Dunno who needs to hear this but:
Game dev articles a lot of times say "nobody wants to play this kind of game anymore" or "we have to do it this way now because," and
just ignore those bits. They're talking about AAA, if not F2P gamers, and seriously: who cares?
Make games for YOUR audience.
The one that really stuck in my craw recently was we "can't make RPGs like Morrowind anymore" because "nobody wants to wander around with so little direction" and
uh my guy, your audience just kinda sucks. Maybe you should take less budget and make smaller games for fewer peoples so you're allowed to say something with them again.
Anyways here's a modern indie Morrowind where you are expected to wander around with little to no direction
It doesn't even have a modern combat system, it's super basic, can you even imagine
It probably did terrib-<hand to ear> wait I'm happy to say, https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574240/Dread_Delusion/
Or here's another one, for FOURTY BUCKS, can you even imagine? Barely any enemy density, huge stretches of nothing, very little guidance, heck you can even miss entire quest lines by not being at the right place at the right time.
Bet this one did terribly too. So terribly it got an HD edition and is gonna get a sequel. Gee golly. https://store.steampowered.com/app/794260/Outward_Definitive_Edition/
@glassbottommeg For me the challenge is finding which games let me wander around doing fun stuff, as opposed to wander around fighting fight fight fighting fight.
I like talking and discovering and that sort of stuff, but so many indie games just drown in their combat focus...
@glassbottommeg outward was so fun 
a true "how much loot can you carry" simulator that puts your backpack at the center of the game design, really looking forward to the sequel!
Outward isn't terrible, conceptually, and I like the idea behind it. At the same time it is super clunky in so many ways.
@glassbottommeg I think 99% of the most played games in my steam library that I throw money at whenever new games of the type come out are "dead genres" .
We do get some pretty dry spells on some though, like more "classic" fps's and imsim's are pretty rare (frankly about 90% of them have been released by new blood) (REALLY enjoying "Fallen Aces"!!!). There's been a few decent CRPGs of late though at least.
@glassbottommeg I find Dread Delusion's basic combat a relaxing change of pace. It lets you just focus on exploring the unique setting - and what a great setting it is! Unique in terms of lore, with a gorgeous retro aesthetic.
Highly recommended.
@glassbottommeg You know, I'd love for games to have less "follow this arrow there and if the arrow isn't enough check your map".
But that only really works if there's something to replace that?
Like Outcast had that absolutely gigantically cool feature where you could ask an NPC for directions, and if you were in the area they would literally point where you needed to go?
@bean you really don't have to replace it with anything. Morrowind literally gave "turn left at the shaggy dog" level directions.
People got lost. That was the point.
@glassbottommeg Descriptions also work, of course.
I'm coming to this having just played Horizon Zero Dawn, which... does not describe these things well.
Which is itself fine, it has those map markers. But if you tried playing that without you would get lost and just never find some of these quests.
Which is probably a bit much even for the Morrowind fans? So you'd design the game for it, and let people work a bit to find things, but not give them a place the size of London and tell them "eh it's somewhere in SoHo"
@glassbottommeg @bean
I still think there is a point to be made here.
I have worked on AAA open worlds for... well "work".
I agree that feeling lost is great and leads to a wonderful sense of discovery... but only if your game is built to be explored freely. Games that work like task lists really don't become good when you remove directions. They just become infuriatingly opaque.
So I think it's important to remember that the recipe must change to make way for the fun of free exploration.
@glassbottommeg
Still, thank you for ranting about this haha. I love to see gamedevs point out that making smaller games for fewer people also works.
It's too common for indies to measure their success using AAA metrics. I think that blinds them to the awesome freedom that AAA could never have. Play on your strengths!
@glassbottommeg RPGs specifically have gotten too big. Remember the original Runescape? Just a set of skills to level up and compete for the high scores in, and an open world that's little more than a 3D chat room?
That's literally all I still want.
It's also what I'm basically making... or will be when I finally get back around to working on it. 😩
@glassbottommeg there are those of us that think that taking away auto maps and quest tracking with waypoints would make some games better
We drew our own maps. We kept notes about all the little things we discovered. Your notes & maps became your own journal of the game, so much more personal than any generic quest tracker
You know what other game doesn’t overtly track quests or have pre-set waypoints? A tiny little RPG called Elden fecking Ring. Don’t tell me you can’t break AAA convention
@sinbad @glassbottommeg I was never massively in to text adventures, largely because I was utterly terrible at them, but I do remember trying to draw out how all of the screens joined up by trial and erroring their exits and literally mapping them out. I also remember playing platformers like Dizzy and Streaker, drawing out each screen on tonnes of sellotaped paper sheets to keep track of where everything was in the world.
Definitely sad that we've lost this with modern games!
@glassbottommeg Some other indie games that match that:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637730/Crystal_Project/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/333640/Caves_of_Qud/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1224290/Horizons_Gate/
...heck, while not an RPG, Animal Well's entire gameplay loop is basically "wander around with no direction trying to figure out what you should be doing" and it's probably one of the biggest recent indie successes.
Crystal Project is a non-linear JRPG where you are the maker of your own adventure. Explore the world while you find Crystals, unlock classes, learn abilities, and create a strategy capable of taking down the world's toughest bosses. Or just stick to exploring; it's up to you.
@glassbottommeg Yeah I mean I think this is really a case of just cultivating the audience you want.
Really, the FromSoft model is an example of that to me - games that if you judged by any of those same "modern AAA gamers" metrics you'd think was totally unmarketable, but what they did was over a series of games find the audience that DID like that specific weird brand of game (and that audience wouldn't have those games any other way - often quite vocally so).
@arzi @glassbottommeg it's also time we see games like Wing Commander, TIE Figher and Privateer again. Really, how was it even possible that this genre so totally disappeared?!
(or maybe people realized they sucked with a gamepad and getting a good affordable joy/flightstick these days....)
@kwramm @arzi nah they're pretty great with gamepad! About the only genre that's weird that way is Descent games, but everything else is fine.
Everspace 2 is the best example I can point at here. Fuckin great game. Weirdly very different from the first one (which was a weird roguelite thing), which probably impacted how widely it got known. But it's seriously a GREAT successor to the likes of Freelancer and so on.
@kwramm @arzi It's no more or less arcade'y than Freelancer. It's basically "what if Freelancer had you zoom around in spaces that were more 3D instead of them all being kinda flat on the galactic plane". So you end up actually exploring cool asteroid bases and stuff AND doing just the more flat zoom-around missions, and sometimes there's surprising secrets to find because of this.
Basically: if you liked Freelancer, I HIGHLY recommend it. If you were one of the ones who thought Freelancer was too arcade'y, then eh, maybe not?
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