Phil,
RPGs back then were typically text-based dos games.
Text based? No, I don't think so. Another guy who wasn't even AROUND in the 1980s, who wants to talk about teh way things were, eh?
Nice grammar police routine you have going on there, too. Said more than I needed to already, to you.
Unkillable Cat,
Do you know why 100+ hours had to be spent on RPG games back then? Because there was no such thing as a journal to help you keep track of what you had done or were doing, there was no in-game map, so you had to make one yourself, it was very easy to get lost in many of the games, and you could run into an encounter and be dead in less than 10 seconds, when you last saved over an hour ago.
Yes, exactly. And they didn't hold your hand every step of the wya, telling you exactly where you need to go and what you need to do. In mass effect, for instance, I think I went from level 2 to level 8 without any combat at all. 100% dialog quests. Most of which only took a few minutes to complete, and most of which were virtually impossible to mess up. Where is the sense of accomplishment in a game like that? Does soemthing like that even qualify as a "game" at all? As near as I can tell it's virtually impossible to NOT win mose of the new games. That's why I call teyhm "interactive movies" To get back on topic, Bethesda's games are NOT in that category. I'm talkking about Bioware and its ilk, on this one.
Bodybag,
notice you're now padding your playtimes with grindy type activites like "mining." Well of course Fallout was much too short for you - you're totally broken! This also explains why you yearn for the massochistic trends of yesteryear when difficulty was artificially inflated by design decisions from people who were just learning how to make games.
That is not a "fring activity" - any more than gathering reagents so you coul;d cast spells in Ultima 7 was a "grind activity" - that is how those games were meant to be played. But I suppose you just coincidentally knew how to solve all teh puzzles before you even got to them, knew where to find all the easter egg items that allowed you to power-by all the "grind activities" taht you so loathed, etc... right? And you think downloading walthrus so that you can bypass large parts of the actual DIFFICULT parts of somebody's game design is the way thingts are meant to be, right? Well, people like you are in the majority now. I admit it. That is why game designers don't even bother with trying to make games challenging any more. The leet kewldewds such as yourself will just cheat tehri way through all their hard work anyway, which must be very frustrating for a developer.
Forekset,
Bodybag said much of what I was going to say, but programmer.craig, you're including a whole lot of grinding when you total up your playtime of 100 hours plus. I grew up on the very types of games you're talking about, and when I go back and play them today, know what? All that grinding for levels and gold just so you won't get gang-raped by a roving band of level 2 goblins really blows. It's not that much fun.
How do you know it is not that much fun? Those games are 20 years old, man. You can't play a 20 year old PC game and expect to enjoy it, no matter how good it is. Those games damn sure were fun at the time. It's not just "my recollection" - games were better, then. The designers were a differenjt breed. Today's game designers are, for the most part, people who are just making games because that is their job. The people who were making games in teh 1980s were doing it because it was their pasion.
BrotherNone (again),
Yes, and if you're truly interested, I'll explain further. Preview example: if you ever needed graph paper to play a PC game then someone fucked you.
How about if there were no save games at all, and you coudl only save your characters at an inn, after returning from an adventure? And so if your whole party got wiped, then too bad... you get to start over at the inn with your last-saved characters (from whenver the last time you were in an inn, probably last wednesday). Or you could start a new party. And those were your only choices. Did somebody fuck you?
That was the Bard's Tale game engine design. And I'm pretty sure that Wasteland used the bard's Tale game engine. And if you think Wasteland was a game that fucked over the players, tahn you probably shouldn't be commenting on the website. Right?
One more thing, Bodybag:
I didn't mean either of those two games. I was speaking about the games & gameplay elements PC brought up, though I did generalize a little.
I didn't bring them up in the conext you challenged me on. I mentioned them as examples of some of the many classic games that were released in 1992 (which was a great year for CRPGs), the year before the CRPG drought started. Which was when Arena was released. I was making the point that Arena was only "critically acclaimed" because it was about the only CRPG to be released in 1993/1994 at ALL. Brother None mentioned Arkania... I played that as well. And that also was relaeased in 1992.
I reckon I played every RPG realeased for the PC between 1982 and 2001. I only have a clear recollection of the good ones, but if you want to challenge me about old PC RPGs then go for it. I don't appreciate you taking me out of context and then challenging me to prove a claim I never made, though. And then pretending like I'm the one who is hedging. That's cheap. But cheap is you, isn't it? Why should I expect you to play fair on the internet when you cheat your way through games and act like that's the way everyone does it? Why does somebody like you even play computer games? Where is the satisfaction in skating past all the parts that are supposed to be hard? I really want to know. Because it's people just like you that screwed up my game hobby.
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