Have RPGM games declined in quality?

[The_fallen_dragon]

Here is a question I've been wondering, have RPGM games declined in quality? It seems like every once in a Blue Moon we get a game that could be comparable to Rune's pharmacy, Ariadne, or violated heroine in either scale, story, or art. I can't really think of many that made me want to just explore the world like these games did. Even some notably creators like Oneone1 don't even seem to reach the same scale.

So is it just me remembering some of the better game with a fondness or have they fallen in quality?

 

[User_51567]

Here is a question I've been wondering, have RPGM games declined in quality? It seems like every once in a Blue Moon we get a game that could be comparable to Rune's pharmacy, Ariadne, or violated heroine in either scale, story, or art. I can't really think of many that made me want to just explore the world like these games did. Even some notably creators like Oneone1 don't even seem to reach the same scale.

So is it just me remembering some of the better game with a fondness or have they fallen in quality?

Well, you are describing not only RPGM games but adult games in general.

Just a lot of people these days who create (or try to) create a game with 0% talent/knowledge to to so.
Or with the motivation to make money a.s.a.p

For every good one, you have to sift through a couple crap ones...

 

[Dicks McKenzie]

RPGM games used to be quality?

In all seriousness, I get where you're coming from, but the same could be said for Ren'Py or Wolf games too. There are always going to be games that are pretty crap. It's just a matter of finding diamonds in the rough - and there's a lot of rough to sift through right now.

I recommend

You must be registered to see the links

if you've not played it. It kind of rekindled my faith in RPGM games.

Side note - Did Violated Heroine ever get finished?

 

[Rythan25]

I always found Ariadne boring as all hell, easily one my least favorite games from the early days of Adult games or VDate games as that one was called.

I think the reason the RPGM games have declined in quality is everyone complains when devs make game in that engine, so the better devs instead learned Renpy and moved on to avoid "dumb" criticism over a stupid engine (rather than the awesome content like characters or story). Look at both ICSTOR and ICCreations, they both moved on from strictly RPGM games to Renpy with Milfy City and FILF... yet despite what someone else said in another topic, as decent as FILF is, if Incest in Paradise was still being developed even in RPGM it would blow it out of the water.

Anyways, the only ones left doing RPGM are some relatively new comers, or ones that cater to a specific niche, therefore creating some pretty bad games... DDunfol comes to mind with his BBC worship and NTR, where everyone loses braincells as the story develops (tons of fetch quest with no reason either, and this coming from a guy that doesnt mind walking in RPGM games).

I think the only two or three RPGM games I can actually say are decent to good being developed still are Roundscape Adoveria, Town of Lust, and Peasants Quest... if Farmer's Dream ever gets its act together and stops shitting on the MC it can join this exclusive club.

 

[Ginji]

i think another issue is that going from the likes of emily sister attraction,to newer formats with renders/animations was(for me at least) mindblowing.i loved esa played it many times until i found BB,the artifact ect.After playing your first games, people tend to judge what comes after against them and just like film sequels if its not so much better then it seems to be somewhat of a failure.there seem to be so many games now that yes quaility will suffer as more people see it as a oppertunity to make money without having any experience in making games .but for me adult gaming never had it so good.this site is proof of that

 

[The_fallen_dragon]

Well, you are describing not only RPGM games but adult games in general.

Just a lot of people these days who create (or try to) create a game with 0% talent/knowledge to to so.
Or with the motivation to make money a.s.a.p

For every good one, you have to sift through a couple crap ones...

I realize it is something that happens to the adult game "industry" s whole, but rpgm games seem to get it te worse, and it could be because of the amount of crap that gets flung on the engine itself. An engine that in itself should and could be used for massive exploration, taking characters stats and bringing them into the world outside of combat. and so on.


Everyone has to start somewhere, but is it really they lack talent and knowledge, or is it that they aren't really willing to try to explore the capabilities of the engine beyond its base?

RPGM games used to be quality?

In all seriousness, I get where you're coming from, but the same could be said for Ren'Py or Wolf games too. There are always going to be games that are pretty crap. It's just a matter of finding diamonds in the rough - and there's a lot of rough to sift through right now.

I recommend

You must be registered to see the links

if you've not played it. It kind of rekindled my faith in RPGM games.

Side note - Did Violated Heroine ever get finished?

VH never finished to my knowledge, I had to stop plying s the creators were breaking their own game by going back and changes past content. I was hearing that they didn't like that their game was being translated into English or something like that. I played peasant's quest around its first released and really didn't get much into it.

 

[Zachy]

Here is a question I've been wondering, have RPGM games declined in quality? It seems like every once in a Blue Moon we get a game that could be comparable to Rune's pharmacy, Ariadne, or violated heroine in either scale, story, or art. I can't really think of many that made me want to just explore the world like these games did. Even some notably creators like Oneone1 don't even seem to reach the same scale.

So is it just me remembering some of the better game with a fondness or have they fallen in quality?

I agree with you. Nowadays, almost all of the RPG Maker games are pretty much the same: "Move through a poorly designed map that uses RTP textures, and talk to an NPC so you can raise his/her affection and get a sex scene. This process can involve walking thru the map so you can find certain item and bring it to the NPC."

Mostly of the games use that formula, and sometimes combinate it with some minigames, and things like that. Yeah, most of the actual games don't even have battles (wich isn't a bad thing to do, but it can make a game really boring if you can't do some fun mechanics to entertain the player in place of battles).

Also, something I've also seen with most of the games; is having a file size of 300-900MB, or even more. This wouldn't mean a problem if most of that wasn't: unused data, unnecesarily big music files, and RTP files (yes, it's possible to compile a game without including the RTP and not needing the player to install it).

So... Why does this happen?
Simply, most of this games are made by beginner devs that focus more on getting money on they Patreon page than developing a good game. This is why we see overly-complicated projects that start with a v0.00001 version number and don't get anywhere.

Of course, not all of the games nowadays are like this, there's also pretty good games like Legend of Queen Opala, Towergirls Kingdom and Town of Passion that do focus on bringing a nice experience to the player, and not milking their Patreon.

 

[Joraell]

I think it is normal that you get during year few really qualitty titles and the rest is just crap. Same is in whole gaming industry. Second thing is money. Some developers have good ideas, but realization is strictly taken down by how much they can spend in development.

Take a look on that all crap around. Fallout 76, BF5 and other and others.

 

[whiskeyrose]

of all formats, RPGMaker is the easiest to create a prototype/game with little to no coding experience. It's actually one of the engines biggest selling points. This is why RPGMaker has the blight of 0.1 versions littering the forum. It's child's play to fart out a few DAZ3D renders, broken English dialogue, and some nonsensical plot involving you having sex with family members. Then it's just making a patreon and spreading the link around adult forums where idiots pledge.

The same can be said for Renpy and HTML games, they just aren't as user friendly as RPGMaker.

To be honest, Patreon is a blessing and a curse for porno games. Now developers can acutally make an income on some of the smut they're making. But at the same time it incentivises minimal effort for a quick buck, as well as never finishing a project because if you actually finish a game, then the incentive to be a patron is gone. The result is a gigantic sea of shit with a few gems floating in it nobody notices because that 0.1 looks just as shitty as the 15 other 0.1 versions it's nestled next to on the latest updates page.

That being said, RPGMaker can create a decent game, it just takes more than a porno theme park to do it. It needs to have a system of gameplay that isn't "run to NPCs and nag them until they fuck you." MILF control is a good example of this, which uses the Triple Triad card game as a gameplay element. Though shallow it made it more than just press button get render. Another option is having some element of player choice or interaction, to give the game feelings of life. If it's just following quest markers in a straight line to see some poorly rendered porno then it's a bust. Peasants quest is a good example of this, in that you can branch off paths throughout the game, interactions with characters can differ based off choices or previous interactions before the event.

alright, blog over.

 

[W65]

Um, let's not all forget that all of the titles the OP listed were made by Japanese devs. There've always been more Japanese-developed porn RPGs, so just by sheer weight of numbers they're going to have more well-developed games--they'll also have more garbage asset-flip-type games, although those are going to zonk out on DLSite and never get translated (theoretically). Also, the discussion and feedback that takes place on English language forums like this one really aren't going to affect what they're doing over there. So Western devs might be getting a message that RPG Maker isn't widely liked, but the Japanese are going to be driven by what sells on DLSite and Getchu (and I guess maybe Steam now?). I don't think they Patreon much.

I've actually noticed the same kind of trend, but I'm going to chalk it up either to coincidental burnout by prominent devs, or maybe flagging sales. VNs and what the Japanese call "adventure" games have always been the bulk of what lands on DLSite, I think, so we might just be seeing a correction back to what makes money without requiring a lot of novel programming effort.

I don't exactly have my finger on the pulse of the Japanese indie porn game industry, but I do know one or two things. Scale Garden, for one, went quiet a while ago. CircleKAME hit its wall some time ago and is in the midst of the episodic game death spiral with their new one. Black Panda came out with a new game a little while ago, and instead of a moderate-length RPG with a bunch of scenes and combat sex, it's some silly low-effort roguelite thing made in MV with something like 12 scenes. Acerola's made the same two games with different themes something like three times now, and I don't know if they're still making money doing it or not. I haven't noticed too many breakout new devs, either.

For another thing, RPG Maker MV's been out for a while now, and you still see a surprising number of games developed in VX Ace--I don't have a basis for saying it, but I'm guessing the Japanese dev community hasn't really bought into MV, or is getting to the point where they can't expand it any longer. Wolf RPG hasn't changed, I don't think, in I-don't-know-how-many versions/

It's also possible that the Japanese players are getting tired of RPGs. I get this feeling that innovative use of the engine is just as important over there as porn content, and innovating takes time and effort that those devs might just be running out of. I don't know how much profit the average Meltys Quest or whatever clears. Like I mentioned up there, time and money spent on adding stuff to MV is time and money that could've been spent drawing porn.

Anyhow, I only follow the market as a porn consumer, so these aren't systematic or professional industry assessments. It's wild guessing mixed with anecdotes, which frankly is about the best a person can expect on a porn forum. No offense.

 

[obibobi]

Evenicle (by the Rance creators) and Meltys Quest out not that long ago are the 2 best adult games I've ever played and are what got me interested in the adult/rpg genre. Full games on release, not slow released once every 2 months until the sun goes cold.

Removing all adult content Evenicle plays like a decent game which is a fucking miracle by adult game standards and Meltys Quest has some serious detail and is quite fun. I would recommend supporting both to encourage mangagamer to pick up Evenicle 2 and the Meltys Quest guy is going to working on a new game.

 

[W65]

Evenicle (by the Rance creators) and Meltys Quest out not that long ago are the 2 best adult games I've ever played and are what got me interested in the adult/rpg genre. Full games on release, not slow released once every 2 months until the sun goes cold.

Removing all adult content Evenicle plays like a decent game which is a fucking miracle by adult game standards and Meltys Quest has some serious detail and is quite fun. I would recommend supporting both to encourage mangagamer to pick up Evenicle 2 and the Meltys Quest guy is going to working on a new game.

The Japanese equivalent of the Patreon-type early-access/pay-during-development model isn't really something that we in the English community have much access to. The result is that most or all games from Japanese devs are complete by the time we get to play them--especially before we get translated versions of them. The two you mentioned, naturally, are of that extraction, so it's pretty natural that they would be more or less finished by the time we get our hands on them (although Meltys at least did get some post-release content, although I think the EN-langauge versions had that from go). I doubt our community will ever really feel the Patreon effect with Japanese devs, even though they do have their equivalent (ci-en, I guess).

When a game's released for free (something like Forest of Blue Whatever) it doesn't feel as galling waiting for updates, I guess? Although I know people chafe when things like VH feel like they're never being updated, if folks didn't pay money to support the dev then they don't have nearly as much skin in the waiting game.

 

[Avaron1974]

I would recommend supporting both to encourage mangagamer to pick up Evenicle 2

I highly doubt Mangagamer has anyone capable of time travel. It only got announced a few months ago, Evanicle 2 won't be out for a loooong time.

 

[obibobi]

The Japanese equivalent of the Patreon-type early-access/pay-during-development model isn't really something that we in the English community have much access to. The result is that most or all games from Japanese devs are complete by the time we get to play them--especially before we get translated versions of them. The two you mentioned, naturally, are of that extraction, so it's pretty natural that they would be more or less finished by the time we get our hands on them (although Meltys at least did get some post-release content, although I think the EN-langauge versions had that from go). I doubt our community will ever really feel the Patreon effect with Japanese devs, even though they do have their equivalent (ci-en, I guess).

When a game's released for free (something like Forest of Blue Whatever) it doesn't feel as galling waiting for updates, I guess? Although I know people chafe when things like VH feel like they're never being updated, if folks didn't pay money to support the dev then they don't have nearly as much skin in the waiting game.

The Japanese have a stronger and more open market for adult games, you even have physical shops where you can go buy them, that's the primary reason.

The 2 I mentioned aren't like Patreon games, they where fully finished on release and in Melty Quests case a western dev contacted the Japanese dev so he could assist and release it at the same time for a Western Audience and he will be doing the same for the next one. Evenicle is an adult game with a budget, rare even for Japan.

But the waiting game wasn't my key point, just that these are the 2 best adult rpg's I've ever played.