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This is taken from a post I made in a KotOR forum. It's about the recent onslaught of "it's too hard" posts. That and "I can't do it's". I tried to remove most of the KotOR-specific references, even though most people have played it. Not like you have to be a Star Wars fan or anything.

Oh man how can you hate [That level]? I mean, it was the best planet,
besides that one with the bar and long NPC-finding puzzle. I loved that,
true RPG style baby, yeah! Oh and [that level]has the most puzzles. So
what if their "hard"? It means you have to think when you play a game.
"Oh, no!"
If you're just comenting that it's a challenge, that's cool. If you're
saying it's too hard and should be easier, look at other RPG's without
harder parts, that drag you by the ear to the next piece of the puzzle.
How many people say Oblivion is too easy? Lot's. The reason companies
put less challenging "puzzles" in games these days is because every
time they do, people whine about it. I got stuck a few times in the game
too. I'll admit it. But I came back, and those times when I came back
and figured it out I played for hours until I looked up at a clock again
and realized, "I gotta get blood flow man!"
So this is just a friendly reminder to all- Think before you say "It's too hard," online. You're just telling producers to make games that have less depth and twists.
If It says in my datapad that I have to see "Ed" next, I go see him and
feel like i did nothing. If it says that someone hinted that they saw
a known alchoholic wandering around who was saying wierd things, and I
look for him at a bar and he tells me he wrote down something but lost
his note, and then I ask "where have you been" and he says hes been to
his girlfriends and passes out and I ask someone else who he's dating
and he says that the drunk just broke up publicly with some chick named
sally and I find sally and she gives me "ed's robe" and in the pocket
is the note which is what I could have got from ed if there was no
challenge. My point is that (lame excuse for a puzzle" aside, I feel good
that I went through all that trouble, not bad.
Any comments?

BTW the post was mine, but was a bit off topic, and belongs here. I think it is very important to the future of my favorite genre of games. Please, voice your opinions here.

I can only agree with you there. The situation you descriped reminded me a bit of BGII's quest with the red robe that started in the graveyard.
Yes, some things are hard in RPG's. But for me, the point of playing RPG's is finding ways around it: either leveling up, mindnumbingly as it might be, gettings some extra skills, combing my environment for clues, thinking out a new strategy...
I like to feel "smart" after defeating a boss encounter because I figured out that Fighters are vulnerable to Paralysis spells, which enables my Melee-types to bust through and lay the smack on the opposing Wizard, which was preveting my Priest from calling down Meteors.

On the same track, I hate the shallowness of modern RPG's. I'm talking about the "system" behind it. You get 3-4 stats, HP, MP, to hit, damage, resistances and a couple of skilltrees. Granted, each tree probably has 20+ skills. That's it.
I like complex systems. Make each stat influence different things in varying degrees. Make the skills interact more with the stats. Give players the opportunity to device combinations.
To give some examples: compare Fallout with WoW. WoW has a shamefully shallow system to customize stats: only by items, and then there are only five of them, one of which is nearly neglible. Just grind, level up, dump a talent point in a tree and you'll do fine. Fallout has seven stats, about 20 skills, traits, and perks every three levels. This game forces you think and read about the numbers. You have to come up with a coherent whole.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not promoting high-end algebra to understand RPG's. On the contrary: Fallout's calculations can mostly be done by hand. WoW on the hand... Dang, those are long, long algorythms...
This does not mean that WoW is a bad game, not at all. But it has a certain "dumbification".
Another, often cited example of this, is how Oblivion rather is "Morrowind-light."
One more example: Jade Empire compared to Arcanum?

This final paragraph (Promise ) will be about packaging. I remember the days when you bought a game and it came in a rather big, colourful, detailed, box with a flap on front giving extra info and background on the game. Inside we hade a manual of about 100 pages, with background, advice, "in-character" tutorials, a fold-out map of the world to explore and a seperate list of skills/spells/mana/theespoons. The "old koots" amongst us know which games I'm talking about. Just a few, for nostalgia's sake: BG (Area Map, City Map, Manual with lots and lots of extra info), BGII (Nice box design, big manual), PS:T (Poster, nice "in-character" introduction to the setting), Morrowind (Map), MMVI (Detailed Manual, Map), Arcanum (Big fat manual with nice in-game explanations and generally very flavourful.), Neverwinter Nights. (Manual, Map). I'm sure there are others.
Nowadays, we get to pay just as much (50 Euro) or even more and we get a floppy plastic DVD box which half of the time cinches my discs so hard it cracks them. Manuals are non-existent, in the best case some PDF on the disc. That's ok for a budget release, not for a full release. Granted, some games still try. KotOR springs to mind.

What's wrong with a little extra reading? A little extra effort for your hobby? I don't want to come my Warhammer guys prepainted. I want to paint them myself! I have the feeling the current generation of gamers is more like this: "ZOMG!!!11! Teh t3xt si 4 teh st00pid5, lollollol!!!11!! Tell me plx wre to get itamz, kthx? I R 1337!!!!"
Some people blame this on the several mutliplatform releases and that games have to be "dumbed" down for consoles. to a certain degree, that's true, a mouse and keyboard offer a lot more options, but KotOR showed us this doesn't have to be the case. Besides, in yester years, there were deep, detailed console RPG's as well. I'm looking fondly at you, Crono Trigger, FFV, FFVI and Zelda.

Edit: A conclusion never counts to the limit of paragraphs.

Edit part deux: Nor does an Edit.

GawainBS wrote:I can only agree with you there. I remember the days when you bought a game and it came in a rather big, colourful, detailed, box with a flap on front giving extra info and background on the game. Inside we hade a manual of about 100 pages, with background, advice, "in-character" tutorials, a fold-out map of the world to explore and a seperate list of skills/spells/mana/theespoons. The "old koots" amongst us know which games I'm talking about. Just a few, for nostalgia's sake: BG (Area Map, City Map, Manual with lots and lots of extra info), BGII (Nice box design, big manual), PS:T (Poster, nice "in-character" introduction to the setting), Morrowind (Map), MMVI (Detailed Manual, Map), Arcanum (Big fat manual with nice in-game explanations and generally very flavourful.), Neverwinter Nights. (Manual, Map). I'm sure there are others.
Nowadays, we get to pay just as much (50 Euro) or even more and we get a floppy plastic DVD box which half of the time cinches my discs so hard it cracks them. Manuals are non-existent, in the best case some PDF on the disc. That's ok for a budget release, not for a full release. Granted, some games still try. KotOR springs to mind.

What's wrong with a little extra reading? A little extra effort for your hobby? I don't want to come my Warhammer guys prepainted. I want to paint them myself! I have the feeling the current generation of gamers is more like this: "ZOMG!!!11! Teh t3xt si 4 teh st00pid5, lollollol!!!11!! Tell me plx wre to get itamz, kthx? I R 1337!!!!"
Some people blame this on the several mutliplatform releases and that games have to be "dumbed" down for consoles. to a certain degree, that's true, a mouse and keyboard offer a lot more options, but KotOR showed us this doesn't have to be the case. Besides, in yester years, there were deep, detailed console RPG's as well. I'm looking fondly at you, Crono Trigger, FFV, FFVI and Zelda.

Edit: A conclusion never counts to the limit of paragraphs.

Edit part deux: Not does an Edit.

Yes. I can't agree with that more. For instance, although not an RPG, I particularly remember the manual from Civilization II. Holy crap! That thing was huge. I mean, when I was kid, there was no way I could read that. But as I got older, I remember gathering an appreciation for all that went intot hat game and manual. Another example of box design is the box from Mechwarrior 3 Good stuff. Big box, flap, beautiful pictures of the game in action, and inside were a manual, a quick start guide, and a couple pamphlets. Now I go out and buy games, and I gotta get manuals online?(read: Guild Wars) Not cool. My favorite thing is the "Readme intsructions file on CD". That's just cutting costs, without thinking about the gamers. Then again, if the money saved is going into production, then I guess I can support it. I just doubt it is.

In response to your second(I think) paragraph, I can only concur that games have become too shallow. Why? There are a few possibilities. Think about the whole boring market research thing. Who are companies marketing to? Who is buying their games? Upper-middle class to just middle class people, many teenagers in high school. Most who's buying? Mom and Dad. I work in retail, so I can safely say that the big companies are marketing to even pre-adolecents,with "M" rated games. I had a kid come buy Oblivion last week. Kids don't want a deep storyline, or a challenge. they grow up on the online games, with up and down arrows as their entire playing interface. It's rather sad, really, how they have no attention span for these sorts of things, and you can see this in the movie industry too.
As a side-note, The whole dumbed down thing is true, especially with online gaming. The whole "lolz" and "wtf" thing is getting old. If one more person says "I will love this game 4evr", I will scream. The only instance that a number is cool instead of a word is in "2 Fast 2 Furious". That's it.

Oh, you said Mechwarrior! Yes, that's another example. Compare the sheer options and vastness of the Mechwarrior 2 Mercs mechlab with the simple kindergarten version of it in Mechwarrior 4. Not that MW4 is bad per se, but it's dumbed down.
I really liked the big packages that games used to be. It gave you something to read on the way home.

I completely agree, and you will find many on this forum who share your sentiments.

Now, the thing is, the time frame outlined here is really not that long, around ten years, or a little more. So what happened in such a short space?
In my personal view it is because gaming has become increasingly mainstream, it is no longer a niche market. Gone are the days when people who gamed (RPGs especially) would avoid discussing their hobby with non-gamer friends because there was a stigma attached.
I'm not objecting to the removal of the "freak status," but unfortunately when anything becomes mainstream it is driven by profit alone; intelligence, artistry and creativity fall by the wayside as the product is marketed to the masses.
I'm not saying ths is always the case... but it happens far too frequently.

Yes, there are a whole bunch of people who feel the same way here. Sometimes, when we discuss these things here, I feel part of "Steadler and Waltdorf" from the Muppets.
I'm glad we still get games like Eschalon. It might not be top-notch, but it is better than nothing. I also think that online distribution offers a new hope for these "niche-games". By avoiding the HUGE costs involved in retail, the need to obtain profit from the sheer number of copies sold, decreases.
Currently, my hope for a big-scale, deep, torough, detailed RPG are set on Dragon Age.

On a side note: I don't dislike games like Diablo or WoW, on the contrary. They're awesome, great games, but fall a bit short in the "RPG" category.

dragon wench wrote:I completely agree, and you will find many on this forum who share your sentiments.

Now, the thing is, the time frame outlined here is really not that long, around ten years, or a little more. So what happened in such a short space?
In my personal view it is because gaming has become increasingly mainstream, it is no longer a niche market. Gone are the days when people who gamed (RPGs especially) would avoid discussing their hobby with non-gamer friends because there was a stigma attached.
I'm not objecting to the removal of the "freak status," but unfortunately when anything becomes mainstream it is driven by profit alone; intelligence, artistry and creativity fall by the wayside as the product is marketed to the masses.
I'm not saying ths is always the case... but it happens far too frequently.

Gaming is very mainstream now. But you have to think about how RPG's fit into that timeline. With the technologies of today, we can to things that, 5-10 years ago, we couldn't dream of in a game. We have all the capabilities to create amazingly deep and captivating games, the only limit is our imagination. Oh, and...MONEY. The (unfortunately) biggest factor in game creation. This goes along with what you said about mainstream products being driven by profit. Shopping for games and playing games is now a much different experience than it was when I was younger, in the Sega Genesis era. I used to go to the neighborhood Funcoland and look at all the games on the rack and they'd even put one of them into the TV for me to try if I wanted. Heck if I get that service today.
I suspect this is because of the internet. We can research games now, get opinions and reviews. And that's great. It's the purpose of this site, and is an amazing resource.

dragon wench wrote:Gone are the days when people who gamed (RPGs especially) would avoid discussing their hobby with non-gamer friends because there was a stigma attached.

How about the fact that more and more games are being mutilated by Holloywood in an effort to bring them to the silver screen? Doesn't that make games more, uh, commercial too?

Loki[D.d.G] wrote:How about the fact that more and more games are being mutilated by Holloywood in an effort to bring them to the silver screen? Doesn't that make games more, uh, commercial too?

Luckily, the RPG genre gets spared of this, mostly. For the time being.
The other way around is just as bad: cheap, bad, games of blockbusters...

Just to chime in

1) RPGs by definition is some of the most expensive games to create today, next to MMORPGs. Exactly for the reason that its an RPG - choices and consequences - CRPGs has to have those, and that means more code and more variations than any other game out there. A CPRG is easily twice the gametime as compared to Madden or Need For Speed if one counts seeing everything in it, replay value is something else altogether (I can't say which has more replay value.) (Oh and the best replay value game I've ever seen? Counter-Strike.)

2) You forget Uwe Boll, he just released craptastic Dungeon Siege movie Oh and there is also a Dragonlance animated movie out there now too. Who says RPGs aren't getting the movie treatment?

I qualify Dragonlance as a novel that gets translated to the screen. Something else entirely. I have a pretty good feeling about that one.
Dungeon Siege the Movie, well, call it selective memory loss, ok? A brain can only take so much before it ceases functioning.

There was some dragonlance games way back, more than 10 years ago....hehe. Pretty good ones too. Far better CRPGs than most of todays stale-beer-games.

Don't forget the Dungeons and Dragons franchise has had more than one movie and a couple of animated cartoons made about it in the past. Not that I am crazy about it, but I feel those adaptations of old outdo todays cheap rip-offs.

It is true that more and more games are being made into movies. The only way that a game really makes it into a movie is if it has elements commonly found in them. Such as Hitman(rogue man with gun, how many times have we seen that). But what's more important is the fact that whenever you get something big, there is merchandising attached to it. With games, there's action figures, downloads, Tshirts, minifilms(red vs Blue, I hate Halo) and more. What really concerns me is that there is too much money in it. Once money becomes involved in anything that starts out as a "done for fun" event, it becomes corrupt, and harder to define the original artifact from the artificial by-products. What you are looking at is a future where you have to catch something when it is in its infantile stage, barely past beta release, before it is a cult phenominon. I feel that the only way we can avoid this is to boycott things like buying T-Shirts for a game before release, and obsessing about it at work. Any game that is much hyped about will fall short of anyone's expectations, only because you build it up to be something more than it is, much like when you tell your girlfriend that you're a diety in the sack only to be revealed as the man formerly known as "The Flash".
The gaming industry changes every year, with growing costs and popularity. And of course, controversy.

Loki[D.d.G] wrote:Don't forget the Dungeons and Dragons franchise has had more than one movie and a couple of animated cartoons made about it in the past. Not that I am crazy about it, but I feel those adaptations of old outdo todays cheap rip-offs.

Also, you shouldn't forget those two Final Fantasy movies

But to the original point of this thread:
I agree with what has already said here. The games are dumbed down, mainly because of becoming mainstream.

First of all, the quest system has been dumbed down greatly. Mostly those doesn't require any sort of thinking from player, just running from point A to point B, perhaps doing some simple tasks in point B like killing monster(s), the returning to point A. For example, WoW is beautiful example of this style of quests (okay, haven't played far yet): Get the quest from NPC, get to specific location or area, usually hunt down enough monsters in that area, then return. The only way of making the quests harder which I have noticed so far is reduced chance of that certain item being dropped which is required to "prove" you have killed the monster. For example, I spent 6 hours last night to hunt down those woops you to get that ONE certain component for Tauren quest in second village. (The potion quest, you were required four different components)

On the other hand, situation could be worse. I agree that there should be some challenge in quests, challenge which forces the player to think, but then again some games may go well over the limit. Good example: Arx Fatalis. There is one quest where you aren't given any info at all to where even begin your searching. You just have to find the correct place by luck. And, as the area of Arx Fatalis is rather... big... it may actually take forever to find the correct place. And also, you have high possibility to screw certain side quest and not even be aware about it!

GawainBS wrote: Nowadays, we get to pay just as much (50 Euro) or even more and we get a floppy plastic DVD box which half of the time cinches my discs so hard it cracks them. Manuals are non-existent, in the best case some PDF on the disc. That's ok for a budget release, not for a full release. Granted, some games still try. KotOR springs to mind.

Even though not RPG, Civilization series also belongs to those rare which contain good old paper manual. Or at least both CIV 3 and CIV 4 had it.
But again, can't say anything else but I agree. Also, usually if the game contains more than one cd (when the games still were made to cd ), it was actually hard to reclose the case with all the cds inside. Baldur's Gate II comes to my mind in this. Also, it's too true that the cds are so tightly jammed inside the cd case, that when you try to remove it from the holder, there is chance to actually destroy the cd. Happened couple of times to me, luckily I got replace cds from the store.

And these were small part of the whole problem of nowaday games. I could rant longer, but time doesn't permit it, so I'll continue this later

Concerning the dumb quest system of WoW: I agree on that. However, I also think there's another reason for these type of quests. Very few people actually read quest descriptions in WoW, let alone think about it. They have a friend or a guide which tells them where to go and what to do.
Even the solutions of new quests get spread-around the internet in a matter of hours.
So, in the end, why even bother with complexer quests?

Granted, this is only possible because of the huge influx of gamers who turn so easily to guide and being "rushed".

Ok so you rant against the quest systems...

Just which games have had good/great quest-systems? The BG series is hailed as the father of modern day RPGs (or mother, if someone feels gender-slighted ) But the quest system in BG is no more complex than the WoW quest-system. WoW only really does it differently in that there's a minimap and somewhat-locator-beacon which wasn't even designed back when the BG series were made.

The Witcher has a few quests which changes 1-3 outcomes of other quests and even then, the change ain't that big.

Fallout 2 has a montage ending, which describes your major actions (for good and bad) with quite a few outcomes. And of course the quest-system allows one to deal with quests in a variety of ways, though even those are limited mainly to dialogue choices due to stats.

So just what exactly is a good quest system? Are there any examples of such at all out there? What are the criteria for them?

Kheros wrote:Ok so you rant against the quest systems...

Just which games have had good/great quest-systems? The BG series is hailed as the father of modern day RPGs (or mother, if someone feels gender-slighted ) But the quest system in BG is no more complex than the WoW quest-system. WoW only really does it differently in that there's a minimap and somewhat-locator-beacon which wasn't even designed back when the BG series were made.

The Witcher has a few quests which changes 1-3 outcomes of other quests and even then, the change ain't that big.

Fallout 2 has a montage ending, which describes your major actions (for good and bad) with quite a few outcomes. And of course the quest-system allows one to deal with quests in a variety of ways, though even those are limited mainly to dialogue choices due to stats.

So just what exactly is a good quest system? Are there any examples of such at all out there? What are the criteria for them?

Well, as you ask, I would say that quest system in Fallout is already what I consider as good. And don't take me wrong, I'm not totally against those FedEx quests or "go to point B, kill 8 of those and return", with other style of quests those go fine. But at least, when you have those killing quests, player should be possibility to actually affect to the fact when the quest is finished, and not to be dependable about lucky drops. For example, in Diablo, if player was assigned to kill specific creature, player could be sure it was really there, or that the item required is dropped. In WoW, player just can't be sure of that. It's all about luck, and especially how bad the luck is.

Oh, and sorry if my writing is hard to understand, haven't slept in 29 hours...

It's not the quest per se, but rather "click on exclamation mark, go to point, kill x (which might take hours), go to question mark, rake in reward." Rinse and repeat.
BG's system, or PS:T, or so many others, at least made an effort to put a quest in context. Granted, WoW tries this, but it always boils down to the same. Always combat. Well, at least 90% of the time.
Fallout's system showed it can be done better, for most of us at least.

Anyway, for an MMORPG, I can understand why they chose those quests...

The same is true for Hellgate. But despite this, the game is still good, mainly because it is very addictive. So, in essence, we should be able to overlook the generic quest system, if the game we are playing is decent enough. Like I said, it works well for Hellgate.

On the other hand, I prefer quests which make the player intimately involved with whatever he/she is doing. Take for example BioWare games. These can be very immersive to the player because of their excellent quest design.

Then the question becomes; which do we prefer?

Kipi wrote:Oh, and sorry if my writing is hard to understand, haven't slept in 29 hours...

Don't fret Kip, have got a Codex cypher here. Oh crap, it just crashed... :laugh: