Have we outlived our time?

[Koki]

It's like that in every genre, Urizen.

Fallout 2 was fucking revolution in it's time, multiple choices, great system, almost complete freedom to roam the world - and everyone agreed it was epic, even other devs. Then they went back to making their action RPGs again.
Deus Ex was fucking revolution in it's time, some choices(In an FPS!), some RPG elements, story which actually did not suck. Everyone agreed it was apic, and... they went back to making "one man versus army of mutants in dark corridors".
Hell, even Ultima Online was more advanced than the MMORPGs we get today. You could have house, you could mine for fish and shit, and cook food. But no one fucking cares, grinding and getting 0,01% drops is the current favorite.

And the worst thing is, these games which should revolutionize the genre get almost no recognition at all. Whenever I'm discussing Fallout 3 with people, I just hear the same thing: "NMA is living in the past, they can't make same game, time flies on, improvements". Improvements? What fucking improvements? Fallout WAS the improvement. No one made as advanced RPG yet, other than Troika which was mostly same people. What fucking argument is this? You don't really think that amount of triangles on someone's nose is an improvement, right? Right?

Fallout, Deus Ex, UO were revolutionary and they should become the current standard, not fall into obscurity. I dunno, if I was a gaming dev and played Deus Ex, I wouldn't fucking make Doom 3. Because I would be able to see how inferior my product is and I would think that no one will simply buy a flat dark dungeon crawler pew pew gun totter now. Not to mention I would be ashamed to make it, because it's in comparision it's a really bad product. Just like after Starcraft introduced move-attack command, so now all RTS' have it. After you invent electricity, you don't go back to torches. I don't know who here is stupid anymore. You say "it wouldn't sell" but what the fuck is wrong with publishers? If I was a publisher, and it was a month after Deus Ex release, and someone would come to me and said "I want to make FPS shooter, you're last man of wiped out commando squad in jungle where killer monkeys roam", I would simply kick out his butt out of my office, saying "Look at these dudes, they have RPG elements, fantastic story and even choices, your product is simply inferior." But as we all know it didn't happen. If car industry was like gaming industry, someone would make a car running on water and no one would even care, all of them driving SUVs around spending hundreds of bucks on petrol.

I don't even know who is at fault anymore. Consumers? Developers? Publishers? All of them?

[Dogmeatlives]

I totally agree with Koki. Fallout was a miracle sent from god.

[Thor Kaufman]

most "classic" roleplaying games beyond wasteland, fallouts 1 and 2, torment and arcanum don't have much "role playing" either. bloodlines, for instance, is an ultralinear piece of shit. baldur's gates, final fantasys and the like are elaborate fighting games with stats tacked on. rpgs aren't getting "worse and worse", there was one decent developer that made some pretty good games for a few years when computer games were just starting to spill over into the mainstream, that's it.

anyway who cares, if you want a "true" role playing game, that's not something easily provided in the medium of a video game. even fallout has its limits - a lot of the dialogue is awfully shallow, for instance. just play shadowrun or something, jeez

the long and short of it is that only fools play crpgs -- people, often middle class liberals, who need contrivances like "backstory" and "believable dialogue" to make them forget their pangs of white guilt. that's unnatural -- the masses, not blinded by such elitism, know the true visceral pleasure that a first person shooter can bring, without getting bogged down by concepts that are all in their heads. indulge yo selves

I like your point of concepts, atoga, very nihilistic. Then again, everything is mental wankery and doesn't matter, amirite?
I doubt that the concept of wanting good story/dialogue is provoked by angst, though, more like the want for good fun. Fallout dialogue is just awesome for the most part.
"What do you want?"
-"A cookie"
HELL YEAH!

The only good line in Oblivion was probably the infamous mudcrab line. Combat isn't fun, either.

Problem is, modern games don't even provide fun or lulz anymore, most have been dumbed down that much that not even shooters use to be fun. Also, it seems like most games have this stupid item/useless quest collecting thing going on just to stretch playtime. Godfather is a very horrible example for that and all MMORPGs of course.
It seems like only dumb people are making games, anymore, hence the lack of good games and dialogue. :deja vu of thought:
Ah fuck it, another useless "debate".


Just do what atoga suggested and procreate, you dumb nerds.
fake edit: I just found the solution for the riddle, in fact, the nerds are behind all this, they want to keep the dumb people behind useless computer games.

[PsychoSniper5]

I totally agree with Koki. Fallout was a miracle sent from god.

qfe, agree 100%, etc etc.

[Urizen]

DAC isn't really about games, anymore, if it ever was. It's just a steaming pile of buttfuck.

i think you may have been here a lot longer than me, so you know best what dac is and what it was. still, i feel that this community may either have to realise the fact that the world has moved on (if that's the case) and let go off this childish cynicism (if that's what it is), or we need to move our attention somewhere else.

most "classic" roleplaying games beyond wasteland, fallouts 1 and 2, torment and arcanum don't have much "role playing" either. bloodlines, for instance, is an ultralinear piece of shit. baldur's gates, final fantasys and the like are elaborate fighting games with stats tacked on. rpgs aren't getting "worse and worse", there was one decent developer that made some pretty good games for a few years when computer games were just starting to spill over into the mainstream, that's it.

anyway who cares, if you want a "true" role playing game, that's not something easily provided in the medium of a video game. even fallout has its limits - a lot of the dialogue is awfully shallow, for instance. just play shadowrun or something, jeez

the long and short of it is that only fools play crpgs -- people, often middle class liberals, who need contrivances like "backstory" and "believable dialogue" to make them forget their pangs of white guilt. that's unnatural -- the masses, not blinded by such elitism, know the true visceral pleasure that a first person shooter can bring, without getting bogged down by concepts that are all in their heads. indulge yo selves

thanks for the input. that is certainly an answer to one of my questions. i need more time to think about it before i can agree or disagree, though. but either way: great answer.

It's like that in every genre, Urizen.

Fallout 2 was fucking revolution in it's time, multiple choices, great system, almost complete freedom to roam the world - and everyone agreed it was epic, even other devs. Then they went back to making their action RPGs again.
Deus Ex was fucking revolution in it's time, some choices(In an FPS!), some RPG elements, story which actually did not suck. Everyone agreed it was apic, and... they went back to making "one man versus army of mutants in dark corridors".
Hell, even Ultima Online was more advanced than the MMORPGs we get today. You could have house, you could mine for fish and shit, and cook food. But no one fucking cares, grinding and getting 0,01% drops is the current favorite.

And the worst thing is, these games which should revolutionize the genre get almost no recognition at all. Whenever I'm discussing Fallout 3 with people, I just hear the same thing: "NMA is living in the past, they can't make same game, time flies on, improvements". Improvements? What fucking improvements? Fallout WAS the improvement. No one made as advanced RPG yet, other than Troika which was mostly same people. What fucking argument is this? You don't really think that amount of triangles on someone's nose is an improvement, right? Right?

Fallout, Deus Ex, UO were revolutionary and they should become the current standard, not fall into obscurity. I dunno, if I was a gaming dev and played Deus Ex, I wouldn't fucking make Doom 3. Because I would be able to see how inferior my product is and I would think that no one will simply buy a flat dark dungeon crawler pew pew gun totter now. Not to mention I would be ashamed to make it, because it's in comparision it's a really bad product. Just like after Starcraft introduced move-attack command, so now all RTS' have it. After you invent electricity, you don't go back to torches. I don't know who here is stupid anymore. You say "it wouldn't sell" but what the fuck is wrong with publishers? If I was a publisher, and it was a month after Deus Ex release, and someone would come to me and said "I want to make FPS shooter, you're last man of wiped out commando squad in jungle where killer monkeys roam", I would simply kick out his butt out of my office, saying "Look at these dudes, they have RPG elements, fantastic story and even choices, your product is simply inferior." But as we all know it didn't happen. If car industry was like gaming industry, someone would make a car running on water and no one would even care, all of them driving SUVs around spending hundreds of bucks on petrol.

I don't even know who is at fault anymore. Consumers? Developers? Publishers? All of them?

i guess we agree on a lot of things. please correct me if i'm wrong... i think the hybrids represent part of the natural evolution of games, and i think a lot of them (like deus ex) were great. i also applaud them for not pertaining to be something they were'nt. but these days, it's ALL hybrids, and people think it's rpg's they're playing. maybe it started with the button-mashing of diablo and diablo 2...

[Thor Kaufman]

I don't know what you mean with childish cynicism, I can't remember to have been cynical in my childhood, that started later.
Also, nothing wrong with cynicism as long as it leads to good lulz.


PC gaming died in '98 in my books, I blame global warming (read: the jews) for bad games.

[Urizen]

I don't know what you mean with childish cynicism, I can't remember to have been cynical in my childhood, that started later.

Also, nothing wrong with cynicism as long as it leads to good lulz.


PC gaming died in '98 in my books, I blame global warming for bad games.

well, as i said: if that's what it is. i don't know. but don't you agree that cynicism is a trait which is very well-represented in children and that cynicism is one of the trademarks of dac?

[cazsim83]

Why do you say '98, Thor?
*please don't say FO was the last great game, because there are other good ones out there.*

[Thor Kaufman]

well, as i said: if that's what it is. i don't know. but don't you agree that cynicism is a trait which is very well-represented in children and that cynicism is one of the trademarks of dac?

Maybe cynicism is a trait, a trait that gets used in adolescence. Either way, one may become cynical later in life.
I don't think children are cynical, though, quite the contrary, neither I nor my childhood friends were cynical. Sure, homo hominem lupus, but that doesn't necessitate cynicism.
fake edit: ah hell, maybe everybody is a cynic, even children at times, I'm not sure

Cynicism is a part of DAC and that's good, but we are also the loving and peaceful people of North Vietnam.

[Urizen]

well, as i said: if that's what it is. i don't know. but don't you agree that cynicism is a trait which is very well-represented in children and that cynicism is one of the trademarks of dac?

Maybe cynicism is a trait, a trait that gets used in adolescence. Either way, one may become cynical later in life.
I don't think children are cynical, though, quite the contrary, neither I nor my childhood friends were cynical. Sure, homo hominem lupus, but that doesn't necessitate cynicism.
fake edit: ah hell, maybe everybody is a cynic, even children at times, I'm not sure

Cynicism is a part of DAC and that's good, but we are also the loving and peaceful people of North Vietnam.

my experience is that it is a trait often found in pubescent males. obviously, your experiences are different. either way, i was just trying to describe something, the particulars aren't really that important.

[Thor Kaufman]

jeez, that's my thought, too, that's why I said adolescents.

Children are 3-12 year olds for me

[Dogmeatlives]

So has it been decided yet whether or not our time has been lived out?

For me I have never been into RPGs besides Fallout and I really don't play any games, console or otherwise. The games that come out now just seem like shit and I have low standards. I played through Shrek 2. The thing that bothers me about FO3 is tha it is a Fallout title being created by a company that has made games that I don't care for. I have found Morrowind and Oblivion to be pretty dull. I am not looking forward to another dull RPG.

It's pretty much that simple to me. Graphics are great and I would be lying to say that great graphics don't mean alot to me. It's important that a game looks good. But when you step up to make a Fallout game, your not continuing a graphics crazy series. You are continuing an epic roleplaying experience. The bottom line is that when I play the game, it will be a worthy successor to Fallout if it makes me feel as involved or more so in the world than when I played Fallout. In other words, what kind of role do I play? I don't think FO3 will meet my expectations. I couldn't care less about combat and viewpoint. Bethesda does not make fun games.

[Goretheglowingone]

well.. if al else faills .. WASTELAND 2 will save us all.

[atoga]

Fallout 2 was fucking revolution in it's time, multiple choices, great system, almost complete freedom to roam the world - and everyone agreed it was epic, even other devs. Then they went back to making their action RPGs again.

fallout 2?

how about answering: what can a crpg offer that a pencil and paper rpg can't? crpgs are already lacking a lot of the enjoyable qualities of pencil and paper games -- the social aspect, open-endedness, the "generative" aspect of a game assuming your gm is good at improvising, i could go on.

if your answer is just that you find crpgs more immersive (even though they're not - if you select this response, you like eye candy and you have no soul), then why is it important that crpgs are ultra-faithful to the mechanistic aspects of the tabletop rpgs they're adapting (like including turn based combat, for instance, and generally toning down the importance of the player's skill in the game)?

[Urizen]

i've only tried pencil and paper rpg-ing once, so i don't want to get into an argument about which is better. i will say, however, that i found Fallout, Bloodlines, ToEE, BG and PS:T (which to me represents the golden age of crpgs) to be a helluva lot more immersive than anything i've seen in the last few years. and yet, immersion apppears to be the biggest current buzzword.

[Dreadnought]

Ja.

[Frater Perdurabo]

ive never tried pencil and paper rpg-ing once, so i don't want to get into an argument about which is better. i will say, however, that i found Fallout, and PS:T (which to me represents the golden age of crpgs) to be a helluva lot more immersive than anything i've seen in the last few years. and yet, immersion apppears to be the biggest current buzzword.

[Urizen]

Fallout 2 even made a constant habit of breaking the fourth wall. but the amazing range of options for where to go, what to say, what to do and who to fight made it more immersive than anything that's come since.

[cazsim83]

Only problem I see w/ p&p is (at least in my area) a lack of any motivation whatsoever. No one I know is into that stuff anymore. It's too "slow" or *gasp* you have to "think too much" THAT'S why you're not seeing the "immersion" of days gone by. Most people around my age at least, and definitely younger, can't stand to A) use their brain - and wait for more than 5 seconds to do anything.

[Megatron]

I don't like using my brain or waiting. Just lay down a wicked tune and pass the roach material, dog the bounty hunter.