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Every generation has its turds. I own plenty of them from the 80s and 90s. There's a few classics that I still replay to this day from time to time, but the majority of video games don't reinvent the wheel. That's just the nature of the beast. There's at least a few games released each year that I really enjoy, so saying modern games suck comes off as a bit ridiculous to me. Developers no longer have the constraints they once did. Text in some of the earlier Final Fantasy games had to be cut due to space limitations. Now it's almost like the sky is the limit. Some of our beloved classics could use updating, or receive updates from fans (System Shock 2). As much as I don't care for Assassin's Creed, if that's what floats your boat play it. I went from Dark Souls the other day to playing a Telltale game, which is little more than an interactive movie. It all depends on the mood I'm in.

 thegreatchimp wrote:
Going back to what the OP is saying, I have mixed feeling about modern games emulating / aspiring to old ones, it can be good or bad depending on how it's executed...but one thing I don't get is how manic some gamers are about still playing the classics. To give an example: I was in a game design course with about 20 other lads. We got talking about beat-em ups one day and 4 of them agreed that Streetfighter 2 is still their favourite. I had my fun with that game when I was 10, but tbh I'd have more fun playing a few rounds of the latest Tekken or DOA than the 2d Grandaddy that spawned them. Same with some of my friends going and buying old Sega Mega Drives and N-64s. Wouldn't I enjoy playing F-Zero? Sure, For about an hour. Then I'd turn it off and go back to playing Wipeout HD. Not sure I get the whole craze.

Excuse you SF2, while a classic, is not a beat em up. It's a 2D fighter. Beat em ups are Streets of Rage, Final Fight, etc.

WipEout HD is seven years old, hardly a new generation game any more.

Perhaps we should agree that it's not nostalgia that makes new games suck, it's naivety that makes them good.

IDK if any of you have ever played the text adventure Snowball (Level 9 Computing, for BBC Micro computer, 1983)? Text adventures died once graphics got good enough to start illustrating them, but the point wasn't the graphics, it was interaction through the text medium, and making your own map and so on. Snowball wasn't the first or most famous text adventure but it was my first one, and I thought it was great.

Just discovered it's available as a Android emulator game! Now I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend.

I guess the modern equivalent of Snowball is something like Phoenix Wright or Hotel Dusk: Room 215.

 jreilly89 wrote:
Excuse you SF2, while a classic, is not a beat em up. It's a 2D fighter. Beat em ups are Streets of Rage, Final Fight, etc.

Quite so. I will now don the cone of shame!

 Talizvar wrote:
If it is "garbage" why does it make so much money and have a huge player base

Marketing. People bought in to its crap, even though it really had nothing of value to offer, because it had a famous name and a good marketing campaign. Once it got to the top, less and less effort was needed to stay there, due to sheer momentum.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

World of Warcraft, which I have not played in several years and have no intention of returning to is very obviously and objectively a brilliantly designed game.

Its a very polished game but there is little to the game itself that is particularly well designed, when compared to other MMOs of its era the only thing that stands out as a 'good' design that wasn't already in other similar games is the Auction House.

Its obviously been a huge success for Blizzard but I strongly suspect that is mainly due to its accessibility, branding, and latterly, nostalgia/habit.

Blizzard make very polished games but not necessarily great ones.

Having played many of the MMO games of that era and since, I'll deign to disagree. While it's certainly an iterative game, so is pretty much everything these days. I see no reason at all why something that's a polished and improved version of something that's been in similar games doesn't qualify as well designed. After al, how many iterative games which just take on what has been seen before utterly fail at what they're trying to do? Blizzard's polish and design for accessibility was brilliant, and they continued to iterate on that very successfully for some time before the general consensus was that they began to have more issues.


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 thegreatchimp wrote:
Going back to what the OP is saying, I have mixed feeling about modern games emulating / aspiring to old ones, it can be good or bad depending on how it's executed...but one thing I don't get is how manic some gamers are about still playing the classics. To give an example: I was in a game design course with about 20 other lads. We got talking about beat-em ups one day and 4 of them agreed that Streetfighter 2 is still their favourite. I had my fun with that game when I was 10, but tbh I'd have more fun playing a few rounds of the latest Tekken or DOA than the 2d Grandaddy that spawned them. Same with some of my friends going and buying old Sega Mega Drives and N-64s. Wouldn't I enjoy playing F-Zero? Sure, For about an hour. Then I'd turn it off and go back to playing Wipeout HD. Not sure I get the whole craze.

People like what they like. Often there's a heavy dose of nostalgia involved, but that's completely okay. After all, classic rock, oldhammer, retrogaming. Not everything needs to be for "you" (generic "you"), after all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
If it is "garbage" why does it make so much money and have a huge player base

Marketing. People bought in to its crap, even though it really had nothing of value to offer, because it had a famous name and a good marketing campaign. Once it got to the top, less and less effort was needed to stay there, due to sheer momentum.

 Azazelx wrote:

You laugh, but you apparently never played it when it was released. It was a buggy, inaccessible mess, a disaster by modern MMO release standards. Gamebreaking bugs, hideously bad netcode, hours required just to log on, crap customer support, et cetera. To say nothing of the really bad design issues, the loads and loads of walking around with no fast travel, the generic fetch quests that were bad and boring even by the standards of MMOs at the time and occasionally bugged, never mind how bad compared to modern MMOs, static and unremarkable combat that was, again, lacking by the standards of MMOs at the time-- It had nothing to go off of except its name and its marketing campaign. Any other MMO that has a release even remotely as bad as WoW's would have gotten shat on, and rightfully so, but WoW mustered on because of its name and its hype machine.

If that's "brilliant" game design, then goddamn you have really low standards.

Interestingly, the only games I preorder now are games with a very strong story where the chances of internet spoilers are high. This has meant that the only games I've preordered in the last couple of years are... Arkham Knight and Dragon Age: Inquisition.

 Melissia wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

You laugh, but you apparently never played it when it was released. It was a buggy, inaccessible mess, a disaster by modern MMO release standards. Gamebreaking bugs, hideously bad netcode, hours required just to log on, crap customer support, et cetera. To say nothing of the really bad design issues, the loads and loads of walking around with no fast travel, the generic fetch quests that were bad and boring even by the standards of MMOs at the time and occasionally bugged, never mind how bad compared to modern MMOs, static and unremarkable combat that was, again, lacking by the standards of MMOs at the time-- It had nothing to go off of except its name and its marketing campaign. Any other MMO that has a release even remotely as bad as WoW's would have gotten shat on, and rightfully so, but WoW mustered on because of its name and its hype machine.

If that's "brilliant" game design, then goddamn you have really low standards.

speaking of MMO's at the time. You'd think if having a good name was all that was involved in WOW's success, then surely star wars galaxies would be a strong second right? Oh ya, people left star wars to play warcraft. How did star trek work out? City of hero's? Lego Universe? WOW has beaten out major names, it obviously has something good going for it as it's thrived where so many others have failed.

It's not a game for you, and that's fine. But you can't deny it has something of value to offer people, as many people find value in it, and thus pay for it.

sirlynchmob wrote:
speaking of MMO's at the time. You'd think if having a good name was all that was involved in WOW's success, then surely star wars galaxies would be a strong second right? Oh ya, people left star wars to play warcraft. How did star trek work out? City of hero's? Lego Universe? WOW has beaten out major names, it obviously has something good going for it as it's thrived where so many others have failed.
It's not a game for you, and that's fine. But you can't deny it has something of value to offer people, as many people find value in it, and thus pay for it.

Yeah, I got on the beta testing for Star Wars Galaxies.
I was so looking forward to that.
I seemed to have a knack for getting trapped in rock formations and reporting them... you can thank me later.
SWG bored me to tears and there were hardly any SW games I would not like then.
So much work, looked slick at first.
I have to respectfully disagree with Melissa that there was far more at work than marketing hype.
WOW was far superior for fun game play, player interaction seemed the better element of the game.
I saw the game as rather time sucking so had to back away.
Her complaints sound suspiciously like my Diablo3 issues that later got resolved (I really hated that game at first!)

sirlynchmob wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

You laugh, but you apparently never played it when it was released. It was a buggy, inaccessible mess, a disaster by modern MMO release standards. Gamebreaking bugs, hideously bad netcode, hours required just to log on, crap customer support, et cetera. To say nothing of the really bad design issues, the loads and loads of walking around with no fast travel, the generic fetch quests that were bad and boring even by the standards of MMOs at the time and occasionally bugged, never mind how bad compared to modern MMOs, static and unremarkable combat that was, again, lacking by the standards of MMOs at the time-- It had nothing to go off of except its name and its marketing campaign. Any other MMO that has a release even remotely as bad as WoW's would have gotten shat on, and rightfully so, but WoW mustered on because of its name and its hype machine.

If that's "brilliant" game design, then goddamn you have really low standards.

speaking of MMO's at the time. You'd think if having a good name was all that was involved in WOW's success, then surely star wars galaxies would be a strong second right? Oh ya, people left star wars to play warcraft. How did star trek work out? City of hero's? Lego Universe? WOW has beaten out major names, it obviously has something good going for it as it's thrived where so many others have failed.

It's not a game for you, and that's fine. But you can't deny it has something of value to offer people, as many people find value in it, and thus pay for it.

I mean tbf, Lego Universe wasn't a terribly great MMO. It was decent fun, though.
Plus Lego snubbed a decent number of their Beta Testers and other potential customers by only releasing it initially to only the US and Europe. Man when I was younger that stung... beta testing a game and having fun with it only to never get access to a full release of it.

Of course, I am a bit biased for that very reason .

sirlynchmob wrote:
Oh ya, people left star wars to play warcraft.

I was in SWG from the Jump to Lightspeed expansion. Star Wars had a stupid long "grind Time" if you wanted to be a Jedi (I avoided this), but otherwise was fun for a 1-2 night per week player with a group of friends.

Then, after 2 years or whatever, the NGE completely reboot how all of the stats and powers work to appease the PVP players. Dumbed-down crafting. And other things. That's when the mass Exodus really happened.

It sucked to lose a game you enjoyed so much.

Fun article: http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/26/a-star-wars-galaxies-history-lesson-from-launch-to-the-nge/

There was a surprising amount of legitimate, proper, academic work around looking at what went wrong with Star Wars Galaxies. It makes some pretty interesting reading.

Well I have never played System Shock 2. The best FPS I ever played was R6: Rogue Spear. Next that of course is Goldeneye.

The Best RTS ever was RA2: Yuri's Revenge.

Best RPG? Well I would have to say Oblivion. I got into real RPGs pretty late. But I loved Mystic Quest on my SNES.

Am I showing my age here?

*Oh lord, don't even get me started on SOE and what they did to my beloved SWG. That was the best MMO system ever until they gakked it up.*

I'll never understand Melissia's pathological hatred for WoW. It is objectively the superior game in a market where they are ALL THE BLOODY SAME. Yes, it didn't revolutionize anything gameplay wise, but it is infinitely more accessible to casual players than many of it's competitors, especially the extremely grindy Asian MMOs and their Western counterparts. The LFG, LFR, and PVP queue features have become industry standard, for better or for worse.

The only MMO I've played that managed to replace/outdo WoW was SWTOR, particularly during Rise of the Hutt Cartel (that game's equivalent to WotLK era WoW). It's gone downhill since then as Shadow of Revan led to certain classes (ie my main) being nerfed and the latest expansion not introducing any significant endgame content outside of monthly chapters for solo play.
Still, the class quests remain excellent and nearly everyone who bothers with the game ends up completing the vast majority of them. It's become something of a cult hit, not only because it is a Star Wars game, but because it now features relatively balanced PvP (compared to WoW at least), player Strongholds, a significant amount of solo play with a heavy focus on storytelling, among other positive assets.

More on topic. I believe two things are accurate:

1) Modern games, particularly RPGs, are more focused on graphics and action based gameplay than providing options and rich storytelling
2) This is a product of an era where there is a general emphasis on superficiality in all avenues of entertainment
3) The graphics demand of modern games has increased faster than computing power and is significantly more time consuming to create than it was in the past. As such, spending time developing richer stories and a bevy of options simply isn't financially wise.

Of course the critical success of Pillars of Eternity and a decent amount of sales shows that fans (at least of RPGs) want a return to the Baldur's Gate/Planescape: Torment era where you have an absurd amount of in game customization available in comparison to modern RPGS (particularly Mass Effect 2/3...).

Still, the best RPGs I've ever played have all come in the last 10-12 years.

I'd go roughly in this order:

1) Mass Effect Trilogy, with 2 being the best, followed by the first 99% of 3+the awesome DLC content, followed by 1
2) Probably KotOR 2 with the fan restored content
3) Eh...probably the Dragon Age series, with Inquisition > Origins > 2
4) Morrowind...the outdated graphics and animations in addition to very weak and simple melee combat really hold this game back. The world setting is second to none, especially the Telvanni cities. The main quest is very good as well and open to a lot of RP options. .
5) Eh...Skyrim...just slightly over New Vegas
6) New Vegas

After that would come in the "old school" RPGs. First Arcanum for it's customization and dialogue options followed by Planescape for a very deep story and than the BG series.

There are also other genres (though rare), where the definitive game is practically ancient. Aces of the Deep is still considered by many to be the best Submarine simulator ever and it came out in the mid 90's. Also, Daggerfall deserves a special mention, if only because it is possibly the largest game world (albeit repetitive) ever constructed, with at points an insane level of difficulty, a very complex political thriller of a story, and a myriads of possible ways to customize your character.

 trexmeyer wrote:
It is objectively the superior game in a market where they are ALL THE BLOODY SAME.

Its not objectively superior, there are no good criteria for saying that something is objectively better than something else.

Lord of the Rings Online was in many ways superior to WoW, IMO of course.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
It is objectively the superior game in a market where they are ALL THE BLOODY SAME.

Its not objectively superior, there are no good criteria for saying that something is objectively better than something else.

Lord of the Rings Online was in many ways superior to WoW, IMO of course.

I never played LoTRO so I can't comment on that specific game.

But every other MMO I played following WoW's release was significantly worse and lacking in polish. This includes Age of Conan (which still has some fun elements to it and I would play it over WoW at this point), the abysmal failure that was the latest Final Fantasy MMO (until it's second release), Warhammer Online, SWTOR (at least at release, it did improve markedly), and The Elder Scrolls Online.

Maybe the claim that Blizzard is really, really good at making mediocre games is accurate. You can't deny that they deliver a level of polish, professionalism, and accessability that is really second to none. I'd say other MMOs would have been much more successful had they been on par with WoW as a game. Until SWTOR they simply weren't. Now, I'm not saying any of them would dethrone WoW. Many, if not the majority, of WoW players are loathe to pursue a new MMO because they are unwilling to replace characters and friendships they spend years developing for a new game. Still, some would abandon it.

 Melissia wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

You laugh, but you apparently never played it when it was released. It was a buggy, inaccessible mess, a disaster by modern MMO release standards. Gamebreaking bugs, hideously bad netcode, hours required just to log on, crap customer support, et cetera. To say nothing of the really bad design issues, the loads and loads of walking around with no fast travel, the generic fetch quests that were bad and boring even by the standards of MMOs at the time and occasionally bugged, never mind how bad compared to modern MMOs, static and unremarkable combat that was, again, lacking by the standards of MMOs at the time-- It had nothing to go off of except its name and its marketing campaign. Any other MMO that has a release even remotely as bad as WoW's would have gotten shat on, and rightfully so, but WoW mustered on because of its name and its hype machine.

If that's "brilliant" game design, then goddamn you have really low standards.

Nice try. I played it from open beta through several iterations, taking breaks all the way through to Panda Town. I also played a number of the games that predated it as well as quite a few of it's competitors and contemporaries, and so I make my statement from a rather informed perspective, particularly when it comes to the comparative issues. When you talk about the quests being bad by the standard of the time makes me believe that perhaps you're the one that never played it when it was released. The way you keep going on and on and on about their "marketing campaign" might be rather telling. Regardless, you seem to have a "bitter ex" attitude towards the game, given the amount of passion you have for slagging it off. I know when I play a game that I feel is gak, I either forget that it 's a thing and go on my way happily ignoring it without feeling a need to rant and piss on other people's fun (ie: EQ2), or if I'm writing a review of it, I use my skills at sarcasm and snide to gleefully tear it a new one in as entertaining a manner as possible, then I forget it exists and don't bother wasting any energy feeling anger or a need to rant and piss on other people's fun if they happen to enjoy the game.

The way that you carry on about WoW really fails the "bitter ex" test, and badly.

But anyway, let's either agree to disagree, or put one another on ignore, because I don't have enough facepalms for your overly antagonistic, aggressive and ill-informed opinions presented laughingly as "fact".



Automatically Appended Next Post:

sirlynchmob wrote:

speaking of MMO's at the time. You'd think if having a good name was all that was involved in WOW's success, then surely star wars galaxies would be a strong second right? Oh ya, people left star wars to play warcraft. How did star trek work out? City of hero's? Lego Universe? WOW has beaten out major names, it obviously has something good going for it as it's thrived where so many others have failed.

It's not a game for you, and that's fine. But you can't deny it has something of value to offer people, as many people find value in it, and thus pay for it.

Very well put, sir.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 trexmeyer wrote:
It is objectively the superior game in a market where they are ALL THE BLOODY SAME.

Its not objectively superior, there are no good criteria for saying that something is objectively better than something else.
Lord of the Rings Online was in many ways superior to WoW, IMO of course.

Polish and smoothness/reponsiveness of control. WoW always felt more responsive in it's UI and systems than LotRO when I was playing both (LotRO Lifetime Subcriber, Yo!)

Other factors like ability/hotkey bloat are really tied to the exact time that people may have played one or the other. Both games have objectively brilliant art direction, especially for the time(s) when they were released - albeit using very different art styles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 trexmeyer wrote:

Maybe the claim that Blizzard is really, really good at making mediocre games is accurate. You can't deny that they deliver a level of polish, professionalism, and accessability that is really second to none. I'd say other MMOs would have been much more successful had they been on par with WoW as a game. Until SWTOR they simply weren't. Now, I'm not saying any of them would dethrone WoW. Many, if not the majority, of WoW players are loathe to pursue a new MMO because they are unwilling to replace characters and friendships they spend years developing for a new game. Still, some would abandon it.

Blizz isn't especially good at innovation. They are (were?) extraordinarily good at taking other people's ideas and innovations (including mods), polishing them and incorporating them into their game(s). Anyone for some DOTA/MOBA?

 Azazelx wrote:
Both games have objectively brilliant art direction, especially for the time(s) when they were released - albeit using very different art styles.

Art direction for anything can never be objectively better than any other, its simply not possible to empirically quantify art.

Speaking of MMO UIs, I remember in Everquest there were lots of ways to use the same ability. Through hot keys, through the action window, through manually typing in a command.

There was incredible inconsistency on when you could use a command. If you were casting a spell you couldn't engage sneak with the hot keys or by pressing a button on the keyboard, but if you mouse clicked the ability in the actions window it would work.