D&D 5E How To Make a Good D&D Videogame

[Spookykid]

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS ONLINE

 

[Ranes]

I've played the SSI gold box series, the EoB series, NWN (which I wrote mods for) and plenty of the more obscure D&D titles. I enjoyed all of them a great deal but...

I loved the Elemental Evil controls - the un-modded game is buggy as hell but the controls are fantastic.

Best DnD to Video game conversion of all time.

I absolutely agree with this. In addition to all the bugs, the UI is nightmarish in places. But I played it when it first came out and got to the end (on Iron Man mode, first play-through no less) and loved it. Combat is simply superb. I'm currently replaying it, via Wine on a Mac, with the epic Circle of Eight mod installed, and enjoying it even more than the BG enhanced editions I played earlier in the year. I've suffered one corrupted save game this time through. Apart from that, it's been solid. I only wish they had adhered to crafting times.

Anyway, when I'm finished with ToEE, I'm probably going to play through Co8's KotB conversion, which I believe is even more ambitious.

 

[Mephista]

I find it interesting that there is this perceived near universal opinion that Sword Coast Legends is no good, and yet when I look at the game in Steam I see "51% of 1,932 user reviews for this game are positive."

That either shows that these "review sites" aren't entirely in touch with what the masses think, or that a game can be enjoyable for the majority of people even if some reviewer thinks it's awful.

There's a lot of complaints about certain parts of the game. When I looked over the reviews, a lot of the people who focused on the main campaign seemed to rate the game fairly highly, while those who focused on the multi-player aspects tended to rate lower - primarily due to lack of customization ability for individual campaigns. There was also a notable subset who were angry over the game not being D&D enough because it didn't use a faithful translation of how classes, feats, and skills worked.

In general, I think its fair to say that people who were unfamilar with D&D beyond the name were generally happy playing the game, while those who bought it looking for a virtual table top were sorely disappointed.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I enjoyed the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance series, and really wish that we had gotten a next gen third one. Ah well…

Forgotten Realms: Demonstone did a lot right, but I hated that you had to manage your whole party (with no multiplayer option).

 

[iserith]

I'm really enjoying Darkest Dungeon. It really boils the dungeon-town experience down to its barest bones while still making it engaging. Plus the art is just awesome.

 

[Paraxis]

Make good games like Dragon Age:Origins and Divinity:Original Sin using D&D worlds and lore.

 

[Zardnaar]

I find it interesting that there is this perceived near universal opinion that Sword Coast Legends is no good, and yet when I look at the game in Steam I see "51% of 1,932 user reviews for this game are positive."

That either shows that these "review sites" aren't entirely in touch with what the masses think, or that a game can be enjoyable for the majority of people even if some reviewer thinks it's awful.

51% is a low score for a video game review. Anything under 70% I probably would not buy.

 

[mellored]

IMO: i would rank them...

Neverwinter nights 2
Knights of the old republic
Divinity: Original Sin
Fallout 1
Neverwinter 1
Baulder's gate
Fallout 2
Vampire: masqurade.

Not all D&D universe, but all quality computer RPG games.

I never played icewind dale.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

51% is a low score for a video game review. Anything under 70% I probably would not buy.

That's not a 51% out of 100% given as a review - that's 51% of people given two choices, recommend or not, choosing to recommend the game.

...and that is even with it being generally true that people are more probable to speak up to trash on something than to praise it, and with reviews coming from people that chose not to recommended the game including such contradictory information as having played the game for 127 hours and saying "I didn't like it."

Now, if you knew that the 51% I was talking about was 51% of nearly 2000 people saying "yes, get this game" and you still wouldn't buy anything under 70%... that's a different story entirely, especially since there is no way at all to guarantee that you are getting info from people with preferences similar to yours (i.e. there might be 2000 people that have played the game and chose to review it, but not all 2000 like what you like so some of the "don't get this game" reviews might actually be listing things you like and the reviewer doesn't as reasons to avoid the game). I mean, I know that 70% of my friends, let alone a group of complete strangers with nothing in common other than the broad quality of "likes videogames", don't agree with me about what is or isn't a good video game even half of the time.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Make good games like Dragon Age:Origins and Divinity:Original Sin using D&D worlds and lore.

The issue we would have in getting a game like this is that those companies who have the money, employees and skill to pull off a D&D game of that quality are so big that they would rather make their own IP rather than use the D&D IP. That's exactly what happened with Bioware-- after Neverwinter Nights they had the cache to make their own fantasy IPs instead of leasing WotC's (and thus we got Dragon Age.) Even Obsidian (who aren't exactly a huge company) went with their own IP for their Infinity Engine style game, rather than try and acquire the D&D license.

The problem we have right now is that I suspect only a smaller and newer game company without a lot of experience or previous hits would want to sign on for the D&D license for that instant branding help... but they're more likely to not have the creative staff or money to pull a AAA level game off (see Sword Coast Legends and n-Space for evidence of that.)