The success of Pillars was something like 500 000 units sold. Skyrim sold 20 million. I'm not saying old-school RPGs can't be successfull, just that they can't be successfull on the same level. And GOG's bestellers are hardly telling of the market in general. It's like going to comic book store and afterwards based on speaking with a few hardcore fans there declaring that comic books are more popular then their movie adaptations.

"Western RPG" is such a terrible term I have no idea why people even use it. Sounds like OP is referring to is a traditional CRPG.

i actually get my car insurance through them. it was cheaper than geico, stupid animated lizard driving up costs.

Oh fuck Geico!

In Flo we trust!

This is essentially the crux of it. There are more than enough capable graphical artists and composers out there to keep wage costs down when producing the next big AAA title, but wRPGs need actual game design finesse and require a significant investment of manhours to balance and tweak. Good game designers are a rarity, especially when you're designing something that makes use of emergent functionality. Proper open-ended wRPGs that are almost sandbox-like in their freedom require vision, creative freedom and generous scope in terms of deadlines. Essentially, they're the stuff of nightmares for shareholders and CEOs who want everything micromanaged in terms of budget and deadlines.

Games like PoE, Wasteland 2, Divinity: Original Sin were successful by wRPG standards, but nowhere near to the level that AAA investment would require.

JRPGs are defined by their simpler mechanics and more strongly defined narrative. Again, these are much easier to balance and tweak than a true wRPG whose gameplay tends to be a lot more open-ended. Action wRPGs offer something much closer to the "open-ended" style of classical wRPGs.

If anything, I'm glad that JRPGs are starting to adopt some wRPG features now. The genre was starting to get a bit stale, although the Tales series is always there for JRPG traditionalists. Final Fantasy 15 took a major leaf out of Witcher 3's book, and Zelda: Breath of the Wild had some astonishingly clever quest design of the kind that you would ordinarily only find in core wRPGs (as in, you actually had to read, explore and study).

I thought they were supposed to help me deal with my emotional dependence on alcohol. Well that explains a lot.

Except that classic Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games are pretty much traditional RPGs, but are clearly not WRPGs. (I note that Dragon Quest stayed traditional much longer than Final Fantasy did.)

Damn you dtgreene... now I need to go fire up DQVII again.... I don't WANT to lose another 4 months of my life!!!

Traditional RPGs, either computer RPGs or JRPGs, do not have the audience large enough to justify a AAA budget and super hi-fidelity graphics. The RPG is a niche genre, which means lower budget and hence worse graphics. It's not a coincidence that arguably the best JRPG of past 10 years, Xenoblade Chronicles, was on the Wii, the platform with the least graphical power, and hence the lowest development costs.

Because AAA games have to be dumbed down for the console market. Lets call it what it is. It is dumbing down. Take the new Dragon Age for example. The game refuses to let the player use more than 8 abilities. The reason behind this is that it is made with a controller in mind. Diablo 3 as well. You can only use the abilites you have mapped onto each button of the controller. You don't even get to level up yourself in that one either. stats are gone and everything.

Something is very wrong when Fifa 17 has about 500% more stats and skills than an rpg.

I noticed this a few years ago with AOE 3 and Diablo 3. They weren't awful they were just really dumbed down, I guess to appeal to a wider audience, and by wider, I mean a console audience.

If you are not opposed to games with an eastern flair and somewhat grindy MMOs take a look at Black Desert; its a Korean wRPG. The depth of the gameplay options are unusual old-school complex; it has the most alive citys I have encountered in any game ever (regardless of of MMO or SP game) and all with modern AAA visuals. Its kind of the antithesis to the usual fancy looking but hollow MMO crap coming from over there (xcept the kept the fancy looking part).

Same thing with Bethesda games. Compare Skyrim to Morrowind and see just how much has been stripped away.

Why would that be? FIFA '17 is aimed at a market of people *very* obsessed with a particular game system, with a given set of rules they've read and practiced so much they could recite them by heart; nothing has come close in the RPG world since the fall of the AD&D3 ruleset and subsequent fragmentation of the PnPRPG market. It makes perfect sense a simulation of a system that requires introduction and explanation to the user would be much simpler than one which does not.

Kinda how the deeper sci-fi books that tackle harder topics tend to be those based on the real world sans one or two key technologies, instead of those where the smargbard fghlemed the hy'oggh smeerp. Sucks for those who like their smeerp erotica to be more about just fghelming, though.

It is the trend though. Fifa becomes more "complex", rpgs get more and more dumbed down.

Pillars of Eternity seems the be the only bright spot for people who really enjoy classic rpgs these days.