Oldschool CRPG Design

[Steerpike]

I decided to make a new thread to avoid derailing the old one.

Not to derail this thread too much, but I tend to be extremely skeptical of any sort of claim that "they don't make games like X any more."

What design philosophy exactly are you looking for? Games with lots of lore that you gradually discover? Games with intricate subsystems that can't be easily understood? Games that have both and half the game is figuring out how to play the game in the first place? Or what?

The kind of design you see in something like Darklands has its closest modern incarnations in open-world sandbox games, notably the Elder Scrolls titles, and in a slightly less direct way in MMORPGs. However, despite some significant similarities, I think the emphases of these games are different than some of their older counterparts. If you compare, for example, the map size of Skyrim vs. Daggerfall, it's almost laughable. Skyrim's actual size is about 38 square km; Daggerfall's is 160,000 square km. Skyrim has a population of about 1000, whereas Daggerfall has 750,000. Obviously, Skyrim (which, to be clear, I totally love) puts its energy into different things than Daggerfall - and I don't begrudge it that, I understand why it makes the choices it does. But there's something about the mind-boggling scope and scale of Daggerfall that I admire, and that a lot of modern titles, for all their other strengths (and indeed, partly because of those strengths) rarely attempt.

Similar things can be said of dialogue trends. Though the word counts of some relatively recent games have climbed pretty high, a lot of the time you can only speak to a very limited number of people on a very limited number of topics, usually pertaining only to quest chains or, occasionally, specific interpersonal relationships. Compare Mass Effect (another game I really like) and Morrowind, to pick a slightly more recent example: overall I think the dialogue in the former is more dramatic and engaging than the latter (which is very important given ME's laudable cinematic design goals and style), but in Morrowind you can talk to virtually anyone on a vast range of topics, from food to political events to climate to culture to myth. You just can't do that in Mass Effect. Yeah, you have a Codex with a lot of game lore in it, which is good, but 99% of the population can't really be interacted with in any meaningful way, and you can't strike up random conversations on topics of your choice, for the most part.

Intricate subsystems are also a part of it; a certain granularity tends to be lacking in more recent rpgs. Skyrim has 18 skills. Morrowind has 27, Daggerfall 35. Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny has 51. There's an intense verisimilitude to this style of skill system, where a game tracks your character's strength in different languages and subtypes of weaponry, that's becoming considerably rarer and more pared-down.

The games I'm comparing, too, are amongst the more detailed of modern CRPGs, the closest to the old school ones I'm talking about - in many ways their descendents. There are lots of games out there that are much more linear, less open, less richly detailed. Take something like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (again, a game I adore for other reasons): it's a pretty darn linear game, when you get right down to it, with quite restricted spaces to explore and a very limited number of NPCs to converse with, a very stripped-down skill system (12 mundane skills and 3 magic skills), and a plot that goes from A to B to C. There are certainly variations and multiple endings and stuff, to be sure, but there's pretty much one major path. There are factions you can join or piss off and ideologies to relate to or reject, but there's nothing as ambitious as Skyrim's civil war questline, where you can choose which of two political factions to side with and then wage war on the other with entire quest chains for both, or even make peace if you're clever.

To be clear, though, I'm not saying older = better. I love lots of modern CRPGs and many of them they do what they do really well. Virtually all of the newer games I've mentioned here are favourites; overall I probably even enjoy newer games more, on balance. Still, that doesn't mean that they do everything as well as some older games did. They tend to be far prettier and more combat-intensive, interested in creating the appearance of another reality rather than breadth or scale. I think there's something really compelling about the ludicrously detailed, demanding, massive worlds some old-school games created, and a part of me kinda wishes that style was still more prominent than it is.

One might imagine a future game that somehow combines the graphical and narrative richness of newer games with the sublime scale and detail of the old. One hopeful trend in this direction has been the ascendency of crafting-based indie-games like Minecraft, which take a lot of cues from some older games and emphasize a massive, procedurally generated world with a lot of details for making stuff. I' wouldn't call Minecraft an rpg, though.

EDIT: I should add to this, on the subject of difficulty and learning curves, that the combination of demanding system mastery, rich lore, and high difficulty also forms part of the appeal of old-school games for me. There's something rather grimly appealing, to me, about the uncompromising brutality of certain old-school crpgs, both intellectually and in terms of things like making sure your character doesn't starve to death, or knowing when to run from foes that have not been neatly calibrated to the player's level. There are examples of modern games that do this well - New Vegas's Hardcore mode comes to mind - and there are certainly games with a punishing difficult curve - for example, Dark Souls. These tend to be exceptions rather than the rule, but I like both of those games precisely because there's something rather nostalgic about those elements. Speaking for myself, I'd like to see more games that offer that kind of demanding-but-rewarding experience.

[Llum]

It's pretty much a technical challenge at this point, and a  time one. The time in takes to make all those details in old RPGs that had no physics or graphics attached. Now every NPC has to look different and that comes with a ton of backage.

[Steerpike]

Yeah, essentially the technical advancements and resulting expectations have made truly large-scale worlds difficult to create, at least for the time being. I think anything modern that aimed to create worlds the size of those found in some older games would need a lot of procedural generation and randomization, but I don't know enough about design to really comment on how feasible that is using current technology. I wonder, though, if in 10-20 years we could reconcile size/scale and graphical quality.

[Llum]

Well if you look at modern games with less graphics, they do have kind of massive things you're talking about. Like mentioned, Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. Even World of Warcraft is quite massive as well.

[Steerpike]

Yeah, Dwarf Fortress is an interesting exception. I never got into it personally but I have a friend who's an absolute fiend for it.

World of Warcraft is big, although nowhere near the size of some older games. Here's a good comparison of map sizes in different games. I'm super impressed at how big LotR online is!

[Polycarp]

Yeah, Dwarf Fortress is an interesting exception. I never got into it personally but I have a friend who's an absolute fiend for it.

A reviewer of Dwarf Fortress, IIRC, once wrote that the game seemed like it came out of an alternate reality in which game companies devoted increasing computer power to ever-more-detailed world simulation instead of advancing graphic standards, and I feel like that sort of hit the nail on the head.

I can see the "big worlds" you're talking about potentially coming back through procedural generation, but that would require exploring that "alternate reality."  My CRPG experience is very limited, so I won't claim any special knowledge or intuition about where the industry is headed, but that doesn't feel like a likely trend in the near future to me based on what I've seen of modern titles.

[Steerpike]

I don't think so either. Partly this probably just has to do with demographics. "Gamers" is now such a huge category that most games with any kind of significant budget have to appeal to as many people as possible, and that tends to translate into quite a bit of hand-holding and pandering to low-risk tastes and trends; hence why most "triple A" games aren't terribly innovative. There are some very notable exceptions, but I don't think there's a significant plurality of gamers looking for old-school worlds of Daggerfallesque scale. Steam and other online distribution venues are mixing things up enough that I'm pretty optimistic about the prospect for unusual/retro/indie rpgs in the future, though.

[LoA]

I don't think so either. Partly this probably just has to do with demographics. "Gamers" is now such a huge category that most games with any kind of significant budget have to appeal to as many people as possible, and that tends to translate into quite a bit of hand-holding and pandering to low-risk tastes and trends; hence why most "triple A" games aren't terribly innovative. There are some very notable exceptions, but I don't think there's a significant plurality of gamers looking for old-school worlds of Daggerfallesque scale. Steam and other online distribution venues are mixing things up enough that I'm pretty optimistic about the prospect for unusual/retro/indie rpgs in the future, though.

Yeah it's time to come to grips with the fact that the Industry is not run by geniuses. Like the old saying goes, "It's better to have a few true friends than a thousand admirers." And almost nobody in the Industry get's that. They always try to appeal to the highest common denominator, only to wind up pissing off the people that were going to buy the game anyway, and shooting themselves in the foot.

[Polycarp]

Like the old saying goes, "It's better to have a few true friends than a thousand admirers."

This is not necessarily true if your true friends pay the same $49.99 retail that your admirers do.

I don't think what we've been discussing is representative of any failure in design or imagination, but a reflection of business realities and priorities.  Concentrating assets - graphics, physics, conversations, voice work, cutscenes, etc. - in a small number of story-critical characters saves money and allows me to showcase my best work in places the player is certain to see it.  The chances that the average player sees all 160,000 square km of Daggerfall is low, as are the chances that they will meet all 750,000 NPCs in it; that means wasted time, wasted assets, and wasted money.  It makes a lot more sense, given a limited budget, to make a tight, highly-polished story in a relatively small game space.

I think there will always be a niche for sandboxes and large worlds, and in time that niche might be more easily exploited with procedural generation, but it doesn't seem to be where the most purchasing dollars are at right now - or at least it's not where most developers/producers believe the purchasing dollars to be.

[sparkletwist]

I remain skeptical of the claim "they don't make games like X any more" but it's perfectly fair to say "mainstream publishers don't make games like X any more." As has been mentioned before, the kind of thing that Steerpike is looking for probably does still exist somewhere, but it's likely to be buried somewhere in the depths of Steam or Kickstarter or whatever. As such, I unfortunately can't really come up with any good specific examples-- there are just so many games out there and I've never heard of most of them. I'm just going to say that by the odds they are probably there.

And, you know, sometimes the mainstream publishers do decide to take a step back. Enough people said "they don't make games like NES Mega Man any more" that Capcom made Mega Man 9.... :grin:

[LoA]

I remain skeptical of the claim "they don't make games like X any more" but it's perfectly fair to say "mainstream publishers don't make games like X any more." As has been mentioned before, the kind of thing that Steerpike is looking for probably does still exist somewhere, but it's likely to be buried somewhere in the depths of Steam or Kickstarter or whatever. As such, I unfortunately can't really come up with any good specific examples-- there are just so many games out there and I've never heard of most of them. I'm just going to say that by the odds they are probably there.

And, you know, sometimes the mainstream publishers do decide to take a step back. Enough people said "they don't make games like NES Mega Man any more" that Capcom made Mega Man 9.... :grin:

Yeah, it's a lot like modern music. Sure I think most of Mainstream music sucks raw sewage, but I'm not going to say "modern" music sucks. There's plenty of great artists out there. But like you said, they have a tendency to be buried. So you have to be willing to do some digging.

Also Megaman and Capcom are probably not the best examples to use right now... Long live Mighty No. 9!

No seriously I was just becoming a Megaman fan right around the time that Capcom began shooting down Megaman project after megaman project....

[Steerpike]

I don't think what we've been discussing is representative of any failure in design or imagination, but a reflection of business realities and priorities.  Concentrating assets - graphics, physics, conversations, voice work, cutscenes, etc. - in a small number of story-critical characters saves money and allows me to showcase my best work in places the player is certain to see it.  The chances that the average player sees all 160,000 square km of Daggerfall is low, as are the chances that they will meet all 750,000 NPCs in it; that means wasted time, wasted assets, and wasted money.  It makes a lot more sense, given a limited budget, to make a tight, highly-polished story in a relatively small game space.

Yeah, I totally understand why big publishers make games the way they do, and I like plenty of recent games - I certainly don't begrudge creators their choices.

As has been mentioned before, the kind of thing that Steerpike is looking for probably does still exist somewhere, but it's likely to be buried somewhere in the depths of Steam or Kickstarter or whatever. As such, I unfortunately can't really come up with any good specific examples-- there are just so many games out there and I've never heard of most of them. I'm just going to say that by the odds they are probably there.

There are definitely a few exceptions out there, and weird throwbacks. There's a couple of isometric, Infinity-engine-esque projects out there - not big-worlds along the lines of Daggerfall but certainly hearkening back to 15 years ago or so. My point was less "this kind of game has absolutely ceased to exist" so much as "this design philosophy has gone out of vogue." There are retro games and various indie games that do have some of the old school elements I was talking about, but for all the reasons Polycarp mentioned they're not especially fashionable and/or feasible for most creators.

EDIT: Found out that estimate for LotR Online is not remotely accurate. EVE Online, though, is ridiculously big: probably the closest to the utopian marriage of size and visual quality I was fantasizing about.

[Nomadic]

Eve Online kind of cheats since space is fairly empty. Granted there's still a lot of places to visit and things to see.

[LD]

Similar things can be said of dialogue trends. Though the word counts of some relatively recent games have climbed pretty high, a lot of the time you can only speak to a very limited number of people on a very limited number of topics, usually pertaining only to quest chains or, occasionally, specific interpersonal relationships. Compare Mass Effect (another game I really like) and Morrowind, to pick a slightly more recent example: overall I think the dialogue in the former is more dramatic and engaging than the latter (which is very important given ME's laudable cinematic design goals and style), but in Morrowind you can talk to virtually anyone on a vast range of topics, from food to political events to climate to culture to myth. You just can't do that in Mass Effect. Yeah, you have a Codex with a lot of game lore in it, which is good, but 99% of the population can't really be interacted with in any meaningful way, and you can't strike up random conversations on topics of your choice, for the most part.

Were the conversations in Morrowind meaningful, though? I am not familiar with the game.
That is, if you talked to a random 10 people, would 5 of the opinions be the same?
e.g. Let's ask "how do you feel about King X" Possible random answers are : "love" "hate" "neutral"?
If that's the case, it sort of seems like a time waster since you may just have to keep clicking randomly among a bunch of options that have no impact on the game itself? Or even much foreshadowing? Is it just drivel? Can you get into a deeper conversation, like a followup- "Yeah, I really hate the King too." and then have effects follow from that.

I agree that I like to see the ability to converse with many people, but more than that, I want my conversations to matter. Games like Mass Effect deliver that to some degree. Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall also delivers that.

If it's a case of "how do you feel about King x"... I want the responses to be along the lines of "Love because he exiled the elves to X" or "Hate because he cheated on Queen Y", giving information and foreshadowing about the world... but I don't want it to be a click fest- where I give up on clicking on different people because they are giving the same canned responses. I want the NPCs to have personality- if I ask the same question to 10- I want 10 different answers: "Love because... Y" "Love because Z", "Mixed feelings because of C", "Hate because N and here's a related quest!"

[Steerpike]

Were the conversations in Morrowind meaningful, though? I am not familiar with the game.
That is, if you talked to a random 10 people, would 5 of the opinions be the same?

There was a mix. You could click on new topics and often express opinions and pick multiple conversation paths, and the entries were usually detailed, but plenty of them were definitely duplicated. Many conversations with significant NPCs did matter, and many NPCs had definite personalities; those with random NPCs mattered less and had less well-defined personalities, but not every minor NPC was identical. Everyone in the game had professions, lived in particular places, came from various races etc., and these things did change how people conversed. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I did like that people weren't all just background. I'm not holding up Morrowind as a Platonic ideal or a perfect experience, but I think it's approach had merits that more recent Elder Scrolls games lack.