Development Info Josh Sawyer on Utility and Balance in Game Design

I don't really disagree with you here, but P:E doesn't have party creation at the beginning of the game. You make one character at the beginning and you add to the party as the game goes along. So you should be able to adjust your party makeup as you gain more information about the game.

 

Apparently the phrase "Real-Time-With-Pause" has the word "tactical game" in there somewhere.

Also, Total War has a turn based strategic layer. The tactical layer is real time.

 

You're the one who just said positioning is tactics. Total War games have positioning.

 

Wrong again. Obviously BG has positioning.

I said you can't have meaningful positioning in rtwp. Which you can't because it's too cumbersome to micromanage to that degree with rtwp. To wit in BG backstab is not based on position because that would be incredibly frustrating.

And no total war is not about tactics, you can't go down to that level of fine grain control in an RTS.

 

Sawyer explicitly states in the video that some party compositions will inevitably work better than others. Stop being retarded.

 

Ok, well Total War has meaningful positioning too.

 

Not tactically meaningful, that's the point. You obviously don't know what tactics are, nor does mangoose.

Then said he wanted to remove this.

 

Positioning is tactics only in games that design for positioning to be the only method of tactical variety.

A tactic is any short term procedure. A specific combination of spells is a tactic, regardless of positioning.

 

Apparently tactics mean whatever you need it mean so it doesn't apply to things that prove you wrong.

 

No, he did not.

4:20 - "If you're gonna play this race, or that class... You're going to find the game plays differently - I think that is important, I don't think that the game should play the same depending [on what you choose]"

8:15 - "And again you can have different party compositions that work better with each other or worse with each other in different situations and that's cool."

Watch the fucking video and don't be a moron.


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Honestly I also am thinking (like RK47) he is looking at the GW2 design route, whether intentionally or not. He suggests that there are different ways to build each class. In other words, it's most likely that a class won't be able to perform all the roles at once, but rather that each class can be built to a variety of possible specialties. So that a mage won't be able to wear heavy armor AND heal AND enchant AND throw fireballs, but that he will be able to pick from 1 or 2 of those.

 

No, it's just the typical retard stating general arguments without backing them up with details, which then fall apart when someone actually pulls specific data and evidence from specific sources.

 

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/what-are-tactics.78105/

 

FPS are tactical games too, I guess.

Unbearably sorry things got dragged into the direction of defining tactics but hopefully no one thinks that positioning matters much in BG series. It's certainly not a game about tactics.

OTOH that doesn't mean that the combat, character creation etc. should be streamlined so that they don't matter. Which is not how sawyer presents his views, but it's the obvious net result.

 

Gize, according to wikipedia, US Army doctrine defines tactics as being positioning, attack and target selection, while strategy is defined as spamming fireball until you can spam missile storm.

 

In the ideal RPG that you have in your head, sure. In a party-based, combat-focused, IE-esque RPG? Not so much.

 

If some of youse guys really don't believe that some battles in BG2 were so significantly easier with a mage that not having one in your party was gimping yourself, I don't know what to say. Destroy mage supremacy, more equal power distribution among the classes.

Heh, taking both Sand and Qara. Yeah few things can stand up against triple mage alpha strikes in 3.5e. I don't think battles should be balanced so that you can only beat them if you have almost nothing but spellcasters in your party. That is obviously a terrible goal.

 

They only have any challenge at all due to the game cheating heavily in favor of enemy mages. Parties should probably have a mage but you don't particularly need mages for any combat. They are the least useful characters against the toughest enemies, which is where fighting classes shine. But sawyer thinks rogues are just utility characters, and that says it all about him as far as I'm concerned.

 

You're being too vague. What are the toughest?

Rogues in the IE games where straight up shit at combat unless you were using trap cheese. Only reason to have one was for disabling traps and unlocking chests.

 

Please, don't waste your time asking him to back up his arguments with specifics.

 

Or just make all classes mages soul magic users.

 

I'm not in the Sawyer-hating crowd, but this is wrong.There is a little thing called backstab.In BG2 it was death for enemy mages.FFS, a high level assasin could deal damage in the tripple-digits.

 

Two antimagic scrolls and a thief can speed solo BG II.

And I don't hate sawyer, I just know the things he's saying are the heart of darkness.

 

Backstab is a situational ability that requires a backstab-able enemy, not applicable in a lot of cases.

 

There is balance in Sawyer's games? Hahaha
That's a good one

I mean like dat awesome balance in New Vegas. Player must drink water? Let's make the desert have it every 50 meters.

D&D has your characters dying? Oh noez! Let's add instarespawn in NWN2 after combat and no ambushes on rest.

D&D combat must be balanced and fun? Fuck that let's overflow the player with dozens of trashmobs in IWD2.


An amateur who haven't learned a thing about good game design in 10 years is talking like he's a pro.

 

Sawyer didn't have any time/freedom to influence NWN2's combat, try to keep up man. He also agrees that IWD2 was too combat heavy. It was a result of an insanely rushed schedule combined with a desire not to deliver a short game (as they did with Heart of Winter, which they all still felt bad about even after Trials of the Luremaster).