It all comes tumbling down, tumbling down.

I still don't get it why there is such a huge hage for anything that is turn based on the PC, I mean, just from the argument. It's apparantly not so much a problem with mobile games and card games.

 

Considering the Success of Divinity:OS, the new x-com and the civ games, I would say that it mostly has to do with UI.

 

That's another thing, pretty strong with kick-starter/crowd funding. Yet, any developer and publisher seems to avoid it like the plague. Hey! I am not asking for making CoD or Doom turn based ... I just don't know ... there clearly IS a market for TB games. And it's not even thaaat small.

 

The fact that people keep insisting that what happened to Fallout isn't a complete shift in focus and design philosophies but "evolution" is more than proof enough of the modern gamer dispostion towards turn based. The declaration itself implies that turn based is obsolete and that a switch from it is progress. Some people have even said that if it hadn't evolved it would "still be just an isometric RPG" like that's an automatic negative.

 

I'm sorry, but 6 million dollars of profit is pocket change for anyone corporate business. Why make that when you can make 60 millions?

 

Not half a handful, but half the people playing the games or half the gamers. It was a progression in numbers from small to medium to large. And at least some ballpark numbers, because if it was only a relatively handful of people demanding that change, even if it was constant, then that's still insignificant. If it was half the people demanding the change, then that's pretty significant, and if it was a majority of people demanding this change (and all this time according to you) then that, of course, would be extremely significant. So that's why I was asking for numbers or percentages to get a feel on it.

Yeah I could see that. (Though Piccross is Japanese too, I think, and there's been pinball, trading cards, that pikachu tamagotchi thing, that puzzle league stuff. So Pokemon has always had that kind of stuff. Granted, it wasn't on cell phones, so I'll give you that much there.)

I couldn't really make a judgement on this myself without knowing more about why Ubisoft went inhouse and changed the combat system. Did they just want to go inhouse? (Did the inhouse team do turn-based stuff or were they more into the real time combat stuff?) Did they go inhouse to get away from turn-based? Did they not go back to Obsidian because of bad sales? Did Obsidian turn them down or just weren't available to do it? Did Ubisoft just not want to go to a 3rd party developer this time around? Was it purely money reasons they went inhouse? Or any mix of the above?

(And googling for it, everything I see about that sequel says it's turn-based similar to the Stick of Truth, but a lot of that seems to be coming out from around the time it was announced, so maybe it's changed since then, or maybe that was just speculation that was wrong and new details have come out?)

 

I think the market for turn-based games is unfortunately quite small. Kickstarter budgets are still very low, as evidenced by the tremendous lack of polish in Wasteland 2 (still one of my favorite games of all time). Pillars of Eternity did quite well, but it just doesn't sell as well and that may be due in part to lack of marketing rather than lack of consumer interest.

So these markets are destined to be served by smaller companies that enjoy serving these demographics.

That said, I'm optimistic that Fallout has become mainstream enough that maybe, just maybe, there will be a turn-based isometric spin-off in the spirit of the originals.

Turn-based games are very much oriented to the PC, which further limits the market.

 

Still, at least some game developers are more interested in making well written games then trying to get a lot of money.

 

I'm bored and while we're on the subject of cRPG's I figure this may be of use to someone here.
Some Metacritic scores for the revival of cRPG's and tactical turn-based combat games:

Wasteland 2
81 - 7.3

Wasteland 2: Directors Cut
86 - 8.2

Underrail (still in early access)
N/A - 8.3

Pillars Of Eternity
89 - 8.4

Dead State
70 - 6.4

XCOM Enemy Unknown
89 - 8.1

XCOM Enemy Within
86 - 7.9

Divinity Original Sin
87 - 8.7

Shadowrun Returns
76 - 7.4

Shadowrun Dragonfall
87 - 8.3

Shadowrun Hong Kong
81 - 7.8

Age Of Decadence
83 - 8.3

They seem to be faring well enough to me. Apart from Dead State, which while I can understand what people would criticize about it I still enjoyed it quite a lot. Lots of choice and consequence in that one.

 

Ratings-wise I think they're doing great. But they don't sell nearly as well as first-person gore-porn, which is why big businesses are putting that out like it's going out of style and small developers are making cRPGs.

I'm hoping to see another post-apocalyptic cRPG like Wasteland 3 or whatever this Van Buren trademark might bring us. I've never heard of Dead State but I'll check it out.

 

Why would you want them to sell as much as first person games? I mean, think about it. How many first person shooter games out there are truly games that you will return to time and time again years after you first played them? Personally, I can't think of a single one I've felt an itch to return to. Bioshock 1 maybe? And why ain't there a lot of FPS' I want to return to? It's cause they are meant to be good for a first run but hold nothing of value that makes me want to return. So if cRPG's became mainstream then chances are we'd get shitty stories, scripted cinematic events and shit like that.

No thanks.

I want cRPG's to stay a niche. They shouldn't sell as well as first person gore porn. If they do then they'll end up getting milked and we'll end up with a flood of them of them, most of which will be a homogeneous, uninspired, uncreative mess. And whenever that happens how many of those games are really good? No. I'd rather that studios that 'want' to develop cRPG's develop them rather than everyone wanting to develop cRPG's because that's the way to secure the most dosh.

I mean, have you seen the amount of clones of the Minecraft block design there are out there?

Imagine if the big publishers and shit started to pump out cRPG's.

The horror...

Big businesses and good art don't mix well from what I've learned.

 

They could work, if money wasn't the only aim.

 

We're talking about big publishers, man.
Money will always be the priority.

 

Of course, sorry for that mistake.

 

I don't know, there's been a few first person shooters with some staying power. Granted they might be mostly older ones. But Goldeneye was around for a while. Half-Life, I've heard Counter-Strike, the original Halo was around for a while and at LAN parties and stuff even after some of the sequels came out (probably Halo 2 also), probably some of the Duke Nukem games, maybe Quake, and Doom games, right? Some for the campaign, most probably for the multiplayer, some for both. Maybe the Metroid Prime series, if you want to count that as a first person shooter. It kind of is, kind of isn't.

Possibly some other newer ones that are escaping my memory right now.

 

Sure, I ain't saying there are none. I'm just saying, look at how many forgettable ones there are being released year after year.
They could end up drowning out the good ones.

 

Yeah these days when there's one or more a year from the same series, there's definitely a quality hit and an over flooding of titles, so I agree with that.

 

My friend made up a fitting allegory for COD.

Imagine a person moving a book forwards and back, again and again. That's COD 1.

Now do it again for COD 2.

Now move it up and down. Call that COD 3.

Now make it move diagonal. That's COD 4.

 

Hell, say you prefer Fallout 1 and 2 and Bethesda fans will say you just want a 640x480 clone of Fallout 2.

 

Honestly though, if we got a new game with a new story that only reused assets from Fallout 2 without the higher resolution patch I'd still love it. So yes, I do want a 640x480 Fallout 2 clone. At least it'd be a Fallout game.