I figured it out... Why RPGs seem to be going down hill.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

I was following the topic of narrative...

 

More Lovecraft please. And no, slenderdork and pyramid heads don't count, even if they share a genre. And for it to be truly Lovecraft, the end can't be the player besting villain. The options are to survive it, join with it, or realize it was you all along. I've seen people try to sell things like the unlikely underdog (think Frodo) as Lovecraft-like. "But it was so much more powerful than our little train that could, and he won by pure luck, a dagger in the Achilles heel." Nope... Sorry, he won, you can't win in a Lovecraft theme, no matter how unlikely, lucky or hapless the protagonist. Finally, the more baffling and haunting it is after the fact, the better.

 

You know, I'm biased as I'm making a game on Lovecraft, but these are ridiculous standards to hold to. I'm sick of people shredding their creativity in order to stay on the "tradition" route. 

 

 

 

Not to mention that in the original cthulhu story, Call of Cthulhu, the supposedly-invincible Great Old One was defeated by essentially being ran over with a ship.

 

End can totally be about the player besting the villain (and then spending their life in an insane asylum, haunted by horrible nightmares).

 

 

I don't agree with you. The genre is fine. Lovecraft is an author, not a genre. His work is fairly unique in its presentation in a similar way The Empire Strikes Back was. Imagine of Gimli succeeded in destroying the One Ring in Rivendell with his axe, that would neuter the whole damn story.

 

“Now all my tales are based on the fundemental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.... To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.” ― H.P. Lovecraft

 

“And now at last the Earth was dead. The final pitiful survivor had perished. All the teeming billions; the slow aeons; the empires and civilizations of mankind were summed up in this poor twisted form—and how titanically meaningless it had all been! Now indeed had come an end and climax to all the efforts of humanity—how monstrous and incredible a climax in the eyes of those poor complacent fools in the prosperous days! Not ever again would the planet know the thunderous tramping of human millions—or even the crawling of lizards and the buzz of insects, for they, too, had gone. Now was come the reign of sapless branches and endless fields of tough grasses. Earth, like its cold, imperturbable moon, was given over to silence and blackness forever. The stars whirled on; the whole careless plan would continue for infinities unknown. This trivial end of a negligible episode mattered not to distant nebulae or to suns newborn, flourishing, and dying. The race of man, too puny and momentary to have a real function or purpose, was as if it had never existed. To such a conclusion the aeons of its farcically toilsome evolution had led.” ― H.P. Lovecraft

 

No where in that do I see: Hope, hero, luck or anything resembling an underdog beating the odds. If you survive, its because you happened to fall beneath the notice of the destroyer. You can't cross the streams and walk away like you kicked butt and took names, if you remain sane, that's probably because your struggle with sanity will only please the Old One.

 

 

Meh, problem is, a great and uncaring universe devoid of a benevolent God was a frankly horrifying prospect in the 1920s, but nowadays it's more like the baseline of how people think about their place in the world.

 

The "Lovecraftian purist" approach has little resonance in our age. It simply isn't scary anymore.

[redneckdevil]

I thought lovecraft was about insanity and that u could never escape it whatever its sourse (spells, confronted with something ur mind could never handle, not knowing u were insane, etc etc) and that we are not important enough for a neat wrapped up like a christmas present happy ending. Hell pyramid head is simply a personal demon created by that persons mind, but neither henry mason nor the guy from the second one ever truely escape it (henry in the 3rd and while the second one ends up accepting and coming to terms, hes still bat**** crazy) i wont go into the rest since they went downhill.

 

Its always out there and u never know what sourse it will come from. You can never truely be rid of it in the world, it will always be there til way past the final ending.

Edited December 24, 2014 by redneckdevil

[aluminiumtrioxid]

I thought lovecraft was about insanity and that u could never escape it whatever its sourse (spells, confronted with something ur mind could never handle, not knowing u were insane, etc etc) and that we are not important enough for a neat wrapped up like a christmas present happy ending. 

 

 

Going out and actually reading some Lovecraft would be a tremendous help in dispelling such misconceptions.

[Luridis]

 

I thought lovecraft was about insanity and that u could never escape it whatever its sourse (spells, confronted with something ur mind could never handle, not knowing u were insane, etc etc) and that we are not important enough for a neat wrapped up like a christmas present happy ending. 

 

 

Going out and actually reading some Lovecraft would be a tremendous help in dispelling such misconceptions.

 

 

Well, you apparently read it... But didn't understand the ship scene at all. The ship didn't kill it and in the end changed nothing.

 

To clarify: Cthulhu dispersed into a toxic cloud and was reforming as the ship made a break for it. The whole point of the entity as a plot device is that it cannot be killed, it is unbeatable. Human ego loves heroes and underdogs and happy endings. Reality doesn't always work out that way, and that idea is scary.

Edited December 25, 2014 by Luridis

[redneckdevil]

 

 

I thought lovecraft was about insanity and that u could never escape it whatever its sourse (spells, confronted with something ur mind could never handle, not knowing u were insane, etc etc) and that we are not important enough for a neat wrapped up like a christmas present happy ending.

Mmm ive been reading him for years and own all his books. I know theres alot written about the unknown, things from outer space and beyound, things that are beyound our understandings and that we dont even matter or important enough to be acknowledged by other than food etc. But from reading his books, the common theme besides the nonhappy endings, is the human trying to deal with something they cant comprehend. Things and ways that goes against our natural laws and physics and the interaction with minds that cannot fully comprehend.

i guess a single word insanity is pushing to far, but its what the overlining common effect with the characters, either by actually going that route or feeling like they are because they can perceive whats going on. I guess its the label of someone who able to understand or on their way to trying to or prevent themselves from trying to understand or cope with whats going on.

 

Going out and actually reading some Lovecraft would be a tremendous help in dispelling such misconceptions.

[Luridis]

That's pretty much what I get out of it too... But, I don't know why so many people think the boat was responsible for anything at all. The creature turned into a poison cloud as a way to say... lolz you can't kill me but I can choke you to death.

 

Or, at least that's how it looked to me.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

That's pretty much what I get out of it too... But, I don't know why so many people think the boat was responsible for anything at all. 

 

"Dude gets away from the horrible thing to live out the rest of his years irrevocably insane" is a pretty significant difference from "dude dies a horrible death by ancient sea god" in my book, but YMMV.

[Luridis]

 

That's pretty much what I get out of it too... But, I don't know why so many people think the boat was responsible for anything at all. 

 

"Dude gets away from the horrible thing to live out the rest of his years irrevocably insane" is a pretty significant difference from "dude dies a horrible death by ancient sea god" in my book, but YMMV.

 

 

And with Lovecraft, that may have been the plan all along.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

And with Lovecraft, that may have been the plan all along.

 

 

I'm not a big fan of the "heh, silly kitten, you thought your choices matter?" attitude in an RPG.

 

I mean, even in the tabletop games based on the IP (Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu), you can at least postpone the untold death and devastation that the awakening elder gods would bring. Usually. At great personal cost. ("Half the party dies, rest goes irrevocably insane, also some get horribly mutiliated" is a good outcome.)

Edited December 25, 2014 by aluminiumtrioxid

[Luridis]

 

 

 

And with Lovecraft, that may have been the plan all along.

 

 

I'm not a big fan of the "heh, silly kitten, you thought your choices matter?" attitude in an RPG.

 

I mean, even in the tabletop games based on the IP (Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu), you can at least postpone the untold death and devastation that the awakening elder gods would bring. Usually. At great personal cost. ("Half the party dies, rest goes irrevocably insane, also some get horribly mutiliated" is a good outcome.)

 

 

I see your point... But, I got the idea from your first post that you thought the boat killed Cthulhu. Anyway, like I said to Bryy, he can write whatever he wants into a game and people can build upon Lovecraft's work however they choose. But, I personally find it difficult to say anything is true to the form that ends "heroically".

 

If I were going to say anything in recent production had a Lovecraft feel too it, it would be the movie Dark Skies, and that pretty much comes down to how it ended.

[Bryy]

You seem way more intent on proving other people stupider than you than to actually have a discussion about style.

[Luridis]

You seem way more intent on proving other people stupider than you than to actually have a discussion about style.

 

I can see how you might think that. But, to perhaps alleviate that a bit, know that I have ADHD. No, not "I think I have" or "I'm scatter brained" as in life long diagnosis across many psychiatrists.

 

I am use to: being misinterpreted, misunderstood, misjudged, every other thing I say being received the wrong way, considered strange, considered creepy, considered crazy... etc.

 

So, I'm not really surprised to hear that someone thinks my goals are to make someone out to be stupid. I stated way the hell back in the thread that my opinion is no more or less valid than anyone else's.

 

So, if you want to know the truth about what I think, here goes: No one is stupid, people are just smart about different things.

[Luridis]

And also... If I made any of you think I was trying to belittle you or somehow prove you to be stupid, know that I'm sorry and that was never my intention. Stuff just comes out the wrong way. I'm not nearly as angsty or confrontational as I probably sometimes sound.

[Hurlshort]

That was some refreshing candor and humility, Luridis.  Thanks for sharing it with us.  

[Luridis]

That was some refreshing candor and humility, Luridis.  Thanks for sharing it with us.  

 

Strong opinions and no filter... It's frustrating the reactivity I create sometimes. But, I honestly don't think I am any smarter or better or that my opinions are more valid. That's not to say I have no conviction for my own ideas, just that I know from experience alone that I make mistakes, back the wrong horse, etc.

 

Now if you saw what I wrote about piracy in the PE forum, that's another strong opinion. The bottom line on that to me is: if you benefit from someone's work who is expecting repayment and you don't reciprocate, for whatever reason, you've done something unjust.

[Luridis]

You know what folks... I've spent a lot of time here defending Skyrim quite a bit and now I feel I need to apologize for that a bit. There has been a giant elephant in the room that I have been failing to consider when I post, so here goes...

 

I do not play vanilla Skyrim, and the idea of doing such has never really crossed my mind. And, now that I've been thinking of it, for people on consoles the experience is hugely different.

 

At minimum I run with the following:

 

All official PC patches.

All Bethesda expansions.

Official Skyrim PC HD Texture DLC

nVidia Game Optimizations

Manual INI entries for shadow map clip range, far plane collision detection, uGridsToLoad=7, huge visible navmeshdetect, etc.

(In other words much more of the world is visible and interactive including arrows that will hit as far as they can fly.)

All unofficial Skyrim Patches, these are community fixes for literally thousands of bugs, glitches, and exploits; the gravity of change can be seen here.

Multiple AI fixes including "no magic 2 meter arrow electric slide dodge" and AI that will actually flank you.

Probably about 200MB of community texture, mesh and map changes for models.

 

So yea, to be completely honest I don't play the same game a lot of people complain about. In fact, without the communities work, I wouldn't play it at all.

Edited December 28, 2014 by Luridis

[omphaloskepsis]

So, you're apologizing for playing the PC version of Skyrim?

 

Come back after you've properly loaded up a few hundred of the best mods and the ENB of your choice. Then you can feel guilty about your impoverished console brethren.

[Luridis]

So, you're apologizing for playing the PC version of Skyrim?

 

Come back after you've properly loaded up a few hundred of the best mods and the ENB of your choice. Then you can feel guilty about your impoverished console brethren.

 

No, actually... You totally missed the point. I'm saying that I probably defend it a little too much because I don't play the out of the box version of the game. A version which has thousands of more bugs, mechanics issues, quest hangups, etc. than I experience. Unmodified Skyrim is probably a pretty terrible experience for some.

 

I've tried ENB and other mods so you can get off of whatever farce moral high ground you're trying to construct. The number of mods you've loaded into your underpants doesn't impress me.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Luridis

[omphaloskepsis]

No, actually... You totally missed the point. I'm saying that I probably defend it a little too much because I don't play the out of the box version of the game. A version which has thousands of more bugs, mechanics issues, quest hangups, etc. than I experience. Unmodified Skyrim is probably a pretty terrible experience for some.

Heh.  No, you missed mine, which was that modded Skyrim IS Skyrim for PC.  Especially a barebones list like yours, which is just vanilla + bugfixes and minor tweaks.  Otherwise, you're just playing console Skyrim on a PC.

 

I was just joking around with the second paragraph (though ENB is arguably worth it for the bugfixes and memory management, even if you want to keep the vanilla look).  And stay away from my underpants!

 

Plus I think you're missing why some people hate Skyrim (or any given RPG).  Some folks automatically dislike single-character RPGs, or RPGs that are first-person, or hybrid RPGs.  People will forgive a lot of bugs and even poor design, as long as a game scratches their personal itch.  Skyrim was never going to satisfy somebody who wanted an IE game, for example, or somebody who wants C&C (which is probably my biggest issue with where TES has gone).

[Luridis]

 

No, actually... You totally missed the point. I'm saying that I probably defend it a little too much because I don't play the out of the box version of the game. A version which has thousands of more bugs, mechanics issues, quest hangups, etc. than I experience. Unmodified Skyrim is probably a pretty terrible experience for some.

Heh.  No, you missed mine, which was that modded Skyrim IS Skyrim for PC.  Especially a barebones list like yours, which is just vanilla + bugfixes and minor tweaks.  Otherwise, you're just playing console Skyrim on a PC.

 

I was just joking around with the second paragraph (though ENB is arguably worth it for the bugfixes and memory management, even if you want to keep the vanilla look).  And stay away from my underpants!

 

Plus I think you're missing why some people hate Skyrim (or any given RPG).  Some folks automatically dislike single-character RPGs, or RPGs that are first-person, or hybrid RPGs.  People will forgive a lot of bugs and even poor design, as long as a game scratches their personal itch.  Skyrim was never going to satisfy somebody who wanted an IE game, for example, or somebody who wants C&C (which is probably my biggest issue with where TES has gone).

 

 

So, what you're saying is that the game the developer shipped is not the game that should be graded?

 

Look, I like Skyrim. But, it also frustrates me to no end because it's less than half as good as it could have been with a little more care. I'm currently playing Risen 3, which a lot of people find terrible. Personally, I don't... but it could do with some changes, like it's terrible action queue and targeting system. I'm also playing Divinity: Original Sin, which I think is a better game, but it too has flaws. To me these are both role & story based games, but the way that they play don't feel similar enough to call them the same genre.

 

Lots of people here don't like Action RPGs, don't consider them an RPG at all. I agree with them and don't at the same time. Action RPG is kindof it's own thing now, I think Skyrim falls into this category. IMO What's the best one I've ever played? That's a simple one to me: Jade Empire.

 

Actually, scratch that bit on Action RPG... I think a better way is just to subdivide RPG into tactical and action and for us to stop being too lazy to add another word to describe what we're referring to.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Luridis

[licketysplit]

 

 

 

Lots of people here don't like Action RPGs, don't consider them an RPG at all.

 

 

I am genuinely shocked.

[omphaloskepsis]

So, what you're saying is that the game the developer shipped is not the game that should be graded?

I don't think it's that simple.  BGS deserves credit for the large amount of effort they put into the modding community (including having devs that respond directly in mod threads on the forums), and that results in a better product on the PC, because of the tens of thousands of hours of volunteer work it gets.  But that doesn't mean that they should be given a pass on buggy or poorly designed products.

 

It is legit for a game to be better (not broken, just better) on some platforms, and Skyrim just happens to be an exception, because a lot of games are console ports that don't get enough attention to the PC release. Technically Skyrim was a fairly poor console port too, but at least they provided the tools to address that.

 

OK, I was trying to figure out how to tie this directly back into the RPG topic, but I've got nothing.  I think that Skyrim deserves huge praise for their modding features, but that has nothing to do with whether it's an RPG at all, let alone a good RPG.  

[Luridis]

 

 

 

Lots of people here don't like Action RPGs, don't consider them an RPG at all.

 

 

I am genuinely shocked.

 

 

The only way to do it in the past was on platform games. Until 3D acceleration & collision detection came around "action" RPGs didn't really resemble tactical. Software rendered 3D environments have been around quite a while longer than they were usable for the more action focused games.

 

 

Now, what I would consider an action RPG around the same time.

 

[Luridis]

BTW: Something that always makes me laugh, "Diablo was the first of it's kind."

 

LOL, No...

 

If you think Diablo was original, perhaps you should check out Demon Stalkers and Gauntlet, even though I know Gauntlet recently got remade. Both were dungeon crawls far older than Diablo, and in DS the objective was to kill a big bad demon at the end.

[Meshugger]

Judging by the content of this thread, one can easily demonstrate the state of RPG's in the form of Tom Petty videos:

 

In the beginning, everything was exciting, fun and filled with unchartered waters

 

Now, the industry is just a steady decline to the worst

 

...but with some oddballs that are still fighting the good fight