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DA2 definitely has the best story. It lags a bit at the end, because it throws waves of abominations at you (thus pretty much justifying the idea that the mages have to be controlled), and the boss fights are dumb, but still, the chaptered storytelling and world building was great, as were the consequences of choices.

Inquisition's NPCs are oddly awful. They aren't simplistic (except Sara), but they're legitimately awful _people_. I ended up romancing the non-party member diplomat because she didn't destroy people's lives and didn't get angry when I didn't.

My issue seems to be that I can never love a whole series, I tend to get into a series because I'm really into the first game or two, and then with even a whiff of popularity the publisher steps in and instructs the devs to "broaden the appeal"(or the devs get a bit high on their own farts and believe every idea they have is a good one), and they lose me.

Dragon Age: Origins? For my money a nearly perfect modernisation of the isometric RPG, which they immediately oversimplified in DA2 and then MMOified in DA:I and, as Voss says, filled it with le super quirky lul NPCs who were just hateful, hateful characters.

Fallout? The first two are classics and NV is a solid and worthy successor, but the spinoffs never grabbed me and Bethesda's efforts leave me cold.

Mass Effect? The first one was spectacular, I played it for two hours on release on 360 and immediately phoned in sick for several days to play it all the way through, then I went and bought the PC version and played it again in the evenings. The second one bundled a bunch of QoL improvements in with some simplification of mechanics and a lot of simplification of the narrative, with the game being saved for me only by some of the companion stories and missions. The third one fully shat itself and spent the runtime walking around bowlegged and leaking everywhere, completing the transition to braindead action movie storytelling topped off with an ending that reeked of the writer's pretentious self-regard. Then Andromeda came out and most people seemed to hate it, but despite the occasional googly-eye or wonky smirk and the MMO elements, I actually really enjoyed it because it was tonally much closer to the first game.

The only reason I can say I liked all the KotOR games is they stopped making them after the second to do the Old Republic MMO

It has been mentioned already, but still: Baldur's Gate. There is no game I spent that many hours in. I used to know all the traps by heart and knew with options ended boring/obnoxious dialogues the fastest.

I tried the advanced version on steam a few weeks ago, but sadly it does not enthrall me the same way it used to back in the days.

 LordofHats wrote:

I used to be addicted to Pokémon as a pre teen and young teen but I grew out of it. Some of the pokemon seem a bit lacking creatively in the more recent iterations which is unfortunate. For me it was an addiction I just had to kick.

For me, I find I just don't have the time to sink in it any more. I'm a completionist and I like doing everything I can do in a game. Pokemon in that regard is a bottomless pit because of the sheer number of pokemon, moves, IV/EV combos that can be made.

I just don't get to enjoy it anymore because I don't have the time to play the game the way I'd like.

Pokemon is probably my favorite series I don't play because I can't get what I want out of it. I love the competitive battles, but everything about the actual game system is so antithetical to the appeal. EV/IVs are such a dumb time sink and its all so loaded with legacy nonsense and a deep fan divide with the developers I just can't stick with it. Kind of hoping that by cutting some ties with the next one we'll see some improvements, but I kind of doubt it. Go has definitely stepped in for me as my outlet. Giving me a way to interact with the characters without really having to put in the kind of active effort you do with the RPGs.

Diablo 2. The amount of hours I have poured into that game would probably be horrifying if I kept track. The visual design is great, the core gameplay is tuned to perfection in terms of getting you hooked and keeping you hooked.

Baldur's Gate and BG2. Still enjoy going back and playing through these.

Mass Effect Trilogy. Love these games. For all the flak 3 gets, it has some of the best big moments of the trilogy, excellent music and use of that music (using Vigil, the Mass Effect 1 main menu theme, after curing the genophage as the Krogan look out upon their world with a new future and possibilities? Genius), the best combat gameplay of the series and a much improved dialogue system which fixed the problems of ME2 where you had to effectively play pure paragon or renegade or else you would miss out on dialogue options for both, allowing you to play how you think you should without needing to worry that by doing so you will be locked out of a cool option later.

I do like the Mass Effect trilogy, but I think they went the wrong direction with it for me. The fantastic talking bits on Noveria and Feros and the exploring the desolote expanse of space in the Mako were some of my favourite parts, but both were cut or reduced for Mass Effect 2 in favour of Gears style combat.
Also why would you cure the genophage? Do you want to doom the galaxy to Krogan domination, you monster? :-p

Felt much the same about Dragon Age; Origins was sooooo bloomin' good that DA:2 and 3 just hurt my soul!

When you think about it, it's quite hard to find a series where you like every entry. Most series have a black sheep which divides the fanbase.

Edit: Realised I just totally paraphrased Yodhrin's thoughts... great minds and all that!

I'm going to go really old-school and mention the Hero Quest / Quest For Glory series by Sierra. There were 5 games in total, and were a blend of graphic adventure and RPG with a nice bit of humour throughout. Each of the 5 games was set in a different location based on different mythology / folklore, and there was nice continuity between games with certain NPC characters making repeat appearances throughout.

The original game in the series was massively innovative for the time (first came out in 1989), with different solutions for puzzles depending on your character class, a meaningful day/night cycle, saving your character at the end of the game to import into the sequel and so on.

Loved it. Loved most of them really, except 5 - that was quite a letdown. Tried to go 3D action-RPG. Didn't really work.

There's a few recent games that were released as homage to the series - Quest For Infamy, (freeware) Heroine's Quest and the original developers' own HeroU - Rogue To Redemption.

 Kroem wrote:

Also why would you cure the genophage? Do you want to doom the galaxy to Krogan domination, you monster? :-p

Hey, Wrex ain't gonna let that happen 'cause he knows how it'll go if he tries to go against my Femshep and Garrus team

 Kroem wrote:

When you think about it, it's quite hard to find a series where you like every entry. Most series have a black sheep which divides the fanbase.

Definitely. Games will either evolve over the entries in a series, meaning some people will complain that it should have stayed the same, or stay the same, meaning some fans complain that the series is getting stale etc.

ME3 is a truly great game. Honestly, the heights it reaches are a big part of why the ending crashes so hard and upsets people so badly. The baffling thing is that it contains so many sequences that give players the exact agency they resent the game for taking away from them at the end. How a game that contains the vicious tightrope of the Quarrian/Geth war, a brilliant resolution to the Genophage, and legitimately everything in the battle of Earth manages to so thoroughly derail everything with that final bit of nonsense is just baffling. I honestly cannot fathom how that end is in the same game as the Geth war.

I know its super backhanded to complain so much in attempts to praise it, but the game keeps giving you amazing, complex scenarios and comes up with a huge variety of answers to them. It lets you find a better way time and time again and brings fantastic closure to some of the best built up conflicts in gaming. It does so much so well and then gives you a literal godmachine that gives you 3 ways to be intolerant. It just blows my mind to try and comprehend how something so good could get one thing so incredibly wrong.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kroem wrote:

When you think about it, it's quite hard to find a series where you like every entry. Most series have a black sheep which divides the fanbase.

Definitely. Games will either evolve over the entries in a series, meaning some people will complain that it should have stayed the same, or stay the same, meaning some fans complain that the series is getting stale etc.

I remember we used to call it the Koei paradox at school. We wanted a new Dynasty Warriors with cool stuff to do, but also it should be exactly the same game with no changes to the formula.

 Kroem wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kroem wrote:

When you think about it, it's quite hard to find a series where you like every entry. Most series have a black sheep which divides the fanbase.

Definitely. Games will either evolve over the entries in a series, meaning some people will complain that it should have stayed the same, or stay the same, meaning some fans complain that the series is getting stale etc.

I remember we used to call it the Koei paradox at school. We wanted a new Dynasty Warriors with cool stuff to do, but also it should be exactly the same game with no changes to the formula.

A very apt name. It doesn't help when a game tries to shake up its formula but does so in a very bad way and ends up pissing off everybody (*cough*DynastyWarriors9*cough*).

Basically:
Fans: "Your game is getting a bit stale after X entries without any meaningful advances in the gameplay, could you maybe mix it up a bit?"
Koei: *Bland barren open world and removed all of the unique weapons*
Fans: "No, not like that!"
Jim Sterling: "Look at what they DID to Zhang He!"

This thread reads more like a graveyard sometimes.
So many memories.
So many dirty publishers.

 LunarSol wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

I used to be addicted to Pokémon as a pre teen and young teen but I grew out of it. Some of the pokemon seem a bit lacking creatively in the more recent iterations which is unfortunate. For me it was an addiction I just had to kick.

For me, I find I just don't have the time to sink in it any more. I'm a completionist and I like doing everything I can do in a game. Pokemon in that regard is a bottomless pit because of the sheer number of pokemon, moves, IV/EV combos that can be made.

I just don't get to enjoy it anymore because I don't have the time to play the game the way I'd like.

Pokemon is probably my favorite series I don't play because I can't get what I want out of it. I love the competitive battles, but everything about the actual game system is so antithetical to the appeal. EV/IVs are such a dumb time sink and its all so loaded with legacy nonsense and a deep fan divide with the developers I just can't stick with it. Kind of hoping that by cutting some ties with the next one we'll see some improvements, but I kind of doubt it. Go has definitely stepped in for me as my outlet. Giving me a way to interact with the characters without really having to put in the kind of active effort you do with the RPGs.

In Sun/Moon they made the most annoying part of this process (IVs) a lot easier through items that inflate a given Pokemon's IV for a stat to 31. Repeat for all 6 and you have 31 all around.

It was a massive quality of life improvement that I think was directly made to address the issue of older competitive players who just aren't teenagers without jobs anymore. The bigger issue is moves. Some of the best moves for some pokemon can only be gained in specific games, meaning the only way to get them is to literally raise a pokemon up through the entire series. It's cool in a way, but it takes forever and it's kind of dumb that there is no one game where all pokemon have complete access to their full move pool.

 LordofHats wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

I used to be addicted to Pokémon as a pre teen and young teen but I grew out of it. Some of the pokemon seem a bit lacking creatively in the more recent iterations which is unfortunate. For me it was an addiction I just had to kick.

For me, I find I just don't have the time to sink in it any more. I'm a completionist and I like doing everything I can do in a game. Pokemon in that regard is a bottomless pit because of the sheer number of pokemon, moves, IV/EV combos that can be made.

I just don't get to enjoy it anymore because I don't have the time to play the game the way I'd like.

Pokemon is probably my favorite series I don't play because I can't get what I want out of it. I love the competitive battles, but everything about the actual game system is so antithetical to the appeal. EV/IVs are such a dumb time sink and its all so loaded with legacy nonsense and a deep fan divide with the developers I just can't stick with it. Kind of hoping that by cutting some ties with the next one we'll see some improvements, but I kind of doubt it. Go has definitely stepped in for me as my outlet. Giving me a way to interact with the characters without really having to put in the kind of active effort you do with the RPGs.

In Sun/Moon they made the most annoying part of this process (IVs) a lot easier through items that inflate a given Pokemon's IV for a stat to 31. Repeat for all 6 and you have 31 all around.

It was a massive quality of life improvement that I think was directly made to address the issue of older competitive players who just aren't teenagers without jobs anymore. The bigger issue is moves. Some of the best moves for some pokemon can only be gained in specific games, meaning the only way to get them is to literally raise a pokemon up through the entire series. It's cool in a way, but it takes forever and it's kind of dumb that there is no one game where all pokemon have complete access to their full move pool.

That's quite a nice change. Honestly, a lot of my drain is just a matter of being at odds with the competitive crowd. I was there from the beginning helping figure out the IV stuff and got kind of fed up with the SmogOn crowd. Stuff like letting Tyranitar define standard for pretty much its entire existence because he's cool irked me generation to generation; particularly after Sand Stream. That it was all so at odds with the new releases really kind of drove me away from the community. Ultimately its just a really cool system that isn't tuned as well as it needs to be and I decided I need to step away.

I really, really wish they'd cut down on movepools significantly. One of the more refreshing things I've found about Go is just how much better the type chart works when everything doesn't have access to Earthquake and Surf. I'd love to see some real thought put into movepools. I also like the smaller multipliers in Go overall. The main series would benefit a lot from being less alpha strikey. (which is a problem created by EVs, STAB, and Choice and to a certain degree, Leftovers....)

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kroem wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kroem wrote:

When you think about it, it's quite hard to find a series where you like every entry. Most series have a black sheep which divides the fanbase.

Definitely. Games will either evolve over the entries in a series, meaning some people will complain that it should have stayed the same, or stay the same, meaning some fans complain that the series is getting stale etc.

I remember we used to call it the Koei paradox at school. We wanted a new Dynasty Warriors with cool stuff to do, but also it should be exactly the same game with no changes to the formula.

A very apt name. It doesn't help when a game tries to shake up its formula but does so in a very bad way and ends up pissing off everybody (*cough*DynastyWarriors9*cough*).

Basically:
Fans: "Your game is getting a bit stale after X entries without any meaningful advances in the gameplay, could you maybe mix it up a bit?"
Koei: *Bland barren open world and removed all of the unique weapons*
Fans: "No, not like that!"
Jim Sterling: "Look at what they DID to Zhang He!"

Haha yea my brother told me about that, weird move.

For me it was the introduction of the forts system in DW5 that killed it, we went from sweeping battlegrounds in varied terrain to fighting over the identical looking forts 10 times a battle, not fun.
I haven't played a DW game since then! To be fair though, DW1 was a fighting game.., so you could argue that re-invention is a key part of the series.

 Kroem wrote:
I do like the Mass Effect trilogy, but I think they went the wrong direction with it for me. The fantastic talking bits on Noveria and Feros and the exploring the desolote expanse of space in the Mako were some of my favourite parts, but both were cut or reduced for Mass Effect 2 in favour of Gears style combat.
Also why would you cure the genophage? Do you want to doom the galaxy to Krogan domination, you monster? :-p

Felt much the same about Dragon Age; Origins was sooooo bloomin' good that DA:2 and 3 just hurt my soul!

When you think about it, it's quite hard to find a series where you like every entry. Most series have a black sheep which divides the fanbase.

Edit: Realised I just totally paraphrased Yodhrin's thoughts... great minds and all that!

To be fair on ME I was pretty much just paraphrasing Shamus Young's thought's(his Retrospective on the series is very much worth a read, when you can spare the time - it ain't short), so we'll call it even

Not Online!!! wrote:
This thread reads more like a graveyard sometimes.
So many memories.
So many dirty publishers.

And it isn't a graveyard? Most of the series mentioned here are dead for some time already.

I doubt we'll ever see a new (and good) Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Dawn of War or Command and Conquer game, to name just a few frequently mentioned. Mostly thanks to one certain company we all love.

Another Dragon Age is already in the works.

C&C and Dawn of War have to contend with the fact that the entire genre is basically dead, but if it gets reinvigorated, it'd be easy enough to crap out another. We'll see if Blizzard re-releasing Warcraft 3 has any real effect.


Mass Effect is doable, though it basically needs a strong lead who can really sell the concept to EA. Probably post DA4, because no one in the head office is likely going to give much weight to Bioware's recommendations after they so thoroughly messed the bed with Anthem.

Another game with the name Dragon Age on it is in the works, but all indications are it will be Anthem: Fantasy Edition, which isn't a Dragon Age game in any meaningful sense, even by the standards of the most recent entry.

And the "dead genre" thing is circular nonsense; publishers all asserted the same thing about horror games until somebody had the sack to say "nah" and develop a good one. The only reason RTS are "dead" is nobody's making them(at least, nobody's making them in their traditional form unsullied by genre-mixing or relegated to mobile platforms as cashgrabs). The problem there is the same as the problem everywhere; publishers(and sadly increasingly many developers) can't be satisfied with making just some money, even if it's a lot of it, they want all the money that exists and will only countenance genres and business models that have a chance of achieving that ludicrous goal.

"THE GENRE IS DEAD!"

Just like PC gaming is dead.

*goes back to playing modern PC-based RTS games like Steel Division 2, Planetary Annihilation, or Ashes of the Singularity*

 Melissia wrote:
"THE GENRE IS DEAD!"

Just like PC gaming is dead.

*goes back to playing modern PC-based RTS games like Steel Division 2, Planetary Annihilation, or Ashes of the Singularity*

PC gaming is dead long live the the PC gaming.

However the time of AAA rts is over.

Given the current trends in AAA games... that's hardly a bad thing

RTS wise I've been looking at Northguard and Empires of the Undergrowth lately but haven't taken the plunge on either yet.

Yeah. There's literally no one producing AAA RTS games save for Creative Assembly (and TW is only like, 1/3 an RTS) and Blizzard who hasn't actually made a new RTS since the early 2000s (no SC2 doesn't count in my book).

At the same time, this maybe depends on how you look at the market. How many pure FPS games are still out there? Pure Sports games? Pure adventure games? Hybridization basically is the genre now. There's only a handful of franchises that I think can be called "pure" now. Even when one labs a game as a "shooter" it usually comes with other descriptors show casing what other genres are being blended into it. RPG elements, in particular, are basically everywhere in games now.

In that view, we could just say that the pure RTS has given way to the isometric action game, MOBAs, action RPGs, or whatever else you want to call it. The most pure RTS' still out and getting made are mostly indie projects made for a very particular section of the market.

Voss wrote:
Another Dragon Age is already in the works.

C&C and Dawn of War have to contend with the fact that the entire genre is basically dead, but if it gets reinvigorated, it'd be easy enough to crap out another. We'll see if Blizzard re-releasing Warcraft 3 has any real effect.


Mass Effect is doable, though it basically needs a strong lead who can really sell the concept to EA. Probably post DA4, because no one in the head office is likely going to give much weight to Bioware's recommendations after they so thoroughly messed the bed with Anthem.

The base difficulty with Andromeda is when you have a branching storyline the way Mass Effect and Dragon Age did you risk either having to overcomplicate your next game to an extreme degree or cut off branches and make prior decisions not matter. The Mass Effect trilogy involves addressing a lot of the conflicts that defined the galaxy before Shepard got there, and your decisions during the game have a dramatic effect on the state of a number of entire societies (whether the Geth/Quarians/both exist at all, whether there is in fact a future for the Krogan, whether anybody at all survives...), so the writers had four bad choices for game four: do a prequel where you can't change anything, do a game set so far off you can't observe the consequences of the trilogy, make canon decisions about the events of the trilogy, or set it up so your decision doesn't really matter in the end (the way they did with the Anderson/Udina pick for the Council in 1). They're about in the same position with Dragon Age, assuming they get their heads out of their behinds and don't just make fantasy Anthem.

Actually, now that you mention it;

The phrase "live service game" has taken many deserved blows. Usually it's just code for a developer who wants to take a traditional game, drag out its life expectancy by making it a grind, and throwing in a shop to sell items to the players.

But, imagine for a moment, what a good live service game might look like. Ostensibly it's just like an MMO. A persistent online world with a large number of players but boy have MMOs become a stale, bordering on dead genre, if only due to a complete lack of vision and innovation.

Then you take the idea of a branching story and throw it into the mix.

Why the hell isn't there an MMO/Live Service game, that is actually alive? Why not present the player base with a world and a series of basic problems. Say, a game world with a tyrannical general who overthrew and equally tyrannical king, and players have to make the choice; support the throne (the general) or the crown (the king) or neither (viva la revolution!). Then base the progression of that game on what player's chose. Track their raid/dungeon/world event clears. Who has the most support? Who is getting the most done? Then devise the next iteration of that game, be it expansion or update, on the outcomes?

The king and the general lose, and their supporters either join the revolutionaries or become the underground trying to restore the monarchy. Maybe the king and general team up, or maybe they're dead and their successors have to decide what to do.

I'd give that game a shot.

Not Online!!! wrote:
However the time of AAA rts is over.

I'd argue we never really had a "aaa" RTS era to begin with.

 LordofHats wrote:

Why the hell isn't there an MMO/Live Service game, that is actually alive? Why not present the player base with a world and a series of basic problems. Say, a game world with a tyrannical general who overthrew and equally tyrannical king, and players have to make the choice; support the throne (the general) or the crown (the king) or neither (viva la revolution!). Then base the progression of that game on what player's chose. Track their raid/dungeon/world event clears. Who has the most support? Who is getting the most done? Then devise the next iteration of that game, be it expansion or update, on the outcomes?

The king and the general lose, and their supporters either join the revolutionaries or become the underground trying to restore the monarchy. Maybe the king and general team up, or maybe they're dead and their successors have to decide what to do.

I'd give that game a shot.

That's EVE, fwiw, but the real answer is simply that its because humanity is terrible. Developers have attempted to implement things like this for years. I remember at one point City of Heroes had toyed with destructible buildings until they realized that players became very dedicated to making sure the city was perpetually flattened. There's probably a system that could be put in place to limit this, but for the most part, getting the social engineering right to stop griefers has never really worked out.

A big part of the problem is just that these kinds of events sound great in theory, but the time they take to play out is miserable. I've played games with pretty open PVP and unless you're at the top end of the power curve, it mostly just means that you can't play for the night while someone that plays 3 accounts all day, picks on people without that kind of time. I've even played good PvP systems focused on taking territory and its mostly just difficult to keep things from getting repetitive and keeping players focused.

It's just hard when the game world exists 24/7 but the playerbase does not. I think it could be done, but I don't think the MMO era proved that the effort required to get it right is really worth it.

 LunarSol wrote:


That's EVE, fwiw, but the real answer is simply that its because humanity is terrible.

EVE is a bit like that isn't it? I don't particularly like the gameplay of EVE though, nor the attitudes it inspires in its most dedicated players.

You can easily make a game a lot like WoW in terms of structure, but where you replace the developer's total control over the story with implementing the consequences of the player's own choices. I think it would be amusing if for example, a particular area became a well known farming spot and then in a subsequent update it becomes a barren wasteland from overfarming or the centerpiece of a world event as players are pushed to compete against each other or a third party for dwindling resources.

A big part of the problem is just that these kinds of events sound great in theory, but the time they take to play out is miserable. I've played games with pretty open PVP and unless you're at the top end of the power curve, it mostly just means that you can't play for the night while someone that plays 3 accounts all day, picks on people without that kind of time. I've even played good PvP systems focused on taking territory and its mostly just difficult to keep things from getting repetitive and keeping players focused.

Yeah. I think the real issue with this model is that it would need a rock solid foundation, because turn around time on new content would be sluggish. The developers would first have to let current content matriculate and then see what players do with it in a market where players rabidly consume content at cheetah speeds and demand more within a week.

 LordofHats wrote:

EVE is a bit like that isn't it? I don't particularly like the gameplay of EVE though, nor the attitudes it inspires in its most dedicated players.

You can easily make a game a lot like WoW in terms of structure, but where you replace the developer's total control over the story with implementing the consequences of the player's own choices.

This is the crux of the problem. The game world becomes something that revolves around the choices of the most dedicated players. Those players often have attitudes that don't make for particularly fun gameplay or world states. When put like that, its the crux of the problem of most world states....

Speaking of MMOs, one of the first ever games that could be classified as an "MMO" comes to mind. Netstorm: Islands at War, an MMO-RTS that I still have fond memories of.