Interview Chris Avellone is still pretty mad about Obsidian

[Grunker]

Hey Storm of Zehir did all that shit fantastically, but it's not really comparable to the companion content we're talking about.

With Level1NPC in BG2 you have full companions with dialogue and quests and can mod them right down to class and stats. Only thing you can't control is race, I believe. I wouldn't be able to play BG any other way.

 

[Lurker King]

:me fails Will save:

You failed an intelligence check.

(1) "Every choice of character should be supported by the character system" does not "make a careful selection of attributes pointless."

When you develop a system in which a player can make a muscled wizard you are throwing common sense out of the window. You can’t seriously invest in strength while you need to invest on intelligence or wisdom. That is the cool shit about classes. They forced you to understand what each build needs to succeed. Oh, wait. Maybe not. You just need to invent a gamey attribute like “might” that works like physical and spiritual strength.

(2) You can't actually use Slicken to knock down a flying dragon, damn thing will have Immunity: Ground.

Well, you could and that stupidity was intentional, since it follows from “special snowflake sawyerism” school of game design.

(You are right about skill choice though, that should always feel useful. They should give you different experiences though. Who felt happy about picking Outdoorsman rather than Lockpicking in Fallout?)

Again, let’s throw common sense out of the window in order to pander to player’s ego, create a retarded game world and make everyone’s life miserable. Let’s consider “traps” in FO, for instance. Some players complained that traps wasn’t that useful. The solution now is to spread traps everywhere. That is great, now that skill is really useful. Well, actually that is not great because there shouldn’t be traps everywhere, especially inside cities. In fact, that will ruin the game for everyone who doesn’t want traps. Now, thet are fucked, because there are traps everywhere. The way to fix this brilliant design approach is by allowing players to use something else to surpass traps (grenades, repair skill, science, etc.). Of course, the consequence of this solution is that now traps are again useless, since you can beat them with other skills or items that have other uses. What is worse, you are still forcing all players who don’t like to invest on traps to disarm traps all the time, just to make traps useful. That is the consequence of your brilliant design approach.

 

[Excidium II]

When you develop a system in which a player can make a muscled wizard you are throwing common sense out of the window.

lmao

Suggestion: cease posting

f course, the consequence of this solution is that now traps are again useless, since you can beat them with other skills or items that have other uses.

^ The VD school of design.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Hey Storm of Zehir did all that shit fantastically, but it's not really comparable to the companion content we're talking about.

With Level1NPC in BG2 you have full companions with dialogue and quests and can mod them right down to class and stats. Only thing you can't control is race, I believe. I wouldn't be able to play BG any other way.

Hard to balance though. One of the highpoints of BG1/2 compared to later Bioware companion systems is that they aren't interchangeable -ie some NPCs are flat out better than others. By combining that with mutually exclusive NPCs, paired NPCs and the need to cover specific roles like trap-checking or undead/level-drain countering, putting together a team was a more satisfying project.

Finding a new recruitable NPC in those games was a fist-pump moment. By covering a particular role well, they'd open up new strategic possibilities for building the rest of your party (eg, getting a NPC that could cross class well as thief-caster , opens up the option of dumping your main thief and fortifying your front line with a fighter, or split the thieve skills so your thief-mage can stealth-fireball while your main thief maxes traps + locks). Good NPCs would often cost you certain options as well -eg do you want the magic resistant class cleric with 'control undead' in a game where vampires are the main enemy in several chapters vs a paladin with ok stats but who brings a +5 sword to the party in a game where several key enemies need +4/5 to damage and there's only a few such weapons in the game world?

For many , that's much more fun than the current model, where every NPC party member is perfectly interchangeable, and much of the reason why I could tolerate their shitty writing in BG2 (and even enjoy it, because the mechanics gave me reason to give a shit about particular party members - aerie is the most insufferable character Bioware has written , but if you've built your party around having a multiclass make-cleric, and she gets chunked , you're going to care a hell of a lot more than any of that later 'choose which of these fully interchangeable except for their dialogue and companion quest NPCs must die' scenarios ) .

Also makes NPC recruitment a major reason for exploration - eg relying on a paladin or ranger as a makeshift healer while you try to find a cleric.

I can see why people would also be interested in doing the opposite though , and being able to fully design their entire party instead of having to 'fit a team together', especially on later run-throughs. But really hard to balance if you want to keep the former option - the party will be so much more powerful , and qualitatively so in ways that you can't adequately tweak via difficulty settings, that it's mutually exclusive with the former type of design.

 

[Grunker]

For the record, as an IE-fan who's probably played these games a combined total of like a hundred times, I think most of that is complete horseshit. No offence, though, I like you

 

[Bester]

Pillars of Eternity - If it was up to him, they wouldn't have gone that wild with features with only 29 months.

It doesn't matter. It's up to him to foresee the amount of problems they'll have if they don't cut down the scope. He should've cut it down. He didn't? It's his fault alright.

 

[Excidium II]

It's technically his fault, but the thing is that kickstarter created different circumstances. Can't cut what was promised, can't negotiate with a mass of 75000 people.

 

[Bester]

Can't cut what was promised, can't negotiate with a mass of 75000 people.

He cut out everything BG out of the game, which was promised in the KS. If he can do that, he can cut down the scope no problem.

 

[Excidium II]

As far as the average backer is concerned, they delivered on that front.

 

[Kev Inkline]

A man who's dead inside cannot want; he can only "want."

I keep hearing that in Dak'kon's voice.

 

[Kev Inkline]

For the record, I'm still butthurt about PoE.

We need a “glittering gem of hatred” button.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Don't have time to read through the whole thread, just someone tell me: has Chris Avellone posted in it?

 

[Bester]

As far as the average backer is concerned, they delivered on that front.

Sophisms aside, they have a board with elements of the story/mechanics/etc that are rated from A to D. A being of critical importance. B that should be in, but could conceivably be cut. Etc. They planned it that way. They planned beforehand that they could cut the B things and C things, and the general design of the game allowed it. And so they should've. But they didn't. And that's on him.

 

[Prime Junta]

Fail at what? If you still get a viable build you haven't failed anything. I know Sawyerist's consider a build failed if you need to reload the game 1 time, but not everybody is as brain damaged.

Fail at making a muscle wizard or ranged paladin. You might still find a way to beat the game with whatever you made, but then people found ways to beat BG2 using ridiculously gimped characters.

No, I don't care about Sawyer's desire to allow snipers who exclusively use pocket knives to be on the same level as every other build.

:sigh: You can't snipe with a pocket knife.

This is what he wants to do (otherwise not happy enough!!!) and, like I said multiple times, it's a thing you can only do with a stupid, simplistic system, which is PoE's case.

If that's what he wants to do, he's failed miserably in Pillars, then. So he's doubly incompetent, yay!

Sure, DnD is so bad because certain builds use certain attributes* but PoE is great because no matter how you choose the stats you still get a build.

*lul wut? And I wasn't aware DnD has only attributes? Yeah, not as complex as the maximum-2 variables for anything system of PoE.

AD&D has no build complexity at all. You pick your class or multiclass combo at the start, distribute your points like you're supposed to, and then click "level up" whenever you level up. Occasionally you get to put a pip in a weapon slot, but since (as a fighter) you'll want to specialise you'll just be putting the pips in the same slot every time. Okay as a thief you'll have to make the agonising choice of how to distribute them between stealth and lockpicking/trapfinding. Or if you dual-class, you get to make another pick from the same menu mid-game, followed by a few hours of drudgery and then a game-breakingly powerful build.

But that, literally, is all.

The likes of BG2 do have build variety, but the variety amounts to picking from a menu: choosing a class, kit, or class combo that's been predefined for you by the people who made the game. There are a lot of options, but it's still completely different from being able to roll your own build. And both games of course let you dramatically skew your build with items.

Bottom line is, Pillars' character system however just is objectively better -- it allows for a greater variety of builds which play differently, and it gives the player much more agency in creating that build: you get to define it feature by feature rather than picking an option from a menu.

(Not discussing use of items to support builds here, since both games let you do that in more or less the same way. It is hugely important of course.)

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yeah but using hirelings means missing out content and interactions. I'm still waiting for someone to make a CRPG that has best of both worlds, where you make all your party but assign personality and background to them.

~wizardry 8~

 

[Excidium II]

^ It's a start.

 

[Fenix]

Bottom line is, Pillars' character system however just is objectively better -- it allows for a greater variety of builds which play differently, and it gives the player much more agency in creating that build: you get to define it feature by feature rather than picking an option from a menu.

Underrail.

 

[Grunker]

Yeah but using hirelings means missing out content and interactions. I'm still waiting for someone to make a CRPG that has best of both worlds, where you make all your party but assign personality and background to them.

~wizardry 8~

Similar to Storm of Zehir. The companion content in Wizardry 8 is fairly insignificant compared to BG2, so it's not really applicable. However an expanded system like Wizardry 8's is precisely what would be cool in this instance. I mean, who didn't fucking love Wiz 8's system here?

 

[Lurker King]

Suggestion: cease posting

I'm not the one defending Sawyer's popamole design and making a fool of myself.

The VD school of design.

Better than Sawyer school of design, right?

 

[Rivmusique]

They seem similar.

 

[FeelTheRads]

ail at making a muscle wizard or ranged paladin.

Who the fuck cares? Is the point of RPGs to allow you any kind of build and reward you for it? If you want to have some special build YOU should work for it, it's not the game that has to give it to you on a platter.

You might still find a way to beat the game with whatever you made, but then people found ways to beat BG2 using ridiculously gimped characters.

And? Would BG2 be a better game if those ridiculously gimped characters were not possible?
I know this is the Sawyerist belief, so it's more of a rhetorical question.

:sigh: You can't snipe with a pocket knife.

k, thx

Bottom line is, Pillars' character system however just is objectively better

Sure, and BG2 would be better with no gimped builds. OBJECTIVELY.

 

[Kalin]

All you fagets lose by default for playing a shit game like Pillars.

 

[Zed]

chris avellone would win an Obsidian Battle Royale. even though he's only 1.4m tall

 

[Lurker King]

ail at making a muscle wizard or ranged paladin.

Who the fuck cares? Is the point of RPGs to allow you any kind of build and reward you for it? If you want to have some special build YOU should work for it, it's not the game that has to give it to you on a platter.

 

[ArchAngel]

"He is the Project MANAGER. It *is* his fault. His job is to make sure things are done fukkin' properly. That includes dealing with bugginess."

Icewind Dale 2 - Inherited from a lead designer who quit because he believed it would have been an embarrassment on his record, was on it for a few months before getting back on The Black Hound, a lot of problems stemming from the extremely short schedule.
NWN2 - Inherited from a lead designer who quit because he used the position to springboard himself into a job for Bioware (which he used to springboard himself into Bethesda once it started looking far more appealing), spent all his time on triage because it was a total mess and they had months to go until they had to ship something
New Vegas - Bethesda noticed that were doing such a good job that they decided to move up the release date by a few weeks
Pillars of Eternity - If it was up to him, they wouldn't have gone that wild with features with only 29 months.

"specialized build" It's right there in the quote. Don't pretend to offer a counter-argument by paraphrasing my post.

Josh has no issue with the concept of specialized builds, as you seemed to suggest.