Company News Obsidian reportedly about to be acquired by Microsoft

[Ismaul]

I find the animosity towards Sawyer very funny.

Here at the RPG Codex we're like "here's everything wrong with your RPG", yet that doesn't mean we hate them. Rather, we care so much that it's a given we like RPGs and shift our focus on criticism, because the games could be better. Sawyer is the same. "Oh noes he talks shit about something I like he's just a hater!!1!" Fucking LOL. Plus, Baldur's Gate wasn't great at all, it was just the first non-Goldbox D&D game, and suffered from Biowaritis so much that it was derided on the Codex for years (ask Volourn the only staunch Bioware defender until the great newfag decline). Turns out Sawyer is much like an old Codex grog.

Also, D&D 3.5 is flawed in many ways (and some of those flaws are especially visible on the GM side). There is much improvement to be had. Sawyer's criticisms of the system actually lines up with what D&D 3e/3.5's designers saw as flaws too (I GMed D&D so I read the weekly designer diaries / forums / Q&A and all that good shit for years). And how do you fix problems? Well, by experimenting, which sometimes leads to less desirable results in certain aspects, which you can then understand and correct. What Sawyer did was very ambitious. We need people taking those risks in the industry, otherwise it would simply stagnate.

Now, you could ask, was this redesign approach appropriate for PoE? You might think not. You might be angry that "it's not the game I imagined when I read the pitch". But I personally would never had backed it if it was a straight up BG clone they promised. So to say the pitch was dishonest because the result is not enough like BG, that's just your Kickstarter hopes manifesting. I felt that if the pitch was dishonest, it's because what we got is too much like BG, and the game suffered from it. One could say that the pitch was vague enough and schizo enough to give rise to both reactions. But that doesn't make Sawyer dishonest.

Y'all acting like spurned housewives. Sawyer is a bro.

 

[Infinitron]

Something that's largely been forgotten is how there was a huge thing about cooldowns in the middle of the campaign. In the end, he went back to Vancian.

IIRC it was Feargus who started that particular panic, not Josh.

But yes, there was already plenty of ill will towards the game during the campaign. See my "Project Eternity Doom Squad" post - a classic.

 

[Roguey]

IIRC it was Feargus who started that particular panic, not Josh.

Having just skimmed through that thread, I can assure you that Josh strongly defended this plan on the Obsidian boards.

 

[Mustawd]

And those pitch videos were then followed by 30 days of constant updates packed full of details. If you were troubled by any of those updates, you could just cancel your pledge. So let's cut the shit, shall we?

That’s a fair point. Tbh tho, I never look at updates once I pledge. Unless it’s something substantial. But that’s on me.

 

[Fairfax]

it was just the first non-Goldbox D&D game,

That's false.

Turns out Sawyer is much like an old Codex grog.

A "grog" who hates AD&D.

Also, D&D 3.5 is flawed in many ways (and some of those flaws are especially visible on the GM side). There is much improvement to be had.

What does 3.5E have to do with BG?

IIRC it was Feargus who started that particular panic, not Josh.

Having just skimmed through that thread, I can assure you that Josh strongly defended this plan on the Obsidian boards.

Indeed:

We do not have a spellcasting system designed. This is not something we have to "change" because the majority of what we have developed for things as complex as the spellcasting system are ideas. It's three weeks into a fundraising campaign to make this project. I cannot tell you what final form the spellcasting system will take, what elements it absolutely will or won't have. All I can tell you is the sort of goals we have and general ideas of things I'd like to see and avoid.

I'm trying to create the feeling of strategic spell selection and tactical spell use in D&D while avoiding the constant rest spamming that was so prevalent in the games I made. There are probably a number of ways to solve this problem. I have some ideas on this, but we haven't settled on them. I want to tell people about general ideas and opinions I have, but I don't think spending a day trying to design the system in the forum is going to produce good results.

Locking out access to an entire level of spells once you have exhausted the castings you have available to you at a given level (as a 3E sorcerer would) means that you have to use spells from your other spell levels. This creates a tactical challenge during combat, especially for spells at levels where you do not have many castings available (i.e. typically your highest). Allowing them to regenerate literally instantly means that there is not a tactical consideration; you should just use the most powerful spell for the situation over and over again for the duration of combat.

I'm not going to rule out cooldowns and I'm not going to design the entire magic system on the fly over the course of three weeks. Both Tim and I want the magic system to feel expansive, powerful, and flexible. We want the player to have to make prep choices when selecting spells for active use. These things do not require a Vancian system, nor do they require the absence of cooldowns as a mechanic. As I wrote in one of the class threads, our goal with class design is not to limit the role of classes but to ensure that every class does have at least one combat role they can clearly excel in. This does not mean that wizards won't be able to cast protective spells, transformative spells, etc. It is likely that they will not be able to select from all of those things in the moment but unlikely that we will require the player to rest to change what he or she has access to.

I think it's possible to still make prep meaningful by allowing the player to switch between pre-built (by the player) suites of spells at a frequency that is less than "per rest". I.e. if the player can only use a subset of spells at any given time, but can switch between those subsets with a time penalty (or only outside of combat), that still makes the choices important without the system strictly being Vancian.

EDIT: I believe this is the Feargus quote that was also responsible for the panic:

Q: In the last Tim Cain update, something he said could be interpreted as that there will be per-ability cool-downs a la WoW. Could you confirm/deny this? I personally feel they are bad design, and just a cheap way to nerf overpowered skills.

A: What we are moving forward with right now is a system that does not require a pure round system. In the IE games, each person was running their own six second round and spells were based on whether they were memorzied. How we look at it, rather than going with a memorization system for spells, in particular, we can use a cool down system. It's a similar balancing system without requireing the whole resting for spells. As for ablities being on that timer, D&D also had certain abilities that could only be used a certain number of times per day - again we want to mimic that with a cool down system.


Q: Cool-downs are not real disadvantages that you take into account when deciding what to do next. They are artificial limitations. Each ability should come with real disadvantages (long execution time while you're locked in place, huge mana cost, etc).

A: Gotcha. Personally, I think that cool downs can be used for both good and evil. We would try to stay on the path of good.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

That's blatant revisionism and then some.

Sawyers open contempt for certain aspects of IE games is what drawn a lot of people into the whole project in a first place, including yours truly. Turning a turn-based system into a real time clusterfuck has been controversial ever since the IE classics came out, and while the games remain popular to this day, a sizeable portion of the fanbase likes them despite the combat, not because of it. So to imply that they were trying to hide their plans is absolute nonsense. They didn't need to. Having a system that is actually designed for a video game from the ground up was incredibly appealing. How it turned out is a different conversation.

I have the same problem with Kingmaker, on a first glance it looks fucking great, but then I'm reminded that RtWP implementation of a dice-roll based PnP system is nearly guaranteed to give me ass cancer.

 

[Tigranes]

See, take a comment like this:

I'm trying to create the feeling of strategic spell selection and tactical spell use in D&D while avoiding the constant rest spamming that was so prevalent in the games I made.

That's an entirely reasonable position to take as someone who is pitching a non-D&D new IP Kickstarter heavily inspired by IE games. It's also an entirely reasonable position to take as a game designer.

One could disagree about the specifics (is rest spamming really a problem?) or the final outcome (hey I think your game ended up worse for it), but it's just dumb to obsess about how Sawyer 'hates' IE and sabotaged it or something. The next step to that is obsessive fappy-fappy about his weight and his biking and his relationship with his father. (Which obviously some Codexers are into.) Sawyer is hardly a Designer God. His record is mixed. He's also hardly a fascinating villain that is worth obsessing over. At least for people who fap disturbingly about MCA, they're doing it with someone that did make one unique, brilliant game with a signature style.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Any discussion about Josh in the end is a variation of the old dillema - do you want to give your money to a bland, boring, slightly autistic accountant who is reliable and gets shit done on time, or do you want to give your money to "i'm so quirky" self-proclaimed creative genius full of inspiring ideas who will have a 5-year delay, go 3 times overdbudget and is just as likely to create a masterpiece as he is to create a pile of dog shit.

 

[Haba]

It is nice of you to defend your coworker, Nick.

But I'd rather give my money to someone who can make a fun game. I don't give a fuck about the systems if the game isn't fun to play.

 

[AwesomeButton]

But I personally would never had backed it if it was a straight up BG clone they promised. So to say the pitch was dishonest because the result is not enough like BG, that's just your Kickstarter hopes manifesting. I felt that if the pitch was dishonest, it's because what we got is too much like BG, and the game suffered from it. One could say that the pitch was vague enough and schizo enough to give rise to both reactions. But that doesn't make Sawyer dishonest.

In my defense, it was 2013, I was young, stupid and had just experimented with Kickstarter, and Sawyer was handsome and mysterious, I was feeling confused.

 

[Ismaul]

Turns out Sawyer is much like an old Codex grog.

A "grog" who hates AD&D.

One can like playing the game, like the general concept, like the settings, but not the detail of the rules. Any PnP group worth its salt had a bunch of house rules and homebrewed stuff. Modifying the rules to fit your style and group is part of the game, and there are whole sections in the rulebooks dedicated to explaining that and giving examples and guidelines. So being critical about the rules does not at all mean that you dislike the game; it's expected. Hell, from the very start AD&D is about customizing the rules: there's 6 methods of rolling ability scores, and so on. But I imagine you don't come from a PnP background. Unlike in PnP RPGs, in cRPGs the rules have always been fixed by the designers, so that system design is not something you interact with or take part in as a player. It's a different mindset.

Also most grogs don't play the old editions, they play retro clones with rules based on an edition but refined and improved. Much like there are a lot of people playing Pathfinder instead of D&D 3.5. Why? Clearly because they hate the original edition.

Also, D&D 3.5 is flawed in many ways (and some of those flaws are especially visible on the GM side). There is much improvement to be had.

What does 3.5E have to do with BG?

It's the D&D rules that were the most commonly known, both in cRPGs and PnP, when Pillars was pitched. Any BG successor would be expected to measure up to D&D 3.5 not 2e in terms of rules, especially since the ruleset had been used in successors of BG (NWN, KotOR). 4E was controversial. If you've read Sawyer a bit, you know that he had 3.5E as reference when designing, and that he looked at what he could bring over from 4E (the Defenses and per encounter abilities in PoE being a direct import).

IIRC it was Feargus who started that particular panic, not Josh.

Having just skimmed through that thread, I can assure you that Josh strongly defended this plan on the Obsidian boards.

Indeed:
...

All I see here is that they're experimenting with different rules, without having yet chosen what particular mechanics will be used, but rather trying to see what works for their design goals. Seems like everything was on the table when they started designing, but in the end for most things they ended up playing it safe and staying close to D&D rules.

 

[Bohr]

Partying like it's 2012 :D

Anyway, for some reason the conversation reminded me of those fun old threads where Gaider would be posting about Bioware or something and Sawyer would just happen to stop by to point out the various things BG got wrong

eg:

Almost no racial bonuses. A strange and limited selection of multiclassing options. Game effects that simply didn't do what they were supposed to do.

I think the first time I took Xan into my party to deal with the sirens up the coast, I felt pretty cool. After all, I had an elf enchanter in my party. Charm effects? Forget about 'em! The first time I came face-to-face with the sirens, BAM, Xan charmed. Huh. Must have been an unlucky roll to get by that 90% resistance to sleep and charm. Again. BAM. Charmed. BAM. Charmed. Over and over again. No Wisdom modifiers to my save, either. Geez, dwarves didn't even get their proper poison and magic bonuses, much less AC bonuses against giants. Knowing AD&D rules was actually a detriment to me when playing the game.

 

[Edija]

Woah, there is nothing sweeter than Microsoft chattel slavery and Windows Store exclusive products

 

[Fairfax]

Sawyers open contempt for certain aspects of IE games is what drawn a lot of people into the whole project in a first place,

Public discussion and press coverage were dominated by people who liked and missed the IE games (or at least a couple of them), not people who shared Sawyer's views.

One can like playing the game, like the general concept, like the settings, but not the detail of the rules.

Yes, I'm sure he doesn't hate AD&D. Still, he prefers new editions, which have completely different design, style, and spirit. They're very different games, and that's why grognards stick to old editions/retro-clones.

Any PnP group worth its salt had a bunch of house rules and homebrewed stuff. Modifying the rules to fit your style and group is part of the game, and there are whole sections in the rulebooks dedicated to explaining that and giving examples and guidelines. So being critical about the rules does not at all mean that you dislike the game; it's expected. Hell, from the very start AD&D is about customizing the rules: there's 6 methods of rolling ability scores, and so on.

Agreed, AD&D is all about customized rulesets. It's one of its strengths. Sawyer doesn't agree, however, and has mocked the idea of AD&D being flexible.

But I imagine you don't come from a PnP background.

Also most grogs don't play the old editions, they play retro clones with rules based on an edition but refined and improved. Much like there are a lot of people playing Pathfinder instead of D&D 3.5. Why? Clearly because they hate the original edition.

You're talking about people who stick to the old edition they like the most. Sawyer trashes the old editions and believes 4E (!) is the best, he's the opposite of a grognard. You seem to be a fan of his, so I'm surprised you don't know that.

It's the D&D rules that were the most commonly known, both in cRPGs and PnP, when Pillars was pitched. Any BG successor would be expected to measure up to D&D 3.5 not 2e in terms of rules, especially since the ruleset had been used in successors of BG (NWN, KotOR). 4E was controversial. If you've read Sawyer a bit, you know that he had 3.5E as reference when designing, and that he looked at what he could bring over from 4E (the Defenses and per encounter abilities in PoE being a direct import).

It didn't have to be measured up to 3.5E, the campaign itself never set such standards. That was fine, though. In fact, something even closer to 3.5E would've been better.

All I see here is that they're experimenting with different rules, without having yet chosen what particular mechanics will be used, but rather trying to see what works for their design goals. Seems like everything was on the table when they started designing, but in the end for most things they ended up playing it safe and staying close to D&D rules.

Exploring different options was fine. The point was that the campaign wouldn't have received as much support if everyone knew more about the project's goals and the people behind it. There's a big difference between this:

Obsidian Entertainment and our legendary game designers Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, and Josh Sawyer are excited to bring you a new role-playing game for the PC. Project Eternity(working title) pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.

Project Eternity aims to recapture the magic, imagination, depth, and nostalgia of classic RPG's that we enjoyed making - and playing. At Obsidian, we have the people responsible for many of those classic games and we want to bring those games back… and that’s why we’re here - we need your help to make it a reality!

And

Sort of IWD3 - made by a guy who didn't like BG1 that much, thinks BG2 sucks, doesn't like PS:T's writing, and said IWD and IWD2 (which he worked on) were average at best. Also, we're only doing this because the window is closing and someone else is gonna pitch the same thing if we don't.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's the D&D rules that were the most commonly known, both in cRPGs and PnP, when Pillars was pitched. Any BG successor would be expected to measure up to D&D 3.5 not 2e in terms of rules, especially since the ruleset had been used in successors of BG (NWN, KotOR). 4E was controversial. If you've read Sawyer a bit, you know that he had 3.5E as reference when designing, and that he looked at what he could bring over from 4E (the Defenses and per encounter abilities in PoE being a direct import).

Long story short, if someone says "let's make an Infinity Engine game" and then delivers core gameplay (combat) which has nothing to do with either Infinity Engine game, the fault is with the backers, because they should have read this promise as a metaphor.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Obsidian Entertainment and our legendary game designers Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, and Josh Sawyer

Funny how in the end it turned out from "Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, and Josh Sawyer" to "Josh Sawyer and some stuff by other people".

and has mocked the idea of AD&D being flexible.

As far as I remember he said that a system is bad if players use house rules. So technically he didn't mock the flexibility, but it's really the same thing.
I'm guessing that's why his modus operandi is to limit player options as much as possible. Hey, the less things the player does that I didn't account for the better the system must be!

 

[Archibald]

And those pitch videos were then followed by 30 days of constant updates packed full of details. If you were troubled by any of those updates, you could just cancel your pledge. So let's cut the shit, shall we?

That’s a fair point. Tbh tho, I never look at updates once I pledge. Unless it’s something substantial. But that’s on me.

To me it reads like blame shifting. Everyone knows that lots of people ain't going to read all the updates so if you mislead people with your initial pitch and then reveal some key info that fundamentally changes everything in update #24 then it is on you and not on consumers. Sure, in perfect world everyone reads everything and makes rational decisions, but reality is different and I'm sure that marketing people are aware of that.

 

[Prime Junta]

Oh, fuck you. We've had "springboards to greater things" for 40 years. Can they now kindly blow their brains out and field another Wizardry 7 for me instead? Thank you.

This attitude honestly puzzles me. We already have Wizardry 7. Why would we need another one? Even if somehow "objectively" it was as good as the original (=as rich, as complex, as big etc) it would still be a warmed-over retread. If you like Wizardry 7, then go play Wizardry 7, it hasn't gone anywhere.

Basically, that's like... I dunno, saying that all detective stories ought to be like Raymond Chandler. You can always go back to them and they'll never lose their lustre. Why would you settle for a knock-off when you can have the original any time?

 

[Mustawd]

do you want to give your money to a bland, boring, slightly autistic accountant who is reliable and gets shit done on time

Yes, gib me ur monies please.

 

[Fairfax]

As far as I remember he said that a system is bad if players use house rules. So technically he didn't mock the flexibility, but it's really the same thing.
I'm guessing that's why his modus operandi is to limit player options as much as possible. Hey, the less things the player does that I didn't account for the better the system must be!

He did:

I've been playing A/D&D for 28 years, 2nd Ed. for 11 of those, and this is the first time I've seen someone describe 2nd Ed. as flexible.

I didn't have to pay for any of my 3E books, but if I did, I would be annoyed at having to write pages of house rules so the game isn't broken or generally sucky. People pay for goods so they don't have to manufacture those goods themselves.

if we don't like the ruleset at hand, we have about three options: 1) use another ruleset 2) modify a ruleset 3) make our own ruleset. but the players are also a factor in this, which is why almost everyone winds up doing 1) or 2). if i have time and my players are open to it, i'll always do 3). i usually don't, or they're usually not, so it's typically 2 (some variant of D&D) or occasionally 1.

compared to the tastes of a specific group of players and DM, every designer's choices are at worst, dogshit, and at best, not quite what we'd like. i've never played in/ran an off-the-shelf system where we didn't have major problems with it. the happiest groups have been the ones where we developed the rules together ourselves.

i can't play TTRPGs without aggressively houseruling a million things. *fart sound*

Bonus:

AoOs sound like a good idea, but really wind up becoming an un-fun, un-intuitive pain in the ass.

And there might be more, since Roguey used to parrot this stuff:

Houserules are a sign that the rules themselves have failed.

House rules are bandages for bad design. I wouldn't have any fun with any crpg at all if I didn't use them.

 

[mondblut]

This attitude honestly puzzles me. We already have Wizardry 7. Why would we need another one? Even if somehow "objectively" it was as good as the original (=as rich, as complex, as big etc) it would still be a warmed-over retread. If you like Wizardry 7, then go play Wizardry 7, it hasn't gone anywhere.

I already played Wizardry 7 to death, dummy.

Basically, that's like... I dunno, saying that all detective stories ought to be like Raymond Chandler. You can always go back to them and they'll never lose their lustre. Why would you settle for a knock-off when you can have the original any time?

We could indeed use more Raymond Chandler as opposed to crap they are putting out nowadays.

 

[AwesomeButton]

House rules are bandages for bad design. I wouldn't have any fun with any crpg at all if I didn't use them.

He actually said that? This is such bullshit. I guess this doesn't apply if the game developer includes special modes and calls them "challenges"? Then they are not "bandages for bad design"?

 

[Fairfax]

House rules are bandages for bad design. I wouldn't have any fun with any crpg at all if I didn't use them.

He actually said that? This is such bullshit. I guess this doesn't apply if the game developer includes special modes and calls them "challenges"? Then they are not "bandages for bad design"?

No, Roguey did. He was basically LARPing Sawyer at the time, though, and it's in line with things he's said.

 

[Mustawd]

This attitude honestly puzzles me. We already have Wizardry 7. Why would we need another one? Even if somehow "objectively" it was as good as the original (=as rich, as complex, as big etc) it would still be a warmed-over retread. If you like Wizardry 7, then go play Wizardry 7, it hasn't gone anywhere.

Your puzzlement puzzles me.

Why play Wizardry 2 or 3? Just keep playing Wizardry 1.

Why play Avernum 2 or 3? Just play Avernum 1.

Why play mods of XYZ game? It’s still the same core game mechanics. Just play XYZ game.

Why play an expansion of the same game you own? Just play that same game.

Are we done with this argument yet? No? Ok, then let me expand further.

When someone says “I just want a real fallout 3 or a bg3 or another Wizardry 7, they’re basically saying “I want a true and genuine sucessor or expansion of the game I just mentioned”

In other words, deliver me a game that would have been made in the vein of the old game I liked in the era I liked but make its own thing, even if similar. And there is nothing wrong with that. Really nostalgia fans will really fall into three main categories:

1.) I want a game almost exactly like the old ones. Even all the UI quirks, gameplay, MIDI sound/music and artstyle of that era.

2.) I want a game very sinilar to the old ones, but I’m ok with some modern touches like 3D graphics, better UI, etc.

3.) I want a spirirtual sucessor that captures a lot of the feelz and lore of the old games but expands the gameplay and switches up the formula to not only modernize it but push the boundaries of design as if the series still continued today.

These groups of people have and will always exist. The only difference with kickstarter is that all three will have given money in advance for the thing they want. So naturally you’re going to get butthurt no matter what.

 

[Haba]

This attitude honestly puzzles me. We already have Wizardry 7. Why would we need another one? Even if somehow "objectively" it was as good as the original (=as rich, as complex, as big etc) it would still be a warmed-over retread. If you like Wizardry 7, then go play Wizardry 7, it hasn't gone anywhere.

You've sucked one cock, why suck off another? Just go back to sucking that first cock?