No quality massive RPG fantasy isometric tilesets...why?

[DrainedMan]

I'm a programmer and what makes me curious is why isometric tilesets are so lacking. There are very few quality isometric tiles/characters, and certainly these are not consistent. Why has no artist(s) made a large tileset for isometric?

I mean sure you get some cutesy ones or some very retro ones (which i like) but they are so incomplete and I cannot make a whole game with them.

I would happily pay hundreds of $$$ for a decent large isometric tileset with a fantasy RPG theme. Something thats enough to make a game from with minimal custom art in addition.

Is the market just not there...I can't think why else not?

[MysteryMeat]

If you're looking to commission that, I am open. I think the problem is more a combination of the rarity of isometric games paired with the surprisingly small number of people making commercial tilesets.

[eishiya]

I'd also love to work on such a thing, but even so I wouldn't make it on spec (e.g. to sell as a generic tileset).

I was going to say that perhaps it's because of the difficulty of making such a tileset sufficiently generic to sell, since fantasy is a genre largely defined by its settings and details. However, there is no shortage of generic fantasy top-down tilesets (perhaps thanks to RPGMaker setting a standard for required assets with its basic package).

So, I guess it's like MM said - there's not much need for such tilesets these days, so it's not worth the risk to spend the time creating one. Most current isometric games are either 3D or have a simple enough visual style that they can quickly create the art in-house. The isometric fantasy RPG genre is also largely defined by 3D games like FFT, which may be why people aren't making a lot of 2D ones.