Development Info Josh Sawyer on Utility and Balance in Game Design

We all saw Adam "Attempt" IWD. I have a good idea what to expect from him.

 

So what?

Same question.
Let's talk about clerics. They're very strong against undead. Is this a problem? Should fighters be able to turn undead? Or do we make take turning work on everyone. Or just take it out the game.

 

This is correct. MotB can indeed be "beaten" with a Bard/Cleric/Swashbuckler/Arcane archer build.

 

The presence of a single class in your party shouldn't have such a drastic effect on difficulty.

Classes should have more to do in combat than just an opening attack against certain creatures.

Clerics aren't just the "turn undead" class, they have many other useful actions they can perform in any given combat session.

 

This is a problem if mages are making the game too easy, but I don't believe they were. The game just expected you to have a mage. But so what? The space of all possible parties that include an arcane caster isn't much smaller than the space of all possible parties. In any case mages only have a drastic effect on the difficulty in certain encounters, assuming they have spells stocked. The point of bringing up clerics is that they do this as well, having a cleric makes undead encounters much easier. The same is true of rogues for encounters they can start with a backstab. Fighters on the other hand usually get the most kills over the course of the game.

We're talking in the context of a party based single player game. The player controls the entire party, and doesn't have any obligation to feel bored or embarrassed on behalf on his imaginary party members every time he feels they aren't pulling their weight. What matters is that the player has enough to do, why does it matter that his rogue has enough to do?

Now it could be argued that in D&D games the player doesn't typically have enough to do, and perhaps melee classes should be given more abilities and stamina/adrenaline bars or whatever. I'm kind of dubious about this but it's not really an argument about balance.

 

But not every skill is applicable all the time. Using different skills could have different outcomes as well as different difficulties. It might be a lot of work to persuade the barbarians to leave the valley alone and not attack the people there anymore, requiring high skill levels in several different skills and that you pass in different tests to prove yourself worthy. However, doing this could earn them as steadfast allies, whereas the easier option of threatening them would make them flee. But later join up with the ogres when those decide to attack, making that encounter much harder.

This kind of informal skill system was used by many D&D campaigns before an actual system was implemented. One thing that this does is make the game a lot less about "builds". This is a really bad thing to some, as they see making a build as a very important part of character creation. It is where they get to test their skills, and I think it is somewhat akin to making a deck in Magic: the Gathering. However, while I can have a lot of fun with this kind of system, I think having skills divorced from the leveling system like this can be a very good thing!

About this being a lot more work... Well, yeah, you are right, but each situation doesn't need to be completely unique either. Instead of keeping track of everything the character has learned from NPCs, you can keep track of a few skills, and make different NPCs change these differently. Instead of keeping track of each individual you killed, each battle you won and how, you can have various reputations. And so on.

 

Would it not be:

1) Simpler
2) Elegant
3) Valuable

To design encounters around a party composition (which is exactly what is done in PnP)?

Understandably this can NOT work for cRPGs; fixed scaffold and all that. Some compositions are going to be super awesome than others in combat. The solution to this dilemma is of course tying the NON-combat elements around all the possible party animals, so that every class can "feel" useful. And not just fluff useful with ONE dialogue option (or an insignificant few) over the entire game, but really gameplay affecting multiples. Here's where Overlap helps in computer games. A "balanced" (I leave the quoted word undefined for I am sure that the sensible amongst you know what I mean) overlap will be a rigid scaffold that will still allow "seeming" flexibility around all party compositions.

 

I don't disagree. I just don't think you can accomplish this in a combat-centric pary-based RPG without splitting up combat and non-combat skills, or making other more drastic concessions.

 

Sawyer's approach make sense under a sertain light. Maybe all this class "overlap" really means that it is his way to intoduse multiclassing without naming it so.For examble,you start with a mage and over the course of the game you can leave him a traditional mage, or make him an assasin-mage, or mage with armor and two handed sword, or pistols. If that is the case it seems to me he tries to conbine the class system of IE games with the developing freedom of,lets say Arcanum. I think it has potential if they can pull it of.Don't forget, that Sayer is not alone.Tim Cain is also on board as a senior designer.

 

And I think you are giving him too much credit by freely interpreting things when they seem to become uncomfortable with this "vision ".

 

I dunno, I can see the separation as something validated if the game has everything besides combat either as a quick distraction (like using persuasion to get a better quest reward) or as affecting combat in a specific, clear way (like crafting skills allowing you to create new gear). But if your skills allow you to act half as dynamically as I am suggesting, I think that it would make sense to put this in the hands of the player, or to make them make hard choices for them. Like, bards may suck at combat, but they may have unique skills you can't find otherwise. Or a certain type of mage might be too slow with its spells to really be useful in combat, but he could have all kinds of useful spells for outside combat.

But enough about what I think. Why do you think this would be such a bad idea to allow characters to make their own decisions here? Is it just because of frustration? Or are there more factors I can't see?

 

I think it comes down to this. Either you think Saywer and Cain know their job and will make an interesting system,or you think that the don't and will make a dumbed down streamlined system for the retarded casual audience. Neither side has enough info at his point to prove one or the other.

 

"
Update #15: PayPal, Polish and Russian support, $2.5M/$2.6M stretch goals, new reddit Q&A, classes, and art!

Update #15 ·

Barbarians come from many of the more remote cultures found across the world. In the Dyrwood, they are commonly found among Glanfathan elf communities. They are distinguished from fighters by their recklessness, ferocity, and their predilection to substitute raw aggression for discipline. Barbarians are a challenge to deal with on a battlefield, though they are vulnerable to exhaustion if they don't pace themselves.
Ciphers are uncommon and often misunderstood individuals with extraordinary mental abilities. Like wizards and priests, they have many talents that draw directly from their souls, but ciphers have the unique ability to peer through the spiritual energy of the world to manipulate other souls. While wizards use complex formulae in large tomes and priests tap into the passion of their faith, ciphers are able to operate directly through the power of their minds... and yours.
But wait, we're not done yet! We've been reading a lot of feedback online about classes, companions, and party composition options. We want to give people the ability to build their parties as they like and we also want to allow people to experience the full spectrum of class mechanics. Companions go a long way toward achieving that goal while also providing a ton of reactivity in the world. Even so, we'd like to do more.
Classes: the "Core Four"

Classes in Project Eternity are meant to provide a general framework for character types. Different classes excel in different areas, but the framework can be extended and elaborated on in a multitude of ways to create characters with unique capabilities. If you see a fighter, chances are good that he or she is going to be able to take a lot of damage, but that's about all you can be sure of. If you see a wizard, he or she probably has some hard-hitting spells that can cover a large area, but his potential list of capabilities is vast.
If you want to create a wizard who wears plate armor and hacks away with a broadsword from behind a heavily-enhanced arcane veil, we want to let you do that. If your idea of the perfect fighter is one who wears light armor and uses a variety of dazzling rapier attacks in rapid succession, we want to help you make that character. So it's good to think of Project Eternity's classes as being purpose-ready but not purpose-limited.
To date, through our Kickstarter campaign, you have helped us fund seven classes. In our design, we started with the "core four" because they are the most broadly familiar and also some of the most versatile: the fighter, the priest, the rogue, and the wizard. To these four, you helped us add three specialized, but popular, classes: the ranger, the monk, and the druid. The design of each class has a solid, distinctive base set of abilities that remain in most builds, but will have a large number of optional specializations and alterations to give players a high level of flexibility in developing an individual character's particular style.
Though we are still early in development, we'd like to let you know the rough ideas on what the core four” classes of Project Eternity encompass:"

I think this should be a good refresher.

 

Nebuchadnezzar

There is Much more to this story apparently, concerning especially this overlap thing we are talking about. Providing single article to base that argument on is kind of fallacious. Probably someone can find a video / post on which this discussion is based and post that too.

 

Except I'm not making an argument for or against the current system at all.

 

Well, the kickstarter pitch is probably the best place to start, since that is where Obsidian was describing the game as a whole and the features they planned to implement in somewhat concrete terms. For example, they described the classes they would implement. Everything that I've seen causing panic, rage and sadness ITT is based on Sawyer's very high-level discussion of principles he applies to game design generally, with very little detail about what they are actually doing with P:E itself.

 

Probably you should read the Topic title again.

 

Well, for what is worth, I am comparing them to my own vision of the "Ultimate, Codexian, Infinity Engine-like, Old School D&D-ish Game".

 

However, arguing against these general design principles is countered with the misguided rebuttal that "P:E is this and that, which makes the principles 'o.k' in this one specific context."

Thus, measuring a game-designers ideas against your own standards, deluded "Ultimate Codexian Game" though they may be, is a no-go because P:E just isn't an "Ultimate Codexian Game" and is exempt from criticism on the popamole front. At the same time, these ideas in no way reflect on P:E, because they're just general design principles and won't necessarily find their way to P:E. Must be nice having both bases covered.

 

So what would be closest to the Ultimate Codexian Game - Grimoire, AoD, or PE? Or WL2?