Bear with me here it'll make sense.

Because like my big loves in terms of games are RPGs and fighting games. And horror games, but those don't really come into this a ton.

And RPGs in my youth were turn-based and slow and about exploring and setting and characters and all that.

I mean sure some were less turn-based than others but nobody ever got into a Tales or triAce game for the frenetic combat.

But now everything wants to be an action RPG with increasingly less actual RPG and more action, it feels like.

Likewise fighting games, fast, technical, highly punishing to errors of execution or strategy.

Again sure there were exceptions; the klassic Mortal Kombats move at a pretty fixed speed and Virtua Fighter has always been ponderous (until you eat a counterhit and like 45% of your health vanishes in a go).

But now it feels like the whole genre wants to slow down and add comeback mechanics even when people complain about those and simplify inputs and remove again, genre-defining mechanics.

And like I get it. The goal is to make them broad appeal instead of niche appeal but why is it only some genres gotta do that?

honestly the funniest part for me wrt the action rpg thing is whoever sold them the idea that turn based rpgs are niche appeal definitely are lying to them.

There is an Execution Barrier with action RPGs that people might not want to or sometimes can't meet.

Exactly.

The whole appeal of a turn-based RPG from a development standpoint is that its execution barrier is stupidly low!

It's real frustrating when like an Atlus or a Falcom game sells three morbillion copies and Square's response is to go "damn. less mechanics in the next one then?"

as someone who straight up can't PLAY a growing proportion of action rpgs, co-fucking-signed.

(Also if you're going to go this route where in the fuck are my PE 1 and 2 remakes?)

(or Vagrant Story?)

like we dunk on trails for being like 600+ hours of game at this point but I will fucking take that over More Action RPG

also why

in the FLYING FUCK

did the game industry look at Baldur's Gate 3, a turn-based RPG

and decide "okay more action then?"

game balance hard crying shibe meme

rpg maker mv save us

They look at Dragons Quest and Pokemon, the two biggest games in the genre, and go, “we know better”

And like on the fighting game side of it, I get it, man. Street Fighter IV and then later Guilty Gear Strive sold like mad and they were both slower, stripped down versions of things.

But that wasn't the secret sauce for SF4; it was a big company letting a franchise sleep for a decade and then putting all their weight behind it.

And likewise Strive needed simplification after Xrd's whole attempt to appeal to more broad markets boiled down to "what if we cut the technical high end but left shit as convoluted as possible"

Also it sold well because it decided rollback was good and cool actually, and then also that trans rights were good and cool too, actually.

Every fighting game being slower, and having homogenized gameplay, and adding revenge mechanics sucks actually!

Yeah part of Strive selling huge numbers is that it was one of the first games on the market with rollback netcode in that era of humanity in which "no a global pandemic is forcing the issue, if you have delay based netcode your game WILL die."

"We have already killed Granblue Versus, we will kill others."

And I don't get why we are cool and fine with anything beyond casual FPS play requiring you to know how to do like 4 different movement techs and execute them simultaneously, but the whole industry is still going "a quarter circle motion, what the fuck'

to be fair there may be no PE remakes on the horizon but there are at least two indie games reviving the PE1/PE2 gameplay that i'm aware of in development

dorohedoro Say more now.

Also like horror games it feels like are getting it from another angle. I think Silent Hill 2 remake is a solid game, I'm not a total fucking grognard here, but I think it suffers immensely because every game now has to be twice as long as they did in the PS2 era to be seen as good value.

So everything is stretched to its absolute breaking point.

Or they're still smoking that 00's indie horror pack so the game is like 4 hours long and hopes you will take explaining nothing in lieu of having a compelling theme.

i cannot recall the name of the other one offhand but this one, this one i remember the name of for sure.45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND - 1st Trailer

Well that looks sick.

i wonder if it'd be possible for fightgames to do like... two stages: slower for a gentler difficulty or something, and then more traditional speed for higher difficulty?

or just different modes...

but that might be a lot to dev on since that's probably a lot of (at minimum) re-calculations among other variables

though that thought comes back to "some games just aren't designed for everyone" thing, and the faster fightgames really... should stay... fast...

man. even pokemon is dipping its toes into action rpg waters with z-a now. i'm so tired