how your idea will turn out.

In retrospect it sounds a lot more condescending than I intended it to and I apologize for that. But I didn't mean to dismiss all those Kickstarter projects. I've backed many of them. I'm looking forward to playing them. They are just as valid as any other release. My point is that these projects cater to a very specific demographic, the kind of people than enjoyed older titles and are sad that games like them are no longer made. And that's fine, that doesn't make them subpar in any way.

If I understand you correctly, and please do correct me if I don't, you're annoyed because the RPS staff criticized Project: Eternity for appealing to nostalgia and lacking any innovative features. It's perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, but it's understandable. They are gaming journalists, they are excited about innovation and new ideas. It's why they devote so many articles to indie titles that feature a unique concept.

What I'm trying to say is that there's no problem with looking back fondly at the past. It's okay to be nostalgic for old RPGs because many of them were genuinely fantastic. And it's okay to support Eternity because you liked those older games. When people on this forum use the word nostalgia they often don't mean it in a derogatory sense. No one thinks less of you because you want another Baldur's Gate.

Well, that was a lot of words about very little. If you actually bothered to read the entire post, help yourself to a cookie. You earned it.

[thesisko]

What I'm trying to say is that there's no problem with looking back fondly at the past. It's okay to be nostalgic for old RPGs because many of them were genuinely fantastic. And it's okay to support Eternity because you liked those older games. When people on this forum use the word nostalgia they often don't mean it in a derogatory sense. No one thinks less of you because you want another Baldur's Gate.

What I object to, is the claim that it's nostalgia to want things like character creation, tactical combat and more complex mechanics in an RPG.

I don't desire these features because of happy childhood memories (I didn't even play any RPG's before 2003). I want them because I enjoy them (when they are implemented well), just like I enjoy the challenging action combat of Dark Souls.

It's not nostalgia to like something that isn't mainstream. It's simply having niche tastes. So why didn't Obsidian reference any newer titles then? Because the NWN2 engine wasn't at all suited to controlling a whole party in combat and Obsidian wasn't involved in Dragon's Age or Drakensang. Not to mention that Obsidian's design philosophies differ from Bioware's recent offerings.

But hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the majority of Project:Eternity backers aren't RPG fans who like character creation, party-based combat and some complexity in their games. Maybe they all just want to relive their rose-tinted memories of playing Baldur's Gate in high school.

[Gray Guardian]

Shadows over Riva probably has the best combat encounters actually, but it's very small scale and all set in a town. It also has a 3D engine to move around in outside, while the previous two games were tile based. The first two games, with Star Trail being the best, provide you with a huge map when you exit the starting town. You plan your route to your destination and you set off. Night and day pass, and you can set up camp for the night. Once you've set up camp you can go looking for plants to make potions and you can even go hunting for food. You have to buy bedrolls for your characters to sleep on, and there's weather and climate too, depending on your location, that can cause diseases that need to be treated. Your characters have to dress appropriately for different conditions, and their boots can be warn out through travelling. You come across lots of things while you're travelling, whether they are merchants or even boats offering you alternative passages/short-cuts. It's incredibly detailed, but admittedly not everyone's cup of tea.

That does sound mighty interesting, for me in Riva the most irritating thing was the constant jumping between the first person camera and isometric view; the first person view was incredibly static, it didn't have any npcs or moving objects, when it got dark you couldn't see a thing. It was generally awful.

[Wizardry]

That does sound mighty interesting, for me in Riva the most irritating thing was the constant jumping between the first person camera and isometric view; the first person view was incredibly static, it didn't have any npcs or moving objects, when it got dark you couldn't see a thing. It was generally awful.

Well there's still a first person view in dungeons and towns in Star Trail and Blade of Destiny, but because they have tile-based movement (step by step, 90 degree turns) it doesn't seem so bad at all. I guess with improved graphics comes more expectations.

[soldant]

I think the non linear part that people talk about is the order of things you have to do to get to the exit.

But it's still linear. You're still on a single path as intended by the devs. It's not like Skyrim where you could go off into nowhere. Hell, there aren't even multiple ways to the exit - you must get that blue key.

So,to criticize backtracking is akin to asking for linear level design.

It depends on how the backtracking is used. If it's actually part of a non-linear design (a true non-linear design) then there's no issue. But pointless use of backtracking shouldn't be applauded as non-linear design, nor is it advocating for the death of non-linear design. There's a joke PWAD for zDoom about this, perhaps you've played it or know of it: it's a loooooooooooooong box separated by a fence, with a switch on the other side of the fence. You go all the way to the end of the box, around the fence, and down to the switch... which activates a switch back where you started. Rinse, repeat about 5 times, and get to the exit. It's absurd, but it does demonstrate that backtracking due to key or switch hunting is not non-linear design, nor does it always constitute good level design.

COD level design is non-existant,thus inferior(scripts dont take the role of good level design,sorry). Doom level design is good for the most part. Of course there exist games with better level design.

CoD level design is non-existent? Nonsense. The fact that you don't like it doesn't mean that there was no map designed. As for scripts - the majority of FPS levels rely on scripting, however primitive, to make the map interesting. Half Life popularised scripted sequences in FPS games. Hell Doom's line and sector actions were an early form of level scripting - cross the line and the lights go off and the door goes down to release a flood of enemies. Without scripting, levels are incredibly static, and they'd be much more boring. Take a Wolf3D map for example.

im my experience, i find the enemy pacing in Doom good enough.

It is good. I don't necessarily know that it was intentional, but I totally agree that it has the right mix of hordes of enemies and smaller battles with interesting level design.

Someone should summarize this thread for me!

Wizardry said some things. Lots of people argued with him. Doom is awesome. Nobody accomplished anything. The end.

[MoLAoS]

So who else is up for forming a disciples of Wizardry club?

I'm so bored with this dumb rose tinted glasses bullshit. I like certain older games because of the game play not because of some stupid first time I played an rpg or mmo type crap.

[Stellar Duck]

This has been a pretty interesting read, if for nothing else, then the fact that Wizardry has basically finally convinced me he's in fact a hell of a lot more on the right track than the wrong (or a design dead end or whatever you want to call it).

I may not be super familiar with the games he often talks about, having started my RPG diet on Ultima 7, Lands of Lore and Betrayal at Krondor (which I still think is great) and then moved on the Baldur's Gate and Fallout and the given up on most cRPGs again in recent years, but the stuff he's said about skill systems has got me convinced that most RPGs are going about it the wrong way.

I've been unable to really put a finger on my dissatisfaction but now think it has to do with the ever decreasing importance of the rule sets and mechanics. There's a reason I prefer to play a PnP session with my mates where we play our characters as a character and not an extension of ourselves only in armor. I think I forgot about that somewhere along the way.

That said, I'll still buy Project Eternity.

[MoLAoS]

I once tried to argue on MMORPG.com that MMOs are RPGs and therefore the capabilities should come from the character and not the player. So no LoL or Starcraft style APM being the most important thing in combat and so forth. Started quite the firestorm of people aiming their brain feces at me. MMOs should be about using your brain to create a stellar and unique character from an open set of skills and stats and such I said. "Go **** your sister while I **** your mother and throw my **** at you" they said to me. Forum PVP is the only real PVP I guess :P

It feels like people want to bring fighting games into RPGs these days. And god forbid that classes play in different styles for different factions.

Also I remember one argument that I started where RPGs should feel like and have the same options as those of characters in fantasy novels. Using the environment like Drizzt dropping an icicle on the dragon for instance. Having a certain situation only solvable by a certain kind of character, having magic be rare but powerful and what not. These days it feels like basic warrior classes have as much magic as a mage in RPGs. That one didn't go so well either.

[Nalano]

I once tried to argue on MMORPG.com that MMOs are RPGs and therefore the capabilities should come from the character and not the player. So no LoL or Starcraft style APM being the most important thing in combat and so forth. Started quite the firestorm of people aiming their brain feces at me. MMOs should be about using your brain to create a stellar and unique character from an open set of skills and stats and such I said. Go **** your sister while I **** your mother and throw my **** at you they said. Forum PVP is the only real PVP :P

It feels like people want to bring fighting games into RPGs these days. And god forbid that classes play in different styles for different factions.

Also I remember one argument that I started where RPGs should feel like and have the same options as those of characters in fantasy novels. Using the environment like Drizzt dropping an icicle on the dragon for instance. Having a certain situation only solvable by a certain kind of character, having magic be rare but powerful and what not. These days it feels like basic warrior classes have as much magic as a mage in RPGs. That one didn't go so well either.

Again, but without the supercilious condescension.

I wanna see if you can actually defend old-school shit without insulting fans of new-school shit. Go.

[NathanH]

I may not be super familiar with the games he often talks about, having started my RPG diet on Ultima 7, Lands of Lore and Betrayal at Krondor (which I still think is great) and then moved on the Baldur's Gate and Fallout and the given up on most cRPGs again in recent years, but the stuff he's said about skill systems has got me convinced that most RPGs are going about it the wrong way.

I don't think it's so much that the current "things-that-are-called-RPGs-now" are going about things the wrong way. Things like modern Diablolikes and fusions of action-RPG and choose-your-own-adventures like Mass Effect are exploring some interesting territory. What has been forgotten is that there is other territory to explore, and it's territory that's more consistent with pen and paper roleplaying ideas: define a character, choose an action from a large set of plausible choices in all manner of situations, and have the world react to the choice through the character's definition. Modern RPGs usually only have that behaviour in combat situations, if they even have it at all.

[Stellar Duck]

I don't think it's so much that the current "things-that-are-called-RPGs-now" are going about things the wrong way. Things like modern Diablolikes and fusions of action-RPG and choose-your-own-adventures like Mass Effect are exploring some interesting territory. What has been forgotten is that there is other territory to explore, and it's territory that's more consistent with pen and paper roleplaying ideas: define a character, choose an action from a large set of plausible choices in all manner of situations, and have the world react to the choice through the character's definition. Modern RPGs usually only have that behaviour in combat situations, if they even have it at all.

Yea, I'd say you're right. It's a shame, really. And it's not like I don't want the more modern games to exist. I do enjoy some of them, but I just think the more mechanics based ones should be a thing as well.

[TechnicalBen]

Why is Kickstarter mainly referencing old works... I don't know, perhaps this will be an example.

Kickstarter in a parallel universe where "nostalgia" related comments don't exist:

Hey, I've got this new game. It's totally new, but if you want something to compare it to, it's going to be like Halo 5/COD8/Battlefield 4

Think they would get much interest, perhaps only from lawyers?

Kickstarter currently has people referencing old games, because that won't get too much IP suits on their case. It also means people can think of what it's like, but not the same as. They may think of the gameplay, and not the artistic style. Where as if they relate to current games, people will expect a AAA game on a shoestring budget. If you compare your game to "a modern version of Quiver" they think of what improvements you can make. If you say "it's like a £50,000 COD", well, they will be thinking of what you cut to get it in budget. :P

So it's not really nostalgia, it's finding what they can relate the audence to and what the budget allows.

[MoLAoS]

Again, but without the supercilious condescension.

I wanna see if you can actually defend old-school shit without insulting fans of new-school shit. Go.

I didn't insult them. They spewed forth filthy invective at me. I guess I should put the profanity stuff in quotes and said specifically that it was directed at me? W/e.

[QuantaCat]

ignore the provocative trolls, they are just that.

And yes, I understand what you said. I am also in favour of making such an RPG, which has all the options, not just progression streamlined into combat experience points. I mean, I get that they are making these games, they used to exist in pen and paper as well, they have a very basic feel to it, almost earthly, tribal, dreamlike, but I do like complex themes and solutions; simply things that make you think, instead of make you live a world that is simpler.