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Eternity Josh Sawyer at Digital Dragons: Deadfire post-mortem

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Another visit to Poland: http://digitaldragons.pl/programme/speakers/josh-sawyer/

Josh Sawyer
Obsidian Entertainment

Breaking the Mold: RPG Evolution and Paradigm Shifts in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

Speech Description


This post-mortem of Deadfire will examine the assumptions the team made between the first game and the sequel, how expectations changed through the public beta, and what lessons they learned after the game was released. The talk will focus on narrative design, combat design, the ship combat system, and the decision to fully voice all dialogue. The end of the post-mortem will deal with post-launch support, including patches, features, and other DLC content.

15:00-15:45, May 27th.



A takeaway from last week: https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/list...at-we-learnt-at-digital-dragons-2019/entry/3/

Be careful about the feedback you get from your most dedicated fans

Game developers need to be careful with the feedback they get from their most hardcore fans.

That's according to Obsidian Entertainment director Josh Sawyer, who said in session discussing Pillars of Eternity 2's launch that the studio had a backer beta for users that helped crowdfund the title on Kickstarter.

The development vet said that the feedback you gain from this audience needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, with the same being true for projects in initiatives like Early Access.

"There's some tricky things about backer betas - it's very limited content and it's a very limited audience," he told the audience at Digital Dragons.

"Anyone who has done Early Access also knows there are dangers to this. For those of you who want to do this type of thing, understand that your audience is self-selected to the most hardcore and enthusiastic people. They give very big feedback, but it is also feedback for psychotic gamers. They have the strongest opinions, they're going to grind your game into the dust. It is very valuable, but it can skew your understanding of how your game plays for a wider audience. Also, the longer a beta goes on for, it becomes a well-trod path. Unless you're going to put a load of new content out every time you update the backer beta, people are going to run that over and over again and it can lead to a very strange perception of difficulty, for example, or quality of writing. No writing seems that great if you've seen it 20 times. There's a little bit of a problem sometimes with content that is overused and over-iterated on."
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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*ignores advice from the hardcore fans*

*makes a game that bombs*

"Guys, you shouldn't pay much attention your your hardcore fans. The difficulty and writing of Deadfire are fine."
 

FreeKaner

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He is trying to offload the autistic and fundamental changes he made to the system to "hardcore fans". When the "hardcore fans" said the PoE1 combat feels floaty because of high DR and armour penetration weapons are objectively better he didn't have to go back to drawing board and make an even more autistic system instead of refining the last one. Completely throwing off even the people who were okay with first game because his streamlining became insolvent.

For example, here is an example of the insolvency of the streamlining. Weapons like stiletto and estoc, which had 3 DR-bypass slapped on to their otherwise identical damage to other weapons of same speed were functionally just 3 more damage than rest because no armour had less than 3 DR. Instead of just reducing their base damage and increasing their DR-bypass as a reasonable person, he instead insisted on his autistic streamlining of keeping every weapon of same speed the same damage. Not only that, the only weapon which had more base damage which also proved to be objectively better than others because of this reason, was just given a 10% damage modifier and had the base damage reduced to same as others. Combat also felt floaty because all armours increased in same numbers with quality, so the gap between light and heavy armours became less as quality increased, making even light armoured targets take less damage from light weapons as game went on.

All he had to do was reduce estoc damage from 14-20 which is same as a greatsword, to something like 8-14 and increase the DR-bypass from 3 to 9. Apply something similar to stilettos. Congratulations it now only deals more damage to plate armour and above. However Sawyer was so dogmatically adherent to his autistic streamlining that all weapons of same speed should have same damage, which makes flails and rapiers functionally the same weapon by the way, he refused to backdown from this even when it created balance problems because absolute streamlining is not balance. Instead, he completely reinvented the whole damage, armour and penetration system in deadfire, making it even more of a series of abstractions and made the game lose its tangible numbers between damage and armour as flat numbers.

I cannot believe how in love he is with streamlining and how he tries proactively to make everything symetrical. Asymmetry is the lifeblood of games, especially RPGs like strategy and tactics games.
 

Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
The alleged problem with DR was that it was "mushy" and "didn't feel impactful". While the actual problem is that damage scaled with level, while DR didn't, so it made DR progressively worse. The only thing he had to do is make DR scale with level, like Accuracy.
 

Mr. Hiver

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feedback for psychotic gamers.
You dislike something in the beta, provide critique and suggestions how to improve it, you are psychotic.

can lead to a very strange perception of difficulty, for example, or quality of writing. No writing seems that great if you've seen it 20 times.
Your writing wasnt good the first time around.
The solution is disregarding the criticism and finding more sycopanths for feedback.


Listening to the video...

Spell effects were overwhelming so they tried rendering them differently. But couldnt come up with the idea of making them more minimalistic.
And they reduced the party to five... to make combat easier to follow? what the f... oh im psychotic now.

Engagement mechanic... was something Tanks could use for crowd control? Tanks?
Every single creature in PoE, from rats to everything else had that ability.

Stremers hated that VO wasnt full.
Yet when they get it they skip them just like anyone else, and read the lines to get through them faster. And nobody listened to all of voiced dialogue in DoS2 either. Because it takes too much time and you especially wont listen to it in repeated playthroughs. The only purpose of complete VO is to have media dumbly mention it over and over as if its some great thing.
Owners pushed for the full VO, but refused to move the schedule, caused the biggest personal stress for Josh in his entire career, caused lots of issues with deadlines and stopped iteration on writing.

Ship to ship combat was most negatively criticized feature that everyone hated, Josh decided to cut it but "his boss" brought it back as a crowdfunding goal.
Most expensive and time wasted feature in development.

It was easier to add TB, that Josh resisted of course, then to do the ship combat.
TB got a very positive reception.
It finally downed on him that the game doesnt have to be RTWP. Wont be doing this type of game again and would rather not be the game director.


btw, why does he have hips wider then his shoulders?
And that unmistakable american fashion.... ayy...
 
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Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
>Make beta available for testing knowing who tests these things
>Complain that people test your game and the information you get isn't relevant for your target audience
 
Last edited:

Shadenuat

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shadenaut: I bet josh will cool off and year later make a big video how it was his fault and mistake when it comes to main plot
josh: it was my fault with all that main plot

this is what I like about Josh - take time but admit you were wrong.

and this:

- grognards said game is too easy, I just thought eh they're grognards
- game comes out everyone says it's too easy
- sawyer pikachu face.gif

is why i dislike Josh. He continiously makes mistakes of just not listening to his own baker playtesters and grognards.


39:50 :lol:
:slamdunk:
 
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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
>Make beta available for testing knowing who tests these things
>Complain that people test your game and the information you get isn't relevant for your target audience

That's unfair imo. It's a game developers conference and he's warning fellow developers of something they should be aware of. Volunteer beta tests attract the most hardcore players, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do them.
 

FreeKaner

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The alleged problem with DR was that it was "mushy" and "didn't feel impactful". While the actual problem is that damage scaled with level, while DR didn't, so it made DR progressively worse. The only thing he had to do is make DR scale with level, like Accuracy.

No need, just make it so instead of just getting +1 DR per quality on every single item, items with higher base DR get more. That would also run against his autism though. Considering that in deadfire that all items get +1 armour with quality. It is just I cannot fathom this degree of streamlining, what is the purpose of it? Sawyer calls others psychotic but he himself is psychotic in adhering to this religion of streamlining.
 

Shadenuat

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not sure how to feel about VO due to DOS2 conundrum but probably for big studios it's a +, since it WILL force them to finally do a decent editing job and instead of "writing when it's all already done" (Josh) actually PLAN STORY AND DIALOGUE IN ADVANCE LIKE YOURE SUPPOSED TO DO.

otoh small studios don't have money anyway so will continue to do only partial VO.

so plus on minus equals
maybe better writing for Obsidian who knows.

then again... it's not like full VO helped Larian to write good dialogue. You just had to go through lots of bad voiced dialogue.
 

Lyric Suite

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The abstraction should both be realistic and balanced. Combat in RPGs is a simulation, the numbers don't exist for their own sake. If swinging a sword as a big strong guy results in greater damage in real life the numbers should attempt to reflect that fact, and once you have a reasonable system set up the next step should be to balance things around in case if you fucked up and your numbers leave open too many meta exploits that make no sense given the logic of the reality your system is trying to simulate.

And that's it. I don't understand all this autistic shit this guy seems to be so obsessed about, and why he is too stubborn to relent.
 

Fairfax

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The Fall of Sawyer:

"AD&D is wrong"
"BioWare is wrong"
"IE fans are wrong"
"Young me was wrong"
"3E is wrong"
"Grognards are wrong"
"I was wrong"
"The hardcore fans were wrong"
"My boss was wrong"
"I was wrong again"
"I should move to a different genre"

It'd be sad if not for his arrogance.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Fun > balance.

Perfect symmetry in all options =/= fun.

If a dagger and a flail do the same damage because they have the same attack speed (lol), why would you choose one over the other?
If mage spells and cleric spells have roughly the same effects, why choose one over the other?
If all stats have the same use for each class (STR increases magic damage, melee damage, ranged damage), you may as well pick a class at random since they pretty much play the same anyway.

If everything is balanced symmetrically, there's no point in choice because your choice doesn't make a difference.
If your choice doesn't make a difference, there's no fun. The fun in RPG is trying out different builds, weapons, spells etc. But if all builds are symmetrical, there's no point in trying out different ones.

The more wild the differences between classes, items, spells are, the more fun there is in experimenting.

Arcanum is hilariously broken yet it's still fun trying out different characters. Magic is more useful than tech, yes, but tech has cool mechanics and lets you craft powerful unique items and even build a fucking robot army at high levels. Guns and bows have different enough mechanics to make it an interesting choice between the two. Etc. Ridiculously broken game system but it's more fun than PoE's because there are actually different builds to try out, and they all play differently. Who cares if one type of character has an easier way through the game and another a harder way through the game - they're different, which is what makes them fun.

I'd rather have one severely overpowered build, one severely underpowered build, and one average build that all play differently and are therefore fun (also different builds offer different challenges due to over/underpoweredness, and due to different playstyles), than a game where all builds are perfectly balanced by playing exactly the same.

Also, it's more fun when items actually do something interesting, rather than having perfectly balanced (TM) effects like +10% to hit chance or +5% damage. +% is such a boring stat.
BG2 gave me items that do +1 acid, +1 fire, +1 ice damage. Items that had a chance of insta-beheading an enemy upon a crit. Items that gave my chars additional spell slots. An item that reduced the enemy's magic resistance and AC on every hit. Some might say these are not balanced, but who gives a shit. They're fun because they actually do something.
 

frajaq

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"AD&D is wrong"
"BioWare is wrong"
"IE fans are wrong"
"Young me was wrong"
"3E is wrong"
"Grognards are wrong"
"I was wrong"
"The hardcore fans were wrong"
"My boss was wrong"
"I was wrong again"
"I should move to a different genre"

every single thing here is true tbh

he should do a FPS-RPG
 

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