Disco Elysium Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Black Angel]

I think AoD did pretty good job of giving players an idea of what set of skills to invest in

AoD is basically choose your route... at chargen.

There are 4 guild each having different skills to focus on.

Once you set on what guild you want to join, you restart the game and build a character with corresponding build.

If you want to experience more compared to simply focus on what is supposed to be available on your playthrough, at least on 1st or 2nd playthrough, you will need to hoard skill points.

Eh, no, I don't do any of those shit. I vaguely remembered getting a recommendation to start my very first playthrough as a full fighter, and the very next one as full talker, so I did just that (Mercenary, and then Merchant).

No hoarding skill points at all, I just focus on the skills highlighted on character creation skill, and increase them as much as I can, focusing more on combat skills as a Merc, while as a Merchant I focused on increasing Persuasion, Streetwise, and Trade.

Yes and no. AOD gave you a sense of what skills to invest in, but critically gave you no barometer for how much to invest in each skill. The numbers had no context and were therefore meaningless. I took my recommended skills and a few more for good measure which I thought would give me more options, but it turned out I simply couldn't do anything. It sounds like DE will communicate better in this regard. I hope.

Fallout is even worse in that regard, then, because with a range of 1-300 we ultimately have no idea how much to invest in a skill at any given point in the game, but I guess the skills being in range of 1-300 is precisely why we heard no problems of skill hoarding whatsoever about the game, since we could just comfortably focus on tagged skills at first before increasing the other skills. AoD's skills ranging from 1-10 is most probably what trigger many people to hoard skill points and reload whenever they need them, even though with main cities split into 3 parts pretty much means the how much skills to invest in is, on average, split into 1-3(4 for specialists), 4-6(7 for specialists), and 7-10. What skills to increase to those levels, is largely up to the players, and from my experience of having replayed the game so many times, they reward me based on my choices just fine, but I guess most people will plainly dislikes if the reward isn't as 'satisfying'.

Anyway, I think it's unfair to just say 'it turned out I simply couldn't do anything.' when truth is I think you just spread your skillpoints too thinly across the board. There's also what Lurker King pointed out in his post previously, so it's proven that the game does soft-failure too. Games like AoD, and Underrail especially, are no-no for hybrid playthroughs until you actually know the game like the back of your hand. And by the back of your hand, I don't mean metagaming, just that you keep the information of how much skills are needed at any given point in the game in the back of your mind, and use that information to see if there will be any different content to experience based on different combination of stats and skills. If you ultimately reload because you don't like what you get, well, that's on you.

Of course, but that still doesn't mean anything. Is a 5 skill in Barrelmaking "sufficiently competent to make a decent living"? Does that mean a 3 is "incompetent but able to hold down a job as a barrelmaker's assistant"? Or is 1 point sufficient to assume basic competence and it just gets better after that?

In case of AoD, 1 is basically, utterly incapable of doing the job, while 2 is the beginner. If 1 is basic competence and it just gets better after that, then there should exists a skill check of 1 somewhere in the game, but as far as I know there are none.

Is every point twice as big a material increase, or is it a strictly linear scale? And what about the fact that all challenges get harder as the game progresses? Are we to believe that everyone in the starter town is just dumb and easy to lie to, while the next town over everyone is smarter, by simple virtue of being farther away from the PC's starting point? There's just no way to know without playing the game, and a strict pass/fail system leaves no margin of error.

How is this a problem at all? Isn't it the exact same as other RPGs? Are you implying people in Klamath/The Den are somehow as smart as people of Vault City/NCR/New Reno?

Seriously, what's the core gameplay of RPGs for you? Wasn't character progression is a thing?

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Eh, no, I don't do any of those shit. I vaguely remembered getting a recommendation to start my very first playthrough as a full fighter, and the very next one as full talker, so I did just that (Mercenary, and then Merchant).

No hoarding skill points at all, I just focus on the skills highlighted on character creation skill, and increase them as much as I can, focusing more on combat skills as a Merc, while as a Merchant I focused on increasing Persuasion, Streetwise, and Trade.

If you want to experience more compared to simply focus on what is supposed to be available on your playthrough, at least on 1st or 2nd playthrough, you will need to hoard skill points.

 

[Black Angel]

Eh, no, I don't do any of those shit. I vaguely remembered getting a recommendation to start my very first playthrough as a full fighter, and the very next one as full talker, so I did just that (Mercenary, and then Merchant).

No hoarding skill points at all, I just focus on the skills highlighted on character creation skill, and increase them as much as I can, focusing more on combat skills as a Merc, while as a Merchant I focused on increasing Persuasion, Streetwise, and Trade.

If you want to experience more compared to simply focus on what is supposed to be available on your playthrough, at least on 1st or 2nd playthrough, you will need to hoard skill points.

Yeah, but how should you know there's 'more' to experience on 1st/2nd playthrough and why should one care when they're not fully familiar with the game's rules and system?

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Fallout is even worse in that regard

When people drop Fallout name in these discussions is always as an authority argument and it is always misguided. They want to suggest that Fallout did the same thing AoD tried to do, but never punished the player. Of course, that isn't true. There are tons of gated content in each playtrough. It may seem otherwise because there are less narrative choices in Fallout, so you are punished less.

Anyway, I think it's unfair to just say 'it turned out I simply couldn't do anything.'

Zombra is the guy who made a laudatory review of Dead State, but only have bad things to say about Age of Decadence. Let that sink in. I don't know if he is so biased because he is a leftist who does not sympathise with Vault Dweller's political beliefs or if it is because he thinks such highly of Brian Mitsoda name. Whatever is the case, it is fair to say he is not rational by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Zombra]

Fallout is even worse in that regard, then, because with a range of 1-300 we ultimately have no idea how much to invest in a skill at any given point in the game, but I guess the skills being in range of 1-300 is precisely why we heard no problems of skill hoarding whatsoever about the game, since we could just comfortably focus on tagged skills at first before increasing the other skills.

The difference is that Fallout has feedback. You can see your % chance to pick a lock or fool the guards.

Anyway, I think it's unfair to just say 'it turned out I simply couldn't do anything.' when truth is I think you just spread your skillpoints too thinly across the board.

Turns out these two statements are synonymous. If I can still compare with Fallout, that game forced me to have "tag" skills, which was a strong way of communicating how many skills I could reasonably expect to excel at at the beginning of the game. Even if I spread out my points, those two skills were good enough that I could do the first few challenges, all the while keeping an eye on the percentages to get a feel for how much to invest on a level up.

In case of AoD, 1 is basically, utterly incapable of doing the job, while 2 is the beginner. If 1 is basic competence and it just gets better after that, then there should exists a skill check of 1 somewhere in the game, but as far as I know there are none.

Which is weird. In AOD, it is worse to have 1 point in a skill than 0. Why do skill levels 1-2 even exist in the game? Because 1-10 looks pretty?

How much is a skill point worth? There's just no way to know without playing the game, and a strict pass/fail system leaves no margin of error.

How is this a problem at all? Isn't it the exact same as other RPGs? Seriously, what's the core gameplay of RPGs for you? Wasn't character progression is a thing?

Again, it is a question of feedback. Fallout has it; AOD doesn't. I recently replayed Fallout and had no problem intuiting the right skill levels to be able to do things. In AOD I never had any idea. Even when I tried to "eyeball" it and guess how many points I needed to pass a check, I was often wrong. The game "taught" me very quickly that hoarding was the only way to go if I wanted to have any control over what I could and couldn't do. Maybe I'm particularly dense, but with so many people having the same complaint I'm disinclined to believe I'm the problem.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Again, it is a question of feedback. Fallout has it; AOD doesn't. I recently replayed Fallout and had no problem intuiting the right skill levels to be able to do things. In AOD I never had any idea. Even when I tried to "eyeball" it and guess how many points I needed to pass a check, I was often wrong. The game "taught" me very quickly that hoarding was the only way to go if I wanted to have any control over what I could and couldn't do. Maybe I'm particularly dense, but with so many people having the same complaint I'm disinclined to believe I'm the problem.

We have the following options:

(a) everyone else had the same problem, but they are lying about it;

(b) you are retarded;

(c) you are making a caricature for whatever misguided reason;

(d) everyone else is retarded.

The most plausible answer must be (c), because (a) and (d) are egocentric and hard to sustain.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Is this thread about AoD now?

Investing heavily in a skill set before being aware of how that translates to gameplay is pretty silly

I think AoD did pretty good job of giving players an idea of what set of skills to invest in, starting all the way from character creation where they highlight the skills needed to play the starting class/desired playstyle and character archetype.

Yes and no. AOD gave you a sense of what skills to invest in, but critically gave you no barometer for how much to invest in each skill. The numbers had no context and were therefore meaningless. I took my recommended skills and a few more for good measure which I thought would give me more options, but it turned out I simply couldn't do anything.

I'm not sure how to solve this problem, assuming it's a problem to begin with. Yes, you never know (until you try) what skill level is sufficient, much like you don't know what skill level is sufficient in real life. You may think you're pretty good at something yet fail when you attempt to do it. Overall though, a 1-10 scale does give you a pretty good idea of where you stand. If 10 means expert or master, then 2-3 is beginner, 4-5 average, etc.

And what about the fact that all challenges get harder as the game progresses? Are we to believe that everyone in the starter town is just dumb and easy to lie to, while the next town over everyone is smarter, by simple virtue of being farther away from the PC's starting point?

The nature of the tasks escalates as you progress (snowball rolling downhill and growing bigger). In Teron you deal with minor issues. In Maadoran you deal with the consequences, the ripple effect. By the time you reach Ganezzar the events reach the boiling point. Convincing a disgruntled employee (Mercato) to spill the beans is infinitely easier than convincing a general (Paullus) to ally with one of the factions.

If you prefer a real life example, in sales signing up a small business is much, much easier than signing up a bigger company and convincing someone to pay (if you gave them 30-90 days terms) is much harder than signing them up.

Again, it is a question of feedback. Fallout has it; AOD doesn't. I recently replayed Fallout and had no problem intuiting the right skill levels to be able to do things. In AOD I never had any idea.

Fallout was a very easy game, which made things easy overall. If non-combat check failed, you could always shoot your way in and out. Even though the skills went up to 200, implying that 200 is a master level, 75 in a combat skill was enough to kill anything. You could do it with 60 too which gave you plenty of points to invest and hoard. They tried to fix it with super high checks in Fallout 2 (125 science, 75 medical, iirc) but such checks were rare.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I'm not sure how to solve this problem, assuming it's a problem to begin with. Yes, you never know (until you try) what skill level is sufficient, much like you don't know what skill level is sufficient in real life. You may think you're pretty good at something yet fail when you attempt to do it. Overall though, a 1-10 scale does give you a pretty good idea of where you stand. If 10 means expert or master, then 2-3 is beginner, 4-5 average, etc.

I mean, why did you adopt a learn by doing system for Colony Ship? Seems like it will solve all of these problems, but maybe that's just serendipity.

 

[Black Angel]

The difference is that Fallout has feedback. You can see your % chance to pick a lock or fool the guards.

I must've been blind because I don't remember there being any %chance shown when trying to fooling guards or whoever in Fallout, unless you mean Fallout 3.

Anyway, in case of lockpicking the game does gave you feedback.... kinda. Just check how much lockpicking/sneak you needed in a city by entering a room in an Inn, and you'll get the general idea of how much level of a skill needed to experience the content there.

Turns out these two statements are synonymous. If I can still compare with Fallout, that game forced me to have "tag" skills, which was a strong way of communicating how many skills I could reasonably expect to excel at at the beginning of the game. Even if I spread out my points, those two skills were good enough that I could do the first few challenges, all the while keeping an eye on the percentages to get a feel for how much to invest on a level up.

But AoD pretty much highlighted what skills you needed when trying certain classes. If you follow the combat tutorial all the way to the end, it even suggest you to play combat specialist with a side of Critical Strike, Crafting, and Alchemy first and foremost before ever attempting hybrid character. And if you're ever confused how much you need to invest in a skill at the start, the combat tutorial give you a good hint of it. For example, as a combat specialist you obviously need to invest more heavily on your combat skills like one of the weapon skill and one of the two defensive skill.

Which is weird. In AOD, it is worse to have 1 point in a skill than 0.

Are you serious with this? Every single skill in AoD started at 1, not 0. You could go on to argue this triviality about how 0 should be the starting point of every skill in every RPG, but I'm not gonna waste my time with you here.

Again, it is a question of feedback. Fallout has it; AOD doesn't. I recently replayed Fallout and had no problem intuiting the right skill levels to be able to do things. In AOD I never had any idea. Even when I tried to "eyeball" it and guess how many points I needed to pass a check, I was often wrong. The game "taught" me very quickly that hoarding was the only way to go if I wanted to have any control over what I could and couldn't do. Maybe I'm particularly dense, but with so many people having the same complaint I'm disinclined to believe I'm the problem.

Nah, this is just you having replayed Fallout many times that you're pretty much familiar with what the content has to offer and how much skillpoints you need to invest at any given point in the game. The same can be said for me who've replayed AoD as much as I replayed Fallout, I'm pretty much familiar with how the rules and system of both games works so I personally have no problem investing whatever amount of SPs needed at any given point in the games. If anything, AoD having a range between 1-10 actually made it easier to plan skill investment, but since the game is genuinely more difficult to play than Fallout I guess that's why people resorted to hoarding SPs instead of enjoying the game as is and play whatever build variation of a specific character archetype (for example, having 3 Persuasion-5 Streetwise vs. 4 Persuasion-4 Streetwise vs. 5 Persuasion-3 Streetwise etc etc) and see where the game takes them.

I'm not sure how to solve this problem, assuming it's a problem to begin with. Yes, you never know (until you try) what skill level is sufficient, much like you don't know what skill level is sufficient in real life. You may think you're pretty good at something yet fail when you attempt to do it. Overall though, a 1-10 scale does give you a pretty good idea of where you stand. If 10 means expert or master, then 2-3 is beginner, 4-5 average, etc.

I mean, why did you adopt a learn by doing system for Colony Ship? Seems like it will solve all of these problems, but maybe that's just serendipity.

From what I remembered in the updates, they mentioned that the problem isn't in the system, but player's expectation. I'm just paraphrasing here, so maybe VD can clear it up.

I personally see this as non-issue, if a good system is in place but most people resort to breaking the rules (for whatever reasons) instead of actually following them then the problem isn't in the system, so much as it's with the players.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I personally see this as non-issue, if a good system is in place but most people resort to breaking the rules (for whatever reasons) instead of actually following them then the problem isn't in the system, so much as it's with the players.

Systems create incentives for player behavior so I don't think you can view them in a vacuum. I'm not even sure the system is why people hoard skill points in AOD. At least if you're playing as a talker, it's more because of the pacing. You don't need those points until the next big conversation.

 

[Black Angel]

Systems create incentives for player behavior so I don't think you can view them in a vacuum. I'm not even sure the system is why people hoard skill points in AOD. At least if you're playing as a talker, it's more because of the pacing. You don't need those points until the next big conversation.

Exactly, it's not that the system drive people to hoard SPs in AoD, it's player's expectation:

Exactly. From an old update:

• One of the most common complaints about AoD was meta-gaming, yet the problem wasn’t on the design end but on the player’s end. Basically, it was driven by the player’s desire to get more content in the course of one game. As that content required stats and skills, it forced some players to metagame, either to spread skill points in the most optimum manner or to hoard points and use them like currency to buy extra content. The ‘increase by use’ system eliminates this meta-gaming aspect as now there are no skill points to hoard or distribute. The content you get will be determined by your actions and choices (including which skills to use as your primary and secondary groups).

Yeah, you don't need the SPs until the next big conversation, but you really need them if you want to experience any side content.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Honestly if you want to just experience content as is presented on you chosen path at chargen the early level might as well just be auto level

Things open up later when you are sufficiently high on your main skills and you can branch out but before that knowing exactly how much SP is needed on checks is important unless you want your first 2 chapters being pretty much just clicking to find out what available to you. If you try to do any other thing not a bit related to your first build? Dead. Build a mercenary and try to betray your employer to another guild? You fail cause you sucks at all aspect of the new guild, now you has less SP, good luck in next chapter.

Succeeding in those quests also gives more SP IIRC while failing either leave you dead, wish you were dead, or no extra SP which makes it more likely for you need fail future checks (due to having less SP thus lower skills).

AoD is a game essentially designed to be played in maybe 6 playthroughs, 4 for each main path, 2 for when you know whats available you can min-max build for profits.

 

[Zombra]

Yes and no. AOD gave you a sense of what skills to invest in, but critically gave you no barometer for how much to invest in each skill. The numbers had no context and were therefore meaningless. I took my recommended skills and a few more for good measure which I thought would give me more options, but it turned out I simply couldn't do anything.

I'm not sure how to solve this problem, assuming it's a problem to begin with.

Well, in one sense the problem(?) solved itself: players adapted their approach to the game to achieve the desired results (being able to succeed at things).

But I think the real solution is what ZA/UM says they're doing with DE: they're using "fail forward" design and making failures fun. In AOD, I tried to disguise myself as a loremaster to infiltrate the dig site (Disguise being one of my highest skills) but failed and was simply told to fuck off. That wasn't fun and left me only worse skills with which to try a different approach. I tried to turn in a pickpocket to the guard, but I failed my persuade check so the guard murdered me for opening my mouth. I don't expect to see brick walls like this in DE.

 

[vota DC]

While soft failure is funny and replay friendly the problem is that for now ZA/UM didn't apply it even to themselves.
This is a photo about Friday recap part 1
http://zaumstudio.com/2019/03/13/follow-friday-recap-part-1/dcim100gopro/
As you can see programmers are thrown from a plane because they failed their employer.
Also after this they have -5 reaction modifier when they try to hire new programmers, this is why friday recap part 2 isn't out.

 

[buffalo bill]

Is this how they are using their money? This game will never get finished.

 

[Prime Junta]

I thought you punks liked it when someone gives Communists helicopter rides.

 

[Alienman]

Without parachutes

 

[Abu Antar]

I voted A.

 

[Tom Selleck]

c) kingcomrade

 

[Tigranes]

c) who the hell cares

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

It should be different messages based on your dominant stats. Like "Hey, you gained a skill point! You know what else expands your mind? Hard drugs" and/or your stats/skills arguing over which of them you should increase. This is a deadly serious suggestion and should increase development time at least another 6 months.

 

[Wunderbar]

I feel stronger

 

[normie]

the results of hard work and dedication always look like luck to saps, but you know you've earned every ounce of your success

 

[luinthoron]

A does make more sense if you don't actually use the term Level in the game otherwise.

 

[HoboForEternity]

"in knowing the teaching of Zerthimon, I have become stronger"